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frankly doggerel Greek verse of the Chronicle of the Morea is a startling one;
nevertheless, in the course of less than a century this transition was made.
The Chronicle of the Morea is a nexus of texts dating originally from the early
years of the 14th century, although its various versions and editions take the
story forward beyond the term of the Villehardouin principality. The Chronicle
exists in four different but very clearly related language versions: vernacular
Greek, French, Aragonese and Italian, a variety which underscores the linguis-
tic and ethnic diversity of the late medieval Aegean. It can be seen to have
originated in the Peloponnese by the 1320s, but the original version has not
survived. Each of the extant versions represents in some sense an edition of
this original, with varying degrees of alteration and adaptation. These later ver-
sions are to differing degrees interesting in their own right, but also in what
they can tell of the lost original, the conditions of its creation, and the cul-
ture that produced it.41 The Chronicle is thus made especially interesting by its
subsequent history—the very existence of so many language versions and the
existence of significantly different Greek versions—and it is clear that this was
a successful and popular work that was repeatedly revisited by those with an
interest in the Morea. It was in different ways reissued to meet different needs
and agendas, and this was thus a work with many potential audiences.
Getting into a little more detail, it makes sense to work—roughly—back-
wards in time. Thus, the Italian version is the least interesting in relation to
Frankish Greece. It was produced as late as the 16th century, perhaps prepared
for Venetian officers still maintaining a precarious hold in the Aegean; it should
be noted, though, that it clearly derives from a Greek version of the Chronicle.42
The Aragonese version (Libro de los fechos et conquistas del Principado de la
Morea) has the clearest origins.43 It closes with the declaration that it was
“made and compiled” for Juan Fernández de Heredia, Grand Master of the
Hospitallers, and that it was completed by the scribe Bernard de Jacqua on
24 October 1383. Juan Fernández de Heredia was master from 1377 to 1396; his
order had obvious interests in the Aegean region and ruled the principality on
41 Teresa Shawcross, The Chronicle of the Morea: Historiography in Crusader Greece (Oxford,
2009), is the essential companion to the Chronicle in its various forms, but see also Page,
Being Byzantine, pp. 178–81; David Jacoby, “Quelques considérations sur les versions de la
Chronique de Morée,” Journal des Savants (1968), 133–89; Michael Jeffreys, “The Chronicle
of the Morea: Priority of the Greek Version,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 68 (1975), 304–50;
Rodrigues, French Chronique, pp. 53–72.
42 Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, Ital. vii 712 coll. 8754; ed. Karl Hopf, Chroniques Gréco-
Romanes inédites ou peu-conuues (Berlin, 1873; rep. Brussels, 1966).
43 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 10131; ed. A. Morel-Fatio, Libro de los Fechos et Conquistas del
Principado de la Morea (Geneva, 1885).