THE LATE BYZANTINE CITY
Chapter II: IOANNINA 1204-1430
The
Population and Society of Ioannina
…The power and
resilience of the aristocracy of Ioannina may have been the result of the
setting of Constantinopolitan refugees in the city. These men certainly had an
outlook and upbringing which would have been completely alien to the native
inhabitants of Ioannina. The refugees had been born expecting a privileged
position at the center of power. Over the next two centuries the aristocracy in
Ioannina, the senate, would time and again assert their independent nature and
right to choose their leader. The Fourth Crusade was not the only event to
induce refugees to seek their shelter in Ioannina. Albanian expansion into
Epiros meant that refugees, including displaced archontes, took shelter in Ioannina from the Vagenetia and
Thesprotia regions to the west of Iaonnina. The Chronicle of Ioannina calls these immigrant archontes Андрес
еписимотати and Гегонтес, the same terms used later in the verse
for the elite of Ioannina. Later in the same verse these same archontes from outside Ioannina are
called И Егзотен, yet were still included in the council which asked Симеон Урош to
appoint a ruler for the city. Whilst it is clear that while the refugees from
the Crusader-occupied Balkans were initially disliked and seen as outsiders,
the continued prominence of Филантропенос
and Стратегопулос families suggest that at least some of them became integrated with
the local elite and in fact rose to the very pinnacle of Ioaninniniote society.
Other outsiders became important in the city by either gaining the favor of the
ruling lord or being invited to the city by him to secure his position. This
was certainly the case with the Serbs brought to the city by despot Тома Прељубовић. Despite the strong
anti-Serbian opinions of the author of the Chronicle
of Ioannina, a strong pro-Serbian party is likely to have survived Thomas’s
murder and the reign of Esau Buondelmonti. Esau’s widow tried to find a new
husband in Serbia,
and although Serbian herself, it is unlikely that she would have done so, if
there had not been a group in the city which was not pro-Serbian or actually
Serbian. This of course, explains Esau’s marriage to a Serbian in the first
place. Although there is no mention in the Chronicle
of Tocco of a Serbian group in the city, this is easily explained by the
fact that the chronicle is highly pro-Italian and pro-Simeon Strategopoulos,
Carlo’s chief supporter in Ioannina. Esau Buondelmonti is known to have invited
at least one Italian to the city. Carlo and Leonardo Tocco each had retinue
which came to the city with them and must have resided in the town. However, at
least under the Esau and the Tocco, the number of high level immigrants does
not seem to have upset the status quo. Тома Прељубовић was
reviled for introducing Serbs into Ioannina in the Chronicle of Ioannina, but no similar criticism was made of Carlo I
in the Chronicle of Tocco.
Furthermore, the Greek Strategopoulos family was dominant at he beginning of
the reign of Carlo I and still held its preeminent position at the end of the
reign of his successor, Carlo II.
It is likely
that the refugees from Constantinople would
have been classed with the archontes
of the city. The Chonicle of Tocco
frequently mentions that ‘great and small archontes’ as does the horismos of Sinan Pasha. This group
dominated the countryside around the city and took most of the major decisions
concerning the fate of Ioannina. The Chronicle
of Tocco records that the senate of Ioannina was composed of the archontes and the leading clergy of the
city. Throughout the history of Ioannina it was the archontes who dictated the fate of the city. The singling out of
the Кастрени for special treatment in the chrysobull
of 1319 could be explained by their having a leading role in the surrender of
the city to the Byzantine Emperor in 1318. Clearly the leading men of the city
did not want to be ruled by Nicholas Orsini, the murderer of the last of the
Komneno-Doukai rulers of Ioannina and it is likely that it was the senate which
sent an embassy to Sygannes Palaiologos inviting him to take possession of the
city in the name of Andronikos II. We do not know who decided to recognize John
Orsini as kephale of Ioannina,
however he agreed to respect the rights of the inhabitants, again suggesting
that the senate was at the very least not opposed to his assumption of power in
the city. Furthermore, when Ioannina was without a protector or ruler following
the death of Стефан Душан, and the collapse of his empire, it was the archontes who sent some of their number to ask the Serbian emperor
Symeon to appoint a ruler for their city. When Тома Прељубовић was
killed in 1384, a boule was called
Joseph, brother of the basilissa Maria, which was made up of the archontes of the city and is probably
synonymous wit the senate recorded elsewhere, but does not seem to be the same
as the wider assembly of the inhabitants which is commonly referred as a boule. It was this council which decided
upon Esau Buondelmonti as the new husband of Maria. When Esau Buondelmonti died
in 1411, Matthew of Naples wrote to the archontes
to urge them not to surrender to the Albanians. Initially, archontes supported the widow of Esau, the basilissa Eudokia,
however she forfeited their good will by trying to kill the captain of the city
and confiscating the lands and possessions of a number of archotes. When Eudokia decided to find herself a Serbian husband,
the archontes moved to overthrow her.
The Chronicle of Tocco mentions a senate
made up of archontes, and also a boule made up of the great and small archontes. After the overthrow of
Eudokia, Symeon Strategopoulos summoned the great and small archontes to a meeting with the Duke the
next day in the cathedral. When at the church Duke Carlo met with ‘the archontes the cleric, the archbishop and
the priests of the city.’ Perhaps this group composed the senate mentioned
earlier in the text? This meeting is significant as it took place in the
citadel which was largely under the control of the archontes of the senate and the church. It is difficult to see
whether this first acceptance of Carlo took the form of his being received in
the heart of the archontes ‘region’
of the city, or whether the proposed despot was summoned there for approval.
Either way the people in general were excluded from this meeting and it was the
senate that took decision to recognize Carlo as a new ruler of Ioannina. Later
this situation was reversed when the archontes
met with the duke in the palace to demand that the lands confiscated by Eudokia
were returned to them. This was granted and Carlo also distributed titles to
members of Strategopoulos family. When Sinan Pasha demanded the surrender of
the city to the army of the Ottoman sultan, his letter was not addressed to
Carlo II, but to the metropolitan, Captain Symeon Strategopoulos, kyr Paul
Strategopoulos, the protostrator
Bouesavon, the protaseskretis Stavitzes and the small and the great archontes of Ioannina, the group which,
as we have seen, constituted the senate of the city. All of these examples
clearly shows that the archontes and
their senate were the real power of Ioaninna. In the case of Carlo II, this was
even so when he was resident of the city. The archontes of Ioaninna chose who ruled them and at the times of
crisis it was their council which prevailed in the chosing of the new ruler.
After the extinction of the Komnenos
Doukas family, only two of the changes of ruler of Ioaninna – the Serbian
conquest and the accession of Carlo II Tocco – were not orchestrated by the city’s
archontes.
The real
strength of the archontes, apart from
their wealth, was that they were organized and met in more or less parliament
senate, located in their own fortified citadel. There is much to be said for a
comparison with the cities of Italy
in this case, in particular emphasis of the Podesta. In northern Italy, it had
become common from the 12th century for the communes to begin
appoiniting an outsider who could rule the city with greater impartiality than
a local candidate could. However, the cities of Lombardy
were – by this time – developing into tyrannies ruled by a signoria, so perhaps
this later stage has more in common with the situation in Ioaninna. In both
cases, the council chose the ruler and in some cases, at least at first, the Italian
communal institutions survived and operated alongside the signoria in much the
same way that the Ioaninniote senate did.
Only few of the archontes of Ioaninna are known by the
name. Under Carlo I Tocco, they are mostly the relations of Symeon Strategopoulos,
but the earlier Chronicle of Ioaninna
mentions a number of archontes. The
reason that these men were named was either because of their resistance to, or
support for, the despot Тома
Прељубовић. In opposition to the despot were
Constantine Vatatzes, Manuel Philanthropenos and Nikephoros Batalas, who were
exiled, the kaballarios Myrsionnes
Amirales and the protokathemenos
Constantine who were imprisoned, Bardas who rebelled and Hagios Donatos
(Photiki), as did John Kapsokovades at Arachobitsa, and Elias Klauses punished
because Thomas wanted his possessions and money. Thomas’ supporters, the
villains of the Chronicle of Ioaninna,
were Chouchoulitzas, Koutzotheodros, Manuel Tziblos, and the protovestiarios Michael Apsaras. Apsaras
in particular belonged to an important Epirote family. Theodore Apsaras was one
of the advisors of the basilissa
Maria following the murder of Thomas, as was a man called Meliglavas. The list
of archontes in the Chronicle of Ioaninna demonstrates the
continued use of Byzantine titles by the elite of the city and the power
certain archontes had in the
countryside, if they could take towns or villages and hold them in defiance of
the despot in Ioaninna.
…
(Jonathan
Shea: THE LATE BYZANTINE CITY: SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND INSTITUTIONAL PROFILE, University of Birmingham – June 2010)
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