Frankish Churches and Monasteries

The Pope and Frankish lords encouraged the settlement of Western clergy, but Catholicism never gained a major foothold in the Aegean area outside of some Cycladic islands (Lock 1995). Despite gifts of land and other support, the Latin Church was a small, dispersed community with limited wealth compared to its

Western counterparts. The monastic orders invited to settle in the countryside were also typically those with an austere lifestyle, so that the few surviving ecclesiastical complexes are simple rectangular basilicas with Gothic ornament applied sparingly, notably in the sanctuary (Panagopoulos 1979). Pitched wooden roofs accompany a vaulted sanctuary apse. In the few major towns there were also parish churches and monasteries, such as the excavated Saint John’s monastery in Corinth. The focus of Frankish power in the Peloponnese was in Elis, close to contacts westwards by sea. Here the Villehardouin dynasty used the town of Andravida as their capital, and nearby built the giant stronghold of Claremont (Chlemoutsi), and three Gothic churches for various Latin monastic orders. That of Saint Sophia has been studied (Cooper 1996, Coulson 1996, Bouras 2006) and originally had a large central nave suitable for convening the court, and a smaller aisle for ceremonies of the monks (Figure 19.5a—b). Like most of the few surviving, and

Figure 19.5a The Frankish dynastic church of Saint Sophia, Andravida, Elis, Western Peloponnese. Photo Tasos D. Zachariou.

Figure 19.5b Plan from R. Traquair, “Frankish Architecture in Greece.”

Journal of the RIBA 31 (1923), 34—48 and 73—83 (also monograph, London 1923).

In any case originally rare, Latin churches on the Crusader Mainland, the plan is an apsed basilica with limited Gothic ornament. Such churches also preserve a fortified appearance, reflecting the insecurity of their founders in a hostile landscape.

In keeping with both Byzantine and Frankish practice, the Frankish elite were buried within churches, for which sadly only fragmentary inscriptions and architectural embellishments survive (Ivison 1996). Near Andravida the now-destroyed mortuary church of the Villehardouins of Saint James has yielded the thirteenth-century tombstone of Princess Agnes in a mixed Frankish-Byzantine style. The Byzantine church at Daphni in Attica became a Cistercian monastery and the burial-place of the Frankish Dukes of Athens: representing this elite are several recycled ancient sarcophagi found in the floor and the crypt, again combining elements of both Frankish and Byzantine art. The Athens Parthenon was also used for the burial of higher clergy and the Florentine Dukes of Athens; fragments of Gothic tomb architecture mixed with Byzantine styles survive as well as epitaphs on the columns. Ivison argues that Mainland Franks were more integrated into indigenous society and hence funerary art was hybrid, whereas on the islands of Chios and Cyprus a more exclusively Western society produced purely Gothic and Italian styles.