THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE AGE OF JAMES II OF ARAGONof Majorca intervened, in this case unsuccessfully, in the
Greek conflicts; but in reality the political ties even to Sicily
were slight, and Catalan Greece was a world unto itself. It
should be remembered, too, that Athens was not a place of
great significance in the Middle Ages; Catalan traders did
not make extensive use of the Duchy as a commercial base,
though they received privileges occasionally for trade in the
heartlands of the Byzantine Empire (or what little remained
of it): Constantinople and its surrounds. The Catalan Duchy
had strategic significance only insofar as it might act as a
check on further Angevin expansion in the Balkans, and
insofar as it tied up Angevin energies which might otherwise
have been directed at Sicily itself.
James II articulated his view of the need to create a line
of communication to the east, a 'route of the islands' ( ruta
de las illas), in a letter to the pope in 1311, written when the
Holy See was trying to stimulate new enthusiasm for a cru-
sade against Mamluk Egypt. Often interpreted as a descrip-
tion of the trading network of the Catalans,James's statement
is increasingly recognised for what it explicitly is: an assertion
that the Aragonese-Catalan commonwealth could serve a
future crusade extremely effectively:
The Christian army, proceeding eastwards by the sea route,
should always stay close to the Christian islands, namely Majorca,
Minorca, Sardinia and Sicily, from which it may receive food
and refreshments and people to reinforce the said army and to
populate the new territories, and then by acquiring this series
of bases it can, with God's help, reach the Holy Land.^29Interestingly, there is no reference to the activities of the
Catalans in Greece, in the very year when they seized the
duchy of Athens, for James's real interest lay still further
east than Athens.THE INVASION OF SARDINIA
Of the lands mentioned in James II's letter to the pope,
only Sardinia did not yet lie under the rule of a member- Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium. p. 236, for a discussion of various
interpretations of this passage.