ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to investigate what the Chronicle of Morea, the most significant Western source for crusading in southern Greece, can tell us about the role of the military orders in that region. The Chronicle of Morea is considered to be so important because it survives in no less than four separate versions (French, Greek, Aragonese and Italian), which between them cover the history of southern Greece from the time of the Fourth Crusade (1202-4) until the late fourteenth century.1 They focus in particular on the crusader principality of Achaia, which covered almost the entire Peloponnese at its height in the mid-thirteenth century, before it gradually disintegrated in the face of first Greek and then Ottoman incursions. The French and the Greek versions, which end in 1305 and 1292 respectively, are closely related. Their pro-Frankish stance have led many (but by no means all) historians to argue that the French version (or a lost predecessor to it) is the oldest. Both were produced in the fourteenth century, and certainly earlier than the Aragonese version, which continued the story until 1377 and was completed in 1393 at the orders of Juan Fernández de Heredia, Grand Master of the Hospitallers (1377-96). The Italian version, on the other hand, was not produced until the sixteenth century, and is effectively a translation of the Greek version. Although this makes the Italian text less useful as a source, its three French, Greek and Aragonese predecessors are vital to our understanding not only of the political history of the region, but also of the nature of thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Franco-Greek society in the Peloponnese. Indeed, the Aragonese version is often a unique source for what was happening inside the principality of Achaia between 1305 and 1377.2
1 French version: Livre de la conqueste de la princée de l’Amorée, ed. J. Longnon (Paris, 1911). Greek version: To Chronikon tou Moreos: The Chronicle of Morea, ed. J. Schmitt (London, 1904). Aragonese version: Libro de los fechos et conquistas del principado de la Morea, ed. A. Morel-Fation (Geneva, 1885). Italian version in Chroniques Gréco-romanes, inédites ou peu connues, ed. C. Hopf (Berlin, 1873), pp. 414-68.
