The Landscape of Medieval Greece 353
of the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders reli-
gious difference loomed large. Although the Venetians did not attempt to
proselytise the Greek Orthodox population, in order to establish a Latin
ecclesiastical hierarchy all Orthodox bishops were eventually evicted from
Venetian territories.76 Similarly new Latin bishoprics were founded in the
Peloponnese, the Cyclades, and Euboea where the residence of the Latin patri-
arch was moved after the recapture of Constantinople by the Byzantines in
1261.77 Many of the Latin churches that have survived were turned into mosques
in the Ottoman period: e.g. the church of St Mark in Negroponte, which in
the Ottoman period became the Friday mosque of the city, and the cathedrals
of Canea and Candia. At times usages were blurred as Latin churches could
sometimes be used as meeting places as in the case of the church of St Francis
in Glarenza, which served in the 1270s as the assembly hall for the ruler, his
nobles, and the burghers.78
The Latin churches of Greece and the Aegean are basilicas with one or three
aisles without a transept (Figure 10.9). The side aisles are articulated as pri-
vate chapels as we can still see in few remaining examples (e.g. the church of
St Francis in Canea and St Paraskeve in Chalkis), a fact that is confirmed by
archival documents from the Venetian archives. Although constructed during
a time when in northern France churches were built in the Gothic style, the
Latin churches of medieval Greece do not employ a skeletal structure but dis-
play thick walls and windows with modest tracery. Like their counterparts in
the Holy Land, they have a plain chevet and vaulting that distinguish them
from northern French examples.79 Ogival arches and ribbed vaulting, two of the
most characteristic elements of French Gothic cathedrals are not always pres-
ent. They are used primarily in the chevet as in St Sophia in Andravida (Figure
10.10) and St Peter the Martyr in Herakleion (Figure 10.11). Moreover, some of
the forms that we encounter in Greece follow much earlier Romanesque mod-
els and look outdated. This is a very important feature of colonial architecture,
76 Fedalto, La Chiese Latina, 1:312–52, esp. 318–20.
77 Fedalto, La Chiesa Latina, 2:90.
78 Athanasoulis, “The Triangle of Power,” pp. 111–51, 125 and Tzavara, Glarentza, pp. 113–17.
79 A comparison with the 13th-century architecture in Toulouse and Majorca is a case in
point. The relatively simple chevet may relate to the function of the surviving Latin
churches of Greece that were Cistercian or mendicant foundations in which the most
important feature would have been the nave and not the chevet; cf. Jean Bony, French
Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries (Berkeley, 1983), p. 446; Herbert Dellwing,
“L’architettura degli ordini mendicanti,” in Storia e cultura a Padova nell’età di Sant’Antonio:
convegno internazionale di studi, 1–4 ottobre, 1981 (Padova-Monselice, 1982), pp. 457–65,
and Herbert Dellwing, Studien zur Baukunst der Bettelorden im Veneto; Die Gotik der mon-
umentalen Gewolbebasiliken (Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1970).