Literature in Frankish Greece 319
audience is literate and to some extent learned.90 In contrast, in the western
romances writing and reading play more minimal roles and there is compara-
tively little learned material. These romances exhibit knowledge only of the
widely disseminated history by Konstantinos Manasses and the didactic ver-
nacular Spaneas. Again, these texts are presented more as oral presentations
to a listening audience.
Additionally, in the knotted problem of links between romance texts, there
do seem to be some close correspondences between the western romances
as a group, and also with the Chronicle of the Morea. Most directly, Imberios
closely echoes two lines of Florios.91 The War of Troy is highly formulaic,
comparably so to the Chronicle, and moreover again shares distinctive for-
mulas with that work.92 Again, the vernacular language of Florios is remi-
niscent of the Chronicle and some distinctive phrases are shared.93 On the
subject of language, the later translated romances overall use more popular
forms of language in contrast to the more archaic touches present in the
courtly romances of Constantinopolitan origin, and there are even possible
traces of Peloponnesian dialect in Florios.94
In sum, these western vernacular romances seem credibly to share a Moreot
origin and, although none can be definitively associated with the principal-
ity, some plausible links have been made. Guiseppe Spadaro’s suggestion that
the Cantare di Florio e Biancafiore was brought to the Peloponnese during the
years 1338–41 by Niccolò Acciaiuoli is now widely accepted.95 In contrast,
Imberios is perhaps more tendentiously associated with the Frankish Morea
90 Agapitos, “Writing, Reading and Reciting”; for the Achilleid also Ole L. Smith, “Towards a
New Approach to the Byzantine Romances,” in Prosa y verso en Griego Medieval. Neograeca
Medii Aevi iii, ed. José Maria Egea and Javier Alonso (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 331–39.
91 Guiseppe Spadaro, “Problemi relativi ai romanzi greci dell’età dei Paleologi I,” Ελληνικά 28
(1975), 302–27, reviewed in Jeffreys, “Style,” pp. 319–28.
92 Elizabeth M. Jeffreys and Michael J. Jeffreys, “The Traditional Style of Early Greek Demotic
Verse,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 5 (1979), 115–39.
93 Horrocks, Greek, p. 217; see Florios v. 1298, “Why should I tell you a lot?” note too that
Florios shares with the Greek Chronicle H a relaxed and non-Byzantine application of
basileus.
94 Kyriaki Chábová, “Jazyk byzantských milostných románů čtrnáctého a patnáctého stoleti”
[“Language in Byzantine Romance Novels of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”]
(doctoral thesis, Masaryk University, 2006), pp. 147 and 208–16.
95 Guiseppe Spadaro, Contributo sulle fonti del romanzo greco-medievale “Florio e Plaziaflore”
(Athens, 1966).