The Landscape of Medieval Greece 327
albeit in smaller foundations. I will start with a short section on historiography
followed by an analysis of the evidence in the urban centres, churches, fortifi-
cations, and the rural landscape. The chapter will conclude with an analysis of
local realities and how these shaped the landscape of medieval Greece.
Although there was no political or cultural unity in the new Latin states that
were shaped after 1204 on Greek soil, they shared several characteristics. The
number of foreign settlers was relatively small and although politically they
had the upper hand, they remained a minority vis-à-vis the locals even in the
case of Crete, which remained under Venetian control until 1669. The term
Outremer—Oltremare stressed the distance between France and the crusader
states of the Levant,3 Venice and its Mediterranean colonies along the coast of
the Adriatic (Zara/Zadar, Ragusa/Dubrovnik), the Ionian Sea (Corfu/Kerkyra
from 1386 onward, Cephalonia, Zante/Zakynthos), the southern coast of the
Peloponnese (Modon/Methone, Coron/Korone), the Aegean Sea (Cyclades,
Negroponte/Euboea, Cerigo/Cythera, Crete), and eventually Cyprus. The pro-
longed presence of Franks and Venetians in Greece covered the geographical
distance as it created polities that lived longer than the crusader states in the
Holy Land. Moreover, as in every mixed society there were many instances of
intermarriage and intra-cultural mingling as the term “gasmoulos” (progeny of
a Greek and Frank) indicates.4
Several questions and assumptions on which this essay is based need to be
addressed from the outset. Why think of Greece as a unit at this juncture in its
history? Is it legitimate to group together Venetians and Franks when we think
of the architectural environment of Frankish Greece? What is the best way to
frame the encounter between Latin and Byzantine architectural culture in the
13th century: as a question of continuity and break, or of tradition and innova-
tion? How to appreciate and evaluate the new styles imported from western
Europe and their relationship with indigenous materials, traditions, and work-
force? How to interpret the meaning of the new artistic forms brought onto
Greek soil?
Despite the many differences apparent in the background of Frankish set-
tlers on Greek soil, the geo-morphological position of the new Latin states in
Greece that were created as a consequence of the crusades along with their
3 It is important, however, to note that the Franks did not use the term for the Peloponnese.
4 Johannes Koder, “Latinoi—The Image of the Other in Greek Sources,” in Bisanzio, Venezia e
il mondo franco-greco (xiii–xv secolo): atti del colloquio internazionale organizzato nel cente-
nario della nascita di Raymond-Joseph Loenertz o.p. Venezia, 1–2 dicembre 2000, ed. Chryssa A.
Maltezou and Peter Schreiner (Venice, 2002), pp. 25–40. See also Teresa Shawcross, The
Chronicle of Morea: Historiography in Crusader Greece (Oxford, 2009), pp. 190–202.