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.

The life of George Sphrantzes - the last Byzantine

George Sphrantzes, (sometimes Phrantzes) was a late Byzantine historian and Imperial courtier. He served all three of Emperor Manuel, his son Emperor John VIII and his other son Emperor Constantine XI.

Late in life, Sphrantzes authored a Chronicle which is considered an important primary source, " which Steven Runciman described as "honest, vivid and convincing" and that Sphrantzes "wrote good Greek in an easy unpretentious style." In fact, for a long time it was believed he had written two: the Minor Chronicle and the Major Chronicle. The Major Chronicle is more detailed, particularly about the siege of Constantinople but in the last century researchers managed to demonstrate that the Major Chronicle was written decades later by Makarios Melissenos ("Pseudo-Sphrantzes"), the Metropolitan Bishop of Monemvasia who fled to Naples in 1571 during the Turkish invasion. It remains disputed as to whether the Major chronicle is nothing but a forgery, or whether it is an expanded edition, based on an original by Sphrantzes but with other Byzantine chroniclers appended.

As a chronicler, Sphrantzes is mediocre, glossing over much of the great events of the time. As a memoir of a Byzantine noble with a front seat on the final plunge of the empire his book is compelling. Described by one historian as 'saturated in loss' it really is one of the saddest primary sources you can ever read. Not for nothing does Sphrantzes describe himself as 'pitiful' and the chronicle as 'the account of the events that occurred during my wretched life." He was writing it as a memoir, aged 76, exiled in a Corfu monastery, wracked by rheumatism,. Two years before he had suffered an infection of the sinuses, ears, and throat. It had been bad enough that he received the last rites three times. There's something almost symbolic about that, since death seemed to reach for him throughout his life and stay its hand at the last each time. But he suffered. Physically he suffered deafness from the infection and complained he couldn't hear a bell tolling next to him, he suffered from the damp in his joints which left him too pained to walk. But more than physical pain, he must have suffered from dreadful survivors guilt, because he was there still in 1478 and nothing of his world remained.

Sphrantzes was born in 1401, a time of great upheaval in the Empire & perhaps appropriately the city was under an Ottoman blockade during the moment of his birth. He was a member of a good Byzantine family and had grown up at court. His father was tutor to Thomas, his uncle was tutor to Constantine. He had been an imperial playmate to Emperor Manuel's sons. But death and tragedy is never far from him, like Waltari's dark angel hovering at his shoulder: plague took Sphrantzes' sister, her husband, a daughter, six servants, then his parents. Still, Sphrantzes survives and at sixteen and a half, Emperor Manuel gave him a good role at court, in charge of the imperial chamber. Manuel seems to have had a real fondness for Sphrantzes and perhaps found it easier to indulge him than his own children. Tellingly, Sphrantzes identifies himself with his first title, protovestiarites, in his memoir, despite accumulating other, perhaps more illustrious honours later in life. Sphrantzes liked clothes & pays attention to them (at least his own) in his chronicle in a way he does not to other matters. There is much about the gifts he received from Manuel - a caftan (kavadi), dark & lined with fur, and a green robe for his future wife. Perhaps the position in Manuel's chamber sparked an interest and allowed him to become knowledgeable on fabrics.

When Manuel died in 1425, John inherited him and after a couple of years, Constantine appears to have begged John to transfer Sphrantzes to his service. He joining the entourage of his childhood friend Constantine in the Morea in December 1427. He was as faithful as any dog has ever been.

His time in the Morea proved quite eventful. Sphrantzes assisted Constantine in a campaign to reconquer the remainder of the Morea (still in the hands of post-1204 crusader families). He gives an account of his captured on 26 March 1429 in a skirmish outside of Patras in which he claims to have saved Constantine's life. He was held prisoner: "I had sustained multiple wounds and was thrown into the dark tower of a house, full of ants, weevils, and mice, as it was located in front of the grain storage. I was put in secure irons and my leg was held by a strong chain, which was attached to a big post." Once the identified him as Constantine's key man he was paroled back to the Byzantine side to negotiate. Constantine was greatful for what his faithful aide had gone through for him and lavished him with gifts which Sphrantzes takes pleasure in describing. Again he picks out clothing: expensive double green tunic lined with fine green linen from Lucca, a red cap embroidered with gold with a silk lining from Thessaloniki, and a heavy gold-colored caftan from Brusa. 

It was not the last time Sphrantzes underwent hardship for his master. Later, while traveling to Epirus as an ambassador, to help negotiate peace between Carlo II Tocco and his uncle's illegitimate sons over the succession in Epirus, Sphrantzes was kidnapped by Catalan pirates, along with his retinue, and held at Cephalonia until the pirates took the group back to Glarentza where they were ransomed.

He continued to travel, being sent by Constantine to attempted to secure Athens in 1435, negotiate Constantine's second marriage with Caterina Gattilusio in 1440 (a journey he would have undertaken alongside Loukas Notaras). The marriage took place at Mytilene that August, but the marriage lasted only a year. Constantine, returning to Constantinople in July 1442, stopped at Mytilene to collect his Empress, and proceeded to Lemnos where he was caught by, as Sphrantzes describes it, "the whole Turkish fleet". Perhaps it was the shock and fear of this, but although no attack fell upon them, Caterina was taken ill and suffered a miscarriage. She died not long afterwards at Palaiokastron on Lemnos. It is just one of the many tragic deaths that fill the memoir.

In 1449 Constantine became emperor and returned to Constantinople from the Morea. Sphrantzes went with him and one of his first tasks was to find Constantine a third wife. The Palaiologoi brothers seemed cursed in this way, with John having died childless and Constantine also without an heir. (Only Thomas of the five sons of Manuel produced a son of their own who lived to maturity). 

Sphrantzes appears to have selected as his first choice Mara Brankovic, the recently widowed consort of Sultan Murad. Mara, who had a complex relationship with Murad's heir, had been allowed to return to her family in Serbia upon Murad's death (the rest of the imperial hareem were remarried to high Ottoman officials - this really was an unusual exception). It's not clear why Sphrantzes thought Mara a good choice for Constantine. She had produced no children for Murad (the rumour of the day was she had withheld her sexual favours but this seems highly unlikely given the power dynamics), so it cannot have been a choice with strong expectations for a quick pregnancy. It's dynastic link to Serbia would have also been unimpressive. Durad Brankovic, Despot of Serbia had already shown himself to be unreliable when it came to helping Christian allies against Turkish attack (in fairness to him, he had little choice but to play a double game to keep any independence for his tiny kingdom). So it appears that the choice of Mara, might well have come down to a belief on Sphrantzes's part that by uniting the Ottoman Valide Hatun and Imperial Empress in one person would safeguard Byzantium from Turkish aggression. Regardless, the offer (accepted by Durad Brankovic) was rejected by Mara.

Sphrantzes then travelled to Georgia by way of Trebizond, to secure a second choice candidate - an unidentified princess. It's hard to see much logic in this choice, beyond a desperate courtier with a reduced number of options. Certainly Georgia was in no position to give military support. It could be that Sphrantzes just wanted to find someone willing and royal in a hurry - perhaps because Constantine was already in his mid-forties and without a child, or perhaps because other members of the court were putting forward candidates of their own. 

There is nothing in Sphrantzes's recounting of this period to confirm the idea that Anna Notaras was a serious candidate to become Constantine's third wife. Indeed the only evidence for it is very unreliable comments made in Italian legal papers decades later. However, one might argue that Sphrantzes (whose relationship with Loukas Notaras was certainly one of political / court rivals) has every motive to whitewash from the record any imperial linkage, the more so given that he wrote his Chronicle after the fall, when Anna Notaras was at the height of her own fame. We should recall that during the first few decades of Turkish Constantinople, the exiled community of Greeks in Italy can be divided between a staunchly Orthodox group in Venice where Anna was certainly pre-eminent, and the remnant Palaiologoi in Rome (where Thomas converted to the Latin faith in return for a Pope's pension), to whom Sphrantzes was alligned.

Whatever the truth about the third bride of Constantine, the siege of 1453 intervened before any final marriage could take place. Sphrantzes gives a rather vague account of things, perhaps because he was employed away from the front line. When the defenses broke, Sphrantzes was captured and enslaved, but was ransomed on 1 September 1453, he immediately traveled to the Morea to offer his services to Thomas. He was able to locate and randsom his wife Helena in 1454 and then served as Thomas's ambassador to Venice in 1455.


When the Morea descended into conflict between Thomas and his brother Demetrios, the latter called in the Turks who promptly seized the whole region. Thomas and his court fled, first to Corfu, then across to Ancona and finally to Rome. They took with them the Head of St Andrew, which Bessarion received at a ceremony in April 1462. Sphrantzes went as far as Corfu but no further. Nor did Thomas's wife and three children, Andreas, Zoe and Manuel. Bessarion managed their education from Rome (we have his many letters which express his concern that their Greek was poor and needed improving). We don't know if Sphrantzes was involved in raising the three Palaiologoi heirs but after they were called to join their father in Rome in 1465, Sphrantzes did make the journey to visit them in 1466 and stayed for 5 weeks.

In his younger, happier days, Sphrantzes had married a good Byzantine woman named Helena, daughter of the imperial secretary Alexios Palaiologos Tzamplakon. Constantine was best man at his wedding. He and Helena had five children, of whom two sons died in infancy, a third son, Alexios, died at the age of 5. John and his only daughter, Thamar, both lived to fourteen & Constantine was godfather to both. They were also enslaved after the fall, but Sphrantzes was unable to locate and ransom them before each died, John in December 1453, Thamar in September 1455 - reportedly of disease in the Imperial hareem. 

                                        

Of John's death, Sphrantzes recorded: "the most impious and pitiless sultan, with his own hand, took the life of my dearest son John, on the grounds that the child had conspired to murder him . . . My son was fourteen years and eight months less a day; yet his mind and body proclaimed a much more mature person." It's unclear quite what he meant here - some might be reminded of the fate of Jacob Notaras and that Sphrantzes believed his son was a victim of the sultan's supposed taste for boys, or perhaps he simply that he looked and seemed old enough to be an assassin. 

It's another sad footnote to an unfulfilled life, you can hear Sphrantzes' grief for both his grown children. Having navigated the perils of childhood, which had claimed three of their siblings, he had plans for both when the tottering empire finally fell. His daughter had not quite reached marriageable age when the travel became impossible. Sphrantzes had made plans to take his son John on the medieval equivalent of a father-son road trip. They were to go to the Morea and Cyprus, "so that my son could visit the places and learn all those things which would be of use in his life". Probably he would have left John in the Morea for safety but perhaps the demands on his time prevented it. The trip certainly never came about and the great events of history conspired to crush that dream.

He is known to have clashed with Loukas Notaras, especially during those last short years that Constantine was Emperor. Notaras was Megas Doux, the most powerful noble not of the imperial family. His father had built up the family power and wealth in Constantinople over the first half of the century. It's not hard to see how these two men would rub against one another. Both social climbers having only one or so generation previously penetrated the upper tier of Byzantine nobility. Sphrantzes from a family of intellectuals, Notaras from hard-bitten merchants. They had been two of the bright young things of Manuel's court, both sent as emissaries to Sultan Murad in 1424 when Byzantium officially submitted to being an Ottoman vassal. 

Sphrantzes saw himself very much as Constantine's man, a member of the imperial oikeios, and must have grown used to taking over and running every city that came under Constantine's remit. Each place Constantine ruled, Sphrantzes was installed into the highest administrative position: when Constantine was despot at Patras, Sphrantzes was governor (Kephale) of Patras, when Constantine was despot in Selybria, Sphranzes was governor of Selybria; when Constantine was despot at Mistra, Sphrantzes was governor of Mistra. Then Constantine becomes Emperor, but someone else already runs the show, his old contemporary from two decades prior. 

Then in 1451, Sphrantzes was told he needed to go to Cyprus for the Emperor. He had only just got back from his mission to Georgia seeking a bride. The story goes that Sphrantzes told his old friend that his wife would either marry another man or run off to the monastery if he continued to live on the road for the emperor like this. Constantine's solution appears to have been to exhume an old disused imperial title and plant Sphrantzes with that (Megas Logothete). Whether this was to mollify his wife or Sphrantzes himself is not clear. There is evidence this caused a minor stir at court, where rank was so important. It was this mission to Cyprus that Sphrantzes saw as an opportunity to take his son on, to bond and teach the young man but it never got underway. 

The rivalry with Loukas Notaras led to him painting the megas doux in an unflattering light in his memoirs but much of the dirt thrown in that direction might also be applied to Sphrantzes. He was as guilty of feathering his own nest as his rival. The trip to Georgia netted him 1,600 florins. 

Another area of friction between the two lay in religion. Notaras was the most vocal critic of Constantine's church union with Rome. Sphrantzes, if he was not the actual architect of that policy, was a fervent cheerleader for it. 

In the end, George Sphrantzes outlived not only his master Emperor Manuel but all of Manuel's sons and his own family. Not only that but he lived to see the Morea, Trebizond and Gothia follow Constantinople into Turkish possession. As an intimate member of the imperial inner circle, he has a very good claim to have been the last Byzantine.

The Helmet of Skanderbeg

One of the most iconic pieces of armour from any era, but especially the 15th century, is the helmet of the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg. With its distinctive horned goats head it is a suitably unique piece for a one of a kind warrior. But why a goat's head?

The first thought that comes into my mind is the demon Baphomet, the deity that the Knights Templar were falsely accused of worshipping in trial transcripts for the Inquisition of the Knights Templar starting in 1307. The name had come to Europe with the returning Crusaders but rather than being the goat-demon (that image is more of a 19th century invention) the original Baphomet = Mahomet, Muhammed. A chronicler of the First Crusade, Raymond of Aguilers, called the mosques Bafumarias. The templar trials essentially accused them of having secretly turned to the enemy religion.

Of course it's entirely coincidental, but Skanderbeg of the Baphomet horns was himself at one time a Muslim.



                                        


Gjergj Kastrioti was born into the noble Castriot family. As a child he was taken as part of the Devshirme 'child tax', converted to Islam and was raised at the Ottoman court, then served the Ottoman sultan for the next twenty years, risingto become sanjakbey (governor) of the Sanjak of Dibra in 1440. In 1443, he deserted the during the Battle of Niš and became the ruler of Krujë, Svetigrad, and Modrič. He returned to the Orthodox faith of his family and in 1444, he was appointed commander of the short-lived League of Lezhë. He consolidated power throughout his homeland and thus for the first time Albania was united under a single leader. 

Inevitably the Turks did not take kindly to a turncoat. For 25 years, from 1443 to 1468, Skanderbeg's 10,000 man army held back repeated incursions into the Albanian mountains by much larger Turkish armies. 

In 1451, he recognized de jure the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Naples over Albania through the Treaty of Gaeta, to ensure a protective alliance, although he remained a de facto independent ruler. In 1460–61, he participated in Italy's civil wars in support of Ferdinand I of Naples. In 1463, he became the chief commander of the crusading forces of Pope Pius II, but the Pope died while the armies were still gathering. 

In late 1466, old and ill, he visited Rome to petition the new pontiff, Pope Paul II, for funds to continue his Ottoman resistance. He was given plenty of honours, including a sword which also survives to this day, but little hard currency (2,300 ducats). He commented bitterly that he should be fighting against the Church rather than the Ottomans and then headed south to Naples in early 1467 where his patron was only a little more generous. He returned home but died of malaria in January 1468 and with him effectively died Albania's resistance.


Returning to the iconic helmet and its horns. The best explanation I have comes from Skanderbeg's Islamic childhood. In Surah 18 verses 83-101 of the Quran, Dhul-Qarnayn, 'He of the two horns' is a heroic figure who builds a wall to hold back the monstrous giants, Gog and Magog. Is Skanderbeg's helmet a sly anti-Islamic joke in which he positions himself as Dhul-Qarnayn and implies the Muslim Turks are the giant threat to be held at bay?

Another layer to the reference is the fact that the Dhul-Qarnayn story supposedly entered the Quran from legends of Alexander the Great's exploits in the Middle east. Alexander, as depicted on his coins, wore the horns of the ram-god Zeus-Ammon. He was also (incorrectly) linked to the Sassanid walls in the Caspian Gates which held back the Scythian hordes. And if Dhul-Qarnayn, he of two-horns, is Alexander, it is an appropriate symbol for a man who chose Alexander (Skanderbeg) as his nom de guerre.

Map of Constantinople, 1453 & Finding the house of Loukas Notaras

To orientate readers of Porphyry & Ash, I took the Cristoforo Buondelmonti map of Constantinople from 1420 & rejigged the key bits onto a more accurate land shape. As you can probably tell, this was a first foray into photoshop.

(Click to enlarge)

And here is the original by the Florentine cartographer Cristoforo Buondelmonti

Buondelmonti was an Italian Franciscan priest and traveler who left Tuscany in 1414 and traveled across Greece. His map is the oldest surviving of Constantinople, and the only one which antedates the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453. They were much copied (the one above is actually one of the copies, made in 1491).

In another of the Buondelmonti sketches there is a building which is clearly not a church, with a wonderful belvedere tower on one side and the notation "palatium chir Luca". Is this the house of Loukas Notaras? It fits the rough location of where it should be found.

It also fits the rough location of Eirene Kulesi, the Tower of Eirene - a name given to it by a 16th century traveler. It formed a corner of the Valide Han in the Ottoman era but its Byzantine origin is unconfirmed. Might it have been part of the Notaras family residence?

Notaras Family Tree

George Notaras was father of Nicholas, who made the great fortune which waited in the vaults of St George in Genoa for his granddaughter to later claim.

Of note here is Theodorus Kantakouzene - Eudokia's father and Maria's husband who is the bridge linking the Notaras tree to the Kantakouzenos tree which contains Mara Brankovic.

Demetrios Laskaris Asan, brother-in-law of Loukas, was a bit of tyrant in the Morea (worthy of a blog post his own). He is almost certainly the same 'Uncle" who Helena sent off to ask Mehmed to intervene when Dorion Gattilusio tried to steal Ainos from her. Demetrios had by then sworn his allegiance to Mehmed.

What really happened to Loukas Notaras?

One of the most famous incidents of the Fall of Constantinople is the fate of Loukas Notaras, the megas doux. Naturally the most lurid account has passed down in folk history. In this (pro-Greek) version, the sex-mad beastly Sultan lusts after the young son of Notaras, who refuses to hand him over and suffers Mehmed's wrath.

Other versions (including Edward Gibbons) focus on Notaras as a duplicitous traitor and Mehmed executing him for being untrustworthy (which would be a curious policy if the Sultan ever wanted to have foreign spies and agents in the future) or caught in some intrigue.

Theirry Ganchou, a Byzantine scholar at the Sorbonne has done magnificent work in this area. By looking at both Greek and Ottoman chroniclers of the time and cross referencing the diplomatic correspondence of Venice and Genoa, he has pieced together a picture of how what the governments of these Republics understood to be the situation on the ground in Constantinople evolved through the days and weeks of the summer of 1453.

I would certainly consider Ganchou's account to be most likely closest to the truth. What I think is interesting is that one can see within this version that both of the other two are not that far off reality in certain ways - in other words they are mutations of the truth to fit a bias, rather than total fabrications.

The certain facts of the matter are that Loukas Notaras was executed on 3rd June 1453. This means that he survived for four full days after the siege was ended. Every account indicates that his situation was not initially a dire one but that something happened that radically changed the Sultan's attitude towards him and he was then swiftly executed along with two sons and two sons-in law (then another 30 nobles the next day).

Ganchou holds that the accounts of Isidore of kiev, Kritoboulos of Imbros and Ekthesis Chronike are less polarised about what ook place and so perhaps more trustworthy than those of Niccolò Barbaro, Nikolaos Sékoundinos, Doukas or Chalkokondylès. From this he concludes the following course of events.

The day after the fall, Mehmed II was at first magnanimous. The high dignitaries and all other survivors who had been taken captive were scattered chaotically across the Turkish camp and ships. It was logical to methodically identify who they had taken (not least in order to arrange ransoms where prudent - particularly those citizens of other nations). Loukas Notaras, having been the man to formally surrender the city, was already identified. To facilitate the identification process, each dignitary found was invited to draw up a list of members of his family in order to be reunited with them. Doukas reports that it was Loukas Notaras who was charged with establishing these lists.
Mehmed's logic here appears to have been that by making advances to the former ruling class, he would reassure the Constantinopolitans so that they - having paid their ransoms - would not desert Constantinople en masse. To avoid such an exodus, he even entrusted to Loukas Notaras, the "first mediator" of the deceased basileus. This is very much in line with methods of conquest used elsewhere by the Ottomans. Theirs was not a conquest of decimation - like the Mongols - but an absorption of peoples.

Mehmed reportedly told the dignitaries that they were now "free", and allowed them to return to their homes. But then, sometime between 29th May and 3rd June, negotiations with Notaras broke down.
It seems that the intransigence of Notaras played a key part in the tragic final outcome. As a basis for their agreement, the Sultan demanded that as a token of his good faith, the megas doux consent to have his youngest son placed in his saray and here we have the origins of the salacious folk history of events.

In the circumstances, this demand by Mehmed is perfectly understandable. It was a prudent political tradition and many sons of vanquished had already become pupils of the Ottoman palace school before later resettling on their throne: the two most famous being Albania's Skanderbeg and both the sons of Vlad II of Wallachia. In other words, Mehmed's condition was a simple and very common, claim of a hostage. 

But these examples also would have showed Notaras that, while not inevitable, there was a great risk that the hostage would be forced to convert to Islam. In addition, this new requirement of the sultan could appear to the megas doux as an abuse of power in complete contradiction with its present situation. Mehmed had supposedly already liberated his family and so he should not now suddenly behave now to his sons as if they were children of slaves. Chalkokondyles reports that Notaras rebelled against this request by declaring that he did not understand what he had done to have imposed upon him now this vexatious measure. 

Faced with this impasse, and taking note of the hostile attitude of Notaras, Mehmed then ordered the execution of all high dignitaries and their adult sons. As for their wives, daughters, and those of their sons not older than adolescence, they fell into slavery, becoming the personal property of the Sultan.
An interesting note in Chalkokondylès's account states that Notaras requested his sons be beheaded first - so he would be sure they did not convert to Islam to escape their fate. This adds credence to the idea that the loss of his children to Islam was of significant concern to him. Secondly, Chalkokondyles says that the sons begged their father to tell the executioners that it was possible to have them deliver the wealth they possessed in Italy, so as not to be killed. Perhaps Loukas already had his daughters in mind when he chose not to do so.

And so it was that the two eldest sons of Loukas Notaras, along with the husbands of Maria and Theodora (Theodosos Kantakuzenos and Manuel Palaiolgos) were executed. And also that in the lamentable procession of the ladies of the aristocracy marching towards Adrianople on the 18th June, there were at least three widows: the wife of the megas Doux (who died on the march and was buried in what is now Kirklareli province in Turkish Thrace) and his two daughters, Theodora Palaiologina and Maria Kantakouzene. We might also conclude that either Maria was pregnant with Eudokia Kantakouzene or the child was among this group since her father had been executed and she later appears with her aunts in Italy). As for the young boy who had triggered the tragedy Jacob (Iakobos) was twelve years old at the time of the events. Separated from his sisters, he was destined for the personal service of the sovereign in his saray as a page, like many of the teenage sons of fallen dignitaries. We know that he escaped from the palace sometime around 1460 (aged 19) and made his way to Italy.

The first foreign embassy to the Sultan following the conquest was naturally enough the closest on the ground. It was weeks before news reached Italy but the Lord of Ainos, Palamedes Gattilusio, would have practically been able to see the fires of the siege from his battlements. Ainos (modern day Enez) sat on the Marmara coast at the mouth of the maritzsa river, the same river that wound past the Ottoman capital of Adrinople. A prudent man, he had stayed on good terms with both Byzantines and Ottomans and it would have been nothing but common sense to send congratulations to Mehmed as soon as news reached him of the fall. Kritoboulos of Imbros says the delegation from Palamedes Gattilusio arrived at Adrianople in June.

But Palamedes had another reason to begin speaking with the conquerors. His late eldest son, Giorgio, had married Helena Notaras, the oldest daughter of Loukas Notaras. At this time, it appears she was living with her father-in-law as the Great Lady of Ainos. We know from records that a daughter of the megas doux negotiated the release of the rest of the Notaras family while they were on their way to Adrianople (but not before the matriarch died in Thrace). This daughter is not identified - it might have been Anna, it might have been Helena or it might have been both (since Ganchou's hypothesis is that Anna had been sent to Ainos for her protection before the fall, not Italy).
Now the question arises - why were the Notaras daughter(s) able to ransom both Theodora and Maria but not Jacob? With Loukas Notaras dead, there was no value in him as a hostage. If we reject the idea that Mehmed was infatuated with the boy as a sex slave, we are left with the probability raised by Ganchou that the reason he could not be ransomed was that he had already converted to Islam. There is no documentary confirmation of this conversion and the fact of his escape and subsequent life in Italy speaks in the very least towards it being insincere if it took place at all. Whatever the situation, either Mehmed refused to give Jacob up or Helena did not attempt to purchase his freedom (perhaps on the incomplete information that the sons of Loukas Notaras had been executed).

Meanwhile, the Italian governments were buried under an avalanche of conflicting information about what had taken place. As late as August 16th 1453, the Genoese chancellor was writing to correspondents insisting that the extent of the eastern disaster had been exaggerated and gave as evidence the fact that the sultan had made wise use of his victory and reappointed Loukas Notaras in his position. This might be an understandable reading of events if the author of that report had fled the city sometime between 29th May and 3rd June. The Genoese were particularly interested to know the fate of the Megas Doux since they held in their possession a great fortune at the Bank of St George, which had been placed there by Nicholas Notaras - father of Loukas - many years previously and never touched by Loukas (perhaps because it was seen as emergency fund in case of just such a catastrophe).

On 17th July, Venice was still unaware of the execution of its bailo, Girolamo Minotto (executed on the 30th May). On that day, one of Minotto's sons was given permission to embark for Constantinople to seek his father's ransom. By the 28th August news had clarified and the Senate granted pensions to the widow and children of their bailo following Minotto's death.

Venice then dispatched her own delegation to negotiate a peace treaty with the Sultan. The ambassdor was Bartolomeo Marcello and he took with him the Greek-born Venetian diplomat Nicholas Sagundino (Nikolaos Sekoundinos). Their most likely route to Adrianople would have been to land at Ainos. It is possible that there they came across the released Notaras daughters - we do not know but what is certain is that Sagundino was sent back to Venice in November to relay the situation and he gave a speech to the Senate in December 1453 which focused very firmly on the fate of Loukas Notaras. It is from this speech that the salacious version of events originates. Sagundino chose to make Notaras the counter example of the vices of the young Sultan, contrasting the nobility and imperturbable moral rigor of the vanquished to the savage and barbarous victor. According to him, indeed, the end of the mags doux was worthy of both an ancient hero and a Christian martyr: images calculated to strike a chord with an audience full of Christian humanists. Sagundino therefore plays up the noble figure of a truly "Roman" father who, realizing that the Sultan's request to surrender his youngest son concealed only infamous designs, refuses to obey in the full knowledge that it will condemned both him and his son. He also juxtaposes the 'pure' love of a father for the immortal soul of his child against the 'impure' love of a sexual deviant.

In Sagundino's account, Notaras exhorts his sons to accept death with inspired words worthy of Plutarch or a martyr of the first centuries. The story told in this way also echoes that of Saint Pelagius, a thirteen-year-old Christian martyr in tenth century Spain who refused the sexual advances of a Cordoban caliph. And of course, such an echo from Iberia would be a hope-inducing reminder to Greeks of the Reconquista, at that time almost completed.

Such was his eloquance that Sagundino was sent on by the Senate to repeat his performance to the Pope and King of Naples (which he duly did on December 27th and January 24th respectively). In March 1454, Genoa gave instruction to its ambassadors to Adrianople, Baldassare Marruffo and Luciano Spinola to inquire about the fate of the son and two daughters of Loukas Notaras who were said to be prisoners. In the event neither man arrived in Adrianople - one died on route, the other refused to go further than Chios out of fear.

The Notaras case therefore gained a certain amount of fame on the Italian peninsular and led to more than one creditor emerging who tried to obtain payment from the assets frozen in the Bank of St George. The resolution of who should inherit this fortune was a long and tangled affair (with the only surviving male heir being dismissed by Italian authorities on the grounds of his conversion to Islam). We know that Maria and Theodora were ransomed for 700 ducats (a much higher sum than other Constantinopolitans were freed for) and that obtaining the funds for this was very much bound up in the issue of the frozen assets.

Un-Boxing Helena

        Sometimes scattered pieces of historical information fit together to form a picture of the past which, whilst not definitive, appears plausible. Such is the case of Helena Notaras, the elder sister of Anna Notaras.

        As so often with non-royal women of the past, what little information was recorded of their lives comes as a side-note or afterthought in documents focused on the men around them. It is therefore a matter of collecting up these fragments and puzzling out the mosaic of a life from among them.

      Loukas Notaras was among the wealthiest (if not the richest) man in mid-15th century Constantinople, holder of several important court functions, in 1441 he sailed with George Sphrantzes and the Despot of the Morea (the future emperor Constantine XI) to Mytilene on Lesbos where Constantine married the daughter of the Lord of Lesbos, Dorino Gattilusio. The Gattilusio family, originally from Genoa, had been lords of Lesbos and the Cyclades archipelago for a century and had followed a policy of prudent integration with both their Ottoman and Byzantine neighbours: Dorino's aunt, Irene, had married the Byzantine Empeor John VII Palaiologos.

       It would appear that Notaras took the opportunity to link his own family to a royal occasion by arranging the wedding festivities to be a double union. As well as Caterina Gattilusio's marriage to Constantine, Dorino's nephew, (Giorgio Gattilusio) took the hand of the eldest daughter of Loukas Notaras in 1441. Helena.

       This was a prudent choice. For whilst Dorino Gattilusio ruled Lesbos, his brother Palamedes was ruler of Ainos (modern day Enez), a small city on the Thracian peninsula and Giorgio was his father's heir. [It's a measure of the inter-related nature of medieval aristocracy that two of Giorgio's sisters married Campofregoso brothers, both of whom served as doge of Genoa in their time]. The Notaras were a merchant family, originally from Monemvasia with estates in the Morea, Kythera & strong links to Genoese merchant familes including the Gritti and Lomellini, so a marital link into the Genoese Gattilusio was likely as much about business as imperial prestige. Loukas Notaras's father Nicholas had obtained Genoese citizenship in the 1390s while negotiating grain contracts on behalf of the emperor John VII.

        Both Helena & Constantine's marriages to the Gattilusio cousins were tragically short lived. A year after the wedding festivities, while travelling from the Morea, Constantine's ships ran into a Turkish pirate fleet and took shelter on Lemnos. There Caterina died of complications from a miscarriage. It was the second time Constantine had been widowed in this way. He never married again.

        Helena's husband Giorgio also died young, in 1449. By then, Helena had born him at least two children. We don't know if Helena and the children remained living with Palamedes Gattilusio in Ainos at this time but it's clear Helena did not give up her interest in her husband's estate. The Gattilusi of Ainos paid a tribute to the Ottoman Sultans and Mehmed's army left the city unmolested on its march to Constantinople.

       The Lord of Ainos was the first to pay respects to Mehmed as the new ruler of Constantinople and it seems that at this point Helena began to try and negotiate the ransom of her two sisters (her mother having died on the march to Adrianople). If she tried to also obtain her brother Jacob's freedom at this time it was impossible - since he had converted to Islam and joined the Sultan's palace school as a page.

      The ransom negotations for Theodora and Maria Notaras were prolonged - it took almost two years to be completed - and complicated by a legal question which arose in Italy over what should happen to the vast Notaras family fortune which was frozen in the Bank of St George in Genoa. That issue was not fully resolved until 1459, but in the meantime the ransom of the girls was set at 700 ducats - by far the highest ransom rate of any recorded among abductees of the fall. This as much as anything shows the status of the Notaras family at this time as second in social rank only to the imperial family of the Palaiologoi.

      Meanwhile in Ainos, two years after the fall, Palamedes Gattilusio himself died at the age of c.65 year old (perhaps at shock from the ransom his daughter-in-law was seeking to pay!). With Giorgio long since dead, the title of Lord of Ainos by rights should have passed to any son Helena had born. Instead, Giorgio's brother Dorino claimed the lordship. We might assume that one of Helena's children was indeed a boy, because in late 1455 she appealed to the sultan for him as suzerain of Ainos, to uphold her child's inheritance rights. An unnamed uncle was dispatched to petition the Ottoman court.

       Dorino Gattilusio's brief rein over Ainos does not seem to have been a happy one. Turkish records indicate that Helena's was not the only complaint which had been raised against him and judges from local Turkish towns had also blackened his name. Whether it was in response to this or not, we know that a squadron of 10 ships under Yunus Pasha set out from Constantinople and bore down upon Ainos on 25th January 1456 [It's not clear if this is the same man as 'Yunus Bey' aka Thomas Katabolenos, Greek secretary to the Sultan who would be killed in the failed ambushing of Vlad Dracula in 1461].

Gates of Ainos

         Dorino had the good fortune to be out when the long arm of Turkish justice came knocking that January. He was on Samothrace, another of the islands under Gattilusio control. The people of Ainos opened the gates to Yunus Pasha without contest and the town fell under Turkish control and remains so to this day. What happened to Dorino is a story for another day.

          Governorship of the town was given to Demetrios Palaiologos in 1463 when the Morea was conquered but it appears to never have been handed over to Helena Notaras or her son. Instead Helena vanished from historical sight in 1456 until we see her mentioned in the last will and testimony of her younger sister Anna and even then it is a posthumous reference. By 1493 it appears that Helena had taken the monastic name of Euphrosyne and subsequently died but we have dates for neither. We also have no certainty over whether she joined Theodora and Anna in Italy or what happened to her children. One possibility is that in 1456 they joined their young uncle Jacob in the Ottoman palace school and grew up as Janissary as many of the children of fallen Constantinople did (the siege of Malta in 1480 was commanded by Mesih Pasha, a young scion of the imperial Palaiologoi who had been ten at the time of the fall).

   

       Euphrosyne, Goddess of Joy and Mirth, was the name Helena chose to take in later life (although she probably had St Euphrosyne of Alexandria in mind)

The mystery of Helena's life between Girogio's death and her death as the nun 'Euphrosyne' will likely never be fully resolved. But following the strands along their lines of possible continuation are a good measure of how inter-connected the aristocratic families of Genoa, Serbia, Byzantium and even the Ottomans were at this time.