On Vacation: Cheetahs

Two Cheetahs (1400-1410)
by a follower of Govannino de Grassi.
British Museum.

Eustacio and the Franciscans of Nauplion

North side of Panagia, in Nauplion, originally a 15th-century
church, possibly the Franciscan church of S. Maria Val Verde.
Possibly not.

 Eustacio showed up the other night.  In my world it was 1491, and I hadn't seen him since 1483.  He was Bartolomeo Minio's cancellier,* which means that he maintained financial records and files, and wrote necessary documents for Minio's administration. He provided deeds, various legal papers, and letters in Italian and Greek for local clients.  They paid him for each individual service, and these examples from 1515 show what they paid.**

- for a letter, 3 aspri; for a letter within the territory, 2 aspri.

- for a document authenticating manumission of a slave, 1 ducat.

- for a document authenticating ownership of a slave, 3 hyperpera.

- for writing out the payroll for a ship, 2 marcelli; for a grippi, 2 aspri; for a barcha, 4 soldi.

- for an inventory of the deceased's possessions: moveable property 1/2 tornese per hyperper; for real estate, 1 aspro per hundred; for a fair copy on good paper, 2 aspri.

His documents moved into history: he wrote the Greek versions of the two boundary agreement that were accepted by Mehmed and Beyazid. So Eustacio should have been comfortable.  He was a survivor of the siege of Negroponte, but his wife and children were taken as slaves.  He had been able to redeem three daughters who needed dowries, but two daughters were still -- more than ten years later -- in Turkish possession.  

In addition to being Minio's cancellier, in 1475, the provveditor of the Venetian fleet and the Captain General had jointly appointed him as paymaster for the Greek and Albanian stratioti, and the Italian fanti. 

When the provveditor of the Venetian fleet arrived in Nauplion in late January of 1480/81, besides firing stratioti, and beating and humiliating some of the kapetanioi, he fired Eustacio -- two months before his appointment was to end -- and assigned his own cancellier as paymaster. This was a serious matter, because the paymaster took a cut from every salary paid, and Eustachio lost in some instances a good four years' worth of benefits. 

What these paycuts meant in actuality was that Minio thought a stratiote should have received 28 soldi for one pay, six times a year.  If Venice was overdue -- and it always was -- there may have been back pay, too.  From that 28 soldi, the Paymaster General back in Italy got 4 soldi and Eustacio was to get 2. When the provveditor put in his own paymaster, the new paymaster took Eustacio's 2 and then another 2 for himself.  So a stratiote could pay nearly a quarter of his salary for the privilege of having a salary at all.  

Minio says that this system was put into place by Valerio Chiericati during the war of 1463-78, when he was sent out to standardize the pay system across the Venetian territories.  I have never been so close to a storming-the-Bastille-and-Winter-Palace mood as I the day was when I was in Vicenza and saw the Chiericati palazzo, the eventual celebration of grinding down Nauplion -- and many other -- stratioti and fanti and soldati.

Minio began writing to Venice about this outrage to his cancellier, and although it took more than two years, Minio managed to get Eustacio's money repaid and, in fact, the payment was put into the hands of Minio's brother-in-law, galley captain Piero Trevisan, to bring to Nauplion.***

In 1491, two Franciscan friars were sent to Nauplion.  There had been no Latin clergy in Nauplion since 1487, and nothing tells us what was going on -- if anything -- in the little Latin churches.  In an effort to remedy this problem, the Senato Mar formally gave possession of the church, friary, land, and houses of S. Maria Val Verde in Nauplion to the Franciscan Minister of the Province of Greece.****  The Senato also provided the first year's expenses for the friars.

When the friars arrived, they found the house where they were to live a calamitatem, there was no place else suitable, and they had no way of building a new house.  They complained to the Nauplion governor, provveditor, probably Giovanni Nani.

A petition was sent to the Senato -- the petitioners are not identified in the Senato document -- which said that since a staff chaplain, capellan, for the provveditor cost 48 ducats a year, that money could be used to build a house for the friars, and then provide for their necessities.  Also, the provveditor would like two more friars to be sent.  He wanted to be able to have Mass said for him and his staff in his own house in the fortifications on Akro-Nauplion, or in church.  The provveditor and the Nauplion council were in agreement with the petitioners.  The Senate approved the petition on 15 December 1491, which is the document I have.

We have almost no information about Latin churches in Nauplion.  There was a Franciscan convent at Myloi in 1450. (Here, #6.)  There was a S. Anastasio on the plateia and a S. Veneranda outside the walls in 1500, and a S. Niccolo (which could have been a Ag. Nikolaos) on the waterfront in 1480. (The dates are the dates of my documents, and don't suggest anything about when the churches appeared.  The Camoccio map shows a number of churches, all certainly small, but they cannot all be Latin rite.

Nauplion's Panagia has been shown to be a 15th-century church, and it is my own prejudice after living beside it for two years that the street organization in its vicinity derives from its origin as a conventual church, and so Franciscan. {Domenicans were never in Nauplion despite what guidebooks  have claimed.]  

[I would be grateful for information from anyone who has knowledge of the archaeological findings that made it 15th-C -- what I know comes from a tiny sign on the rear of the church.]

 South side, remains of earlier arch.

As the photographs indicate, Panagia has been built and rebuilt to such an extent that the original appearance is speculative, though it surely looked like these little churches from Camoccio, or a very small version of Ag. Pareskevi in Chalkida:

 It has been through periods as a mosque, and about 1700 the Venetians reconfigured the roof to give it the flat ceiling customary at the period.  But we don't know if Panagia was S. Maria Val Verde.

The connection between the friars and Eustacio is that he is identified in the Senato document as writing the Nauplion petition.  The petition is so clearly worked out in detail,with all the possible bases for objection covered, that you can see the careful work of the man Minio wrote about during the early 1480s.  It was Eustacio who allowed me to identify Minio's handwriting: the manuscript of the Minio letters is written in four different hands, closely related. There are occasional glosses in the margin written in one of the hands, and you can see how that works in the printed version of the Minio letters, say on page 101 here. Eustacio's name never appears in the letters, but in the margin of Letter XXVII, the gloss says about my Eustacio, cancellier and collateral. That my Eustacio -- mio Eustacio -- identified Minio's handwriting is not an earth-shaking discovery in many worlds, but it was exciting for me after so many years of living with the letters. After finding this document, he is mio Eustacio, too.

* Bartolomeo Minio's letters about Nauplion between 1479 and 1483 are here.

** These can be found in volume 4 of Sathas, 216-217, here. 

*** Possibly as a result of the Eustacio affair, the Senato declared in 1485 that no cancellier could hold his position under the same governor for more than two years. Obviously, Eustacio had been rehired.

**** S. Marie Vallis Viridis in the document. The mother house was  in Venice, in Cannaregio.  The Franciscan Minister of the Province of Greece who had to handle the matter of sending Franciscans to Nauplion in 1491 was Gratiano of Brescia.

Brigitte Eckert took the photographs.

Red Ink

Image of signatures of Demetrios Palaiologos, 1451.*

I was recently reading Warren Woodfin's fascinating book, The Embodied Icon,** which discusses ecclesiastical dress. At one point (173) he relates the color of the ink used in signatures to the rank and costume of the signer: patriarchs tend to wear blue and sign in blue ink; the emperor wears red shoes and signs in vermilion; despots wear shoes of mixed purple and white, and sign with purple. (There is also an article on this topic here.)

I like that idea a great deal, but it makes me think that no one told the later Palaiologues.  The treaty Theodoros I signed with Venice in 1394 described itself as "subscriptione in fine instrumenti rubei literarum manu propria domini dispoti . . .."  Theodoros II signed a letter to the Pope and a grant of land in red -- vermilion -- ink.  The same with the signature of Demetrios, above.  The image in last week's entry showed the little Despot Theodoros wearing red: we couldn't see his shoes.
 
A signature of Andronikos in 1414, confirming a grant from Manuel in Thessaloniki on his way south to build the Hexamilion -- is in black.***  He was a minor then, just 14, and the signature is in the genitive -- Andronikou -- "by me, Andronikos." You will notice that Demetrios' signatures above and below are in the nominative.

Manuel and Andronikos, 1414.

A  second signature at Thessaloniki, this from 1419, is in red and the ending is in the nominative -- ὁ δεσπότης.***  Eighteen was a significant age for Byzantines, and I believe the change in case ending is an indication that Andronikos had become of age to rule for himself, without a regent.
 

A signature from Demetrios,*** when he was Despot of Lemnos under Mehmed II,  is also in red.

Demetrios Palaiologos, Despot, 1462.

                * Image from: "Σφραγιδες των τελευταιων Παλαιολογων και των περι αυτους," Νεος Ελλςηνομνημων 1: 416-432.
** Warren Woodfin, The Embodied Icon.  Oxford University Press, 2012. 
*** Treasures of Mount Athos, Thessaloniki 1997. Ch. 13.  The quality of the color printing in this heavy, expensive volume produced by Athos and the Ministry of Culture is shameful.

The Little Despots

 Detail, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Ms. Ivories A53, f.1  1408.
Theodoros, πορφυρογέννετος and δεσπότης.
Andronikos, αὐθεντόπουλος  

This miniature family portrait is on the first page of a manuscript of Pseudo-Dionysios that Manuel II sent as a gift to the Abbey of St. Denis in Paris.  It is usually dated to 1403-1405* but there are reasons that doesn't seem right to me.

Theodoros is identified as Despot, and he is wearing -- agreed, there is a lot of wear on the painting -- the four-arced crown that Pseudo-Kodinos says the emperor puts on the head of the despot as part of the despot-making ceremony.  

the emperor puts on his head, with his own hand, a crown ornamented with precious stones and pearls which has four small arcs, in front, behind, and on each side,

His brother Andronikos is identified as Prince, and he is wearing a diadem with no arcs.

Theodoros was created Despot of the Morea in the summer of 1407 -- a chronicle says his uncle Theodoros I died on 24 June, a date a little suspect since that is the date much more reliably given for the death of Theodoros II as well.  However, an action by the Venetian Senate of 27 August refers to the "despotum novum creatum," so he must have died around that time.  Sphrantzes tells us that Manuel went to the Morea, and I think it is safe to assume he created Theodoros Despot then.**  That gives two months for Manuel to have learned of his brother's death, make the trip to the Morea, and then for news of the ceremony to get to Venice. 

 

 "dominum despotum de novo creatum"
ASVE Senato Secreti r.3, f. 74r, 27 August 1407 

 

Theodoros was about 9 years old at the time, and he had been in the Morea for several months already, watching his uncle die from gout. Manuel described his excruciating pain, his inability to use his limbs.  The painting of Theodoros I at Mistra shows him grossly swollen from progressive renal failure.  He must have died from kidney failure.  The child Theodoros saw his uncle's pain, saw his friends tending him as if he were a baby, smelled the growing sores from the gout, the odors from the kidney failure.  It was a harsh beginning for a bright and sensitive child, and it explains the end of his life.

Andronikos was created Despot of Thessaloniki after 22 September 1408, the date his older cousin John VII of Thessaloniki died.  He was not quite 8 years old. John should have been succeeded by his own son Andronikos, but Andronikos died earlier in the year. Sphrantzes tells us that Manuel took Andronikos to Thessaloniki and created him Despot there.**  It is a nice, literary, effect: Manuel replacing a Theodoros by a Theodoros, an Andronikos by an Andronikos, but it seems a hard thing to impose on small boys.  

So I believe the family painting was painted after the summer of 1407 and before the fall of 1408, which fits with the 1408 date of the gift of the manuscript to Paris.

Another thought: Manuel -- and John who is not shown in the detail -- is wearing black.  I believe Manuel is depicted wearing mourning for his brother. I have seen only two mentions of what he was wearing at particular times: both times white.  Pseudo-Kodinos says the emperor wears white or yellow for mourning, but many details of the imperial court can be seen to have changed between P-K and Sphrantzes.  Black was the usual Byzantine color for mourning, and it was the usual color for mourning in the West, where this manuscript was going.

I cannot think I am the first person to note these details: I would be grateful for any references anyone has that confirms them.

 

* Byzantium: Faith and Power.  Metropolitan Museum of Art (2004) p. 20, fig. 2.5  

** A description of the ceremony to create a despot is here..

The Chimneys of Mistra

 Orlandos, in Palaces and Houses of Mistra, 1937.

This is a view of the throne-room wing of the palace of Mistra, as seen from the back.  There are eight chimneys, elegantly disposed, fed by eight fireplaces in eight individual rooms on the level under the throne room, which has the largest windows.  Anastasios Orlandos, in 1937, explained at some length how these chimneys and fireplaces provided heat for the throne room, a space 36.50 meters by 10.43 meters. Architectural historians Charalampos Bouras and Gianluigi Ciotta repeat this information quite flatly, as do the guidebooks and travel books and tourist articles.

So I was thinking about that, half-dozing in an afternoon nap, how it would work: how many people would be needed carrying how many armfuls of logs up the stairs to the second floor to keep the fireplaces fed, how much labor and refuse removal would be constantly visible from the formal front of the palace, the constant procession of people carrying armfuls of wood through those twisty difficult Mistra streets.  And then I started thinking about our own fireplace, how there is never a sign in the room above when the fireplace is working below, how I do not feel any heat from the chimney even just above the fireplace -- that sort of thing.

I compared building materials, thickness of walls and floors, even looked up burning temperatures of different kinds of firewood, and calculations for dimensions of fireplaces.

As you can imagine, none of this was helpful, and I remembered reading in Kostis Kourelis' dissertation that archaeologists have found "no evidence of hearths of fireplaces joining or inserted within the wall construction" of medieval houses in Greece.  I decided that the famous archaeologists were wrong, but I needed to find support for my unspecialized opinion.  I finally wrote a builder of chimneys in England, sent him photographs and architectural drawings and dimensions.  He wrote back:
 

From what I can see, the chimneys were not designed to heat the throne room, as the chimneys are on the outside of the external walls. Had they been on the internal walls, they would have given some heat to the room. I would have thought if they wanted to heat the throne room they would have built the fireplaces in the room

Then I found an article by architect Stefan Sinos in which he stated that these chimneys served individual living quarters on the floor below the throne room.  Well, of course, and there are fine surviving examples -- in Venice -- of very similar fifteenth-century rooms and chimneys, again on the second level: 

 

 E. Trincanato: Venise: Guide de l'Architecture Mineure (1997).

This was the model followed for the rooms on the second level. Heat in the throne room, if any, would have come from portable braziers.  And layers and layers of wool.

 
 Photograph of chimneys, 1995, after new roof and some reconstruction.

Diplomatic Expenses

Detail from Carpaccio, Triumph of St. George. 

Bartolomeo Minio twice had to negotiate the dividing line between Argos and Nauplion territories with the Ottomans. The first was in August 1480, to fulfill the terms of the peace settlement between Venice and Mehmed II.  The second was in April 1482, because Mehmed had died and all agreements had to be renegotiated with Beyazid II.

This 1480 commission was the first territorial definition in a very long time, certainly since 1460 and the period of the despots when borders between the despotate and Venetian territories had been extremely porous.  At Methoni-Koroni, the lands of several Italians who had fiefs over the borders -- Marin Sisani, Nicoli Romagni, the Ca' Gezzo family, and Jacopo Testa -- had been included in the Venetian limits because they had given gifts to the Ottoman negotiators.  At Nauplion, Minio reported giving the lead negotiator, Sinan Bey, 30-40 ducats as a gift to ensure things went well, as well as providing the housing expenses for him and his suite.  In fact, between gifts and expenses, Minio paid out 100 ducats before they ever got to the negotiations He was going to collect a quarter of that from the citizens, but he was concerned about the burden it would be for them.

In 1482, Minio wrote, after the territorial agreement had been written out, the sultan's slave (who had accompanied the emin who conducted the negotiations) refused to hand it over until he had received a present, which amounted to 30 ducats and 6 braccie ("arms") of scarlet cloth for a robe.  Minio gave the emin 40 ducats, and 6 braccie of scarlet.  The scrivan who wrote up the agreement (and who had been most generous) got 10 ducats, the emin's three servants 5 each, and the translator 2, for a total of 97 ducats.  This did not include the cost of the cloth, or the candy, or the expenses for food. The governor at Methoni wrote Minio that they had spent a total of 300 ducats on various gifts that year.

Certain Naupliots got more benefits out of the boundary settlements than others: the holders of the castelli at Castri (a Palaiologos) and Thermissi (including the bishop), and the mills of Kiveri/Myloi. Then there was the land held by the church of the bishop, and assorted other less important fiefs.  Minio decided to prorate a good share of the expenses for gifts according to how much each of these had profited.  Things must have improved for the fiefholders considerably in the past two years, after the first definitions of boundaries, as Minio did not this time seem concerned about burdening them.

No one thought these diplomatic expenses at all unusual.  Minio wrote in other letters about making gifts of wine, fish, sugar, bread, honey, candles, white cloth, and silver cups to various Ottoman officials, and told of being given camels' hair cloth and a blue sash.  These were more the sort of gifts exchanged between visitors or neighbors, and it is interesting that he is in the position of providing basic goods, as well as small luxury gifts.




Read and download the letters of Bartolomeo Minio from Nauplion.
http://www.nauplion.net/MINIO.html 

April 1941: Part Two

British troops passing Palamidi, going to Tolo. LIFE Magazine.  

Continuing the accounts from last week:

Bernard Ryan, 2/1st Australian Infantry Battalion, Redhead, NSW: 

We reached the vicinity of "T" Beach on 25th April, after passing through, I think Nauplion & Argos . . . My recollection is of a couple of days spent taking cover in gullies with Messerschmidts & Stukas attacking anything that moved.  . . . One memory I have is of seeing fireflies for the first time -- they do not occur in my country so far as I know.
      At last our turn came for evacuation and for the first time since arriving in Greece, I saw the sea.  I don't think there was any moon but we could make out the shape of the ships quite close to the shore, perhaps no more than 100 yards away.  At the head of the queue was a small barge or lighter and I was near enough to it to see a group standing on it waiting to be transferred to the ships . . . Whatever the intention, the barge or lighter did not move at all while I was watching it.  I calculate there is a very good chance I would have been in the next batch to board the craft.  A story went the rounds at the time that the thing was stuck on the bottom because it was overloaded and no-one would disembark to allow it to float free . . . It remained stranded by the outgoing tide and the ship sailed away.
      Dawn found us at a village which may have been Tolo.  We set up a defensive perimeter of sorts, although weapons of any kind were scarce, and there was some firing exchanged between us & the German troops who were now appearing in force.  It still had not been realised by most of us that the evacuation was over & that we had been left behind.
      During that day I saw the waters of the bay in full sunlight and even in the circumstances I realised why the coastline of Greece was so famous.  There was a small island perhaps a quarter mile from shore and I remember a woman in a small rowboat standing up & calling to someone on the island. (I saw no Greeks in the village at "T" beach except the woman in the boat out in the bay.)  I saw an English sergeant take the ammunition out of his revolver & throw it into the bay.   . . .  In the afternoon there was a meeting between one of our representatives and the German command . . . The news that we were prisoners of war was brought to us by a Salvation Army major, I can even remember his name -- Major Hosier.  It was about 5 o'clock in the afternoon of 29th April 1941.  I cannot begin to convey to anyone the sense of shock . . .
       Our imprisonment started with a march of about 3 hours in the early part of the night . . . I am sorry to say that in the doorway of a few houses along the road -- not many -- people stood giving the raised hand of the Nazi salute.   [In Nauplion] we were in a compound at the foot of [Palamidi] next day, 30th April, and looking up the first thing to take the eye was a huge swastika flag flying over the fort . . . I think we spent one or two days & nights there in the open. There was no shelter but that was no novelty if you were in the infantry.
         

POWs, Nauplion.  

We travelled to Corinth by rail and I think it may have been a narrow gauge railway, in closed trucks, and of course without any contact with the Greeks. At Corinth we spent, I estimate, about two months in a huge compound which I believe had been a Greek military barracks.  There were buildings there, filthy of course, but a least they provided a roof over the head.  In this prison camp we joined another 3000 or 4000 allied troops who had been captured at Kalamata  . . . In addition to about 5000 British, Australian & NZ troops, there were Yugoslav, Cypriots and a few hundred Indian civilians who were said to have been brought to Greece to look after mules or donkeys.  As well, there were a couple of thousand Italians who had been made prisoners by the Greek army near the Albanian frontier . . .

     In Corinth we did have some contact with the Greek civil population, in that the Germans allowed the Greeks to set up a few food stalls, just inside there wire, where, if you were lucky enough to have any drachmae, you could purchase such items as dried fruit & the like.  About once a week the Germans took us down to the beach to swim and I remember a Greek woman attempting to distribute a basket of bread among us being roughly handled by the Germans for her pains . . .

     The compound at Corinth was a really dreadful place -- open latrines, lice, bugs, and starvation.  We spent two months there &  then moved to Salonika, which was much worse.  The journey to Salonika was by rail & on foot, where bridges & tunnels had been wrecked.  There were many escapes on this journey and a number of fatalities.  Some who escaped lived with the Greek people for two years evading capture at what must have been great risk to the inhabitants who sheltered them. 

* * * * * *

There is much more in Bernard Ryan's account which begins with his background in Australia, an interlude in Alexandria, his arrival at Piraeus, rail trip to the north of Greece, and arrival at Veria with the Aliakmon in flood, where their retreat began and he was injured. He describes the retreat, being bombed at the Larissa railway station, passing through Athens, and then comes the section excerpted above.  He left Greece on a train (with a German military band playing "Roll out the Barrel," for prison camp in Germany. 

* * * * * *  

Sometimes the midday sun, sometimes handfuls of light rain
and the beach covered with fragments of ancient jars . . .
Friends from the other war,
on this deserted and cloudy beach
I think of you as the day turns.
                                     G. Seferis

April 1941: Part One

 

Destroying equipment at Nauplion.

In the summer of 1978, swimming just outside the harbor at Nauplion, I glimpsed on the seafloor what looked like part of the bridge of a ship.  The Blue Guide mentioned the British-Anzac retreat in April 1941 from Greece.  Later, I wrote to leading newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, asking if anyone remembered Nauplion.  This post and the next will consist of excerpts from the dozens of letters I received about those days.  I have not edited the excerpts beyond indicating where I have omitted text.  

* * * * * *

Jack Underwood, 1st. Aust. Corps Salvage Unit, Wollogong, NSW:

I was evacuated from Nauplion . . . on April 25, 1941.  I was just 20 years of age then and a driver with a bomb disposal, salvage-cum-recovery unit.  . . . I did keep a diary . . . unfortunately I was rather busy at Nauplion and scrawled in fewer lines in those couple of days. . . I was given duty of destroying (per tipping over cliff) trucks, cars, bikes, etc. which were arriving hourly bearing personnel of every description and country.  For a depression kid who never owned more than a push bike it broke my heart to see such a waste. This carnage went on all day during which we were bombed pretty consistently although casualties were surprising light.

      I just noticed I wrote: "bloody Stukas again!" -- Remember coming back from cliff face and seeing quite a few bodies at road-side.  I clearly remember being assigned to group and under cover of darkness moved northwards to Argos (from Nauplion) . . . We were told our ship was to be the Ulster Prince.  Recall the ship sidling into bay, then to our horror saw it run aground. . . with a short period, over came bombers with grounded ship as target.  Ship caught alight and continued to burn throughout night, lighting up whole area.

     In early hours of morning in came the Glenearn and we boarded her "ducks" and ferried out bay to her.  One of "ducks" was hit by a destroyer and sunk with loss of life.  Ours made it to mother ship but boarding was all haywire with many of us taking a ducking in attempts to get aboard.  . . . Might add in passing, with me was my father who had joined AIF with me claiming to be my elder brother!

Jim Roberts, Manly West, Queensland

I was with the 6th Div Signals  . . and we fought the rearguard action during our withdrawal from Greece, on reaching Argos . . . a sad sight met our eyes, the ship on which we were to escape on was in flames, having been hit by the German bombers . . . we traveled to Kalamata and waiting as we had received a radio signal that a ship would pick us up from there.  In the early hours of the morning we saw a light coming in from the sea and it was a destroyer.  My brother and I were two of the last soldiers to board her on her final run to the Dilwara, as we found out after the war that a Sgt friend of our was captured half an hour after we left.

 

 Troops of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force at Nauplion. 

Michael Stark-Brown, 2nd NZEF, Aukland, NZ

. . .  Our route was south to the town of Trikala, east to Larissa, southeast to Volos, then southwest to Lamia where we dug in.  Our stay was not much more than a week when the Greek army to the west was overrun and we had to pull out again.

      This time we uplifted the 25th Maori Battalion and brought them back in one night through Eleusis and Corinth to Nauplion where they marched to Tolo and were taken out that night.  We hid up in a pine forest till dark then went back to Corinth to pick up the rearguard battalion.  Back at Nauplion my most vivid memory was at how quickly the Greek peasants took everything moveable before we destroyed the vehicles.  The heavy vehicles like repair trucks were tipped off a cliff into the sea, the rest the radiators and engine sumps were drained and motors raced at full gun until everything broke, tyres were shot and slashed to bits and all told it was a shambles.  At about 2 am on 25th April we went on board the troop carrier Glengyle and after a fairly hectic sea voyage made it to Suda Bay.

      . . .  On food, we fed quite well on the whole during the Greek affair.  During the actual withdrawal we fed like lords.  We had huge food dumps etc. in our area and were told to help ourselves before they were destroyed.  . . . it was rather a gamble as none of the cases was labelled and if you did not know what the numbers meant, anything could happen.  . . . I understood several Greeks were later shot by the Germans for being in possession of foodstuffs they had acquired from the dumps.  On the whole, the people we met were very hungry even before we landed there.  It was not unusual for the females to offer themselves or even their daughters to the troops in return for food.  Tea was the highest price commodity with canned beef running a close second.

      . . .   Probably about 80% boredom.  The remainder? 18% a lot of noise and about 2% drama and danger.

Ex. Sgt. R. J. Corbett, Brisbane, Queensland:  

I left Athens in a small convoy on 23rd April and after some drama we crossed the Corinth Canal and arrived during bombing and straffing at the small port of Argos.  We were a bit short on sleep -- and rested all day -- the 24th  -- in tense German air activity.

     At midnight we were instructed to gather at the loader's edge and were ferried in small boats to the side of the Stirling Castle (I believe that was the name*) and clambered aboard . . . I remember bread & coffee  & a long sleep until dawn. A heavy AA gun mounted on the predeck began firing and scared the daylights out of me.  I jumped up and saw we were part of a convoy preceded by many Royal Navy ships -- 2 of the 3 aircraft were hit and we proceeded to sea.  News was that we were on the way to Egypt.  However -- after passing Crete, I understand the crew volunteered to go back to Greece to pick up further troops.  It was 25 April. . . . The ship turned round and we were off-loaded on Crete at Suda Bay.

 Soldiers being evacuated on the Thurland Castle.

* Not Stirling, but Thurland Castle.

Pavane for a Dead Princess: Part Seven

 Agia Sophia, Mistra

Nikeforas Cheilas said: 

When the appointed day came, the day on which our Saviour consented for our sake to be nailed to the cross, on that same day and at that same hour of His sufferings and burial, she died and was entombed together with Christ.

Cleofe Palaiologina Malatesta died on Megali Pareskevi, April 10, 1433, about noon, in childbirth.  Her husband was beside her bed, mixing some medicine. There was a sudden hemorrhage, a great deal of blood, a dead baby.  Bessarion said she flew out of his hands. 

She flew away, Cheilas said, leaving amazement.

No one expected death, though she had spoken seriously to friends about her thought that she might not survive. She had given birth successfully before, though she had been afraid, then, too.  Doctor Pepagomenos said her body was built for childbearing.  But she had been keeping an exceptionally austere fast, standing much of each night in prayer, and she  had become extremely anemic.  You could expect a hemorrhage with anemia. 

Cleofe's body was carried on a bier up the hill to the palace chapel of Agia Sophia and interred that afternoon -- some people in the city only learned about it when they saw the procession, Theodoros following the bier, beating his head with his fists, howling (ὀλολύζοντος). The bier was mobbed, everyone trying to put a hand to support her.  Mistra was struck as if by a collective wound, Pepagomenos said: it was if everyone had a sudden fever in the bones.

Like a crystal shattering, Cheilas said. He had come up to Mistra, expecting celebration, as they had celebrated before when this woman first came from Italy -- a light from Hesperia, he said. 

You gave us then a celebration, showing us all something new, a reason to sing sweetly, songs worthy of your goodness and of the good fortune that came to us from you . . .  But now you set us to deep grieving, to uttering long cries of pain,

to weaving a tragic song, antiphonal to our former hymns,

Pepagomenos implied that the baby was a boy:

But we were hoping that a successor for the race and a continuation of the monarchy . . . that there might be skipping and dancing in your realm, . . .that we might sing rightly about this and hymn it to the limit of our abilities. 

 When they spoke of her later, it was in terms of light, and music.  The Epitaphios service that evening must have been unbearable.



Translations: Pierre A. MacKay. For his translation of Cheilas' monody for Cleofe, go here.  For the sources for Cleofe's death, here.

Pavane for a Dead Princess, I
Pavane for a Dead Princess, II
Pavane for a Dead Princess, III
Pavane for a Dead Princess, IV
Pavane for a Dead Princess, V
Pavane for a Dead Princess, VI
Glory Days
Theodoros' Poem to Cleofe
Theodoros II Palaiologos  
Malatesta "dei Sonetti" Malatesti
Bessarion to Theodoros, II
Bessarion to Theodoros, I
Her Most Dear Daughter, Helena
Scholarios talks about Theodoros II

The Church in the Street -- Εκκλεσία στους Δρόμους

Some who minister at The Church in the Street:
Georgia, Georgia, Irene, Helen, Agnes
Mary, Vassilis  

[At 11 minutes in this Swedish film shows the Church in the Street.]

Just after that first Easter, Jesus said, "Feed my sheep." An interracial, interdenominational group in Athens -- The Church in the Street -- Εκκλεσία στους Δρόμους -- now on Pieros Street -- has been doing that daily since it was formed in early 2009.  I was privileged to volunteer with them briefly. If some of guests are homeless, undocumented unwanted, addicts, defenseless -- harassed by the police, harassed by right-wing patriots, harassed by their embassies, more are Greeks wounded by a collapsing economy.

Although Εκκλεσία στους Δρόμους is directed by male clergy, it is mostly women who serve.  The budget is small and unreliable, foodstuffs minimal and changeable.  Sometimes they can give bottles of water: sometimes the water disappears.  Volunteers come and go. Important clergy and bank directors come to visit and are photographed, but the budget does not increase.   This is not the only feeding program in Athens -- far from it -- but this is the one I know.

Here, as a reminder of what Easter means, are portraits I took -- with permission -- of the guests I knew in 2009 and some of those who minister to them.

 Georgia who feeds multitudes with five loaves and two fish.

 Agnes, who has served every day since the food program began.

 Arm of policeman, left, trying to keep me from taking photographs

 

 

Pastor Jimoh

 

One of the founders, the late Ephraim Boms. 


For more on the complexity of the problems, read this.