Literature in Frankish Greece 321
language in a mixed form with, secondly, that fifteen-syllable metre that went
on at least to have a strongly popular character. They are, in the Byzantine con-
text, unlearned and their language is comparatively uneducated and they are
thus credibly representative of the peripheral Peloponnese.99 They reveal the
strong influence of an oral culture and it is surely possible that they were orally
transmitted alongside the clear process of written transmission.
Evidence for oral performers in Greek on the model of the French jongleurs
is sadly lacking, and there is nothing specific to the Peloponnese, but there are
scattered mentions of both professional and amateur performances in a variety
of sources from across the Byzantine world and it is clear that oral performance
was enjoyed by all ranks.100 Specific to the 14th century, Nikephoros Gregoras
remarks on songs sung by travellers about men of “glorious reputation”, which
sound like epic tales; he also mentions that the Emperor John Kantakouzenos
was accompanied by a “creator of songs”.101 Finally, there is additionally the
hint of medieval Greek folk song from this period. At least two songs which
have strongly Frankish themes survived into modern times, one (in many vari-
ants) on the death of the Latin Emperor Henry of Flanders, and one about
the “Castle of the Beautiful”; the latter was recorded in the 19th century in the
Peloponnese.102 It is highly problematic to argue back from these very late folk
songs, but it seems intuitively unlikely that these Frankish themes would have
arisen much after the Frankish period.
Hellenes and Trojans...
The War of Troy presents particularly interesting issues about the symbiosis of
western and Greek storytelling. Firstly this was, like the Chronicle of the Morea,
a popular work: there are seven extant versions and must once have been at
least seven more. It is a reasonably close translation, with some abridgement,
of the hugely popular French Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte-Maure, and
99 Note the garbled names of ancient Hellene protagonists in the War of Troy: Elizabeth
Jeffreys, “Prism,” p. 18.
100 Jeffreys, “Oral Background,” pp. 508–09.
101 Nikephoros Gregoras, Nicephori Gregorae Byzantina Historia, ed. Ludwig Schopen, 2 vols.
(Bonn, 1829), 1:377 and 2:705–06.
102 Manoussos Manoussakas, “Το ελληνικό δημοτικό τραγούδι για τον Βασιλιά Ερρίκο της
Φλάντρας” [“The Greek Folk Song about King Henry of Flanders”], Λαογραφία 14 (1952),
3–52; Jean Alexandre Buchon, La Grèce Continentale et la Morée (Paris, 1843), pp. 400–02;
see also Aneta Ilieva, Frankish Morea (1205–1262): Socio-Cultural Interaction Between the
Franks and the Local Population (Athens, 1991), pp. 237–38.