A Frankish Estate Near the Bay of Navarino

 Peter Topping
Source: Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Vol. 35,
No. 4 (Oct. – Dec., 1966), pp. 427-436
Published by: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

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A FRANKISH ESTATE NEAR THE BAY  OF NAVARINO
I  am happy to represent the area of later Greek studies in this volume of essays in  honor of a distinguished teacher and colleague. Few classicists or prelhistorians  have known and loved post-classical Greece as well as Carl Blegen. Testifying to his  interest in Byzantine, Turkish, and independent Hellas is the notable collection of  Modern Greek books in the University of Cincinnati Library.  It now numbers  about 14,000 volumes, the result of his purchases begun in 1930. The quality and  range of this collection place Professor Blegen in the select company of such Greek  book-collectors as the late Joannes Gennadius, George Arvanitidis, and Damianos Kyriazis.
My purpose is to describe a small feudal estate of the fourteenth century located  near the northeastern end of the bay of Navarino. The evidence I shall cite is to be  found largely in three unpublished documents preserved in Florentine archives. It  will be convenient to refer to these documents by the letters A, B, and C. Document A,2 dated at Naples, 16 July 1338, is a charter recording the grant to
Niccolo Acciaiuoli of several estates in Messenia and Elis. The grantors were mem-  bers of the Angevin house of Naples and Sicily, founded by Charles of Anjou, brother  of St. Louis. The kings or lesser members of this dynasty had since 1267 been  suzerains of the crusader principality of Achaia or Morea (1205-1432);  at times  members of the house were themselves princes of Morea. Niccolo Acciaiuoli (1310-
1365) was the most talented member of the Florentine banking family of the Acciaiuoli,  which made itself indispensable to the Angevin monarchs and was to provide Athens  with its last ducal line.3 For his numerous services to the Neapolitan Angevins he  was rewarded with the office of great seneschal of the kingdom and with the hereditary  title of Count of Melfi. In both Italy and Greece he was the recipient of many estates.

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