118 Papadia-Lala
while his successor, Emperor Henry, after implementing a policy of supreme
control, sought to appease both his Frankish and his Greek subjects. Within
this context, though the archbishop was a Latin, the Greek Church remained
free, Byzantine law continued to be applied and certain Greeks participated in
the local administration. The objective of the emperors was the shaping of a
mighty empire based on feudal principles while at the same time discouraging
any centrifugal tendencies on the part of its subjects.
By contrast to the above-mentioned examples, the feudal system found fer-
tile ground for development in the Principality of Achaea, or Morea, through-
out its historical duration,5 ever since the conquest of the Peloponnese by
William de Champlitte and Geoffrey I de Villehardouin in 1205 and the subse-
quent recognition of the latter as a vassal of the emperor of Constantinople and
senior official (senescalus totius imperii Romaniae) and as governor (prince) of
the Peloponnese.
The socio-administrative organisation of the principality is reflected in the
Assizes of Romania, or Book of the Customs of the Empire of Romania (Liber
Consuetudinum imperii Romaniae), a law code (or a private compilation) com-
posed of 219 articles drawn up during the first quarter of the 14th century and
today preserved in its 15th-century Venetian version, which defined the legal
relations and mutual obligations of all members of society.6 The organisa-
tion of the new regime was underpinned by a network of personal allegiances
(homage), that is, the bond of dependency of a free man upon another and the
rigid stratification of the population into lords and vassals.
The ruling class of the principality was comprised of the prince and the
eleven Latin barons, peers of the primus inter pares prince, who dominated
the local High Court. Below them, the prince’s vassals, the lieges, made up a
middle tier of lesser feudatories, followed by the feudatories of simple or plain
homage, at the bottom of the “feudal pyramid”: these included certain of the
old Byzantine archons who, in accordance with Byzantine law, retained their
patrimonial estates in return for rendering of homage and military service to
the Frankish rulers.
5 Longnon, L’Empire Latin, mainly pp. 187–355; Antoine Bon, La Morée Franque: recherches
historiques, topographiques et archéologiques sur la Principauté d’Achaïe (1205–1430), 2 vols.
(Paris, 1969); Maria Dourou-Eliopoulou, Το φραγκικό πριγκιπάτο της Αχαΐας (1204–1432): Ιστορία,
οργάνωση, κοινωνία [The Frankish Principality of Achaea (1204–1432): History, Organisation,
Society] (Thessalonica, 2005).
6 Concerning the Assizes, see the seminal study by David Jacoby, La féodalité en Grèce médiévale:
Les “Assises de Romanie”: sources, application et diffusion (Paris, 1971). Specifically concerning
the Peloponnese, see Peter Topping, Feudal Institutions as revealed in the Assizes of Romania,
the law code of Frankish Greece: Translation of the Text of the Assizes with a Commentary on
Feudal Institutions in Greece and in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, 1949).