Literature in Frankish Greece 309
... and when [Geoffrey I] had passed away [.. .] there was great mourning
in all the Morea, for they had held him dear, they had loved him much for
his good lordship, the wisdom which he had (H2462–4).58
On occasion, the Greek Chronicle uses the collective term “Moraites” to denote
this combined population of the principality (2252, 3900, 3915, 7166, 8266, 8435,
8630). Inclusive of both Franks and Greeks, the term is typically employed to
strike a contrast with outsiders to the principality and is common to all Greek
versions, thus indicating that it had a lasting signification. In these ways, then,
the Greek Chronicle paints a picture of Moreot society where ethnic differ-
ences were acknowledged but not fundamentally significant in the context of
a localised identity.59 This ideology is absent in the other language versions of
the Chronicle; B has little appreciation of this mixed society, and it may have
been an element that was diminished or eliminated in the process of abbrevia-
tion and redaction for a non-Moreot audience.
Also significant in arguing for an audience at least in part French are the
clear close links between the Chronicle and the Frankish family of le Maure,
the barons of Arcadia (now Kyparissia) on the Messenian coast. The le Maure
were late arrivals in the principality, having come east with Florent de Hainaut
in 1289; however, they married into the de Briel and d’Aunoy families which
were long established in Latin Greece and by the middle of the 14th cen-
tury had become one of the few “old French” families in the principality. The
repeated references to the le Maure in all versions of the Chronicle suggest that
the work may have originated in this family’s circle and certainly continued to
circulate in its orbit. It is significant that even P, which radically curtails pro-
Villehardouin and anti-Greek comment, remains extremely positive about the
le Maure.60
All this combines to suggest that the Greek Chronicle was well known in a
French context and had, as it indeed asserts, an audience composed of both
Franks and Greeks. This has profound implications for our view of the Franks
of the principality in the 14th century. It would seem that the Franks were, by
the 14th century, generally fluent in Greek. This is not to deny the continuing
use of French and other western languages, but it is notwithstanding the case
58 And see also, for example, H2098–2102, 7173–6, 7218–32.
59 Page, Being Byzantine, pp. 182–205; Shawcross, Chronicle, pp. 206–17; Rodrigues, French
Chronique, pp. 86–93.
60 Note also that the son-in-law of Erard iii le Maure, John Laskaris Kalopheros, must have
been well known to Fernández de Heredia, the commissioner of the Aragonese Chronicle:
Luttrell, “Juan Fernández,” pp. 129–30.