Porphyry and Bones - Authors Note

 

Sharpe books tell me it becomes commercially unprofitable to publish paperbacks beyond a certain page count (perhaps especially for low volume niche historical fiction titles). For that reason the authors note at the back of Porphyry and Bones is shorter than I had originally intended. The blog is an opportunity to publish the full note and go into more depth on the history behind the fiction. Naturally there will be spoilers. 

Author's Notes

The necessities of the narrative prevented Porphyry Ash from including the fate of Loukas Notaras, so it was satisfying to revisit that point in time. As so often, contemporary sources differ on the exact events and motives for the sudden arrest and execution of the Byzantine Megas Doux and Ottoman Grand Vizier just a few days after Constantinople's capture. Chalkokondyles records that Loukas Notaras requested his son be executed first so he would know he had not reneged on his faith. That plea fell on deaf ears and Jacob Notaras disappeared into the palace school along with many other sons of Byzantine nobles.

Six years later, Jacob Notaras resurfaces in the historical record having escaped to Italy and approached Cardinal Bessarion for help. Bessarion brought him to the Council of Mantua in 1459 (Pope Pius's unsuccessful first attempt to organise a crusade). By then the Bank of St George had released the Notaras fortune to Anna and it appears Bessarion acted as family mediator. An arrangement was reached in January 1460 whereby Anna agreed to share the interest income with her brother. They reconciled enough that Jacob acted as Anna's representative for some of her petitions to the authorities of Siena and Naples.

In around 1474 Jacob married a woman called Zampeta. Much of the information about the Notaras family has survived thanks to the frankly dreadful relationship between Anna and Zampeta, which explodes across the testimony of several court cases following Jacob's death. In March 1489, Zampeta filed a petition before the judges of the Venetian Procurator alleging that shortly before his death in Ancona, Jacob sent his sister Anna "a box of law books of different kinds, both on parchment and on paper". She demanded that Anna hand over these works to her or be ordered to pay the sum of 120 ducats. Anna acknowledged receipt of this box but contended that she had purchased most of the books lent them to Jacob. Anna won this court case and on 8 May 1490, Anna filed a petition against Zampeta, alleging that she had entered the Ca Notaras and stolen a valuable copy of Petrarch, which Anna had bought from Thomas Palaiologos in 1462, valued at 51 ducats. The judge ruled in Anna's favour again.

Around this time Anna also attempted to publicly rehabilitate her father's name among the Byzantine diaspora. Ten years after its invention in Germany, Italy was in the grip of a mania for the printing press. Anna herself funded the first works dedicated to printing exclusively in Greek (the Kalliergis press in Venice) and she employed a humanist (John Moskhos) to write a pamphlet entitled 'A Funeral Speech in Honour of the Most Glorious and Most Honourable Grand Duke, the Late Lord Loukas Notaras' which was clearly an attempt to refute the public perception of her father as having been somehow disloyal or even a traitor.

The exact reason why the Sultan changed his mind about Loukas Notaras and ordered his execution varies considerably between sources depending on the axe it has to grind. In the case of Halil Candarli, the young Sultan clearly saw a chance to cement his grip on power. It heralded a dramatic shift in the way the Ottoman empire was run.

The first man to hold the title of Grand Vizier had been Halil Candarli's grandfather. By 1453, through its ninety-year history, the title had been held by just seven men, all ethnic Turks, of which four were members of the Candarli family. Following Halil Candarli's execution, Mehmed went through seven more Grand Viziers in less than thirty years and all but one of these were non-Turks sourced through the devshirme system.

Despite the seemingly high turnover of these Grand Viziers, one stands pre-eminent among them. The seminal biography of Mahmud Angelovic by Theoharis Stavrides is appropriately titled 'The Sultan of Viziers' and was a key source for this novel. The Serb-born Mahmud Angelovic became Grand Vizier in 1456. He was well connected - his cousin George Amiroutzes was chief minister in Trebizond and together they conspired the capture of that fortified city without a serious fight. His brother Mihail Angelovic was similarly placed in the Serbian court but there the Angelovic had to contend with the Brankovic family. A similar scheme to hand Smederevo to Ottoman troops failed. Mihail's imprisonment forced Mahmud Angelovic to attack and subdue Serbia in 1459. The open animosity between Mahmud Angelovic and Mara Brankovic is my invention, but I feel it quite plausible given this history between the families in their homeland.

Mahmud Angelovic fell from favour in 1468 over the misuse of power and possible embezzlement in newly conquered Karaman. I have shifted dates by four years to link that fall to the fictional plot in Ragusa. He regained the top office in 1472, the only Grand Vizier who Mehmed gave a second chance to - but that is a tale for another time...

Maut Bassa is not an invention. There really was communication between Venice and a traitor within the Ottoman court using that alias during this period. The first record in the Venetian state archives does not appear until December 1470, when the council convened to discuss a proposal from 'Maut Bassa' delivered via a go-between named Alessio Span.  The traitor had offered to hand over the Black Castle of the Dardanelles and the Ottoman fleet in return for an annual pension of 40,000 ducats and title to the Morea. Correspondence continued sporadically for four years but never amounted to anything. Who was behind Maut Bassa and whether the offer was genuine remains a mystery, but circumstantial evidence points squarely to it having been Mahmud Angelovic.

The abortive crusade of 1464, almost four hundred years after the first, represented the last attempt by a Pope to take up the cross and reconquer the Levant. Having found little interest from western princes and dukes, Pius II insisted on leading the effort himself, despite his failing health. He died, as I described, at the point of departure in Ancona. Most of his Cardinals must have breathed a sigh of relief. There was certainly no appetite to continue his legacy, which is probably the key reason for Bessarion's poor turnout in the subsequent conclave.

Tentative peace feelers were put out over the subsequent years, with Mara Brankovic and her sister Katarina running what historian Donald Nicol describes as 'a kind of unofficial foreign office' that maintained diplomatic relations and received ambassadors from Ragusa, Venice and Constantinople. In 1471 Mara personally accompanied a Venetian ambassador to the Porte for negotiations with the Sultan such was her perceived influence. Mara also intervened in Mehmed's appointment of a new Patriarch of Constantinople in 1465 when Symeon of Trebizond attempted to buy the position. There is ample evidence that she viewed her role as protectress of the Great Church in exile. Several monasteries including Chilandari on Mount Athos received incomes directly from her purse & Bulgaria's Rila Monastery obtained stewardship of the bones of St Ivan Rilski thanks to another of her interventions with her step-son. There is some evidence that she maintained a workshop of scribes and artists at her estate in Macedonia, not unlike Anna Notaras's financing of the Greek printing press in Venice. Unlike the characters in Porphyry and Bones, Anna and Mara probably never met, but their life histories hold several Plutarchian parallels.

If I have maligned the historical George Amiroutzes in my portrayal, it cannot be by much. Together with Gennadius (George Scholarius) and Plethon (George Gemistus), Amiroutzes was a member of the celebrated Greek delegation to the Council of Florence-Ferrara in 1437. Reportedly he was among the few members of the 600-plus delegation who could speak Italian. There is evidence from the papal sources that he took a bribe for his vote in favour of the church union. Subsequently he held high office in Trebizond (protovestarius, perhaps even megas logothetes) and played a controversial role in that city's surrender in August 1461. According to several sources he used deception to persuade Emperor David IV Comnenus to open the gates. He soon found himself a favoured member of Mehmed's court where he composed some minor philosophical works and translated Ptolemy's Geography for the Sultan. Additionally, he uncovered / fabricated correspondence between the captive Trebizond royal family and the Persian court which would see David Comnenus and his children executed in late 1463.

The account of the bigamous marriage between Amiroutzes and the widow of Duke Franco Acciaioli of Athens, is much repeated, as is the thuggish treatment of members of the Greek church in Constantinople which the Grand Vizier and his cousin employed to try and get their own way on the matter. Patriarch Joasaph did try to drown himself in a cistern, but this took place in Easter 1464 and was not directly connected to Amiroutzes. As well as a bigamist and traitor Amiroutzes was a gambler and is said to have died with a dice in his hand sometime around 1470.

The independence and behaviour of the Brankovic women in the novel might strike some as overly modern, but for the most part their actions are grounded in fact. Katerina Brankovic, Contessa of Celje, really did sell off her dead husband's lands in Hungary and then undertake a grand tour of Italy, Corfu and Ragusa before settling at her sister Mara's estate in Macedonia.

Equally their niece, Jelena Brankovic, escaped the fall of Bosnia aided by Ivanis Vlatkovic and carrying the bones of St Luke. As the Turks invaded, King Stephen Tomasevic sent his family members off in several directions, but Jelena and the King's mother were the only ones to escape the encircling Turk army. Jelena is more commonly known as Maria of Serbia. She changed her name from Jelena to Maria (Mara) when she married the Catholic king, but I felt it too confusing to have two characters with the same name and stuck with Jelena.

Aside from the phantom pregnancy, Jelena’s story in Frankincense follows the historical record. She lost the relics during her flight to Ragusa, recovered them with Ivanis’s help and was given sanctuary by the Ragusans on one of their islands (not necessarily Lokrum) while the Republic decided what to do with her. Eventually Venice received the bones in exchange for sanctuary at the monastery St Stephen Under the Pines in Spalento. Subsequently she left Spalento and lived with her aunts.

Later in life Jelena was involved in a number of contentious legal cases, defrauded Ragusa out of a sum of gold and was even imprisoned for a time. With all this in mind, schemes involving counterfeit relics and phantom pregnancies do not appear too far out of character.

The Croatian island of Lokrum has been the backdrop to several movies and receives thousands of visitors each year, but no one is permitted to stay there overnight on account of its famous curse (or the tourist board). The story of the monks bewitching the island with their upturned candles comes from a later time when the Benedictines were expelled from the monastery on Lokrum by the invading French army of Napoleon. Each day visitors arrive at Skalica, where Richard Lionheart was shipwrecked, walk the cloisters of the monastery, orchards and olive groves and swim in the Dead Sea, which really does have an underwater passage out to the sea. The subterranean guest-room tower is however fictitious.

The fall of Bosnia and the prospective crusade triggered a building spree in Ragusa, the result of which remains as Dubrovnik's signature walls. Although the city had long been fortified, the great defensive bastions of Fort Bokar, Minceta Tower and the incredible Walls of Ston were all products of this time. The Republic invited Michelozzo di Bartolomeo of Florence, who had been apprentice to Donatello & Cosimo Medici's favourite builder, to oversee this work, but he did not stay to their completion. The Rector's palace really was badly damaged in 1463 by a gunpowder explosion. Michelozzo submitted a design for the refurbishment but perhaps too much of Ragusa's funds had already been committed to defensive works. His bid failed and he returned to Italy.

Cardinal Bessarion's modest casina on the Appian Way can still be visited. That early scene was inspired by the famous painting of Pierro Della Francesca, 'The Flagellation of Christ'. It is one of the most enigmatic art pieces of the Renaissance. Among many theories as to its allegorical meaning, several agree that it relates to the fate of Constantinople under Ottoman control. Sultan Mehmed appears in the background overseeing the whipping of a bound Christ beside a helpless Byzantine Emperor. It is the three figures in the foreground whose identity sparks most debate, one of whom is a close physical match for Bessarion. There are several interesting books and essays analysing the painting, but my favourite is by Professor David King in which he links its hidden message to an astrolabe given by Regiomontanus to Bessarion in 1462. That astrolabe is now in a private collection but images of it can be seen on the Museo Galileo website. Its reverse contains the acrostic engraving which Anna and Mara solve.     

Plato and Platonic love form an important theme in the book. I thought it was particularly appropriate to the novel's historical setting since in 1463/64 Marsilio Ficino (inspired by Plethon's lectures in Florence) was in the midst of translating the entire corpus of Plato into Latin. It was Ficino's interpretation of Platonic love from which the modern sense of the term derives. The letter Anna writes to Mara in the story’s penultimate chapter is heavily based on Ficino's own letters to Giovanni Cavalcanti.

In 1465 there were no Greek orthodox churches in Venice, but just as in the story, Anna Notaras was pressing the Senate to change that. I accelerated historical events in the epilogue for dramatic effect. In reality, Anna was only granted leave to build a chapel on her own property in 1475. After twenty years, the Greek community in Venice finally had their temporary church, fittingly inside Anna's house. Eventually, in 1498, Venice further relented and agreed to the founding of the Scuola de San Nicolo dei Greci with its own church attached, San Giorgio dei Greci. Like Mara Brankovic, Anna Notaras had used her wealth and connections to preserve several significant ikons. Although Anna died in 1507 before the church was completed, she was able to gift in her will three such ikons to San Giorgio that modern visitors can still admire there: Christ in His glory surrounded by symbols of the 4 Evangelists and figures of the 12 Apostles; Christ Pantokrator; and an image of the Virgin Hodegetria.

How Columbus and European Colonialism learned their dark art in the Levant

European Colonialism doesn’t begin with Colombus or 1492. The 1st people to be colonised by Europeans were other Europeans. The Frankokratia left a swath of merchant colonies across the Eastern Mediterranean which are the very model of post-Colombian colony.

Frankokratia was the period following 4th Crusade (1204) when the Morea & Greek islands came under Latin control. The model was usually for a wealthy Genoese or Venetian family to control an island or archipelago, including the Sanudi on Naxos, the Gattilusi on Lesbos & the Giustiniani on Chios.

The Latin faith was introduced by the new overlords, to little enthusiasm from the locals. Pragmatically, the Latin rulers tolerated the Greek faith but gave it no legal sanction. Byzantine landowners (archons) submitted to the Frankish invaders & kept control over their paroikoi. Essentially a small colonial topsoil was added to the existing social strata.

The motive for maintaining these colonies was broadly the same as later colonialism: commercial exploitation & as strategic checks on rival powers. Alum, as a commodity, was to the 15th century what oil was to the 20th. The main source (prior to 1461) was Genoese-held Phocaea. In 1346 a chartered company (Maona) was setup to exploit Chios & Phocaea. The mineral & taxation rights were sold by the Genoese Republic to the Maona of Chios & Phocaea. The company employed its own troops & ran Chios for 220yrs. Similar Maona existed on Cyprus (1373) & Lesbos.



The Maona can be seen as a blueprint for the East India Company of the C17th. Another Genoese institution that foreshadowed the EIC was the Bank of St George. Established in 1407, it was given the charter to run Genoa’s 5 colonies in the Crimea (collectively, Gazaria), from 1453

Gazaria provides the darkest echo of future colonialism, Caffa being a hub of slave trading. Medieval slavery was domestic (mostly female) slaves rather than the agricultural workers of the African trade. East Europeans & Central Asians were the victims.

Most were sold into the Muslim world where demand was higher but 1000’s went to Italy. Petrarch lamented ‘Whereas huge shipments of grain used to arrive by ship annually in this city, now they arrive laden with slaves, sold by their wretched families to alleviate their hunger.’

Religion rather than race was used to excuse slavery. It was always a contentious subject. Was it only wrong to sell Christians to Muslims? What of non-Latin Christians? Pope Martin V excommunicated the merchants of Kaffa in 1425 for dealing in Christian flesh but nothing changed

In 1431 Genoa signed a treaty with the Mamluk Sultan to provide boys (to become eunuchs) from the Black Sea coast via Kaffa market. The Ventimiglia family of Genoa were the official slave agent to Cairo.

Like the British ‘divide & rule’ policy with Mughal rulers in India, Genoa exploited local conflicts to its benefit. Most crucially, perhaps, in 1352, during the Byzantine civil war, Genoa aided the Ottomans to cross the Dardanelles & take their 1st European possession.

Christopher Columbus provides a symbolic continuity between colonialism in the Levant & Americas. He was ‘from the Republic of Genoa’, but not necessarily Genoa itself. One theory holds he was in fact from Genoese Chios.



As well as an explorer he was also a pirate (the 2 careers went together back then). Just as England would later use privateers to hassle Spanish treasury convoys in the Caribbean, Genoa and Anjou used corsair navies to disrupt the Venetian muda convoys in the Med.

Venice did not have an equivalent to the Maona, preferring direct control of its Stato da Màr. It held Crete (Candia) from 1205 to 1667 & divided island into 6 sestieri just like their home city but later reformed this to 4 provinces.



Venetian rule never sat easily with the natives who were heavily taxed & saw most of their best produce shipped to Venice There were numerous uprisings. When a new tax to pay for Candia’s harbour was imposed in 1363 it triggered a Boston Tea Party moment: The Revolt of St Titus.

The figure of St.Titus became the emblem of the newly established Commune of Crete. Greeks were admitted to the councils of government, & restrictions on the ordination of Greek priests were abolished. But unlike 1776, the rebellious colony could not hold on to independence.

 
Venetian troops retook Candia within a year, but it took 5 before Crete was completely subdued. Venice celebrated with jousting in Piazza San Marco witnessed & recounted by Petrarch. Note that the Byzantine Emperor openly supported Venice & not his fellow Greek freedom fighters.

The Kallergis family were instrumental to the rebellion of 1363 & had been in previous revolts in 1282 & 1341. Later rebellions included the uprising of Sifis Vlastos in 1453. Ironically Venice used the Kallergis family to put down the Vlastos uprising.

Hagia Sophia and the little known last Divine Liturgy

"Some weeks before, Anna Notaras had wished that the candle of worship within Hagia Sophia might flame up one last time. Although she was herself absent that evening, the sound of voices raised in song came to her ear through the window of her room in the Rose Palace. She lay on her front, listening, silently weeping in joy and despair, while Zenobia gently rubbed balm into her wounded back. For the first time since its Latin desecration, the people had converged on the great church. Greek and Latin, Venetian and Genoese, side by side; united in a last solemn ceremony, a final plea to God. Stood among beggars and lords in the dark, lamp-lit basilica, John Grant watched with a quiet calm as no ritual was spared, no relic left unparaded. All had come. All, in their finest robes, to the mother church one final time. Ranks of soldiers, merchants and millers, fishermen and sailors, all joining their voices to rise and fall in the harmony of rhythmic chanting. The sound re-echoed from the walls and rose with the incense vapour, up, up, into the curving embrace of the dome. The gaunt emperor led a solemn procession beneath a banner of the two-headed eagle, joined by the Latin cardinal Isidore and all the local churchmen, absent Gennadius. It seemed at last that here the two halves of the faith were united; the great schism forgotten. The relic of the true cross was paraded, and soldiers kissed its silver casing, that it might instil divine strength to them for the hours ahead. Then, having taken the sacraments, the emperor fell to the floor and begged God to forgive all their transgressions. He bowed in all directions and took his leave, followed by Grant and the rest of the army, leaving behind a vigil that would continue through to dawn."  Chapter 32 of Porphyry & Ash begins with the service conducted on the night of the 28th May 1453 as the depleted Byzantine & Latin defenders prepare to face the final assault. That dawn vigil will of course be ended by Janissary bursting into the great church and within a matter of days it would be converted into a mosque.

As Erdogan seeks to turn Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque, it would be understandable to think that the liturgy John Grant witnessed on the night of the 28th was the last one performed in Hagia Sophia, but this is not so. There is a little known historical footnote to the buildings history as a church. The last Byzantine Rite performed there took place just over a century ago, on the 19th January 1919. This is the story of a bold priest & a bubble in the Turkish control of Constantinople.

The Armistice of Mudros, signed on the deck of HMS Agamemnon, concluded the Ottoman empire’s involvement in WWI on 30 October 1918. Two weeks later French & British troops began the occupation of Constantinople. They would remain for 5 years until 4 October 1923 when Kemalist forces retook the city following the Treaty of Lausanne.

Meanwhile the Russian Civil war was underway. As part of the Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks, an international expeditionary force sailed to the Ukraine in early 1919 including two divisions of the Greek army.

On route, the fleet docked at Constantinople & the military chaplain of the Greek 2nd Division along with 4 officers determined to go ashore & perform the Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia – at the time still a functioning mosque.

The chaplain was Eleftherios Noufrakis (Father Lefteris) from Rethymno in Crete. He and the 4 officers hired a local Greek boatman to row them ashore and lead them quietly to the doors of Hagia Sophia. 

At the door, a guard asked in Turkish what they were trying to do, but with the city under occupation, he had little authority against allied officers.

Father Eleftherios moved quickly, identifying the location of the Sanctuary and the Holy Altar. Finding a small table, he put it into place, then opened his bag and took out everything needed for the Divine Liturgy. Then he put on his stole and began the first Byzantine rite in Hagia Sophia for 466 years.

As this went on, an incredulous crowd of local Muslims worshippers began to watch in silence. Lefteris placed the antimension on the table, to do the Proskomidi. He then took a small Holy Chalice out of his bag, as well as a paten, a knife & small prosphoron, even a bottle of wine. 

News of what was happening had spread around outside the building. The crowd was growing, both Turks & Greeks. The atmosphere was changing. Nonetheless the Divine Liturgy was completed without interruption.

As the five soldiers made to leave, the crowd began to shout. Outside they there attacked by one man with a stick but made it back to the boatman & were rowed to their ship. The incident caused a brief diplomatic ruckus. Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos appologised publicly but privately congratulated Lefteris.

Father Lefteris died in 1941 during the Nazi occupation of Crete. His monument can be seen in the village of Alones.  

Torcello

Before the Roman fall of 1453 there was the Roman fall of 452. Before Venice there was Altinum. When the Huns of Attila burst into northern Italy they sacked a small provincial Roman city on the edge of an unprepossessing lagoon. Fleeing those barbaric invaders, the local Veneti of Altinum took to those treacherous waters and founded a new settlement on one of the lagoon's islands. They named it Torcello, after the Porte Torcellus, one gate of their old destroyed city and they named five other small islands around it after the five other gates: Murano, Burano, Mazzorbo, Ammianco and Constantiacum.

Torcello had a century of significance before an outbreak of malaria decimated the population and the lagoon community shifted a little further out to Venice. It's fitting therefore that when another barbarian invasion swept through the Eastern Roman Empire, many of its survivors sought refuge in the same lagoon as had done during the Western empire's decline and fall. Venice post 1453 had a thriving Greek population. One wonders if any took comfort from the dramatic success the Veneti had built from the wreckage of their sacked mother-city. They probably would never have become a maritime empire if Attila had not driven them into the lagoon. So perhaps something more would one-day rise from the ashes of their own homeland. 

If any Greeks did look to Torcello for inspiration, they would have found a physical symbol in the shape of the churches which are all that remains of that settlement to this day. The Basilica of Santa Maria Asunta was first built in 639. It is the oldest building in the entire Venetian lagoon. Its current form dates to 1008 and was restored in 1423. Underneath the altar are the remains of Saint Heliodorus, first Bishop of Altinum and a friend of Saint Jerome. An Orthodox iconostasis divides the chancel from the nave with images of the Virgin and Child and The Twelve Apostles. The semi-dome in the apse behind has a 13th-century mosaic of the Virgin and Child in a field of gold, probably the work of Greek craftsmen from Constantinople who were also responsible for the Apostles in the atrium of San Marco.

But most impressive of all is the spectacular mosaic back wall containing the Crucifixion and the Last Judgement. The heads of the damned, brought to a blue-skinned Satan by his flying demons, are unmistakably Byzantine in their style and it would surely have evoked the most terrible memories in the minds of any survivors of 1453 each time they looked upon it and prayed for the souls of lost friends and family.

The life and times of Anna Notaras

I had the pleasure this month of guest posting at the Coffee Pot Book Club.
https://maryanneyarde.blogspot.com/2019/07/join-historicalfiction-author-peter.html

The below is taken from Mary Anne Yarde's blog, which is a great source to get to know about historical fiction authors:

Imagine a life which begins with a childhood playing at the knee of Roman emperors and ends after the New World of the Americas have been discovered. It sounds like something out of Highlander or the Portrait of Dorian Gray, but in fact this real life belonged to a woman named Anna Notaras, who was every bit as remarkable as the era of history she witnessed.

Born in Constantinople in 1436, Anna was the youngest daughter of Loukas Notaras, the Megas Doux (Grand Duke), perhaps the richest man in the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire). The Notaras family were relative newcomers to the upper tier of Roman society. Anna's merchant grandfather, Nicholas, had made a fortune during the Byzantine civil war (1373-1379AD). His son Loukas had gone into politics and held several of the top administrative ranks in both Byzantium's civil and military administration by the 1450s. Whilst Anna's three sisters were married off: the eldest into a powerful Aegean-based Genoese family, another to the powerful local Kantakouzenos family, Anna remained unwed, likely because Loukas Notaras had very high ambitions for his last daughter.

By the time Anna came of age, the empire - which had been in perpetual crisis for some time - had taken another shuffling step towards the abyss. Emperor John VIII Palaiologos died in 1448 and his younger brother Constantine XI took the porphyry throne. In his forties, Constantine had been widowed twice already and had no heir. It was therefore imperative that he take an empress swiftly. Circumstantial evidence suggests Loukas Notaras may have put Anna forward as a candidate, but been thwarted by his court rival, George Sphrantzes, who oversaw arranging the bridal candidates. In the event, Constantine never did marry, as Constantinople came under yet another siege from their Muslim Ottoman neighbours and this time, against newly perfected cannon fire, the walls were unable to hold out. On 29th May, 1453, the Roman Empire fell for the last time.







That might have been the end of the story for Constantine and Byzantium, but it was not the end for Anna. Historians are divided on when she escaped the city (some say her father moved her abroad years before, others think weeks and there is even the intriguing entry of the name Notaras in the passenger list of a ship which escaped on the 29th of May itself). Whatever the truth of those lost years, we know for certain that Anna resurfaced in Italy in 1459 to claim her family fortune.

As prudent men of business, both her father and grandfather had hedged the risk of Ottoman invasion by placing their material wealth with the Bank of St George in Genoa and obtaining both Genoese and Venetian citizenship for their family. Thus, among the many thousands of Byzantine refugees who moved from Greece to Italy following the fall of Constantinople, Anna Notaras was by far the wealthiest (in stark contrast to the last emperor’s brother who was little better than a beggar in Rome). She did not sit on this fortune but instead put it to work over the remaining forty-odd years of her life trying to help the Byzantine refugee diaspora and maintain their church and customs in an alien land.

In 1499, when the first dedicated Greek-language printing press began, the dedication in the initial book printed was made to ‘the most modest lady Anna, daughter of Loukas Notaras’ for financing this new technology to ensure Byzantine culture and knowledge persisted. Like her close friend, Cardinal Bessarion, Anna also helped recover humanist manuscripts from the east and bring them to Italy as part of the Renaissance’s great impetus in the late 15th century.

Anna lived most of her exile life in Venice, where she maintained a grand house with at least one of her widowed sisters. Venice was the home to the largest community of displaced Byzantine families, but there was no provision for a Greek-Orthodox church in the city. Anna began to lobby the Senate to allow the construction of such a church but met great resistance. This had been an era of religious friction between the Greek and Latin churches (one reason for the fall of Constantinople was the luke-warm assistance offered by the Pope). Faced with this problem, Anna’s solution in 1472 was to try and negotiate the lease of an old castle and tract of land from the Commune of Siena, where Greek families could resettle and live according to their religious practices and customs. The contractual documents were drawn up and survive to this day. Intriguingly they address Anna as Anna Notaras Palaiologina – from which the legend that she had been married to Constantine may well stem. There is no reason to believe Anna actually married the last emperor, but it may be that she allowed the old men of Siena to believe it to try and advance her cause. 

The contract was never executed, perhaps because Anna and her supporters surveyed the land – malarial, war-torn, barren - and realised what a poor prospect it represented. Instead, further badgering of the Venetian senate brought a compromise and in 1475, Anna was granted leave to build a chapel within her own house where the Byzantine rite could be performed. After twenty years, the Greeks of Venice had their temporary church, fittingly inside Anna’s home.

Eventually, in 1498, Venice relented further and agreed to the founding of the Scuola de San Nicolo dei Greci with its own church, San Giorgio dei Greci. Although Anna died in 1507 before the church was completed, modern visitors to San Giorgio can still admire the three ikons she gifted to it in her will: Christ in His glory surrounded by symbols of the 4 Evangelists and figures of the 12 Apostles; Christ Pantokrator; and an image of the Virgin Hodegetria.







She was clearly not a woman to cross lightly, as contemporary Venetian court records attest. She disapproved of her brother’s choice of wife and their conflict was played out in a series of fiery legal cases. Through these depositions it is possible to glean the outline of an incredible, intelligent, determined character. The renaissance was still very much a man’s world, but Anna Notaras was a woman who refused to allow the disadvantages of being female, a refugee and a religious minority, stop her in her mission to preserve as much of her culture from the apocalypse of her city’s collapse.
Anna’s life is the central subject of my books, the first of which, Porphyry and Ash, charts the final days of Constantinople. Subsequent books will form a thirty-year journey right across the Levantine map: from the Crimean steppe to the lagoon of Venice, from the mountains of Transylvania to the harem of Topkapi by way of Anatolian plains and Aegean islands. My Anna, like her historical inspiration, is not a woman to accept a passive lot in life and while she may not swing a sword or have magical powers, just like her inspiration, she can still kick ass and achieve a great deal for her people.

Porphyry and Ash

Released today, in paperback and Kindle: Porphyry and Ash.

1452: After a thousand years, the sun is setting on the Eastern Roman Empire...The covetous eye of the Ottoman Sultan has set itself firmly upon Constantinople. His great army prepares to strike, while the Byzantine court is split between those who would sacrifice everything - including their religion - to defend the city, and those who would prefer rule by the Turkish turban. But amid the deadly undercurrent of court politics, religious division and a brutal siege, Anna Notaras, youngest daughter of Byzantium's richest family, has a more mundane issue to solve - how to be rid of an unwanted betrothal to a loathsome Venetian.When she meets John Grant among the mercenaries flocking to the city's defence, she thinks she might have found a solution. Scottish, world-weary and repentant, Grant hopes holy war can bring absolution for his dark past. He soon discovers that life in Constantinople is never so simple, and the cannons and scimitars of the invaders beyond the crumbling walls might prove less lethal than the dangers lurking within them: a flamboyant Genoese general with a secret agenda, a firebrand monk with the mob in his thrall, a murderer with a taste for the theatrical. And although Grant has the requisite strength and skills to overcome all of these, in the beautiful, astute, monstrously ambitious Anna, he might have met his match.




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The Life of Gemistus Plethon

Georgius Gemistus (later called Plethon), was one of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byzantine era. He was an important pioneer of the revival of Greek scholarship in Western Europe and re-introduced Plato's ideas to Italy during the 1438-1439 Council of Florence. His great literary work, the Nomoi or Book of Laws, which he only circulated among close friends, made a rejection of Christianity in favour of a return to ancient wisdom based on Pagan Greek philosophy and Zoroaster. He adopted the name Plethon out of his deep admiration for Plato's philosophy. Cardinal Bessarion once speculated as to whether Plato's soul occupied Plethon's body.

Plethon was born in Constantinople around 1355AD. Raised in a family of well-educated Christians, he studied in Constantinople and Ottoman Adrianople, before returning to Constantinople and establishing himself as a teacher of philosophy. He also served as a senator in Constantinople and a judge. Eventually, in about 1410, he was sent to Mystras by Emperor Manuel II. At Mystras he established something of an academy, perhaps modeled on his beloved Plato. A great many of the most famous 15th century Greek humanists were at one time or other his pupil. 

When Emperor John VIII departed for Italy to seek Western Christian aid against the Turks, he included Plethon in the delegation, despite his being a secular philosopher, on the basis of his renowned wisdom and morality. Other delegates included Plethon's former students Bessarion, Mark Eugenikos and Gennadios. He was not included in the Council's religious debates and instead, at the invitation of some Florentine humanists, he set up a temporary school in Florence to lecture on the difference between Plato and Aristotle. According to Marsilio Ficino, Cosimo de Medici was among those who attended and became subsequently enthralled by Plato.

While still in Florence, Plethon wrote a volume titled Wherein Aristotle disagrees with Plato, (De Differentiis), to correct the misunderstandings he had encountered. He claimed he had written it 'without serious intent' while incapacitated through illness, 'to comfort myself and to please those who are dedicated to Plato.' Gennadios responded with a Defence of Aristotle, which elicited Plethon's subsequent Reply. 

This Reply letter is not a sober academic piece but a work of venomous personal invective directed at Gennadios:

"Along with your other faults, lying comes naturally to you. . . .


You are not only vindictive, but dull-witted, as your present work shows . .
. . . a man who has no shame in boasting about the influence of a wretched woman -- and a little tart at that . .

You seem to be so consumed with your vanity that you will even sacrifice your religious beliefs for it, changing them at every opportunity in whatever direction you think will bring you greater esteem. . .

They are certainly not stupider than you, for it would be hard to find among serious students of Aristotle anyone stupider than you. . .

You can have nothing to say that affects me . . . I have paid, and shall continue to pay, no more attention to it than to the howling of a Maltese whelp. "


He seems to have been an old man full of bones piss and vinegar and very definitely not someone, as Anna knew, one invites on a picnic if one requires only flattery.

Still, clearly Plethon could be a charming, loveable man as well. That aspect of his character comes through in the monody he wrote for the funeral of Cleofe Malatesta, the wife of Theodoros Palaiologos, the Despot of Morea. Gennadios aside, most of those around him appear to have treasured him greatly.

Gennadios was to get the last laugh in that bitter rivalry of master and rejected pupil. In 1460, when the Morea fell to the Ottomans and Theodoros's young brother, Demetrios, was summoned to Adrianople with his wife Theodora, they stopped at Serres, where the now ex-Patriarch, Gennadios, was living in monastic seclusion on nearby Mt. Menoikeon. The manuscript of Plethon's great work, "Laws" appears to have been among their possessions and Theodora - a devout woman, likely troubled by the overt paganism extolled in the work - handed it over to Gennadios. 

Gennadios read the work, a tremendously upsetting experience he claims, that brought him to tears. He made a list of chapter headings and a summary then sent the book back to Theodora, with instructions to burn it. She couldn't bring herself to do so and sent the book back to Gennadios who burned it himself, in a public ceremony. It was possibly the only copy in existence.

Gennadios was found of burnings. A few years before this he had sent a letter to the Morea vividly describing how a heretic should be tortured and then burned. I was perhaps unfair to the man to portray him as I did in Porphyry and Ash, but then again, perhaps not.
Still, Plethon was not above burning people either. In the Laws he recommended it as punishment for those guilty of perversions of sexuality (which he considered divine). These perversions included bestiality, pederasty, rape, incest, and male adultery. Notice, however, these did not include homosexuality as a perversion.

Plethon's writing is full of a sense of physical knowledge. In a society that appears to have been quite awkward and sexually repressed (Cleofe Malatesta and her husband took six years to consummate their marriage), Plethon was anything but. 

"Desire is a gift of the gods," he wrote. It is the way we approach the gods since it is a thing most beautiful and most divine to marry and have children. We cannot deny the importance of this act which in our mortal nature is the imitation of the immortality of the gods. We ought to see that we do it well. We do this in private not because of shame, but because most humans do not wish to display publicly those religious acts which they regard as the most holy. It is the most personal thing people can do, and since it is one of the most important things given to people to do, it deserves to be done as perfectly as possible. Nothing is more shameful than an important act poorly done.

Plethon himself had two children, Demetrios and Andronikos. Both were alive and of age in 1450.
There is disagreement over when precisely Plethon died. Some say 1454, others 1452. Hence I have felt comfortable splitting the difference at 1453 to suit my purposes. He would have been in his nineties in any event. In all probability he died peacefully in the Morea and we might hope it was the earlier date to prevent him learning of the cataclysmic fall of the capital and the death of his old pupil Constantine. 

In 1464, another Malatesta came to Mystras. Unlike Cleofe, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was not well loved and did not come to marry into the dynasty. A famous Italian Condottiero, Malasesta had been hired to lead Venice's land forces in their campaign to drive the Turks out of southern Greece. It proved an unsuccessful venture, but Malatesta was able to pull off one personal coup. A true renaissance man, Malatesta was an admirer of Plethon and returned to Rimini where he was funding the reconstruction of the Tempio Malatestiano, as a personal mausoleum. Malatesta wanted to include the tombs of illustrious people and so had the bones of Plethon dug up and brought back to Rimini with him, where they remain within the side chapel. 

Readers of Porphyry and Ash might find this difficult to imagine since my version of history does not seem to allow for Plethon's bones to be in Mystras. For this, we might consider two possible explanations. 

The first is that Malatesta dug up any old bones and made up the story to add provenance to them and secure something from an otherwise dismal campaign. The third is that faced with an armed general demanding to know where the grave of a philosopher was, some enterprising peasant showed him any old tomb and let him dig it up. Note I am not arguing this is actually what happened - probably Plethon remained in Mystras and never returned to Constantinople - I am merely suggesting that Malatesta's story is not necessarily proof that Plethon could not have done.