Literature in Frankish Greece 325
macy of the pope and of Rome even though, according to the western ideology,
their emperor Constantine had handed on the Christian baton to Rome. But
this was all part of their character, as the Greeks laboured under an archetype
of treacherous guile. In the mythic ethnography of the West, they were the
slaughterers of the Trojans, the supposed progenitors of the peoples of western
Europe.
And yet... in the world of the crusades, the Peloponnese was not geo-
graphically peripheral at least. In the same context, where better for knightly
prowess to be displayed than the Latin East? The court of the Morea was
viewed as the very flower of chivalry and shows itself to have been right in the
heart of courtly French culture. And in some at least of the products of western
courtly culture, Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in general played an
important part. The fact of ancient Greece, and its myths and legends, were
known in the West. Did the conquerors and settlers of the Peloponnese to some
extent feel they trod a familiar landscape, and did this influence their enjoy-
ment of the tales of Troy? Again, from the Greek perspective, in the world after
1204, the Peloponnese assumed renewed importance in the Byzantine world,
especially with the blossoming of the Despotate of Mistra. In the culture of the
Palaiologoi, there was an increased interaction with western modes, which is
reflected in some of the more innovative products of late Byzantine culture.
The Greek romance tradition combined with western storytelling in the ethni-
cally mixed Morea, and the Frankish principality was home to historiographic
innovation with its Chronicle of the Morea.
With regard to the 13th century and the Morea Chansonnier, all that
is unusual is the location. This is an example of French culture in its wider
world, of the culture of France transplanted “beyond the sea”, and although
the Chansonnier has its unusual features it is fundamentally mainstream.
What we have from the 13th century suggests simply a very French state doing
well what the French did best. The Greek Chronicle of the Morea shows that
things were in the end not that simple in the principality and, although it dates
from the 14th century, it must be indicative of earlier practice as well. By the
second quarter of the 14th century, the Moreots of French origin were at home
in Greek and this is evidenced in the creation of a distinctive literature indica-
tive of an ethnically mixed society with a strong localised identity.