214 Jacoby
as maritime outlets of a much larger rural region extending into the Frankish
Morea, and exported a large variety of commodities including cotton, silk,
acorn-cups and kermes. It is not excluded that the malvasia wine sailing in
1415 and 1444 respectively from Modon and Coron to the Black Sea had been
produced from grapes grown close to the two Venetian ports, rather than in
Byzantine Laconia. By the 15th century the shipping of wine from the two ports
to Venice was carried out each year in September by the nave da Modon da le
vendeme, “the grape harvest vessels from Modon.” In the 14th century Venetian
protectionist policies and the extension of Venetian economic domination in
the western Aegean gradually reduced the share of Byzantine Monemvasia in
maritime trade. The city became increasingly dependent upon Modon and
Coron for long-distance exports and financial dealings.52 Intense traffic linked
the two ports to Crete and many other islands. Situated in the south-eastern
Peloponnese at the juncture of the Ionian and Aegean Seas, they also served
as transit and transhipment stations along one of the busiest navigation routes
crossing the Mediterranean. As bases of Venetian naval forces and as obser-
vation and surveillance points they fulfilled a strategic role in the assertion
and consolidation of Venetian supremacy in the western Aegean. In 1375 the
Venetian Senate considered that the two cities were the oculi capitales com-
munis Venetiarum, the “major eyes of the Commune of Venice”.53 Modon was
also a transit station for pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pilgrims drinking mal-
vasia wine in Modon in the late 15th century considered it superior to Cretan
malvasia.
The city of Euripos, called Negroponte by the Latins, was already an
active port of call and trading station along the waterway linking Italy to
Constantinople before 1204.54 Venice’s outpost in the city, established in
1211, rapidly stimulated the urban economy. In the course of the 13th century
Negroponte became an important commercial and maritime crossroads. In
addition to exporting Euboean products, namely silk, silk textiles, wine, honey
and grain, it acted as warehouse for the collection, distribution, transit and
transhipment of goods brought in from the mainland and numerous ports in
52 Jacoby, “Rural Exploitation,” pp. 236–72, passim; Gasparis, “The Trade in Agricultural
Products,” pp. 102–03.
53 Venice, Archivio di Stato, Senato, Deliberazioni, Misti, reg. 35, fol. 11r.
54 Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Handel und Politik zwischen dem byzantinischen Reich und den
italienischen Kommunen Venedig, Pisa und Genua in der Epoche der Komnenen und der
Angeloi (1081–1204) (Amsterdam, 1984), pp. 119–20.