The establishment of Latin rule over extensive portions of Romania opened
the way to western immigration and settlement in these territories on a scale
much larger than before 1204. With the exception of the Venetians, the
new Latin settlers initially came from the ranks of the conquerors, many
of whom were knights. The Latin population was gradually reinforced
in numbers and became more diversified, the majority of the newcomers
hailing from Italian cities. However, our lack of adequate quantitative data
makes it impossible to assess the extent of Latin immigration. About 1225
some 450 mounted warriors were dispersed throughout the principality of
Achaia, yet it is not clear how many of them lived there with wives and
children. In 1210Othon of La Roche (1204–25), duke of Athens, mentioned
localities in which only twelve Latins resided, a reference to feudal lords
and their retinues settled in isolated mountain castles or fortified rural
mansions. Some of these lords occasionally resided in the houses they owned
in cities. Most Latins, however, whether knights or commoners, tended to
live permanently in an urban centre, preferably protected by walls, or inside
an acropolis, regardless of their previous lifestyle or occupations. Such was
the case, for instance, with the crusader knights and Venetian fief-holders in
theGallipoli peninsula.To some extent this marked preference of the Latins
for urban settlement in Romania derived from economic considerations,
in particular those of merchants and craftsmen. Yet it also arose from the
psychological urge of a minority group for security, keenly aware of its
isolation amidst an overwhelmingly Greek population.
The largest Latin concentration in the conquered territories outside the
Venetian colonial empire occurred in Constantinople between 1204 and
1261. The major economic role of the City, aswell asVenice’s improved position
and extended quarter there, attracted primarily Venetian immigrants.
In Frankish Achaia the establishment of the princely court at Andravida
prompted further settlement in this locality and contributed to its urban
development. Italian bankers and merchants took up temporary or permanent
residence at Clarence, the port founded near Andravida in the first half
of the thirteenth century, and turned it into an economic centre connecting
the principality of Achaia with the kingdom of Sicily and Venice.However,
Latin migration in Romania did not always result in permanent settlement.
Some of those established in Latin Romania left after a while for other destinations.
After the establishment of the Latin empire, knights whose pay
was in arrears or who were dissatisfied with their living conditions either
returned to the west or left the emperor’s service to fight in his neighbours’
armies. In addition, some Venetians who had kept up close ties with their
kin in Venice, and retained property there, returned home after spending
many years in Constantinople or other cities. The Byzantine recovery of
the imperial capital in 1261 triggered an exodus of some 3,000 Latins, the
majority of whom were undoubtedly Venetian settlers.7
As already noted, the conquering knights transplanted their own political
organisation and social regime to Romania, except in the Venetian portion
of the Latin empire. Yet their encounter with the local population required
significant accommodations. As in the west, the society of the territories
they settled became highly stratified, with a clear distinction between the
upper, knightly class and the other strata of society. This distinction was
bolstered by the knights’ strong class consciousness – expressed in the
ceremony of dubbing – and their particular values, lifestyle, mentality and
culture. Yet even within this Frankish elite there was pronounced social
differentiation. Vassalage and the holding of fiefs entailing military service
provided the backbone of the social and political hierarchy, yet only higherand
middle-ranking noblemen exercised judicial and legislative authority
and rights of taxation.
The stratified nature of the feudal hierarchy is best known from the principality
of Achaia. The barons, one of whom was the Latin archbishop of
Patras, enjoyed a strong position, participating in the decisive deliberations
of the princely court, and exercising high justice. Among the other tenantsin-
chief of the prince, from the second half of the thirteenth century we
find some Italian bankers and merchants to whom the princes had granted
knighthood and fiefdoms in return for financial assistance. There were several
ranks of feudatories below the direct vassals of the prince. The lowest
rank included those individuals who were not members of the knightly
class: sergeants, owing mounted military service in return for land or a
payment, and archontes, members of the local elite (see below, pp. 772–3).8
Our knowledge of thirteenth-century feudal custom in Frankish Achaia
derives mainly from a private legal treatise, known as the Assizes of Romania.
This compilation was completed between 1333 and 1346 in French,
the language of the Frankish knights, yet survives in a Venetian translation
presumably prepared in Negroponte in the late fourteenth century.9
Achaian feudal custom developed from a mixture of imported and local
elements. The conquerors and their successors borrowed principles, rules
and formulations from their lands of origin, among them Champagne, as
well as from the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, where the Frankish kings
and nobility faced many similar problems to their own. Traces of the feudal
custom from the kingdom of Sicily also appeared after 1278, when the
principality came under Charles I of Anjou’s rule. The determining factors
in the development of the legal system, though, were legislative acts and
judicial precedents established by the princely court of Achaia, registering
the dynamics of Frankish problem-solving. Within this framework, the
feudal custom of the principality had one novel feature: it incorporated
elements of Byzantine law relating to the patrimonial lands held by Greeks
and to the status of dependent peasants.
The Assizes confirm the strong legal and political position of the prince,
reflecting both the tensions which occasionally arose between him and his
barons, and the barons’ cooperation with the princely court, for which we
also have evidence from other sources. The Assizes deal extensively with
matters of vassalage, fiefdoms, the military service they owed, and with the
rights of lords over their peasants, but only marginally with non-feudal
holdings, commercial cases and the drafting of wills. The extension of
Achaian suzerainty over most islands of the Aegean in 1248 resulted in
greater involvement by their Frankish lords, like the dukes of Athens and
marquises of Bodonitsa, in the political, military and above all the feudal
life of the principality. The collapse of the Latin empire in 1261 increased
this involvement – which continued after 1278 under the bailiffs appointed
by Charles I of Anjou and the princes ruling the principality directly –
spreading Achaian feudal customs throughout the territories subject to the
suzerainty of the Frankish princes.10
Representatives of Venice served as baili in the city of Negroponte
(presently Chalkis) from 1211, dealing with judicial cases involving Venetians
and their assets on the island. Their jurisdiction increasingly extended
to feudal matters, drawing on Achaian custom. In 1262 the island’s overlord,
William II of Villehardouin, checked their interference in that field
(see above, p. 767), and Venice refrained from exercising feudal jurisdiction
in Euboea for the next half century or so; however, some Venetian
lords in the Aegean continued to submit feudal cases to the Venetian baili
in Negroponte. This jurisdiction stimulated Venice’s interest in the use
and preservation of Achaian feudal custom and induced her to sanction
a Venetian version of the Assizes in 1452; this version acquired legal force
throughoutVenice’s colonial empire, save inCrete. The reliance on Achaian
custom contributed decisively to the piecemeal extension of Venetian lordship
over Frankish Negroponte and some neighbouring islands, a process
completed in 1390.11 Venice also used other means gradually to undermine
the authority of the lords of Euboea in the city of Negroponte.12
As a result of Latin settlement, society in the Latin territories of Romania,
other than those ruled by Venice, was divided into two distinct groups.
While religious affiliation was not of major importance in daily life, it
constituted a criterion of basic social stratification and individual identity.
The Latins belonging to the Roman church enjoyed the superior status
of freemen – Francus or Frank being synonymous with both Latin and
freeman – while the local society remaining faithful to the Greek church
was collectively debased.
Two factors drove this important change in local, formerly Byzantine
society. Firstly, the conquering knights projected their own concept of a
rigidly stratified society onto it, translating Byzantine social realities into
legal terms. Secondly, since the abstract concept of statehood upheld in
Byzantium was alien to them, all the prerogatives and functions of the
imperial government, which had retained their public nature in the empire,
were transferred into the hands of feudal lords. This again was in accordance
with the legal system prevailing in western feudal society at that time. The
overall privatisation and decentralisation of state authority in judicial and
fiscal matters, the twin features of feudalisation in Latin Romania (except in
Venetian-ruled territories) arrested social trends in Greek society and had
a direct bearing on the status of its members.
Before 1204 the basic social and legal distinction within Byzantine society
had been between free individuals and slaves. Social as well as economic
differentiation among freemen was not expressed in legal terms, and
they were all subject to the same imperial laws and courts. The Byzantine
elite – the archontes, great landlords, high- and middle-ranking imperial
officials and imperial dignitaries, mostly living in cities – thus lacked a legal
definition. The Frankish knights, however, considered them members of
a well-defined socio-legal class, similar to their own yet not equal. The
knights’ status was hereditary, subject to a legal system different from that
governing the bulk of the indigenous population.
With the breakdown of Byzantine imperial government in the years
just before and particularly those following the Latin conquest of Constantinople,
the archontes in many areas of Romania assumed control over
the local population. By and large, those who negotiated the submission
of the cities and territories under their control were allowed to keep all
or portions of their patrimonial estates and the dependent peasants living
in them. In the duchy of Naxos the small number of Latin settlers
prompted the conqueror,Marco I Sanudo, to adopt a conciliatory attitude
toward the Greeks, integrating archontes among his feudatories. In Frankish
Achaia the converging interests of the Frankish knightly class and the
archontes, more numerous than elsewhere, led to the archontes and other
Greeks being gradually absorbed into the ranks of the feudatories who owed
simple homage, the lowest stratum in the Frankish feudal hierarchy. This
legal integration did not affect the status ofGreek patrimonial estates, which
remained hereditary andwere governed byByzantine law, as before the Latin
conquest.
Fromthe mid-thirteenth century, especially after the return ofByzantium
to the Peloponnese in 1262, the Frankish leaders’ concern to ensure the
loyalty, cooperation and military service of the archontes led the Franks
to grant them fiefdoms under feudal custom, thus furthering their social
rise. They even dubbed some archontes to knighthood, a status that became
hereditary. In most cases, however, this social process did not induce the
Greeks to adopt the westerners’ creed, nor did it make the Latin knights
less reluctant to intermarry with them. The limits of the legal and social
assimilation achieved by the archonteswere also illustrated by the persistence
of a cultural gap between the two groups. The archontes’ social promotion
enhanced their status within their own traditional community, yet deprived
that community of an elite willing to oppose Latin rule.13
As noted above, the entire local population underwent a process of
debasement as a result of the conquest. Except for the archontes, all Greeks
sank into a state of dependency, since in principle they became paroikoi or
dependent individuals, regardless of their personal status or place of residence
before 1204. The Assizes of Romania distinguish between only two
categories of Greeks, archontes and paroikoi, the latter also called villani
by the Latins. In practice, however, the situation was more complex and a
distinction apparently existed between local urban and rural populations.
Political expediency accounts forGreek autonomy in Adrianople, held since
1206 by the Greek arch¯on Theodore Branas under Venetian lordship. And
we may safely assume that the Greek court operating with Latin consent in
Thessaloniki in 1213 upheld the rules of Byzantine law regarding the paroikoi
and their assets, as distinct from those of non-dependent city-dwellers.14
However, continuity in the use of the Byzantine term paroikos conceals a
major change in the legal status and social condition of theGreeks to whom
it was applied. Under Byzantine rule, paroikoi were peasants considered
legally free. As such they had access to imperial courts, although they were
attached either to the imperial fisc, to an ecclesiastical institution or to an
individual lord, and were subject to important personal restrictions. With
the privatisation of governmental authority under Latin rule paroikoi were
deemed legally unfree, like dependent serfs or villeins in the west; they were
therefore members of a legal class from which they could escape only by a
formal act of emancipation. The presumption of dependence was so strong
that free status had to be duly proven by Greeks who enjoyed it, preferably
with the help of documents, if doubts arose. The subjection of the paroikos
or villein to his lord was far more rigorous than it had been in the Byzantine
period. He was considered a mere chattel and tied to the estate of his lord,
who wielded almost unlimited authority over him, except for criminal
justice which was reserved for competent courts. The legal capacity of the
paroikoi in their handling of landed property and goods was also far more
restricted than in the Byzantine period. Cases of manumission appear to
have been rare. Paradoxically, in the absence of Byzantine imperial authority
this whole process also adversely affected those dependent peasants who
were subject to archontes and Greek ecclesiastical institutions. Even lower
down the social scale than villeins were the slaves, whose numbers grew as
a result of the frequent warfare and piracy in Romania. Many slaves were
exported to the west or to Muslim countries. In the portion of the Latin
empire under its direct rule, Venice adopted the principles and policies
of the Frankish knights vis-`a-vis the social stratification of Greek society
and the privatisation of taxation owed by the peasantry, while maintaining
state control over the property and rights it granted out. Moreover, Venice
strictly upheld the public nature of Byzantine judicial and fiscal authority
as exclusive state prerogatives.15
World History
