MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

A HISTORY OF FRANKISH GREECE (1204-1566)

CHAPTER XV

CORFU (1214-1485)

We have described in the previous chapters the rise and fall of the various states of continental Greece, whose history occupied the period between the Latin and the Turkish Conquests. We must now turn to the two principal island possessions of the Franks, omitting, for the sake of clearness, those minor places in the Aegean whose fortunes do not affect the main narrative. These two insular states are the duchy of Naxos, and the colony of Corfu. In the history of both, Venetian enterprise played a conspicuous part. Both survived, though for different periods of time, the establishment of Turkish rule on the mainland, and Corfu, the most important of the Ionian islands, was practically never subjected to the Mussulman yoke. But in other respects the careers of the two exhibit widely different results of Latin rule in the Levant.

The island of Corfu, the loveliest spot in all Greece, has had a history separate, down to very recent times, from the rest of the country. Even the other Ionian islands, except the little island of Paxo, lie far away from the ancient home of the Phaeacians. For well-nigh three centuries its history was quite distinct from theirs, and it was not till after the Turkish Conquest of the mainland of Greece, that they were all united under the Venetian banner, which waved over them until the downfall of the republic in 1797.

We saw in the second and third chapters how, after two Venetian attempts to colonise Corfu, the island was captured by Michael I, Despot of Epiros, about the year 1214, with whose continental dominions it remained united for half-a-century. We saw, too, how one Despot after another ratified and extended the privileges of the Corfiote Church, which they wisely recognised as the bulwark of their rule over the islanders, and which furnished them, from the pen of the metropolitan, George Barddnes, with plausible arguments against the theologians of the Nicene Empire. Under the sway of the bastard Michael II, the island was specially favoured. An usurper, he was bound to conciliate his subjects, and we accordingly find him lavishing one privilege after another upon the fortunate Corfiotes. At the end of 1236, immediately after he had made himself master of the island, he not only confirmed their former rights, but made them and their villains practically exempt from taxation and customs duties; ten years later, by two successive golden bulls, he freed the thirty-two priests of the town of Corfu, who formed a religious corporation, from all forced labour, and bestowed similar privileges upon the thirty-three country popes, who were consequently described as the “freemen”, forming a regular caste, into which none but members of their own families could enter. From the scanty notices of the period when Corfu belonged to the Despotat of Epiros which have come down to us, it is clear that this was the zenith of the orthodox church in the island. Long after the times of the Despots, the Corfiote clergy were wont to produce their charters when they sought for redress from their Angevin or Venetian rulers, and the institution of the thirty-two town priests still existed in the middle of the fifteenth century, when it was regarded as the mainstay of orthodoxy in the island. These privileged priests never forgot their benefactors, and the wise ecclesiastical policy of the Despots of Epiros saved the Greek Church through centuries of Roman Catholic predominance.

Of the civil administration of the Despots in the island we know scarcely anything, beyond the fact that in their time it was divided into ten “decarchies”— possibly a continuation of the Venetian system of colonisation by ten nobles, possibly a survival of the old Roman decuriones, or local landowners. It is interesting to notice that among the names of these“decarchies” which have come down to us, one at least, in the slightly corrupted form of “Bistoni”, preserves that of the classic mountain of Istone, the modern Santi Deka, which figures in Thucydides’ account of the Corcyraean sedition. The oldest historian of Corfu may be exaggerating when he says that the Despots of Epiros “adorned the city with most noble buildings”, but tradition and probability are with him when he ascribes to them the castle of Sant’ Angelo on the west coast, whose ruins, in a superb situation above the blue Ionian sea, still preserve the name of that adventurous race.

Michael II, as we saw, considered it necessary to secure the alliance of King Manfred in his struggle for the leadership of the Greeks. Accordingly, in 1259, he married his beautiful daughter Helene to the sovereign of the Two Sicilies, to whom she brought as her dowry Corfu, the fortresses of Butrinto, Suboto, and Valona, and one or two other places on the mainland. It was not the first time that the island had been a Sicilian possession, for more than once in the course of the twelfth century the Normans of Sicily had temporarily occupied it. Unable, however, to govern it in person, Manfred entrusted the island, together with his possessions in Epiros, to his admiral, Filippo Chinardo, who, as a Frank from Cyprus, had had experience of managing Greeks, and who endeavoured to win over the Corfiotes by exempting them from the duty of repairing the Sicilian fleet. Even after Manfred had fallen at the battle of Benevento and his widow and children were prisoners of Charles of Anjou, Chinardo maintained his position in Corfu and the Epirote fortresses for a few more months. The crafty Despot of Epiros gave him the hand of his sister-in-law, and recognised him as lord of the island by regarding it as her dowry, now that his daughter, its rightful owner, was in prison. Chinardo felt himself secure enough to bestow Corfiote fiefs upon his lieutenants, thus extending the feudal system which had been founded under the Greeks and which so long prevailed in Corfu. But there was a Greek party in the island which was in communication with the Despot, and the latter had no difficulty in procuring his assassination. Michael II. did not, however, reap the profit of his crime. One of Chinardo’s newly created barons, Garnier Aleman, a member of the Provencal family which we saw installed at Patras, had the strongest motives of personal interest to keep out the Greeks. He naturally turned for aid to his fellow-countryman and fellow-Catholic, Charles of Anjou, who regarded himself as the representative of the conquered Manfred in all the latter’s possessions. On hearing of Chinardo’s murder, Charles had, in January 1267, appointed the murdered man’s son captain of Corfu. But Aleman’s position and services called for this reward, and the office of captain and vicar-general was transferred to him by the cautious king.¹ The treaty of Viterbo, two months later, formally recognised Charles’s rights over the lands “which had been held by Manfred and Filippo Chinardo”. Thus, in 1267, began the Angevin domination over Corfu.

For the next few years, however, Charles of Anjou was too much occupied with Italian politics to devote his personal attention to that grand scheme for the conquest of the Eastern Empire, which had been conceived at Viterbo, and towards which he, like Bonaparte five centuries later, considered the occupation of Corfu to be the first step. He added indeed the style of “King of Corfu” to his other titles, and deputed Prince William of Achaia to make arrangements for its custody; but he thought it expedient to allow Aleman to remain in undisturbed and practically independent possession of the island and its castles, excusing him from rendering any account of his administration, and pardoning any offence which he might have committed against the king’s orders. It is clear that the diplomatic monarch was anxious not to offend the proud Provengal baron, to whom he owed the island; it is clear, too, that he desired to conciliate the Greek party among the Corfiotes; one of his first acts was to recall all the natives who had fled the island, except those implicated in Chinardo’s assassination; another was to guarantee to all the citizens the security of their lives and the enjoyment of their property according to the usages and customs of the island.

Just as the death of the Despot Michael II gave Charles the opportunity of carrying out his long-deferred plans in Epiros, so that of Garnier Aleman in 1272 made him for the first time the real master of Corfu. Aleman’s son was satisfied with a money payment and with confirmation of his family fiefs in the island, and Giordano di San Felice, the new vicar-general and captain of Corfu, took possession in Charles’s name of the three fortresses of Castel Vecchio, Castel Nuovo (as the two summits of the present Fortezza Vecchia were then called), and Sant’ Angelo. Under his jurisdiction were the castles of Suboto and Butrinto, “ the key of Corfu,” as the Venetians called the latter, which had once belonged to Manfred and Chinardo, which had been retaken by the Greeks, but which, in 1279, was restored to Manfred’s conqueror by the feeble Despot Nikephoros I.

The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from its origin, was especially intolerant of the orthodox faith. Charles owed his crown to the pope, and was anxious to repay the obligation by propagating Catholicism among his orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw, had enjoined tolerance of the Greek Church during their brief period of domination; the Despots of Epiros had made it a privileged body; now for the first time the islanders learnt what religious persecution meant. The metropolitan of Corfii, whose dignity dated from the tenth century, and who had played so conspicuous a part in the disputes between Epiros and Nice, was deposed, and in his place a less dignified ecclesiastic, called “chief priest” was substituted. This personage was elected by the thirty-two priests of “the sacred band” and by the same number of local nobles, while eight similar ecclesiastics were appointed for the benefit of the Greeks throughout the island. The title of “Archbishop of Corfu” was usurped by Antonio, a Latin priest, and the principal churches, including the cathedral, which was then in the fortress, were seized by the Catholic clergy; the residence of the metropolitan had already been pulled down by Chinardo. It was not till the Russians landed in Corfu a hundred years ago that the Greek Church recovered its high position in the island, though the successors of Charles showed their willingness to grant favours to the Greek clergy.

Towards another religion, that of the Jews, the Angevins were sufficiently tolerant to induce that race to settle for the first time in any numbers in the island, where a ghetto and its vicar are mentioned in 1365; but the injunctions of successive sovereigns, bidding the Corfiotes treat them well, would seem to show that this protection was seldom efficacious against the prejudices of the natives, prejudices not quite extinct in our own day. That these Jews came from the Levant rather than from Italy seems proved by the curious fact that the Greek is the older of the two Corfiote synagogues, and that the earliest known example of vulgar Greek prose is a translation of the Book of Jonah for the use of the synagogue in Corfu.

The military and civil administration was placed, as was natural, in the hands of Italians or Provencals. At the head of the government was the captain, or vicar-general, usually directly dependent upon the king, but at times specially placed under the supreme authority of the royal representative in Albania. A magister massarius, or treasurer (so called because one of his duties was to look after the material of war and other instruments of the massa, or public “estate”) was the second Angevin official, and in the middle of the fourteenth century the two offices were united in the same person. A third official was styled inquisitor). The High Court of Justice, or Curia Regis was composed of the captain, a legal assessor, and a notary, all foreigners and all appointed by the sovereign, together with two or three Corfiote judges, who from their tenure of office were styled judices annuales. This court, which sat to try all civil and criminal cases, met in the loggia- adjoining, or in a palace “above the iron gate,” an important entrance, the custody of which was entrusted to a special officer.² The official language of the court was Latin, but we find the captain signing his name in French, and there was a public notary for the Greek tongue, in which contracts between a Greek and a foreigner were drawn up.³ One of the first acts of the Latin rulers was to introduce the feudal usages and customs of the Empire of Romania.

The island, under the Angevins, was divided into four bailiwicks, each administered by a bailie, and called re­spectively the Circle, the Mountain, the Centre, and Levkimme after the White Cape at the South. The old decarchies, however, continued to exist, as in the days of the Despots. The landjbelonged partly to the royal domain, and partly to the barons, to whom it had been granted by the sovereign. One of Charles’s chief instructions was to draw up a complete list of the Corfiote fiefs, distinguishing those created by Manfred and Chinardo from those of Greek origin. This list has been lost; but, if we may believe the historian Marmora,⁷ there were twenty-four at the time of the Angevin occupation. These fiefs passed into the posses­sion of Provencal or Italian families like that of Goth (or Hugot), which had accompanied Charles to Naples, or those of Altavilla, S. Ippolito, and Caracciolo. This great Neapolitan clan left its name long imprinted on the land which was once its property. Even the little group of the Othonian islands formed one of the fiefs in the gift of the sovereign of Corfu.

The Latin barons formed a council which met in the arcades near “the iron gate”, and which elected the above­mentioned “annual judges”, four officials, named sindici, who were the representatives of the community, and two others, bearing the ancient Byzantine title of catapan, who looked after the food supplies. As time went on, baronies were conferred on Greeks who had rendered services to the sovereign, such as the family of Kavasilas from Epiros; and, towards the close of the Angevin period, we find the com­munity, or at least the principal persons composing it, summoned by the sound of the bell for the discussion of public affairs. One prince after another, as the Corfiotes confessed, conferred privileges upon them.

The island was, indeed, valuable to the Angevins for other reasons than its strategic position. Charles I found it well suited for horse-breeding; it possessed valuable salt­pans; it produced plenty of wine; and its olive-trees, though not what they afterwards became in the Venetian times, are already mentioned in the fourteenth century. The fisheries of Butrinto were a source of revenue, and there was sufficient trade to attract a Venetian, as well as a Jewish colony, to the island. Moreover, the Corfiotes, descendants of the sea-faring Phaeacians, were bound to furnish crews for the Angevin fleet.

The Sicilian Vespers and the consequent struggle between the houses of Aragon and Anjou entailed the vengeance of the former party upon the unhappy Corfiotes, who had the misfortune to be subjects of the latter. Roger de Lluria twice ravaged the island, burning and destroying the castle; Berenguer d’Enten^a and Berenguer Villaraut both raided this beautiful spot; and, on its way to Constantinople, the Catalan Grand Company did not fail to plunder it. Nor were the Aragonese fleets the only evils of which the islanders complained. The captains at this period were absentees—men of great name and lineage, like Hugh of Brienne, baron of Karytaina; Count Richard of Cephalonia; and Florent d’Avesnes, Prince of Achaia; who had more important interests elsewhere, and whose deputies oppressed the people. Charles II. of Naples, who was now their sovereign, showed, however, that he wished them well. In 1294, he confirmed¹ the golden bull which the Despot Michael II. had issued in 1236; in the same year he bestowed the island, together with the castle of Butrinto and its dependencies, upon his fourth son, Philip of Taranto, on the occasion of his marriage with the fair Thamar of Epiros, reserving to himself the overlordship as a matter of form. Thus the Prince of Taranto repeated the diplomatic marriage of Manfred under more favourable auspices. Holding Corfu, with its dependencies and the dowry of Thamar on the mainland, he seemed to occupy a stronger position than any previous Latin ruler of the island. So far as high-sounding titles went, there was soon no personage in the Latin Orient so magnificent as the new “ Lord of Corfu,” as he styled himself on his coins, who was also titular Emperor of Constantinople, Prince of Achaia, and Despot of Romania.

His long reign of nearly forty years over the island was, if we may believe the indiscriminate panegyric of Marmora, a second golden age, during which a well-beloved prince governed a devoted people. He strengthened the Catholic element, and at the same time encouraged agriculture by conferring upon the archbishop the waste and uncultivated lands of the island for the support of the established church. He issued orders for the protection of the Jews, whose Sab­bath services were disturbed, whose possessions were liable to seizure, and whose services were enlisted as galley-slaves, or worse still, as public executioners, a duty all the more repug­nant because the gallows were erected in the Jewish cemetery.

But there are some dark shadows on the picture, which the courtly artist has omitted. So ardent a Catholic as the Prince of Taranto could scarcely be expected to tolerate the Greek Church, which represented a national as well as a religious force, especially as the Greek emperor had recently bestowed upon the new metropolitan of Joannina the offensive title of “Exarch of Corfu”. There was, too, the alarm of Greek invasions from the mainland opposite. At one moment we find the Despot Thomas of Epiros scheming with the Greek emperor’s admiral to make a descent from Valona on Corfu; at another it is Count John II. of Cephalonia who threatens the fortunate island; or, again, it is the imperial fleet which blockades the harbour. Philip’s governors, too, oppressed even the Catholic Church; and the prince, always an absentee and for some years a prisoner, was not able to keep a tight hand upon them. Still, in the Venetian times, the Corfiote nobles looked back on the good Prince of Taranto as the founder of many of the privileges which they enjoyed, and he confirmed and strengthened the feudal system by grants of new baronies to his friends.¹ Among these was Guglielmo Tocco, who, as his governor in Corfu, laid the foundations of that remarkable family’s fortunes in the Ionian islands.

Philip’s son, Robert, was a minor at the time of his father’s death, and his mother, the titular Empress Catherine of Valois, exercised authority in her own and his name in Corfu, as well as in Achaia. Robert followed his father’s policy of protecting the Corfiote Jews, and of rewarding his faithful adherents, both Greek and Italian, by the bestowal of feudal lands. He confirmed the local privileges, especially those of the thirty-three country priests, granted a century before by the Despot Michael II., and released them from the exactions of the magister massarius and from the obliga­tion, which lay upon all the Corfiotes, of making a present to the prince whenever they appeared in his presence. The fertile island enabled him, too, to make provision for his wife, Marie de Bourbon, in the event of her widowhood, and during the struggle which arose between the widow and her brother-in-law, Philip II of Taranto, she had sufficient authority in Corfu to repeat her late husband’s orders on behalf of the Hebrew colony. But, from the death of his brother in 1364, Philip II. exercised the rights of sovereignty over the island. He, too, strove to protect the Jews, ratified the franchises so long enjoyed by the village popes, and ordered his officials not to interfere in the affairs of the Greek clergy, the punishment of whom he allowed the protopapos of the city of Corfu to determine, as had been their immemorial custom. In this tolerant policy he was guided by Romanopoulos, the archbishop, who, though a Greek by race and a Catholic by religion, had neither the Chauvinism of a naturalised foreigner nor the bigotry of a convert. According to some authorities, it was during this reign that the fief of the gypsies, of which we shall hear more in the Venetian period, was first created. At any rate, the gypsies, of whom we have seen traces in other parts of Greece, where the various TutproKua-Tpa still preserve their name, seem to have crossed over to Corfu from the mainland during the Angevin domination. These may have been the oft-mentioned “men from Vagenetia” in Epiros, who first found refuge at the courts of the Corfiote barons in the reigns of Charles II. and of Philip I. of Taranto. Catherine of Valois and her son Robert made these serfs, whose name still lingers in Corfu, a source of revenue, by imposing a poll­tax upon them, to be paid by their feudal lord when they entered the island and his service; and Philip II’s second wife, Elizabeth of Hungary, to whom he granted Corfu on his marriage in 1371, tried to seize them all and make them serfs of the princely domain. Against this high-handed act the barons successfully protested.

Both Elizabeth and her husband died in November 1373, and his young nephew, Jacques de Baux, became the heir of all his titles and dominions. The Corfiote barons, however, were as little inclined as their fellows in the Morea, to accept his sway. During the civil war, which raged between the Baux and Queen Joanna I of Naples, Jacques found a temporary refuge in his Greek estates; but the Ionians, headed by Guglielmo and Riccardo d’Altavilla proclaimed the Queen of Naples as Lady of Corfu, the suzerainty over which had been preserved, as we saw, ninety years before, to the Neapolitan Crown. Joanna retained possession of the island for seven years; she pacified the Greeks by renewing the privileges of the thirty-two city priests, granted by the Despot Michael II, and confirmed by her predecessors; she guaranteed to the citizens their old customs and the franchises bestowed upon them by a long line of Angevin princes; she extended her protection to the Jews; she encouraged the immigration of the “men from Vagenetia” ; and ordered her officials to see that the Venetian merchants, so long established there, enjoyed their time-honoured rights undisturbed. But, in 1380, Jacques de Baux thought that the moment was favourable for the assertion of his claims in Greece. The Navarrese Company was despatched thither to do his work, and its first achieve­ment on Greek soil was the capture of Corfu. The last titular emperor of Constantinople did his best to win adherents in the island. Almost his sole act was to purchase the support of the powerful baron, Adamo di Sant’ Ippolito, by the grant of the island of Paxo, which had belonged to Filippo Malerba of Verona, a recent captain of Corfu—one of the few allusions to the smallest of the Seven Islands during the Angevin period. But the distracted politics of the time made the baron of Paxo soon forget his benefactor. Charles III. of Durazzo descended upon Naples, and robbed Joanna of her crown and life. Corfu, too weak to stand alone, was divided into three factions—that of the usurper; that of Joanna’s heir, Louis of Anjou, one of whose officials was pleased to style himself “Marquis of Corfu” ; and that of Jacques de Baux, whose Navarrese garrisons must have been detested alike by Greeks and Italians. Sant’ Ippolito and Riccardo d’Altavilla saw that it was their interest to worship the rising sun. They succeeded, not without con­siderable labour and expense, in driving the Navarrese veterans out of the castles of Corfu and Butrinto; most of the barons joined them; and, in 1382, Charles III was lord of the island. The usurper showed the usual “kindness of kings upon their coronation day”; he rewarded the services of the two most conspicuous traitors, graciously received a deputation of Italians and Greeks, renewed the ancient privileges of the city and its thirty-two Greek priests, en­deavoured to repair the ravages which the recent struggle had made in its finances, assured the Jews of his royal pro­tection, and confirmed important feudal lords, such as the Caracciolo, in their fiefs.¹ To those who remember Corfu in the days of the British protectorate, when the island of Vido in the harbour was defended by those strong fortifications which we subsequently blew up, it may be of interest to recall that it formed one of his feudal grants. It was then known as the island of Santo Stefano—a name derived from the old church, which our engineers sacrificed in 1837. At the time of the siege of 1537 it was called Malipiero, but later in the sixteenth century it received from its then owner the name of Vido, changed by the French, during their brief occupation, into He de la Paix.

There was, however, another Power, which had long coveted Corfu, and had been closely following the various revolutions in the ownership of the island. Venice had never forgotten that the key of the Adriatic had once been hers; during the Angevin period she had made successive attempts to obtain it—in 1314 and 1351 by purchase, in 1355 by a coup de main. More recently, negotiations had been opened with Jacques de Baux for the mortgage, lease, or purchase of the island; but these negotiations also fell through. Meanwhile, the Venetian consul, after the fashion of Levantine consuls in our own day, was busy preparing public opinion in Corfii for a Venetian occupation. There was a party among the Corfiotes, which could not help contrasting the unbroken continuity of Venetian administration with the continual civil wars of Naples. Money was freely spent and promises as freely made to wavering nobles, who may have been frightened by the execution of one of their order for high treason, but who, when death had removed both Jacques de Baux and Charles III, found themselves without a sovereign lord. Their allegiance to the throne of Naples at this moment received a further shock from the discovery that the baron, who held the city and castle for the late king, was an impostor who had forged his patent. While the Neapolitan party advocated loyalty to Ladislaus, Charles’s little son and successor, some thought of Genoa, others of Venice, and others again actually offered their country to Francesco da Carrara, Signor of Padua, who at once sent Scrovigno, a trustworthy servant of his own and of the late king, to occupy the place. That Corfu should fall into the hands of her bitterest foe was more than Venice could stand; a recent incident had made it unnecessary to spare the susceptibilities of the Neapolitan court any longer. Miani, the Captain of the Gulf, chanced to be in Corfiote waters at the time ; he landed and explained to a meeting of the citizens that his government was both willing and able to protect them, that Genoa, the only other maritime power, would treat them like slaves, while Padua had no navy. These arguments proved effective; the town was peaceably surrendered; and Scrovigno shut himself up in one of the two forts of the sea-girt castle. But siege materials were despatched from Venice, the castle was besieged, and Scrovigno was glad to escape by night on a Genoese galley. Miani then summoned the garrison to surrender; once again, after the lapse of 170 years, the lion banner was hoisted over Corfu; thenceforth it floated there for more than four centuries. A few places, however, held out some time longer for the King of Naples—the second of the city forts, the lofty castle of Sant’ Angelo on the west coast, the recently constructed castle of Cassopo at the north of the island, and that of Butrinto on the opposite main. These strongholds were, however, all surrendered or taken; that of Cassopo was destroyed for fear lest it should fall into the hands of the Genoese; strange legends grew up around its ruined ramparts ; and a hundred years later, travellers were told that it had been deserted because a fiery dragon had poisoned the inhabitants with his breath. As for Butrinto, its governor, Riccardo d’Altavilla, who had received his post from Charles III, capitulated as soon as he had secured his reward from the Venetian commander. Malipiero arrived from Venice as rector and provveditore of Corfu.

On 28th May, 1386, a meeting of the commune or “of the larger and saner part of it”, was summoned by the sound of the bell to elect a deputation which should do homage and present the petition of the commune to the Venetian govern­ment. All the three races of Corfu—Italians, Greeks, and Jews—were represented among the six Corfiote envoys, and the fact that the name of “David, son of Simon”, figures beside that of the proud Altavilla, shows the influence of the Hebrew element in the island. The deputation was instructed to beg that the new masters of Corfu would observe all the privileges granted to the community by the Angevins; that the republic would never dispose of the island; that all fiefs should be confirmed, and that the barons and Holy Church might continue to exercise the right of dragging their recalcitrant serfs before the captain, who would keep them in prison till their lords should have obtained satisfaction; that the captain should administer justice, in civil and criminal matters alike, with the assistance of the “annual judges”, according to the ancient custom; that, whereas the commune had resigned to the new rector the time-honoured Corfiote privilege of exemption from all taxes and tolls, in considera­tion of the prosperity of the town, an annual salary should be paid to a doctor, the walls should be repaired, and a loggia erected for the honour of the republic and the island; and that all the provisional arrangements made between Miani and the community should be ratified. A second meeting, held on 9th June, proclaimed the formal acceptance of Venetian rule, because the island was deprived of its lawful protector, “coveted by its jealous neighbours, and almost besieged by Arabs and Turks”; and conferred the post of captain and magister massarius upon Miani, as a token of gratitude for his peaceful occupation of the city.¹

The six envoys met with a warm reception from the Venetian aristocracy and a handsomely furnished palace was placed at their disposal. On 8th January, 1387, they obtained an audience of the doge, whom one of their number addressed, so it is said, in the florid style of the Levant. He spoke of their past history: how Corcyra had been ruled by Roman and Greek emperors, by Despots and kings, and expressed the hope that the Venetian lion, the king of beasts, would scorn to tyrannise over his subjects, but would be content with their homage and leave them their ancient liberties. The doge was graciously pleased to accept the one and confirm the other, with a few alterations and additions. Thus, it was provided that justice should be administered by the Venetian governor and the “annual judges”, according to the customs of Venice, to which an appeal would lie; but no Corfiote was to be tried outside the island, except on appeal. A Greek notary was to be elected, according to usage, to draw up citations on the Greeks, and two officers of the court were to be appointed to serve them. A clause was inserted, owing perhaps to the experience of Crete, ordering the island barons to perform their feudal service with good and sufficient war-horses; another prohibited the Venetian officials from forcing the Corfiotes to sell them food or to fish for them ; while a third directed that the measure for the sale of new wine should be stamped by the authorities in October, or oftener, but that the customary fee should be only paid once a year. Finally, the offices of catapan and syndic were to be retained, and no one except the governor was to interfere with them.

Great was the joy of the Corfiotes at the return of their envoys with the charter of the island ; nor had they reason to repent their change of masters. The Venetian bailie, as the governor was called by the express desire of the islanders, reduced the chaos of the last few years to order. During the general confusion of the interregnum, various persons had appropriated public property, which they were now compelled to restore. Such was the popularity of the new government, that the municipality granted it the proceeds of the two per cent, customs duty, which had lately been imposed, in order to hasten the restoration of the walls.

Venice was, however, anxious to legalise her position as mistress of the island. The Queen-regent of Naples complained of the annexation; Ladislaus, when he came of age, demanded, and attempted to exercise, his rights, but hinted that he did not mind coming to terms. The negotia­tions were protracted till 1402, when Ladislaus finally sold the island with all its dependencies to the republic for 30,000 gold ducats. Thus ended the rule of the Neapolitan princes over the fairest of Greek islands, and with it their last connection with Greece. In its early days it was, on the whole, easy, though its ecclesiastical policy was unfair to the church of the majority. Later on, when it was weak at home it was ineffective at Corfu. Every revolution at Naples had an echo in the island, with the worst effect upon the morality of its public men. It became the highest form of statesman­ship to go over to the winning side, in the certainty of obtaining a fief or an office as the reward of disloyalty. On the other hand, the insecure title of these successive rulers made them peculiarly ready to respect the ancient privileges of the islanders. Indeed, it is probable that, in the Angevin days, when the sovereign was always an absentee, Corfu was a paradise for the barons and an inferno for their serfs. The chief result of the Neapolitan domination was to strengthen the feudal system and so to confirm that spirit of aristocracy which still characterises the Ionian islands.

Modern Corfu contains scarcely a trace of its Angevin rulers. The church of Santo Stefano has vanished, Cassopo is a heap of ruins, and one coin alone preserves the name of the princes of Taranto, from which a recently extinct Corfiote family boasted its descent. The Angevin barony of De Martina, once held by the Tocchi, which till lately sur­vived in the topography of the island, has now changed its name. But the pilgrimage church on the summit of Pantokrator dates from this period.

The administration of Corfu during the Venetian period was modelled on that which had long prevailed in the older colonies of the republic. For the first twenty-four years, the government was entrusted to a single Venetian official, styled “bailie and captain”, who was elected by the Home Government and held office for two years. But, in 1410, it was decided that two councillors should be sent from Venice to assist him in the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction and to perform the duty of chamberlain. Each of the councillors was to receive 300 gold ducats a year, and two towers of the city were assigned as their abodes. They and the bailie were ordered to sit in court five days a week, and the “annual judges”, whose numbers were now increased to three, one Latin and two Greeks, continued to act as their assessors. The peasants, however, soon found that the presence of the two councillors tended to protract litigation and led to their having to supply two more officials with fodder for their horses. They accordingly petitioned for a return to the former system of one-man rule, which is really more beneficial to the poor in southern countries than more democratic arrangements. Their prayers were, however, rejected, and the island continued to provide posts for the two councillors. We are specially told, that, though the Venetian officials were forbidden to engage in trade, these appointments were considered as the plums of the colonial service. So, in the British days, the pleasant island of the Phaeacians was regarded as the best of our foreign stations.

The power of the bailie was further limited by the institution of a third office, that of the provveditore, who was in command of the garrison and resided in the fortress, and who also decided those moot points of feudal law which were of frequent occurrence in a community such as Corfu. He was, moreover, judge in disputes between the citizens and the garrison, and his authority extended over the island barony of Paxo, which was treated by the Venetians as by their predecessors, as an integral part of its larger neighbour. It continued to belong to the great baronial family of Sant’ Ippolito, which in 1423 fortified it against the Turkish corsairs, who were wont to carry off the defenceless serfs. When that clan became extinct, it passed to the other great Neapolitan house of Altavilla, and thence to the republic. In 1513, however, it was sold, together with the taxes which it paid, to the family of Avromes, which treated the inhabitants so badly that many of them fled to Turkish territory. In consequence of this, it was restored to the jurisdiction of the provveditore, who was locally represented by a leading native. As time went on, that important official assumed also the title of “captain”, which had originally been borne by the bailie, and his delegate in Paxo was accordingly styled “captain” also.

In the sixteenth century the appointment of the great naval authority of provveditore generale del Levante, whose headquarters were Corfu, completely overshadowed that of all the other Venetian officials in the Ionian islands. His arrival for his three years’ term of government was regulated by an elaborate code of etiquette, still preserved in a special volume in the Corfiote archives; the Jews had to provide the carpets for the streets, along which the great man would pass; the heads of both the Latin and the Greek Church greeted him with all the splendid rites of their respective establishments; a noble Corfiote pronounced a panegyric upon him in the church of St Spiridion, before whose remains his excellency would kneel in prayer ere returning to his palace, where obsequious Hebrews, laden with flowers, bent low as he crossed the threshold. Strict orders were issued to these officials that they should respect the rights of the natives, and spies, known as “inquisitors over the affairs of the Levant”, were sent from time to time to the islands for the purpose of checking the Venetian administration and of ascertaining the grievances of the governed, who had, as under the Angevins, the often-exercised privilege of sending special missions to lay their complaints before the Home Government We can see from the Venetian archives what Ionian historians unanimously assert to have been the case, that redress was almost invariably granted, though the abuses of which the natives complained were apt to grow up again.

A large share in the local administration was granted to the inhabitants, or rather to the aristocracy. At the time of the transfer of the island to Venice, the General Assembly consisted of the principal citizens, Greeks as well as Italians; but, as time went on, strange elements, Albanians and Cephalonians, crept into this body, so that, in 1440, it was ordered that the bailie, with the advice of the “good citizens”, should choose some seventy prominent persons as a council for the term of one year; half a century later, this body was increased to 150 —a total preserved till the last years of Venetian rule. There were henceforth two councils— the General Assembly and the Council of 150. The former became an oligarchy, composed exclusively of Greek and Italian nobles, together with a few foreigners who had resided ten years or married into a Corfiote family. But when the numbers of the nobility were much diminished by the first great Turkish siege in 1537, new families were added to the list from the burgher class, the qualification for noble strangers was subsequently reduced to five years, and Marmora gives the names of 112 noble families inscribed in the “Golden Book” of the Corfiote aristocracy when he wrote his history in 1672. The “Golden Book” was burned as the symbol of hated class distinction in the first enthusiasm for liberty, equality, and fraternity, after the French repub­licans took possession of Corfu. As all the nobles were debarred from engaging in trade, it may readily be imagined that a premium was put upon place-hunting. Very early in the Venetian period we hear of the number of Greek lawyers—then, as now, the plague of Greece. It only remained to discourage agriculture by compelling the nobles to reside in the city if they wished to take part in the Assembly, and the corruption of Corfiote society was complete. To these arrangements we may trace the neglect of country life and the consequent distress of the island in the present day.

The General Assembly met every year at the end of October to elect the Council of 150 from among its own members. At first it seems to have held its sitting in “the hall above the Chancery”; but, after that building was destroyed by the Turks at the time of the first siege, it was convened in a quaint house, decorated with pictures of Nausikaa welcoming Odysseus and of other scenes from the early history of Corcyra, and situated on the esplanade between the Fortezza Vecchia and the town. This interesting memorial of Venetian rule has long since been swept away.

It was the policy of the Venetian Government to leave the Corfiotes all the minor offices, and it was the desire of the islanders that these offices should be annual, so that they might be enjoyed by as many people as possible. Thus, the Council of 150 elected the three “annual judges,” who, besides sitting as assessors of the bailie and the two council­lors in the High Court, formed a petty tribunal of their own for the trial of cases where the sum at issue was small. It elected the four syndics, two Greeks and two Latins during the period of which we are treating, who were required to be at least thirty-eight years of age and who were the representatives of all classes of the community, collectively and individually, bringing their grievances before the Vene­tian authorities, and also regulating prices in the market—a function which bordered on that of the still existent catapans. It chose, too, the clerk of the Court, two taxing masters, who regulated the scale of law costs; the giustizieri, or officials who stamped the weights and measures; and the person entrusted with the census, which was supposed to be made once during each bailie’s term of office. In 1470, it obtained the privilege of electing the captain of the war galleys fitted out at Corfu, a wise concession of the Venetian Government, which found, on the great day of Lepanto, that its Corfiote captains were worthy descendants of the seafaring Phseacians. Venice was unwilling, however, to relinquish to the natives the posts of constable of the island, captain of “the iron gate,” dragoman, and salt commissioner; but the command of the castle of Sant’ Angelo, which included some petty judicial authority, passed in time into the hands of the Council. Later on, too, the Council elected a species of cabinet, called the Conclave and composed of the three “annual judges,” the four syndics, and five other officials, whose number was fixed in the seventeenth century, and whose meetings were held with closed doors.

The dependencies of the colony on the mainland likewise furnished posts, some of which were in the gift of the Council, and all were held by Corfiote nobles, usually for a year. Butrinto was the most important of these stations, both strategically and economically, for it was not only “the guardian and right eye” of Corfu, but yielded from its fisheries, once the property of Cicero’s friend, Atticus, 1300 ducats a year. More interesting, however, from Byron’s noble lines and from its dramatic history in the early days of the British protectorate, when official ignorance of geography abandoned it to the Turks, was “Parga’s shore” —an outpost boldly occupied on his own responsibility by the Venetian bailie of Corfu in 1401, and accepted, after some hesitation, by the republic. This hesitation was not unwarranted, for, despite its poetic name, the practical Venetians found that the place, whose sugar had proved so remunerative to Count Nicholas of Cephalonia a century before, now cost more than it was worth, and accordingly several times urged the inhabitants to emigrate over the narrow channel to the islet of Antipaxo, where they enjoyed the right of tilling the land, or even to Corfu, where unculti­vated ground was always at their disposal. But then, as in 1819, the Pargians showed a touching, if inconvenient, attachment to their ancient home, which was well situated for purposes of piracy, and they combined devotion to Venice, from whom they had obtained excellent terms, with the lucrative traffic of selling the weapons sent for their defence to the neighbouring Turks. The governorship of Parga, at first bestowed on a Corfiote noble for life and then placed at the disposition of the Council, was, at the petition of the Pargians, in 1511,taken from that body and transferred to the Venetian authorities of Corfu: but it was ultimately restored to the Council. The post could not, however, have been either lucrative or easy; for out of his exiguous salary the governor had to provide each Pargian family with five measures of salt a year, and each priest and local magnate with a dinner on Christmas eve and at Epiphany, while a local council of thirty-two managed most of the affairs of this small community, and looked after its spiritual welfare. All the inhabitants were soldiers, and many of them pirates, and they were known to imprison a Venetian governor, just as the Albanians of to­day besiege a Turkish Vali, till they could get redress. At the same time as Parga, Corfu acquired the castles of Saiada and Phanari, which with La Bastia, Suboto, and Strovili made up the continental dependencies of the island in the fifteenth century. For a brief period Lepanto was placed under the jurisdiction of Corfu.Under Venetian protection, too, were the monks who inhabited the ancient home of the harpies, the Strivali islands, where Theodore Ldskaris and Irene had long ago established a Greek monastery of the Redeemer. Thither in the thirteenth century the Benedictines had gone, and on one occasion we find the pope appointing the prior of “Our Lady of Stropharia”. When, however, the Greeks recovered Achaia, the Emperor John VI restored the monastery of the Redeemer. Every passing ship reverently greeted and gave alms to the monks, whose exploits against the Turks who had dared to set foot on their wind-swept solitude enhanced the prestige of their sacred habit among pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land.

The ecclesiastical policy of the Venetians was always less bigoted than that of other Catholic powers; and while, as Catholics, they continued to give precedence to their own Church, which in Corfu became a perquisite of the great Venetian families, they never forgot that the interests of the republic were of more importance than those of the papacy. Accordingly, they studiously prevented any en­croachments on the part of either the oecumenical patriarch or the pope, fearing the political influence of the one and the theological fanaticism of the other. The externals of the Angevin ecclesiastical system were therefore retained as being well adapted to this cautious policy. The head of the Orthodox church was still called “chief priest”, while the title of archbishop was reserved for the aristocratic Venetian who was the head of the Catholic clergy. The “chief priest” was elected by thirty chosen members of the General Assembly and by the “sacred band” of the thirty-two city priests, whose numbers, however, in the later Venetian period, were really only twenty. His term of office was five years, at the end of which time, if not re-elected, he sank into the ranks of the ordinary clergy, from whom he was then only distinguished by his crimson sash. Merit had, as a rule, less to do with his election than his relationship to a noble family and the amount of the pecuniary arguments which he applied to the pockets of the electors, and for which he recouped himself by his gains while in office. In each of the four bailiwicks into which Corfu was still divided, and in the island of Paxo, then, as now, a part of the Corfiote diocese, under his jurisdiction, while he was dependent upon no other ecclesiastical authority than the oecumenical patriarch, with whom, however, he was only allowed to correspond through the medium of the Venetian bailie at Constantinople. He had his retinue of officials with high-sounding Byzantine titles; he enjoyed consider­able honours; and from his decision in ecclesiastical cases there was no appeal. Two liberal popes, Leo X and Paul III, expressly forbade any interference with the religious services of the Greeks on the part of the Latin archbishop, and the doges more than once upheld the ancient charter of the city priests and the privileges of “the decarchy” of the thirty-three rural popes. At the same time, measures were taken to prevent the increase in the number of Greek priests, monks, and churches, which gave the Venetians cause for alarm, because they were well aware that to the Greeks politics and religion are inseparable. This was especially the case, when numbers of fugitive priests sought refuge in the island after the capture of Constantinople and the Morea. But, in spite of all regulations, the Orthodox church kept alive the national feeling in the island. Mixed marriages were allowed ; and, as the children usually became Orthodox, it is not surprising to learn that twenty years before the close of the Venetian occupation there were only two noble Latin families which still adhered to the Catholic faith.

It was a natural result of the Venetian policy that there was less bitterness in Corfu than in most other places between the adherents of the two religions. The Catholics took part in the religious processions of the Orthodox; the college of thirty-two priests on the eve of Christmas and Epiphany delivered an eulogy of Venetian rule at the bailie’s palace, whereupon two condemned prisoners were released to them, after the fashion of Barabbas. When the body of St Spiridion was carried round the town, the Venetian authorities and many of the garrison paid their respects to the sacred relics; twenty-one guns were fired from the Old Fortress, and the ships in the harbour saluted. The Orthodox clergy reciprocated these attentions by meeting the Catholics in the church of St Arsenios, the tenth century bishop who had been the first metropolitan of Corfu, where the discordant chanting of Greeks and Latins represented their theological concord, and by praying for the pope and the Latin arch­bishop at the annual banquet in the latter’s palace. They were ready, also, to excommunicate refractory villages at the bidding of the Government, and this practice, which filled the superstitious peasants with terror, was one of the greatest social abuses of Corfu. It is not quite extinct in Greece even now.

The position of the Corfiote Jews, though far less favour­able than that of the Orthodox, was much better than that of the Hebrew colonies in other parts of the Venetian dominions. In the very first days of the Venetian occupation an order was issued to the officials of the republic, bidding them to behave well to the Jewish community and to put no heavier burdens upon them than upon the rest of the islanders. Many of the Venetian governors found it convenient to borrow not only money, but furniture, plate, and liveries from them. That they increased in numbers—owing to the Jewish immigra­tion from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and from Naples, Apulia, and Calabria half a century later—may be inferred from Marmora’s statement that in 1665 there were about 500 Jewish houses in Corfu; and the historian, who shared to the full the dislike of the Hebrew which has always characterised the Greeks and has been always cordially reciprocated, naively remarks that the Corfiote Jews would be rich if they were let alone.They paid none of the usual taxes levied on Jewish banks at Venice; and when, by the decree of 1572, they were banished from Venetian territory, a special exemp­tion was granted to the Jews of Corfu. They were allowed to practice there as advocates, with permission to defend Chris­tians no less than members of their own race. They had their own council, and elected their own officials, representing the Greek and the “Apulian” or “Spanish” synagogues— for from 1540 there were two—who managed the internal affairs of the ghetto. Outside its limits they were allowed to own real property worth no more than 4000 ducats between them—indeed, public opinion would have left them no land but their graves—and they were expressly forbidden to have serfs, or to take land or villas on lease, with the exception of one house for the personal use of the lessee. But the effect of this enactment was nullified by means of mortgages ; and if a Jew wanted to invest money in houses he had no difficulty in finding a Christian who would purchase or rent them with borrowed Jewish capital. Nor was it easy to confine the growing Jewish colony within its separate quarter. When the old ghetto,  the mount of the Jews”, was pulled down in 1524 to make room for the fortifications, orders were given to choose a new site; but sixty years later we find a Venetian report complaining that they were living among the Christians and even in the castle. Later plans of the city show us, however, the ghetto marked in the same place and called by the same name as the still surviving Hebratkd? At the same time, the Jews had to submit to some degrading restrictions of costume. They were compelled to wear a yellow mark on the breast, as a badge of servitude, and a Venetian ordinance naively remarks that this was “a substitute for the custom of stoning, which does so much injury to the houses.” True, a money payment to the treasury secured a dispensation from the necessity of wearing these stigmas; but it is obvious from the complaints of their envoys that the Jews were badly treated by the natives, who refused them access to the principal well and harried them while they were doing their marketing. Absurd tales, too, were current about them. The old fable that Judas Iscariot was a native of the island, was still told to travellers, who were shown a lineal descendant of the arch-traitor. They were expected to offer a copy of the law of Moses to a new Latin archbishop, who sometimes delighted the other Corfiotes by lecturing them on their shortcomings. Finally, they were forbidden to indulge in public processions—an injunction perhaps quite as much in their own interest as in that of the public peace.

The feudal system continued to form the basis of Corfiote society, and became the bulwark of Venetian rule. The new masters of the island confirmed the Angevin barons in their fiefs, but created few more, so that towards the end of the Venetian period the original twenty-four baronies had dwindled to from twelve to fifteen, among them two still bearing the names of the extinct clans of Altavilla and Sant’ Ippolito, one or two held by old Greek families, and the rest by Venetian aristocrats long settled in the island. For as the “Customs of Romania” continued to prevail, it followed that the Salic law did not obtain in Corfu; accordingly, there, as elsewhere, many baronies passed into the hands of women, who usually found husbands in the Venetian aristocracy. In theory each baron had to keep at least one good horse and a certain number of retainers for the defence of the island, and to present himself with them for review in the castle on the ist of May. We have an account of the brave show made by the barons, then fourteen in number, in 1515; but in practice this chivalrous custom was usually allowed to lapse. A less picturesque but far more efficacious body was the armed band of the peasants, the so-called cernide, which guarded the coast and at times furnished the republic with some of her best seamen. In this body all between the ages of twenty and sixty-five were bound to serve. A clause in the charter of Parga specially stipulated that the natives of that rock-fortress should only be liable for service in defence of their own home.

By far the most interesting of the fiefs was that of the gypsies, who were about a hundred in number and were subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the baron upon whom their fief had been bestowed—“an office,” as Marmora says, “of not a little gain and of very great honour.” Their feudal lord could inflict on them any punishment short of death—a privilege denied to all his peers; they were his men and not those of the Government, which could not compel them to serve in the galleys or render the usual feudal services of the other peasants. They had their own military com­mander, similar to the drungarius of the gypsies at Nauplia, and every May-day they marched, under his leadership, to the sounds of drums and fifes, bearing aloft their baron’s banner, and carrying a May-pole decked with flowers, to the square in front of the house where the great man lived. There they set up their pole and sang a curious song in honour of their lord, who provided them with refreshment and on the morrow received from them their dues. Originally granted to the family of Abitabuli, whose name perhaps came from the habitacula, or encampments of these vagrants, and then held by the house of Goth, the fief of the gypsies was conferred in 1540, after the great siege of Corfu, upon Antdnios Eparchos, a versatile genius, at once poet, Hellenist, and soldier, as compensation for his losses and as the reward of his talents. By a curious anomaly the jurisdiction of the gypsy baron extended over the peasants of the continental dependencies of Corfu. It is therefore possible that the serfs called vaginiti, whom we found under the Angevins, and who emigrated from the mainland, and paid a registration fee on their arrival, were gypsies.

The Corfiote serfs were of three classes, those of the republic —for Venice had domain lands in the island, which were usually let to the highest bidder on a twenty-nine years’ lease—, those of the Latin Church, and those of the barons. The Corfiote peasants, though they sometimes amassed sufficient money to enfranchise themselves, and though Venice often lent a ready ear to their grievances, were worse off under the feudal system than their fellows on the mainland under Turkish rule. They had no political rights whatever; they were summed up in the capitulations at the time of the Venetian occupation, together with “the other movable and immovable goods” of their lords; and it is no wonder that they sometimes ran away to escape the tyranny of a hard master. The peasants on the domain lands had a lighter lot than the other two classes; though all except the priests were liable to forced labour, they could obtain exemption on payment of a very small sum. Their chief grievances were that they were compelled to labour on Government works in the town at times when they wanted to be sowing their corn or gathering their grapes; that they had to cut firewood for the bailie, and to provide oil even in years when the olives did not bear. Occasionally we hear of a peasants’ insurrection against their oppressors, and Marmora remarks in his time that “the peasants are never contented; they rise against their lords on the smallest provocation.” Yet, until the last century of her rule, Venice had little trouble with the inhabitants. She kept the nobles in good humour by granting them political privileges, titles, and the entrance to her navy; and, so long as the Turk was a danger, she was compelled, from motives of prudence, to pay a due regard to their wishes. Moreover, by an almost complete neglect of education, the republic was able to prevent the growth of an intellectual proletariat, such as in the British times furnished an ample supply of political agitators.

During the four centuries of her rule, Venice did practi­cally nothing for the mental development of the Corfiotes. No public schools were founded; for, as Count Viaro Capodistrias informed the British Parliament much later, the Venetian Senate never allowed such institutions to be estab­lished in the Ionian islands. When the Catholic archbishop wanted an excuse for remaining in Venice, he pleaded that he could not study theology at Corfu. The administration was content to pay a few teachers of Greek and Italian; and to grant the Ionian youths the special privilege of taking a degree at the University of Padua without examination. Moreover, the Corfiote student after his return soon forgot what he had learned, retaining only the varnish of culture. There were exceptions, however, to this low standard. When Cyriacus of Ancona visited Greece, he was able to purchase Greek manuscripts at Corfu. Others were copied by the exiles who fled there after the conquest of the Morea. In the sixteenth century there was quite a number of Corfiote writers—poets like Eparchos and Triboles, the traveller Noukios, the theologian Kartanos ; but they mostly wrote abroad. It was a Corfiote who founded at Venice, in 1621, the Greek school, called Flangineion, after the name of its founder, Flangines, which did so much for the improvement of Greek education, and which still exists by the side of S. Giorgio dei Greci. But even in the latest Venetian period there were few facilities for obtaining knowledge in Corfu. No wonder that the Corfiotes were easier to manage in those days than in the more enlightened British times, when newspapers abounded and some of the best pens in Southern Europe were ready to lampoon the British Protectorate.

The long Venetian domination exercised a natural influence on the language, especially in the town. At the time of the annexation, the islanders had stipulated, as we saw, that a Greek notary should be appointed, as under the Angevins, for serving writs in Greek on the Greeks, and a Greek interpreter formed part of the Venetian administration. From 1524 dates the appointment of the first Greek teacher. That Greek continued to be used in private documents, while Venetian or Latin was the official language, is clear from the will of one of the barons, which has been preserved, and which is drawn up in Greek, though the testator was of Frankish origin. But at the time of the battle of Lepanto, when Venice was particularly anxious to conciliate her Greek subjects, the bailie issued a Greek translation of his proclamations for the special benefit of the country folk. It was among them, of course, that the language of Hellas held its firmest roots, and even today it is almost the only tongue understood in the country-districts of Corfu, while Italian is readily spoken in the town. In the Venetian times, the dialect of the rulers was the conversational medium of good society, and the young Corfiote, fresh from his easily won laurels at Padua, looked down with contempt upon the noblest and most enduring of all languages, which had become solely the speech of the despised peasants, Still, nature will out, and Greek idioms occasionally penetrated the Venetian dialect of Corfu. But it was only towards the close of the Venetian domination that Greek became fashionable. Two Corfiotes, Eugenios Boulgaris and Nikephoros Theotokes were the pioneers of modern Greek, and in one of Goldoni’s comedies we are told that the street-boys of Corfu sang ditties in that language.

The Venetian flag naturally attracted a far larger amount of shipping to the island, which served as a half-way house for galleys between Venice and Crete, and a traveller, who visited it in 1480, says that the harbour “was never empty.” But these visits of the fleet led to many fatal brawls, while Ionian commerce was hampered by the selfish colonial policy then prevalent in Europe, which aimed at concentrat­ing all colonial trade in the metropolis, through which Corfiote exports had to pass. This naturally led to a vast amount of smuggling, even now rampant in Greece. Among the exports we read of valonea, cotton, all sorts of fruit, and salt, which was sent to the other Venetian colonies in Dalmatia and Albania; a considerable amount of wine was produced; and the oil-trade, now the staple industry of Corfii, was so greatly fostered by a grant of twelve gold pieces for every plantation of 100 olive trees, that in the last half century of the Venetian rule there were nearly 2,000,000 of these trees in the island. Even the now bare islet of Vido, which the French made a solitude and called it lie de la Paix, was, in Marmora’s time, so thickly planted with olives, that it “looked like a forest swimming in the waves”. Yet Corfu then, as now, presented the paradox of great fertility combined with great poverty. When the corn raised on the mainland was exported abroad, instead of being kept for the consumption of the colony, the Corfiotes were in despair, for their island did not produce nearly enough grain for the whole year; hence its export was more than once forbidden by the paternal administration, and public granaries in which officials were ordered to deposit a part of their pay, were established to mitigate the severe famines. The taxes con­sisted of a tithe of the oil, the crops, and the agricultural produce; a money payment on the wine sold; a “ chimney­tax” on each house; and export duties of 15 per cent, on oil, 9 per cent, on salt, and 4 per cent, on other articles. There were also import duties of 6 per cent, on Venetian, and of 8 per cent, on foreign, goods. The salt-pans of Levkimme formed a Government monopoly, and the importa­tion of foreign salt was punished by banishment. The fisheries of Butrinto were let, as we saw, to a Corfiote, and yielded 1300 ducats a year. Corfiote merchants received the same treatment in Venice as those of Candia and the other Greek colonies, and the bezzoni and tornesi of the Venetian mint did duty in Corfu.

It is to Venice that Corfu, almost more than any other place in Greece, owes its present appearance. The streets, the fortifications, the houses are all Venetian rather than Greek; indeed, in some respects, the traveller just landed there can scarcely fancy that he has set foot on Greek soil, for neither forty-three years of union with Greece, nor fifty years of British protection, nor yet the brief interregnum of French and Russian rule, have succeeded in removing the mark of Venice. The lion of St Mark still watches over the walls ; from his mouth the water still flows at the fountain of Kardaki, where Venetian ships used to fill their tanks; the castles still retain their Venetian names, a Corfiote village on the slopes of Pantokrator is still called Enetia. The whole fabric of modern Corfiote society, the conditions of land tenure, and the habits of the people are still largely based upon the Venetian polity. The titles, which the lonians almost alone of Greeks still use, are relics of the days when the shrewd statesmen of the mercantile republic, like our modern Prime Ministers, closed the mouths of obstreperous subjects or rewarded loyal services by the bestowal of honorary distinctions. Many of the most ardently Greek opponents of the British Protectorate bore aggressively Italian names, and among the modern Corfiote Members of Parliament there are some whose Italian origin is scarcely concealed by the classical terminations of the Greek declensions.

If we would figure to ourselves what Corfu was like during the first 150 years of the Venetian domination, that is to say, up to the period of the first great Turkish siege, we must remember that the town, despite the resolutions of the Venetian Government, remained unwalled, and that its sole defences were, as in Angevin times, the two fortified peaks of what is now known as the Fortezza Vecchia, then distin­guished as the “old” and “new castles” (the latter built by Charles I of Anjou), whose commanders changed every sixteen months. Familiar landmarks were the two towers, in which the councillors resided, the “tower of the iron gate”, the church of St Nicholas, and that of the Holy Apostles. In 1394, a Corfiote baron of Neapolitan origin, Pietro Capece, built the Catholic convent and church of the Annunziata, the oldest of all the extant Latin churches in the town, which he subsequently placed under the care of the bailie, and which contains many tombs and inscriptions, mostly relating to Corfiotes who fell in the Turkish wars. Another church, that of St Michael, attributed by some to the Despots of Epiros whose name it bore, is said by Marmora to have been perhaps founded on the day when the islanders resolved to accept the sway of Venice. But the most famous shrine in the island was that of Our Lady of Cassopo, to which home­ward-bound mariners were wont to pay their respects, and which rose on the site of the altar of Zeus, before which Nero had inaugurated his artistic tour of the Greek provinces. Around it there had grown up a much-frequented market, which was free from all dues.^{1 2} Owing to the number of poor and infirm pilgrims who passed through the island to and from the Holy Land, a hospice was provided for their accommodation ; but towards the end of the fifteenth century their usual abode was the cloister of the Bare-footed Friars. Upon travellers from the north, the town did not at that time make a favourable impression. The streets were “narrow, dark, and smelly,” the place swarmed with “abject persons,” and the pious pilgrim was offended by the contrast between the meanness of the archiepiscopal residence and the numbers of the Jews. Yet at the time of the siege we hear of the “beautiful and splendid houses” of the suburbs and of the splendid Avrame Palace by the sea-shore—a mansion adorned with fine marble statues, and standing in a lovely garden. It is interesting to note that visitors were shown the rock which Pliny the elder had long ago identified with “the ship of Ulysses”. Another spot associated with classical Corfu, the ancient Hyllaean harbour, now received its modern name of Chalikidpoulo from the family of that name to which it belonged.

The Turkish peril had not become acute at the time of the Venetian occupation. The neighbours of the new Venetian colony were either Italian princelets, like the Tocchi, who ruled over the other Ionian islands, and like Esau Buondelmonti, the Despot of Joannina, or else Albanian chieftains who had established themselves at various points in Epiros after the break-up of the Greek Despotat It was the policy of the republic to play off the Italians against the Arnauts and the Arnauts against the Italians. Thus, when Esau was captured by the Albanians, the bailie of Corfu intervened to obtain his release and entertained him in the castle; while, on his death, the Corfiotes assisted the Albanians to occupy Joannina, rather than that it should fall into the hands of his ambitious nephew, Carlo Tocco, who was a vassal of the King of Naples to boot. The latter’s aggressive and successful policy in Aetolia and Akarnania led to occasional friction with Venice, but never endangered the safety of Corfu.

It was otherwise, however, with the Genoese. These commercial rivals of Venice did not abandon all hope of obtaining so desirable a possession until some time after the establishment of the Venetian protectorate. Twice, in 1403 and again in 1432, they attacked Corfii, but on both occasions without success. The first time, under the leadership of Marshal Boucicaut, they tried to capture the impregnable castle of Sant’ Angelo, which was courageously defended by a Corfiote noble, and were routed by the island militia with great slaughter near the village of Doukades. The second attempt was more serious. The invaders effected a landing, and had already ravaged the fertile island and burned the borgo and suburbs of the capital, when on the seventh day a sudden sally of the townsfolk and the garrison checked their further advance. Many of the Genoese were taken prisoners, while those who succeeded in escaping to their vessels were pursued and severely handled by the Venetian fleet. The further attempts of Genoese privateers to waylay merchantmen on their passage between Corfu and Venice were frustrated, and soon the islanders had nothing more to fear from these Christian enemies of their protectors. The raid had proved what Venetian statesmen had once doubted—the fidelity of the Greeks; but the loss of life and property which it had caused, and which was intensified by visitations of the plague, led the Government to grant five years’ exemption from all services and dues to all who would settle in the island.

Meanwhile, however, the Turks had been rapidly gaining ground on the mainland opposite. The first serious alarm arose when they captured the harbour of Valona, one of the keys of the Adriatic, from Regina Balsha, the lady of the place. In 1430 Joannina fell, and in the following year the Turks made their first attack upon Corfu; but the repulse with which they met discouraged them from renew­ing the attempt for more than a century. Henceforth, however, especially after the disappearance of the Tocchi from the continent, the continental dependencies of Corfu were constantly exposed to the danger of Turkish or Albanian attack. The people of Parga, in particular, suffered terribly for their devotion to Venice; their homes were captured, their wives and children carried off, and it required a vigorous effort by the Corfiotes to recover the rocky fortress, which was now their outpost against the Turk.

After the fall of Constantinople and the subsequent collapse of the Christian states of Greece, Corfu became the refuge of many distinguished exiles. From the imperial city came the famous family of the Theotokai, which has given so many leading men to the island of its adoption. From the Morea fled the last Despot Thomas Palaiologos with his wife and family, the historian Phrantzfe, and the ancestor of the Corfiote historian Marmora. Phrantzes wrote the story of his troubled times at the instance of some noble Corfiotes in the repose of the Phaeacian island and his remains, with those of his master’s consort, the Despoina Caterina, sleep in the church of SS. Jason and Sosipater. So great was the influx of Greek priests that Venice became seriously alarmed lest they should undermine the loyalty of her Corfiote subjects, and issued an order that the ancient “college of 32” should hold no more meetings, and that all popes settled in the island during the last ten years should leave it. But the need of humour­ing the Greeks in view of her own struggle with the Turks induced her to pursue her usual tolerant policy.

The religious enthusiasm of the Greeks increased all the more, because at that time Corfu became the shrine of her famous saint, Spiridion, a Cypriote bishop who took a prominent part at the council of Nice, and whose remains had been transferred to Constantinople. A priest, named Kalochairetes, brought the holy man’s body and that of St Theodora, the consort of the Iconoclast Emperor Thedphilos, to Corfu in 1456, and upon his death his two eldest sons became proprietors of the male saint’s remains, and his youngest son received those of the female, which he bestowed on the community. The body of St Spiridion ultimately passed to the distinguished family of Boulgaris, to which it still belongs, and is preserved in the church of the saint, just as that of St Theodora reposes in the cathedral. Four times a year the body of St Spiridion is carried in procession, in commemoration of his alleged services in having twice delivered the island from plague, once from famine, and once from the Turks. His name is the most widespread in Corfu, and the number of boys called “Spiro” is legion.

During the operations against the Turks at this period the Corfiotes distinguished themselves by their active co­-operation with their protectors. We find them fighting twice at Parga and twice at Butrinto; during the long Turco-Venetian war, which broke out in 1463, we hear of their prowess at the isthmus of Corinth, beneath the walls of Patras, and behind the ramparts of Lepanto; it was a Corfiote who temporarily gained for the republic the castle of Strovili on the mainland, and even in her purely Italian wars the islanders assisted. The privilege of electing the captain of the Corfiote war-galleys was the reward of this loyalty. Meanwhile, headed by their archbishop, they worked on their own fortifications, and, regardless of archaeology, found in their ancient city, Palaiopolis, a handy quarry. It seems, indeed, as if the words of Marmorawere then no mere servile phrase: “Corfu was ever studying the means of keeping herself a loyal subject of the Venetians”.

CHAPTER XVI

THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE (1485-1540)