Society, Administration And Identities In Latin Greece 119
Belonging to the lowest ranks of the society of the Latin East were the
numerous peasants, some free but most of them serfs. According to feudal law,
the serf could be freely transferred from his lord to a third party, he was com-
pelled to request permission to wed or to marry off his daughters, he could not
accept feudal land as a grant without the authorisation of the prince and, if
he was a Greek, his testimony in a court of law against a liege had no value in
a criminal case involving life or limb, while, in the event of his death without
legal heir, his belongings passed to the ownership of his lord. Amongst his few
rights was his ability to sell his livestock, to feed his pigs with acorns which he
gathered in the woods and to cut wood in the forest.7
Finally, the city-dwellers occupied a special place in local society: these com-
prised both well-to-do merchants who owned landed property and the simple
populace. The towns were in the main identified with their castle, an excep-
tion being the first capital of the Principality of Achaea, Andravida, which had
no castle. After 1255, the main financial centre of the region was the nearby
seaside town of Glarenza.8 This town prospered considerably during the later
Angevin period as a port animated by intense commercial activity and inhab-
ited, either permanently or temporarily, not only by locals but also by Italians,
Spaniards, French and other westerners.
As regards the administration, numerous western and Byzantine official
posts were in place: around the governor there developed a hierarchy of offi-
cials bearing the titles of constable, marshal, treasurer, protovestiary-chamber-
lain, chancellor, castellan.
Women held a relatively important position in the principality, in direct rela-
tion to their social rank. At the upper echelon, women were not excluded from
hereditary succession, played a considerable role in political developments
(the characteristic example being the princess Isabelle de Villehardouin) and
were allowed to own fiefs. Τhe widowed liegewoman, by contrast to a woman
of simple homage, was able to marry freely. Widows’ position was meanwhile
an elevated one.
Τhe Principality of Achaea, particularly during the first and most glori-
ous phase of its history under the Villehardouins, experienced a remarkable
cultural flowering. This same period also witnessed a harmonious symbiosis
between the Frankish suzerains and the indigenous Greeks, some of whom
owned fiefs and exerted official functions, bore titles and engaged in commer-
cial activities. Nevertheless, it should not be overlooked that in their majority,
7 Topping, Feudal Institutions, p. 79. On the division and exploitation of land, more generally,
see above, Charalambos Gasparis, “Land and Landowners in the Greek Territories under
Latin Dominion, 13th–14th centuries.”
8 Angeliki Tzavara, Clarentza, une ville de la Moreé latine, xiiie–xve siècles (Venice, 2008).