The Latins in Greece: A Brief Introduction 9
historiography for much of the 20th century and persists in Greek popular atti-
tudes to this day.
The first half of the 20th century saw the publication of landmark works
on the period by William Miller and Jean Longnon. Miller’s The Latins in the
Levant remained for decades the standard English-language narrative account
of the period;6 Longnon produced a string of publications elucidating, in par-
ticular, the political history of the Frankish states of the Peloponnese and of
central Greece in the 13th century.7 These historians had inherited from the
19th century a romantic view of the crusades and of Frankish expansion into
the Eastern Mediterranean, which would fall out of fashion in the post-war
period. The same period is also noteworthy as the starting point of systematic
study of the hitherto neglected archaeology of medieval Greece, by the likes
of Anastasios Orlandos and Antoine Bon.8 Bon’s work in particular, starting
with fieldwork undertaken in the 1930s, culminated in the publication of the
two-volume La Morée Franque in 1969, which is still one of the most essential
and detailed studies of Frankish Peloponnese.9 Similar fieldwork was under-
taken earlier in the case of Crete, by Giuseppe Gerola, whose masterful four-
volume Monumenti Veneti nell’isola di Creta appeared between 1905 and 1932.10
The work is still indispensible, not least because many of the monuments that
Gerola studied and photographed no longer exist today.
The study of medieval Greece was revitalised in the second half of the
20th century. To the general surveys of political history there were now
added more specialised studies, focusing on particular regions and, predomi-
nantly, on the institutions (legal, social, political and religious) of the Latin
polities, grounded in painstaking archival research and complemented by the
Niketas Choniates to the History of the Greek Nation”, in Urbs Capta: The Fourth Crusade
and its Consequences, ed. Angeliki Laiou (Paris, 2005), 151–60.
6 William Miller, The Latins in the Levant: a History of Frankish Greece (1204–1566) (London,
1908; repr. Cambridge, 1964). See also, idem, Essays on the Latin Orient (Cambridge, 1921;
repr. Amsterdam, 1964).
7 Longnon’s output is far too lengthy to be cited here in full. One might cite indicatively: Jean
Longnon, Recherches sur la vie de Geoffrey de Villehardouin (Paris, 1939); idem, L’Empire
latin du Constantinople et la Principauté de Morée (Paris, 1949); idem and Peter Topping,
eds., Documents sur le régime des terres dans la principauté de Morée au xive siècle (Paris,
1969).
8 See, for example, Anastasios Orlandos, Μοναστηριακή αρχιτεκτονική [Monastic Architecture]
(Athens, 1927); idem, Τα παλάτια και τα σπίτια του Μυστρά [The Palaces and Houses of Mistra]
(Athens, 1937; repr. 2000).
9 Antoine Bon, La Morée franque: recherches historiques, topographiques et archéologiques
sur la principauté d’Achaie (1205–1430), 2 vols. (Paris, 1969).
10 Giuseppe Gerola, Monumenti veneti nell’ isola di Creta, 4 vols. (Venice, 1905–32).