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chapter 9Literature in Frankish Greece
Gill PageThis paper considers works of literature associated with the Frankish
Peloponnese between the 13th and the 15th centuries. That word “literature”
suggests a body of work which has been written down, a collection of fixed and
noteworthy texts which exist to be read, and of course, we have a body of texts
surviving from Frankish Greece. But in the context of the High Middle Ages
much creative work existed independent of books, independent of writing.
This was still an age of oral creation and transmission alongside, and increas-
ingly interweaving with, written transmission. If we want to understand the
origin and context of these texts, then seeing “literature” as only and strictly
written and read is unhelpful, as the written text did not occupy the same
privileged position as it does in the modern era.1 Thus “literature” might be
more usefully understood as denoting “cultural or leisure activity of the word”.
It is a dilemma—an awkward fact—that we might wish to speak coherently of
this complex cultural sphere but all we have to go on are the written survivals.
Nevertheless, the written texts are our way into a discovery of enjoyment of
the word in Frankish Greece. What did the residents of Frankish Greece create,
value, and enjoy in terms of the word?
This paper looks at this activity of the word in Frankish Greece, focusing
on the Principality of the Morea in the Peloponnese. As Frankish Greece is
a large area both in terms of time and geography, it can be difficult to speak
sensibly and concisely over the whole, and I have thus chosen to concentrate
on a more specific area and time. The Principality of the Morea lasted a little
over two centuries after the conquest of the Fourth Crusade in 1204; geographi-
cally it included initially large parts of the Peloponnese, although it had shrunk
to a nubbin by the time its final remnant passed to Byzantine rule in 1430.
Moreover, the medieval Peloponnese is comparatively rich in recorded history,
monuments and culture.2
1 This position is not universally recognised: contrast Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy:
The Technologizing of the Word (London, 1982), pp. 10–14 and Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry
(Cambridge, 1977), p. 2.
2 Other areas of Frankish Greece also have much to offer. Cyprus has a wealth of material
in both Greek and French including religious accounts as well as histories: for recent work,