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Summing up, while it is universally agreed that none of the surviving ver-
sions is the original Chronicle, it is likewise agreed that the French B and the
Greek H are the oldest and therefore the closest to that now lost original.
Further, as H is not explicitly abbreviated, it provides the closest witness of
that original. Working from the evidence provided within the various ver-
sions, it can be said with some confidence that this original Chronicle was first
completed in the 1320s, and this makes it a work of the principality in decline,
confronted with the confident Byzantine power base in Mistra that was
making substantial gains at the cost of the French.56
French, Italian, Greek and even Provencal have all been proposed as the
language of the original Chronicle, but the consensus must now be for a Greek
original. In her recent and compellingly argued examination of the Chronicle,
Teresa Shawcross has shown that both H and P must derive from an earlier ver-
sion, again in vernacular Greek. Evidencing the many links between the Greek
and French versions indicative of a shared source, she has convincingly pro-
posed that this earlier Greek version might be considered the lost original of
the Chronicle as a whole; as she says, this can never be proved, but it is the most
economical solution and “some reconstructions [.. .] are more plausible than
others”.57 H is thus the best guide to the Chronicle as originally conceived, and
to its context and its audience in the early years of the 14th century.
Oi Moraites
The audience of the Greek Chronicle included both Franks and Greeks of the
Peloponnese, for both are addressed explicitly at H724: “Listen all of you, both
Franks and Romans!” However, the mixed audience is also and more subtly
indicated via the Greek Chronicle’s conception of a Moreot identity which
combined both ethnic groups in the principality. More than any other version
of the Chronicle, H emphasises Greek involvement in the principality, and it
also provides more positive characterisations of the local Greeks. H repeatedly
shows the Villehardouins as conciliating and involving local Greeks, and it
emphasises how the Villehardouin rulers were appreciated by Greeks as much
as by Franks:
56 Shawcross, Chronicle, pp. 43–47.
57 Shawcross, Chronicle, pp. 49–52.