106 Gasparis
the prince, their subjects and the peasantry were regulated by the Assizes of
Romania, a law code compiled in the mid-14th century.45
The military responsibilities of the feudatories of the Peloponnese, espe-
cially the lieges who formed the majority, were determined according to the
size or rather the number of fiefs that they held and their ensuing incomes.
From this perspective, and according to the Chronicle of the Morea, three dif-
ferent categories of feudatories emerged: those who owned a single fief, those
who owned four fiefs and those who owned more than four fiefs. The first owed
military service as footsoldiers (sergeants). The second, apart from providing
personal military service as knights, also had to present a second knight and
twelve sergeants. Feudatories in the third category were required to maintain
two lightly armed mounted sergeants or one knight for each of their fiefs.
In the second half of the 13th century, the new overlord of the principal-
ity, Charles of Anjou, took over all the pre-existing baronies and forced all the
landowners to take an oath of fealty in order to retain their fiefs. At the same
time he (and later his successors) granted out new fiefs, thus strengthening the
local class of feudatories.46 Τhe military service of the feudatories was gradu-
ally connected to their revenues and not to the number of their fiefs. It was
decided that the annual revenues of a knight’s fief amounted to 20 ounces of
gold. Therefore the feudatories whose annual income was 20 ounces of gold
had to either perform personal military service as knights, or provide a sub-
stitute to do so. If one’s income exceeded this sum, he had to provide more
knights according to the same ratio. At the same time, there existed fiefs and
feudatories that had been relieved of military duty. This could happen for a
variety of reasons, including dispensations for services rendered, or inability
to undertake military service because of sickness, gender or inadequacy of the
fief. These dispensations could either be plenary or partial, in which case the
feudatories had to render reduced services.
During the first decades of the 13th century the Villehardouins pursued
a policy of appeasement of the local lords and eventually soon after the
Αχαΐας (1204–1432): Ιστορία, Οργάνωση, Κοινωνία [The Frankish Principality of Achaea (1204–
1432): History, Organisation, Society] (Thessalonica, 2005), pp. 93–123.
45 On the Assizes, see Antonella Parmeggiani, Libro dele uxanze e statuti delo imperio de
Romania (Spoleto, 1998). See also Jacoby, La féodalité.
46 See such examples in Jacoby, “The Encounter of Two Societies”, pp. 892–95. Another char-
acteristic example is Niccolò Acciaiuoli and his offspring who acquired important fiefs in
the Peloponnese in the 14th century. Acciaiuoli in turn ceded smaller fiefs to others, who
became his vassals. See Jean Longnon and Peter Topping, eds., Documents sur le régime
des terres dans la principauté de Morée au xive siècle (Paris, 1969), pp. 7–12.