The Island of the Pope: Catholics in the Aegean Archipelago Between Empire and Nation-State, 1770-1830 1805398598, 9781805398592

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Contents
Maps and Figures
Preface
INTRODUCTION: What Happened to the “Island of the Pope”?
PART I - The Imperial Setting
CHAPTER 1. The Early Modern Aegean Archipelago and the “Island of the Pope”
CHAPTER 2. From the Russian Occupation to the Greek Revolution (1770–1820)
CHAPTER 3. The Outbreak of the Revolution
CHAPTER 4. The Holy See and the Greek Insurrection from the Massacre of Chios to the Congress of Verona
PART II - Revolution in the Islands
CHAPTER 5. Territorial Integration and the Battle for the Tithe
CHAPTER 6. Nestor Faziolis’s Incursions and the Takeover of the Port
CHAPTER 7. On the Limits of Sovereignty and the Frontiers of Civilization
CHAPTER 8. The Empire Strikes Back Crete, Kasos, and Psara
CHAPTER 9. Luigi Maria Blancis and the Adjustment to the New Reality
CONCLUSION: Endgame
Chronology
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Island of the Pope

The Island of the Pope Catholics in the Aegean Archipelago between Empire and Nation-State, 1770–1830 m m m Dimitris Kousouris

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2025 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2025 Dimitris Kousouris All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2024950948 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-80539-859-2 hardback ISBN 978-1-80539-860-8 epub ISBN 978-1-80539-863-9 web pdf https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805398592

For Tasso, and our seas of islands

SIRA, Siro. Syros, Syria. C’est une des isles de l’Archipel. Elle est à sept lieues des Sdilles du côté du Midi. Elle a une ville Episcopale, suffragante de Nacsia. La plûpart de ses habitans sont des Chrétiens Latins; de là vient, qu’on l’appelle quelquefois l’isle du Pape. (SIRA, Siro. Syros, Syria. One of the islands of the Archipelago. It lies seven leagues south of Rhenea and Delos. It has an episcopal city, suffragan of Naxos. Most of its inhabitants are Latin Christians; hence, it is sometimes called the Island of the Pope.) —Charles Maty, Dictionnaire Géographique Universel

Map 0.1.  Map of the Levant by Fredric Hasselquist. Hasselquist, Voyages and Travels in the Levant. © Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Library, Harvard University, reproduced with permission.

Contents m m m List of Maps and Figures Preface Introduction.  What Happened to the “Island of the Pope”?

x xii 1

PART I: The Imperial Setting Chapter 1.  The Early Modern Aegean Archipelago and the “Island of the Pope”

17

Chapter 2.  From the Russian Occupation to the Greek Revolution (1770–1820)35 Chapter 3.  The Outbreak of the Revolution

53

Chapter 4.  The Holy See and the Greek Insurrection from the Massacre of Chios to the Congress of Verona

68

PART II: Revolution in the Islands Chapter 5.  Territorial Integration and the Battle for the Tithe

81

Chapter 6.  Nestor Faziolis’s Incursions and the Takeover of the Port

99

Chapter 7.  On the Limits of Sovereignty and the Frontiers of Civilization115 Chapter 8.  The Empire Strikes Back: Crete, Kasos, and Psara

129

Chapter 9.  Luigi Maria Blancis and the Adjustment to the New Reality

146

Conclusion.  Endgame163 Chronology183 Bibliography 188 Index205

Maps and Figures m m m

Maps Map 0.1.

Map of the Levant by Fredric Hasselquist. Hasselquist, Voyages and Travels in the Levant. © Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Library, Harvard University, reproduced with permission.

vii

Map 1.1.

Map of Syros by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. De Tournefort, Relation d’un Voyage du Levant, 320. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission. 23

Map 1.2.

Map of the Eastern Mediterranean indicating Ottoman claims to maritime territoriality in 1696, 1703, 1744, 1758, and 1779. In Firges et al., Well-Connected Domains, 61. © Tobias P. Graf and Michael Talbot using map data provided by Natural Earth, 2014, reproduced with permission. 

30

“Map of the Port of Syros: View of the City” by Joseph Roux. In Recueil des Principaux Plans, des Ports, et Rades de la Méditerranée. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission.

70

Map 4.1.

Map 10.1. “Map of the Cyclades” by Daniel Baud-Bovy and Frédéric Boissonnas. In Des Cyclades en Crète au gré du vent, 25. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, reproduced with permission.178

Figures Figure 3.1. View of the Town and Island of Syra by Florent Auguste de Gabriel Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce, 48. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission.

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Maps and Figures

xi

Figure 9.1. S yra: A Greek Island by John Carne, Syria, The Holy Land, Asia Minor, &c. Illustrated, 36. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission. 151 Figure 10.1. Syros: The Latin Town by Daniel Baud-Bovy and Frédéric Boissonnas. In Des Cyclades en Crète au gré du vent, 25. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission.

177

Preface m m m

We all have or should have homelands: family, community, national homelands. And to deny human beings the sense of homeland is to deny them a deep spot on Earth to anchor their roots. —Epeli Hau’ofa, “Pasts to Remember”1

The expression Sira nostra Patria (Syra our homeland), repeatedly used by Catholic priests of Syros petitioning against a series of incidents of violence and land encroachment by Greek Orthodox pirates, soldiers, refugees, and settlers during the Greek War of Independence, reminded me of those words of Epeli Hau’ofa, written for another homeland, and another insular space, the remote Oceanian sea of islands. This book revisits an instance of the disintegration of a premodern ethnoreligious community and identity and recounts how the Catholic Latins of the Aegean Archipelago were rebranded in less than ten years “Greeks of the Western Church.” The transition from an imperial setting and overlapping forms of extraterritorial sovereignty toward a territorial conception of sovereignty, in tune with the new national setting that was about to take shape, is one of the major themes of this book. The story of how an island of medium size and minor importance encountered the events of world history involves the creation of a new Christian state and the making of a new political, but also symbolic and ideological frontier between Europe and the Orient. In the middle of a contact zone between different cultures and religions and transformed into a major trade hub, Syros became a crossroads for the circulation of political ideas of revolution and counterrevolution in the Ottoman Levant. Exploring the dialectics of connectedness and isolation of this insular community involves inevitably a discussion of their hybrid half-European and half-Oriental Latin or Levantine identities. These issues provide a canvas upon which unfolds the process of the incorporation of Syros and the integration of its Latin community into the new nation-state. The view from the hill of the Latins on Syros island provides a distinct peripheral perspective on the major transitions that took place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Latin community of Syra that used

Preface xiii

to rule the entire island for centuries was among the vanquished of these transformations; this book is an attempt to reconstruct the last half-century of its existence as an autonomous community. Although history is written by the victors, as Reinhart Koselleck already reminded us, the most important gains for our knowledge of the past stem in the long run from the perspective of the vanquished. In that sense, by adding a missing piece to the history of the early modern “far-flung city of the Aegean archipelago,” this narrative intends to weave some threads for further investigation and discussion. The juxtaposition of the view from Syros with those from Smyrna, Constantinople, the Peloponnese, Rome, Paris, and Vienna provides a transnational perspective that allows us to see beyond the anachronisms, silences, and distortions of national histories that prevailed after the nineteenth century. Focusing, for instance, on the daily interactions between Latin islanders and Orthodox Greeks allows us to discern a range of plural early modern Hellenisms that goes beyond an alleged Orthodox Commonwealth. Accordingly, the transition of Syros from the Ottoman Empire to the Greek nation-state captures a snapshot of the manifold circulations and mobilities of people, goods, and ideas in the Eastern Mediterranean during the long nineteenth century. Ultimately, a systematic examination of how the Catholic population has fared until today and the gradual process of their integration, assimilation, and formation of a national identity remains an open issue for scholarly research. Since every research endeavor is by definition a product of collective work, collaborations, and exchanges, my debts to persons and institutions are too many to fit into this short text. Yet, I would like to thank here those friends and colleagues who, when I started exploring this field, facilitated my acquaintance with the archival sources that formed the core of this research. Sophia Roussou was the first to notify me of the availability of the Syros church archives. Elias Kolovos first showed me the way to the archives of the Catholic bishoprics of the Aegean islands. Father Markos Foskolos provided valuable advice for my research in the archives of the Catholic Archdiocese of Tinos-Naxos as well as in the other church archives in Greece and in Rome. The Catholic bishop of Syros Petros Stefanou and the archivist Michalis Roussos benevolently facilitated my access to the diocesan archives. Christos Loukos and the archivists of the General State Archives helped me find my way into the archives of the Community of Ano Syra. Despoina Georgopoulaki-Loukou offered me a most instructive tour along the cobbled streets of Hermoupolis up to the outskirts of Ano Syros. Father Sevastianos Freris welcomed me to the precious resources of the Jesuit Library and Archive in Athens. The late Professor Otto Kresten provided me with valuable advice and references that facilitated my access to the archives of the Vatican and the Propaganda Fide. Furthermore, I owe thanks to the students who attended my seminars and lectures for their comments and

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Preface

critiques, as well as to the friends and colleagues who read the manuscript or parts of it in the various phases of its preparation. Responsibility for any errors or omissions obviously rests solely with me. Finally, I would like to thank my father, Petros, who throughout this adventure frequently provided me with advice and references that helped me make sense of shipping, seamanship, and navigation of those times. Vienna, September 2024 Note   1. Hau’ofa, “Pasts to Remember,” 77.

INTRODUCTION

What Happened to the “Island of the Pope”? m m m

Syra ou Syros, come l’appelloient les anciens, est une île de la mer Égée ou Archipel, située presqu’au centre des Cyclades, vers le 37e degré 22 minutes de latitude et le 42e degré 14 minutes de longitude. Sa longueur du N.O. au S.E. est d’environ 14 milles, et sa largeur de l’O. à l’E., c’est qui lui donne environ 40 milles des côtes, quoiqu’on les estime communément qu’à 36 dans le pays.1

A medium-sized island, Syros counts among the most densely populated islands in the Cyclades, with more than twenty thousand inhabitants, two-thirds of whom live in Hermoupolis, the regional capital of the South Aegean administrative district of the Aegean Sea, a town founded and built by Greek Orthodox merchants and refugees during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1832). The fact that a third of its population are Roman Catholics adds a touch of Levantine multiculturalism to the nineteenth-century cosmopolitanism of the new city. Viewed from the sea, the two hills facing each other over the harbor, each with a church on the top, the Catholic Saint George Cathedral and the Orthodox Resurrection of the Savior, are emblematic of the multiple links of cooperation, interdependence and/or antagonisms between Orthodox and Catholics. This was not always the case. The Greek Revolution of 1821 constitutes a radical rupture in the history of the island, separating before from after. Before, in the Ottoman era, Syra, as it was then known, was the only Aegean island inhabited for centuries by a majority of Catholics. According to most sources, between the early seventeenth and the beginnings of the nineteenth century, the Latins, also called Franks (φράγκοι, efrenc) by their Orthodox counterparts and the imperial administration, accounted for more than 90 percent of the island’s population, compared to only “a handful of Greeks.”2 Hence, Syra became the “most Catholic island of the Archipelago,”3 also known as the “island of the Pope.” With a handful of notable exceptions,4 the presence, activity, and distinct identity of this community after its integration into the Greek nation-state has drawn only marginal attention in scholarly research. In most histories of the revolutionary events, the Latins of Syros figure usually as a detail in the saga of

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The Island of the Pope

founding and building in only a few years a new city that would become a major industrial and commercial hub of the new kingdom. According to a master narrative shaped in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the majority of indigenous Latins withdrew to the hill, overwhelmed by the revolutionary events, to be dragged into the new realities of the nation-state once the war was over.5 This research springs out of a gap I noticed back in 2016–17 while doing research on the population movements of hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims during the Greek War of Independence, in an early occurrence of the mass migrations of ethnic un-mixing of peoples in the region.6 While the arrival and settlement in Syros of tens of thousands of Greek Orthodox after 1822 is one of the best-documented aspects of the various forms of forced or voluntary migration, the encounter of those newcomers from Chios, Ayvalik, Psara, Crete, and all parts of the Ottoman Levant with the local Latin community, and the reactions and reluctant integration of the latter into the new state, have always remained a side story, in the background of those epochal events. This book attempts to revisit Syros’s transition from the perspective of the medieval hill town and the Latin community of four to five thousand souls who lived within its walls. How did the native inhabitants of the “island of the Pope” experience the arrival of over thirty thousand refugees and settlers? How did they initially implement their neutrality in the conflict between Greeks and Ottomans, and how did they respond to the different forms of violence? How did they affirm, accommodate, or compromise their distinct Latin identity and how did this shape their allegiances and tactics in the changing conjunctures? After all, how did they respond to that Braudelian “call of history,” the transformation of their island in the twinkling of an eye into a major hub of the Levantine trade?

The Aegean Archipelago: A Space In-between in Times of Transition A precarious, restricted, and threatened life, such was the lot of the islands, their domestic life at any rate. But their external life, the role they have played in the forefront of history far exceeds what might be expected from such poor territories. The events of history often lead to the islands. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they make use of them.7

The most recent synthesis of a history of Hermoupolis by Christos Loukos, covering the period until the mid-twentieth century, contains a brief but interesting section on the old town and the local Catholic community. The claims of the Catholics to their properties seized in the mid-1820s by the Greek Orthodox settlers continued to feed occasional tensions throughout the nineteenth century. Anti-Catholicism remained pronounced among the inhabitants

Introduction 3

of Hermoupolis. The old medieval town and the newly built city were integrated as separate administrative entities and remained so, in different forms, all through the twentieth century. Despite various pressures, the local Syriots maintained for decades their trade and networks with the Levantine hubs of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. About a century later, a few years after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, their distinct hybrid identity based on indigenousness and religion had been adapted to the new setting: “We, Greek Catholics, aspire to be Catholics within Hellenism and Greeks within Catholicism.”8 Until the Greek Revolution, Syriot Catholics were generally known or referred to as Latins, and as such they declared their neutrality at the outbreak of the Greek insurgency. They were first addressed as “Greeks of the Western Church” by representatives of the provisional revolutionary government and as such were also included in the newly established Greek Kingdom.9 This book relates how, within a decade of war, incursions, attacks, land encroachments, mass arrivals of refugees and settlers that sometimes bore a resemblance to colonization or outright conquest, the community of indigenous Syriot Catholics abandoned their Latin identity for that of Greeks of the Western Church. During the next two centuries within the nation-state, that story has not been an easy one to recount for either side. Instead, various Catholic Syriot intellectuals often sought to integrate their community into the national history, by highlighting linguistic traits or material remains that provided evidence for the Greekness of the local population throughout the centuries, including those under Frankish rule.10 In order to reconstruct the story from the point of view of that insular community, we explore the dialectics of isolation and connectivity, following the internal dynamics of solidarity and division but also the multiple threads that connected the island with the Levantine communities of Smyrna and Constantinople, the trade hubs of the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean and the hierarchy, networks, and religious missions of the Holy See, and all sorts of representatives of France and other imperial courts of Europe. The renegotiation of their collective identity markers was imposed by a sudden change of the frame of reference, a fragmentation of the Archipelago and the inclusion of the Cyclades in the territories of the new nation-state, from the Ottoman eyalet of the islands of the White Sea to the Greek prefecture of the Cyclades in the Aegean. The contacts, exchanges, and negotiations of Syros and the other Catholic communities of the Archipelago with the Greek government have drawn the attention of historical research, in a long-running debate around their alleged unpatriotic attitude during the Revolution.11 For that purpose, I looked into the archives of the Municipality of Ano Syros, the Catholic Diocese of Syros in Hermoupolis, the Catholic Archdiocese of Tinos-Naxos in Xinara and the

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The Island of the Pope

Jesuit Library and Archives in Athens. The traces of correspondence located in Greece revealed an intense communication with prelates of the Catholic Church as well as with diplomats and military officers of the French and the Habsburg empires. Since the archives of the nineteenth century rarely contain copies of the outgoing correspondence, I followed the thread of those exchanges in a number of individual or collective petitions from or about Syra, letters, reports, or formal declarations in the Archive of the Propaganda Fide, the Vatican Apostolic Archive, the Diplomatic Archives of the French Foreign Ministry and the Austrian State Archives. As Syros was a regular port of call for European merchants and diplomats, passersby, travelers, missionaries and envoys, I also managed to draw and cross-check information about the Catholic community of Syros, using a number of published sources, mainly travelogues and various accounts of the revolutionary events. From a geographical point of view, this brings us to the dialectics of isolation and connectedness. If isolation is inherent in the concept of insularity, the sea that surrounds the islands cutting them off from the rest of the world is also the linking body through which insular societies maintain formal and informal connections and relationships with the world around them. Recent research on ancient, medieval, and modern insularity has highlighted the complex matrix of maritime connectivity.12 In the Mediterranean, and even more in the Archipelago, the “sea of islands,” isolation was only relative and provisional. The islands functioned since antiquity as bridges in a dense matrix of connectivity through complex and ever-changing networks of mobilities, stations, and ports of call. This book attempts to decipher how, to follow Fernand Braudel’s metaphor, the events of history or the events of war make use of a medium-sized island, placing it at the center of a modern “dance of the islands”—the ancient poetic image for intense insular connectivity, mobility, and interaction.13 Situated in an intermediate gradient of sovereignty where the presence of the Ottoman authority was limited to the occasional dispatch of judges (kadis) and an annual visit of the fleet,14 Syra possessed a deep and large natural harbor on its eastern side and, most importantly, a unique status of neutral territory, controlled neither by the Ottomans nor by the Greek insurgents, with a local community that was for centuries under French protection. Hence, the shore under the old medieval town would become a safe haven for entrepreneurs, pirates, traders of all sorts, and a shelter for thousands of refugees. According to James Emerson Tennent, a British philhellene, “Syra [was] now the only neutral port of the empire equally respected by Turk and Greek, and permitted to carry on the trifling remnant of commerce remaining in the Cyclades.”15 The Archipelago remained a contested sea since the centuries of shared or shifting Byzantine and Latin/Frankish rule to the long-standing antagonisms and wars between the Ottomans and Venetians.16 In recent decades, a growing

Introduction 5

number of approaches have explored the dialectics of singularity and diversity, isolation and connectivity, contact and conflict in the islands of the late Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean.17 The maritime dimension of the Ottoman Empire has come into focus both from the perspective of the Sublime Porte, the logic guiding the conquest of the islands and their organization, as well as from the point of view of the insular societies, their reciprocal links and the continuities of their social and economic structures through the transfers of imperial power. Next to the studies on the demography and ethnoreligious diversity of those islands, long considered as a sort of ethnographic conservatory, recent research has shed light on their networks and modes of communications with each other and with the rest of the world, as well as on the precariousness of their position and the dangers caused by piracy.18 Syra was thence part of the “far-flung city” of the Aegean Archipelago,19 a diverse aggregate of insular communities striving to overcome the structural disproportion between local resources and needs through various forms of fishing, shipping, and trade. The multiple threads connecting these insular societies with the world around, reveal a plurality of spatial perspectives and temporalities. The spatial extent and multiplicity of its connections allows us to grasp a more comprehensive, multilateral and multifocal, and transnational perspective of the revolutionary events of the 1820s. The conflicting claims for political sovereignty over Syros during the 1820s describe the Archipelago as a liminal space with fuzzy boundaries, a space of mobility and intense interaction and dynamic interplay between majority and minority cultures, between the boundaries of imperial entities, in other words a contact zone or a Sattelraum.20 When caught in the dynamic field of struggle between revolution and counterrevolution, empires and nations, this insular space, whose territories dispose “the strange capacity of preserving for centuries antique forms of civilization,”21 offers a panorama of the contemporaneity of the non-contemporaneous. Multiple temporalities coexisting next to each other can easily be noticed in the shifting boundaries of cultural and political geography. Depending on the ideological and spatial perspective of different actors, the Greek Orthodox subjects of the sultan could be named or referred to as Greeks, Romans, or Hellenes; the Catholics as Latins, Franks, Levantines, Grecolatins or Greek Catholics; the maritime space at stake as the Archipelago, White Sea, or Aegean. Syra itself (or Sira in Italian) was since the eighteenth century reported on by European writers with its ancient Greek name in various, at times misleading, spellings (Syros, Siros, Sciros). The encounter with the multitude of traders, sailors and captains, soldiers and officers, pirates and refugees produced a kind of Arendtian gap between past and future, an “interval in time altogether determined by things that are no longer and by things that are not yet.”22 Pre-national imperial forms of

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The Island of the Pope

extraterritoriality based on the Capitulations (ahdnames) conceded by the sultan to various European powers existed alongside claims and forms of territorial sovereignty;23 hence, among others, the double taxation paid by the community to both Ottomans and Greeks during half of the decade examined in this book. Steamships, a large-scale ship-building industry, printing presses, rapid monetization of the economy existed alongside traditional forms of agriculture and animal husbandry, like the Syriot beekeeping praised by Abbé della Rocca thirty years earlier. New instances of secular administration functioned alongside ecclesiastical courts and traditional forms of government. Eventually, a compromise was achieved on the basis of a strict distinction between nationalism and religion, as formulated first in 1823 by the Interior Minister of the provisional Greek government.24 “Sira nostra patria,” a recurring phrase in the petitions of local Catholic priests against the crimes and offenses committed by the thousands of  “foreigners” (forestieri), illustrates both that which was about to vanish and that which was about to come into being. It epitomizes a pre-national notion of fatherland bound by common descent, territory, and religion, which for a limited amount of time existed alongside—only to be finally replaced by—a modern notion of homeland as national space.

“Sira Nostra Patria” The multiple threads linking Syra with Istanbul, Smyrna, Rome, Paris, or the Vatican portray the island as a crossroads in which several regional studies (Ottoman, Greek, European, East Mediterranean, etc.) and several fields of historical research (the history of religion, nationalism, empires, revolutions) intersect, raising questions concerning analysis and research that could not fit into a single book. Therefore, rather than exhausting the range of questions posed by the material studied, the aim of this book is to add a missing piece to the history of the revolutions of the 1820s and to map the territory of this developing field for further research. The territory containing the only Catholic community that did not represent a small minority among larger aggregates and a unique Ottoman territory not inhabited and/or controlled by a Muslim or Greek Orthodox majority, Syra remained for centuries part of an imperial setting. With a varying but considerable degree of autonomy all through the Ottoman era, the Syriots exploited their close ties with the Catholic Church and the French to integrate the Levantine communities and networks of the Empire.25 If the French Revolution and the wars that ensued had already upset the imperial order in the Ottoman Levant, the Greek Revolution of 1821 and the consequent creation

Introduction 7

of the Greek Kingdom raised a new border in land and sea that fragmented the imperial space and heralded the long passage to the age of nationalisms. In this sense, the inclusion of Syra and the integration of its Latin community into the new nation-state as a religious minority is representative of the end of a historical era. Following the chronological order, the chapters are divided in two parts: one (chapters 1 to 4) on what was no longer, that is, early modern Syros before the 1820s; and one (chapters 5 to 9) on what was about to occur, focusing on the events of the years 1822 to 1830. The last chapter attempts to draw some provisional conclusions and to formulate questions for further research. Chapter 1 introduces a long-term perspective reviewing Syros and the other Catholic communities of the Archipelago from the time of the Latin Empire and the Crusader states until the late eighteenth century. The modest purpose of this hazardous endeavor to fit half a millennium in a few pages is to propose an approach that, instead of following the often unproductive or illusory path of looking for a real or imaginary ethnic origin, explores the making of this hybrid community and identity through the major turns of the historical tide: transition to Ottoman rule, Counter-Reformation, the Tridentine church and the era of missions, the Capitulations and French protection, the Ottoman– Venetian antagonisms, the role of Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the “Orthodox reconquest” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alongside antagonisms and conflicts between Orthodox and Catholics, diverse forms of syncretism, conversions, shared places of rite and comunicatio in sacris indicate that the boundaries of belonging and allegiance between the two churches remained to a great extent permeable, movable, and negotiable all through the early modern period. The presence of the so-called northern invaders in the Mediterranean since the sixteenth century and the European state system after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) blurred but did not dissipate the boundaries of religious conflicts and divisions.26 During the seventeenth century, the tensions between Orthodox and Catholic culminated around the Veneto–Ottoman conflicts, until Tinos, the last Venetian outpost in the Archipelago, passed to the Ottomans in 1715. Instead of a consolidation of Ottoman control in the region, the gradual withdrawal of the Serenissima created a power vacuum that was to be filled by local sailors and captains, primarily Greek Orthodox, who started taking over small- and medium-distance (caravane) trade across the Eastern and Central Mediterranean. A series of Russo–Ottoman wars during the reign of Catherine the Great in the last third of the century signaled the beginning of the involvement of the region in large-scale antagonisms.27 Chapter 2 starts at the time of the first of those wars, which for Syros and the other Cyclades produced a unique disruption of Ottoman rule through a short period of Russian occupation between 1770 and 1774. The fifty years separating that Russian

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The Island of the Pope

occupation from the Greek Revolution were marked by the upheavals of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1792–1815) but were also a period of commercial opportunities, of intense mobility, connectivity, and population growth in the region. In Syros, as in most other insular societies, economic growth and mounting inequalities intensified internal divisions across lines of income, status, and class but also of religion. A revolt of the poor farmers working in the countryside (chorikoi) against the notables (kastrinoi) in 1814, provisionally deposed the epitropos from office. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the community was also involved in a long feud with the Orthodox Metropolitan of Andros and his local representative around the ownership of a chapel. According to a series of reports to the Propaganda Fide, external pressure and internal strife had contributed to a gradual decline of Catholicism in the Archipelago. In a demonstration of the different temporalities at play, the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in the Morea coincided with a key moment in the internal strife in Syra: the departure of the Catholic bishop, Russin, for Rome, accused of being at the head of one of the two parties that divided his flock. Part of the revolutionary wave of the early 1820s in the Mediterranean,28 the Greek revolt appeared first as a regional uprising. Chapter 3 assesses its impact on Syra during 1821. As for most Archipelago islands, the first year of the Greek insurrection had no significant effect on the internal situation or the overall position of Syra. The Latin prelates urgently requested instructions from the French ambassador in Istanbul and activated channels of communication with the Austrian internunzio, the Apostolic Vicariate in Istanbul, the French general consul and the Catholic archbishop in Smyrna, the archbishop of Naxos, and the whole web of connections between Catholic hierarchs and vice-consuls of France and other European powers in the region. Chapter 4 revisits the internationalization of the Greek question from the perspective of the Holy See. Already committed to condemning the Carbonari, justifying and facilitating the oppression of the liberal revolts in the Italian peninsula by Austrian troops, the Vatican believed the Greek revolt would fail. Catholics in the Ottoman lands received instructions to observe full neutrality and to demonstrate loyalty to the Porte. Along with some Orthodox prelates or vice-consuls, the Latins evoked French protection and hoisted the French flag on churches and consular residences. Until the Congress of Verona (1822), the question of the Catholic communities in the Archipelago for the Greek insurgents was mainly a foreign policy issue affecting their relations with the European sovereigns, especially the Holy See and the French emperor. In the wake of the collaboration between Cardinal Ettore Consalvi and Klemens von Metternich for the suppression of the Italian revolts, the Vatican requested a more active involvement of the Austri-

Introduction 9

ans in the protection of the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, along with the Division du Levant of the French Navy. It was at that moment that the fate of Syra was first implicated in international politics as a Catholic outpost that could be conceded to the Knights Hospitaller in a treaty unofficially negotiated by the French Count Philippe Jourdain on behalf of the Greek government.29 The second part of the book starts when the Greeks first laid specific sovereignty claims over the Archipelago islands, challenging the imperial status quo. The Chios massacre had an enormous impact on those insular societies. Thousands of refugees and fear of subsequent Ottoman attacks stimulated oaths of allegiance to the sultan from both Orthodox and Catholics and stirred internal strife. As Mark Mazower has noticed for neighboring Tinos during the same period, where the two communities shared the island, in the power vacuum created by the revolutionary events conflicts between leading factions took on religious connotations.30 The Latins were officially addressed as co-nationals who shared common descent, language, territory, and Christian faith. At the same time, there is plenty of evidence that in real life they were often treated as Turcophiles. That Syra was the only Cycladic island not included in the national territories of the first tentative administrative division of the Greek state in 1822 was a tacit but clear acknowledgment of its distinct ethnoreligious identity. Chapter 5 follows the Greek attempts to control the islands through coercion and consensus in 1822–23. In most islands, the Revolution was imported from outside. The purpose of the first representatives of the Greek government was to organize a system of taxation and representation of those communities in the National Assembly. The battle for the collection of the annual tithes in the Archipelago was of vital importance for the maintenance of the Greek fleet in 1822–23. This happened sometimes through compromise with the local primates, and sometimes by means of military intervention or gunboat diplomacy carried out by ships from Hydra, Spetses, and Psara. The war and its consequences, thousands of refugees, the transit of prisoners and slaves, piratic raids, and disrupted communications and commercial routes multiplied pressure on those insular societies and deepened social cleavages along lines of class and status rather than of confession. Reportedly, Syra also had two opposing factions (partiti) who were either in favor or against their bishop, which were distinguished from each other by the social status of their membership. Meanwhile, the number of merchants and refugees settling temporarily in the harbor under the old town already equaled or even outnumbered the local population. When the Greeks started their attempts to take over control of the port, the local community had already elected a new governor from the Syriot diaspora in Istanbul, while the diocese had been provisionally put under the supervision of the archbishop of Smyrna. Chapter

10

The Island of the Pope

6 focuses on a sequence of proxy warfare and gunboat diplomacy carried out in 1823 by the Greek insurgents against the Latin community of Syra. A series of raids and incursions headed by a Cephalonian ship captain on ships flying the flag of the Ionian Islands—a British protectorate since 1815—were countered by armed groups of local Latins and consecutive interventions of the French Division du Levant. In the midst of those upheavals, a Hydriot flotilla forced the payment of the first of a series of levies imposed on the community of Syra. After multiple frictions and negotiations between Greeks, Latins, and the various representatives of the European powers across the Levant, a compromise was found in a regime of shared sovereignty over the port of Syra. Chapter 7 recounts what happened after the Greeks took over the port and its revenues, committing themselves in return to refrain from hoisting their national flag and to respect the entitlements of the various vice-consuls. Transformed de facto into a free port where everything, including slaves and pirate booties, could be sold, the harbor became from that point on the meeting point of all nations, “a picture of Venice at the time of Crusades,”31 while the hinterland of the island became a crossroads for several thousand wretched refugees and a favorite target for pirates and bandits. The issue of anti-Latin violence has been sort of taboo in the various histories of the Greek Revolution. However, the great number of petitions from the local community and vice-consular reports document the many incursions and attacks from land and sea, armed riots against the Catholic population and profanations of their churches and chapels, mainly in Syros and Tinos between 1822 and 1827. Symptomatically, the fate of Syra Latins was sometimes paralleled with that of the ancient Helots.32 Chapter 8 attempts to frame how diffused violence, in combination with disrupted trade routes and double taxation, suffocated the economies of the Latin community and its individual members, undermining drastically its internal cohesion. Hence, local landowners who rented their lands or poor peasants who sided with the Greeks had to be dealt with by the secular and religious authorities. Despite consecutive petitions and declarations documenting crimes and aggressions and claiming reparations, the consolidation of the Greek positions, in combination with the reluctance of the French to enter into conflict with them, rendered impossible any return to the previous state of affairs. Chapter 9 follows the efforts of the community, the Catholic Church, and the French to adjust into the new realities that were about to take shape. A reformed Franciscan friar from Piedmont with a long service in Istanbul, who was appointed apostolic administrator of the Catholic diocese of Syra in 1825, became a pivotal figure in the endeavor to adjust to new realities. After reiterating the claims of the local communities to the Greek government and containing the divisions within the Latin community, the administrator coor-

Introduction 11

dinated the Catholic communities of the Aegean islands and represented them to the French and the other Europeans. Hence, once the point of no return was reached after the disaster of the Ottoman fleet in Navarino in October 1827, a final series of paper exercises among local bishops and French officials shared and promoted an autonomous status for the Latin communities in the new national setting. But once again, the end result would be something other than what they would have chosen or hoped for. In the following pages, the reader will become familiar with a number of historical figures who were directly or indirectly involved in the communication of Syros with the Levant and Europe in the 1820s. Among them, Luigi Maria Blancis da Ciriè, the apostolic administrator of the diocese who would be appointed bishop in 1830 and remain in office for another two decades until his death in 1851, represents the end of a transition and the adaptation to the new reality. Blancis’s navigation toward an unknown shore recalls the regrets of François-René de Chateaubriand, a man who found himself between two centuries as at the confluence of two rivers33 and who symptomatically was among the receivers of information about Syra during this critical turn as Minister of Foreign Affairs of France in 1823–24. The world of yesterday is perhaps best embodied in the figure of Bishop Russin. In office from 1801 but absent in Rome during the events of the Revolution and in failing health, he persistently asked his superiors for permission to return to his parish. His appeals were not satisfied until his death in 1829. The place to which he wished to return, the Pope’s island in the Ottoman Levant, was where the Catholic priests who had remained there also sought to return. Sira nostra patria was a country that no longer existed.

Notes  1. “Syra or Syros is an island of the Aegean Sea or Archipelago situated almost in the center of the Cyclades toward the 37th degree 22 minutes of latitude, and toward the 42nd degree 14 minutes of longitude. Its length from N. W. to S. E. is about 14 miles, and its width from W. to E. from 6 to 7 miles, which gives it almost 40 miles of coastline, although it is commonly estimated at 36 miles.” This description was provided in 1790 by a Levantine monk in a treaty on the beekeeping as practiced on an island that constitutes a most precious source of information on the rural economy and social organization of this medium-sized island of the Archipelago. Della Rocca, Traité complet sur les abeilles, 29–30.  2. See Della Rocca, Traité complet sur les abeilles, 1:82; See also, Dimitropoulos, Μαρτυρίες για τον πληθυσμό, 227–31, where the number of Greeks mentioned is between ten and twelve and two hundred out of a population of two thousand to five thousand. Cf. the Catholic population census of 1777 (stato di anime) recenty published by Michalis Roussos, “Μία ανέκδοτη απογραφή του καθολικού πληθυσμού της Σύρου του έτους 1777.”  3. De Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage, 122.

12

The Island of the Pope

 4. See mainly the study of Andreas Drakakis on the making of Hermoupolis. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, vol. 1 and vol. 2; Lecoeur, Mussolini’s Greek Island; and the recent study of Loukos, Ιστορία της Ερμούπολης Σύρου, 215–48.  5. See Loukos, Ιστορία της Ερμούπολης Σύρου, and Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού; likewise, in more recent approaches, the emergence of Hermoupolis figures emblematic of a swift modernization process while the presence and agency of the local Latins has generally not been the focus. See, for instance, Kardasis, Σύρος, 1832-1857; Agriantoni and Dimitropoulos, Σύρος και Ερμούπολη. Also the recent histories of the Greek Revolution published around the bicentenary, see, for instance, Kitromilides and Tsoukalas, The Greek Revolution: A Critical Dictionary, 94–96; Kitromilides, The Greek Revolution in the Age of Revolutions (1776–1848).  6. See in an extensive bibliography, Hirschon, Crossing the Aegean; Zürcher, “The Late Ottoman Empire as Laboratory of Demographic Engineering,” 1–12; Sigalas and Toumarkine, “Demographic Engineering—Part I.”  7. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 154.  8. Stefanou, “Το Βατικανό και οι Έλληνες Καθολικοί,” quoted in Loukos, Ιστορία της Ερμούπολης Σύρου, 243–44.  9. Salachas, “Η νομική θέσις της Καθολικής Εκκλησίας εν τη ελληνική επικράτεια,” 55–71. 10. See, for example, from three different moments of the twentieth century the efforts to document the Greekness of the local Catholic population: Stefanou, “Το Βατικανό και οι Έλληνες Καθολικοί,” quoted in Loukos, Ιστορία της Ερμούπολης Σύρου, 243–44; Sigalas, “Tα εξωκλήσια της Σύρου”; Printezis, “Παλιά και νεώτερη ονομασία της Σύρου.” 11. See, for example, the documents published by Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, and Georgios Zoras, Εγγραφα του αρχείου Βατικανού. For the recent debate on Greece, see the two recent studies on ecclesiastic history and intercommunal relations: Manikas,”Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,” and Asimakis, Η πορεία των σχέσεων Ελλάδος και Αγίας Έδρας. 12. Among an immense and ever-growing body of bibliography on insularity and connectivity: Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea; Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands; Sicking, “The Dichotomy of Insularity”; Malamut, Les îles de l’Empire byzantin; SaintGuillain and Schmitt, “Die Ägäis als Kommunikationsraum im späten Mittelalter”; Rothman, Brokering Empire; Calafat and Grenet, Méditerranées. 13. Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, 25–26. 14. Talbot, “Ottoman Seas and British Privateers”; Calafat, Une mer jalousie, 258. 15. Emerson Tennent, Letters from the Ægean, 11. 16. See Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus; Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans. 17. Dierksmeier et al., European Islands between Isolated and Interconnected Life Worlds; Reyerson and Watkins, Mediterranean Identities in the Premodern Era. 18. Only indicatively: Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus; Vatin and Veinstein, Insularités ottomanes; Greene, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants; White, Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean; Zachariadou, The Kapudan Pasha; Kolovos, “Insularity and Island Society in the Ottoman Context”; Zéi, Visages et visions d’insularité; Harlaftis et al., Corsairs and Pirates in the Eastern Mediterranean; Hadjikyriacou, Islands of the Ottoman Empire. 19. “[T]hat unifying sea or plain-like expanse, has always been a focal point for the reception and transmission of cultures, throughout pre-history and recorded history, and has apportioned itself between isolation and a system of constant connections. Without a center of its own, it has forged multiple links between the lands to its East and West; its fragmentary

Introduction 13

20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

nature allowed its individualized organizational forms to survive throughout the long years of Ottoman rule.” Asdrachas, “The Greek Archipelago.” For the notion of a “contact zone,” see Pratt, Imperial Eyes; for the notion of “in the Levant,” see Kaser, The Balkans and the Near East; for the concept of Sattleräume (saddle spaces), built in analogy to Koselleck’s Sattelzeit, in order to describe “liminal spaces and fuzzy boundaries” see Lässig and Rürup, “Introduction: What Made a Space ‘Jewish.’” Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 150. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 9. For an overview of the various forms and limits of Ottoman sovereignty, see: Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it, 27–74. On the concept of “territorial sovereignty”, among the rich recent literature see: L. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty; Maier, Once within Borders; Legg, Spatiality, Sovereignty and Carl Schmitt. For a more comprehensive discussion of territorial sovereignty in the insular space, see Kousouris, “Empires, Nations and the Question of Territorial Sovereignty in the Greek Archipelago during the Greek Revolution: The Case of Syros”. See chapter 7, this volume. This was the very basis upon which Petros Stefanos or Stefanou, a publicist and publisher of several newspapers and a public intellectual of the community in the first half of the twentieth century, defined the identity and the belonging of the Catholics in the Greek nation: Loukos, Ιστορία της Ερμούπολης Σύρου, 241. See Drakakis, Η Σύρος επί Τουρκοκρατίας; Schmitt, Levantiner; see Karachristos, “Familie, Verwandschaft, Heirat und Eigentumsübertragungen”; Agriantoni and Dimitropoulos, Σύρος και Ερμούπολη; Katsouros, “Περί των Κάπου-Κεχαγιάδων.” See the remarks of Greene, “Beyond the Northern Invasion.” See Galani, British Shipping in the Mediterranean, 19–53. Isabella, Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions; Innes and Philp, Re-imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean; Stites, The Four Horsemen; Zanou, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean. Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires, 166–236; see St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 138–49. Mazower, “Villagers, Notables and Imperial Collapse.” Lauvergne, Souvenirs de la Grèce, 151. Indigenous people of ancient Laconia subjugated and enslaved by the Spartans. For its uses in this context, chap. 7, this volume. Hartog, Regimes of Historicity, 66.

CHAPTER 1

The Early Modern Aegean Archipelago and the “Island of the Pope” m m m

Once the island was annexed to the Greek territories, the question would be how to integrate the past of the Catholic community into the national history. A lot was written during the second half of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century about the origins of the Catholic population of Syros during the late medieval and early modern era until its colonization by the Greek Orthodox. Whereas those approaches, among others by intellectuals from both religious communities of the island, brought new archival evidence to light, more often than not the discussion orbited around the question of whether their Latin identity was indigenous or imported.1 Hence, based mainly on evidence for the use of a vernacular Greek by the local population all through the late medieval and the early modern centuries, Catholics and Orthodox alike reached a consensus on the origins of the local population as the product of intermarriages and coexistence between a pre-existing (linguistically or religiously) Greek/Roman native population and of various intermarriages with Latins or Latinized Greeks. As it happens, histories say more about the present in which they were written than they do about the past they study. Recent research on the late Byzantine and early modern history of the region has taken a critical distance from such projections of nineteenth and twentieth century concepts into the (more or less) remote past.2 An Eastern Roman identity emerged after the eighth century CE based mainly on language (Greek) but also on religion (Orthodoxy) later on. However, the names and the limits of the communities or peoples they referred to or the geographical space they occupied remained rather abstract and variable throughout the centuries.3 That identity was a construction of imperial elites in order to mobilize and maintain the allegiance of their provincial subjects, but we know less about how the provincial subjects themselves perceived or used it in this contact zone of intensive interaction. Certainly, according to the available evidence, the writings of the Constantinopolitan elite can be read rather as an argument to the contrary, an indication of the prevalence of local identities over a broader political or ethnic definition of homeland, particularly in regional elites throughout the Greek-speaking communities of the Eastern Mediterranean.4

18

The Island of the Pope

From the Crusaders to the Ottomans Recent research provides an alternative key—or potentially a new paradigm for research concerning the origins of the Latins of Syros. Instead of looking for an ethnic origin, it seems more appropriate to explore instead the process of the emergence of a hybrid identity through a combination of diverse sociocultural and religious elements, produced by contacts and frictions in a changing international context over several centuries. In a context, therefore, where the boundaries between choices dictated by ever-changing circumstances, political allegiances, and cultural or religious affinities have never been clear-cut, the distinct Greek and Latin Christian identities were used among many others to describe or justify allegiance and/or belonging to the Church of Constantinople or Rome, and the different identities gradually acquired an ethnic character through successive cultural encounters or conflicts.5 In order to trace the adventures and transformation of the mutual construction of the Western/Latin/Frankish as opposed to the Eastern/Roman/Greek identity in the Eastern Mediterranean, one has to look back to late antiquity. The eighth and ninth centuries, marked in the West by the rise of the Carolingian Empire and in the East by the intense politicization of linguistic and liturgical diversity between Eastern and Western Christians (e.g., the controversy on the use of icons) marked the rise of the new medieval Christendoms.6 Two centuries later, the so-called Great Schism of 1054 was at the time perceived as a landmark in a longer process of antagonisms around the translatio imperii from the Eastern to the Holy Roman Empire, but certainly not as the definitive rupture as it would later prove to be.7 Thus, the eleventh century offers itself as a rather nominal limit in the process of consolidation of distinct Greek and Latin language, dogmatic and liturgical practices, and rituals as adapted into different contexts. Linguistic, cultural, and doctrinal divergences (e.g., the addition of the filioque to the Creed, use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist) were gradually involved in a process of ongoing and growing antagonisms between Western Europeans and Byzantine Romans over the Eastern Mediterranean. The age of the Crusades, from the eleventh to the late thirteenth century, marks a period of intense contacts and conflicts that culminated in the sack of Constantinople in 1204. The Fourth Crusade, the partition of Byzantine territories among the Crusaders, the creation of a Latin Empire the Byzantine effort to regain control of Constantinople and the imperial territories, as well as the conflicts that followed the substitution of Eastern Church prelates by their Latin counterparts in a local or regional level, involved large sections of the Christians of the Levant and played a key role in the wide adoption and diffusion of those distinct identities. Emotions of mutual hostility would prove strong enough to be overcome later, even when the leaders of the two churches agreed on a reunification.8



The Early Modern Aegean Archipelago and the “Island of the Pope”

19

The distinct Latin, Greek, Armenian, and other identities involved multiple temporalities. Although Western historiography has drawn greater attention to the divide between Christianity and Islam in early modern times, antagonisms between the Latin and Eastern Christians perpetuated in the context of the Ottoman–Venetian antagonisms and the wars in Crete and the Morea until well after the involvement of the northern “intruders” in the region during the long eighteenth century.9 The population of the Archipelago varied across the early modern centuries, following the contingencies of the changing conjunctures and circumstances.10 Amounting to around forty to fifty thousand in the beginning of the Ottoman era, the number of islanders had doubled until the 1820s, witnessing the impact of eighteenth-century economic growth. The most inhabited islands were those close to the coast and/or in a critical position for the fast-developing trade routes, like Andros, Tinos, and Naxos, with around twenty thousand inhabitants each. In total, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the population of the Archipelago islands was slightly higher than that of Smyrna, the closest major Ottoman urban center, and similar to that of Chios, the most prosperous and densely settled island in the early modern Aegean, close to the Asia Minor coast opposite Çesme.11 Catholics represented around 15 percent of that population, approximately eight thousand in Tinos (about a third of the total), five thousand in Syros, plus two communities with a few hundred members, in Naxos, the old seat of the Latin dukes of the Aegean, and in Santorini. Concerning the confessional allegiances of the islanders, a rather stable nucleus of an indigenous peasant population, majority Greek Orthodox, intermingled with people of various confessional or ethno-cultural backgrounds. For instance, in some of the greater islands, the various representatives included the noble families (Gozzadini, Crispo, Sanudo, and others) and were often offspring of mixed marriages between Latin settlers and daughters of local patricians. In the course of time, the Catholic flock was composed of the “old Latins,” who had been meanwhile grecized until the sixteenth century, as well as some Greek converts.12 The limits between the different confessional communities, especially between the Christians, were never fixed and impermeable. Likewise, the links between the subsequent Western overlords (Venetians, Genoese, Angevins, Catalans, and others) was characterized by great complexity and constant fluidity. The institution of imperial vassalage that would last until the Ottoman conquest provided the framework for the formation of local ruling elites, a multiform, complex blend of Latin nobility and local primates, landowners, secular and church functionaries, whose particular formation varied in each place according to the local traditions and its position in the shifting political and geographical coordinates of the early modern Mediter-

20

The Island of the Pope

ranean. Those elites governed the various Latin states along feudal principles, often combined with pre-existing urban institutions. In most of the mainland Frankish dominions, those feudal rules were codified and resulted in a rather strict social stratification modeled on the Western paradigm. The Assizes of Romania, a fourteenth-century compilation of laws and customs in the Principality of Achaea, was a most important and influential codification example.13 Meanwhile, in the maritime dominions that belonged for the most part to the Venetian Stato di Mar, feudal institutions were adapted to the local conditions and circumstances in a more empirical way.14 As a result, insular societies were divided into the elites (Latins, Greeks, Latinized Greeks, or Grecized Latins alike) who shared the privilege of living in the towns, and the majority of landless peasants, mainly Greek Orthodox, who dwelled in smaller villages across the countryside. An emblematic historical text narrating the establishment of Frankish rule in the thirteenth-century Peloponnese, the Chronicle of the Morea, stands also as a valuable testimony of a Greek, pro-Western and anti-Byzantine ideology, but also of the hybrid identity and the internal stratifications of the ruling elites in the Duchy of Athens and the Principality of the Morea already by the late fourteenth century. Latin, Roman, or Greek identities that existed in a local or regional level already had been increasingly diffused, politicized, and built against each other after the late twelfth century.15 A variety of ethnonyms, Franks (Φράγκοι) and Romans (Ρωμαίοι) in Greek, Franks (Françoys) or Latins (Latins) and Greeks (Grex) in French, marked a distinction that had political connotations, that is, it concerned the imperial legacy of the Roman Empire, but was gradually ethnicized through intense contact and conflict.17 The emergence of those hybrid identities that were, for instance, distinctively Greek and not Byzantine Roman, demonstrates that even when different cultural traits of identity become decisive in times of crisis, the main factor of political identity remained social standing and local belonging rather than belonging in distinct ethno-confessional groups. In that respect, the vantage point of the Archipelago seems to corroborate Fernand Braudel’s position that religious and cultural cleavages were not the most critical dividing lines in the early modern Mediterranean.18 Across the Aegean, like in the Morea, the regional identities of the inhabitants were forged on an actual encounter with the other (“Franks” fellow Christians, or Barbarians, heathens). Hence, the boundaries were more fluid, floating, and negotiable than in the ideologically driven administrative imperial centers.19 Since the eleventh century, the Archipelago lay on or next to a constantly shifting frontier, a contact zone between the Byzantine Romans and the Seljuks, Ottomans, Genoese, Venetians, as well as Sicilians, Pisans, French, Catalans, Ragusians, Saracenes, Maltese or other traders, pirates, soldiers, and



The Early Modern Aegean Archipelago and the “Island of the Pope”

21

sailors recruited along the Mediterranean coast. The in-between position of this zone of intense contacts, and occasional conflicts, is also visible in the fluidity of the geographic terms used to describe the larger regions to which it belonged or was adjacent to (Romania, the Levant, the White Sea, the Near East),20 depending in each case on the standpoint adopted and on the balance of powers in the region. Cultural contacts involve language. As in all land and maritime contact zones, multilingualism was a distinctive feature of early modern eastern Mediterranean societies. Informal or official multilingualism was widespread. In Venice or in Istanbul as many as thirteen languages could be spoken in a dinner or as many as ten within a household.21 Linguistic variety was commonplace for the region; in the Aegean, a crossroads of an ever-expanding communication network, the linguistic mosaic was not less varied. Part of the broader linguistic ecology of the region, Syros disposed of a particular division of labor among the different languages in use: Greek, with many loans from Italian and Turkish mainly, was spoken and used in written speech by the secular administration; Italian, the official language of the Catholic Church and of the education provided in the Ottoman era (see below), was also a language of diplomacy and main component of the Eastern Mediterranean lingua franca; likewise, French was gradually gaining ground for exchanges with European merchants and diplomats, as was Turkish for communication with the Ottoman administration.22 Abbé Della Rocca reported that in late eighteenth century Syra any member of the local community was able to have effective oral communication in all four languages (Greek, Italian, French, Ottoman Turkish), which were also used in the notarial acts, petitions, and correspondence of the local secular and religious authorities.23 A striking aspect that remains somewhat understudied as such is the process of mutual acculturation between Latins and Greeks. Historical evidence and archaeological remains bear witness to the fact that forms of acculturation were visible already in the thirteenth century and took on many forms in the early modern Eastern Mediterranean. For instance, the issue of mixed marriages and the religion of their prole (offspring), with or without subsequent conversions of one of the spouses, remained for centuries a constant headache for both church hierarchies and subject of intense and rich correspondence between different ecclesiastics.24 Since the fourteenth century, law compilations drawing from both Eastern and Western canon law traditions and secular law were in use in Cyprus and continental Greece.25 Conversions from one rite to the other were not unusual, and were more often than not for reasons of social and fiscal status.26 As a result, for the inhabitants of this maritime crossroads of languages, religions, and cultures, a zone of contact and conflict between Islam and Christendom, the Christian and insular/local identities often blurred

22

The Island of the Pope

the distinction between the Eastern and Western Church. In many cases, in the common celebrations of public feasts and processions, the various forms of comunicatio in sacris, that is, communion of members of one flock in sacraments of the other, or confessions given and ceremonies celebrated by priests of the other rite, the actual boundaries between the two communities almost disappeared. Some double churches connected with an internal door and others with a double altar that still exist in the Cyclades mainly from the period between the councils of Florence and Trent, private chapels built for use by both Catholic and Orthodox members of the families, provide additional evidence about a frontier between Catholic and Orthodox islanders that remained fluid and permeable.27

Transition to Ottoman Rule (Mid-Sixteenth Century to 1820) The permanent Turkish (Muslim) presence was meager, limited mainly in the various clerks of imperial administration dispatched occasionally by the Ottoman fleet. The latter was present mainly during its annual visit under the orders of the kapudan pasha.28 Most significantly, the mobility from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and to and from the islands of the Archipelago remained intense, as indicated by, for instance, a significant number of family names suggesting place of origin29 or the persistent presence of informal islander communities within the Levantine hubs of Istanbul and Smyrna.30 Following the policies of the Seljuk and Mamluk rulers in the region toward the Venetians and the other Westerners, through the capitulations (ahdnames) granted to the different Catholic communities of the empire, the Ottoman government acknowledged on several occasions a Frankish/European (efrenc) or Latin taife or millet, in which, as was the case of the “Magnificent Community” of Pera in Istanbul or the Frankish community of Jerusalem, non-Muslim subjects (dhimmi) and foreign non-Muslims (müstemin) formed a joint common group. Placed simultaneously in the domains of internal and foreign affairs, the capitulations regime created or consolidated forms of extraterritoriality, tax exemptions, and more that favored the perpetuation of this hybrid identity through selective affinities of those Levantines, Westerners for the Easterners, and Easterners for the Westerners with the new actors and powers that were claiming a new role in the Eastern Mediterranean.31 Hence, as Braudel noted for the early modern Mediterranean, identities and senses of belonging were neither fixed nor mutually exclusive, but a complex of different, often overlapping identities in which different ties of political, ethnic, or religious belonging existed next to each other.32 These complex dialectics of unity and multiplicity, social and cultural continuity and rupture reveal the



The Early Modern Aegean Archipelago and the “Island of the Pope”

23

Map 1.1.  Map of Syros by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. De Tournefort, Relation d’un Voyage du Levant, 320. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission.

conventional character of established political landmarks. This was particularly visible in the transition from Latin to Ottoman rule. The political break did not really constitute a rupture within the social order and hierarchies, quite the contrary. The effort to integrate the islands into the Ottoman administrative system took carefully into account the particularities of the maritime space and the conditions and of local elites. Ottoman domination in the Archipelago was exerted through the intermediary of the local Christian elites shaped by several intermarriages, settlements, and mutual assimilation practiced by both “Latins” and “Romans” all through the late Byzantine era. From the conquest of Hayreddin Barbarossa until 1579, the Duchy of Naxos recognized Ottoman suzerainty as a tributary to the Porte while maintaining at the same time the ranks of local nobility as well as its communal institutions.

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The persons who received the power to administer the islands of the Archipelago from the Sublime Porte until the turn of the century are indicative of the hybridity and liquidity of boundaries between communities and ethnoreligious identities. First, in the transitional period between Frankish and Ottoman rule, it was a Portuguese Jew, Joseph (Yusuf ) Nasi, named Duke of the Archipelago between 1566 and 1579 through the intermediary of a Spanish Jew who converted to Catholicism (Francesco Coronello). After the formal integration of the islands in the Ottoman Empire in 1580, in the position of beys/dukes, tax farmers of the sultan administering the islands according to age-old traditions that went back to the Latin Assizes, were first a Greek convert to Islam (Suleyman), then a Phanariot (Kantakouzenis), and an Athenian (Khoniatis) until the turn of the seventeenth century.33 Perhaps the most representative example of, the hybridity of identities and the fluid character of religious allegiances, especially among the upper classes (nobility and large landowners) was the saga of the Cicala brothers, offspring of a Catholic Spaniard father and a Turkish mother who converted: Carlo and Scipione, better known as Sinan Pasha, a captive who converted to Islam and became admiral of the Ottoman fleet (kapudan pasha), head of the Janissaries and grand vizier. He would allegedly concede the Duchy of the Archipelago to his brother, who acted as representative of their mother.34 That arrangement, a scenario that probably did not materialize as the tax-farming remained in the hands of Khoniatis, depicts the contingent and nonlinear incorporation of the islands into the Ottoman Empire. Emblematic of hybrid identities and shared allegiances between Venice and Istanbul, the title of Duke of Naxos was formally maintained until 1640.

The Role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate The growing strength of (current or former) Greek Orthodox subjects in the Archipelago during that transitional period brings us to the question of the condition, role, and position of the Christian Churches within the Ottoman context, especially in what concerns the political role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and its attitude toward Roman Catholics. Until the 1980s, scholarly discussion orbited around the millet system in the Ottoman Empire and its evolution from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The retroactive projection of a political and legal concept shaped by the mid-nineteenth-century Tanzimat reforms into the pre-national era is symptomatic of a tendency toward anachronism that has long persisted in the research of early modern Ottoman societies, influenced by the various national Balkan projections of post-nineteenth-century concepts and ethno-confessional boundaries into the more distant past. Recent scholarship has significantly challenged this



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historiographical paradigm, especially in what concerns the political status of the various religious groups and their representatives, according to which the hierarchy of different confessional groups and denominations (Greek Orthodox, Copts, Armenians, Catholics, etc.) acted simultaneously as spiritual and secular leaders of their respective communities. The advantage of such a conception was that it facilitated the study of those groups autonomously, as religious estates or guilds, largely disconnected from the broader Ottoman state and society of which they were part.35 However, the concept of millet, initially used as a synonym of ta’ife (group, community) at a local or regional level, was a disparate notion that evolved considerably through the centuries of Ottoman domination. Accordingly, the Ecumenical Patriarchate was reinstated in 1454, however, the patriarch’s status did not initially differ a lot from that of other religious leaders. Later on, however, after the weakening of the Ottoman central authority in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the advent of the “Age of the Ayans”, he would be recognized as millet baçi, leader of the (Rum) millet, the largest non-Muslim community of the Empire.36 This process was intrinsically linked to the economic and fiscal functions of the Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in particular. Recent research has shed light on this aspect that for a long time was not well understood. The Ecumenical Patriarchate represented above all for the Ottoman government a huge tax farm. The frequent successions or rotations to the position of the Ecumenical Patriarch were the result of evolving alliances between groups of the Phanariots and regional Orthodox hierarchy and secular powerholders. The multiple social effects of the accommodation of pre-existing power structures and elites in the Ottoman system are still to be discovered by scholarly research. The fiscal mechanism of the patriarchate reveals the diversity, internal divisions, and social hierarchies of the millet, but also allows us to overcome the ideological and disciplinary barriers and examine the development and evolution of the different ethno-confessional groups as an integral part of Ottoman society.37 As the Ottomans attempted to stabilize their rule over regions with a strong Orthodox presence, either as provinces subject to direct taxation or as tributary principalities of varying status and extent,38 the Ecumenical Patriarchate became a critical lever for the accommodation and/or integration of the local Christian elites and hierarchy. In other words, the so-called Orthodox reconquest was part and parcel of the Ottoman conquest of regions and territories previously under Latin rule. That process took many forms and faces between the mid-sixteenth and the eighteenth century.39 Its economic drive was manifested from early on through the restitution of Orthodox sees on the islands right after the Ottoman conquest and the parallel foundation of new Orthodox monasteries—or the development of existing ones. Thus, with claims to Greek Church chapels and landed property, mon-

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asteries often became important landholders. After the expulsion of the Latin duke in 1566, Theodosios Zygomalas was sent on tour as patriarchal exarch “of the Aegean Sea as a whole, and of islands and part of the Levant”40 with the aim to restore the network of already existing and restituted Orthodox sees. The case of Andros seems quite characteristic in that regard. Shortly after the Ottoman conquest, the Orthodox prelates protested to the Ottoman authorities against the taxation imposed on them by the Frankish landlords.41 For mainly reasons of social and fiscal status, family strategies included conversions and migration, and the Catholic Church inevitably lost ground on the island. Of strategic importance for the control of maritime trade passages after the Battle of Lepanto (1571), and probably the only Cycladic island with a notable Muslim presence, the case of Andros offers valuable insights into the political drive of the antagonisms between the two churches during a period in which the Eastern Mediterranean remained contested between Venice and Istanbul. A few years later, the execution of the Catholic bishop of Syros, Andrea Carga, by the kapudan pasha in 1617 was also linked, partially at least, to the hostile attitude of the Orthodox Church, allegedly due to a feud concerning the effort of the Orthodox to build a second church in the town of Syra. Thus, following a friendly reception of a squadron sent by the Duke of Naples, the kapudan pasha sacked the town of Syra, executed the bishop and the priest Michail Vuccino, and took several hostages.42 Emblematic of how the Orthodox sought to take advantage of the Venetian-Ottoman wars in order to gain ground over the Catholics was the island of Chios in the seventeenth century, which until then, by virtue of its missions, monasteries, schools, and libraries, was considered as the “pride of Catholicism” in the Levant. During the Cretan War, in 1664, the local Orthodox metropolitan accused the local Catholics of illicit correspondence with the Venetians in an effort to obtain ecclesiastical properties for the Orthodox Church. Thirty years later, during the Morean War (1694), when a Venetian fleet occupied the island, the local Orthodox refused to pledge allegiance to Venice and entered into communication with the Porte. The Ottoman reconquest a few months later involved harsh reprisals against the Catholics, including the execution of four of their secular leaders, and the destruction and pillaging of most of their churches, which stopped only after the intervention of the French consul.43

The Catholic Church after the Council of Trent The lasting antagonism between the two churches led to a gradual mobilization and tension both between and within the communities. Under the spirit of the Counter-Reformation after the Council of Trent (1545–63), and with the aim,



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in the first place, to counteract the presence of Protestants as well as to neutralize contacts between Calvinists (mainly) and Orthodox, the Catholic Church hardened its line. In 1577, the Vatican created the Pontifical Greek College of Saint Athanasius for Eastern Christians of different denominations;44 in parallel, it encouraged and sponsored various missions of religious orders in the Levant and supported existing or new local Latin religious brotherhoods. Such fraternities existed in the Cyclades since the fourteenth century, yet most of them were created after the Ottoman conquest and the Orthodox reconquest.45 Due mainly to the hegemonic position of the Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church in the Levant underwent a crisis of personnel, resources, and legitimacy. The efforts of the Tridentine hierarchy toward the Eastern Christians focused mainly on ritual and liturgical separation. Hence, the implementation on various occasions of measures such as the invalidation of mixed marriages celebrated according to the Orthodox rite, of consecrations and sacraments performed by “schismatic” priests, or the various prohibitions and limitations to attend the Orthodox mass.46 Launched already during the late sixteenth century, that effort culminated in the creation of the Holy Congregation for the Propagation of Faith (Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide) in 1622 whose aim was to propagate the Catholic faith in all parts of the world, regaining the faithful where Protestantism had been established (or Orthodoxy prevailed) and diffusing the Gospel in pagan lands. Similar to the other congregations created by the Holy See during the same period, the Propaganda Fide differed according to the extent of its powers and the range of its geographical and doctrinal jurisdiction.47 Already in its formative period, when there was only a Commission of Propaganda run by three emblematic cardinals of the Counter-Reformation, but also after its constitution, the congregation promoted a strict Tridentine spirit often implemented with narrow-mindedness.48 In order to uphold in the Ottoman Levant the universality of the Catholic faith, the union of the churches, and the recognition of papal primacy, the Propaganda Fide combined evangelization with a civilizing mission. Beyond, or rather along with evangelization, its work aimed at “the promotion of letters, sciences and civilization among ignorant, barbarous and savage peoples . . . for faith served as an introduction to civilization, and vice versa.”49 In this spirit, the officials of the congregation and most missionaries to the Levant usually regarded the Eastern Christian clergy and flock as largely ignorant and uneducated. The effort to control and coordinate the various religious orders in the Levant, which was not without setbacks and reactions from Orthodox and Catholics alike, was soon to bear fruit. The Capuchins and the Jesuits were gradually installed in the Levant during the first half of the seven-

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teenth century through the foundation of convents as well as of schools that offered courses in reading and writing in Italian and Greek but also in religious catechism open to both communities.50 In Syros, the Capuchins opened the first such school in 1633.51

“Roman” and “Latin” Identities As time went by, the various fiscal and legal functions of the Church and the communities at the local level, and the different forms of protection received from European powers, were weakening the grip of the central imperial authority on those insular societies. Still, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, “Latins” and “Romans” were terms conventionally used for communities or people who pledged allegiance to the Church of Rome or of Constantinople. Greek and Latin identities acquired a political, ethnic, or “national” aspect gradually, through lasting economic and political antagonisms. Since the movement of Orthodox reconquest took advantage of the Venetian-Turkish Wars, from the outbreak of the Cretan War (1645) to the Treaty of Passarowitz (1716), in order to claim chapels, monastery premises, and landed properties from the Catholic Church,52 those antagonisms fueled and consolidated mutual hostility. Thus, throughout the eighteenth century, the two churches repeatedly tried to restrict communication, interaction, and connections between the two communities. The number of letters, reports, trials, and directives issued on those matters are also indications of the fluid boundaries between the two flocks. Their goal, among others, was to avoid as much as possible the conversions that the coexistence of the two communities made fairly easy. Forms of allegiance to Rome or Istanbul were continuously readapted into the changing setting. The long process of multiple assimilations had produced a local blend, a hybrid insular identity shared by local Greek and Albanian Orthodox and Catholics, Hellenized Latins and Latinized Greeks alike.53 The various forms of syncretism and practices of mutual assimilation, existing already before the arrival of missionaries as mentioned above, made the Roman Church doubt the actual Catholicity of the Latins of the Archipelago.54 Several reports to the Propaganda Fide from the Archipelago indicate that monks and visitors were confronted with a society where the line between Catholicism and Orthodoxy was constantly blurred. Another singular aspect of the permeable boundaries between the two communities was also the fact that a number of the local Orthodox priests had received their education in schools run by Catholic religious orders. On smaller islands, the Latins joined the Orthodox mass or used the local churches; hence, there were a number of Greek churches with two altars so that both the Greek and the Latin mass could be celebrated.55 Therefore the various



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occasional transgressions reported in the correspondence with Rome may as well be considered as evidence of a normality of shared use of ritual places, of mixed marriages and other sacraments. As Latin missionaries often preached to the Orthodox flock and occasionally heard their confessions, the question that arose regularly was whether the different forms of communication and communion were means of penetration into the Orthodox majority or were a mere corruption of the Catholic faith.

French Protection Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, Catholic bishops and prelates who found themselves under Ottoman rule received imperial recognition after the request of the local communities and prelates (in the Archipelago, the bey/ duke). Indicative of the mixed and moving allegiances of the Catholics during the seventeenth century was also the fact that the first foreign intermediary involved was the Venetian bailo in Constantinople.56 Meanwhile, the creation of the Propaganda Fide coincided with the rise of the French influence in the Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean. As Santus observes, from that point on, a conjunction of interests was developed between the Roman curia, the embassy in Constantinople and the government in Paris, in a political-religious project that linked the spread of Latin Christianity in the Orient to the expansion of French authority through a network of merchants, consuls, clerics, and members of religious orders.57 The French claim for protection to the Catholic faith, as expressed already by the appropriation of the title Rex Christianissimus since the sixteenth century by Francis I, became actually effective during the seventeenth century, between the capitulations awarded to France in 1604 granting free movement to priests, monks, and pilgrims in the Holy Places, and those of 1673 in which France was recognized as the guarantor of the safety of all Catholic clergy in the Levant.58 Until the mid-eighteenth century, French merchants and entrepreneurs dominated the Levantine trade hubs just as French influence in the Ottoman court kept increasing. The penetration of the French in the Levant facilitated on the one hand the integration of the Ottoman Empire into the early modern European state system, while, on the other, consolidated their claim to a sort of informal protectorate over all Catholic communities in the Levant.59 The protection of French subjects and members of the Catholic clergy would occasionally be extended to members of the local communities or entire communities, notably through commercialization of the status of protégé by the local consuls and vice-consuls as well as through various transgressions of the limits of their jurisdiction, especially in times of transition.60

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Map 1.2.  Map of the Eastern Mediterranean indicating Ottoman claims to maritime territoriality in 1696, 1703, 1744, 1758, and 1779. In Firges et al., Well-Connected Domains, 61. © Tobias P. Graf and Michael Talbot using map data provided by Natural Earth, 2014, reproduced with permission.

The various forms of extraterritoriality established by the system of capitulations rendered the status of the Latin communities and their members an area where Ottoman internal administration overlapped with foreign policy. From a geographical point of view, Syros and most Cycladic islands stood below the Andros–Kos (Stankoy) line that defined that part of the maritime and coastal regions of the Aegean in which the Ottoman government exercised a sort of territorial sovereignty. The Archipelago appears often as a space of relative anarchy, as a buffer zone where raiding was tolerated within gradients of sovereignty that, going from north to south and from east to west, denoted a progressive loss in the effectiveness of Ottoman jurisdiction.61 Soon after the Ottoman conquest, capitulations (ahdnames) were conceded by the Ottoman government to the Duke of Naxos and some communities of the islands, without however explicitly recognizing sovereign status.62 This ambiguous status is suggestive of the growing political role of the local communes (kinotis) in the power vacuum created by the consecutive Ottoman–Venetian conflicts. Notes  1. See for instance histories of the island, like that of Timoleon Ambelas (1850–1926) who attempted to insert the island into the fabric of national history, as well as archaeological, ethnological, or folklorist approaches stressing or unearthing attributes of the Greekness of



 2.

 3.  4.

 5.  6.  7.

 8.

 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

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the indigenous population, see Sigalas, “Tα εξωκλήσια της Σύρου,” Printezis, “Παλιά και νεώτερη ονομασία της Σύρου,” and Stefanou, “Το Βατικανό και οι Έλληνες Καθολικοί.” See the discussion about Greek and European historiography on the Cyclades by Slot, Archipelagus turbatus, 11–12. See on this subject, Page, Being Byzantine; Stouraitis, “Roman Identity in Byzantium,” and Stouraitis, “Byzantine Romanness.” For a critical overview of the national historiographies on the Byzantine past on the wake of Iorga’s Byzantium after Byzantium, see Stamatopoulos, Byzantium after the Nation. See Kaldellis, Romanland; Stouraitis, “Reinventing Roman”; see Cameron, Byzantine Matters. See, for example, the analysis of the Chronicle of the Morea by Page, Being Byzantine, 210–42; see Molly Greene’s analysis on the evolution of the Greek/Roman identity in the Aegean (focusing on Crete) in Greene, A Shared World; also Slot, Archipelagus turbatus, 155–82. For a recent cross-cultural approach on those shifting and negotiable identities, see Ortega, Negotiating Transcultural Relations. See Stouraitis, “Byzantine Romanness: From Geopolitical to Ethnic Conceptions”; Rapp, “Hellenic Identity, Romanitas, and Christianity in Byzantium”; Koder, “Latinoi.” See Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom; Bayer, “Byzantium, Rome and the Papacy.” See, for example, Jacoby, “The Encounter of Two Societies.” Meanwhile, the lines of separation between the two rites, albeit always subject to the fluctuations of the relations notably between the Vatican, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Sublime Porte, and the Serenissima remained porous and blurred, especially among the middle and lower social strata, as revealed, for instance, in the report of 20 March 1664 by the Jesuit Father Robert Saulger from Constantinople, the Jesuit school at Constantinople had Greek (grecs) children of both rites; at the same time, “many Greeks, especially the women” preferred to confess to the Jesuits rather than their Papas, “in order to avoid the fee they were obliged to pay to them”; many Orthodox joined on various special occasions (e.g., Good Friday) the Catholic mass; finally, some members of the Orthodox clergy received from the Jesuits courses of literary Greek. Carayon, Relations inédites des missions, 101–3. See Kolbaba, “Byzantine Perceptions of Latin Religious ‘Errors’”; Jacoby, Latins, Greeks and Muslims; Angold, “Byzantium and the West 1204–1453”; Chadwick, East and West; For an overview of the first centuries of Latin rule, see Gasparis, “Land and Landowners in the Greek Territories”; Papadia-Lala, “Society, Administration and Identities in Latin Greece”; and Coureas, “The Latin and Greek Churches.” For a short overview of those relationships, see Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 32–41. See Greene, “Beyond the Northern Invasion”; Greene, A Shared World; Papadia-Lala, “Society, Administration and Identities in Latin Greece.” Dimitropoulos, Μαρτυρίες, 173–238; Kolodny, La population des îles de la Grèce; Asdrachas, Οικονομία και νοοτροπίες, 235–44. To provide a measure for the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on those societies, it would suffice to have a look at the demography of the islands that led the maritime war of the Greeks like Hydra that in the same period passed from 1,000–1,500 to 30,000 inhabitants or Psara that passed from 1,500 to 8,000 within the first two decades of the nineteenth century, see Dimitropoulos, Μαρτυρίες, 249–50, 297–98. For the process of cross-acculturation and mutual assimilation, see Coureas, “The Latin and Greek Churches”; Borromeo, “Les Cyclades à l’époque ottomane,” 123–44; Chrissis and Carr, Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean. Topping, Feudal Institutions as Revealed in the Assizes of Romania. For one among various local variations in the use of the Assizes, see for instance the “Fragment des usages de Naxos”

32

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

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in Société de l’Orient Latin [sous le patronage de], Archives de l’Orient Latin, vol. I, Paris: Leroux, 1881, 613–614. A notable exception was that of the island of Chios, governed by a municipal council controlled by the Mahona, a company of Genovese origin sold to and administered by a rich family of settlers (Giustiniani) until the Ottoman conquest in the mid-sixteenth century. Argenti, The Occupation of Chios; and Argenti, “The Mahona of the Giustiniani.” Stouraitis, “Is Byzantinism an Orientalism?” For the Chronicle of the Morea, see Page, Being Byzantine; Shawcross, The Chronicle of Morea, 191–93. Once this division, between West and East was consolidated with the Schism of the Churches in 1054, the Crusades, the sack of Constantinople in 1204, and the Latin states, in the Archipelago lasted until the late sixteenth century. “Constantinople might be regained, and the years from 1204 to 1261 theologically rationalised as the temporary exile of the Chosen People of God, yet in the end it would be impossible not to acknowledge that the empire was now an earthly power among its fellows. The political imperial identity foundered, giving place to a religious identity that was essentially distinct from the imperial tradition, and to an ethnic identity that emerged into and gained weight within the public consciousness of the Romans as a result of the enforced encounter with the Latins of the West.” Page, Being Byzantine, 182. See the introduction in Green, A Shared World. Page, Being Byzantine, 181; cf. Shawcross, The Chronicle of Morea, 187–259. Romania was a region, mainly connected with imperial territories of the Eastern Roman Empire that during the Middle Ages represented a vague ensemble of historical territories, a floating signifier in different times and from different perspectives, designating, e.g., Asia Minor for the Tatars, or Latin Greece and Near East. See Kaldellis, Romanland; Rapp, “Hellenic Identity.” Dursteler, “Speaking in Tongues.” Wansbrough, Lingua Franca in the Mediterranean; Minervini, “La lingua franca mediterranea.” See the contributions in Braunmüller and Ferraresi, Aspects of Multilingualism. Della Rocca, Traité complet sur les abeilles, 133. For the majority of the population, the use of the Greek language remained mainly oral. The teaching in the schools of Capuchins (since 1622) and Jesuits (1733) was mainly in Italian. For the history of education in Syros, see Elpida Kambeli-Printezi, “Η ιστορία της εκπαίδευσης στην Άνω Σύρο.” See, for instance, Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 122–27, 189–90, 219–24. See Papadia-Lala, “Society, Administration and Identities in Latin Greece”’ also Coureas, The Assizes of the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus. A rule with many exceptions and nuances, conversions from Greek to the Latin rite were more frequent under Frankish rule and inversely after the Ottoman conquest. Coureas, “Latin and Greek Churches,” stresses the element of conversions to the Orthodox rite. For a more complex view, among a growing literature on conversions within the broader process of acculturation all through the late medieval and the early modern era, see Ranner, “Mendicant Orders in the Principality of Achaia”; Krstić and Terzioğlu, Entangled Confessionalizations?; Norton, Conversion and Islam; Kedar, Franks, Muslims and Oriental Christians; Lappa, “Religious Conversions.” For those aspects of syncretism and comunicatio in sacris in the insular space, see Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 220–24; Foskolos, “Εισαγωγή στην ιστορία των καθολικών εκκλησιών της Τήνου”; Gratziou, “Evidenziare la diversità”; Arvaniti, “Double-Identity Churches”; Veloudaki, “Inter-Faith Relations and Their Spatial Representation.”



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28. Zachariadou, The Kapudan Pasha. 29. Those names are testimony of an intense mobility between islands of the Aegean and the Ionian (Amorgos, Cerigo, Cephalonia, Crete, Cyprus, Limnos, Zante, etc.), places of the nearby coast of Asia Minor and continental Greece (Istanbul, Smyrna, Thessaloniki, Kalamata, Fokea, Philadelphia, etc.), as well as places located further afield in the Mediterranean and Balkans (Malta, Raguza, Genoa, Sicily, Black Sea). See Dimitropoulos, Μαρτυρίες, 127–33. 30. See Schmitt, Levantiner; those islanders often formed confraternities in Smyrna and Istanbul during the nineteenth century. Foskolos, “Frangochiotika.” 31. Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 207, cites the document published by Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus, 132, and Foskolos, “Η Επισκοπή Τήνου-Μυκόνου στις αρχές του 17ου αιώνα,” doc. 124, as one of the earliest and most emblematic acknowledgments of the distinct identity of a nazione franca within the Ottoman Levant. For the status of the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire see Frazee, Catholics and Sultans; Gofmann, “Ottoman Millets,” 139–41. For an overview of the capitulations, see De Groot, “The Historical Development of the Capitulatory Regime.” 32. In a rare generalization of the concept of “insularity,” Fernand Braudel described the Mediterranean lands as “a series of regions isolated from one another. Like an enlarged photograph the history of the islands affords one of the most rewarding ways of approaching an explanation of this violent Mediterranean life. It may make it easier to understand how it is that each Mediterranean province has been able to preserve its own irreducible character, its own violently regional flavour in the midst of such an extraordinary mixture of races. religions, customs, and civilizations.” Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 161. 33. Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus, 102–3; see on the transition in Kolovos, “Insularity and Island Society,” mainly 51–68. 34. Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus, 89–103; Ocakaçan Levent, “Cigalazade Yusuf Sinan Pasha”; Graf, “Of Half-Lives and Double-Lives”; and Graf, “Trans-Imperial Nobility.” 35. For a comprehensive survey of the evolution of the historiographical debate on the Ottoman millets, see Van den Boogert, “Millets: Past and Present.”; Braude, “Foundation Myths”; Goffman, “Ottoman Millets,” 136ff. Regarding the study of the regions with an Orthodox majority, cf: Kostis, “Κοινότητες, εκκλησία και μιλλέτ στις ‘ελληνικές’ περιοχές”. 36. McGowan, “The Age of the Ayans”; Konortas, “From Tâ’ife to Millet,” 174. 37. For the Rum millet and the patriarchate, see Papademetriou, Render unto the Sultan; and Konortas, “From Tâ’ife to Millet.” 38. Işıksel, “Imperial Limits and Early Modernity.” 39. A subject broadly discussed but not systematically studied. Greene, A Shared World, 3–5; Peter Sugar, who is among the first to use the concept, described the position of the Orthodox church as that of a “state within the state.” Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 47. 40. Legrand, “Notice biographique sur Jean et Théodose Zygomalas”, 184–99. 41. Kolovos, “Insularity and Island Society.” 42. At that time, the Catholics disposed of only one church, Saint George, as many as the Orthodox minority, representing less than 10 percent of the total population. Drakakis, Η Σύρος επί Τουρκοκρατίας, 20–29; Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici della Grecia, 24, 44, 50–53. 43. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans, 172–74; Argenti, The Religious Minorities of Chios, 207–8 and 221–8; Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage, 11, 49–50.

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44. Seven years later another two Colleges for Maronites and Armenians were founded. See Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 114–15, and Santus, “Tra la chiesa di Sant’Atanasio e il Sant’Uffizio.” 45. The four brotherhoods reportedly functioning in Syros (Santissimo Sacramento, Madonna del Santissimo Rosario, Terz’ordine di San Francesco, Madonna di Carlo) were all founded during the first half of the seventeenth century. Panopoulou, “Le confraternite religiose latine delle Cicladi,” 301–2. 46. Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 206–8. 47. Mejer, Die Propaganda, 351–472. 48. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans, 90–92. 49. Guilday, “The Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide,” 480. 50. Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 208–9; Printezi-Kampelli, “Η ιστορία της εκπαίδευσης στην Άνω Σύρο,” 75, 130 51. Followed by one created by the Jesuits 111 years later (1744). See: Printezi-Kampelli, “Η ιστορία της εκπαίδευσης στην Άνω Σύρο,” 133–88 and 310–406. 52. In the correspondence between the Commission of Propaganda and the local clergy and missionaries in the Archipelago and the urban centers of the region (Istanbul, Smyrna, Thessaloniki, Alexandria) in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one discerns various points of friction around properties claimed by both churches, and, occasionally, contested inheritances and recourses on the validity of sacraments. 53. Borromeo, “Les Cyclades à l’époque ottomane.” 54. Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 212–18. For the context of the Orthodox-Catholic disputes and conflicts after the patriarchate of Cyril Loukaris, see Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat; Gara and Olar, “Confession-Building and Authority.” 55. Coureas, “Latin and Greek Churches,” 159. 56. In the case of the nomination of Giovanni Andrea Carga as bishop of Syros (1607) and an imperial laisser-passer for the bishop of Tinos as apostolic visitor of the Catholic Church in the Aegean (1610). The latter figures among the most discussed documents of the period, as it recognized an autonomous status to the Catholics of the empire as nazione franca. See Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 206–7 and Kolovos, “Insularity and Island Society.” 57. Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 134–40. 58. Van den Boogert, The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System, 101–3. 59. See Eldem, “French Trade and Commercial Policy.” 60. For the recent research on the subject, see Dipratu, Regulating Non-Muslim Communities. See also Vintilă, Changing Subjects, Moving Objects; Galani, “Caught between Empires.” 61. Talbot, “Ottoman Seas and British Privateers”; and Calafat, Une mer jalousée; see Chryssoulis, Naviguer au gré des frontières de juridictions. 62. Vatin, “Îles grecques? Îles ottomanes?”

CHAPTER 2

From the Russian Occupation to the Greek Revolution (1770–1820) m m m

The specificity of Syros was its overwhelmingly Catholic majority. As part of the Latin communities of the Archipelago, the island became a stronghold of the Catholic faith, the “most Catholic of all islands” or “island of the Pope.”1 Meanwhile, the intense cultural and political presence and protection of France, often managed directly by the French ambassador in Istanbul, in collaboration with the local bishop and vice-consul, had de facto created a situation of shared sovereignty and a hybrid identity of mixed loyalties to the sultan and the Rex Christianissimus.2 The gradual withdrawal of La Serenissima (Venetian rule) was not accompanied by a stabilization of Ottoman power but by the intrusion of new actors in the region along with France, namely, the British, the Dutch, the Russian, and the Habsburg Empire. The Russian occupation of the islands in 1770–1774 during the Russo–Ottoman War of 1768–1774 signaled a break in Ottoman sovereignty in the Archipelago with long-lasting consequences. After the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, Russia gained the role of protector of the Christian Greek-Orthodox millet, the largest non-Muslim community of the Ottoman Empire. As happened in the Morea after 1715, the Ottoman reconquest of the Archipelago was characterized by the loosening of the links between the imperial center and its provinces. After 1774, local communities experienced an increase in their degree of autonomy: the volta of the imperial fleet for the collection of tax became intermittent, whereas kadis were dispatched to the islands less frequently than before.3 The virtual autonomy of the island communities after the Russian occupation was summarized in 1790 by Abbé Della Rocca, who outlined the position of Syra within the Ottoman and international context as follows: “Judging by the form of government established in Syra and almost all the other islands, one would think that they are all small tributary republics. All executive authority resides in the hands of the epitropos.”4 But was it really so? For the maritime economy of the islands, the French Revolutionary Wars and, after the turn of the century, the effects of the British blockade on French trade in the Mediterranean, in combination with the constant reduction of costs and speeds of shipping after the 1770s, brought on

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rapid monetization of the economy and many opportunities to make substantial profits.5 The economic boom of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is perceptible as well in the population growth, not only in the major shipbuilding and shipping centers such as Hydra, Psara, and Spetses, but also Syros.6 The population growth after the plague epidemics of the late 1720s, in combination with the constant movement of Syriot immigration to Istanbul, Smyrna, and other commercial centers of the Eastern Mediterranean during the same period, reveals growing social inequalities. The rise of a new class of merchants and shipowners deepened the economic disparities within the communities of the Archipelago, exacerbating the antagonisms both between Orthodox and Catholics and within each community. Hence, the authority the leaders of the local kinotites exerted over the insular societies—fiscal, juridical, or political—depended on the internal divisions and alliances as much as on the presence and influence of institutions and representatives of the Ottoman administration and of the European powers in the region.

A Divided Community From 1752 at least, Syros appointed a representative (kapu-kehaya, Ottoman Turkish kapı kethüdası) at the Sublime Porte, most often selected among the most prominent members of the Syriot community in Istanbul. Assigned primarily with the duty to manage the community’s fiscal obligations to the Ottoman administration, those representatives often handled the relations with the French diplomatic mission and were often obliged to intervene in order to appease internal conflicts, either between bourgeois families or clans (inhabitants of the bourg, καστρινοί) or between them and the peasants (dwellers of the countryside, χωρικοί), especially in times of a transition and power vacuum.7 The close connections between the local Latin community and the Syriot diaspora residing in the Levantine hubs of the Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean as well as the influence and status of their representatives in Istanbul are indicative of the importance of those diasporic communities as privileged, if not exclusive, points of contact between the Syriot community and the world around. During that same period, the remarkable continuity of family names and properties in combination with the quasi-absence of incoming migrants or settlers are evidence of a relative isolation of Syros compared to other islands of the Archipelago.8 The traditional right of preference, an age-old customary law giving priority to close relatives and neighbors for the sale and purchase of land or real estate, played an important role in the relatively equal split of the properties among extended families or clans, as well as in the fragmentation of family properties,



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until the late eighteenth century. According to the code of customs of 1695, the deadlines for the prossimi (close relatives or neighbors) to express interest for the property put on sale was ten days for the residents of the island, one year for the ones living abroad (xenitemenoi), and “until they get back” for those who had been enslaved.9 For sales that had already taken place, interested relatives or neighbors could appeal to the municipal court within the prescribed time limits. If their appeal was successful, the sale was cancelled, and the family was allowed to purchase the property at the same price. Cancellations of sales that had already been concluded was a common occurrence. The limitations on real estate transactions imposed by the customary law were gradually lifted from the second half of the eighteenth century, in particular with regard to the rights of distant relatives (beyond the second degree of kinship) and deadlines to exercise this right. A municipal resolution of 1812 testifies to a process of liberalization of the real estate market, which is also discernible on the other islands.10 According to this document, the seller obtained the right to negotiate the market price beforehand, bypassing the traditional process of estimation (stimarisma) of the estate value by a communal committee. This change, which was introduced under the pretext of allowing small property owners to acquire a fair market price, would facilitate the accumulation of property by a growing merchant bourgeoisie and clear the way for the real estate boom that occurred during the Greek Revolution, a decade later. Shortly thereafter a major revolt of the peasants took place against the wealthy “dwellers of the citadel,” occasioned by a decision of the community council restricting communal land for grazing livestock use by farmers and breeders in April 1814. A popular assembly deposed the epitropos Nikolaos Capella and replaced him with Ioannis Salacha, who took control of the situation for a few days. When Salacha attempted to travel in early May 1814 to Istanbul to obtain official recognition of his “patent” (that is, official document) of election by the community, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities. The situation was defused by the election of a third person as epitropos. Not much information about these events survives, but the relative ease with which the rebels gained control of the communal building, as well as the reluctance of the authorities to punish other participants, such as those responsible for the murder of an associate of the former epitropos Capella, indicate that the revolt had widespread support.11 Similar riots had been recorded three decades earlier, in 1785, when the ouster of the epitropos, Giannoulaki Salacha, by the representative of the Ottoman government triggered violent clashes, during which one person was killed. Those dissensions within the Syriot community—expressed as family or clan feuds, affinities with different powers present in the region (e.g., Turcophiles and Russophiles during and after the Russian occupation), or as class conflicts—are evidence of the fact

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that the divisions ran deeper and the social gap grew wider during the last halfcentury of Ottoman domination.12

Orthodox in Catholic Territory, or Who Is the Owner of Holy Trinity? News and reports about dissensions and conflicts among the Catholics of Syros reached Rome as well. In the second half of 1819 and the beginning of 1820, the Catholic bishop of Chios, Xaverio Dracopoli, made an apostolic visit at the request of the Propaganda Fide, after which he submitted a report to the prefect of the congregation, Cardinal Fontana, on the “causes that contributed and still contribute to the decline, withdrawal and weariness of Catholicism in the islands of the Archipelago.”13 In this densely written eighty-page report compiling copies of letters and reports received from the local clergy, the bishop provided a brief historical sketch of the gradual decline of the Catholic Church during the half-century before 1820, highlighting the role of the relative withdrawal of the French influence in the Eastern Mediterranean after the French Revolution. Dracopoli singled out three main causes for this decline: “bad civil governments”; the “enmity of the schismatic Greeks”; and the “barbarism of the Turkish sovereigns.”14 Concerning the flock, after describing the different aspects of moral corruption (bigamy and so on) expressed in the surviving practices of communicatio in sacris, he observes that the fact that the Catholics live often in mixed villages next to the Orthodox creates in the former a strong inclination to Grecismo (that is, adoption of Orthodox customs and holidays) that needed to be countered by the presence of zealous missionaries who would preserve the exercise of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith.15 The story of the chapel of Holy Trinity, one of the two Orthodox churches within the town of Syra, is quite illustrative of the politics of the Orthodox reconquest under Ottoman rule, the porous boundaries between the two communities as well as of the dissensions this could provoke among the Latins. The tiny family chapel, like the other one of Saint Nicholas, property of the (then Orthodox) Salacha family, was built in the late sixteenth century, shortly after the Ottoman conquest. Around 1580, during the restitution of the Orthodox episcopates of the Archipelago, the patriarchate allegedly tried to seize the Catholic cathedral of Saint George. Faced with the new situation, the Catholic clergy and hierarchy allowed the building of two new family-owned chapels, maintaining in return control of the diocese and its area of jurisdiction. A critical turning point in this standoff between the two churches took place in 1624 when, a few years after the hanging of Bishop Carga by the Ottomans and under the patriarchate of Cyril Loukaris, known among other things for his



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fervent anti-Catholicism, “those few Greeks [on Syros] with their priest tried to appoint a Greek bishop, but with the diligence of the French ambassador in Constantinople, the Greek bishop of Andros was prevented by the Turks from entering Syros.”16 Inaugurating a long period of active French protection toward the Catholics of the Archipelago, the ban of the Orthodox bishop of Andros perpetuated in Syros the ecclesiastic regime of Latin domination under Ottoman rule. Thus, as on the neighboring island of Tinos, which however remained under Venetian rule until 1715, the Orthodox priests of Syros were put under the authority of the Catholic bishop. However, unlike Tinos, where the Orthodox were in the majority with several priests and their own protopapas, in Syros they were a tiny minority with just two papas, of which the one, usually the oikonomos of Saint Nicholas’s chapel would act as protopapas. Ordained by the bishop of Andros, the Orthodox priests of Syra received their dismissorial letters from the Catholic bishop of Syros. According to various testimonies, they would often give confessions or attend the preachings of Jesuit and Capuchin friars.17 This probably explains the hybrid identity, as well as the conversion of the initial owners of both Orthodox chapels of Syra, by the mid-seventeenth century. During the seventeenth century, the ownership of Holy Trinity transferred to a family of Orthodox priests, likely of Byzantine origin who also served the community from the post of canceliere (registrar).18 Passed down from father to son according to jus patronatus toward the end of the century, it came into the hands of Georgios Komninos, canceliere of the commune, who raised funds among the Latin community to enlarge and renew the old chapel. The chapel of Saint Nicholas was renovated at the same time and enlarged by its owners after fundraising among the few members of the Orthodox community and finally remained in Orthodox hands. Unlike Saint Nicholas, Holy Trinity became (or rather remained) a hub of the hybrid group of “Greek Catholics” or “Catholics of the Greek rite” in seventeenth-century Syros and Tinos that posed several puzzling questions with regard to the implementation of the Tridentine precepts by the Roman congregations.19 In a zone of mixed allegiances, where the Orthodox flock was educated in Catholic schools, confessed to Catholic priests, or participated in the Catholic mass and sacraments, formal conversions were rather rare and would usually lead to the adoption of the Latin rite as well. Reportedly, around the turn of the eighteenth century, the heir of the Holy Trinity chapel, Konstantinos Komninos, converted to Catholicism shortly after his ordination, and is mentioned in the registry of the Catholic diocese as Constantinus Graecus Catholicus Sacerdos.20 From that point on, the chapel was used by its owners for the celebration of Catholic mass and sacraments but also by other priests for the purposes of the Orthodox flock. The Catholic bishop of the island on the eve of the Greek Revolution, Giovanni-Battista (Ioannes Baptistus) Rus-

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sin, submitted to the French ambassador in Istanbul in 1813 a detailed report on the affair of “a certain schismatic and heretic chapel.” Many forms of sacramental and liturgical communion with the schismatic Orthodox, forbidden or strictly restricted after the Council of Trent, had been regularly held for decades in that chapel.21 Russin repeated the concerns of eighteenth-century bishops and Apostolic visitors signaling that, if in the seventeenth century the communion with the schismatics had brought many Greeks to the Catholic faith, since the mid-eighteenth century, after the consolidation of the position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean, intermarriage and various forms of syncretism worked on the opposite direction, leading more Catholics to “apostasy.”22 The eighteenth century was marked by the rigidity of both church hierarchies and the mutual effort to limit communion and intermarriage. The number of similar cases reported in the archives of the Propaganda Fide, foreign diplomatic delegations and the local church provide substantial evidence for the widespread, if not mainstream, character of such practices and of the porous boundaries between the two communities. The question of the ownership of the chapel resurfaced toward the end of the century shortly after the Russian occupation, when one of the priests who used the church withheld from the Catholic owners its key on behalf of the bishop of Andros. An ambiguous situation was created for more than two decades in which, while the chapel was used exclusively by Orthodox priests pledging allegiance to the bishop of Andros, the Latin owners had their rights affirmed by the communal tribunal. After all, in 1805 the bishop of Andros bought the church at a high price from the heirs. Alarmed by what they perceived as an attempt of the Orthodox Church to gain a foothold on the island, a part of the Latin community reacted and eventually cancelled the sale after the intervention of a beneficiary who claimed his priority for the purchase of the chapel according to the right of preference as the next of kin (prossimo) of the sellers. Swiftly thereafter, the new owner, Don Giorgio Marinello, ceded the chapel to the Commune; by the end of the year, Holy Trinity had been partially rebuilt and rebranded as a Catholic chapel. Apparently, the outcome of a broader mobilization and fundraising effort among the Latins, the appropriation of the chapel still seemed quite precarious. For that reason, the community decided in 1810 to entrust it to the local Capuchin Order that was under the direct protection of the French ambassador in Istanbul. Yet, following the fates of the Napoleonic campaigns and their impact in the region, Holy Trinity did not remain Catholic for long. Shortly after Napoleon’s defeat, the patriarchate took action and in 1817 obtained a decree from Istanbul validating the purchase of 1805 and ordering the immediate transfer of the chapel to the representatives of the bishop of Andros. Reluctant to get involved in this affair, Bishop Russin considered the



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whole plot for the appropriation of the chapel merely opportunistic and hazardous, since “in such a long period of time, there is no real evidence of any claim made by the previous Latin bishops on the aforementioned chapel that was owned by the Greeks.”23 Russin went on to explain that even after the heirs of the founder (istitutore) of the chapel converted to Catholicism, the chapel remained always under the jurisdiction of the Greeks and continued to be used by them. The last legal owner, Zorzis Louvaris, had three direct heirs: after his wife and daughter signed the contract for the transfer of their rights to Holy Trinity and received their share in 1805, the sale remained pending, since the signature of the son was still missing. Don Niccolo Louvari, a priest in Constantinople at the time, was probably reluctant to cede his rights definitively. Following the advice of Monsignor Russin, he would have first bought some time in order to ask the opinion of the Propaganda Fide; finally, four years later, in 1809, he traveled to Andros to sign the contract and receive the sum corresponding to his share.24 According to Russin, Marinello only expected to find the 1,000 piastres in the “charity of the most devout,” “promising here and there to convert the small heretic chapel into a Catholic one.” The secular chancellery swiftly recognized him as rightful owner of the chapel through legal acrobatics and without checking if he had enough funds to reimburse the sale price. Russin reports that supporters of the new secular government destroyed and removed everything made for the benefit of the Greeks and remade everything in the Latin style, ignoring the Greek protests. Russin thought that the Greek reaction could place him in conflict with the Ottoman authorities, and he was afraid he would have the same fate as some of his predecessors, like Marengo who, a few years after Carga’s execution, had to flee to Sifnos over a debt to the aga of Andros,25 but most of all like Giacinto Giustiniani, who had been held in Constantinople and finally liberated with a ransom paid by the French ambassador after he had tried to ban “Greek foreigners” from Syra. In that respect, Russin reminded the French ambassador that Giustiniani had been instructed by the latter’s predecessor to show tolerance toward the Greeks and consider anyone free to come and settle on the island.26 Thus, when the new owners asked the bishop to consecrate the chapel, he refused, responding that he would do it once all circumstances and dangers deriving from such an action were taken into account and arguing that the reactions of Greeks could bring violence and eventually lead to a recovery and profanation of the chapel, “to the dishonor of God and the Catholics.” When later, the chapel was transferred to them, the Capuchins invited him once more to consecrate the Holy Trinity church. He responded that the Capuchin Friars were not allowed to own real estate without the permission of the Holy See, on pain of excommunication.27 This double refusal inaugurated a long rivalry

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between the bishop, on the one hand, and the secular government and the Capuchins, on the other.

Monsignor Russin The common denominator of all parties involved in this dispute was a territorial conception of the jurisdiction of the diocese of Syros, that was intended, as we have seen, to perpetuate the ecclesiastic regime of Latin domination under Ottoman rule. Most emblematic of this was the characterization of Syra as isola del papa, a name widely diffused among locals and travelers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and documented from the early seventeenth century.28 As the island was being swept up by the whirlwinds of history, in the midst of the Napoleon’s German campaign, Russin justified himself to the representative of his Imperiale Maestà against an accusation of sharing intelligence with the English (ingerenza coll’Inglesi), to which he riposted by returning the reproach, commenting that the Capuchin hospice had been turned into “a tavern and inn for foreigners, especially Englishmen.”29 These events were the beginning of a long and bitter feud between him and one of the friars of the local Capuchin Order. Giovanni-Battista Russin had been ordained bishop in 1800 at the age of thirty-one after having studied in the Collegio dei Cinesi in Naples.30 With the exception of Chios, where from early on local Greco-Latin priests were educated in Italian universities, bishops appointed in the smaller dioceses of the Archipelago were initially Italian-born, over the course of the eighteenth century, the bishops appointed were also Ottoman subjects, mainly from Chios but also Istanbul and Naxos, and often members of Levantine aristocratic families (Guarchi, Giustiniani, etc.). Russin was the first “local” bishop, born in neighboring Tinos, appointed in times of turmoil for the Roman Church, with the mission to hold together the Catholic clergy and flock on that eastern frontier of Europe. His somewhat humble origins and his lack of connections and support within the Vatican hierarchy would finally cost him his office and ultimately his life. He died in Rome in 1829, his eventual home after his removal from the episcopal see and his summoning to the Vatican in the spring of 1821, shortly before the outbreak of the Greek Revolution. His rivalry with the Capuchins was not an anomaly. Writing in 1819–20, after the war was over and the Holy Trinity chapel definitively returned to the Orthodox, Dracopoli described the desolation of the Catholic churches and the depopulation of Catholics from several of the islands. “The real cause of this lamentable situation is unfortunately the discord, the spirit of partisanship and the civil wars that reigned and still reign among our Catholics.”31 Com-



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menting that this indubitable truth was documented in a series of reports and memoirs kept in the archives of the local dioceses and monasteries that he had the opportunity to examine thoroughly, the report blames the Catholic hierarchy and clergy for the decay of the Catholic faith in the Archipelago. Observing that most parish priests were dedicated to their ministry, the Apostolic visitor noted at the same time that “the holy prelates of these islands, instead of proposing and using all their zeal to interpose themselves between the parties, are the first to foster and promote this disgraceful agitation.” Adopting an orientalist or orientalizing view of the Levantine clergy, which was quite common in the post-Tridentine church, he acknowledged the incompetence of the local bishops, their indolence concerning the promotion of faith, their attachment to their private affairs, and their passion to dominate the clergy and the flock (i cleri e i popoli).32 Dracopoli was concerned specifically with two cases: Giovanni-Battista Russin and Caspar Delenda, bishop of Santorini since 1815 and also a native of the island,33 both of whom refused to receive him as apostolic visitor, claiming that the brief for his appointment was fake. The root of the evil, according to Dracopoli, was a kind of “presbyterian despotism” promoted by the two bishops. Those two bishops . . . from the very first years of their promotion, they set it in their minds to be sovereigns in their dioceses and churches, and full of the sickening enthusiasm of their authority and dignity, they have sacrificed everything, both sacred and profane, in order to achieve their despotism, which, if it is intolerable by any secular sovereign, for the holy prelates of the sanctuary, is detestable and not to be tolerated at all. Both of these bishops have set themselves this purpose and end of their manoeuvres and machinations.34

According to Dracopoli, while Delenda met with the disapproval of the majority of the Latin community of Santorini, the one of Syra—tries more craftily and cunningly to be, as in the spiritual, also in the temporal, the one and only who legislates for all, and tries by every means possible to influence the government, to disband the council of mayors and establish those who follow his views, so that he might always have the power to do as he pleases, to confront and oppose all those who are contrary to his designs.35

Doing nothing but stirring up the parties and factions of the people, consequently keeping the community always “divided and mutinous,” the two bishops tried to concentrate all spiritual and secular powers in their hands. This had obvious drawbacks, such as the mobilization of their opponents and their appeals to the Catholic hierarchy. For example, the authors of most of the letters sent to Dracopoli from Syra during his visit were priests claiming to have been irregularly moved or replaced by Russin’s people. In one of the letters sent

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in March 1819, six of the priests informed Dracopoli that after the civil government (council) of Syros submitted an appeal to the Vatican concerning the conduct of the bishop, Monsignor Russin got angry at them, reacted violently, and used every means, including deception and violence, to put his own people on the Council.36 Dracopoli also recalls earlier manifestations of Russin’s passione di despotismo, reminding the Propaganda Fide that a few years earlier he had refused to accept the authority of the archbishop of Naxos, Vinkentios Coressi (1755–1835), also a Chiot and predecessor of Dracopoli in the see of Chios, before moving up within the Levantine hierarchy of the Catholic Church, appointed first archbishop of Naxos (1800), then titular bishop of Sardes and vicar apostolic in Constantinople (1814/16). Russin had already been summoned to Rome on this occasion to answer for his irregular conduct toward the hierarchy. After recounting his failed efforts to invite Russin to conform to the rules of the Roman Church, the various transgressions and factional cleavages that were caused by the bishop’s failures within the Latin community of Syros, along with anecdotal events concerning his authoritarian character,37 the apostolic visitor also discovered an irregularity in his appointment. Dracopoli reports an “involuntary mistake” made by the Propaganda Fide in the process of appointing Russin, relating a rather unlikely story according to which the papal bull or brief was actually intended for Don Francesco Canonico Russin, uncle of Giovanni-Battista, a well-educated, pious, and experienced priest, not a thirty-year-old who had just graduated from the Collegio di Napoli without experience or any particular talents. In the end, the young Russin somehow managed to receive the certification (diploma di consacrazione) in his name.38 The first to challenge Dracopoli’s authority, Caspar Delenda eventually accepted the Visit when threatened with excommunication, but he also initiated an attempt to form a common front with the other bishops. In Syros, the conflict escalated differently and reached a peak when Russin insistly refused to recognize him as apostolic visitor, offering him instead a private house (belonging to the Austrian vice-consul) or a cell at the Capuchin convent. Dracopoli reports that his representatives uttered affronts and outrages that he considered too obscene to report. Finally, upon his departure, one priest “who counts among the most favorites of Bishop Russin” apparently shouted out loud, “Go to hell, sons of the devil.”39 The point of no return was reached when, according to the testimony of the priest Giuseppe Xanthaky, Russin openly denied the primacy of the supreme pontiff, claiming publicly that “the Pope cannot anymore order a bishop, nor remove his from his diocese.”40 Dracopoli explains that facing all this, he had nothing left to do but excommunicate him and declare him deposed (caduto) from his episcopal see,41 providing a long



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justification of his motives and reasons in order to convince the Propaganda Fide to validate this decision.

Internal Conflicts The Catholic hierarchy in the Levant had not experienced such a negative turn of events for a long time. As the frictions between the secular authorities and the bishop usually regarded their overlapping jurisdictions in matters of dowries and inheritance, they were most often referred to the local representative of the Ottoman authorities in Andros. Factional cleavages involved various private property affairs, which were also put under the inspection of the Propaganda Fide. This in itself in no way revealed the particularity of Monsignor Russin’s mandate. The question of the status and extent of the bishop’s jurisdiction had long been a point of friction, especially in times of crisis and transition. Thus, for example, in the second half of the seventeenth century, during the Cretan and Morean wars, Bishop Giuseppe Guarchi (ca. 1620–90), a descendant of the Chiot nobility too, had seized the seal of the secular community. Finally, the solution of a double-locked box was introduced with one of the keys to be kept by the bishop.42 Meanwhile, dowry and marriage contracts and testaments remained under the exclusive responsibility of the bishop. Symptomatically, only a few years before Russin’s appointment, in 1791, the community had recognized the full authority of the bishops so that if, on any secular matter decided by him, another court decision appears, that one would be considered null and void, “especially if it is contrary to our customs and rules.” This resolution, which provided the basis for the community’s refusal to comply with the Ottoman bey’s order for the restoration of Holy Trinity to the Orthodox a few years later, undoubtedly occurred at a time of agreement between the island’s secular and religious authorities to avoid “foreign judges,” in order to maintain the unity of the community and their authority over its affairs.43 However, legal conflicts reappeared during the following decades, concerning mainly the implementation by the bishop of ecclesiastical legal norms that were incompatible with the local law. Dracopoli’s claim that all dignified members of the community and the representatives of the European powers were turned against him indicates that Russin, who in his saggio of 1813 claimed to have the support of the local French vice-consul, gradually lost his supporters and seemed isolated in 1819–20. Apart from the Capuchins and part of the local clergy, the bishop also had an ongoing feud with the Jesuits and more specifically with Father Domenico Venturi.44 The latter had come to the Archipelago from the Order of Russia to reorganize the local school that Russin had put under his tute-

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lage.45 Thus, the memory of Russin’s initial efforts to reorganize the education offered by Catholic schools was gradually overshadowed by the controversies and conflicts he had with monks, priests, and various representatives of the island’s secular authorities. The violent acts of his supporters against the administration of the previous epitropos, Antonios Printezis, and his direct involvement in local politics for the election in 1819 of Giorgis Stefanou, who in his turn supported Russin, consolidated an opposition of different members of the local community who had reason to worry about the concentration of power by the so-called partito of Monsignor Russin. Concluding his report on Russin, Dracopoli abandoned the rhetorical precautions and indicated that the only solution was the dismissal of the bishop, to be put into effect without delay: Summon him to Rome and judge him at a distance, not only in my opinion, but according to the universal voice of all, his condemnation is already decided, and, for all his past and present indignant conduct, release him from the sacred bonds of the Church of Syra and keep him there forever to be watched and guarded, and provide this poor Diocese of Syra with another worthy Pastor.46

The appeal of the local government to the Vatican against Russin, and all that followed until his summoning to Rome in 1821, was in all likelihood the first such episode since the times of Bishop Giuseppe Guarchi, who had also been recalled to Rome in 1669 and remained away from Syros until his death a quarter of a century later, during which the diocese was successively put under the authority of four vicars and two apostolic administrators.47 Monsignor Russin spent his last nine years in Rome, during which the management of the Latin diocese of Syros was entrusted first to the archbishop of Smyrna, Luigi-Maria Cardelli (1777–1868), as vicar, then after 1825 to Luigi-Maria Blancis da Ciriè (1770–1851), as administrator, a Recollect Franciscan and former prefect of the missions in Istanbul, who would formally succeed Russin in the episcopal see a few months after his death, in March 1830.48 During those years, Monsignor Russin retained his title, while awaiting (in vain) a hearing of his appeal.49 The contradictions and antagonisms that led to his demotion were widespread and covered a long period. The more obvious issues concerned the power games within the Latin prelates of the Levant. As Russin was the first “local” bishop, after a long series of Italians and Chiots mainly, but also Naxians and Istambuliots during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries,50 the apostolic visit and this standoff might be understood as a retreat in the constant effort to (re-)integrate the Archipelago dioceses within the Levantine network of the Roman Church. In those times of transition, such efforts often met with the resistance and reaction of various local prelates



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and clergy and continued to do so, even in the most “unproblematic” dioceses. The neighboring island of Tinos was one such “unproblematic” dioceses whose regular clergy would protest against the efforts of the archbishop of Naxos to put them under his jurisdiction, claiming that from time immemorial they were subject directly to the Holy See.51 What made the case of Syros unusual was, according to all evidence, the depth of the social divisions and the ferocity of the conflicts. Dracopoli’s repetitive allusions to the “civil wars” fomented by Russin, in combination with the sparse information provided by the local priests on acts of violence committed by the groups or gangs of his alleged supporters, indicate that a large number of people were involved. As it happens, information about those times of internal division within the community remain partial and fragmentary. Attempting to gain full control of the situation, the bishop had allegedly seized the seal of the community while groups of his supporters were terrorizing his opponents and also stormed the seat of the Council.52 Just a few years after the revolt of 1814 and right after the restitution of the Holy Trinity chapel to the Orthodox Metropolitan of Andros, the apostolic visit of 1819–20, the intervention of Dracopoli on behalf of the Holy See, and the final demotion of Russin were but a new phase, an escalation and, to some extent, internationalization of the intense and bitter struggles that had been tearing apart the Latin community in Syros for years. The insistent references of Dracopoli to the most prominent and sane elements of Syra, as opposed to the riffraff (gentaglia) of the bishop’s supporters, might indicate an occasional or permanent connection of the bishop with the “Peasants” (χωριανοί) party, which would be worth further investigation. The broader transformations that occurred during the half-century before 1820, that period on the threshold of modernity marked by the double revolution, had an impact on this scattered maritime city in the Levant. As mentioned above, the breakthroughs in shipping, in combination with the serious drawbacks for French trade in the Levant during the Napoleonic Wars, had created the terrain for the quick emergence of a regional merchant and shipping bourgeoisie, mainly Greek Orthodox, from the new shipbuilding centers of Hydra, Spetses, and Psara or the traditional trade hubs of Chios and Smyrna. The acceleration of maritime trade and the rapid monetization of the economy created new opportunities but deepened social inequalities. In that sense, the abandonment of the right of preference to follow the rise of the land and real estate prices, the continuing migration of islanders toward Istanbul and Smyrna, and the growing importance of the port during the decades that preceded the Greek Revolution53 were different aspects of those developments. In their efforts to maintain the influence of the Roman Church in that border zone between Europe and the East, the Levantine hierarchy seemed to be

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concerned with external pressures on the Latin communities of the Archipelago. Among those pressures, the enmity of the “schismatic Greeks,” combined with their growing strength in the region, was a major concern. Dracopoli’s references in his report to the “hatred of Greek schismatics” that pushed Catholics to migration or conversion54 reveal an effort to strengthen the Catholic faith and consolidate a distinct Latin identity that would take a new turn after the outbreak of the Greek revolt in the spring of 1821. Notes  1. “La pluspart de ses habitans sont des Chrétiens Latins. De là vient qu’on l’appelle quelquefois l’île du Pape” [Most of its inhabitants are Latin Christians. Hence, it is sometimes called the Pope’s Island]. Dictionnaire universel françois et latin, 1603.  2. See, for instance, the account of an incident of a pirate raid against a French ship in 1770 and that of an immense mobilization among the Syra community to rescue the French seamen of a shipwreck eight years later reported by Della Rocca. “If a French ship is chased by privateers or pirates near Syra, the inhabitants rush to help them, as it can be attested by various certificates of our informers,” which “fully justified” that “of all the islands in the Archipelago, Syra has a special right to the trust and affection of the Franks; an affection that these people deserve for the sincere commitment they have always shown to those of our nation, as if they were just one single people with us [comme s’ils ne formoient avec nous qu’un seul peuple].” Della Rocca, Traité complet sur les abeilles, 95–107. For the links between French trade and cultural interactions, see Celetti, “France in the Levant,” 383–406. One of the most characteristic attributes of the cultural hybridity of those island communities were the religious catechisms in Greek printed in Latin script throughout the eighteenth century, see Foskolos, Τα “φραγκοχιώτικα” βιβλία. For other aspects of that hybrid identity, see Drakakis, H Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας, 245–47; Roussos-Milidonis, Syra Sacra; Printezi-Kambeli, Η Σύρος στους αιώνες της τουρκοκρατίας.  3. Kolovos, Η νησιωτική κοινωνία της Άνδρου, 85.  4. Della Rocca, Traité complet sur les abeilles, 76–77.  5. See, for example, Frangakis-Syrett, Trade and Money, esp. 307–20; Galani and Papadopoulou, Greek Maritime History, 1–7 and passim; see Maximos, Το ελληνικό εμπορικό ναυτικό.  6. Drakakis, H Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας, 78–85; cf. idem “Ο λιμήν της Σύρου προ του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως”, Κυκλαδικά, vol. 1 (1956) no. 1, p. 23–28; Dimitropoulos, Μαρτυρίες για τον πληθυσμό, 171–238.  7. As for example in 1769 and 1776, before and after the Russian occupation of the Cyclades. Sigalas, “Επιστολαί των εκ Κωνσταντινουπόλει,” 29; and Drakakis, H Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας, 66–68 and 231.  8. Dimitropoulos, “Ένα συριανό,” 63.  9. Drakakis, “Η Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας: Η δικαιοσύνη και το δίκαιον.” 10. Decision of the Council of Elders of Spetses claiming that the Right of Preference was not valid on their island and stressing that the sale contract—and by extension the good acquired by it—was “sacred” on Spetses. See Dimitropoulos, “Το δικαίωμα προτίμησης,” 225. 11. Drakakis, Η Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας, 75–77.



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12. Around the time of the Russian occupation as mentioned (1769, 1775), as well as in 1785 and 1814–15. Drakakis, Η Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας, 75–77. 13. The whole report including attachments and short addresses of special issues: Archivio storico della Congregazione de Propaganda Fide (APF), Scritture riferite nei Congressi (SC), Arcipelago, volume from here on: v. 34, f. 166–185 followed by a complementary second report (f. 190–205). 14. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 34, f. 169–170. 15. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 34, f. 205r. 16. “Ora quei pochi Greci con prete loro hanno cercati di avere un vescovo greco, ma con la diligenza dell’ambasciatore di Francia che sta in Constantinopoli e stato vietato il vescovo greco di Andro che in Constantinopoli procurava per via di Turchi impetrare l’entrata in Sira.” Report of Santorini Bishop Demarchis to the SCPF on his visit to Syros, dated 12 July 1624. Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici, 43. 17. Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici, 20–21, 83–88. 18. First to serve as canceliere from the family of Komninos or (latinized) Comneno was Georgios in 1620–28, then Marco in 1665–69, and finally Giorgio Comneno in 1691–9. Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici. 19. See on this subject, Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 216–28. 20. Drakakis, Η Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας, 150-52, 167-68. Cf. Santus, 216-219. 21. The entire report of Monsignor Russin in APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 101–119. 22. Sanctus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 101–4. 23. “In tanto spazio di tempo non vi esiste alcuno vestigio veridico di sostenuta pretensione che gl’antecessori Vescovi Latini pretendessero su la detta cappella dai Greci posseduta” APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 102. 24. Intended, according to Monsignor Russin, to finance another charitable project, Ibid., f. 102. 25. Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici, 22–23. 26. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 107. 27. Ibid., f. 111–12. 28. Oldest reported by Bishop Pietro Demarchis as apostolic visitor of the island in 1624: “E l’isola di Sira sola in Levante tutta del nostro rito latino, et per la riverenza che hanno alla Chiesa Romana et al Sommo Pontefice vien detta l’isola del Papa.” Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici, 43. See Frazee, Catholics and Sultans, 119–21. 29. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 109. 30. Collegio dei Cinesi, founded in the eighteenth century and a precursor of Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale.” See D’Arelli, “The Chinese College.” 31. “[M]a la causa vera di questi legrimevoli effetti sono purtroppo la discordia, il spirito di partito e i guerre civili che regnavano et vi ragnano al parte tra i nostri cattolici.” Dracopoli to SCPF in APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 185. 32. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 188. 33. Dalli soli vescovi viene la diminuzione della nosta santa religione (194). Although not the first: Caspar Delenda (1768–1825), born in Santorini, served as a missionary to Asia Minor for several years, and was appointed bishop in 1815. Kassapidis, “Prosopographic Study of the Latin Clergy of Thera,” 128–29. 34. “Ma questi due vescovi sono stati sempre rivolti, che a mostrarsi animati di questi sentimenti tanto essenziali alla loro vocazione e stato. Questi se misero in testa fin dalli primi anni della loro promozione, di farla da sovrani nelle loro diocesi e chiese, e pieni del più stomachevole entusiasmo della loro autorità e dignità, fanno sagrificato tutto, e sacro, e pro-

50

35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

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fano, per venire a capo del loro despotismo, il quale, se è intolerabile in qualunque sovrano secolare, nei sacri prelati del santuario, è detestabile e affatto da non tollerarsi. Ambidue questi vescovi si sono propsto questo scopo e fine dei loro maneggi e macchinazioni.” APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 187. “Non facendo altro che sollevare dei partiti et fazioni del popolo . . . quello di Sira tenta con piu scaltrezza e furberia, che volendo essere siccome nel spirituale cosi anche nel temporale, il solo che da leggi a tutti, procura con ogni mezzo possibile che gli sindici si scolgano, e si costituiscano coloro che li vanno a seconda dei suoi sentimenti, per avere sempre il comod di fare quello che li pare e piace, e far fronte ed opporsene a tutti quelli che si mostrano contrari nei suoi disegni, val a dire, al rimanente coro dei Vecchiardi Assistenti e Consultori nel Governo Civile.” APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 187. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 34, f. 188-189. For example, he would have ordered young priests to erect a wall surrounding his garden instead of letting them carry out their spiritual duties toward the community. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 193v. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, 195r–v. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 205. “[Il] Papa non puo piu comandare un vescovo, ne levarlo dalla sua diocesi.” APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 189v. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 31, f. 197. Che il sigillo della Comunità sia posta in una cassetta sotto due chiavi differenti, una delle qualli sia tenuta d’esso Mgr. Vescovo, l’altra da Primati della medesima o dal loro Ministro: “Ordre du Capit. Fr. Morosini 17-1-1658 de Milo, au sujet des affaires entre l’Evèque de Syra et son clergé,” kept in the archive of the Capuchin Monastery of Syros. Drakakis, Η Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας, 39–40. Resolution of the members of the Council and Prelates of the Community of Syros, 15 July 1791, published in Drakakis, Η Σύρος επί τουρκοκρατίας, v. 2, “Η δικαιοσύνη και το δίκαιον”, 406–7. On questions of legal pluralism, see Barkey, “Aspects of Legal Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire.” APF, SC Archipelago, v. 34, f. 218–220, 15 March 1820, Letter in Greek written with Latin characters (Frangochiotika) by local prelates concerning the enmity of Bishop Mons. Russin against the Jesuit Father Venturi, signed by priests L. Chalavazis, G. Pampakari, N. Bambacaris, N. Dalezios, M. Makryonitis, M. Freri, N. Stefanos, S. Archangelo, N. Sargologo. See Printezi-Kambeli, “Η ιστορία της εκπαίδευσης στην Άνω Σύρο,” 347–51. Dracopoli report. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 34, f. 191. Roussos-Milidonis, Syra Sacra, 91–99; Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici, 55; Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus, 185–87. Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici,145–53; Carayon and Gilles, Missions des Jésuites, 201. In the last traces of his correspondence with the Propaganda Fide: APF, SC Archipelago, v. 35, f. 944–945; v. 36, f. 259; v. 37, f. 96–97. See Roussos-Milidonis, Syra Sacra, 71–143. Letter of 15 March 1824, signed by fifteen priests among whom was Russin’s uncle from Tinos, Francesco Canonico. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 35, f. 754–755. APF, SC Archipelago, v. 34, f. 188–189. Speis, “Tο λιμάνι και η Ναυτιλία της Σύρου, 1715–1821”; Drakakis, “Ο λιμήν της Σύρου προ του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως.”



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54. Dracopoli report, APF, SC Archipelago, v. 34, f. 183; Cf. Drikos, “Οι Συριανοί στην Κωνσταντινούπολη του 18ου και των αρχών του 19ου αι.”; Karachristos, “Μετανάστευση Συριανών στην Κωνσταντινούπολη”; Sfyroeras, “Μεταναστεύσεις και εποικισμοί Κυκλαδιτών εις Σμύρνην.”

Figure 3.1.  View of the Town and Island of Syra by Florent Auguste de Gabriel Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce, 48. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission.

CHAPTER 3

The Outbreak of the Revolution m m m

Until the early 1820s, Greece as a location represented a historical area, a rather vague region around the heartland of the classical Greek civilization on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula and the surrounding maritime area. The geopolitical realignments and upheavals of the French Revolutionary Wars stimulated, beyond the historical significance of the term, new political projections on a space that could encompass all the territories included between the Danube River and Crete, from north to south, and from the Ionian Sea to Asia Minor, from east to west.1 The plan of the secret society that fomented and undertook the organization of an insurrection against the Ottoman yoke for the spring of 1821, the Philiki Etaireia (Friendly Society), included military action in the northern and southern Balkans combined with a revolt in Istanbul itself. In late February, Alexandros Ypsilantis, a Phanariot and former officer of the Russian army, proclaimed the Greek Revolution as head of a moderate military unit composed mainly of students, crossing the river Prut, a tributary of the Danube that formed the border between the Russian Empire and the Danubian Principalities under joint Ottoman suzerainty. However, this campaign did not meet with the expected mobilization of the local population nor was there a parallel Serbian and Montenegrin revolt in the Western Balkans. By June, the Sacred Battalion had been defeated by the Ottoman army and disbanded; Ypsilantis himself fled to Habsburg territories, where he was captured and held prisoner until 1827.2 Likewise, the swift and harsh reaction of the Sublime Porte to the generalized revolt in the Peloponnese and the various smaller local revolts nipped in the bud any prospect of revolt in Istanbul.3 The insurgency, meanwhile, took hold in the Peloponnese. The Morea Eyalet had a population of a little less than a half million, 90 percent of whom were Greek Orthodox. Around 90 percent of that population resided in the rural countryside and only 10 percent in the small port towns around the coast or in the administrative center of Tripolitsa. With the joint support of the kodjabashis or proestoi, local prelates who during the second period of Ottoman rule had regularly acted as tax farmers and intermediaries between the Ottoman authorities and the Greek Orthodox peasantry, local and regional

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warlords built a revolutionary army that took control of most fortified positions within a few months. The Turks (Muslims) were persecuted, killed, or captured; the ones who escaped persecution sought refuge in the few coastal fortresses still under Ottoman control. After the capture of Tripolitsa by the Greeks toward the end of September, which degenerated into a total massacre of Muslims and Jews, the insurgents had consolidated their control over the whole of the Morea. The involvement of the islands and the naval war brought the effects of the revolution directly to the Archipelago. The revolt of the Hydriot seamen and sea captains, led by Antonis Oikonomou in late March, triggered a new disposition of the social forces at play and various renegotiations of social ranks and hierarchies in the new situation. Rich landowners and prelates invested or just disposed of their assets to fund the war effort; on the islands too, rich shipowners and merchants placed their vessels at the service of the national cause and renegotiated the terms of the political arrangement with the seamen and peasants. The Greek navy was formed under the joint leadership of the islands of Hydra, Spetses, and Psara, the three largest fleets, accounting for three-fourths of the total number of vessels.4 The decision to participate in the Greek struggle was in most islands taken by popular assemblies instigated by members of the Etaireia, usually after coordination with members of the local elite. Thus, the relative withdrawal of the Ottoman fleet after the first Greek attacks created a power vacuum that gave way to a new political space of negotiation between the local elites and the ordinary people whose agency was now able to tip the scales in favor of the one or the other side of the conflict. The revolutionary fervor soon began to spread, while the impact of the events in the Peloponnese reached the Archipelago. The first appeals and orders by the representatives of the Greek government toward the insular communities were dispatched in late April. By early May, a series of popular assemblies, usually with the active involvement of the Orthodox clergy, took place. Such insurrectionary assemblies were organized during the spring of 1821 in Andros, Tinos, Mykonos, Paros, Naxos, Milos, and Santorini, the most prosperous and densely populated among the Cyclades, particularly valuable as potential tax resources for the financing of the naval war. At the same time, the first groups of Ottoman prisoners from the Morea, mostly women and children destined for the slave trade, started appearing on the shores of the islands. The timely coincidence between what would later prove to be Bishop Russin’s last departure for Rome and the crossing of the Prut by Prince Alexander Ypsilantis, inaugurated a period of multiple transitions during which Syros illustrates how the events of history can often lead to the making use of the islands, bringing them to the forefront of history.5



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From Laibach to Verona and “Those Who Delivered the Eastern Part of Europe to Incalculable Turmoil” The main object of the conferences of the European powers in Troppau in late 1820 and in Laibach (Ljubljana) in the spring of 1821 was the constitutionalist military insurrection in Naples. During the Congress of Laibach, programmed to coordinate and legitimize the Austrian intervention in Naples, the news about the outbreak of new insurrections in Piedmont and Greece further complicated the situation. This new twist on the Eastern question came as a surprise to most participants. Although the various Greek leaders attempted from their very first declarations to emphasize their difference from the other insurrections with their classical inheritance and the Christian character of the revolt against a Muslim sovereign,6 the counterrevolutionary spirit of Vienna prevailed. Through his representatives Nesselrode and Capodistria, who had previously declined the offer of the Philiki Etaireia to assume the leadership of an armed insurrection in the Greek lands, the tsar denounced the revolt. For the sovereigns of the Eastern powers, the Greek Revolution was one in a wave of revolts that caused disquiet in Restoration Europe. Thus, in their common statement about the restoration of peace in Europe, the kings of Russia, Austria, and Prussia included a reference to “the events of Naples, those of Piedmont,” but also to “even those which, under very different circumstances, but by equally criminal maneuvers, have just delivered the eastern part of Europe to incalculable turmoil.”7 The Austrian Chancellor Klemens von Metternich, the key figure in the creation of the Concert of Europe, tried to influence the other Christian sovereigns against the idea of a Christian crusade against the sultan, highlighting the perils deriving from a successful Greek rebellion that would set a paradigm for other national-liberal movements. Indeed, each of the Christian sovereigns of Europe, in the east and the west, had their reasons to worry. A new cycle of revolt had started on New Year’s Day of 1820 in Spain. By the summer of 1821 there had been another anti-Bourbon constitutionalist revolt in Naples. In light of these world events, the religious character of the Greek revolt for independence from the sultan, which had broken out in March, the same time as the constitutionalist insurrection in Piedmont, seemed to still be a rather unimportant incident. Hence, the first official reactions of France and Britain toward the Greek insurrection were underwhelming. In view of the open fronts that the two Western constitutional monarchies had with liberal-nationalist movements, in Spain and Ireland notably, they recognized the conflict as an internal matter of the Ottoman Empire and declared their neutrality. Concerned about the

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perspective of a Russian-Ottoman war, in his correspondence with the tsar, British Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh8 qualified the Greek rebels as no different than Carbonari whose success could provoke a domino effect that threatened to topple the established post-Napoleonic system. Despite the long-standing political interests of Russia in the Eastern Mediterranean and his role as protector of the Greek Orthodox Church, Tsar Alexander II seemed from his side convinced by a conspiracy theory according to which the wave of revolts, including the Greek one, was organized by an obscure revolutionary committee sitting in Paris.9 Hence, fear that a possible success of the Greek insurrection might inspire similar national-liberal movements in Russian lands (e.g., Poland, Ukraine) prevailed, and Alexander rejected Capodistria’s suggestion to address a strict warning to the Porte over the atrocities against the Orthodox that could pave the way for a war. Having achieved the alignment, however temporary, of the European powers on the condemnation of any revolutionary movement as a prerequisite for the maintenance of the post-Napoleonic status quo, Metternich intensified his efforts to acquire the “moral support” of the papacy, in his political struggle to (re-)establish an ideological hegemony of the counterrevolutionary forces. After the Austrian troops had invaded and oppressed the revolt in Naples, the Austrian Chancellor actively promoted the policy of cooperation between throne and altar, requesting a formal papal condemnation of the Carbonari. Elected by an extraordinary conclave held in Venice in 1800 after the death of his predecessor, Pius VI, in French captivity, Pope Pius VII inaugurated his papacy with an effort to normalize the relationships with France, notably signing a concordat in 1801 and consecrating Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor in 1804. However, after the French troops attacked the Papal States anew in 1809, the aged Pope excommunicated Napoleon, only to be subsequently arrested and held in captivity by the French in Savona and other places while his health constantly deteriorated until 1814. When Pius VII finally returned to Rome, he reinstated Cardinal Consalvi, mastermind of Vatican foreign policy and virtual ruler of Rome in times of absence or disease of the pontiff.10 After the restoration of the Papal States at the Congress of Vienna, Consalvi had opted for a line of strict neutrality toward any European conflict in an effort to preserve as much as possible of the already precarious temporal power of the Holy See in the new international system.11 That concern informed both his persistence on this line during the rebellions of 1820–21 in Italy, as well as his reluctance to publicly denounce the Carbonari societies, at least for as long as the rebels retained political power in Naples. However, as the Austrian troops invaded Naples and restored King Ferdinand IV, the Greek revolt appeared as a new threat to the fragile post-1815 equilibrium.



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The Holy See against the Challenges of the Revolutionary Wave The first concern of the papal policy toward the Greek insurrection was to assert its neutrality toward the belligerents. Greek ships continued being admitted in the ports of the Papal States, Ancona, Livorno, Civitavecchia, and elsewhere, on the condition that they lower the national flag; meanwhile, the security apparatus used to block ammunition destined for the rebels in Naples was also used to control Greek ships or ships bound for the region for the same purpose.12 The refugees, who had already started arriving in Ancona during the war of the Ottoman troops against Ali Pasha Tepelenli in Epirus, became a separate issue after the outbreak of the revolt in the Peloponnese. The orders sent by Consalvi and the management of the issue by the apostolic delegate in the district of Frosinone, G. A. Benvenuti, demonstrate a combination of Christian charity and realpolitik.13 The groups of refugees arriving in small boats mostly from or through the overcrowded lazarettos of Corfu and Zante were given shelter in Ancona or passage to places with established Greek communities, so as to avoid illegal entries through the coastline and to channel their movement toward areas and communities that were already under the direct control or close supervision of the papal authorities. With the publication of the papal bull Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo in September 1821, the Holy See adopted an openly counterrevolutionary stance. The condemnation of the Carbonari and other “secret societies and clandestine sects” formed in the spirit of freemasonry, “created by a prodigious number of guilty men, united in these difficult times against the Lord and against Christ . . . to deceive the faithful by the deviousness of a false and vain philosophy, to drag them away from the bosom of the Church, with the foolish hope of ruining and overthrowing this very Church.”14 Fruit of long and tedious negotiations and investigations conducted by Count Apponyi, ambassador of the Austrian Empire to the Holy See and Cardinal Consalvi, the bull marked a period of close cooperation between Vienna and Rome against the new revolutionary uprisings. Since the outbreak of the Greek revolt, the Austrian Chancellor sought to repress any papal inclination toward support for the insurgents. However, Consalvi already had his own reasons to be negatively disposed toward the Greek rebellion, especially with regard to the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire: should the revolution prevail, a Greek nation-state would apply discriminatory measures against them; should it fail, the wrath of the Turks would fall without distinction between Eastern and Western Christians. The only positive outcome could be envisaged in the failure of the revolt, combined with full dissociation of the Latins from it. In that case, they could win the favor of the sultan as the Greeks were losing their previous influence. Hence, one of Consalvi’s first

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initiatives on the matter in the early summer of 1821 was to remind the sultan, through the intermediary of Metternich, of the distinction between Greeks and Latins, as well as of the exemplary loyalty of the latter toward their sovereign.15 And so the issue of the Archipelago Catholics became a parameter of international politics. Of course, protection of the Catholic Church had long been part of the French agenda in the Levant and had increasingly drawn Austrian interest, and that of Metternich himself, especially after the temporary withdrawal of the French influence in the region during the war.16 Aponyi and Consalvi discussed the fate of the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire in late May 1821. The papal secretary of state observed that the present moment was favorable to gain all the advantages for the Catholics in the domains of the sultan and asked the Austrian government to employ its representatives at the Sublime Porte for that purpose. In a dispatch issued September 1821, the Austrian internuncio in Constantinople, Count von Lützow, stated that he shared the conviction that the moment was opportune to restore to the Catholics the privileges that had been lost because of the influence of the Greek interpreters and patriarchs to the sultan.17 At the same time, a Russian intervention seemed inevitable sooner or later, since the tsar would finally succumb to internal pressures to help the Greeks. Hence, now the main concern for the Austrian Chancellor was to avoid a French interference in Greek affairs, using as a main argument the perils a Greek victory could bring to the Catholics of the Levant—a tactic he was to employ frequently during the course of the Greek Revolution.18 Feigned or sincere, his worries about the Catholics of the empire were informed by reports and appeals circulated by their various representatives in the Levant.

First Contacts and Frictions between Insurgents and Islanders In April 1821, a few days after the revolt led by Oikonomou and the temporary truce concluded between the insurgents and the prelates, the community of Hydra (signing as “the inhabitants” and no longer “the prelates”) issued a unanimous declaration of the revolution “as descendants of the glorious men” of classical Greece fighting for liberty against the “yoke of Mohammedan barbarians . . . exterminators of the sciences and the arts and enemies of the holy religion of Jesus Christ.”19 Along the same lines as the declaration of Petrobey Mavromichalis from Kalamata a month earlier, this declaration emphasized the Christian rather than the Hellenic character of the revolt. The Hydriots had declared war on the Ottomans and asked for the active assistance or at least the favorable neutrality of the European powers.20 The war flotilla of nine ships under the command of Ioannis Tombazis, which sailed to the Aegean islands in the following days was united with the



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ships from Spetses and Psara carrying new revolutionary appeals announcing to the islanders that “thousands of our brave brothers under the command of Prince Alexander Ypsilantis march from the Danube toward Constantinople to subdue the enemy at his base, while the Peloponnese and the rest of Greece have hoisted the flag of freedom and the Holy Cross reigns!”21 The fleet carried an appeal to Western Christians, addressing them as members of the same community, co-nationals or co-ethnics (ομογενείς, loosely translated), to join the struggle in the name of their common Christian faith and liberty, “bound to each other by love, the same kindred (γένος) and the same fatherland (πατρίδα) . . . We Western and Eastern Christians are also bound by the Holy Cross, upon which our Lord spread His arms. Rise up, together with your Eastern Brothers! . . . Let us all move ahead under the same flag and the same spirit.”22 The appeal to the Latins as natives of the same land and offspring of the same glorious ancestors preaching civilization against barbarism and Christianity against Islam was actually a repudiation of the distinct identity of the Latins as a separate ethno-confessional group.23 Around the turn of the nineteenth century, the denominations Frank and Latin, initially carrying a distinction between native Ottoman Catholics and foreign subjects, were used with an overlapping meaning,24 distinct from Eastern Christians under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate designated as Romans (Romaioi/Romioi) or Greeks (Γραικοί).25 Accordingly, around the turn of the nineteenth century, the term nazione greca, already in use to describe either Greek Orthodox or Greek-speaking communities, gradually acquired a more political sense. The insurgents felt compelled from the very beginning to solicit the cooperation of the Latins mainly out of concerns related to their foreign policy, namely the reception of European opinion in view of a possible recognition by the powers. Among the first to address the distinct identity of the island Catholics were some of the most prominent Greek scholars. One of the main authors of those patriotic appeals to the islanders was Neofytos Vamvas, a scholar and deacon from Chios, member of the Etaireia who had arrived in Hydra with the purpose of convincing the prelates to organize a military campaign to his native Chios. During those critical years, he remained in regular contact with Adamantios Korais, a personal friend and mentor, who monitored the receptions of the revolutionary events by the French press from Paris. Korais praised that appeal for helping “to silence our many enemies, who are trying to present us as pirates eager to exterminate the religiously divisive Grecolatins.”26 Meanwhile, upon their arrival, the ships of the new revolutionary fleet met with popular assemblies organized by the networks of the Philiki. In Naxos, leaders of the insurrection were Michail Markopolitis, head of the community of the villages of the island, and the Orthodox Metropolitan Ierotheos of

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Paronaxia. They were both members of the Philiki and fervent heralds of the revolution. For the Orthodox villagers, the adherence to the insurrection was yet another episode in a long struggle waged against the Latin feudal lords of the Kastro. Markopolitis himself was a descendant of the family of hereditary leaders of the village community and the son of the chief who masterminded a sequence of local revolts against the Latin lords of the same name and who had been exiled and put to death by the Ottomans in 1802.27 Hence, the revolt of the Naxos villagers against the rich landlords of the Kastro in 1821, similar to the late eighteenth-century revolts or to that of Syros a few years earlier, involved from the very beginning an anti-Latin polemic. According to the testimony of Catholic Archbishop Andrea Veggetti, “since 6 May, when the Greek bishop and Michael Markopolitis publicly carried the flag of freedom from the countryside, the insurgents denounced Catholics as their enemies, calling them Turcolatras, that is, worshippers of Turks.”28 However, whether out of conviction or fear of the Orthodox, some local Catholics reportedly took part in the popular mass celebrated by Ierotheos in early May 1821. From his side, the Catholic archbishop, Andrea Veggetti, already involved in a feud with Metropolitan Ierotheos, who had arrived in the island a year earlier, was convinced that the Orthodox were plotting the elimination of the Archipelago Catholics. In concert with the local vice-consul of France, he implemented a line of strict neutrality, appealing (successfully) for protection not only to the French but also to the Russian Emperor.29 But the effects of the war in the Morea would soon be felt in the Archipelago, further fueling the antagonisms between the two churches. On 13 May 1821, a Greek ship carrying about a hundred Turkish prisoners stopped on a beach of the island. The captives were first dumped onto a nearby desert islet, then distributed in groups among the villages and the town where, out of fear of possible Ottoman reprisals or of pure nationalistic hatred, the Greeks began to pursue and murder them.30 Veggetti claimed that this was the result of a written order given by the Orthodox bishop, and took action in concert with the Catholic primates to save their lives, soliciting the help of the French vice-consul but also of captain Vangheli Mazarakis, representative of the provisional government in the Cyclades. However, despite the formal condemnation of the killing of unarmed prisoners by the latter, bands of armed Greeks continued pursuing and murdering the captives. From that point on, the affair of the Turkish prisoners remained a point of constant friction between Latins and Greeks in a series of episodes throughout the summer of 1821; finally, seventeen of them who survived after finding shelter in Latin convents or the residence of the French vice-consul were evacuated by a French ship that delivered them to kapudan pasha on behalf of the Latins of the Archipelago.31 Turkish prisoners, usually elderly, women, and children, continued transiting through



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the Archipelago during the years to come in various numbers and conditions and would be instrumentalized, as we shall see later, by all parties to achieve various goals.32 Considered in a broader perspective, revolutionary events crossed rather than consolidated the boundaries between Greeks and Latins. Like in Hydra, in Naxos too, the insurrection drew a dividing line between rich landowners and merchants on one side and the poor peasants and sailors on the other. In both cases, the primates found themselves obliged to buy some time seeking a compromise with the insurgents. That social division became all the more obvious in Santorini where since the first months of the revolution local Orthodox notables allied themselves with the Catholic prelates to prevent the establishment of Greek authorities on the island. That attitude generated growing tensions within the community that, according to the Catholic bishop, Casper Delenda, even led some Greeks to request their admission to the Church of Rome as a means of receiving more effective protection.33 Since crossing religious boundaries for reasons of convenience had been recurrent for centuries in the region, such events only fed a permanent concern on both sides. Like the members of the Catholic hierarchy who were afraid that the Latin communities of the Archipelago would sooner or later have the fate of that of Andros, the Greek insurgents were also aware that, if they gave in to the Latins or the notables of Santorini, the islanders might use conversion to Catholicism in order to avoid tax collection. In Tinos, members of the Catholic flock attended the popular assembly organized by the Orthodox Metropolitan Gabriel Sylivos. At the same time, the Catholic bishop, Giovanni Collaro, had since April received messages from the Tiniot members of the community of Pera, which conveyed the Vatican’s line that the occasion was favorable for Latins to seek the sultan’s favor. Collaro preached and observed strict neutrality soliciting (and obtaining by late May) a patent of protection from the French king through the intermediary of the French consul in Smyrna Pierre David, hoisting the French flag on top of every church and including a prayer for the French king in the feast-day celebrations in every parish.34 Similar patents were issued for all Catholic communities during the spring of 1821. The part played by the local French vice-consuls in the mobilization and building of networks of the Archipelago Latins was pivotal, as they secured the communication between the Catholic hierarchy and the French diplomatic delegation.35 As we will see, their intervention would become more direct as the tension between Greeks and Latins gained momentum. The attacks of armed bands of Greek rebels against the Latins in Naxos may well have been kept in check, yet they were not an isolated or exceptional outburst of violence. Anti-Latin riots and attacks by an Orthodox mob against Catholic properties and chapels occurred during those first months also in Santorini and Tinos. However, the most serious among a series of minor tensions

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and conflicts between islanders and insurgents took place after a Hydriot sailor who had sexually abused a Tiniot girl was caught and murdered by members of the local community. Groups of enraged sailors raided the town in search of the perpetrators, in a conflict which within a few days culminated in the bombing of the island by Hydriot ships.36 Hence, in one of the most densely populated and religiously diverse islands, where the representatives of the insurgents had already been able to conscript a few hundred volunteers to join the revolutionary effort, a part of the local community and the prelates distanced themselves or openly opposed the insurgency. Such events demonstrate both the fragility of the commitments and alliances forged at that critical juncture, as well as the significance of local affiliations and identities alongside religious ones. The first eparchoi (prefects) sent by the Greek government reached the islands during the summer of 1821, with the principal aim to organize a mechanism for the collection of the tithe. The Lazarist abbot Louis Pègues, who arrived in Santorini in 1824, recounted this period from his experience and hearsay evidence collected from the local Latins, as follows: “authority is constituted and organized in great haste and with all the disorder of anarchy; it surrounds itself with all that it finds by its side and at its disposal . . . . In the absence of laws and ordinances . . . , each governor becomes a legislator,” and arbitrariness, caprice, despotism, and violence37 become the sources of the new law. Torn between fear and hope, the islanders were often forced to accept as governors “men who sprang suddenly from the hold of a ship or a pirate vessel, from the huts of the Mani, or from the dens of barbarism, to appear in the midst of the towns.”38 In the power vacuum caused by the sudden collapse of imperial power structures and the emergence of new power centers and its power brokers, the visits of the governors accompanied by armed soldiers “sometimes resemble[d] an invasion of brigands.”39 During its first months, what the insurrection brought to the islanders was “the armed palicars, the wild voice of a disguised Maniot, or the orders of a fierce Albanian, whose sheepskin clothes his pride.” Hence, recurrent in the account of Abbé Pègues, and in those of other members of the Latin clergy during those years, was the figure of “foreigners” (forestieri, étrangers), fanatic, lowly, or debased people coming from elsewhere, terrorizing from the very first moment the Catholics, “shooting at them and their houses from afar, without provocation,” pillaging their crops or attacking them physically.40 Yet again, the novelty of the revolutionary experience was not so much the revival of the old rivalry between Greeks and Latins, as the encounter between people of different cultural backgrounds and social classes. “In these times of disorder and anarchy, the most prominent Catholic families are even more exposed than the others, because of the brutal pleasure that was found in hu-



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miliating them, or because of the greed that attached covetous glances to their fortune.” Hence, before those “ferocious soldiers, i.e., the Albanians, the Candiots, and other brigands from the islands or the mainland,” the Latins “yielded to fear and pusillanimity, paralyzing themselves before those shepherds or brigands whom they inwardly abhorred.”41 Finally, for the Syriot Latins, the Greek insurrection remained during its first year an event that happened elsewhere. There the line of conduct of the local community was much more unambiguous. The secular authorities decided already in late April 1821 to declare their neutrality and to formally request through the intermediary of the local French vice-consul that the island be put under French protection. According to the vicar apostolic in Istanbul Vinkentios Coressi, former bishop of Chios and archbishop of Naxos, in the summer of 1821 a number of Syriots stood under arms in order to prevent a potential Greek assault.42 However, the first representatives sent by Dimitrios Ypsilantis did not even stop at Syros. The internal life of the community still orbited around the departure of Russin to Rome and his fate: his supporters kept spreading rumors about his imminent return, whereas his opponents kept trying to prevent it. Meanwhile, Russin’s party had managed to reelect as epitropos of the secular community his supporter Giorgio Stefano. According to one of his opponents, the local priest Giorgio Salacha, due to incompetence and excessive ambitiousness, Stefano sent many letters to the Ottoman authorities and the European diplomats in Istanbul that were twice intercepted by the insurgents, exposing the community to defamation and/or a potential assault by the insurgents.43 Although the reputation of the Syriots among them was somewhat tarnished, the insurgents lacked local contacts and did not attempt any direct approach or contact with the local community. But the effects of the war that had just started were to be felt very soon on the islands. The anti-Greek riots in Constantinople in April and the hanging of the patriarch and of several prominent Phanariots resulted in the first wave of refugees. After the first attacks of the Greek navy on Ottoman ships close to the Asia Minor coast in May, the first major setback of the war in the Aegean took place in the rich and populous island of Chios, in an episode that prefigured the massacre that would take place the following year. Chios was an island too big and too close to the coast and, most of all, too prosperous to be left alone by the Ottomans. Hence, the local authorities arrested preventively and held as hostages the heads of the most prominent Orthodox families of the island. The Greeks abandoned their plans of invasion and the Ottomans abandoned their plan for a military intervention, and order was soon to be restored on the island. However, out of fear of another Greek or Ottoman attack, some of the wealthier and prominent families sought to set foot on safer shores. In that regard, neutral Syros seemed for many the best option.44

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Yet this was just the beginning. The first mass wave of forced population movement during the Greek War of Independence was caused by a wave of Ottoman reprisals against Orthodox communities along the Asia Minor coast in late May–early June. The impact of Christian refugees fleeing the Ottoman reprisals on the demography and economy of the islands was sharp and would also prove durable. According to different estimates, between fifteen thousand and thirty thousand Greek Orthodox refugees arrived in the Archipelago during the summer of 1821 from the city of Smyrna, the town of Ayvalik and the nearby islands (Moschonissia/Cunda) fleeing the aggressions of the Ottoman army and the Turkish mob.45 To those would to be added a part of those who fled Ottoman reprisals or military operations against local revolts in southern Macedonia, Thessaly, but also in some of the biggest islands like Crete and Cyprus. Of course, that migration was precarious, especially for the majority of the destitute. Seeking refuge from the war and possible ways to earn a living, the majority chose to settle temporarily in the bigger and more populated islands of Naxos and Tinos, which still was at that point the main hub of commercial, political, or military activity. Others went to Zea (Kea), Mykonos, or Thermia. In 1821, between 700 and 1,000 refugees arrived in Syros from Smyrna and Ayvalik, but also from the Greek mainland, Chios, and Crete. Most of them worked in various occupations in the port but slept inside the town during the night. Meanwhile, as war and piracy started raging around, the port of the island seemed to provide several advantages. A large and deep natural harbor in the midst of the Archipelago with a quasi-indemnity for commercial transactions, the neutral territory of Syros de facto acquired the status of free port (porto franco) where pirates, merchants, and any sort of agents of the belligerents could continue their activities and transactions relatively sheltered from war, incursions, assaults, pressures, and tax collection by the insurgents.46 Thus, in the first winter of the war, Syros was chosen as the temporary seat by different people of the political and economic elites of the region. Raktivan Agasi Halil Bey, an Ottoman envoy who conveyed instructions of submission from the new patriarch to the Orthodox clergy and orders from the kapudan pasha to the prelates of the Archipelago, stopped at Syros in October 1821 and remained there for three months, attempting to establish channels of communication with the prelates of Hydra and other representatives of the insurgents.47 Likewise, among the few Chiots who had arrived before the massacre of 1822 were some members of the extended Ralli family, owners of a huge trading company, with branches in Marseille, Livorno, and London and who bought one of the few buildings outside of the bourg then situated close to the shore.48 During the same time, in the absence of Russin, the situation on the island kept drawing the attention of the Catholic hierarchy in the region. And as long as the war went on, the island was to attract grow-



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ing interest of merchants, insurgents, vice-consuls, and other representatives of European powers. Notes  1. Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution; Leontis, Topographies of Hellenism; Tziovas, Greece and the Balkans. For the global context, see Livingstone and Withers, Geography and Enlightenment.  2. See Kitromilides and Tsoukalas, The Greek Revolution, 19–29; Mazower, The Greek Revolution, 3–36.  3. For the Ottoman reaction to the Greek Revolution, see Ilicak, “Those Infidel Greeks”; Kolovos, Ilicak, and Shariat-Panahi, Η οργή του σουλτάνου; Moiras, Η Ελληνική Επανάσταση.  4. Nikodimos, “Yπόμνημα της νήσου Ψαρών”, 1: 95-96; Sfyroeras, “Προβλήματα του ναυτικού αγώνα του ’21,”; Svolopoulos, “O ελληνικός εμπορικός στόλος”; Metallinos, O ναυτικός πόλεμος κατά την ελληνική επανάσταση 1821–1829, 1:108, 1:148–50; Harlaftis, “H ‘ναυτική πολιτεία’ του Iονίου και του Aιγαίου.”  5. Braudel, Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 154.  6. See, for example, the declaration of Prince Ypsilantis from Jassy in February and that of Petros Mavromichalis from Kalamata in March 1821, respectively. Daskalakis, Kείµενα-πηγαί τῆς ἱστορίας τῆς ἑλληνικῆς ἐπαναστάσεως, 141–44; Gordon, History of the Greek Revolution, 183.  7. “Pénétrés de cette vérité éternelle, les Souverains n’ont pas hésité à la proclamer avec franchise et vigueur; Ils ont déclaré qu’en respectant les droits et l’indépendance de tout pouvoir légitime, ils regardaient comme légalement nulle et désavouée par les principes qui constituent le droit public de l’Europe toute prétendue réforme, opérée par la révolte et la force ouverte. Ils ont agi, en conséquence de cette déclaration, dans les événemens de Naples, dans ceux du Piémont, dans ceux-même qui, sous des circonstances très différentes, mais par des combinaisons également criminelles, viennent de livrer la partie orientale de l’Europe à des convulsions incalculables,” Journal de clôture des Conférences particulières de Laybach, 12 May 1821. Austrian State Archives—Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA), Staatskanzlei, Kongressakten, Kart. 22, Fasz. 40 (alt), 122/2–122/6, 126–128.  8. Heraclides and Dialla, Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century, 109; Couderc, “L’Europe et la Grèce, 1821–1830.”  9. Frary, Russia and the Making of Modern Greek Identity, 18–53. 10. Reinerman, “Papacy and Papal State”; Robinson, Cardinal Consalvi. See Consalvi, Mémoires du cardinal Consalvi. 11. Thomson, Europe since Napoleon, 107–138; Schütz, Die europäische Allianzpolitik, and Heraclides and Diala, Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century, 105–33. 12. Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, 48–54, the main issues concerned the Greeks in Livorno and the Greek ships in the papal ports and the control of whether or not the munitions are destined for Greece. 13. Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, 55–59. For Giovanni Antonio Benvennuti (1765–1838); Baudrillart et al., Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, 288. 14. Reinerman, “Metternich and the Papal Condemnation.” 15. Reinerman, “Metternich, the Papacy, and the Greek Revolution,” 179.

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16. Metternich’s occasional involvement can be traced back to 1814 regarding an affair of a female monastic community in Santorini. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 31, f. 433. See Reinerman, “Metternich, the Papacy, and the Greek Revolution,” 187n5. For the Austrian policy during the Greek Revolution, see Katsiardi and Kontogeorgis, Η αυστριακή αρμάδα. 17. OeStA/HHStA, GKA, GesA Rom Vatikan II, 56 and 57. 18. Reinermann, “Metternich, the Papacy, and the Greek Revolution,” 180. 19. Philemon, Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Ελληνικής Επαναστάσεως, 3:112. 20. Philemon, Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Ελληνικής Επαναστάσεως, 3:112. For Mavromichalis’s declaration see Braudel, Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 154. 21. Orlandos, Ναυτικά, 1:93–99. 22. Philemon, Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Ελληνικής Επαναστάσεως, 3:113–114. 23. For the political and administrative status of the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, see Frazee, Catholics and Sultans, 153–221; and Schmitt, Levantiner, 51–87. 24. See Schmitt, Levantiner, 55–58; and Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus, 272–81. 25. For an overview of the discussion and recent research on the name to be used for the Greek nation, see the conference proceedings: Katsiardi et al., Έλλην Ρωμηός Γραικός. 26. Letter of Adamantios Korais to Neofytos Vamvas dated 17 September 1821. Korais, Αλληλογραφία, 307. 27. Slot, “Το ημερολόγιο του προξένου της Ολλανδίας στη Νάξο,” 1987: 5–11, 19–20; 1988: 5–10; Papaïliaki, “Les fermiers d’impôts de Naxos.” 28. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 140–144, here 142v. See also Korinthios, “αποστολή τών αρμοστών στη Νάξο,” 211. For the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, see Kasdagli, Land and Marriage. 29. Korinthios, “αποστολή τών αρμοστών στη Νάξο,” see the response of Raftopoulos, vice-consul of Russia: 202–3, 207–8. “This curbed the audacity of the insurgents and spared us from their deadly attacks,” Veggetti would comment a year later in his report to the French ambassador in Istanbul, Marquis Fay Latour-Maubourg, (APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 143), making it clear in his correspondence with the French ambassador in Istanbul and the Propaganda Fide that his only aim was to buy some time until the arrival of a considerable French force in the island. 30. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 140–144. 31. According to Archbishop Veggetti, in May-June 1822, the tension escalated to an armed confrontation between bands of Greeks from the island of Kassos and the militia of the Castle (Kastro) of Naxos. See his letters to Marquis Florimond de Faÿ de La Tour-Maubourg, French ambassador to the Sublime Porte, dated 20 May and 5 July 1822: APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 140–149. 32. A similar event, involving rescue and liberation of a small number of Turkish prisoners took also place in Syra, see Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως, 1:75–77. A copy of the annual balance sheet of the community can be found in the files of Drakakis in the General State Archives (GAK) of Syros. 33. For the “anarchic situation,” the tensions and the conflicts on the island after the outbreak of the Revolution, see Pégues, Histoire et phénomènes du volcan, 624–50; Manikas, “Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,” 101–3; Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, 163 (doc. no. 111). 34. See the correspondence between Monsignor Collaro and Pierre David in the Archive of the Catholic Archdiocese of Tinos-Naxos (ACAT), file 8, documents 299–301. 35. Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 128–88; Zéi, “New Perspectives in Local Politics.” For a broader perspective on the French consular network in the Levant, see Koutzakiotis, “Le réseau consulaire français.”



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36. According to Orlandos (Ναυτικά, 1:99–100), the conflict, indicative of the vigor of local identities, was only stopped after intervention and mediation of a group of Spetsiots who managed to achieve a compromise between the two parties. 37. Pègues, Histoire et phénomènes du volcan, 619 ff. 38. Pègues, Histoire et phénomènes du volcan, 622–28. 39. Pègues, Histoire et phénomènes du volcan, 622–28. On the tensions between Orthodox and Catholics in Tinos, see Mazower, “Villagers, Notables and Imperial Collapse.” 40. Pègues, Histoire et phénomènes du volcan, 632–33. 41. Pègues, Histoire et phénomènes du volcan, 626. 42. APF, SC Romania Costantinopoli, vol. 35, f. 267. See Schmitt, Levantiner, 132–33. 43. See the report of Salacha to the Propaganda Fide on the situation in Syros one year after the bishop’s departure. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 56–57. 44. According to the registry of the island, twenty-five Chiot families arrived and settled on Syros in 1821. See Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως, 2:201, and Koufodimos, Χιώτες πρόσφυγες στη Σύρο. 45. Vakalopoulos, Πρόσφυγες καί προσφυγικόν ζήτημα, 7–20. 46. For a recent overview of the refugees and other settlers arriving to Syros, see the list published by Dimitris Varthalitis, “Πρόσφυγες που εγκαταστάθηκαν στη Σύρο τη δεκαετία 1821-1830”; Cf. Delis, “A Hub of Piracy in the Aegean,” 41–54. 47. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως 1:33–34; Mazower, “Villagers, Notables and Imperial Collapse,” 389. 48. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως, 2:201–2; Chatziioannou, “Η κατασκευή μιας επιχειρηματικής δυναστείας.”

CHAPTER 4

The Holy See and the Greek Insurrection from the Massacre of Chios to the Congress of Verona m m m

Regardless of the upheavals and confusion of the first months, by autumn 1821, all island Catholics had officially adopted neutrality, had appealed for French protection, and hoisted the white French flag on top of their churches.1 Meanwhile, after the fall of Tripolitsa in late September and the consolidation of the Revolution in the Morea, the representatives of the Holy See gathered information about the character, leaders, and ideology of the Greek insurrection. The papal consul in Zante submitted a report (memoria) on 20 November on the Greek insurrection in the Peloponnese. Based on testimonies of firsthand witnesses of and participants in the events, the report was in tune with the reigning counterrevolutionary spirit among the hierarchy and the networks of the Holy See, stressing the criminal, rather than the political, motivations of the insurgents. The natives of the Morea and their captains had “no clear idea about any principle or government,” and were exclusively drawn to “pillage and cruel vendetta.” Ypsilantis was described as a man “without talents or any sort of authority, who will not probably stay there long”; the primates as “venal robbers”; the archbishop of Patras as “very sly, very diligent for his own interest”; the young Colocotronis brothers as “rascals and vagabonds (furfanti e vagabondi).” As evidence of those descriptions, the papal consul provided a detailed account of the last days and the fall of Tripolitsa and the Greek massacres that followed.2 According to an eyewitness who had fled to Zante, there were around fifteen thousand besiegers against ten thousand inside the city. Tripolitsa fell when Colocotroni and other insurgent leaders started breaking deals with Turkish prelates by letting them escape by paying a ransom.3 At that point, fearing that nothing would remain from the booty for them, groups of irregular soldiers started storming the city. Hoping that their lives would be spared, the Turks gave minimal (piccolissima) resistance. In a few hours, the Holy Cross banner was waving on the city walls. The worst scenes took place the next day, when around three thousand Turks, the majority of whom were women and children, were led to a sort of ravelin outside the walls of the city where they were killed and cut into pieces. The massacre continued for the next days and the number of dead reached almost eight thousand. Finally,



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around one thousand Jews were rounded up, tortured, and burned alive (bruciati vivi) indiscriminately. Around eighteen hundred Albanians who had betrayed the Turks were released into safety. Among the insurgents, many cultivated the “chimeric idea of reestablishing the ancient Greek republic,” but this was baseless and lacked any union of parties, places, or convictions. The poor moral qualities of its leaders and the corruption of its participants had allegedly brought the insurgent government to the verge of disintegration. It disposed of “no money or munitions,” as “not even a taler from the fundraising ha[d] ever reached their army.” The informers of the papal agent were mainly French philhellenes disenchanted by their acquaintance with the insurgents and their atrocities, poised to be the first of a wave of deserters of the Greek cause, who would return home disillusioned and try to curb the tide of volunteers.4 The tide would only start turning after the infamous massacre of the Christian population of Chios in late March–early April 1822. From that point on, the Archipelago was caught up in the whirlwind of the naval war, suffered its effects, and contributed, haphazardly, to its enormous and pressing expenses. Fireships, such as the ones used by Konstantinos Kanaris for the emblematic burning of the Ottoman flagship off Chios in June 1822, cost between twenty-five and forty thousand piastres each. The average costs for food and ammunition for each of the fifty to eighty warships operating in the service of the Greek government was roughly twenty thousand piastres per month. Consequently, the overall cost for each year of operations (eight to ten months) was between 8 and 14 million piastres.5 That sum was of course far beyond the taxpaying capacity of the insular communities. However, the income from the collection of tithes, which in some places started in late 1821, as well as from a series of “contributions,” became vital not only for the satisfaction of various pressing needs of the insurgents but also for securing, or forcing, the loyalty of the islanders. Those events pushed the islands of the Archipelago irreversibly into the waves of history. Syros, in the center, provides a powerful demonstration of how, as Fernand Braudel put it, the events of history led to making use of the islands, adding to their day-to-day existence a chapter in the history of great events. Laying on a crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea routes, its neutral port would soon become a safe haven from the cruelties of the war for a growing number of people but also from the waves of epidemics that hit larger islands with denser populations, like the plague in neighboring Tinos.6 The petitions of the Catholic prelates and the interventions of various representatives of the French and the Habsburg Empire on behalf of the Archipelago Catholics toward the belligerents, in combination with news in the European press, internationalized the question. Meanwhile, the growing importance of

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Map 4.1.  “Map of the Port of Syros: View of the City” by Joseph Roux. In Recueil des Principaux Plans, des Ports, et Rades de la Méditerranée. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission.

Syros’s position in the international markets turned Syros into a parameter of international relations. The various postwar settlements about the status and position of the island within, without, or beyond the maritime frontier that was about to take shape, discussed, and promoted by papal, French and Austrian representatives were projections of the imperial order into the future and hence lacked strategic insight and realism. Inaugurating a process of ethnic unmixing that marked the long disintegration of the Ottoman Empire until its final demise, the arrival of subsequent waves of Christian refugees from Chios, Asia Minor, or the Greek mainland had had an immediate as well as profound and durable impact on the economy, social hierarchies, and power relations within those insular communities.

“La Bella Città Di Scio Passò a Tante Montagne Di Pietre E Di Ceneri” Rich from the trade of mastic plant products and home to several prominent commercial houses active in regional and global trade routes, Chios had a population equal to that of Smyrna or of all other islands of the Archipelago. Situ-



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ated opposite to Çesme at the entrance of the Gulf of Smyrna, Chios was also of strategical importance. For the Ottomans, a potential loss of the island to the Greeks would also mean the loss of control of a central route of communication to and from the imperial capital. The divan sent a governor to Chios, Vehid Pasha, with a garrison of 2,000 men that by the end of the year had been increased to 4,500. The local prelates themselves had even fewer reasons than their counterparts on the smaller islands to risk the security and relative autonomy they had under Ottoman rule. However, despite the fact that they had pledged allegiance to the sultan from early on and avoided contacts with the representatives of the Philike, forty of them were taken hostage in the citadel in May 1821. The Greek rebels attempted to agitate and recruit Chiot peasants with little success. In March 1822, local army officer Antonios Bournias recruited a few hundred volunteers from among the peasants and attempted to take control of the island with the support of 2,500 soldiers from Samos under Lykourgos Logothetis. The Ottoman reaction was swift and severe. In Istanbul seven prominent Chiots were imprisoned together with three of the local prelates and sent to the capital, only to be executed shortly afterward. Meanwhile, the wealth of the islands was coveted by Turkish irregulars, some tens of thousands of whom had started gathering on the shore of Çesme, four and a half miles off the island’s coast. An Ottoman fleet under the Ottoman grand admiral, the kapudan pasha, composed of forty-five ships and seven thousand soldiers landed in Chios on 30 March (11 April, N.S.),7 Holy Thursday for the Orthodox. The Greek rebels faced minimal resistance; and the rebel troops were evacuated to Psara leaving the local population at the mercy of the Ottomans. The enterprise of extermination and enslavement of the population was carried out not in days, but in weeks or even months. The first phase of the massacre took place immediately after the fall of the town to the Ottoman troops; killing, pillaging, and enslavement continued and were spread to the countryside during the next weeks by groups of irregulars who kept arriving on the island; the final wave of massacres took place in late June in retaliation for the burning of the flagship and the killing of the kapudan pasha. According to different estimates, of the 120,000 inhabitants of the island in 1821, between twenty-five and thirty thousand died on the spot; up to fifty thousand were sold into slavery , and between twenty and thirty thousand were able to escape and rebuild their lives elsewhere.8 The Catholics of the island were not spared. In his report to the Propaganda Fide on the fate of the Chios Catholics dated 10 May 1822, Vincenzo Coressi, vicar apostolic of Constantinople, lamented that “our pleas for the fate of our unfortunate Catholics of Chios proved vain.”9 The Cathedral of Saint Nicholas in the town was pillaged, demolished, and burned to ashes, and several Catholic chapels in the countryside had a similar fate. The Catholics who remained in

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the city, like the ones who tried to escape to countryside villas, fell to the sword and fire of “the countless furious troops that were flooding the island.”10 With the exception of those who found refuge to the consulates of Austria, France, and Naples, the Catholics shared the fate of the Orthodox: they were massacred or taken into slavery. A native of Chios himself, Coressi reports, among the other damages and casualties, a whole branch of his larger family was killed in the massacre. Despite his regrets for the victims and his expressions of mercy and Christian solidarity toward the Orthodox of his native land, Coressi maintained equal distance from the belligerents, reporting that the Catholics were targeted “no less by the perfidy of the Greeks than by Ottoman barbarism.” He seemed actually convinced that, had the Turks not invaded the island, the fate of the Catholics would have been similar if not worse, as the insurgents had scheduled a wholesale massacre of the Catholics for the next day, Good Friday for the Eastern Church. Regarding the Ottomans, he stressed that what finally happened to the Latins was “against the will and the orders of the government and the local authorities, who were unable to contain the rage of the soldiers.”11 The Ottoman invasion of 1695 during the Ottoman-Venetian War had signaled the beginning of the end for the most prominent and radiant Latin community of the Levant,12 a long era of constant decline under the pressures of the Ottoman administration and the Greek Orthodox patriarchate, which came to an end with the massacre of 1822. The gradual repopulation of the island after the war is the topic of another story, set in a very different historical setting, yet to be written. The end of an era for a diocese internationally renowned in the Catholic world13 was the first of the effects of the massacre on the Catholics of the Archipelago. In the first instance, the terror inspired by the massacre reinforced the introversion and entrenchment of the island communities and led to multiple conflicts with the newly established Greek administration. Meanwhile, the large refugee wave from Chios had a direct and drastic impact on the economy and demographic balance of the Archipelago islands. More than anywhere else, Chiot immigration was to affect Syros. From this point and until the end of the war, about half of the few tens of thousands of refugees that settled in the port of Syros came from Chios. The flux of capital and the connection of Syros to the networks of international trade firms, combined with the advantages of neutrality and the abundance of refugees seeking to make a living in the midst of the war, was soon to turn Syros de facto into a free port.

Greeks and the Papacy toward the Congress of Verona As the Greek revolt proved to be more than a minor, short-lived episode on the periphery of the continent, the Austrian chancellor consolidated his po-



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sition that its eventual success would serve as a paradigm for other national-liberal movements and would thus pose a threat to the established order in Europe. In this respect, Metternich instrumentalized the question of the Latins in the Ottoman Empire in order to influence the policy of the Holy See as well as that of France.15 The so-called Metternich system was a fragile equilibrium based on the fears of the European sovereigns for each other and on their common dread before Revolution. Accordingly, dangling the danger of the Revolution, he managed to distract the Holy See and the tsar from actively supporting the claims of their co-religionist Poles and Greeks, respectively.16 And as revolutions were gaining ground in Spain and Piedmont, a congress of the European Concert was organized in Verona, then under Habsburg rule, which would soon mark the beginning of the disintegration of the Quintuple Alliance.17 The different agents and representatives of the European powers in the Eastern Mediterranean involved directly or indirectly with the war in the Ottoman Levant, had different ways to understand and implement the directives they received, according to their functions, interests, and connections with the local authorities and societies.18 For the Holy See, the questions regarding the Greek insurrection and the Latins of the Levant were treated directly by the secretary of state, Cardinal Consalvi, through the correspondence of the Propaganda Fide with the Catholic hierarchy in the Levant, and through its various dignitaries in the port cities of the Papal States or the pontifical consuls and agents in the British-ruled Ionian Islands and the Ottoman Empire. From Ancona, Cardinal Benvenuti inspected Turkish and Greek ships regularly and collecting information on their cargoes, crews, and passengers in order to block the transport of munitions and philhellene volunteers and adventurers. Likewise, regarding the flow of refugees from Ali Pasha’s war in Epirus, the Apostolic Delegate suggested a preliminary profiling of the immigrants in order to privilege the migration of “honest families” who would bring their fortunes and block “those soiled by revolutionary ideas.”19 From his side, the pontifical consul of Corfu describes the desperate condition of the refugee families arriving constantly from the mainland in small boats packed with people mingled with the casualties of hunger or disease.20 Count Apponyi reported to Metternich one year later on the “system” imposed by the Papal State authorities toward the Greek refugees (transfugés), consisting in blocking them at Ancona, the main port of arrival, with a very strict quarantine, followed by close surveillance by the local police and restriction of their movement.21 As a result, large crowds of refugees from Greece were gathered in Ancona, while at the same time, the papal police were trying to channel the movement of other Greeks traveling through Vienna, Venice, or Trieste toward Livorno, where the police had an eye on the local Greek community.22

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The first direct contact of the Holy See with the insurgents took place in early February 1822 and in an impromptu manner, when an attorney from Rome formally introduced to Consalvi a Greek subject, G. Valsamachi, claiming to represent the community of Athens and asking for material aid. Despite the ambiguous authenticity of the petition, as Valsamachi lacked official credentials, Consalvi’s response was particularly interesting, as it summarized the main lines of the papal policy toward the Greek question by bringing up the Ottoman Catholics. The secretary of state allegedly made clear that since the “Greeks had hitherto been considered by the European powers only as rebellious subjects seeking to subvert the legitimate authority of the Ottoman Porte, the Holy Father did not wish to predetermine this important question and could only follow the judgments of the great European powers.” Furthermore, he stressed that “the Holy See was particularly interested in not offending the Porte, since it contained within its domain a large number of Catholic subjects, who had hitherto maintained a perfect submission to the sultan, which had earned them . . . protection and support from the Ottoman government.”23 The obscure Athenian envoy had allegedly left Greece in October 1821, before the creation of a first centralized provisional government by the National Assembly in early 1822 headed by Alexandros Mavrokordatos, a Phanariot. The new government addressed first the “Western Christians” of the Archipelago and sought to approach the Holy See. In view of the congress to be held in Verona, by late August the Greeks had prepared three petitions addressed to the “monarchs gathered in Congress at Verona,” to Tsar Alexander I and to Pope Pius VII. Each one was personalized to the recipient(s), following precise instructions sent to the insurgents by Capodistria through the intermediary of his friend Prince Alexandre Stourdza. The letters were trusted to two non-Ottoman delegates, a subject of the British-ruled Ionian islands, Count A. Metaxas from Cephalonia, and a captain of the French Royal Navy, J. P. P. Jourdain.24 The first one addressed the European sovereigns on behalf of the Greek nation under aggression by “all the forces of Mohammedanism” and sought international recognition as a belligerent Christian nation in the name of “Jesus Christ Our Savior.” The ones addressed to the tsar and the pope also stressed the religious character of the revolt and Christian solidarity, starting both by expressing gratitude for the relief offered to Greek refugees trying to escape Ottoman reprisals in Russian and papal lands. Tsar Alexander I was addressed as a descendant of “a long series of Orthodox sovereigns” and the “strongest supporter of the Church.” Accordingly, the pope was addressed as “Most Holy Father,” “Supreme Pontiff,” and described as “Protector of the Church” and “head



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of Christendom.”25 Well aware of the conservative and orientalist perceptions of the Greek rebellion, Mavrokordatos and Metaxas explicitly attempted to shake off the label of a rogue nation, speaking in the name of the common Christian faith, pleading for compassion and humanity, and requesting a member of the European nobility as ruler of the independent state.26 Meanwhile, the implicit overtures for the reunification of the two churches were, according to Benvenuti, more explicitly tackled by a second mission that left shortly after the first, composed of Patras Metropolitan Germanos and Georgios Mavromichalis with the aim of reaching Rome to establish contact with the Holy See. However, while Benvenuti reiterated the readiness of the Holy See “to welcome back to its bosom its ancient sons and brethren,” due to their reticence toward the Greek insurgents as well as to language barriers impeding direct communication, the issue remained pending.27 Actually, faced with the fait accompli of the consolidation of the Greek revolt in the Peloponnese, Consalvi was afraid of the Ottoman reprisals against Catholics as much as of the oppression they would have to endure should they be included in an Orthodox-ruled nation-state.28 Hence, although their petitions did apparently somehow reach the representatives of the European powers, the Greek delegates remained under surveillance in the Ancona lazaretto at the request of Metternich and never made it to Verona. Those informal contacts with the representatives of the rebels did not directly influence the foreign policy of the Holy See. Nevertheless, all parties involved used the opportunity to explore alternative courses of action. Jourdain suggested that “in order to encourage His Holiness to protect the cause of the Hellenes, the deputies were asked to offer him, under certain conditions, one of the islands of the Archipelago to make it the headquarters of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, whose flag would have flown again on the seas that witnessed its former glory.”29 The project to involve the Knights Hospitaller, which had been ousted from Malta by Napoleon in 1798 and still remained without stronghold in the Mediterranean, was probably the reason why the Hydriot prelates insisted that Jourdain, who had only arrived in Greece in April 1822, should represent the country to the European powers. According to his plan, such a solution would give a decent professional outlet to the “crowds of soldiers” who had become dangerous in times of peace, to establish an “unbreakable link between Greece and Europe,” and thus dissipate the fears of European sovereigns about Greek “carbonarism.” Moreover, such a dynamic support would also serve the interests of more than one of the involved parties: the Vatican would be emancipated from Metternich’s grip, while France, but also Austria and Russia, would defend and consolidate their position in the Levantine trade routes.30 Hence, after

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being stranded in Ancona together with the other Greek delegates, Jourdain left for Paris with the urgent mission to seek a loan for the revolutionary government, offering in return territory for the new headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller. The terms discussed with the leadership of the order in summer 1823 included an entire project of development and transformation of the Archipelago into a rampart of Christian Europe in the Levant.31 The various drafts of the treaty regarded initially the restitution of the Knights in Rhodes. As the informal negotiations went on through 1823, the focus was drawn to the island of Syros, which, situated in the middle of the Aegean and populated by Catholics, could be transformed into a French-controlled Gibraltar in the Eastern Mediterranean.32 Those projects remained mere paper exercises. The fears of Jourdain, who promoted the restitution of the Hospitallers also as a means to check the rapid expansion of the British influence in the Levant, were soon realized. The loan of 16.5 million francs negotiated by the Hospitallers in London for the Order’s establishment in four islands controlling the main maritime passages was never completed.33 The Greek government negotiated instead directly and received from British funds the whole amount of a similar loan in 1824 and another, even higher, the year after.34 The intended restoration of the Hospitallers in the Levant belonged to a state of affairs overtaken by the social, ideological, and geopolitical transformations of the age of revolutions. The insurgent government followed this lead in their pressing need for international recognition and financial support. However, the promotion of this project by the Hydra prelates should be seen as an indication of the difficulties they faced in their effort to exercise political control and collect taxes in the islands of the Archipelago. Notes  1. See, for example, the letters of Andrea Veggetti, archbishop of Naxos, to Marquis Florimond de Faÿ de La Tour-Maubourg, French ambassador to the Sublime Porte, concerning mainly the various forms of pressure exercised by the Greeks on the island Catholics and the reactions of the latter, as well as the correspondence of the French ambassador and the archbishop of Smyrna with the Propaganda Fide on that same issue: APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 140–144, 288–297, 464–465. See Frazee, Catholics and Sultans, 248–52.  2. Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (AAV), Segreteria di Stato, Parte moderna (1816–1822; 1846–1935), anno 1821, rubr. 292, fasc. 1, 14–19r.  3. Kokkonas, “Πολιορκία και άλωση της Τριπολιτσάς.”  4. AAV, Segreteria di Stato, Parte moderna (1816–1822; 1846–1935), anno 1821, rubr. 292, fasc. 1, 14–19r. On the disillusioned philhellenes that published books and pamphlets “to warn others against the mistakes I made,” and that modern “Greeks are a cruel, barbarian, ungrateful race”; see St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 116–18; and Droulia, “Les résistances au philhellénisme.”



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 5. Pizanias, Η Ελληνική Επανάσταση, 137–44; Bozikis, Ελληνική επανάσταση, 295–362; Harlaftis and Galani, “Privateering during the Greek War of Independence.”  6. For the plague epidemics in the islands of Tinos, Kea, and Kythnos in 1822–23, see Kostis, Στον καιρό της πανώλης, 409–10 and passim.   7. New Style, also known as the Gregorian calendar.  8. Although some researchers tend to raise the numbers of victims, see, e.g., Cartledge, “The Chios Massacre (1822) and Early British Christian Humanitarianism; and Cartledge, “The Chios Massacre (1822) and Chiot Emigration”; Chatziioannou, Στη δίνη της Χιακής καταστροφής (1822); Argenti, The Massacres of Chios.  9. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 93r–v. 10. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 93v. 11. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 93v. 12. Hoffmann, Vescovadi cattolici della Grecia, I. Chios, 33–36. 13. Chios was not only regionally known as the birthplace of nineteen bishops on the islands of the Archipelago—eight archbishops of Naxos, five archbishops of Smyrna, and two vicars apostolic in Constantinople—but also internationally known since Chiot clergymen served as bishops of the Catholic Church in Moravia, Albania, Romania, and various Italian dioceses; members of the Giustiniani family became bishops and three of them cardinals; others, such as members of the Timoni family, also distinguished themselves and became secretary and head of the Jesuits in Italy. Hoffmann, Vescovadi cattolici della Grecia, I. Chios, 33–36. See Roussos-Milidonis, Έλληνες Ιησουίτες, 85–234; Tsirpanlis, Το Ελληνικό Κολλέγιο, 541–42. 14. Emerson Tennent, Letters from the Ægean, vol. 1, 11. 15. Reinerman, “Metternich, the Papacy, and the Greek Revolution.” 16. Dunn, The Catholic Church and Russia, 42–50. 17. Nichols, The European Pentarchy. 18. See the case of the implementation of French neutrality by local agents in Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 189–252. 19. AAV, Segreteria Dello Stato, 1822, 165/8/3–7. 20. Reporting the names of trustworthy people and families to be granted passage to Ancona, the Consul appealed for relief for the victims of war: AAV, Segreteria dello Stato, Parte moderna (1816–1822; 1846–1935), 1821, 292/1/107–108r–v. 21. Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA), GKA GesA Rom, Vatikan II, 65: “Gesandtschaftsarchiv Rom Vatikan II, Berichte und Weisungen, 1821–1822.” 22. HHStA, GKA GesA Rom, Vatikan II, 65: “Gesandtschaftsarchiv Rom Vatikan II, Berichte und Weisungen, 1821–1822.” Reports of Count Apponyi to Prince Metternich, no. 55 dated 10 September 1822 and no. 68 dated 18 September 1822. 23. HHStA, GKA GesA Rom, Vatikan II, 65: “Gesandtschaftsarchiv Rom Vatikan II, Berichte und Weisungen, 1821–1822.” Reports of Count Apponyi to Prince Metternich, no. 20 dated 13 February 1822. 24. Spiliadis, Απομνημονεύματα, 435–41. 25. Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires sur les événements, 1:151–65; Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, 191–96. 26. “Our supplications are not the demagogic clamour of a perverted people, but the moans and groans of an unfortunate nation, begging to be heard by pity, humanity and religion.” Letter of Alexandros Mavrokordatos to Consalvi, dated 17 August 1822. Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, 80–82. See “The uprising of the Christian Greeks, rather than originating from those senseless corporations that are suspected of aiming to overthrow religion, the throne

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and every well-ordered system, is on the contrary devoted to the altar and the throne.” Andreas Metaxas to Pius VII, 3 November 1822, Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, 193–96. 27. Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, doc. 93, 147–48. 28. Reinerman, “Metternich, the Papacy, and the Greek Revolution,” 181. 29. Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires sur les événements, 167. 30. Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires sur les événements, 169–71. 31. Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires sur les événements, 207–88. 32. Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires sur les événements, 215, 230. 33. The islands discussed for concession during those negotiations were Rhodes, Sapienza, Karpathos, and Syros (Scira). Four million of those 16.6 million francs would be sent directly to the Greek government, the rest would support military and logistic needs of the order. Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires sur les événements, 281–82. 34. Kitromilides and Tsoukalas, The Greek Revolution, 608–11; St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 205–23.

CHAPTER 5

Territorial Integration and the Battle for the Tithe m m m

As we have seen, in their correspondence with the various papal representatives, the insurgents deliberately blurred their references to Christianity skipping over the division of the churches. At the same time, they referred implicitly or explicitly to the Latins of the islands as members of the “Greek nation,” suffering under the same “yoke,” and aspiring to the same noble ideals.1 Of course, disposing of its own age-old extensive networks, the Holy See could not be duped on the attitude of its flock and had not missed the chance to highlight the loyalty demonstrated by the Archipelago Latins. However, this did not stop them from spreading fake news that served their purposes. The most characteristic piece of fake news was an obscure declaration made by the pope in favor of a Christian crusade that was used more than once by the insurgents to convince the Catholics to join the Greek Revolution. Dated June 1821, the first mention of such a text was among the Orthodox. To avoid the anti-Latin bias of the government’s representatives in Santorini, Captain Tombazis, a Hydriot, mentioned that the supreme pontiff threatened to excommunicate those who refused to join the struggle. A year later, the Greek prefect of Tinos addressed an open letter to the “inhabitants of Syra” in which he referred to a supposed “horrific anathema of His Holiness the Pope [that] had been posted by their excellencies the consuls of Smyrna in all the market places of the city.”2 Whatever the veracity of the news or the credibility of the fakes that were circulated by the belligerents, the war of information was among the first concerns of the representatives of the Greek insurrectionary government for an obvious reason. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the insurgents had just a few contacts at their disposal among those insular communities, and those mainly through the networks of the Philiki Etaireia, that is, chiefly among the most liberal and popular parties in bigger islands like Naxos or Andros. But they had only loose or no contacts with the members of the local elites whatsoever. Especially in the biggest islands like Andros, Naxos, or Samos, the revolution unfolded in a mode similar to that of Hydra, a popular revolt that dragged the island into a revolutionary maelstrom, followed by a power vacuum, a phase of negotiations between insurgents and prelates that led to the arrest or even

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the elimination of the leaders of the revolt. The difference in the Archipelago islands was that there were the poor peasants who revolted against the landed elites and the aristocratic privileges they often carried since the times of Frankish rule. Hence, the events followed the rhythms and temporalities of the rural societies. As the situation came to a stalemate, the Greek revolutionary government wanted to appear to be a mediator and guarantor of peace between the two parties. In their effort to win over the rich prelates of the towns and convince them to pay the tithe, they needed to appear strong. For this purpose, control of the information highlighting the victories of the insurgents and downplaying the force of the Ottomans became a crucial task for the Greek insurgents. The Latins were often criticized for their attitude in this regard. Emmanouil Spyridonos, prefect of Tinos, warned the Commissioners of the Aegean Sea, administrators appointed by the Greek provisional government, in June 1822 against the Grecolatin Greek-haters (μισέλληνες γραικολατίνοι) “who spread discord, try to deceive and instill fear in the hearts of the common people.” As a remedy, he proposed assigning three messenger ships to secure the communication between Andros, Tinos, and Naxos that would secure the quick circulation of information between local representatives.3 By the summer of 1822, the provisional government elected by the National Assembly at Epidaurus at the beginning of the year organized and attempted to implement the territorial integration of the “islands of the Aegean Sea.”4 The primary aim of the representatives dispatched to the islands in May was to ensure the collection of the yearly tithe from local communities to fund the efforts of the Greek military fleet. Of course, it did not take long to provoke reactions and create tensions. Abbé Pègues stated that no one believed in the stability of the new political order. Especially the Catholics, whom their religion places under the immediate protection of France, or whom their consulates hid under the shadow of their flag, and who used that as a title to refuse taxation, offered the most comical episode. All hastened to untie their paperwork, and their patents in hand, which several had had made almost the day before in Smyrna or Constantinople, they strove, one to prove that he was French, another that he was English, this one that he was Austrian, that one that he was Spanish.5

European consuls and vice-consuls had a pivotal role in the circulation of those patents and of the various claims of exemption from taxation or jurisdiction of the Greek authorities. Particularly the French diplomatic agents, often seconded by French warships, regularly put in doubt the legitimacy of the Greek government and actively supported members of the local Latin communities in their effort to avoid taxation as foreign subjects or protégés. Within the power vacuum created by the Greek maritime campaign and the withdrawal of the



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Ottoman presence, the various local vice-consuls of the European powers, who more often than not were themselves members of prominent families of those insular societies, countered what was perceived, by Catholics and Orthodox alike, as an effort by external forces to subdue these island communities and exploit their resources. The Catholics had privileged but not exclusive access to the patents of protection issued by the representatives of the European powers. Informed by the experience of the first year of the revolution, the Greek government claimed territorial sovereignty and de facto recognition of its authority. In June 1822, the vice-eparch of Paros and Antiparos, Vafiopoulos, addressed a strict protest to the French vice-consul in the neighboring island of Naxos that would set the standard for the line employed against the challenges presented by the various forms of extraterritoriality claimed by the various local agents of European courts. Vafiopoulos protested against the refusal of his local agent to be accredited to the Greek authorities on the grounds that the French government had not recognized the Greek nation and he castigated the use of the protection offered to the “Grecolatins” as a pretext in order to instruct those falsely claimed (mal pretesi) French subjects not to pay tithes on the produce of their estates even though they and their forefathers were born and bred in Greece.6 The vice-prefect dismissed this attitude as an unheard of effort to claim members of another nation, living within the territory of that nation, as subjects and asked to be informed about any official superior orders they had received. If the representatives of the Greek insurgency initially appeared as vectors of unrest and conflict, as the war and its political, economic, and social consequences spread across the maritime space disrupting trade routes and shaking up the traditional social hierarchies of those insular societies, they now presented themselves as mediators and guarantors of social peace to both the traditional elites and the agents of the European powers. This approach was to be adopted against the refusal to pay tax or claims of fiscal immunity, in order to neutralize the reaction of the local prelates and to circumscribe the limits of the protection offered by France and other European courts to the inhabitants of the Archipelago.

Refugees and Prisoners in the Aegean The islands found their place in history as places of refuge or transit. As various forms of forced population movements took place in both directions, the islands represented a reachable and relatively safe haven for those transiting between the two coasts. The victims of the atrocities committed by both sides during the first months of the war were the first to make the war felt in the insular societies in 1821–22. Greek Orthodox refugees from Istanbul, Smyrna, and the Asia Minor coast, who had been hit by the first wave of Ottoman

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reprisals in Istanbul in May–June 1821, were among the first to arrive to the islands seeking security from the military operations. At the beginning of the summer, Ottoman reprisals hit several villages along the Asia Minor coast, among which were the larger Orthodox communities of Ayvalik and Smyrna.7 According to different estimates, between fifteen and twenty-five thousand fled from the Asia Minor coast westward, mostly from Ayvalik and the nearby islands. As would also be the case with the Chios refugees a year later, the first stop for most of them was the small but prosperous island of Psara. From there, in order to avoid epidemic breakouts, those migration waves were gradually channeled elsewhere, mainly to some of the biggest and most populated islands, such as Andros, Naxos, Tinos, or Hydra, but also to the smaller ones, such as Mykonos, Syros, Milos, as well as the mainland. At the same time, Cretans fleeing Ottoman attacks found refuge in Kasos and various Archipelago islands, mainly Tinos, but also Naxos, Paros, Sifnos, and Ios. Moreover, some of the refugees from areas of Epirus and Macedonia where the Ottomans had suppressed local uprisings also fled to the islands, mainly to the northern Sporades.8 Refugees from inland agricultural communities usually sought refuge in the rural mainland. The majority of those who came from coastal or other insular communities preferred the relative security of the islands and sought, according to their status and financial situation, the diverse opportunities in trading, shipping, and any kind of legal or illegal business that went on in the Archipelago. Muslim prisoners from the Morea, mainly, but not exclusively, women and children, started appearing in the Archipelago from the first year of the war. As we have seen in the previous chapter, during the summer of 1821 the fate of Muslim prisoners became the central point of contention between the Orthodox and the Catholics in Naxos. The fate of the seventeen Muslim prisoners rescued by the Latins of the island had been entrusted to Captain de Reversaux, the French commander of the corvette Active in September 1821, and remained under his protection until the next volta of the Ottoman fleet in the Aegean in June 1822, when they were finally delivered to the kapudan pasha. Recounting those events, Archbishop Veggetti highlights that: [in] order to attract the affection of Capudan Pasha toward the Catholics of the said islands, [Reversaux] said to him: the Catholics of Naxos, Syros, and Tinos have redeemed these 17 Turks and have handed them over to me in order to bring them to his Highness. Then Kapudan Pasha made the warmest remarks of gratitude to the said commander and added: we consider all Catholics to be French.9

Of course, Veggetti had reasons to highlight that acknowledgment of a certain Frenchness of the Catholics by the Ottoman admiral. Addressing the French



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ambassador in Constantinople, Faÿ de la Tour-Maubourg, the archbishop appealed for active protection. If, however, the dates mentioned by Veggetti are accurate, knowing what happened next, the fate of the seventeen rescued a year earlier must have been tragic. Veggetti reports that he received the news on 19 June from the French commander when the Active called at the port of Naxos coming directly from Chios. On the night of 18–19 June 1822, Konstantinos Kanaris, a ship captain from neighboring Psara, attacked the Ottoman flagship off the coast of Chios with a fireship, setting it ablaze and killing on the spot Nasuhzade (Kara) Ali Pasha and most of the more than two thousand officers, crew and others celebrating Ramadan Bayram. This was the most serious blow to the Ottoman fleet, which soon became emblematic, and Captain Kanaris became famous among European philhellenes as an intrepid seaman who delivered vengeance for the infamous massacre.10 The distance of around 85 nautical miles between Chios to Naxos at the time was no more than a one-day trip. Although it is rather implausible that Veggetti was not aware of it when he was writing his letter two weeks later, he did not make any mention of these events. After all, his testimony was mainly intended to provide evidence of allegiance to the Ottoman power and of a certain “Frenchness” of the Latins, who would hence be entitled to receive active and extensive protection of the Most Christian King. Out of humanism or pragmatism, Catholics sought actively and repeatedly to redeem Muslim prisoners on other islands, too. In Tinos, the vice-consul of France, in collaboration with the primates of the Latin villages, gave shelter to and helped with the flight of a Turkish aga as well as a group of Muslim pilgrims heading for the hajj, captured in the port of the island on board an Austrian ship.11 In Syros, the rescue and relief of Turkish women and children became an affair of the local community. According to the balance sheet of the community, more than 10 percent of the expenses between October 1821 and December 1822 covered the ransom, housing, food, and clothing costs of Turkish women and children who had been distributed among several Latin families of the island.12 This, in combination with the payment of the annual maktu to the kapudan pasha, as well as the hosting of Turkish agas, cadis, and military officers that fled there from the mainland, confirmed in the eyes of the insurgents’ allegations regarding their Turcophile attitude.13 Local archives contain sparse information about the several groups and individuals rescued and delivered by the Catholics or sold as slaves but no safe estimate can be extracted about the number of Muslim prisoners or refugees transiting through the islands. De Reversaux’s corvette was reportedly making the trip from Istanbul and Smyrna to the islands carrying people away from captivity in both directions.14 The formal ban of slavery on the Greek lands by the Provisional Constitution of 1822, in combination with the island’s neutrality and the attitude of the local community

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toward Ottoman captives and fugitives, would soon transform the port of Syra into the main hub of the slave trade during the war, involving mainly, if not exclusively, young women and girls.15 Sexual violence and abuse are aspects long ignored or underestimated by scholarly research.16 Muslim sexual slaves were usually given the choice to convert. The fact that in various administrative documents conversion usually appears as voluntary conceals the various forms of physical and psychological coercion exercised on the converts, especially in the Peloponnese during the first months of the revolution. The story of “Maria,” which took place in Naxos, as narrated by one Latin and one Greek source is very instructive on this as well as on the many effects and backstories that the presence of Muslim prisoners or “converts” could have on those insular societies. According to the eparch of Naxos, local administrators of the Greek provisional government, Maria was a young Turkish girl from the Peloponnese who was handed over in January 1822 by Grigorios Salas, lieutenant of Dimitrios Ypsilantis, to his uncle Apostolaki Salas, commander of a local police force. In early June, a certain Crispi, a French subject, would have kidnapped the girl and taken her away with the help of the vice-consul of the Netherlands. At the protest of Salas, the French vice-consul threatened that he would break into any private house hosting Muslim slaves.17 According to Archbishop Veggetti, afraid for her life, the young woman organized her escape disguised as a soldier with the help of the French viceconsul on the day of Corpus Christi, that in 1822 was celebrated solemnly with the participation of a French military detachment. As a reaction, in the following days, the insurgents threatened once more to storm the castle and even fired two warning canon shots, damaging one of its towers.18 Muslim captives did not always come from the Morea nor were they all caught on land. Konstantinos Metaxas, who would himself be married later on to a convert from a prominent Turkish family of the Morea,19 was appointed commissioner (armostis) of the Aegean islands by the Greek government since April 1822, and reported a story involving a group of some thirty Muslim pilgrims captured on board an Austrian ship heading to Syria. If the questioning of the status of “protection” or “custody” offered to Muslim female converts by Greeks was considered a straightforward challenge to the new authorities, the presence of Muslim captives was clearly an inconvenience for many and for various reasons. For the insurgents, prisoners were witnesses or victims themselves of atrocities and mistreatment; as for the various island primates, their presence could invite the intervention of the Ottoman fleet and events similar to those of Chios. For the Psariot captain who delivered them to Metaxas they were a hassle and should Metaxas not accept to take them into custody, “he would have to throw them into the sea.”



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The first problem that the new authorities had in their contacts with the insular communities was the impact of the massacre of Chios and the widespread fear of an imminent attack of the Ottoman fleet. In the midst of rumors about the Egyptian or the Istanbul fleet approaching, many prelates of the local communities resumed communication with the imperial authorities in Istanbul pledging allegiance to the sultan. Hence, in order to halt the negotiations between the prelates and the sultan, Metaxas made the “harsh decision” to sacrifice the captives in order to incriminate the former in the eyes of the latter. For this purpose, he distributed the prisoners among the islands considered suspect, ordering the local prelates to house and feed them until further notice. Then, he sent his agents to stir up emotions against the supposedly privileged treatment of the Muslims by the prelates. According to Metaxas, those prisoners were put to death without exception, drawing those prelates into the circle of blood, whereas at the same time their reports served as proof of their crime.20 Discussing this account, Mazower suggests it is probably an ex post facto reconstruction of the events that should not be taken at face value, but as testimony to the nature of war and to the real resistance the insurgents met from the island notables.21 The concrete issue of that conflict that opposed the insurgents with the island prelates, Catholic and Orthodox, was the collection of the tithe. Critical for both the maintenance of a military fleet and the establishment of effective political sovereignty, that confrontation lasted for several months and was composed of various local revolts, counterrevolts or straightforward military interventions.

The Battle of the Tithe The government directives to the commissioners and the local prefects, vice-prefects, and chiefs of police dispatched to the islands in May 1822, provided for the establishment of a public administration with the primary tasks of appointing “the most honest and deserving” among each local community to the intermediate organs of the state, and the collection of tithes, which, “though not the most appropriate system,” was the only one that the government could apply under the given circumstances. In line with the practices of Ottoman rule, the commissioners were authorized to outsource the collection of the tithes and customs duties by auction (mezat), under the condition that the highest bidder would pay at least one-third of the fixed sum in advance. The collection duties of the commissioners included the collection of a compulsory loan of 400,000 piastres from the island communities, which would be temporarily compensated with “national bonds” and the collection of valuables

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from churches and monasteries. Among the rest, regarding the Latin communities, the commissioners were instructed: 15. To endeavor to end, to the extent possible, the passions between Greeks of the Eastern and Western churches on the basis of religious tolerance as stipulated in the provisional constitution. 16. If this suits their purpose, they might appoint to public offices some of the worthiest and wisest of those of the Western Church.22

At a precarious juncture, about a year after the outbreak of various local uprisings in the Archipelago, the provisional government granted its representatives broad powers and room to maneuver to gain the support of the local elites (or at least part of them), regardless of their religious affiliation. However, the reports dispatched from the islands during the first months remained discouraging. On one hand, the demeanor of the various Greek agents on the ground often remained reportedly aggressive or rapacious, whereas the consent of the local elites was precarious, depending on the true or false news of war, creating a fragile equilibrium, constantly balancing on a razor’s edge. During the whole summer of 1822, correspondence between local prefects and the commissioners includes desperate notes of the former trying to locate the latter in order to receive instructions or reinforcements.23 Where tensions were high, some prefects were soon removed and replaced by more moderate elements. Hence, Konstantinos Radou, appointed the prefect of Andros after his predecessor had been ejected by the local community in July 1822 for various abuses and thefts, reported that, as a result of fake news about decisive Ottoman victories in western Greece, his life was threatened by irregular soldiers.24 In Santorini, where the primates, Orthodox and Catholic, had refused to pay taxes from the very beginning, Metaxas’s life was threatened when, terrified by the view of a division of the Egyptian fleet heading to Istanbul, local prelates lowered the Greek flag and arrested him, allegedly in order to deliver him to the Ottomans.25 A few weeks later the vice-prefect of Patmos, Ioannis Renieris, who was transiting in Santorini,26 saw his personal belongings confiscated by the representatives of the local government. Commissioners and prefects repeatedly stated their inability to collect any taxes whatsoever. At the end of August, the representatives in Naxos had gathered less than 10 percent of the required sum. In the neighboring Paros, the prefect, P. Vafiopoulos. reported the refusal of the entire local community to pay tithes, “having no respect for the government, that they consider fallen,” and urged the government to send more troops in order to assure control of the islands.27 The situation in Milos was no different. The prefect of Sifnos and Serifos, Panayotis Karaioannis (Karayannis), reported that he had completely lost control of the situation because of the organized opposition of two local



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(Orthodox) families, Bais and Mantzis, who recruited and armed the common people of the countryside against the Greek government, “seeking to provoke a civil war (εμφύλιον πόλεμον).”28 In Sifnos, things took a particularly bad turn due to the active interference of the local vice-consul of France, N. Masse or Matzas. A member of the local community himself, he apparently widely distributed patents of protection to locals, raising the question of various “pseudoFrench” Greek Orthodox natives who claimed tax exemption.29 The power vacuum created in those insular communities was frequently referred to, in the political and administrative vocabulary of the time, as a state of “civil war,” “anarchy,” “apostasy,” or “chaos.” Those references are probably because in the islands, the revolution manifested a social dimension similar—or at least analogous—to that of Europe. With a growing pace during the Napoleonic Wars, a commercial bourgeoisie began to emerge, which affected members of the insular communities who were involved in trade and shipping, thus increasing the economic gap between rural inland towns and port towns. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Naxos was one of the islands on which the conflict between peasants of the villages and residents of the fortified town, the Kastro, had been manifested and also took a political expression in the decades that preceded the Greek uprising. Michail Markopolitis organized the community of the villages in Naxos against that of the rich landholders, Latins and Greeks. When in 1822 a deal was broken by the government representatives with the prelates of the Kastro community, that is, some of the richest landholders of the island, Markopolitis questioned the fairness of the tithe system and attempted to establish instead a progressive tax system. He and Archbishop Ierotheos, both members of the Philiki Etaireia, were pursued by government agents and arrested in late summer 1822, sent to Nafplio, and forced to accept a compromise.30 A similar situation had developed in Samos, where the Radical Party, composed of poor peasants, seamen, and artisans had been formed around the turn of the century, borrowing their name from the famous French revolutionary dance of the Carmagnole. Influenced by the radical enlightenment of Rigas Feraios, the leader of the Karmanioloi had been initiated into the Etaireia in Smyrna, where he also received his revolutionary nom de guerre Logothetis Lykourgos. The insurgents took control of the island in the spring of 1821 and established a system of self-administration, the “military-political organization” that combined liberal forms of local administration, universal suffrage, and control of the governing body to the local assembly. Despite the failed attempts to export revolution to the neighboring islands (and notably to Chios) and to join the territories of the Greek state, the legacies of this radical tradition survived in a status of extended autonomy granted to the island after 1830.31 The plebeian aspect of the Greek revolt manifested itself also in Andros, where one of the

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leaders, Dimitrios Balis (or Palis) was a poor peasant who allegedly mobilized his peers with radical egalitarian rhetoric.32 As we have seen earlier, in smaller or medium-sized islands, opposition to the Greek authorities was usually organized by local clans or parties, who were soon to be stigmatized as renegades or traitors. During the harvest season, the conflict reached a decisive climax. Local prelates who refused or blocked the collection of tithes in cash or kind were threatened straightforwardly with burning and pillaging of their properties. On 1 September, the date the communities or the bailers delivered the tithe to the government, little progress had been made. Hence, the vice-prefect of Paros asked his superiors to penalize the “evil” elements who “spread the seed of anarchy.” The prefect of Milos and Kimolos described the various ways the peasants avoided paying their obligations and asked that the commissioners and the fleet come to force them to pay. Likewise, the prefect of Kea and Thermia (Kythnos) urgently asked for a military ship. Thus, during September, the government representatives adopted a most unequivocal line. On 16 September the commissioners addressed an ultimatum to the inhabitants of Naxos, stating that: If impostors told you that you don’t have to pay the tithe, that’s a fraud; it’s as if they told you that you’re not at war with the Turks, that you’re not part of the Greek nation, that you don’t have to provide for the Greek fleet to stand against the enemy. That the payment of the tithes is decided by God is written into the Holy Bible. That every Greek should pay them for the sake of our faith and homeland is general knowledge. But you have delayed that payment already for three months. The government sends a ship to collect them within a few days . . . Should you not comply, the Government will apply the hardest means for revenge: it will send ships to seize your cattle, confiscate your properties, burn your houses, and kill the instigators.33

A similar ultimatum was sent a couple of weeks later to the prelates of Serifos, also threatening to seize crops and burn houses in case the local community would not comply.34 In the bigger islands, where small military units were dispatched, such reprisals were actually applied against local leaders of the opposition, as in Naxos, where the prefects also put a bounty on their heads.35 Meanwhile after the local primates in Santorini had gotten control of the tithes and violently refused to deliver them to the government, even temporarily taking hostage K. Metaxas, aas we have seen, the commissioners declared its inhabitants “enemies of the government” and the island under siege, until its inhabitants arrested and delivered to the government six of the “renegade leaders of that anarchy” and ask for the appointment of a prefect.36 Pègues mentions that Captain Vangeli Matzarakis, with an axe in his hand, knocked down the doors of the shops in Santorini and seized the tithes that were denied to him.



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Regarding the Latins of the Archipelago specifically, the main concern of the insurgents in this chaotic situation was the news about military campaigns and victories the Ottoman army and fleet, namely the campaigns of Reşid Mehmed (Kütahı) Pasha in western Greece and of Mahmud Dramali Pasha in the Peloponnese, circulated by members of those communities. Trying to limit the spread of such news that discouraged the soldiers and distanced the local population from the cause of Greek independence, the eparch of Naxos addressed the French consul and Veggetti, receiving the response that this was the work of two or three irresponsible individuals who would be warned to abstain from spreading unverified claims about the military conflict. However, the European vessels traveling in both directions kept bringing news from the Peloponnese and the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Besides, the Latin communities arranged their own communication networks, those of the Catholic Church, and the various diaspora communities in the Ottoman lands, but also those of their protectors, mainly the French and Austrian merchants, viceconsuls, or naval officers. Meanwhile, in the midst of this set of upheavals and conflicts, as the insurgents were too busy to force the islanders to pay or to make deals with the primates, Syros remained completely out of reach for the government of Nafplio. Symptomatically, the prefects of neighboring Andros feared that the rebels, who were barricaded in the upper castle of the island, would escape to Syros, while dismissing any news coming from there as untrustworthy.

The Exception of Syros As we have seen, Syros was not included in the first administrative division of the Greek state implemented in 1822, a choice attesting to the provisional government’s awareness of the complications entailed by the declared neutrality and the distinct identity of the Latin community of the island.37 This did not mean, of course, that the island had somehow remained intact through the conflicts and transformations manifested on the other islands, nor that the local community and its individual members remained inactive. The false impression of an introverted community that retreated to their hill town is mainly due to the fact that most histories of the island have been focused on the founding a new city by refugees and settlers who started crowding the port of the island after the massacre of Chios and were based on materials of the Greek government. A closer look at the archives of the local community and their intense communication with secular and church authorities in Smyrna, Istanbul, Rome, and Paris, reveal the numerous initiatives taken

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to respond to the external pressures exercised by the events of the Greek Revolution. The point of friction in Syros remained the question of Bishop Russin, which soon became a matter followed by the entire Catholic hierarchy of the Levant. Among many letters that members of both camps of the local clergy addressed to their superiors in the hierarchy in Naxos, Smyrna, and Istanbul, usually accusing each other side of corruption, blasphemy, and impiety, in April 1822, the apostolic vicar in Constantinople forwarded to the Propaganda Fide the report of a Syriot priest written a few days earlier.38 According to the priest Giorgio Salacha, who was among the most active opponents of Russin, one year after the departure of the latter, the internal strife between the two parties had reached a new climax. The bishop’s party attracted many supporters among the local lower classes, as well as “from Italian foreigners who are here in large number, and by a certain Mr. Scassi, an impious and unreligious man . . . who is believed to be an apostate.”39 Scassi, who allegedly acted as a spokesman of Russin’s party, was probably the Genoese businessman Raffaele Scassi, and the “Italians” who were with him were related to the project of colonization of the Eastern Crimea and the building of the port of Kerch in the Azov sea.40 The presence of Italian settlers heading to Russia in order to build a major port adds yet another thread to those connecting the island with the various projects of the Vatican, Paris, the Greek insurgents, the Ottoman Porte, and the Knights of Malta. Whatever the case, the supporters of Russin prevailed in the domestic affairs of Syros during the first year of his absence. The bishop maintained regular correspondence with his vicar, the abbot of the Capuchin monastery, Father Urbano, as well as with his favorites among the local clergy and still disposed of solid support among the local community. In one of his letters, he reported a meeting with the pope himself, in which the Holy Father would have declared himself unaware of the reasons of his recalling to Rome. This news was received as proof that Russin was not facing charges and was not in danger of being removed from office. His supporters, led by the priest Constantino Zorzano, organized dynamic, allegedly armed, demonstrations across the town of Syra and placed his portrait on the altar of Saint George Cathedral. Similar mobilizations went on until the end of the year, when the assembly of the community elected as new epitropos (governor) one of Russin’s supporters, Giorgio Stefano. Regarding the Greek insurrection, the new administration carried on the line of neutrality drawn one year earlier. Once the news about the approach of the Ottoman fleet to the Archipelago arrived, the community of Syros reached out to the Ottoman administration, as well as to the French diplomatic mission in Istanbul, seeking to express their allegiance to the former and receive the active protection of the latter. However, the letters sent to Istanbul were



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intercepted twice by the Greek insurgents, first in Naxos and then in Tinos, when a French ship was inspected by the Greek navy because it was suspected of carrying Ottoman captives.41 Those events were perceived as signs of unforgivable recklessness by the new administration and drew the rage of the insurgents, thus doubling the threats that loomed above the community. The petitions of the local clergy during the summer of 1822 testify that Russin’s opponents were mobilized in preparation for the imminent apostolic visit of the archbishop of Smyrna. In a letter written in late August, thirteen Syriot priests directly addressed Cardinal Consalvi, now the prefect of the Propaganda Fide, confirming the information about the ongoing factional activity of Russin and his party, and reporting various irregularities committed by his vicar, concerning mainly the performance of clandestine marriages extra faciem ecclesiae and the tolerance of what they deemed to be “public concubinage.”42 That letter actually intended to overcome barriers of communication between those local priests and Luigi-Maria Cardelli, archbishop of Smyrna, who had been appointed apostolic visitor by the Holy See and was soon expected in Syros. Cardelli was received respectfully by the vicar on 11 September and stayed at the bishop’s residence for the next couple of months. On this visit, he sent two reports to the Propaganda Fide, one from Syros and one after his return to Smyrna. Born in Rome in 1777, Cardelli had joined the Franciscan Order and, since 1807, had lived in Constantinople as a parish priest and later as an apostolic prefect. In 1817, he had been named archbishop of the elevated see of Smyrna and ordained by Xaverio Dracopoli in Chios in 1818. His apostolic visit was the first among a series of missions that made him the principal link between the Holy See and the dioceses of the Archipelago during the troubled 1820s. Cardelli was just becoming acquainted with those insular communities. In his first report on Syra, he completely discarded the presence of immigrants and refugees, reporting on 2,284 permanent dwellings within the town and twenty at the port of the island housing one hundred souls. After meeting the local clergy and visiting churches, chapels, and ecclesiastical estates and listing various damages, lack of maintenance, and more, Cardelli’s first and foremost task was to organize a formal investigation about Russin’s administration that would mark the beginning of a transition in the affairs of the diocese and the community of the island. Despite the support he had had among the flock, Russin seemed to have disappointed many priests. The interrogation was structured around the faulty behavior and irregularities of Russin. Among twenty members of the local clergy summoned to give testimony, only five testified in favor of the bishop. Interestingly, apart from the former epitropos (governor) of the community, Russin enjoyed the somewhat understated but firm sup-

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port of the secular government but also of other prominent members of the community, such as the vice-consuls of Britain and France.43 Cardelli considered the official supplication of the epitropos, G. Stefanou, in the name of the community for the return of the bishop to be without foundation. However, a few months after his visit, some priests claimed that they had been forced or deceived to provide their signatures in the petitions against Russin.44 The only Catholic prelate in 1820s Levant who came from the Italian peninsula, Cardelli adopted an orientalist stance toward the bishop, the clergy, and the flock of those dioceses. Symptomatically, during his long stay in Syros, Cardelli attended or led several funeral services. His encounter with the local mourning rituals offers a demonstration of the involvement of the church in the civilizing process. The archbishop of Smyrna qualified the laments of local women as “noisy and ridiculous” that caused disgust and contempt and ordered the priests to put a stop to such “outrageous and impious” habits.45 Referring to Russin, whose name he regularly misspelled as Russini, Cardelli portrayed him as deceitful and troublesome and considered him inclined toward moral decay and depravity. In the line traced by Dracopoli two years earlier, Russin was described as a bishop who tolerated blasphemies, concubinage, and “sinful women” among the flock, who had left the property of the church unprotected or even in ruins, and was driven by a spirit of vengeance and vendetta against his opponents; hence, he was deemed incompetent to govern the diocese. To support this judgment, Cardelli compiled a long list of concrete irregularities and omissions over the course of Russin’s tenure.46 Significantly, the improper or irregular administration of sacraments, such as clandestine weddings, was attributed to the avarice of Russin, who was also accused of mismanagement of the financial affairs, especially in what concerned his effort to personally control sworn testaments and pious bequests and to distribute the benefits deriving from them among his favorites. Therein seems to be the material stake of Russin’s administration. This is probably why the first initiative taken by the archbishop of Smyrna, once the formal investigation of Russin was over, was to examine the various claims and recourses concerning the allocation and administration of the various bequests. The archives of the chancellery and the ecclesiastical courts that could reveal the character and the stake of the various claims on church property and pious bequests had disappeared. Cardelli suspected that Russin had hidden, taken away, or even burned those documents. Hence, he ordered the chancellor of the episcopal mense to classify the existing registers, testaments, and dowry records and collect copies of the missing ones from individual priests and families. In order to counter the effects of the bishop’s negligence of the education of the clergy, he advised the creation of a school for priests led by the Jesuit Venturi.



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Cardelli’s notice of decrees to the clergy and the people of Syra concerned the administrators (procuratori) and chaplains of various churches, chapels, land properties and the communal cemetery, the missions of the Dominican nuns and the Jesuits, the function of religious confraternities, and so forth.47 A special section was devoted to the behavior of the priests, which he judged not to be proper and not conforming with the moral standards of the Roman Catholic Church.48 Hence, he prohibited cohabitation or concubinage with women, ordering them to always leave the door open when in the same room with a woman. Despite the fact that the Greek authorities considered the Latin community Turcophile, they continued to address them in civilized terms, asking for an one-off contribution in kind. After the massacre of Chios, the flows of refugees increased accordingly. Toward the end of 1822, more than one thousand people had gradually settled at the port under the walled town of the island, building small huts and shacks along the shore, where any sort of trade could take place. The importance of the place started to draw the attention of the Greek insurgents, who would soon attempt to infiltrate the island. The first assault of a Greek takeover of the port of Syra took place a few days before the departure of Cardelli, on 13 November. But the “conspiracy” of a few men described as criminal elements was nipped in the bud, and after a short battle, the assailants withdrew with no casualties on either side. After those events, one Austrian or French ship remained in place for the protection of their co-religionists. Meanwhile, the assembly of the community decided to mobilize the vice-consuls of the European powers in their favor as well as to arm people for the defense of the citadel. On his departure, Cardelli decided not to go to Santorini or to Tinos because of the ongoing tensions between Catholics and Orthodox and instead returned directly to Smyrna. It was clear that the events of 1822 were only the prelude to a new era that was about to emerge in Syros as well as in the entire archipelago. Notes  1. Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, 81–82, 131–35. See also the discussion by Manikas, “Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,“ 142–64. and Asimakis, Η πορεία των σχέσεων Ελλάδος.  2. Βουλή των Ελλήνων-Αρχεία Ελληνικής Παλιγγενεσίας (AEP), v. 1, 565.  3. AEP, v. 15 a–b, 89–90, letter of Emmanouil Spyridonos to the Commissioners of the Aegean Sea, dated 7 June 1822.  4. Dimakopoulos, H διοικητική οργάνωσις, 154–57.  5. Pègues, Histoire et phénomènes du volcan, 622–23.

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 6. Recalling that since the vice-consuls did not hold the power nor the right to judge and punish foreigners, if they wanted to fulfill their mission to facilitate the trade of the subjects of the European power they represented and to protect them from possible injustices, they were obliged to recognize the local government. AEP, v. 15 a–b, 97–99, doc. 24.  7. Vakalopoulos, Πρόσφυγες και προσφυγικόν ζήτημα, 11–20.  8. Vakalopoulos, Πρόσφυγες και προσφυγικόν ζήτημα, 58–66.  9. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 148–149. 10. See, for instance, Georgia Gotsi’s description of the Kanaris’ reception as a national symbol by Victor Hugo and its re-adoption by Greek authors in the nineteenth century. Gotsi, “H διεθνοποίησις της φαντασίας.” See also Mucignat and Ricks, “The Revolution and the Romantic Imagination.” 11. Raffenel, Histoire des événements de la Grèce, 95–97; Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (AMAE), Correspondence Politique (133CP)/Turquie/233, janv.–déc. 1821), no. 118, f. 425–426. See also a report from Naxos that was relayed by Pierre David, French consul in Smyrna, which was published recently. Karapidakis and Duteil-Loizidou, Bulletins français de nouvelles, 146–49. 12. The expenses for the welfare of Muslim prisoners were about 2,600 piastres of an annual total of 25,200 piastres. That balance sheet was published in Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως, 2:214–18. 13. Manikas, “Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,“ 221–23; Drakakis Ιστορία του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως, 1:44–46. However, such practices were very old and common in the Archipelago, see Zachariadou, “Changing Masters in the Aegean”; Vatin and Veinstein, “Une bonté unique au monde.” 14. De la Gravière, “Les Missions Extérieures De La Marine,” 290–91, 310. 15. “Every day I pass a cottage, occupied by four or five Turkish slaves, so notoriously for sale, that the prices of each have been communicated to me. All are females, and one of them a girl of great personal attractions, and a distinguished Moraite family.” Waddington, A Visit to Greece, 36–37. See also chapter 8, this volume. 16. Some aspects of the subject are discussed, albeit somewhat hesitantly, in the recent study by Katsikas, Proselytes of a New Nation, 89–94, 132–56. 17. AEP, v. 15a–b, doc. 8, 83–84. 18. APF, SC Archipelago, vol. 35, f. 147–148. 19. In 1825, Metaxas took under his protection a twelve-year-old “beautiful and modest virgin,” who had “survived by miracle the massacres” and would be baptized Eleni. He trusted her initially to a friend of his in the island of Paros, then married her in 1830 and had eight children with her. Goudas, Βίοι Παράλληλοι, 163. 20. They were exposed by their acts and their signatures. Metaxas, Ιστορικά απομνημονεύματα, 78–80. 21. Mazower, “Villagers, Notables and Imperial Collapse,” 73. 22. AEP, v. 1, 329–331. See Manikas, “Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,“ 66–77. 23. See, for example, the letter of the vice-prefect of Symi to the commissioners dated 20 July 1822. AEP, 15a–b, doc. 51, 125. 24. AEP, 15a–b,doc. 49, 124. 25. Metaxas, Ιστορικά απομνημονεύματα, 82–84. 26. Metaxas, Ιστορικά απομνημονεύματα, 142. 27. Metaxas, Ιστορικά απομνημονεύματα, 129–30. 28. AEP, v. 15a–b, doc. 68, 142–143.



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29. See Matzas or Masse’s letter to the vice-prefect of Sifnos dated 7 September 1822. AEP, v. 15a–b, doc. 85, 156. 30. AEP, v. 12, 26–27 and v. 15a–b, 118–119, 153–156. 31. Samos remained an autonomous principality until its annexation to the Greek state in 1912. See Sevastakis, Σαμιακή Πολιτεία; Sevastakis, Το κίνημα των “Καρμανιόλων” στη Σάμο, 1805–1812; see also the entry “Samos” by Christos Landros in Kitromilides and Tsoukalas, The Greek Revolution, 315–28. 32. In connection with radical prelates with connections to the Etaireia or the patriarchate, as well as the secretary of the community, Stamatis Psomas, and a member of the Philiki Etaireia, the priest Theophilos Kairis, Balis joined the revolutionary troops and fought against the Turks in Evia from the first year of the revolution. On his return to Andros, he formed a military unit. When, after the destruction of Chios, some local chieftains declared allegiance and asked for the intervention of the Ottoman fleet, Balis and his followers rose up against them, burned down some of their houses and proclaimed a regime of equality, abolition of land ownership, and equal redistribution to heirs, and took control of the island’s castle until the end of the year, when the regiment was disbanded and its leaders were led to the Peloponnese where they were executed by hanging. This information is uncertain and covered by consecutive layers of ideological uses since the publication of a tract allegedly written by Balis in Kordatos, Η κοινωνική σημασία της Ελληνικής Επαναστάσεως, 190–94. On the ideological uses of this past, see Dimitropoulos, Τρεις Φιλικοί, έπαρχοι στην Άνδρο, 82 ff and 82n251. 33. AEP, 15a–b, 164–165, doc. 93. 34. AEP, 15a–b, 169, doc. 99. 35. AEP, 15a–b, 197–198. 36. The order regarded the arrest of three members of the Lagkadas family, two of the Drossos family and the secretary of the chancellery, Kaustos. AEP, 15a–b, 199, doc. 130. 37. Dimakopoulos, Η διοικητική οργάνωσις; Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 1:36–43; also Hydra Community Archive (HCA), v. 8, 266–267. 38. The letter was transmitted through the intermediary of his Armenian counterpart Andon Missirli. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 55 and 56–57r–v. 39. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 56. 40. Rojas Gomez, “Re-conceiving Territory in Eastern Crimea”; see Scassi, Note sur l’ouverture, f. 1251. 41. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 57v. 42. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 250–252. Since there is no mention of mixed or forced marriages and probably this practice concerned mainly marriages without family consent, the persistence of the question of marriages extra faciem ecclesiae in nineteenth-century Syros probably reveals high social mobility and novel forms of relationships and marital contracts that disturbed or irritated the conservative morals of the clergy and of a part of the community. An age-old question for the Catholic Church and the other Christian Churches, see Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 49–65, 121–27, specifically for the Archipelago, 219–24. 43. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 56–57r–v. 44. See, for example, the letter of Zane Voropoulo to the SCPF, concerning the testimonies given by his son Antonio, a young priest in Syra, against Bishop Russin. The author claims that his son was deceived and forced to undersign testimonies: APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 788–789. 45. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 306–317.

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46. The list concerned mainly the refusal of the apostolic visitation; disregard of orders coming from Rome and claims that the bishop was not to subject to the Propaganda Fide and the pope; persecution of his opponents; partiality as a judge; negligence about the education of the clerics and various rivalries that led to excommunication of his opponents who wrote against him to Rome in 1818; a feud with the Jesuit father Venturi; naming as confessors of priests that were ignorant and incompetent. Report of Msgr. Luigi Maria Cardelli, archbishop of Smyrna and apostolic visitor in Syros, on the moral, religious, administrative, economic situation of the Catholic community of Syra, dated 30 October 1822. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 288–297. 47. Adding the maintenance of church properties and the repair of material damages caused by recent attacks. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 312–314. 48. One of them concerned the affair of a priest with a married lady whose husband was away for business. The priest was accused and threatened with suspension. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 311.

CHAPTER 6

Nestor Faziolis’s Incursions and the Takeover of the Port m m m

Archbishop Cardelli’s mention in his last report of an attempted incursion on Syros on 15 November 1822 that was attempted by “criminal elements” was much more than a premonition, in all likelihood, it expressed an early effort to test the potential for resistance of the Syra Latin community. The various vice-consuls had reported information about an imminent attack on the Catholics toward the end of 1822.1 A few weeks later, the insurgents started claiming their share of political power and capital accumulation in Syra. Commercial activity had started moving to the port of Syra at a growing pace after the summer of 1822, especially with the initiative of the Chiots, rich merchants and poor refugees, who, taken together, represented half of the refugees that, at the beginning of 1823, already equaled or even outnumbered the population of the Latin community.2 If until then a more discreet attitude had been adopted by the representatives of the provisional Greek government, now the strategic and economic importance of the island to control the Archipelago trade routes and the maintenance of the revolutionary fleet was posing new challenges. The port, at least, controlled until then by the Latin community, had to be made available for the establishment of some sort of control by the Greek revolutionary government. A sort of division that had already been de facto established after the settlement of merchants, refugees and all sorts of representatives and middlemen at the port, created the space available for that to happen. However, in the case of Syra, the risk of attracting the attention of the Ottoman fleet and thus destroying the last trade hub in the Archipelago was compounded by the risks emanating from the protection offered to Catholics by France and other European powers. The events of 15 November 1822 were probably an expression of a growing separation between the town and most of the hinterland and, on the other side, the port and its growing gravity as a free trade spot in the Archipelago. In his Letters from the Aegean, the British philhellene James Emerson Tennent grasped the particularity and the growing importance of Syros in the two years after the Chios massacre:

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The town is by no means so well built as those of some of the other islands less equivocally Greek. Its streets, owing to their situation on the sides of a steep and conical hill, are irregular, narrow, and infamously filthy, while its little harbor is crowded with vessels of various flags from Hydra, Malta, and Marseilles, as Syra is now the only neutral port of the empire equally respected by Turk and Greek, and permitted to carry on the trifling remnant of commerce remaining in the Cyclades.3

The multitude of poor and destitute refugees had been arriving at the port of Syros in search of security from the Ottoman reprisals or an income, be it provisional, in order to survive and sustain their families. Most of those newcomers had no accommodation, and were sheltered in tents, churches, or even in the streets of the town, which started then to be called “the town above” (απάνω χώρα).4 Considering that their settlement and the concentration of business in the port of Syra was only occasional, most did not yet attempt to acquire land or build houses. In the meantime, various “shops” (μαγαζιά) and warehouses kept pushing along the shore. Much more than a “trifling remnant of commerce,” the wheat, barley, textile products, oil, coffee, rice, and all sorts of other merchandise carried across the Eastern Mediterranean made clear that the control of Syra port would be a source of considerable income for the maintenance of the Greek military fleet and the expenses of the revolutionary administration.

The End of Indifference and French Involvement As the only Cycladic island to follow the Gregorian calendar, Syra celebrated Christmas in 1822 in a calm atmosphere fraught with perils. The new year did not bode well for the local community. In late December 1822, some cases of pest were reported from the neighboring islands of Tinos and Paros, triggering fears of an epidemic. On top of this, on 5 January, Christmas Eve according to the Julian calendar, Orthodox merchants and seamen stationed at the port demanded to be allowed to attend the mass celebrated in the Orthodox church in the town. The local authorities denied permission in order to maintain quarantine measures, and a group of around thirty armed men, under the command of a Cephalonian, Nestor Faziolis or Faggioli, captain of a ship under the flag of the Ionian Islands—then a British protectorate—disembarked and opened fire on the small squadron of sanitary police who were in the way of the ships. Six people were killed in the first clash between insurgents and Syriots.5 As a result, many local inhabitants, including various vice-consuls of the European powers, sought refuge in the few houses at the port, in ships



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that were anchored at a reachable distance, and within the fortified town on the hill, the Apano Chora, leaving the port completely under the control of Faziolis and his crowd. From that point on and for almost a month, until the beginning of February 1823, Faziolis took control of the shore and increased his irregulars,6 who looted properties of the local Latins in the harbor and in the nearby countryside, and threatened occasionally to invade the town. Appearing as the representative of the insurgents, Faziolis attempted to break deals with the people at the port, trying to win them over to the Greek cause and the goal to subdue the Latins. At the same time, he also endeavored to consolidate his position, recruiting in the neighboring islands of Tinos and Mykonos among Cephalonians, but also among Orthodox refugees. For this, he had implicit but quite clear support from representatives of the insurrectionary government. The role of Emmanuel Spyridonos, eparch (prefect) of Tinos between May 1822 and May 1823, in the efforts to subdue the resistance of the Latin population was pivotal, both for Tinos,7 home to the largest Latin community of all islands, but also for Syros. From early on, Spyridonos quarreled with the local vice-consul of France Michele (Michail) Spadaro over the limits of French protection. In his correspondence with the Greek authorities on the matter, Spyridonos described the Latins and the Catholic vice-consuls of the various European powers alike as Turcophiles (τουρκολάτρες), that ought to be countered or subdued.8 In June 1822, he was among the first to address an appeal to the community of Syra, inviting them as members of the same nation to join the Greek struggle and asking them to send five hundred barrels of wine for the needs of the fleet.9 Once those efforts to win over the Syra Latins through persuasion failed, the eparch had no reason to hinder, if not to facilitate, the efforts to conquer and subdue the community of Syra made by Faziolis and his irregulars.10 In that sense, the rumors from Tinos in December 1822 about an imminent wholesale massacre of the Catholics on Christmas Eve probably concerned the attack that was planned for Syra and indicated that at least part of this expedition had been prepared there.11 Finally, the report sent by Spyridonos himself to the Greek administration on those events, dated 6 (19) January 1823, corroborates his involvement, if not already before Faziolis’s first incursion, then certainly immediately after it. The eparch presented the events as a result of the initiative of the Latin community to collect a port tax that irritated the “Easterners” (ανατολικούς, Eastern Christians). After describing the “bravery” of the Cephalonians facing the Syriot sanitary police, he even raised the number of killed or injured among the local Syriots to thirty and, reporting on the new situation at the port, he introduced the Cephalonian captain to his superiors, so that he could give them himself a firsthand account of the

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events and receive orders for the future.12 According to Spyridonos’s version of events, a ceasefire had been achieved between Syriots and Cephalonians with the mediation of the vice-consuls, according to which communication between the town and the port was re-established under the condition that neither party had the right to dispatch armed units to the port. The port had been detached from the control of the Latin community. One week later, Spyridonos addressed a second letter on Syra to the Ministry of War, in which he reported that he had instructed Faziolis’s brother, who had remained in the Archipelago to ease the tensions that had resurged, and proposed appointing a vice-prefect to the port of Syra.13 All bets had now been placed. Faziolis had given the Greek government the opportunity to appear as a mediator in Syra, too. The issue would now be to redefine the roles of the various actors of the old imperial order, as well as to circumscribe their powers. The government’s communiqué to the primates of Hydra on this subject dated 15 January 1823, that is, when the port was already under Faziolis’s control, summarized their attitude toward Syra until that point and heralded their change of attitude: The issue of Syra is to be considered as most essential: firstly, because an island with a port in the middle of the Cyclades, however small and sparsely populated, means a lot for the general as well as for the internal interests of the nation. And in the second place, the fact that we have within our bosom a community in a state of antagonistic neutrality (αντιπραττούσης ουδετερότητος), like that of the Syriots, who side directly and indirectly with the enemy and damage our national interests as much as they can, can cause damage of course, but the use of violent and coercive means by the government in order to correct this, does not seem to serve for the time being the purposes of our foreign policy.14

The eparch of Tinos reported as well that, after the conclusion of that temporary truce, the vice-consul of France had planted the French flag at the gate of the walled town. Actually, right after the outbreak of Faziolis’s first incursion, the community of Syra had begged the French vice-consul for help. Now you see our enemies fighting us in great numbers, you see them attacking us from land and sea, killing our brothers down at the port in their houses and shops, bombarding our town with cannonball shots from ships under different flags, not only Greek, but also Ionian and Russian. What are we waiting for? Are we to let them conquer our land and eliminate us completely? We implore you, . . . in the name of the Most Merciful Sovereign of ours, the Most Christian King of France . . ., to hoist without delay the glorious white flag of our venerated King of France on the gate of the town. And once our enemies see this, the war will stop. We are ready and decided to stand upon our walls, under the shadow of the blessed white flag and repel



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our enemies, defend our homeland, our temples and our honour, with the firm decision to perish in order to prove the gratitude we owe to our precious benefactor, His Highness the King of France and in honour to the Flag, that is the royal bequest and sign of the glorious sovereignty and protection He granted to us since time immemorial until today.15

Soon thereafter, French vice-consul in Syra, Natale Vuccino, addressed two letters: one to the French commander Henri de Rigny at Smyrna, asking for support and active protection from the French navy,16 and another to the primates of Hydra, who were leading the naval war against the Ottomans. His phrasing puts into relief how the elite of the Syriot community conceived their bonds of belonging and understood their position within the existing imperial setting. [T]he King of France, my sovereign, has accepted to offer his high protection to the entire community of the island of Syros, and this protection, along with its declared neutrality, has been hitherto respected by every nation, including all Greek ships that have called into this port. However, I was informed that on the island of Tinos a number of persons, allegedly around five hundred until now, are gathering in order to attack this island. I would be happy, dear Commanders, to know if that conspiracy had been organized or approved by the Greek government. This would be for my information, as a representative of this population.17

The primates of Hydra and the representatives of the provisional government denied any connection with Faziolis’s actions. Our ships have never molested Syra, because, although subject to the Turks, the island is inhabited by fellow Christians . . . Finally, we always regarded with indifference their indifference toward our political affairs and we cannot believe that our government has authorized an expedition against Syra. If therefore one is currently under preparation in Tinos, it can only be an arbitrary initiative.18

At the same time, the primates of Hydra questioned the two capacities of Vuccino,  “as consular agent of a Power and as representative of a population that is entirely subject to another power.”19 The Greek administration attempted now, in Syra too, to present itself to the local primates as protection from radicals and outlaws. Hence, on the one hand, they sent one envoy to Tinos, in order to stop any military preparation against Syra. And on the other, they asked the vice-consul of France to present his credentials and the decrees according to which Syra and its community was put entirely under the protection of the Most Christian King.20 Meanwhile, from Smyrna, the French General Consul Pierre David had reprimanded Vuccino in early April, clarifying the rules of conduct to be followed for the establishment of an informal empire in the Levant:

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The letter you wrote to the governors of Hydra had good motivations but was badly conceived, so it brought back to you a rather unpleasant answer. . . . It was not necessary to attribute to the Community what the King grants only to the religion. I am well aware that by protecting the religion we seek to protect in many other ways those who profess it, but this extension which we tacitly give to this faculty, which the Capitulations have consecrated, must not be cited as a right. Above all, we must not set this imaginary right against those who may have an interest in contesting it; in a word, we must exert it without saying it.21

The questioning of the functions and position of the various local vice-consuls once the Greek government decided to claim its rights on Syra, or at least its port, as part of its territories, was the beginning of a broader renegotiation of traditional functions and hierarchies as well as of the confessional and political ties that linked the Latin community to Paris, Rome, and Istanbul. The idea that was expressed in the twentieth century by local Greek authors and historians that the French claim and intervention during those events, in combination with the fear of the Turks, did not let the Latins express their genuine patriotism and sympathy toward the Greek national struggle,22 proved to be an ex post facto construction. The French intervention during the first efforts of the Greek insurgents to gain control of the island was actively sought by the locals as much as keenly provided by the Station du Levant. However, the stakes were different for each side and each actor involved. Apart from their social status, the various vice-consuls, officially charged with the protection of the maritime trade under the flag they represented, could draw various benefits from their position, in the form of tax exemptions, gifts, and commissions they received for their services. They dispatched patents of protection as well as various forms of informal indemnity, and they enjoyed the connivance of local officials. Hence, their tendency to support the established order on each island made them the number one problem for the establishment of the Greek administration during the first years of the insurrection.23 On their part, the French officers and diplomats had to take into account all the parameters that formed the network of French interests in the Levant. The protection and recovery of their previous position in the Levant was not only the strategic aim of the French naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean in the post-Napoleonic period, it weighed much more in material terms. The ship inspections imposed by the Greek navy with a growing intensity on French and other European ships that passed through the Archipelago had been the first trouble the Division navale du Levant had to resolve. In his letter to Commander de Rigny, David explained that:



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The Greeks are confused about their status vis-à-vis the European powers; they supposed that they have already been recognized as an independent nation and their provisional government thought it could adopt some principles of the maritime law that we contested even with the old governments. Hence, imitating England, they pretend that the flag does not cover the merchandise and that they have the right to seize enemy properties from European ships carrying them from one place to another.24

Hence, the main bulk of the French engagement in the Eastern Mediterranean concerned the merchandise seized by Greek ships in one form or another, and the reparations to be received by their respective communities on account of French merchants. In early 1823, there were already were dozens of such cases pending, of which only a part was deemed by de Rigny to be sufficiently informed or substantial enough to be settled with the primates from the three naval islands, depending on the provenance of the boats that had made the catch. The fact was, however, that the French had already established contact with Hydra, Spetses, and Psara and their requests and negotiations with them was in conformity with their professed neutrality and behavior as “friends of everybody” and defenders of humanity.25 What is more, the amount of compensations granted by the authorities of the islands to French merchants was not insignificant—amounting to twenty to fifty thousand piasters in each case.26 Thus, while the Greeks on their part ensured a sort of legality of maritime transport, the French found a way to remain neutral while reducing the damage imposed by the war on their trade—and this was the line of action of the consuls of other countries as well. Furthermore, initiatives such as the constitution of a consular tribunal for the trial of a French captain accused by the Greeks of involvement in the slave trade of Greek captives from Chios constituted an implicit recognition of the Greeks as belligerents and an opportunity to claim France’s role as the “moral queen” of the Levant.27 In this context, the protection offered to the Latins, their claims for fiscal compensation and, lately, the case of Syra, were complexities that troubled the idealized neutrality that the consular corps wanted to implement.

Faziolis Strikes Back During his stay in the Peloponnese, Nestor Faziolis received permission to put his ship under a Greek flag but acquired no official authorization for an expedition against Syra. A few weeks after his departure, he returned to Tinos, where he captured a commercial brig under the Austrian flag and, on 14 (or 12) February, sailed for Syra with a force estimated by different accounts to number be-

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tween 300 and 500 men. Aware of the imminent attack, the Syriots were seized by panic and barricaded themselves within the walls of the old town. The irregulars disembarked at the port and for three days they looted Latin properties and prepared for an assault on the town. It is not clear whether Captain Pierre Hargous had been notified of the ongoing attack, but the fact that the French schooner Estafette under his command called at the port of Syra in the morning hours of Saturday, 1 March 1823 (17 February O.S.28), was designated in all subsequent accounts of the Latins as a manifestation of Divine Providence.29 The limits of neutrality prevented Hargous from engaging directly in a battle against Greeks. However, an official request made by the local vice-consul of Naples on the subject of the brig captured in Tinos a few days earlier gave him the legal grounds to intervene. The French captain sent an ultimatum to Faziolis to release and return the captured ship to its owners or he would take it by force. The irregulars withdrew to the ship or the nearby islands; Faziolis, who meanwhile complied and returned the brig, was put in detention until the awaited arrival of de Rigny.30 The frigate La Médée arrived at the port of Hydra on 6 March; for the local community this was “like the rainbow after the storm.”31 According to David’s report, Faziolis escaped shortly before the arrival of de Rigny, who managed to arrest two of his accomplices, brought them to Smyrna and handed them over to the British consul. The French consul in Smyrna collected his information from his local agents, Archbishop Cardelli and the networks of the Catholic church, as well as from the French naval officers. On Syros particularly, he received additional information from the famous painter, archaeologist, and collector Louis Fauvel, vice-consul in Athens, who had quit the city after its capture by the Greek insurgents and was installed in neutral Syra in the summer of 1822. Fauvel, who did not feign his pro-Ottoman feelings, addressed a series of letters to David during the events, asking urgently for the dispatch of ships and troops for the protection of the island and criticizing the reticence of the French naval officers toward the Greek aggression. Asking for the permanent presence of a French ship at the port of Syra, Fauvel described vividly the triumphal reception of the French as their saviors and liberators with cannon and rifle fire, and the popular cries “Vive le Roi, Protecteur de Syra.” La Médée left in the evening of Saturday to Sunday in order to chase Faggioli. On Sunday [9 March N.S.], Mr. Hargous, his staff and part of his crew attended a solemn mass in thanksgiving for the deliverance of Syra. . . . A Te Deum was sung with all the pomposity and enthusiasm possible, accompanied by the roar of the Estafette’s cannons and the city’s artillery, while the air resounded with cries of “Long live the King” repeated by a thousand mouths.32

From that point on, there was de facto question of the French claims over the island of Syra. A few days after the arrest and ousting of Faziolis, an emis-



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sary of the Greek government, Theocharis Papantoniou, arrived in Syros, and transmitted to the local community a demand to pay an extraordinary levy. Reassured by the presence of French ships in the harbor, the primates of the community invoked once more the French protection and requested time to receive directives from the representatives of the French king in the region. After a few weeks of exchanges between the Hydriot representative, the community, and Captain de Comorre, commander of the French ship Le Sylène stationed at Syra after the departure of the Estafette,33 the Hydriots decided to bypass the French intervention and increase their pressure on the Latin community. On 13/25 April, they addressed a threatening ultimatum to the Syriot community. We believe you understand that the particular protection offered by France to your weak island is enough to secure you from the bloodthirsty purposes of our common tyrant and of some criminals who attempted to exploit these irregular circumstances in order to inflict suffering on you, but can never detach you from the body of the Greek Nation. Since Syros is a Greek place, all its inhabitants are subject to the taxation paid already by the entire nation for two years.

The decision of the Hydriots was to collect the annual tax from the Cyclades before the annual tour (volta) of the Ottoman fleet. The potential paradigm that an exemption of the Latins could create, prioritized the collection from those islands where the Latin communities had claimed immunity, otherwise “all islanders will soon become Latins, or they will sell their properties to them.”34 In late April 1823, a flotilla of fourteen ships under Captain Lazaros Lalechos departed to collect taxes from the islands. After stopping and collecting taxes from Naxos and Santorini and forcing when necessary the ones who did not want to pay, the Hydriot ships arrived at Syra on 30 April (12 May), requiring the payment of 40,000 piastres within twentyfour hours. To the effort of the Syriots to negotiate the amount, Lalechos replied that he had no authorization to bargain and that if the Community did not pay its debt, once the ultimatum expired his men would disembark and loot the town. Apart from the payment in cash that was five or six times higher than the annual tribute paid until then to the kapudan pasha, the community of Syra was also forced to add an additional payment in kind (meat, wine, oil, and so forth) for the needs of the crews of the flotilla under Lalechos.35 Thus, the swift action of the Hydriot fleet had succeeded in collecting a tax from all the Latin communities, including that of Syra. Only a few days before the armed collection of the tax in the Aegean, the primates of Hydra had addressed de Rigny on the subject of the protection to Syra, clarifying that the sum requested corresponded “to their part of the regular tax to which all inhabitants of the islands and of the rest of Greece are subject.” The Division Navale du Levant commanded by de Rigny comprised his frigate and

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five other ships. Well informed on the strength and the successes of the Greek fleet, and aware of his limited resources and the constraints of neutrality, immediately after Faziolis’s second attack, de Rigny had made an agreement with the officers of the Austrian imperial fleet to participate in the protection of Syra, that is, to ensure the presence of a ship of one or the other permanently in the port.36 However, even that measure proved inadequate. Given a fait accompli, de Rigny protested against the treatment of the Catholics as helots, regarding the sum collected by means of violence as exorbitant for the size and the population of the island.37 Justifying the deal with the Austrian fleet to his superiors in Paris, the general consul of Smyrna mentioned that de Rigny only requested help from the Austrian commander, counting on the economic interests he represented, given that his compatriots made up eleven-twelfths of the trade in the Archipelago: “Our motivations are religion, humanity, the commitment that this population has shown to us over the years.”38 Highlighting the different motivations of the Austrians and the noble and uninterested character of the French presence, also served to preserve the exclusivity (or the primacy) of the king’s right to protect the Catholic religion in the Levant. The idea of a Latin Syriot population that was pro- or quasiFrench derived not only from his correspondence with the consular agents, but also from his contact with the Catholic archbishop of the city. Cardelli had actually contacted the French Embassy on the issue of the Archipelago Latins soon after his return from Syra in late 1822, initially through David. In his report to the Propaganda Fide on the events of Faziolis’s second attack, Cardelli also insisted the Syriots receive the French fleet as liberators, with public ceremonies and manifestations of commitment to the French king. Writing in June to Count de Beaurepaire, chargé d’affaires at the embassy in Constantinople, he described the relentlessness (acharnement) of the Greeks. Cardelli stated that the Greeks themselves recognized the necessity of the neutral port of Syra, yet they did not hesitate to endanger it with hatred for the Catholic religion and with contempt for the French protection, which “they manifest at each opportunity, insulting the flag of His Majesty.” Appealing to the French imperial ideology, he also adopted an anti-revolutionary stance, stating the Greeks had no right to oppose the protection of religion from the ravages inflicted by revolution. The archbishop also mentioned an alleged offer of English protection to the Syra community, which he declined, thinking that such a move would not only harm the traditional French interests on the island but also hurt the feelings of the Syriot people who were French by disposition (françois d’inclination). Extending this quasi-French identity to the entire Latin population of the Archipelago (quatorze mille infortunés devoués à la France; fourteen thousand unfortunates committed to France), the archbishop addressed a desperate



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appeal warning that “unless we rush to stop the evil, Catholicism will be eliminated in the Levant.”39

“Oppressed by Greek Barbarians” Informed of these events, Bishop Russin grabbed the opportunity from Rome to intervene, denouncing the sufferings inflicted on his flock by “schismatic and heretic Greeks” and to place himself at the disposal of the hierarchy.40 As we will see, this was the first of a new series of efforts by him and his supporters to request his return, to no avail, however. The demoted bishop and his “party” belonged to a previous state of the affairs that was being rapidly bypassed by the events. In his report to Count de Beaurepaire, Cardelli mentioned that the Greeks now wanted to impose a governor, customs, and new taxes. He was, of course, referring to the new administrative division of the Greek territories issued in May 1823 that formally incorporated the island as part of the county of Mykonos and Syros.41 By integrating the island as part of a broader territorial unit, the provisional government created on the one hand a legal basis for its subsequent interventions while on the other they avoided direct tensions with the claims of the Latin community, implicitly recognizing the de facto territorial division of the island between the old inhabitants of the town and the newcomers at the port. The ambivalence remained but, as was the case already, the limits of sovereignty of the various authorities that staked a claim to Syros were to be redefined. In more concrete terms, once the port was detached from the exclusive control of the Latin community, now the question was who would now be in charge of its operation and the revenues generated by it. A representative of the Greek government remained on the island to inquire about and negotiate with the merchants a new organization of the port; he did not, however, make any effort to publicize his presence. At the same time, in the Peloponnese, the officials deliberated about the person who would be appointed eparch (prefect) of the new administrative district: the initial choice of a Cephalonian, Nikolaos Inglessis was abandoned to avoid reviving a Syriot–Cephalonian feud, in favor of a “local” candidate, the Mykonian Alexandros Axiotis.42 For the rest, the Greek government kept the initiative and forced the pace, adopting a hard line. Faziolis was officially appointed chief of police in Syros on the order of Axiotis. On 3/15 July, he sailed from Hydra on a Hydriot ship together with a guard of twenty Hydriots. He arrived to Syra on 5/17 July and was joined by a large number of irregulars, who started attacking local Latins and looting their properties. Meanwhile, after the Fazolis’s first two incursions, the Syriots had

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armed 500 men for the defense of their fortified settlement, who were barricaded within the city walls and took up positions for combat. The next morning, while skirmishes between Syriots and Fazioli’s men had already begun on the hills around the town, the frigate La Médée entered the port of Syra. David described what followed: M. de Rigny was informed of the state of affairs, and had the Hydriot brig which had brought Fagioli seized, and in which he found only his brother. But one man had been seen to escape to a Greek ship flying the Russian flag. The French commander sent a task force on board that ship where they found Fagioli in the hold and took him to the French frigate. Meanwhile, another squad had been sent ashore to arrest the gang of the so-called chief of police, who had begun to plunder the cattle and gardens and to assault the inhabitants. M. de Rigny sent this scoundrel and the brig back to the Primates of Hydra.43

De Rigny addressed a strict warning to the Hydriots for appointing a bandit (forban). It is difficult to believe that for the charge of maintaining order your government chose the biggest enemy of order, a man who was chased from Syra because he plundered, torched, and seized on his own initiative a ship under the flag of Naples . . . , who, despite the fact that he comes from Zante and is a British subject, he appeared in Syra under all sorts of citizenships and flags seeking to fulfil his passion for vengeance.44

This direct intervention and arrest of a government official constituted a turning point in that bras de fer between the provisional government and the French. The protection of the French merchants remained the primary aim of the French Division du Levant.45 Hence, Vuccino, who was regarded as undiplomatic and overly confrontational vis-à-vis the Greek claims, was removed from his post in June to be replaced a few weeks later by a Frenchman, Pierre Lami. The new vice-consul maintained, however, the claims of extra-territoriality accepting the setting up of a Greek police and port authority, but refusing to declare himself and the Latin community subjects to them.46 In his attempt to circumscribe the character and limits of the protection provided by France to the Latin community, the eparch reassured the French vice-consul and the local community that the establishment of the Greek authorities would remain discreet and that he would not raise the Greek flag on the island in order to assuage the fears of the local community about a Turkish attack.47 Hence, the first half of 1823 inaugurated a period of shared sovereignty between, on the one hand, the “native” community with French support, and on the other the newly established instances of the Greek state, the police, justice and port authority.



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Within a new buffer zone, a new, moving frontier thus went now through the island. The “old” and “new” Syra, as they were first named,48 were now going to obtain different sanitary regulations and authorities, distinct police forces and civic authorities. Until late in the decade, the jurisdiction of the Greek police force established in Syros was constantly called into question by the French consul and the leaders of the Catholic community. Likewise, in the fiscal registers of the Greek authorities, the island of Syra would be divided into two communities, that of the local Latins and that of the “merchants of the Port” of Syra.49 In the following months, the local vice-consuls, Frenchmen, or members of the local communities kept challenging the legitimacy of the Greek authorities, especially the French ones, maintaining a prominent role in the negotiations between the local community and the revolutionary government. De Rigny, as commander of the French naval forces in the Levant, and Guilleminot, the ambassador in Istanbul, would soon have to define the character of French neutrality and the limits of protection provided to the island Catholics on a basis of respect toward national territorial sovereignty.50 The people in the town sought to organize their defense and to ask for solidarity through the networks of the Catholic Church. Toward the end of 1823, the community council took measures for the protection of the properties of the Latins and the control of contacts with the people at the port.51 The local clergy appealed to the Propaganda Fide and the archbishop of Smyrna for support. As the range of French protection was about to be further curtailed, the mood of the reports on the Archipelago sent by the archbishop of Smyrna to the French Embassy in Istanbul became dramatic. In September 1823, he reiterated that protection consisting only in vague and fine words did not support the poor Catholics who are harassed to the extreme by Greek barbarians.52 No doubt, this reference to “Greek barbarians” who severely oppressed the Latins was intended to convince his correspondent to put the Greek Revolution beyond civilization, just as the insurgents and their philhellene supporters were convinced of exactly the opposite. Whose conception would prevail depended now on the balance of power and the outcome of the Greek insurrection. The line dividing the “old” town on the hill and the “new” on the shore that was about to be set as a border between a nascent nation-state and an empire would also be described by various actors involved in this process as a frontier between Europe and the Orient, and/or between civilization and barbarism. Notes  1. AMAE, Correspondance Consulaire (CC), Smyrne, v. 38, f. 32.  2. Loukos, Η Ερμούπολη της Σύρου, 57–61, Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως, 2:200–12.

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 3. Emerson Tennent, Letters from the Ægean, 11.  4. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού της Ερμουπόλεως, 7.  5. One member of the sanitary police and another five inhabitants of the port, three local Latins and two Neapolitans happened to be there during the shootout. See the reconstruction based on the 1842 trial minutes in Drakakis, “Νέστωρ Φαζιόλης,” 10–11.  6. Drakakis, “Νέστωρ Φαζιόλης,” 13–16.  7. Mazower, “Villagers, Notables and Imperial Collapse”; see the letter of Bishop Giovanni Collaro of Tinos and the information on violence against the Latins given by the archbishop of Smyrna in his visitation report. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 35, f. 87–88, 320–326.  8. See his report to the primates of Hydra. HCA, v. 8, 463 as well as his long letter to the French General Consul in Smyrna Pierre David in AEP, 15a–b, 132–137.  9. Archive of the Catholic Diocese of Syros and Milos (ACDS), Ekklisiastika, f. 57, doc. 25 and AEP, v. 1, 565. 10. Letter evoking the fake denunciation of the sultan by the pope. AEP, v. 1, 565; see HCA v. 8, 394 and 463, and v. 9, 362; Vaos, Σελίδες του 1821, 283–85; Manikas, “Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,” 230–32. 11. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 32. 12. See the whole three-page report of Emm. Spyridonos, dated 3 January 1823 in the Greek General State Archives (GAK), Archive of the Secretariat of the Interior, f. 5 [1823], doc. 14. 13. GAK, Archive of the Secretariat of the Interior, f. 5 [1823], doc. 23. 14. GAK, Archive of the Secretariat of the Interior, f. 5 [1823], doc. 23. 15. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, f. 59, doc. 9; see Manikas, “Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,” 214. 16. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 284–285. 17. Letter dated 18 January 1823. HCA, v. 9, p.3–4. 18. HCA, v. 9, p. 5 19. “We have not been notified that His Most Christian Majesty has under His protection the community of Syros, and we find almost incompatible the two roles you assume, that of the consular agent of a Power on the one hand and of representative of a people subject to another Power. However, we will forward to our government your letter, since you should have already sent it to them and not to our community, if your sovereign is the actual protector of Syros and you the actual representative of the island.” See a copy of this letter in Greek. HCA, v. 9, p. 4; and in French, AMAE, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 282. 20. HCA, v. 9, p. 22. 21. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 284, letter dated 12 February 1823 (N.S.): “[il] ne fallait point attribuer à la Communauté ce que le roi n’accorde qu’à la religion. Je sais bien qu’en protégeant la réligion nous tâchons de protéger en beaucoup d’autres choses ceux qui la professent, mais cette extension que nous donnons tacitement à cette faculté, que les Capitulations ont consacrée, il ne faut point la citer de citer comme un droit. Il ne faut point surtout opposer ce droit imaginaire à ceux qui peuvent avoir intérêt à nous le contester; en un mot, il faut l’exercer sans le dire.” See the transcription by Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 227. 22. See for example, Drakakis, “Νέστωρ Φαζιόλης,” or the last pages of the novel by Rita Boumi-Papa, Η Χρυσώ, 189–209. Thanks to Christina Tsialis for alerting me to this text. 23. See among many examples of reports, especially by local agents of the Greek government on the patents of protection as well as for the measures taken to control this activity: HCA,



24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

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v. 9, p. 338–339; AEP, v. 7., p. 289–290; See also Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 250–52. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 265. For the practice of ship inspection by Greek ships carrying permission of the government, see Themeli-Katifori, Η δίωξις της πειρατείας, 11–21. Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée. Letter of the commander of the division du Levant Henri de Rigny to Pierre David, 11 April 1823. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, 263–264. The minutes of the tribunal inquiry on the Durante affair. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 230–233. Old Style, also known as the Julian calendar. De la Gravière, La Station du Levant, 328. According to a local popular verse on those events, recorded by Natale Vuccino, vice-consul of Netherlands in Syra, Saint George himself protected the Syriots who, attacked with canons by the Greeks, fought back with pistols. I owe my thanks to Giorgos Koutzakiotis who brought to my attention this document from Nationaal Archief (Den Haag), Legatie Turkije en de Levant, 1814–1872, No 424. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 28–29. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 224v–225. See Fauvel’s letter of 14 March 1823: AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 243. See the description of De la Gravière, La Station du Levant, 121. HCA, v. 9, p. 121–128 and 131–136. This story is recounted by Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 1:65–70. HCA, v. 9, p. 362; Manikas,“Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,” 97. HCA, v. 9, p. 168; Hoffmann, Das Papsttum, 156–57; Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 72–73. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 279–280. HCA, v. 9, p. 140 and 427. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 142–146v; see Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée. In an interim period before the arrival of Guilleminot as new ambassador: APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 522–523. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 494r–v. Dimakopoulos, Η διοικητική οργάνωσις, 154–57. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 1:79–80. See the report of the events by the French consul in Smyrna. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39 ( July–December 1823), f. 28–29. HCA, v. 9, p. 260. De Rigny’s frigate had encountered Fagiolis while sailing to the Archipelago in order to “make the Greeks pay some bonds they have subscribed for compensation to our merchant captains and their charterers who were robbed by the insurgent privateers”: AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39. Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 558, 621–22. “[A]fter the conversation I had the honour to have with you the day before yesterday, you are aware that the motivations that make me act with reservation in this land, derive only from the fact that my government ordered me to accommodate the fears generated in the minds of the inhabitants, who can only foresee a devastation, in case that the rights of the Greek government on this island went public.” HCA, 9, 340–341 (in French and Greek, respectively).

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48. “La population de cette île augmentait tous les jours; et tandis que la haute et ancienne ville, administrée par ses primats, était réduite à une nullité complète, la cité littorale formée d’élémens hétérogènes était la nouvelle Sciros, dont la renommée remplissait la Grèce.” Lauvergne, Souvenirs de la Grèce, 159. 49. See the report of David, French consul in Smyrna. AMAE, CC, Smyrne. See the studies of Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 51–75; Drakakis, “Ενας Έλλην κοντοτιέρος.” 50. See the letter of the ambassador of France in Constantinople to the Propaganda Fide where on the protection provided by France to the Catholic population of the Archipelago islands, dated 27 September 1824; APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 952r–v. 51. Public warning (Aviso) of 24 December 1823: ACDS, Ekklisiastika, f. 59, doc. 25. 52. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 641.

CHAPTER 7

On the Limits of Sovereignty and the Frontiers of Civilization m m m

If in the first half of 1823 the Greeks managed to detach the port from the control of the local community, the question now would be to define the character, extent, and limits of their authority in those territories. The making of a new frontier between a nascent nation-state and an empire, was presented by the provisional government as a step toward the integration of those territories into the commonwealth of civilized nations. On the other side, for the Latins (and to a certain degree the French), the Greeks remained those of the Eastern Church, in a liminal position inside and outside Europe. Syra was now becoming a zone of intense contact and low-intensity conflict, where the debate about the limits of civilization came to regard issues of public order and morality.

“Les Droits Nationaux Ne Se Rapportent Pas Aux Sujets Mais a` La Terre” As interior minister, Gregorios Dikaios, also known as Papaflessas, an early member of the Philiki Etaireia who played a key role in the preparation of the Greek insurrection, refuted the claims of the Latins and of the vice-consuls about their respective subjects and protégés, raising the question instead on the territorial sovereignty over the islands. The letter he addressed on 23 June 1823 as Minister of Justice of the Provisional Administration of Greece, which was the first time the central administration addressed the Latins as “Greeks of the Western Church,” Dikaios laid down the theoretical principles of the insurgent government’s conception of nationalism on the basis of the limits of civilization: If we look at the enlightened world, we see many nations, each of which is composed of individuals who have different doctrines in regard to rite and religion and who, in spite of this, are so closely tied to each other that they form one nation. The German, Dutch, French nations provide such examples. Only barbaric nations identify nationalism [εθνισμό] with religion, and this is why small religious differences can divide a nation.1

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To substantiate this statement, the minister referred to the provisional constitution adopted by the National Assembly the previous year, according to which everyone who was born in Greece and believed in Jesus Christ was considered a Greek. Since the constitutional text already excluded non-Christians from the national community, the fallacy of his argument was obvious. Likewise, the insurgents did not claim the exclusion of Muslims or Jews, although eliminating them proved unavoidable several times in the course of events and was often deemed a necessary evil—when not divine retribution for the crimes committed by the Muslim tyrant. This was not mere inconsistency. Speaking in the name of religious freedom while limiting its range to the different denominations of the Christian faith, implicitly identified civilization with Christianity and excluded others from the commonwealth of civilized nations. Of course, double standards for those who belonged to humanity and civilization and those who did not was a typical trait of colonialist discourses in the century of Enlightenment. Adopting and adapting them to the needs of the circumstances, Dikaios actually appropriated the discourse of the colonial masters. In order to finish with the various claims for a tax exemption, he stipulated that “national rights do not refer to subjects but to the territory,” adjuring all consuls of the Archipelago to accept that everyone, whether or not subject or protégé of a European sovereign, would have to pay the tithe and all other contributions “as Greeks did already.” Presenting Greece as a territorial frontier of Christian Europe, Dikaios reprimanded the viceconsuls, reminding them that their mission was not to proselytize and transform Greeks into Austrian Greeks, French Greeks, and so forth and advised them to stay out of the country’s internal affairs. As the conflict on the mainland was reaching a stalemate, resources derived from warfare were becoming scarce and the islands became the object of a concerted and systematic effort of extraction of all sorts of contributions and revenues. A joint armada of the three islands providing the revolutionary fleet sailed out to collect taxes and various other contributions in late summer 1823. Conflicts and frictions with government opponents took place occasionally, and this was also the case with the Latins in neighboring Tinos, as well as in Naxos and Santorini. This official gunboat diplomacy was not the only nor the most efficient form of coercion to bend the resistance of the government’s opponents, Greeks or Latins. In the course of 1823, local primates and members of the clergy reported with growing frequency various sorts of mob violence against the Latins, supported implicitly or explicitly by the local government representatives. A case in point is Tinos, where the organizers of the anti-Latin riots had assembled from early on, as we have seen, in the previous chapter. Apparently, the largest Latin community of the Archipelago, representing around 60 percent of the overall Catholic population, became the target of various sorts



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of violence from early on. In his exposé on the reparations requested for violent acts against the Latins committed by “Greek schismatics” during that period, the bishop of the island reported threats of a wholesale massacre and various forms of attacks that comprised the destruction of private properties, thefts of valuables and relics in eight Catholic churches and chapels, legal prosecutions against Catholic priests, cattle raiding, a great number of injuries and the murder of six members of the Latin community in four villages.2 Such terrorist practices occurred mainly in the most populous communities of Tinos and Syros. In Naxos and Santorini, where the Latin communities where smaller, occasional riots or attacks from the sea occurred occasionally. Since the Greek government had to deal with divisions and feuds within the Greek majority of those islands,3 anti-Latin violence was less diffuse. As Dikaios put it in his address, the common belief that legitimized the various “remedies” applied against Latins was that they, together with the various local consuls, were pro-Ottoman and wanted to detach a part of the territory and thus weaken and harm the national interest. As the Greeks were gradually gaining control of the mechanisms of coercion in the Archipelago, the Europeans and particularly the French were to be presented with a series of faits accomplis at a growing pace. However emblematic, Syra was only part of this process of incorporation of the islands with the help, as we have seen, of all sorts of integrated networks of locally recruited military units, pirates who became privateers, members of the local governments or factions of the broader communities.4 The representatives of the insurgent government gave a specific spatial definition to a hitherto vague geographical concept. The nascent state was presented as an outpost of “civilized” Christian Europe, claiming a territorial sovereignty, which guaranteed religious and civil equality. On this basis, the Community of Hydra invited de Rigny to specify the character and the limits of French protection. In his response, the French commander stated that “[this] protection applies specifically and unconditionally to Catholic worship, temples, and clergy. It also applies to the Latin communities in so far as they would be subjected to particular oppressions by the Greeks or officials of the Greek government, and insofar as special taxes would be imposed on them on account of their being Catholics, and which would not be imposed on all the Greeks without exception.5 De Rigny, who had already acknowledged the new realities by involving the Habsburg fleet in the protection of the Catholics, as we have seen, was now requesting not a fiscal exemption, but equal treatment of the Catholics. At the same time, the Latins were advised to “return good for evil” and remain out of the conflict, since they were exposed to cruel reprisals by both Turks and Greeks.6 Alexandre Massé points out that from that point on, the contours of French neutrality fluctuated according to the strengthening or

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weakening of the Greeks. Gradually until 1826, that is, well before the French government abandoned the line of neutrality, the vice-consuls in the Archipelago had to put up with Greek privateering, to recognize the right of the Greeks to impose duties on their trade and taxes on their subjects, as well as to incorporate de facto the Latins into their state.7 Hence, during this de facto transition from a reflexive to an active (partisane) French neutrality in favor of the Greeks, each particular local conflict was to be resolved depending on the particular balance of power at any given moment. Sometimes the tithes collected were to be held in trust in the French chancellery until a higher instance or an agreement would designate to whom they should be remitted.8 At the same time, the vice-consul in Athens received instructions from the embassy in Istanbul to leave Syra since the island’s neutrality was no longer recognized by the Greeks. Embittered, Fauvel complied, packing for Smyrna and bemoaning the fate “of this unfortunate island” that had become a hot potato the new ambassador preferred to pass around.9 As the number of inspections and seizures by Greek ships of European ships across the Aegean Archipelago was rising, the appeals for protection from piracy were multiplying. Those who were losing out in the new situation, merchants, primates, or local consular agents petitioned against what they considered a yielding attitude of the fleet in regard to “Greek predatory activities.”10 Actually Greek piracy was not new; what were new were the Greek privateering passports introduced to support the blockade of Ottoman ports and merchandise. However, more often than not the Greeks proved able to circumvent those reactions by being accommodating and generous to the French merchants. Several prize courts on various islands provided in most cases compensation for the seized merchandise. Rather than getting embroiled in straightforward confrontation with the Greek authorities, De Rigny’s main priority was to oversee and assure the functioning of these local prize courts. The operation of the courts constituted a de facto recognition of the authority of the three islands, and, by extension, of the Greek provisional government, in the Archipelago around the time the British government officially recognized the Greeks as belligerents in March 1823.11 Usually composed of local primates and consuls of the neutral European powers, the prize courts constituted a mechanism that proved more realistic and more reliable for French merchants, too.

The Arrival of the Greek Authorities at the Port of Syra At the local level, the thorniest issue remained that of port duties and tax exemptions. The question of control and taxation of merchandise for ships calling at the port of Syra reached a peak after the arrival of the Greek eparch



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in late July/early August (O.S./N.S.) 1823. The council of the local community addressed a formal note to the French and the other vice-consuls of the European powers refusing to recognize Axiotis and asserting the neutrality of the island.12 The subsequent correspondence between the eparch and the new vice-consul of France, Pierre Lami,13 in summer 1823 hints at how the positions of the parties involved were formed through a sequence of contacts and frictions. Upon his arrival, Axiotis had issued two decrees, the first of which ordered everyone to report to his new police force in order to register all those permanently or temporarily settled on the island; the second imposed a customs tax of 3 percent on the value of imported or exported goods, so his port authority could collect the tax from virtually all ships using the island’s port. To Lami’s statement that those measures could not be extended to the subjects and protégés of his government, Axiotis sought to affirm the territorial sovereignty exercised by his government. If the Greek government has the right to govern its territory, then no one could prevent the establishment of a police in it. But if you have specific orders to oppose the creation of a Greek police in Greek territory, please be so kind to communicate it explicitly, so that I can inform my government, whose members are obviously ignorant of the fact that their authority should not reach Syros.14

The plan was apparently to take hold of the port to fund the further establishment and stabilization of the Greek authority. The community council issued immediately after Axiotis’s arrival a formal note to all consular agents stating that the island maintained its neutrality and that he was not recognized “neither by us, nor by our community.”15 As mentioned, Axiotis also reminded Lami that he had accepted not to raise the Greek flag in order to reassure the fears of a Turkish attack, but he would not renounce his right to exercise his authority. A de facto regime of shared sovereignty was about to take form. In response to his insistence to recognize no exceptions to the measures announced, the French vice-consul noted: “in our private and friendly conversation which I had with you these last few days, I made you understand, it seems to me, that any change which you might make in this harbor regarding the Europeans and the local inhabitants would only disrupt the good relations which it is useful for you to maintain with the other nations.”16 This, of course, did not prevent the Greeks from continuing their course, establishing a sort of port police and collecting the customs tax. Meanwhile, the eparch agreed to place the sums collected from French ships on deposit until the vice-consul presented an order from his government on the matter. With different nuances, the various representatives of the French consular corps in

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the Levant considered the Greeks’ position in the hierarchy of civilization as inferior or liminal, a people “so far from civilization and so alien to the public faith,”17 representing a quasi-state that would potentially obtain rights to collect taxes and duties if recognized by the European powers, but could not yet exercise them. Along those lines, the general consul of Smyrna approved of Lami’s position. It seems to me that the Greeks are going much too fast when they want to subdue the subjects, the navigation and the trade of these powers to rights which they have not consented to. Do they not know that such things can only be established by treaties and that treaties are only made between recognized powers? They will alienate the whole of Europe. How could they consent to be more poorly treated by the Greeks than they were by the Turks?18

The tense exchange between the eparch and the vice-consul that followed involved once more the issue of the position of the Greeks in the map of civilization. Hence, when Lami retorted by accusing the Greek authorities of an arbitrary and violent attitude against long-established practices at the Levantine ports, Axiotis, in line with Dikaios, raised the question of the administration of good order and justice. Our sovereignty [administration] cannot be shared with a foreign authority. The past practices of a barbarian master in a part of the earth cannot in any way constitute the basis of the policy adopted by the Greek government, which is resolved to follow the steps of the civilized nations (nations policées). Among those nations, even the most civilized (les plus policées), those who set foot ashore without the prior permission of the local authorities are severely punished.19

As already demonstrated, for example, by the choice of the new eparch not to raise the Greek flag at the port, familiar with the practices and habits of the Archipelago, the representatives of the Greek government combined the means of soft power with coercion, exercising sovereignty without declaring it. As the business of nearby islands was moving there at a growing pace and the port of Syra was becoming a contact zone for consular agents, Greek officials and ships of every flag, their purpose was the preservation of Syros as a hub for all sorts of trade. Hence, once they had removed the port from the authority of the local community and obtained control of its revenues, they still had an interest in avoiding an intervention by the Ottoman fleet. Hence, the payment of the annual maktu in September to the kapudan pasha by the community of Syros was done with the knowledge and tacit agreement of all sides.20 That was the first of a series of double tax payments to the Greek and Ottoman governments by the community of Syra, the beginning of a slippery slope that constantly de-



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stabilized the internal power relations and enhanced the centrifuge tendencies, especially among the lower strata.

The View from the Hill: Loyalty, Tranquility, Neutrality The Government of Syra finds itself bound to make the following declaration of protest in respect of the most unfair tyranny and great damage done to this poor Catholic population by the Greeks, from the beginning of their uprising to the present day, 24 November; this is intended to be valid as a formal protest against the wrongdoers and abusers before any competent Majestic Sovereign, any judge, and any competent court, in order that justice and satisfaction may be done to the poor innocent people of Sira. Declaration no. 1: It is well known to the entire world that the government and community of Sira have never had the slightest sympathy for the machinations of the Greeks, and have never wished to unite with them; on the contrary, they have always and continually remained faithful to their majestic Ottoman ruler Sultan Mahmud, as the island of Sira has been known to all the majestic rulers of Europe up to the present time, that as such is known the island of Sira to all the majestic rulers of Europe, and that the Greeks never had official possession of Sira.21

Formally handed to the vice-consuls of the European powers in the residence of Natale Vuccino, vice-consul of France, on 24 November 1823, this declaration was signed by Governor Marinello and four other members of the community council and was certified by the vice-consul with the request to communicate it to his superiors in Istanbul as well as the consuls and representatives of the other European powers. The second point referred to Greek soldiers and civilians who had been gathering in Syra by the thousands since 1821 and “did great damage to Syra and to our patriots both in the port and in the country for the first two years of the uprising out of sheer wickedness,” ruining properties and stealing crops and animals. The following points recounted the consecutive efforts of the Greeks to take control of the island—or at least its port. The third point referred to the events of Faziolis’s first raid, reporting the killings and other aggressions committed by “Greek and Ionian thugs . . . If we were not defended by the honorable French and Imperial commanders, they would have certainly destroyed the whole of Sira and massacred its People.” The fourth point reported the collection of contributions by Captain Lalechos in late April–early May when

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the Greek fleet of Hydra consisting of fourteen ships came to anchor in our harbor and disembarked a great number of men (moltissima gente) among whom many were armed, who made despicable insults tainting the Catholic Religion and the Catholics themselves, committing great damage both in the town and in the countryside for three days, and extirpating from the poor compatriots of Sira 40,000 piastres in cash and 4,000 in kind.22

The fifth point presented the arrival of Alexandros Axiotis in late July/early August as the first straightforward attempt to exercise rights of sovereignty over the island. [H]e came pretending (vantandosi) to be sent by the Greek Government of the Morea as Eparch or Governor of Syra, although he was neither known nor accepted as such by us nor by our community; and although we did not allow him to lodge within the town as declared in our protest that was deposited in the most reverent chancellery of France, communicated to all the local consuls and manifested by means of posters in the square of the town, he forcefully set himself down in the harbor, thereby usurping with his arrogance our rights and all the revenues of our port: by which overbearing step of this personage, the immense Greek population gathered here acquired a great liberty, and walking day and night through our countryside, ruined a third of the revenue and fruits of our land, committing also various insults to our compatriots.23

The petition went on to say that the last straw was the arrival of an Hydriot flotilla under command of Captain Andreas Miaoulis in late October/early November 1823. Miaoulis, whose statue now stands in the central square of Hermoupolis that bears his name, appeared as representative of the three naval islands and commanded the governor to be brought to his ship, where he requested the immediate payment of the tithe plus an annual contribution of 2,500 piastres. Acquainted through family affairs with the family of the Hydriot captain, Marinello wanted to “appease the furious ideas” of the Greeks. However, after a polite formal reception, Miaoulis gave the community a twenty four-hour deadline to bring the sum of 8,500 piastres. In a letter addressed more or less at the same time to the archbishop of Smyrna, Marinello reported: “I reasoned in thousand different ways, begging him with tears in my eyes to show mercy to our poor people who cannot bear such large expenditures in a single year.” Upon the governor’s claim of incompetence to decide on the non-payment of such an amount without the consent of the community council, the Hydriot ordered his detention until the other members of the council came on board in order to make a decision. When in the evening the other members of the council received the necessary guarantees and finally boarded the flagship Aris, Miaoulis refused to yield to their appeals, claiming in turn that he was



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bound by the orders of the National Assembly. Finally, he threatened them that, should he not receive the required amount within the set time frame, he would take them with him to Hydra.24 Those events, as well as what followed, indicate that by the end of 1823, the Greeks had come to regard Syra as a conquered territory and its inhabitants as a subjugated group. “Unwilling to consider the impossibility and extreme poverty to which they reduce this poor population,” but also well aware that in the port of Syra there were plenty of businessmen keen to lend their capital, Miaoulis finally let the primates to go ashore after an intervention of the French vice-consul; however, he detained their governor on board. Hence, the community of Syra borrowed a sum of 8,500 piastres from “some gentlemen” (alcuni signori) only to deliver it to the Hydriot captain the following day. That was the first of a series of private lending, internal or external, by the community of Syra. The concrete purpose of this protest was to provide a memorandum of the crimes committed and damage inflicted in order to seek reparation. The damage in cash or livestock caused by Faziolis’s incursions, the contributions imposed by the Hydriot captains, as well as the various gangs roaming the island, was estimated at 159,000 piastres, to which the primates added the expenses for the maintenance of the town wall and fortifications, raising the total to 200,000 piastres. The community claimed that of this total, at least 52,000 piastres had been collected or extracted in cash the governors of Greece unjustly collected at the time when our island and all of us and our people were and are continually persevering in their allegiance due to their Ottoman sovereign, by whom our island and our compatriots have always been treated paternally, through the usual age-old tribute that the local governor faithfully sent to his capital of Constantinople without ever altering our municipal laws and ancient customs.25

This pledge of allegiance to the Sublime Porte reveals a strong local identity of the Latin community based on the age-old customary laws of the Archipelago and the continuity of an autonomous status vis-à-vis the various sovereigns. The text continues specifying that this local identity is distinct, if not incompatible, to the Greek insurgency because of its religious component. Stigmatizing the ingratitude of the Greeks toward those who “saved thousands of poor good Greeks when they were about to perish by starvation,” the text of official protest attributed the insults and damages inflicted on the Latin community to the sole desire for revenge. “Because they could not fulfil their purpose, that is, to see us break away (apostatare) and rebel against our Ottoman sovereign, but also out of a dislike for Catholicism that we profess. These alone are the reasons why the Greeks ruin the poor Syriots.”26

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The two pillars of the Syriot identity were Catholicism and autonomy. Hence, the declaration of 26 November 1823 finished with a statement insisting on being governed by a “local Latin compatriot” elected by the community, and with an appeal to the clemency of His Most Christian Majesty, the Protector of the Catholic Religion (Sua Maestà Cristianissima protettrice della religione cattolica), “in order not to allow from now on any harassment to be committed against us or any change to be made with regard to our loyalty, tranquility and neutrality.”27

Interregnum: Spatial Isolation, Economic Suffocation We know very little about Faziolis before or after the events of the first half of 1823. Actually, he would reappear in 1826, allegedly after two years of trials and imprisonments in Smyrna and in Zante. All subsequent information comes from the judicial archives, from a lawsuit he filed in 1829 and its litigation that lasted until well into the 1840s. What we know is that during the years of his absence, his men remained active in Syros and the neighboring islands in that interregnum of shared sovereignty in which different actors claimed a share of the transactions that were taking place at the port, usually mentioned in contrast to the Greeks as Ionians or Cephalonians. According to Marinello, “[T]hese all Cephalonian villains, who have brought us trouble and disturbance in the past months together with many more like them have now gathered at our port where disturbances often occur. I have found it necessary to make a complaint to their respective superiors in this matter that I am also sending to the Consul General of Izmir.”28 In mid-October, Eparch Axiotis left for the other island of the administrative unit, his native Mykonos, leaving in charge the vice-eparch, Michail Grivas, and Hydriot Captain Theocharis Papantoniou, who had been meanwhile named harbormaster. Grivas and Papantoniou maintained the exclusive control over the port revenues, charging the Syriots themselves with customs duties despite Sira’s ancient customs, backed by a mob that started molesting and threatening the Latins. The attacks against local Latins in the countryside started multiplying, while skirmishes and quarrels were now reaching the gates of the town, often orchestrated by the Greek officials. The Latins found themselves surrounded and isolated from the world. Their port was now under the control of some sort of new authority whose leaders, like Faziolis earlier that year, were supported by armed gangs. Various reports testify that the Greeks had also repeatedly attempted to intercept or impede their correspondence with Smyrna and Istanbul.29 As a result of the removal of the shoreline from the control of the community, fights and quarrels between locals and newcomers multiplied, often in front of the gates of the old town;



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the business of the port expanded quickly to the foot of the hill, where the first improvised red-light district was formed.30 Describing that situation in front of the walls of the town in October 1823, Marinello reported attempting “several times to send away certain foreign women[, who] lodged next to the town from a public place of prostitution, where different gangs of thugs gather, and where fighting and beatings ensue, where much is feared that some bloody and generalized brawl may take place.”31 Marinello tried to appeal to the vice-eparch and the harbormaster about such public order issues, but they treated him with scorn, uttering countless insults, slurs, and threats. Describing the Greeks more or less as invaders, occupiers who wanted to usurp age-old rights and customs, Marinello looked forward to a second French intervention, a repetition of what Hargous and de Rigny had done a few months earlier against Faziolis, this time against the vice-eparch and his acolytes.32 That policy of “active” neutrality, inaugurated on the field in 1823, was soon to be endorsed by the French Foreign Ministry. According to the instructions dispatched to its agents in the Levant in April 1824, protection was limited to the exercise of the Catholic religion and its ministers, and interference in the “internal” fiscal or civil affairs was excluded. However, in spite of that tacit recognition of the sovereignty rights of the Greeks, the French reserved the right to resort to arms, either in the form of “benevolent protection” to be offered to the Latins by the regular presence of the French fleet in the Archipelago, or an ad hoc intervention in event of discrimination or oppression exercised against Catholics or French subjects.33 The gradual annexation of the island within the new national territory was not a linear process. As we will see in the next chapter, the third, and last French intervention in Syra would take place in the summer of 1824. The occasion for it was given by the conduct of the Greek authorities toward two French subjects, but the cause was due to the constant concerns expressed about the fate of Syros. During the winter of 1823–24, various consular agents and local officials repeatedly criticized the lack of French resolve, expressing concerns for the fate of the Archipelago Latins and highlighting the danger of them being reduced to rayas of the Greeks. The aspect of an indigenous people subjugated by a stronger invader that settled in its former territories triggered an analogy with the ancient Helots, as did de Rigny in his letter to the primates of Hydra referring to Faziolis’s incursions that initiated the course of violence against the native Latins earlier that year.34 Despite the strict criteria for their protection recognized by de Rigny, Syra had been significantly disadvantaged. By the end of 1823, the community had paid more contributions to the Greek fleet than any other island of the Archipelago, notwithstanding its moderate population.35 From that point on, the

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danger of spatial isolation was joined by that of economic suffocation. In desperate need of cash under the constant burden of double taxation, the community council exhausted its available savings and borrowed repeatedly until 1827, from private individuals within the community or the broader Levantine networks, a total amount of 166,861 piastres.36 The debts accumulated for the community as well as for many individuals who saw their properties and crops looted, encroached on, and destroyed. This also exacerbated inequalities within the community, as there were also some Latins who were able to make the most of these circumstances. Among the main lenders of the community appear the owners of real estate around the harbor, like the local Latin Stefano and Salacha families, or Angelo Cristodoulou, a wealthy Greek merchant from Odessa who was married to a local Catholic who apparently purchased large pieces of property on the seafront during that time. Those people constituted a link between two worlds that from 1823 on were evolving next to each other: on one side, the ever-moving, volatile, and versatile crowd of the port, made of sailors and captains, merchants, middlemen, artisans, shopkeepers, pirates and thugs, pimps and prostitutes; on the other, an insular community deprived completely of the revenues and the control of its port and partially of its agricultural production. In order to defend the island’s autonomy and self-determination, the Syriots became increasingly dependent on the Holy See and the traditional protectors of Catholicism, the French and the Habsburg monarchies. The letters and petitions to the Propaganda Fide, the archbishop of Smyrna, the Vicariate of Constantinople and the various diplomatic agents of France on the fate of the Syra Catholics multiplied in the following months. That effort to activate links and actively involve the networks of the Catholic Church in the Levant to the defense of Syra and the other Catholics of the Archipelago was inevitably linked to the fate of Bishop Russin, as, since his absence in Rome, the diocese lacked a leader who could ensure communication and coordination with the Catholic hierarchy in the Levant. The last round of internal disputes about a possible return of Russin unfolded in late 1823–early 1824, until the question was eventually resolved by the Vatican’s decision to maintain his suspension and appoint an apostolic administrator to the see of Syros in autumn 1824. Thus, if 1823 marked an abrupt severing of the community’s ties with its traditional links to the Ottoman Levant, 1824 was to mark the beginning of its reintegration into a precarious and ever-changing maritime space now claimed as national by the fleet of Hydra, Spetses, and Psara.



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Notes  1. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 151–153.  2. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 666r–v.  3. For the internal divisions among the Greek Orthodox on the islands of Naxos, Santorini, and Tinos, but also on Milos, Kimolos, or Kea, see Pelekanos, Η πολιτική των νησιωτών του Αιγαίου, 58–116. See Moutzouris, Η αρμοστεία των νήσων του Αιγαίου πελάγους.  4. See Tilly, Trust and Rule, 79–99.  5. “As far as the protection of the Latin communities by France is concerned, this is a matter of great delicacy and it is in the interest of the Greeks to adopt many precautions. This protection concerns especially and without limitation the rite, the temples and the Catholic clergy. It also concerns the Latin communities insofar as they would be subjected to particular oppressions by the Greeks or the officials of the Greek government, and in so far as special taxes would be imposed on them on account of their being Catholics, and which would not be imposed on all Greeks in general . . . Finally, as far as civil obligations are concerned, no distinction should be made which is burdensome and to the detriment of Catholics. They too are Greeks like you, Christians like you, and private ships, whenever they sail to the unarmed islands, should not treat them as if they were helots. Especially against these local disturbances, which I hope are not authorized, you will always find me armed.” HCA, v. 9, 428–429.  6. Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 227–28.  7. Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 239.  8. Such were the cases of Naxos and Tinos, where the local primates provisionally trusted the sum of the tithe to the local French vice-consul. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 42–44, 147–150, 362–364v, 386–388.  9. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 242–244, 280–281. 10. Petition of the French merchants (April 1826) to the general consul of Smyrna: AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 42, f. 74–81. 11. See Themeli-Katifori, Η δίωξις της πειρατείας και το θαλάσσιον δικαστήριον; de Lange, “Navigating the Greek Revolution”; Dimitropoulos, “Pirates during a Revolution.” 12. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 180–181. 13. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 183–191. 14. HCA, v. 9, p. 341–342. 15. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 187 v. 16. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 187r. 17. Quote of a letter written by the consul Méchain of Larnaca, in Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 229. See Massé, “French Consuls and Philhellenism in the 1820s.” 18. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 189. 19. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 191. 20. According to some authors, the kapudan pasha exempted the community from the payment of the annual tax. See Drakakis, Ιστορια του οικισμού, 101–3. 21. Copy of this declaration in Italian in the original, certified by the vice-consul of France in Syros. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 382–385. 22. Ibid. f. 382v. 23. Ibid. f. 383r. 24. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, Copie de la lettre écrite à Mons. l’archevèque de Smyrne par le chef de la communauté latine à Syra,” 25 November 1823, f. 354–355. 25. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f.384r–v.

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26. Ibid., f. 384r. 27. “Per non permettere che in appresso ci sia fatta qualche molestazione o inalterazione in circa alla nostra fedeltà, tranquillità e neutralità.” AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 384v. 28. Letter of G. Marinello, Catholic Governor of Sira, to L. M. Cardelli, archbishop of Smyrna, 6 August 1825. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 36, f. 153–154r. 29. APF, SC Arcipelago. v. 37, f. 88–89. 30. For the development of prostitution in the new town, see the social history approach of Drikos, Η πορνεία στην Ερμούπολη. 31. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 305–306. 32. “These people need to be chased out of Sira, especially the said Griva, a very evil person.” AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 305–306. 33. Derigny to the primates of Hydra. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 40, 213–214, quoted by Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 230–31. 34. “They too are Greeks like you, Christians like you, and private ships, whenever they sail to the unarmed islands, should not treat them as if they were helots. Especially against these local disturbances, which I hope are not authorized, you will always find me armed.” HCA, v. 9, 428–429. 35. More than 50,000 piastres in cash, whereas islands with a much higher population like Naxos and Tinos contributed 40,000 piastres. See Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 103107; Bozikis, Ελληνική επανάσταση και δημόσια οικονομία. 36. Catalog of bonds issued by the community of Syra 1823–1827. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, f. 57, doc. 34.

CHAPTER 8

The Empire Strikes Back Crete, Kasos, and Psara m m m

It should be clear to the reader by now that the presumed Greekness of the Syriot Latins was rather a post facto invention of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A strict dividing line between Greeks and Latins though is also an easy extrapolation that omits the internal conflicts among the elites and exacerbated inequalities and conflicts within each community. As evident from the number of disputes that appeared in the various communal or ecclesiastical courts, as well as from civil registers of the eighteenth century, comes out that the legata pia were distributed among a more or less stable set of families, which followed a motif of quasi-hereditary succession within the enlarged family or clan. Hence, a son, a nephew, a brother, or a cousin, a priest himself, would usually inherit the usufruct of specific land bequests to the church.1 In this sense, the bishop functioned as guarantor of the social reproduction of the community. Those material motivations also explain the relatively high number of priests in Syra compared to the other islands of the Archipelago.2 The families of the clergy had better opportunities for education and were relatively well-off, if we take into account that several of those priests figure among the mediumscale lenders of the community during 1823–27, according to the inventory of the community’s debt obligations.3 The dispute around the bishop regarded, among others, properties or legati pii and the claimants to their administration. The year 1823 had been marked by the absence of major naval battles and a relative withdrawal of the Ottoman fleet, which concentrated its activity in the efforts to support the defense of fortresses still under Ottoman rule along the coasts of Negroponte and the Morea (Karystos, Modon, Koron, Patras, and Rio) as well as the Ottoman campaign against Missolonghi. In 1824, the Ottomans endeavored to break the deadlock. The Ottoman land operations in Crete led to the suppression of the local insurgency by late March/early April 1824. On 20 June, the Egyptian fleet attacked and invaded the rebel island of Kasos 20 miles east of Crete, slaughtering hundreds and taking thousands into captivity. Almost simultaneously, the entire Ottoman military fleet under the kapudan pasha attacked the island of Psara, some 15 miles northwest of Chios, crushing the resistance of the Greeks after a few days of fierce fighting. Half of

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the island’s population was killed or captured and sold as slaves; the rest sought refuge on other islands and the mainland territories controlled by the Greeks. The destruction of the northern- and easternmost outposts of the Greek navy had now secured the lines of ammunition for the landing of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, in the Morea, the heartland of the insurgency. The impact of those events in the Archipelago was similar to that caused by the Chios massacre two years earlier. Rumors about an imminent attack of the Ottoman fleet spread terror among the islanders again and tendencies of defection reemerged. On 23 June (5 July N.S.), while Psara was still burning, the Greek eparch of Syros reported to the government. “We here are in great unrest. All the islands of the Aegean Sea are openly considering to pledge allegiance to the enemy.”4 At the same time, the Ottoman counterattack at sea was swelling the waves of refugees. Around sixty thousand people fled from Crete within a few months; another fifteen to twenty thousand escaped or were evacuated from Psara. On the receiving side, 625 families settled during the first three years of the war (1821–23) in Syros; in 1824, this number rose to 900. These figures, drawn from a population census of the early 1830s, are mainly indicative of a growing predilection for Syra and of a tendency to a more permanent settlement; the actual number of people residing in Syra at that particular time, as well as of those transiting in the Archipelago, was certainly much higher. In any case, the precariousness of other ports of the Archipelago and the relative security provided by the takeover of the port by the Greek authorities and the neutrality of the island as declared by the Latin community made Syra an increasingly more appealing destination for merchants, ship captains, artisans and day-laborers and their families, which rose within a very short period of time “from insignificance to prosperity.”5

The Making of a Free Trade Zone The destruction of Psara had multiple effects on Syra. According to the public registry of 1834, four out of five newcomers in 1824 came from Psara, Chios, and the Asia Minor coast (Smyrna, Ayvalik, and nearby islands).6 It was thus mainly Psariots and people who had found a temporary refuge in Psara during the first year of the war. Since Psara was at the same time an outpost of Greek trade and one of the three “naval islands” providing ships and men for the Greek military fleet, now much of this business moved to Syros. Some of the most prominent commanders of the Psara fleet settled temporarily in Spetses but also in Syros. Hence, Greek war vessels started anchoring more regularly at the port of Syros.7



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The number of immigrants from all over the region also rose exponentially after 1824. People coming from the same island occupied neighboring lands around the port, forming the first settlements of the new city named after their respective places of origin (Chiotika, Psariana, Kasiotika, and so forth). Hence, an island with some four to five thousand inhabitants until a couple of years earlier, by 1825 had acquired a population of thirty to forty thousand according to different estimates.8 Everything could now be bought or sold here. The gravitational center of all sorts of legal and illegal trade was the piazza of Syra. “All the trade of Greece is now made in Syra; that of Europe, Turkey and Egypt, it is there that it comes to end; and as the war destroyed almost completely in Greece all the resources of subsistence, Syra became the warehouse of goods brought from outside to nourish Greece.”9 Opportunities for quick and easy profit soon attracted all sorts of adventurers but also established trading houses. Along with grain, wine, oil, textiles, perfumes, spices, and condiments from all parts of the Levant, forgers fabricated and circulated counterfeit coins and antiquities dealers sought out potential buyers for their merchandise.10 But, Syra was also a warehouse for piracy; the merchandise seized by pirates was brought there to be sold and often sent back to the same places from which it had departed, a few days earlier, for another destination. The merchants of Syra made even greater profits from this infamous traffic than the pirates.11 The crisis in Greek shipping following the end of the Napoleonic era produced social unrest, turning piracy in its diverse forms into a structural feature of the local economy but also fueling insurrectionary activity after 1821. Greek pirate activities between 1823 and 1827 spread all along the Levantine sea routes up to the coasts of Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.12 The main pirate strongholds in the 1820s were the Sporades islands in the north, the Mani in the Peloponnese, and the island of Gramvousa off the northwestern tip of Crete in the south.13 Thus, warehouses spread quickly all along the shore now under the control of the insurgent Greeks, while trading houses and people rushed to act as intermediaries. The main ethos here was business, not politics. Heads of broader power networks, old and new ship captains, made no distinction of flags in their pirate raids nor of clients in their trade business.14 Since among the sellers and buyers of illicit trade were wealthy Greek or European merchants, diplomats and Greek officials tried to control and limit their activities, but usually without success. The trafficking of slaves and pirate booty, in combination with the capital invested in war operations and insurance of all kinds, ensured an accumulation of capital that made Syra “the most important trade hub, and in some respects, it is even more active than Smyrna, for example, in the grain trade.”15 It was the center around which gradually gravitated all sorts of trans-

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actions of the war economy. Hence, Syra soon became the place were pirate booty and seized ships were to be sold: the need for technical support for the many vessels that called into the port in combination with the availability of specialized ship builders from Chios, Psara, and elsewhere, soon enabled the development of a ship building industry, which was to flourish and pave the way for industrialization.16 While the regularity of such unlawful transactions was telling, it was not the only occurrence of the vague boundary between what was legal and what was illegal in an ambiguous state of shared sovereignty and competing jurisdictions of the various actors present at the field, namely the two representatives of the two communities and the local vice-consuls of the various European powers. The latter, locals or other Levantines usually with prior experience in the diplomatic services of Constantinople or Smyrna, apart from their notarial functions that allowed them to constitute the link between all sorts of merchants and the local authorities, Greek or Latin were also required to safeguard the respect of the Capitulations and the protection of French nationals and interests. Thus, for example, they also had judicial powers over the French subjects in their area of responsibility.17 The ongoing slave trade perhaps offers the most instructive insight. If, as we have seen, in the beginning the Latin community rescued some of the Muslim war captives transiting there, the war kept producing its ravaging results and this trade developed soon in new directions. For instance, tracking the thousands of captives became a recurrent activity. People from both sides of the conflict searched for their kin who had been sold as slaves in the markets of the Levant; their redemption involved ransom or exchange. Again, Syra became the meeting point for all sorts of intermediaries and the principal ground where Muslim captives were traded as slaves or exchanged for Christians. Hence, despite the moral condemnation of slavery and the constitutional provision that “in Greek territory a man can be neither bought nor sold,”18 the Greek authorities did not do a lot to hinder human trafficking at the port of Syra. Until late in the decade, captives were sold there in plain sight.19 The suspension of the general rule in Syra points toward its de facto transformation into a free port. Since imports from the Ottoman ports were undertaken exclusively by foreign, mainly European, ships, the various consuls found themselves in an advantageous position as a link between ship captains, merchants, and authorities making profitable deals for all sides while increasing their own wealth. And, since the Austrian ships held the lion’s share of this trade, they also suffered the greatest losses from piracy. An Austrian squadron under the command of Admiral Amilcare Paulucci was dispatched to the Archipelago in 1825.20 As we will see, this, in combination with more energetic involvement of the French Station du Levant in order to protect their Levan-



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tine trade, proved beneficial, albeit temporarily, for those who in the meantime were only losing out on the unprecedented economic boom on their island.

Debt and Violence An extraordinary resolution of the Latin community council on 6 June 1824 is indicative of the economic burden of the double taxation. Referring to the “heavy debts that have fallen upon our community, due to the current circumstances and the upheavals of the Greeks,” that threatened “to destroy the families of our compatriots,” the council decided that: For this reason, we think that the right thing would be to collect all those piastres which have been donated by our pious compatriots, as well as by outsiders coming from various places, with the aim to build a school (college) or another honorable project, and to use them to pay the debts of our Community. In the meantime, we remain under the obligation, once our Community regains its peace and well-being, to collect the same amount of piastres and dispose of them for the same honorable works for which they were intended by those who donated them.21

A few days after the decision to withdraw their funding in order to meet the urgent fiscal pressures, a letter from the Hydriot captain Kriezis reiterated the demand for the payment of the tithes for 1824; their collection was auctioned to the harbormaster Papantoniou for a sum of 8,050 piastres.22 The increasing debt caused by the double taxation imposed on the Latin community through a series of visits of the Hydriot fleet was also supported by shady groups of irregulars on the shore, who meanwhile regularly bothered the local Latins. After paying a first installment of the yearly tithe to the Greek authorities, “the prelates of Syra in the name of the entire community” addressed an appeal to the eparch in early July, one among a series on similar disturbances. Expressing their indignation that “instead of being left in peace in their occupations our poor compatriots are still persecuted and greatly damaged” by those very people who benefited from their Christian sympathy, the prelates reported repeated incidents of animal rustling, trespassing, stealing fruits and crops, sacking cottages, and even burning beehives. Gangs roamed the countryside or attacked it from ships and boats anchored off the southwestern bay of Finikas and Delagrazia.23 According to all indications, raids and incursions by various irregulars were frequent, sometimes overwhelming the modest armed force of the local community. The above-mentioned appeal was one among a considerable number of letters and petitions sent during 1824 and 1825 to the Ottoman government,

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the various European diplomatic agents in the region and to the Vatican. Those appeals had two immediately imperative purposes: to prompt more active French (or Austrian) protection and to document the damage for future reparations once the war came to an end. Meanwhile, as the settlement around the port had grown rapidly, acquiring the characteristics of a small town, the activity of the armed gangs had begun to become a problem for the Greek prefect as well. Originally from neighboring Mykonos, Axiotis followed a policy of inclusion toward both the newcomers and the local Catholics, with whose representatives he seems to have had regular meetings. The continuing action of armed gangs previously used by the Greeks to wrest the port from the control of the Latin community not only disrupted relations between the two communities, but also undermined his efforts to raise money from merchants’ donations for the construction of a church and a hospital.24 The first manifestation of these tensions occurred in autumn 1823 when on his first visit, Admiral Andreas Miaoulis attempted to substitute the harbormaster Papantoniou with his nephew, apparently in order to control the revenues of the port. The eparch refused to validate this intervention, offering his resignation, which however was not accepted by the government. Apparently, until January 1824 Ioannis Vokos acted de facto as a chief of police, openly defying the eparch and his authority.25 Axiotis reported to his superiors a resurgence of various forms of gang violence against local Latins after the departure of the aspiring Hydriot chief of police. Those armed bands of irregulars, usually described by Greeks and Latins alike as “Cephalonians,” “Ionians,” or “Heptanesians” along with their associates, constantly created disturbances and tensions with the Latins, threatening a general conflagration. Hence, in order to justify the depredations, they demanded the return of the weapons that had been allegedly seized from them by the local Latins after the intervention of the French fleet the previous summer and threatened that otherwise they would attack the town and arrest the Latin prelates. The Syra community denied any involvement with the arms seized from them and even supported that, should the Greek authorities conduct an official inquiry on those claims, they would present their own claims on the damages suffered during the same riots.26 The inclusion of the damages caused by their resistance in the debts of the Latin community reflects a logic of conquest and subjugation and provides an illustration of how debt becomes “a way for relations based on exploitation and even violence to be seen as moral in the eyes of those living inside them.”27 The incidents that followed in August 1824 revealed how the massive influx of refugees and the formation of larger communities based on the settlers’ place of origin, mainly Chios and Psara, intensified divisions and conflicts among the people that made up the nascent new town on the shore.



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On 23 August, a group of Cephalonian sailors went hunting in the Syra countryside, plundering on their return the vineyards of the locals who apprehended them and tried to stop them. In the ensuing skirmish, one man on each side was slightly injured. While the Greek administration sent its small police force to search for the culprits, the Cephalonians roused many of the settlers against the Latins and formed strike squads that “went out at night into the countryside attacking innocent peasants, beating and wounding many of them.” The next day, they gathered a crowd of people on the beach demanding the surrender of the Latin man they accused of injuring one of them, while at the same time attacking whoever tried to oppose them, and injuring a Chiot merchant and a French citizen. In the meantime, in consultation with the Latin community, the eparch attempted to defuse the situation by promising to arrest the accused and by sending the injured man to recuperate in nearby Mykonos. Stating how meager the police force available to him was for the number of settlers and armed men he had to deal with, in his report to the government Axiotis demanded the dispatch of a police force of at least one hundred men or the presence and intervention of the commander of the British naval squadron in the area “in order to purge the place of the wicked Heptanesians.” The presence of Cephalonians was not new: captains, shipowners and pirates were active in the area before the Greek insurgency and the “unpleasant incidents” of 1823. In his first visit in the Archipelago, Metaxas disposed of a network of ship captains and their crews from his homeland who supported his endeavors and came to his rescue when needed.28 In 1822, the Faziolis brothers and their crews from Cephalonia and Zante reportedly had the support of the eparch of Tinos. As we have seen, Hydriots used the action of those Heptanesian gangs to achieve control of the port and its income.29 The last major clash between them and the Greek police took place in the first days of 1825, upon the arrival of a new eparch appointed by the insurgent government, who was a brother-in-law of the powerful Hydriot notable Kountouriotis. According to different accounts, between two and six people were killed and many others injured during that clash, which a report by Cardelli, Catholic archbishop of Smyrna, said was organized by the new “governor” himself who attacked with a force of eighty men the guard of his predecessor.30 Whatever the case, the new eparch, Eleftherios Drizza, attributed responsibility to the chief of police in order to substitute him with another Hydriot, which would be appointed in command of a twenty-member guard, maintained by a regular contribution imposed on (or “offered by”) the port merchants. Yet, the activity of that police force was soon to become infamous both to local Latins and Orthodox settlers of the port. From that point on, and until the arrival of Capodistria at least, the Hydriots secured the control of the port and its growing income in various official and unofficial ways.

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Despite the existence of two lines of conduct among the new settlers toward the Latins, one of violent subjugation and one of conciliation and peaceful coexistence, there was no ambivalence concerning their distinct identity and position in the ongoing conflict. The Greek officials qualified the occasional conflicts between local police and Cephalonian gangs as civil, internal, while at the same time, and despite his informal pact with their prelates, Eparch Axiotis declined repeatedly the offer to use the Syra communal police against the armed gangs, obviously in order to avoid the criticism of and reaction from the hotheads or “the wicked ones.”31 There apparently existed among the Greek settlers and sailors a strong anti-Latin/anti-Catholic sentiment, which did not cease to lead to violent incidents. Hence, beyond the forms of violence directly linked to the constraints of war (crop plundering, cattle raiding, and so on) and the recurring opportunities of profit-making, different forms of ethnic violence were exercised that were not limited to Syra or to isolated attacks to private individuals. Such attacks were first reported against the largest Latin community of Tinos. Several private or parish churches and chapels were robbed, looted, or destroyed in the countryside, whereas the Catholic church of Saint Anna in the Greek village of Falatado was violently taken over. Six Latins were murdered in the villages of Kardiani, Kampo, and Karkado and various threats and warnings were addressed to the rest that, should they try to resist, they would have the same fate. Besides, armed gangs attacked the residence of the Catholic bishop, breaking windows, destroying his dovecote, and killing the pigeons. In Santorini and Naxos, such incidents remained limited, insofar as after 1823, the numerical superiority of the Orthodox compelled the Catholic communities there to comply with the abolition of some fiscal privileges for church properties and the taxes levied by the Greeks. They were now under pressure to dissolve themselves as a distinct ethno-religious community and integrate the institutions of the new Greek administration.32 In their reports and petitions to the archbishop of Syra and the French diplomats all through 1824, the prelates of Syra reported the presence of “hundreds of foreigners,” many of whom were armed, who terrorized the inhabitants. At the same time, during and especially after the invasion of Ibrahim Pasha of the Morea, people of all sorts arrived every day from the insurgent territories. Due to the immense number of newcomers, the locals now found it difficult even to access water from fountains and wells. Obviously, as the migrants became more numerous, so they became more aggressive vis-à-vis the native Latins, threatening them publicly and repeatedly that once the French ships stationed at the port for their protection would go away, they would cut them into pieces. “They treat the Latin inhabitants as slaves and insult them calling them all schilofranghi [dog Franks]. We are forced to remain vigilant and under arms night and day.”33



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As it happened in the neighboring Tinos, religious shrines became privileged targets of the Greek anti-Latin mob.34 On 25 March 1824, a mob attacked the procession of the Annunciation, which traditionally went from the Cathedral of Saint George on top of the hill to the Catholic church on the shore, breaking the windows of the church with stones and injuring many Syriots.35 As had already been the case with the churches of the HolyTrinity and Saint Sebastian, the church doors were walled up later on “as it happened in the age of persecutions of the Christians.”36 After losing control over their port, the Syriots were now prohibited from performing their age-old religious processions. According to Governor Marinello, the situation had reached a non plus ultra. From that point on the petitions of the Syra community to the representatives of the Catholic powers and hierarchy in the Levant became more frequent and more desperate, brandishing the dilemma of  “conversion to the Eastern Rite or annihilation” in case the French in particular did not offer more effective protection.37 The Catholic archbishop of Smyrna actively promoted the need to provide protection to the Catholics of the Archipelago islands, by undertaking visitations and addressing letters and reports to the Propaganda Fide as well as to French and Austrian diplomats. His efforts seem to have paid off. Apparently confused by the intensity of the events and the contradictory or inconsistent information arriving from the Ottoman Empire, in June 1824 the prefect of the Propaganda Fide charged Pietro Caprano, member of the Roman curia and titular archbishop of Iconium, to verify the “consoling reports” received from the chargé d’affaires of the French Embassy in Istanbul Count De Beaurepaire. The reports stated, “The island of Sira not only enjoys a tranquility, which is a very singular happiness in the midst of the turmoil that afflicts these shores, but also sees its harbor becoming a sort of warehouse frequented by trading ships, the influx and movement of which spreads happiness throughout the place that has come to my knowledge from several reports.”38 In his report, Caprano highlighted the discrepancies of the information received by juxtaposing Beaurepaire’s words with a report of Monsignor Cardelli written in April, recounting the various incidents of abusive taxation, violent attacks, and profanations of Catholic shrines. The archbishop of Smyrna criticized the reluctance and lack of empathy of the French, who, at that time, not only appeared less but had also forbidden the use of their flag by the Catholics. During his visit to Syra in the summer of 1824, he met with the eparch (or governor) of Syra, and expressed his concerns about the profanation of the church of the Holy Annunciation and of five countryside chapels. Axiotis regretted those attacks, explaining they were due to raids by ships on the western shores of the island that he did not have the power to intercept or counter. In his subsequent reports to the Propaganda Fide, the archbishop described the perpetuation of this strategy of tension by the Greeks against the Catholics.

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Thus, while reassuring the Vatican about the restoration of unanimity within the community on ecclesiastical matters, he described poignantly time and again the attacks and insults inflicted on the Catholics of Syros and Tinos by the Greeks, who were now described as their “principal enemies.”39

Internal Divisions On his 1824 visit to Syra, Monsignor Cardelli mentioned that he stayed at the port “among the Greeks,” disregarding the warnings of his coreligionists about the dangerous and criminal elements hanging around the harbor.40 After the consecutive attacks endured in 1823, the native Latins withdrew to their town on the hill. Yet, as could be expected, not all of them. On Christmas Eve 1823, the community council issued a notice (αβήζο>ital. aviso) “to all and each one in particular for the moderation (ρέγουλα) of every compatriot,” stating that despite the fact that it had been repeatedly forbidden to host tenants in private properties without previous approval and authorization, many members of the community did the opposite: “not only you receive them into your houses without disclosing it, as we have prescribed, but also into your barns and cottages, which is an important reason why we see all that is happening today, the scandals, thefts, harassment, etc., in our estates.”41 A strict three-day deadline was prescribed to report rentals of houses or cottages to the community as well as to declare all tenants’ names, occupations, and ethno-religious affiliation (νασιόνε); those who failed to comply were to be subject to sanctions. The wording and tone of the notice betrays growing internal divisions, most likely caused by the external pressures on the local rural economy on one side, and by the rapid monetization and the booming increase of land value around the port, now transformed into the main trade hub of the Archipelago. The notice also addressed those who gave permission to build houses in their fields, who were deemed responsible for any inconvenience or damage this practice would cause to the “fatherland.”42 Since Axiotis had recognized the deeds of the local Syriots for properties located beyond the zone of 50 meters from the shore, which had been confiscated and declared as national property by the Greek authorities, several families and individuals who owned the estates around the port now grabbed the opportunity to rent them at high prices to the new settlers. Included among more than twenty landowners were the rich Stefano and Salacha families, which had branches in Smyrna or Istanbul, but also Anghelos Christodoulou, a wealthy Greek merchant based in Odessa who had acquired property on the island upon his marriage to a local Catholic.43 At that point, these people constituted the town’s only link with the port, but also with the world around. Together



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with the Catholic Governor Marinello and the vice-consuls of the European powers, these landowners were the interlocutors on behalf of the community with the Greek eparch, but most likely also the sources invoked by the chargé d’affaires of the French embassy in Istanbul, who gave news of tranquility and prosperity for the Latins of the island. As intermediaries, positioned halfway between the Latin community and the port society, those vice-consuls and rich landowners could not avoid tensions in their relationship with both communities. For instance, the problems created by the rental of fields and the building of new houses, especially in the area of the port, had to do with the use of neighboring properties. Faced with the consecutive waves of refugees settling temporarily along the shore, several Syriot landowners leased their land but also provided permission for the building of the first small houses, probably some sort of improvised shacks most of which did not survive the rapid expansion of the new city in the following years. In a notice addressed to Giorgio Salacha, owner of a number of fields on the shore, the chancellor of the Catholic diocese said, concerning the neighboring fields of the episcopal mense: [T]he land of the episcopal mense which is down at the seashore among the mills has suffered damage due to which it can no longer be cultivated, a great part has suffered from the Schismatic Greeks, who built their many little houses on your land at your permission and will: These people are of every sort and quality, and one can only expect from them disorders . . . , people of every sort of iniquity. . . . By this act, I warn you to take all necessary precautions so that all those who built on your land no longer pass through the land of the mense, which is not bound by anything to grant you such a road. Otherwise, if you do not remedy such great damage to the sacred terrain and continue as at present, then I shall be forced by obligation of my duty to appeal and invite you to the competent court.44

Antonios Vitalis, vice-consul of Britain, allegedly accumulated considerable wealth by facilitating all sorts of trade. His early disputes with the Greek authorities included some cases in which he violated the quarantine in order to facilitate the trade of merchandise carried by English ships. Later on, he would again get involved in a long dispute with the Greek authorities over a staircase he attempted to build on the public way in front of a residence he maintained at the shore. Vitalis had allegedly built the house “on speculation, hoping to let his apartments to the traveling ‘milords’ who visit Syra.”45 These Latins who acquired ostentatious wealth from leasing land and trade business highlight the deepening inequalities and social divisions within the community of Syra, which were expressed yet again in the ecclesiastical affairs and the question the absence of the ousted Bishop Russin.

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The Impossible Return of Monsignor Russin The unfolding of the Russin affair reveals the crucial role of the bishop in the administration of church property (legati pii and so on) and the power vacuum created after Russin’s departure for Rome, intensifying antagonisms and divisions within the Latin community. During his subsequent visit to the island in August–September 1823, Archbishop Cardelli conducted an investigation among the local clergy, which is often described as a legal processo, which confirmed the charges pending against Russin. While the legal details of that procedure are somewhat complex and beyond the scope of this book, its implications for the balance of power within the community are quite instructive. Apparently, in order to corroborate the charges against Russin, Cardelli relied on a part of the local clergy, in a process that stirred up the old divisions rather than calming them down, as he repeatedly asserted in his reports to the Propaganda Fide. In a series of letters and petitions sent by the local clergy, local priests who either competed to gain the archbishop’s favor or hastened to denounce his intervention and administration, questioned the moral integrity of other priests and informed the Propaganda Fide about their public and private life and responded to similar accusations made against them.46 The main reasons for disputes reported involving the bishop regarded the usufruct of the various assets of the episcopal mense, most commonly legati pii and their distribution according to the terms of the original bequest or the subsequent inheritance rights of the previous beneficiaries’ descendants.47 With the absence of the local bishop, the disputes were put de facto under the jurisdiction of Cardelli himself or the archbishop of Naxos, Andrea Veggetti (1816–1838). For that reason, the diocesan books and archives concerning the administration of pious bequests and other assets of the episcopal mense, remained the foremost priority for Cardelli, who reported that while he eventually found the relevant books and accounts, they were missing many documents concerning ongoing disputes.48 By building his own alliances, Cardelli also provoked the formation of an opposition composed by clerics and laymen, who denounced his overall management of the affair. In January 1824, three letters of support for Monsignor Russin from members of the communal council reached the Propaganda from Syra. All of them are written by the same hand, possibly that of the chancellor/secretary of the community, carry the signature of their respective authors and are dated at five days’ difference from each other. And all of them questioned the choices and actions of the archbishop of Smyrna. First came Gaspare Vuccino, cavaliere, who accused him straightforwardly of partiality: he was strict toward those who remained obedient to their pastor and lax toward slanderers (calunniatori), who allegedly were “bad priests whose sacrilegious words do not cease



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to denigrate their pastors in front of people of every age or sex, in private and in public.”49 Gregorio Stefano, another prominent member of the community who had twice served as epitropos (governor), brought up old family feuds by pointing that those who now accused Russin belonged to the same families who disrespected the authority of his predecessors in the past.50 At the same time, the signatories of those letters did not hesitate to warn about the dangers of subjection to the Greeks and the end of Catholicism in the island. “Sira is tormented by her fierce enemies, full of schismatic bishops and priests, who by all means provide to make her as they wish, to see her orphaned without a shepherd, and without energetic and powerful help to be able to resist such a fierce and cruel war.”51 In response to the external pressures, a spirit of collective withdrawal and entrenchment prevailed among the members of the communal government, expressed in the claim for the return of their bishop. Stefano appealed to the Holy See, “for the love of [his] homeland,” to show clemency and allow the return of the bishop. The governor, Marinello, recapitulated the position of the community, stressing that without the active protection of His Most Christian Majesty and the presence of their usual spiritual leader (solito pastore), “poor Sira will soon no longer take pride in naming itself a Catholic island.” Reporting as well the gathering of “thousands of foreigners, schismatic Greeks” with their priests and bishops, who introduced “vile doctrines and brutal vices” to the Catholic population, Marinello implored the Holy See “to send our most illustrious bishop . . . back to Syra.”52 A number of petitions from the local clergy to Rome concerning abuses of the new administrators appointed by Cardelli or disputes between family networks over the management of the church property, reveal the social extent of factionalism. For instance, Don Leonardo Russo protested against usurpation of a field he cultivated by the vicar appointed by Cardelli, Gabriele Privilegio. As if he were confirming the fears of the community primates, Russo specified that he had not resorted to the Greek authorities because of his “attachment to our holy religion, and respect to our clergy,” but threatened to do so anyway if the injustice he suffered was not repaired.53 From his side, Don Costantino Sargologo, the previous vicar suspended and substituted by Cardelli, criticized the whole management of the affair, attempting to debunk the charges pending against him, but also stigmatizing the moral qualities of the people surrounding the archbishop during his stays at Syros.54 More petitions in favor of Monsignor Russin reached the Propaganda Fide during the first half of 1824, among which were some withdrawals of testimonies against the bishop, alleging that they were misled or coerced to testify against him.55 The communication and co-ordination between Russin and his supporters were arranged by Don Francesco Cuculla, an educated and well-respected local

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priest who had accompanied the bishop to Rome, acting as his secretary and assistant.56 During the first three years of their stay, Cuculla maintained regular correspondence with the clergy and members of the communal council, mediating the various claims and requests to the bishop and the Propaganda Fide. One of his letters to Governor Marinello is quite telling regarding the traditional bonds of interdependence between church prelates and local gentry. The cordial tone and reference to previous exchanges indicate that there was regular contact during the years of the bishop’s absense. On the end page of the letter, under the main text, appears a short signed note by Monsignor Russin, sending his greetings to the governor’s brother, who was a priest, and promising that upon his return he would “do what is convenient” for a legato pio apparently requested by the governor on behalf of his brother.57 In the meantime, Russin had systematically sought to defend himself before the Holy See. Already in February, he submitted a long report about the legitimacy of his election to the office of bishop, mentioning his studies in Rome and at the Collegio dei Cinesi in Naples as well as the process of his nomination, providing proof that refuted any possibility of misappropriation, of which he was accused by his opponents and Cardelli. As for the motivations of his opponents, he attributed their opposition to avarice, ambition, and jealousy because of his young age when he was ordained bishop.58 Russin spent most of his years in Rome dwelling in Lazarist Mission in Monte Citorio, next to the Palazzo, which became the seat of the Italian parliament after 1870. As time went by, his health deteriorated. In one of his letters to the prefect of the Propaganda Fide, he provided a detailed report of his symptoms and the remedies provided by physicians. Blaming his poor health on the climate of Rome and convinced that after responding to the charges against him he would return to his see, the bishop urged Cardinal della Somaglia to disclose official information about the charges against him, so that he could provide a response before he succumbed to his illnesses.59 In the meantime, informed about the complaints concerning irregularities and arbitrariness in the investigation he conducted, Monsignor Cardelli suggested the adoption of an even tougher stance against Russin and his followers. Hence, after having dismissed his trusted priests from all positions of responsibility within the diocese, he attempted to limit or intercept Russin’s communications with Syra, asking that his correspondence be first consigned to him. On 18 May 1824, in a meeting with Monsignor Pietro Caprano, Cuculla received instructions not to maintain correspondence with Syra nor to mediate the claims of the local clergy; petitions and letters should henceforth be directly addressed to the Propaganda Fide. From that point on, the communication of the bishop with his diocese became increasingly intermittent. Gradually isolated and aware that he would not be allowed to return to Syra soon, in September 1824 Russin re-



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quested to be allowed to move at least temporarily to the residence of his alma mater, the Collegio dei Cinesi, hoping that the climate there would be more beneficial for his health.60 None of his wishes were to be satisfied. The expectation that the bishop would return was the expression of the collective desire of the Latin community to return to a previous state. And perhaps the most emblematic, not only because it was closely linked to the core of their distinct ethno-religious identity, but also because it would be the first to be thwarted. Notes  1. See, for example, the list of D. Dimitropoulos, “Ενα συριανό κτηματολόγιο,” 56 and 72–75.  2. See Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici, III. Syros; and Hoffmann, “La chiesa Cattolica,” 405–14.  3. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, f. 58, doc. 34.  4. See, for example, the warning that “all islands of the Aegean Sea consider pledging allegiance to the enemy.” Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:230, doc. 19.  5. Slade, Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece, &c., 35–36.  6. Around 740 families settled there in 1824 from those regions; the rest of the refugees and the new settlers came from the other islands of the Archipelago, Istanbul, and various regions of mainland Greece: Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:206–12.  7. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 1:184; Pissis, “‘Little Malta’: Psara and the Peculiarities of naval warfare in the Greek Revolution.”  8. The numbers of settlers and new inhabitants of the new town given by Loukos, Ιστορία της Ερμούπολης Σύρου, 57–59 are actually based on later censuses of those who remained permanently in Hermoupolis. The representatives of the local community and clergy as well as various observers and travelers, provide for those who lived in Syra in 1823–30 various estimates that are closer to thirty thousand. See Dimitropoulos, Μαρτυρίες, 230–31; accordingly, a petition of the local clergy estimated the number of settlers in late 1828 between twenty and twenty-five thousand. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, 1829, f. 72, doc. 4.  9. Soult de Dalmatie, “La Grèce après la campagne de Morée.” 10. Mainly interested in antiquities, the Reverend Charles Swan wrote in his Journal of a Voyage Up the Mediterranean: “I could hear of no antiquities. Coins were offered me in abundance, but there is no place where forgeries are more frequent, nor would the possessors part with one unless cleared of their whole stock. I procured, however, some beautiful lachrymatories, dug up at Athens, for a small sum.” 11. For Syra, see Delis, “A Hub of Piracy in the Aegean”; Soult de Dalmatie, “La Grèce après la campagne de Morée.” For the overall presence of armed refugees in the insular space, see Dimitropoulos, “Pirates during a Revolution.” 12. See, for example, the pirate raid at the coasts of Syria organized in early 1826 and its impact on the islands from its preparations to the purchase of the booty. Orlandos, Ναυτικά, 2:326–33; Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:18–24. On its impact on Syra, see Hoffman, Vescovadi Cattolici, 150ff. 13. Themeli-Katifori, Η Δίωξις της Πειρατείας, 11–21; Mylonakis, “Transnational Piracy,” 74–97. 14. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού; Delis, “A Hub of Piracy in the Aegean,” 48–52.

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15. Soult de Dalmatie, “La Grèce après la campagne de Morée,” 16–17. 16. Loukos, Ιστορία της Ερμούπολης Σύρου, 25–55; see Delis, Mediterranean Wooden Shipbuilding, 6–34. 17. Slys, Exporting Legality, chapter III; Barkey, “Aspects of Legal Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire.” 18. “Εις την ελληνικήν επικράτειαν ούτε αγοράζεται ούτε πωλείται άνθρωπος. Αργυρωνητος πάσης θρησκείας και γένους, άμα πατήση το ελληνικόν έδαφος είναι ελεύθερος και από τον δεσπότην αυτού ακαταζήτητος.” Mamoukas, Τα κατά την Αναγέννησιν της Ελλάδος, 2:129. 19. See, for example, the account of the American Waddington, A Visit to Greece in 1824 and 1824, chap 5, n. 15; Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 1:249–52; Drakakis, “Πρωτότυποι νομικοί θεσμοί εις την οικιζόμενην Ερμούπολιν,” on the slave trade: 177–185, 212–215. 20. For a comprehensive presentation of the activity and aims of the Austrian squadron, see the recent: Katsiardi and Kontogeorgis, Η αυστριακή αρμάδα κατά την ελληνική επανάσταση; Delis, “A Hub of Piracy in the Aegean,” 44; Konstantinidis, Καράβια, καπεταναίοι και συντροφοναύται, 1800–1830, 536. 21. ACAS, f. 267, doc. 5 (published in Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:229, doc. 18). 22. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, f. 61, d. 2. 23. ACAS, f. 267, doc. 6. 24. See his report to the government on the riots of August 1824 to the government published by Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:231–33, doc. 21. 25. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 224–25, doc. 12. 26. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 1:61 and vol. 2:227–28, doc. 16. 27. Graeber, “Debt, Violence, and Impersonal Markets,” 112. 28. Metaxas, Ιστορικά απομνημονεύματα εκ της ελληνικής επαναστάσεως, 75–85. 29. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:235–38, doc. 25–27. 30. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 36, f. 33–35. The Greek priest Anthimos Poulakis mentions 200 casualties, but his account rather exaggerates using the total amount of people involved in the skirmish. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 239–41, doc. 28. 31. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, v. 2, doc. 21, 231-33. 32. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 35, f. 666r–v, 816v. 33. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 153v. 34. See chapter 5, n. 11, this volume. 35. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 35, f. 815–6, r–v. 36. APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 36, f. 77, letter of the governor Marinello to Cardelli 22 April 1825. 37. “If there is no hope to have an active defense we are all obliged to make a general public profession of the Greek rite, in order to save the life of the Catholics, especially of us poor Syriots.” APF, SC Arcipelago, v. 36, f. 154r. 38. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 815–817. 39. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 923–926. 40. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 923–926. 41. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, f. 57, doc. 15. 42. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, f. 57, doc. 15. 43. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:34–36. 44. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, f. 58, doc. 5. 45. Swan, Journal of a Voyage Up the Mediterranean, 64–67. 46. See, for example, the letter of priest (chierico) from Syros, Giorgio Privilegio to the Propaganda Fide to the archbishop of Smyrna on the private life of other Syriot Catholic priests,



47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

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and Leonardo Russo . . . , defending themselves against accusations, making accusations about the morals of other clergymen and denouncing scandalous behavior, relations with women of the local community or even with Greek women from the surrounding islands, 14 June 1823. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 512–513 and 714–715v. For instance, Francesco Brusetto trying to justify his right to exploit a legato pio destined for families coming from Vicenza, probably remnant of an Italian/Venetian group that had settled in the island in the sixteenth century or earlier. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 789–790r. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 33–35. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 690–691. Letter dated 24 January 1824. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 694 r–v. Letter dated 24 January 1824. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 691. “[li] buoni costumi cristiani principiano corompersi e se iddio signore no mette la sua santissima mano, povera Sira non si gloriera nominarsi più isola cattolica. qui si raccolsero migliaia dei foresti, scismatici greci, tra quali sono molti loro sacerdoti e vescovi. lascio a loro eminenze penetrare quali villanose dottrine e quali brutali vizii si comunicano a questa popolazione Cattolica.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 698r–v. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 714–715. His main target was the priest Francesco Brusetto, whom he described as a “voluptuous person, entirely indulged to the pleasures of the body.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 716–719. See for example the letter of Zane Voropoulo concerning the testimonies given by his son Antonio, a young priest, against Bishop Russin in which the author claims that his son was deceived and forced to undersign testimonies. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 788–789. A native of Syros, Francesco (François) Cuculla would later become bishop of Santorini and archbishop of Naxos. Roussos-Milidonis, Syra Sacra, 153, 294. Dated 24 June 1824 and written in Greek with Latin script (Frangochiotika): ACAS, f. 61, doc. 1. This report and the attached copies of letters Russin used for his justification. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 819–826. Letter to Cardinal Della Sommaglia. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 774–775 r–v. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 35, f. 944–945.

CHAPTER 9

Luigi Maria Blancis and the Adjustment to the New Reality m m m

Ethnic violence against the Latins during the Greek War of Independence has not been the object of scholarly research as much as ethnic violence against Muslims and Jews. During the first three years, the dynamics of the constant arrivals of new settlers boosted consecutive waves of armed violence. Land encroachment followed the massacre of Chios in 1822, Faziolis’s incursions during the otherwise relatively uneventful 1823, and the destruction of Psara, Kasos, and Crete in 1824. Ibrahim’s campaign in the Morea, delayed by the fear of Greek fireships, finally started with his landing at Modon in February 1825. To the previous population movements were now added the people who fled the Peloponnese in view of the advancing Egyptian troops, for whom the new and upcoming trade hub in the middle of the Archipelago was a most attractive destination. Coexistence produced forms of contact between the two communities, making Syra a zone of conflict and contact between, on the one side, a native ethnoreligious group and, on the other, a multilingual community of traders, adventurers, and poor devils. The Greek authorities challenged the regime of shared sovereignty that had been established in 1823 with the agreement of the Latin community and local vice-consuls. Informal forms of violence exercised against the Latins in combination with the formal pressures for taxation and conscription, left the Latin hierarchy with the impression that they were being subjected to a targeted enterprise of colonization and eventually displacement or conversion. Governor Marinello and Archbishop Cardelli had already stressed in their appeals the central position of the island and the frequent passage of European warships in the Archipelago. Given the urgency of the situation and the limited protection provided by France, what was now missing was a link that could connect the secular and spiritual leadership of the Latin community with the European diplomats and officers in the Ottoman Levant. The nomination and election of a Franciscan friar serving in Constantinople as apostolic administrator of the Catholic diocese of Syra in 1825 inaugurated a period of adaptation of the Latin community into the changing context that might well be described as a transition to a new legal order in international as in domestic affairs.



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Plural Sovereignty and Its Twists From the summer of 1823, when the French vice-consul first refused to grant permission to Governor Marinello to hoist the French flag on the gates of the town, until October 1824, when Pierre David, the French general consul in Symrna, refused to actively oppose the conscription attempted by the insurgents, the gradual limitation of the French protection of the Catholic clergy and rite created a sense of abandonment among the islanders and increased their anxiety.1 Reports and correspondence exchanged at that time between the French diplomats in the Ottoman Empire with Paris and the Propaganda Fide reveal, time after time, the inability or unavailability of the French to satisfy the petitions and requests of the Latins. In a desperate effort to activate all available networks, Marinello wrote to Archbishop Cardelli and to David desperately requesting active protection and asking to solicit on behalf of the Austrian representatives too, as had already been the case two years earlier after Faziolis’s incursions.2 With different powers claiming control over different parts of the territory, in addition to the people living on the island, tensions were inescapable. In order to ascertain his authority during the riots that marked the beginning of his mandate in January 1825, Eparch Drizza adopted an authoritarian attitude toward the local community and the various vice-consuls, relying first on the same armed bands of Cephalonians and other Septinsulars who had provided their services to the various Hydriot attempts to gain control over the port of the island since 1823. Drizza funded his new police force with contributions from the merchants at the port exclusively and manned it primarily with Hydriots. By June, he had also dismissed the previous harbormaster, inaugurating a period of almost complete Hydriot control over the port and its revenues. Among the first actions of the new eparch were his attempt to put an end to the statu quo ante and claim control over the entire island, by hoisting the Greek standard at the port. However, after the protests and petitions of the local vice-consuls which provoked the intervention of commanders Hamilton and de Rigny with the Greek government, urging them to take steps for the reestablishment of the previous state of affairs. As the Egyptian fleet was about to make its way to the Morea, Drizza’s attempt provoked widespread fear of an imminent Ottoman invasion, similar to that of Kasos or Psara, which even led some merchants to temporarily move their business away from the island.3 A series of rumors that did not materialize but were enough to spread panic among the inhabitants were systematically diffused by various local vice-consuls who sought to maintain the privileges of their position within the Ottoman context but also to profit from providing patents of protection to various islanders, Catholic or Orthodox. Hence, after

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the destruction of Kasos and Psara and in view of the Egyptian invasion of the Morea, the Greek authorities attempted to counteract the action of the vice-consuls of the Aegean, who were mostly Catholic subjects of the sultan integrated in the Levantine networks of Smyrna or Constantinople.4 The new eparch’s actions in Syros were part of a broader plan of reorganization and reinforcement of the various local police forces, as a means to exercise more effective control of the insular space and curtail the various forms of privileges, tax exemptions and extraterritoriality. We have already noticed that during the first years of the Greek insurrection, tensions between the government and the various vice-consuls arose regularly regarding the collection of the tithe and fees, quarantine limitations, claims of extraterritoriality, or other issues. The pivotal role of the vice-consuls during that traditional period describes the rearrangements of power and the recomposition of the links connecting Syra with the Ottoman Levant, but also with Rome, Paris, and Vienna. Through the port of Syra passed people, merchandise, but also news and information. Hence, for instance, in the Bulletin de l’Archipel, where the general consul of Smyrna compiled reports received from the vice-consular agents, Syra provided regularly rich information about the movements of the fleets, but also the battles and military activity on the mainland.5 Along with the French, the other European powers present in the region (Austrians, Britons, Russians, Dutch) also gradually developed their own intelligence networks. Preparing to transfer his troops to the Morea in order to nip the insurrection in its heartland, Ibrahim Pasha placed his own informers on the island. As the main hub for the purchase of pirate booty, the port of Syros was also where various small vessels that could be used as fireships by the Greeks were often put on sale. On 10 July 1825 (N.S.), a four-member commission, with a task force of one hundred men, was dispatched to Syra by the Greek government to intercept agents who would try to purchase such vessels at high prices purportedly on behalf of the pasha of Egypt. Among the people investigated were Pierre Rossi and Pandion Zizinia, who claimed to be French subjects and sought shelter in the residence of the French vice-consul. Joseph Bargigli, a career diplomat, the second to be sent to Syra after Pierre Lami during the installation of the first Greek authorities on the island in 1823, addressed a strict letter to the eparch stressing that French subjects were under the jurisdiction of the French authorities, therefore any action taken against them would be a violation of international law; consequently, any grievances against them should be addressed to the agents of the French king. Drizza responded the following day, specifying that the commission ordered the examination of their papers, to determine if they were guilty of gathering intelligence for Ibrahim Pasha “against the Hellenic affairs.” Although the eparch implied that Rossi and Zizinia were Greek “protégés” rather than French subjects, he did



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recognize in writing the rights of the vice-consul with regard to them and requested the vice-consul to accompany them to his office and be present during the examination of their documents. In order to diffuse tension, Bargigli complied the following day. Drizza ordered the immediate arrest of the two suspects and the confiscation of their papers, thanked Bargigli, and asked him to go. The latter’s refusal to leave without the French subjects led to a tense conversation that ended with Eparch Drizza putting the suspects in jail and kicking Bargigli out of his office. Offended and outraged, Bargigli sailed early the next day of 12 July (N.S.) to Smyrna to report the insult suffered by that “double and dangerous man, capable of making the Greek inhabitants rise up against the Catholics.” By virtue of his authoritarian attitude toward the local Catholics and the vice-consuls, Drizza was already considered dangerous and corrupt, “a man without talents, haughty, whose oppressive administration was unbearable to the Europeans who were involved in the trade.”6 Two weeks later, at 7 o’clock in the morning of 27 July 1825, La Sirène, the French flagship of the Station du Levant, arrived at the port of Syra escorted by two smaller ships, a corvette and a schooner. Admiral Henri de Rigny announced that the entrance of the port would be blocked until the Greek eparch came aboard to repair the insult made to the French nation in the person of the consular agent. During the morning hours, the various consular agents and members of the Latin community went aboard to pay their respects and receive official information and instruction concerning the ongoing affair. Drizza remained at his residence. Later that afternoon, de Rigny sent his aide-de-camp to summon him aboard La Sirène and officially present his excuses. Drizza responded defiantly that he had no business on the French frigate and if de Rigny wanted to see him, he was ready to welcome him ashore. At that point, everybody wanted to avoid a violent incident. The eparch first turned to the Zantiots and Cephalonians, who “either intimidated by the French presence or because they detested him,” refused to get involved. Likewise, the modest Greek police force advised him to pay a visit to de Rigny to avoid a confrontation. Drizza insisted on resisting the pressure. Acquainted with the island’s contours since his operations against Faziolis in 1823, and fearing that Drizza would escape from the island during the night, de Rigny asked the Syriot community, who were “always faithful to France,” to put up guards along the entire coastline and inform him of every suspicious movement. After an uneventful night, fifty grenadiers and fifty sailors disembarked at 7 o’clock in the morning on the two opposing sides of the port and converged on the eparch’s residence encircling it. At the same time, the two smaller ships, the Daphné and the Lionne, approached the shore, pointing their canons to the eparch’s headquarters. The French troops were accompanied by Greek-speaking interpreters and provided with a proclama-

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tion they distributed to the inhabitants. In his report to the general consul of Smyrna, Bargigli noted that “what followed proved this to be a useless formality,” as “instead of regarding the French as enemies, a large crowd of Greek inhabitants gathered first in front of the house of the eparch, throwing insults at him.7 Drizza was finally arrested and brought to de Rigny. A few hours later the Greek investigative commission visited La Sirène, only to receive de Rigny’s outrage for their overall behavior. Drizza was subsequently taken to Nafplio, whereas the French vice-consul was allowed to disembark and solemnly return to his residence, accompanied by four officers and greeted with canon shots.8 All the same, rather than challenging the Greek claim of sovereignty over the island, de Rigny’s second major armed intervention in Syra, which would also prove to be the last one, was merely negotiating the position of France in the new situation. Drizza would be soon reinstated in September, be it provisionally, with the approval of the French. To the detriment of the local community, less than a month after the eparch’s arrest, the Latin governor, Marinello, reported to the archbishop of Smyrna that while de Rigny’s intervention did somehow terrify the malevolent mob, once the general left the island “those untamed Greek warlords started threatening furiously all us Catholics, and they do not cease until today to publicly declare that after the departure of the ship left here by the General [de Rigny], they will cut us into pieces.” Cephalonian and other Septinsular vagabonds again started crowding into the port of Syros, declaring themselves ready for the final assault on the Latin town. Apparently, the intermittent French presence, in combination with the mass arrivals of new settlers from the Morea too, evading the campaign of Ibrahim that was just starting, had given way to a new wave of anti-Latin aggressions.9

“Una Tirania Insoportabile” This movement reveals how in 1825–26 the loss of resources and cash on the mainland moved the center of economic gravity of the Greek insurrection to the maritime space.10 Between 1825 and 1827, when Ibrahim occupied a large part of the Morea, drastically reducing the tax revenues for the insurgent government, the naval captains and their sailors turned toward piracy of all kinds; at the same time, due to the lack of other resources, the tithe and other revenues from the island space became substantial for the maintenance of the military fleet.11 As the defense of the Catholics of the islands was an integral part of the grounds invoked by the vice-consul to invite the intervention of the French Station du Levant, Bargigli delivered a letter signed by Marinello, “Catholic



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Figure 9.1.  Syra: A Greek Island by John Carne, Syria, The Holy Land, Asia Minor, &c. Illustrated, 36. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, reproduced with permission.

Governor of Syra,” to the archbishop of Smyrna, reporting the desperate state of the Latin community caused by the Greek aggression and the threat to deport their prelates to Nafplio and asking desperately for active French protection. In that letter and in a follow-up written just after the arrest of the Greek eparch by de Rigny, Marinello actually denounced the existence of a Greek project to “wipe out (estirpare) from the island of Syra the Catholics, and Catholicism,” consisting in the combination of systematic colonization by Greeks and economic strangulation of the local Latin community through heavy taxation, land seizures and outright terrorism.12 Indicative of the plasticity of island identities and their variance in relation to the “others” against whom they were constituted each time, the reduction of the Latin identity of the local community to its strictly religious component, its “Catholicity,” was a prerequisite if they wanted to invite French intervention, reserved, as we have seen, to the protection of the Catholic faith and clergy. Thus, from that point onward, Marinello’s letters repeatedly stated that, in case they did not receive active protection from France and possibly Austria or “other protectors of Catholicism,” the only options left to the local Catholics were emigration and/or public profession of conversion to the Greek rite if they wanted

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to save their lives and properties.13 In the fiscal register of 1825, the island was represented by the “merchants of Syra” and the local Latin community, which, on top of the 11,000 piastres collected for the tithe, was also required to pay an extraordinary levy of another 15,000 piastres. “I don’t know from whom will these exorbitant sums be raised. I foresee that we will have to sell all the buildings of the poor inhabitants and start departing from Syra, abandoning everything to the power of the revolutionaries.”14 Marinello requested that Cardelli solicit the help of David and de Rigny and reminded him that in the middle of the Archipelago there were other potential protectors of Catholicism. His attempt to internationalize the problem of the Latin community of Syra actually regarded mainly Austria, which then had the lion’s share of the trade in Syra but also suffered the most damages due to piracy.15 In the long line of efforts to weaken the French protectorate in the Levant, the Austrian internunzio, Franz von Ottenfels-Gschwind, became actively involved in cooperating with the Catholic clergy and hierarchy in the protection of Armenian and other Catholics in Istanbul.16 As the importance of the island in the Levantine trade rose exponentially, so did the interest of various international powers and actors. An emblematic figure among others was Philippe Chastelain, plenipotentiary of the Knights Hospitaller, secretary of the Chancellery for Spain and Portugal, and vice-lieutenant of the chancellor. Dispatched to Greece in 1823 in order to investigate and negotiate the cession of one island to the Knights of Malta, according to the negotiations inaugurated by Jourdain on behalf of the Greek government, Chastelain remained mainly in Syra,17 where he tried to make contact with Greeks and Latins while waiting for the outcome of the initiatives taken by Jourdain to contract a loan for the account of the order and the Greek government in Paris and in London. Finally, despite the high rate of subscriptions in London, the Stock Exchange authorities were informed about the involvement of the Hospitallers and blocked this option, paving the way for the loans to be provided directly to the representatives of the Greek government, Ioannis Orlandos and Andreas Louriotis, with the support of the London Greek Committee. During his stay in the Archipelago, Chastelain attempted to recruit new members among the wealthier classes, conferring knighthoods of Saint John of Jerusalem for a fee of 600 francs or 500 sequins, according to different accounts.18 In late 1824, after the active engagement of military officers and diplomats, Chastelain’s presence was deemed problematic and he was asked to leave Greece. However, as Lauvergne reported, on his departure he unashamedly ravished one of the most beautiful girls of Sciros [sic], Mariza, who was from a family that had given him hospitality.19 On top of the consecutive waves of innumerable foreigner families (foreste familie) of immigrants and settlers who kept arriving, “occupying entirely our island and our properties,” in mid-September 1825 the former commissioner of



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the Aegean island, Count K. Metaxas, appeared as representative of the Greek government to implement compulsory conscription of the male population on the community of Syra as well. “With tears in my eyes,” Marinello reported the events instantly to Archbishop Cardelli: “Yesterday evening a messenger sent by the Vouli with many soldiers arrived from the Morea; earlier this morning the sad news was communicated to me: fifty Syriots were to be prepared without delay to follow him to Nafplio, so that the island of Syra helps as well the genos in the war against the Turks.” When the governor visited Metaxas at the port to ask for an exemption or a delay, the latter responded that he had received an order to carry out conscription, voluntary or forced, and that the only concession he could make would be to recruit teenagers instead of adults. In the meantime, Eparch Drizza, who had just been reinstated to his post, “presented himself as a friend” of the Latins, offering to mediate “for the accommodation of the affair through the payment of a large amount of money.” While the outcome remained uncertain, Marinello described dramatically the mood within the Latin town: Everyone is in despair in view of the fact that this is an unbearable tyranny and have abandoned the harvest of the vine and of any other produce. No Syriot goes down to the port, the whole city is in the most grave and sad commotion and we are expecting at any moment the terrifying beginning of a bloody and irremediable battle and, finally, the total destruction of Sira and of all Catholics. . . . Have no doubt, Most Illustrious Monsignor, that the island of Sira, with all its Catholic inhabitants, will soon be reduced to ashes, either in this storm or in the next one, given that our enemies clearly want to destroy us; many prepare to leave, only desperate curses that can be heard in the town and almost everybody is crying out that we will become Greeks.20

The Appointment and Arrival of Luigi Maria Blancis Da Ciriè Archbishop Cardelli responded immediately to the desperate call for help, turning first to Pierre David. The Smyrna general consul gave a cold answer stating that France could only intervene if the conscription order regarded members of the Catholic clergy. In his letter to the Foreign Minister, David justified himself as follows: [O]ur government recognized the Greeks’ right to levy the territorial tax on the country that they occupy and to be able to impose even on our trade, our navigation, the same taxes that were paid to the tax office of the Great Lord. I conclude from this, by analogy, that the high dominion that was recognized de facto in the Provisional Government to raise these taxes, gave them also the right to levy troops, that this levy could not be restricted to the Schismatic Greeks.21

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Cardelli reported a meeting with David on the matter, stating that “even that poor man has not the power to do what he would have wanted.”22 Both the archbishop and the Propaganda Fide had by then realized that the position of the Archipelago Latins had become extremely critical and the urgent task of their protection could not rely solely on the vague reassurances provided by the French government to the apostolic nuncio in Paris.23 There was an urgent need to lobby the diplomatic staff of the European embassies in Istanbul, especially those of France and Austria, but also to establish a direct link between the Latin communities and the imperial capital. The solution was found in the appointment of an apostolic administrator for the diocese of Syra sede plena, for as long as Bishop Russin remained under investigation in Rome. That mission was entrusted to Luigi Maria Blancis, a Piedmontese reformed Franciscan friar who served as prior of Saint Mary Draperis, one of the three Catholic parish churches at Pera. Born in 1770 at Cirié, close to Turin, Blancis spoke French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, and Slavonic. At young age, he was sent to Smyrna, where he served as a guardian and took part in the creation of a hospital; in Constantinople from the beginning of the nineteenth century, he had served among others as prefect of the missions.24 Enjoying respect among the representatives of the European courts in Constantinople, Blancis was appointed apostolic administrator of Syra in July 1825. His acquaintance with the Pera community and his links with the European diplomats, especially the Austrian internuncio, were enough to win the confidence of Marinello and the other prelates, who switched course swiftly on the issue of the return of Monsignor Russin and declared themselves impatient to receive the new appointee.25 The news from Istanbul about the imminent assumption of office of the new apostolic administrator reached Syra more or less at the same time as the conscription decree and the disembarkation of Greek troops at the port, perceived as an additional step in a de facto annexation of the island. Marinello asked Cardelli to notify the French ambassador that the Catholics are about to lose “body and soul” but also to write to the new apostolic administrator, who “might come after his flock has already been extinguished.”26 Cardelli, from his side, greeted the appointment of Pre Luigi da Ciriè (Blancis) as apostolic administrator at this critical juncture for Sira and stressed the importance of appointing a Frank (European subject) rather than a local Latin prelate: Your Holiness could not have made a better choice, both because of the personal qualities, gifts and prerogatives that adorn the chosen subject, who is most suited for the government of that church but also because of the particular prerogative to be Frank and not a subject of the Great Lord or of the Greeks; whereby in those circumstances he will be able to show more vigor, energy and freedom of speech in dealing with the Greek authorities, which



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currently tyrannize that island, and thus bring some benefit to those unfortunate Catholics.27

Blancis received congratulations for his appointment from the Catholic clergy of Syra, too. According to Cardelli, there was still an attempt on the part of “two or three partisans of Monsignor Russin” to stir up the people against the new administrator, but they did not have much impact, whereas finally the combined efforts of Governor Marinello and of his vicar “silenced those whisperers.”28 Apparently, in those critical moments perceived as a direct threat to their long-enjoyed autonomy and self-government, the Blancis’s acquaintances with French and other European diplomats in Constantinople, most importantly with the Austrian internunzio, von Ottenfels-Gschwind,29 provided a tentative lifeline for the Latin community. Hence Blancis needed to start deploying his faculties and activating his networks before even setting foot on Syra. In his first report as apostolic administrator of the diocese after his appointment before even he departed from Istanbul, he informed the Propaganda Fide about the dangers threatening the Latins of Syros and the other islands after the conscription decree, as well as about his approach to the French ambassador, who promised to notify de Rigny in Smyrna to take measures “more appropriate to the circumstances.” At the same time, Blancis requested from the Propaganda Fide the issue of two letters to the ambassadors of France and Austria (Germania) in Constantinople, urging them to coordinate so that a French or Austrian warship, however small, could be present in the port of Syra at all times.30 Blancis’s consecration was celebrated in the church he served, Saint Mary Draperis, by the patriarchal vicar Vicenzo Coressi on 6 November 1825. His arrival to Syros on board a French ship a month later31 was saluted as a good omen, since it coincided with the end of the general emergency that had been called after the conscription order of the provisional Greek government. Apparently, given the unequivocal unwillingness of the Latins to take up military service and the existence of more urgent requirements for the war against the Ottoman-Egyptian troops of Ibrahim Pasha in the Peloponnese—and probably after receiving some sort of exemption fee, by November 1825 the Greek representatives relaxed their demands for conscription on the Latin community.32

Violence Reloaded Among the first concerns of the new apostolic administrator was to ease the tensions between factions on the internal front. Hence, although the supporters of Monsignor Russin apparently maintained relations and correspondence

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with him, they were apparently quickly put under pressure from Blancis, who took it upon himself to continue Cardelli’s work of clearing up cases of abusive distributions of bequests by the bishop. Hence, from that point on, the bishop’s letters to the Propaganda Fide became increasingly rare and were usually limited to clarifications provided about financial requests and disputes between priests over the ownership of church estates inherited from his years of service.33 At the same time, he strove to relieve the pressure on the Greeks in the port. He made efforts to limit the points of friction and create points of mutual understanding between the two communities, when the circumstances allowed it, as the dangers coming from outside and threatening the inhabitants of both communities, the old Latin town and the “new colony” at the port. Ibrahim’s invasion of the Morea signaled the beginning of a period of penury for the Greek administration, as the various sources of income from tithes and other taxes were drastically reduced.34 Taxes collected by the insular communities represented hence, as we saw earlier, an increasingly important share of the government income. Meanwhile, displaced peasants, unemployed sailors, and other adventurers who abounded at the time were readily recruited by various ship captains who sought resources in piracy and raiding. One of the most notorious such enterprises was organized by fifteen ship captains and chieftains, mainly coming from Spetses and Evia with the aim to raid the coasts of Syria and Lebanon. As the apostolic administrator claimed in his first full report to the Propaganda Fide about the situation in Syros a few months after taking up his office in early April 1826, he was awoken at midnight by the Greek eparch and the Latin governor. For two months, around two thousand irregular soldiers conscripted for the expedition to Syria and Lebanon and who had gathered in Kea were plundering the island and its inhabitants. They had just sent a vanguard to announce their intention to come to Syra to receive the necessary provisions for their expedition. At that critical turn, Blancis highlighted his potential as a European “known and respected by the representatives of all nations in the Levant”: he first wrote to Captain Hamilton, a Briton, who was in Mykonos at that point, who immediately sent a small ship that deterred any attempts at incursion by the “Albanese pirates.” This bought him some time to notify de Rigny in Smyrna, who sent within twenty-four hours a frigate, which remained for several days, allowing the Catholics to celebrate their Easter in some peace.35 Meanwhile, the Austrian internunzio sent a circular to all Austrian warships traveling through the Archipelago, prompting them to make a stop at Syros “to see if the Latins needed any kind of help”; a few days later, two Austrian warships anchored at the port of Syra. The new apostolic administrator had assured his lines of communication with Istanbul and the European officials in the Levant and had also built



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bridges between the communities and the various representatives of the European powers. This happened once when he intervened to contain the reaction of the Austrians stationed at the port when Greek authorities sought to inspect one of their brigs, averting a bloody conflagration. A few weeks later, when Evians and Spetsiots returned from Lebanon to Syra to sell their meager booty, de Rigny approached them and engaged them in a rescue mission of an expeditionary corps of the regular Greek army under the command of the French philhellene Charles Favier. Meanwhile, violence went on in its different forms. In a letter to Blancis, written in June 1826, Marinello insisted that if a European warship was not stationed at the port of Syra, the “poor Catholics will be assassinated one after the other. The Greek governors ruling here pretend that they have not the force to repress the murderers, and only wait to wipe out us poor Catholics, with the fines and the forced contributions; so that thieves and murderers on one side, and the polite expropriators on the other, are soon to drive the innocent Catholics to deny their own faith.”36 At the same time, the coasts of the island were targeted regularly by pirate attacks. The governor invited Blancis to take initiatives for the sake of other Catholics, since Syra had become the “official arms marketplace of the thieves” (formale piazza d’armi delli ladri). Adapting his language to the prerogatives of the French policy of protection, Marinello described a state of anarchy, regarded the activity of criminals a common problem for Greeks and Latins, and protested for partiality or discriminatory treatment from the authorities established by the insurgents: whereas the action of the Greek police force was considered legitimate, the perpetrators of various crimes intercepted of the armed force of the Latin community were often treated as victims. Marinello mentioned the large number (moltissimi) of assassinated Syriots, mainly in the countryside, highlighting the recent murder of the Catholic priest Giorgio Peri, on 30 May 1826, by robbers of the chapel who hanged him and his servant “with the same cord” in his countryside cottage. A crime that could justify the intervention of France as the protector of the Catholic faith, the matter was pursued personally by Monsignor Blancis, who made a formal complaint to the Greek government through the intermediary of the French vice-consul, solicited the commander of a French frigate that arrived at the port a few days later, and wrote to the Austrian internunzio in Constantinople. But the authors of the crime could not be identified “among the great quantity of such people found in this island.” Blancis solicited various European diplomats in Smyrna and Constantinople about the “disrupted tranquility” of the island.37 In the spring of 1826, a small squadron of the Austrian navy under Admiral Amilcare Paulucci was dispatched to the Archipelago in order to defend Austrian ships from piracy and seek compensation for captured ships and

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merchandise. Blancis came into contact with him through the mediation of Ottenfels-Gschwind. Paulucci reassured him that, despite the fact he was not allowed to attempt an intervention on land, an Austrian ship would always be present in the port of the island.38 In September, Blancis expressed his gratitude for the zeal shown by the Austrians to provide active protection to the Catholics of the Levant. Paulucci’s passage was rather short but eventful. As Syra was the market for piracy booty, an Austrian ship stationed at the port kept an eye on that trade. And as Austrian losses and damages from piracy were by far the highest of all, he often engaged in direct confrontation with the Greek navy and authorities, by attempting to seize Greek ships and their merchandise; on one occasion, Paulucci also arrested French philhellenes who were aboard a Greek vessel. Finally, one year after his arrest and dismissal by de Rigny and after being eventually removed from his office in the spring of 1826, Paulucci arrested Drizza a second time over a debt left to an Austrian merchant, Demetrio Petrisevich, for provisions bought by the Greek administration of the island during Drizza’s service. Despite the protest of the Greek prelates that it was a national and not a personal debt, Paulucci retained Drizza only to release him in Hydra later when the debt had been repaid.39 Paulucci’s aggressiveness, however, did not always benefit the local Latins. Quite the contrary, his activity exacerbated the anti-Latin sentiments of the Greek mob. Plundering in the countryside went on, as did sporadic attacks to unarmed Syriots or skirmishes between Greek gangs and the small armed police of the Latin community. The anti-Latin riots caused by the action of Greek gangs, usually of local origin (Chiots, Hydriots, Cephalonians, and so forth) is an aspect that remains to be studied with regard to its local dynamics, but also the pre-existing mutual prejudices between Orthodox and Catholics on which it drew. The bloody riot of 28 January 1827 offers a demonstration of the various forms of ethnic violence targeting the Latins. The “truthful testimony” (veridica deposizione) signed by the members of the communal council and another ten members of the community “on the sacrilegious insults and cruelest ills carried out within and outside the town of Sira during the public ceremonial procession” in honor of Saint Sebastian provides a detailed account of these events. During the procession that traditionally went from the church dedicated to Saint Sebastian on the south side of the town to the Cathedral of Saint George on top of the hill, Monsignor Blancis held a large crucifix in his hands and was followed by all his clergy and a large crowd of believers. Suddenly, as the procession entered the town from the southern gate, four Chiots from the village of Vrondadho, apparently drunk, came out of a side street harassing a young woman who was about to join the procession. “Those four men stood in the midst of the procession, laughing at the holy crucifix and the whole procession. When discreetly admonished, they began to become insolent and started murmuring, saying ‘why keep silent; this



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is not our procession; it is that of the Franks (franchi), who worship an idol hanging on the cross.’” In order to avoid greater inconvenience, some Catholics sought to remove them. As the intruders began to retreat, they found themselves among the women who followed the men, and began to verbally attack them, calling them schilofranghes (dog-Franks) and putanes (whores).40 The group of local Latins who performed police duties tried to keep the troublemakers away quietly, but as the murmur kept spreading around, they worriedly took them out of the procession and the town through the southern gate that is closest to the church of Saint Sebastian. Once outside, the four Chiots appealed to their compatriots and came back, joined by another ten or twenty furious and hostile people ready to fight back with stilettos in hand. The Syriots drove them away with stones and clubs, taking away their knives, too. According to the account of the Latin community, no Greek was injured during that first fight and, once the Chiots began to withdraw, they were given back their knives. Meanwhile, that skirmish had drawn the attention of other Greeks from the port, who started gathering near the Latin town. Soon, a crowd of around three hundred “Chiots and other foreigners” armed with knives, stones and clubs threw themselves with great fury at the Syriots, “insulting them with opprobrious terms, calling them cuckolds (keratadhes).” For a few minutes, the Syriots, around twenty, managed to defend themselves, sending at the same time messengers into the town to call for help. However, overwhelmed by the Greek crowd, they soon had to retreat within the walls. Unable to break in, the mob, described as enemies (nemici) in the report, assailed two unfortunate Syriots who, unaware of the events, were returning from the countryside from the main road. The younger one was thrown down, hit by stones on the head; then, one of the assailants ferociously threw a large rock on his back, “breaking his spine in the middle.” Terrified, the task force of the Latins rushed out to help their compatriots in what proved to be a deadly trap. A group of fifteen or sixteen Syriots were soon to be encircled by more than three hundred armed men. After striking them down with stones and clubs, one of the Greek thugs stabbed one of the Syriots in the heart, killing him on the spot. A clamor spread among the town and everybody ran to take arms against the besiegers who were approaching the gates. Outside, more men in arms joined the Greek rioters and, followed “by a large crowd of three thousand people uttering insults and threats” against the Latins, headed toward the town. Faced by an imminent generalization of the conflict, Governor Marinello came down from the Cathedral of Saint George, forbidding anyone to go armed out of the walls. Afterward, protected probably by armed Syriots at the gate, he addressed the gathered mob, asking them to disband and disperse peacefully in order to avoid bloodshed on both sides. For his part, the chief of the Greek police arrived swiftly with his force, “driving back the whole Greek mob.”41

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Notes  1. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 39, f. 3 and v. 41, f. 428. quoted as well in Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 228n193, and 231n211.  2. See the series of letters he wrote between July and September 1825 to the archbishop of Smyrna urging him to mobilize the French consul and ambassador for the rescue of the Latin community: APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 153–154v, 189–190v. (“quotidianamente e senza numero vediamo trasportarsi in Syra delle foreste famiglie occupando intieramente la nostra isola, e le nostre proprietà.” f. 189).  3. See Archbishop Cardelli’s report to the Propaganda Fide on the Archipelago Catholics: APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 219r–v.  4. See, for example, the circular sent by the Executive to the local administrators on 14 July 1824 (O.S.), warning them against the “various vice-consuls” who “spread unscrupulously in these critical circumstances the virus of their malevolence, and promote with the help of scoundrels and turcophiles, the idea of submission to the yoke of the tyrant.” Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 1:97–98.  5. “La divergence de toutes ces opinions fait éclore des nouvelles absurdes qui recueillies à bord des navires, sont de là exportées dans tous les lieux du monde.” Lauvergne, Souvenirs de la Grèce, 153. See Karapidakis and Duteil-Loizidou, Bulletins français, 3–63.  6. “Les résultats de son administration se bornèrent à fomenter des dissensions religieuses entre les catholiques romains et les orthodoxes, à fixer les yeux du suprême Divan qui aurait projeté la dévastation de la nouvelle Sciros, sans la bienveillance que les nations de l’Europe avaient témoignée pour les anciens et paisibles possesseurs de l’île.” Lauvergne, Souvenirs de la Grèce, 159–60.  7. The consular agent does not specify whether or not those incidents were staged or instigated by the French and their agents. The whole report see AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 41, f. 328–332v, here f. 331.  8. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 41, f. 331. See Massé, Un empire informel en Méditerranée, 232; Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:39–40.  9. See, for example, one of the reports sent by Marinello to the archbishop of Smyrna, 6 August 1825. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 153–154r. 10. “La città tutta è fortemente disturbata e tutti messi in disperazione, stante che questa è une tirania insoportabile.” Phrase of the Latin Governor G. Marinello, see APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 190v. 11. Pizanias, Η Ελληνική Επανάσταση, 165–75; Bozikis, Ελληνική επανάσταση και δημόσια οικονομία, 137–68. 12. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 153 and 154. 13. “L’affare si è arrivato à non plus ultra, se non c’è speranza d’avvere una energica diffesa siamo tutti costretti di fare une generica pubblica professione del rito greco, ed in questa maniera potranno salvare la propria città li Cattolici, particolarmentenoi poveri Siriotti.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 154. 14. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 154. 15. Katsiardi-Kontogeorgis, H  αυστριακή αρμάδα κατά την Ελληνική Επανάσταση, 462–479. 16. Šedivý, “Austria’s Role in the Armenian Catholics Affair.” 17. Syra was one of the islands to be ceded to the order in case of alliance with the insurgent government together mainly with the small island of Sapienza off Modon at the southwest-



18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

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ern tip of the Morea and Rhodes, their sovereign headquarters between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. See Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires. St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 130; Keightley, History of the War of Independence in Greece, 173–79. Lauvergne, Souvenirs de la Grèce, 155–56. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 190v. AMAE, 42, 428–429, 5 October 1825. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 187–188, 5 October 1825. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 131r–v. In his report to thePropaganda Fide of 21 June 1825, Vincenzo Macchi (titular archbishop of Nisibis and apostolic nuncio in Paris) reports soliciting the Foreign Minister (Baron de Damas) and the Minister of Navy (Chabrol) on the French protection to the Archipelago Catholics and receiving promises for adequate protection from de Rigny. Roussos-Milidonis, Syra Sacra, 165–66; Carayon and Henry, Missions des Jésuites, 57. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 189, 16 September 1825. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 190r-v, 18 September 1825. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 177–178, 17 September 1825. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 219, 30 November 1825. See, for example, the correspondence between Blancis and Ottenfels-Gschwind in OeStA/ HHStA, SB Nl Prokesch-Osten 35–2. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 197. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 211. APF, op. cit., f. 219r. See for communication with the Propaganda Fide concerning the clearing of the pension of Don Giuseppe Xantachi, who had served as vicar during a previous absence of Bishop Russin between February 1816 and April 1817. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 253r–v and 302r–v. Bozikis, Ελληνική επανάσταση και δημόσια οικονομία, 168–93. Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:20–22; Hoffmann, Vescovadi, III Syros, 150–53. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 308r–v. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 389. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 393–394. Jourdain, Mémoires historiques et militaires, 2:430–31; Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:164–68; Katsiardi and Kontogeorgis,  H αυστριακή αρμάδα κατά την Ελληνική Επανάσταση, 489ff. “[Quelli] Siriotti che quietamente procuravano di allontanare l’insolenti, vedendo il dilatato sussurro sollecitamente spinsero li medesimi facendoli sortire dalla città e da mezzo delle donne per porta la più prossima alla chiesa di S. Sebastiano. I detti 4 insolenti disturbatori menati fuori del muro della città dove incontratosi con molti altri Sciotti ed infuriandosi principiaronno di ostilmente opporsi alli Siriotti coi stiletti in mano. I Siriotti in allora li cacciarono con delle pietre e con legni…; riuniti pero questi malfattori ad una gran multitudine di loro compatrioti Sciotti e di altri differenti foresti li quali corsero in loro soccorso tutti unitamente e con gran furia si gettarono contro i Siriotti, altri coi coltelli, ed altri con delle pietre gridando ed ingiuriando li Siriotti con termini opprobri chiamandosi keratadhes e in questo nuovo attacco i pochi Siriotti si difesero con pietre per pochi minuti …; certuni pero Siriotti trovati merso gli baruffanti procurando con qualunque odo di placare e di far cessare la ciuffa …, tra quanto instante ritornando due disgraziati Siriotti dalla Campagna per la strada maestra e venire in città innocenti ed insù di quando correva, ecco improvvi-

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samente assaliti da molti feroci e crudelissimi Greci dai medesimi infollati nemici feriscono l’uno il più giovinetto in testa colle pietre e dopo essersi gettato in terra, uno dei assalitori con gran ferocità li getta su la schiena una grande pietra e gli rompe in mezzo l’osso maestro della schiena, il quale resto tagliato in mezzo del corpo.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 473–474. 41. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 473–474.

CONCLUSION

Endgame m m m

I found myself between two centuries as at the confluence of two rivers; I plunged into their troubled waters; regretfully leaving the ancient strand where I was born, and swimming hopefully towards the unknown shore. —François-René de Chateaubriand, Memoirs

When Monsignor Russin was preparing to leave for Rome in September 1821, his supporters mobilized seeking to cancel his departure. On 21 September, when the archbishop of Naxos, Andrea Veggetti, who had come to Syros to appease the reactions explaining this was a papal order that could not be bypassed or overruled, a crowd reportedly prevented the bishop from boarding a Sardinian vessel bound for the Papal States, abducting and carrying him on their shoulders back to the old hill town. According to a local informant of the French consulate of Smyrna, at around nine o’clock that same evening, “the prelate left his home alone and without a lantern, and made his way through the darkness of the night to the port, where he arrived around ten o’clock, embarking as secretly as possible and the ship set sail the next day before sunrise.”1 The daybreak of 22 September 1821, when the bishop saw for the last time his diocese, heralded not only the end of his own tenure, but also the end of an era. Despite his repeated protests about his declining health, Russin would never be allowed to return to Syra. Until August 1828, his correspondence with the Propaganda Fide still regarded the same old allegations about mismanagement and irregularities in the exercise of his episcopal duties.2 Finally, Bishop Ioannes Baptistus Russin passed away on 22 August 1829 in Rome, at the age of sixty. His successor, who was approximately the same age, would outlive him by another two decades, during which he carried out the task of integrating and adopting the Catholic communities of the Archipelago into the new Greek nation-state. After Russin’s death, it seems that, in a final, but futile, effort to prevent Blancis’s ordination as a bishop, the former’s supporters filed various complaints concerning the qualities of the latter’s service as apostolic admin-

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istrator. In his own report on his achievements as apostolic administrator and the current state of the diocese, apart from his requests for the return of the diocesan archive, as well as some valuable items and regalia, taken by the late bishop to Rome, Blancis reported that the party of Rossini [sic] was still attempting to appoint procuratori who would collect tithes from peasants that cultivated fields of the episcopal mense.3 The question of the diocesan archive, or a large part of it consisting of fiscal and land registers, as well as various loose documents (carte volanti) of various contracts, dowries and so on, that had been withheld by Russin and his secretary, Monsignor Cuculla, was of critical importance for that transition, as without them it was impossible to determine the extent of taxable lands and to adjudicate on a number of disputes regarding the ownership or usufruct of land. Of course, in order to safeguard the properties of members of the community and the Catholic Church in the absence of sufficient property records, Blancis had meanwhile taken measures for the effective marking and protection of the estates of the Catholic Church in the countryside, organizing the rapid restoration and reconstruction à la latina of the small family chapels located on the various bequests, which had meanwhile been vandalized, robbed, claimed by Orthodox priests or used by them since the early years of the revolution.4

“Pristine Privileges” Lost Regarding the burning question of taxation of properties of the Catholic Church in the Archipelago, in April 1827, Vicenzo (Binkentios) Coressi, then the longest serving prelate of the Roman Catholic Church in the Levant, former archbishop of Naxos and vicar apostolic in Constantinople since 1814,5 submitted a report to the prefect of the Propaganda Fide, Mauro Cappellari. During the decades of his service, the collection of a maktu by the Ottoman authorities, that is, a fixed lump sum paid yearly to the Porte by the community of the island regardless of the status of the different properties,6 prevented the Church in most cases from actually claiming tax immunity since “if ecclesiastic property was then to be exempted, the whole tax would have to be levied upon the possessions and lands of the people and the poor.”7 Hence, in Naxos, Chios, and Santorini, there was no distinction of properties, and “everybody bore equally the public burden.” The pact between the Church and the communal authorities on the fiscal affairs had a different form in Syra where “the entire island was Catholic and the clergy great in number.” Church properties were distributed traditionally by the bishop to a number of prominent families of the island, each one of which had a priest who would usually act as a parocco of the chapels laying within those terrains.8 Hence, since church properties

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were distributed to “those same families which carried the main fiscal burden of church immunity,” that is, the ones with the more extent land properties, the church’s immunity “remained only nominal” and its unique practical purpose was to tacitly exempt the names of their priests and their respective possessions from the fiscal registers.9 This reality explains at the same time not only the great number of Syriot priests, but also the twists and conflicts deriving from the accumulation of economic and political power to the office of the bishop of Syra, as well as the tensions between different claimants to those properties. During his mandate as archbishop of Naxos, the vicar apostolic had dealt with disputes about pious bequests in the past decades, sometimes conflicting with Bishop Russin and his “party” about the limits of his jurisdiction.10 The latter, invested with an office that, beyond his spiritual duties, served for centuries to secure an internal power balance between the powerful families of the community and to contain the tensions between them and the peasantry, had arguably proved inept at maintaining his authority over the entire flock by the late 1810s. In the midst of an Archipelago caught up in the whirlwind of the Napoleonic Wars and the Greek Revolution, the effects of the retreat of the French presence and influence, combined with the emergence of new actors and forces in the Levantine seas, intensified inequalities and shook up the social hierarchies within these island communities. In Syra, the ongoing tensions between clans and families over the management of ecclesiastical lands in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the peasant rebellion of 1813–14, and the suspension of the bishop in 1821, were all signs of growing social inequalities and internal divisions. The Greek Revolution intensified them even more, undermining its unity and internal cohesion. When in 1826 a local Latin of lower social status (paesano) named Giorgio Xantaky returned to Syra after thirty years of absence as a tithe renter on behalf of the Greek government (decimatore), he was initially reassured by Monsignor Blancis that the tithe of church properties represented a paltry sum (una bagatella) and agreed to exempt church properties. However, a few weeks later, he returned to the issue, maintaining that, unlike Naxos or Santorini, where church properties represented one-tenth of arable land, yet paid their tithes, in Syros, the rate of church properties represented one-third of all tithes and could not be granted tax immunity.11 Apparently, a new fabric of social ties, whether of friendship, enmity, collaboration, or antagonism, was being woven between the people of the port, the forestieri coming from elsewhere, and the Latins of the medieval town on the hill, making the boundaries between the members of the two ethnoconfessional groups more transparent, not only among the upper classes, as before, but also among the lower classes of the Syriot community and diaspora. In order to maintain the cohesion and faith of the flock, Blancis undertook

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the task of checking points of contact and handling tensions between Catholics and Orthodox. In matters of landed property, together with the protection of the church properties, Blancis sometimes defended as well the interests of some prominent local Latins, owners or renters of land that had been usurped or encroached upon by Greek settlers.12 When it came to mixed marriages, he formally contracted a mutual ban in common with the Greek despoti. This agreement, which constituted a direct recognition of the new situation, did not prevent him from requesting from the Propaganda Fide an exception for the marriage of Antonio Gabinelli, a prominent Tiniot relative of the newly appointed bishop of the island and vice-consul of the Netherlands, to the daughter of Emanuel Xeno, a Greek shipowner, member of the Philiki Etaireia and deputy for Patmos in the National Assembly.13 Monsignor Blancis however took a much more rigid stance toward the tithe collector Giorgio Xantaky. In his response to the request made by the Commission of the Aegean Sea concerning tithes on revenues from ecclesiastical lands, Blancis began by tacitly questioning their authority, addressing them as “representatives of the Greek government in Syra.” He went on to describe the Catholic Church’s privilege not to pay tithes as sacrosanct, founded on scripture and papal bulls and respected even by Muslim rulers, and finished by threatening the tax collector with excommunication should he insist on suppressing this age-old right.14 Concerning the separation between secular and ecclesiastical affairs, Blancis reminded the precarious status of the Greek state in international law, stressing that “Ellada” had not yet contracted a concordat with the supreme pontiff, “the only one able to determine the limits between ecclesiastical and civil domain as stipulated by France, Prussia, Netherlands and other European Powers.”15

On the Brink of No Return As was the case from the very beginning, the line of conduct followed by the prelates of the Catholic Church remained a wait-and-see neutrality, focused on the effort to secure their possessions and/or reduce the damage, waiting for the storm to pass. Based on the recent experience of a series of regional upheavals across the Ottoman Empire, as well as the rapidly changing conjuncture in the Eastern Mediterranean, the effects of the Greek insurrection seemed at first sight to be inscribed in a series of military and revolutionary incidents that temporarily disrupted the peaceful circle of production and trade of those insular communities, but did not affect the overall context. Besides, the violent repression of the liberal revolutions in Spain and Italy by the French and the Austrian armies in the beginning of the decade seemed to consolidate the spirit

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of the Congress of Vienna and to foreshadow the outcome of the Greek revolt. For Monsignor Coressi, since the fiscal immunity of the Church had only been nominal under Ottoman rule, the Greek claim to its formal suppression ought to be handled with caution; he advised that Syra too follow the example of Naxos and Santorini, and refrain from laying claim to such privileges, until order was restored. The current anomaly does not allow such claims to be made; but it is necessary to wait until things acquire stability and consistence. Therefore, for the time being it is enough for them to have appealed against this kind of oppression and abuse that was used against them; and once things have returned to their former state, it will be then clear whether they should return to their pristine privileges.16

Like the vicar apostolic, until the fall of 1827, the Latins of Syros kept nursing the belief that the troubles and woes inflicted by the war were an extraordinary, temporary situation that would soon come to an end and the various forestieri would sooner or later return to their homelands. Two major military events in late 1827 and early 1828 definitively buried the prospect of a return to the status quo ante, demonstrating that, instead of a passing storm, the calamities brought about by the Greek Revolution rather heralded the passage to a new, as yet uncharted, state of affairs. Before the Battle of Navarino became part of modern Greek national history as a pivotal point in a more or less inevitable escalation leading to independence, the event was experienced and discussed as completely unexpected and out of the ordinary. After the signing of the Treaty of London in July 1827 in which Britain, France, and Russia called the belligerents to an armistice, a joint fleet was dispatched to the Eastern Mediterranean to enforce a ceasefire. Toward the end of August, after the Ottoman rejection of the conditions stipulated by the treaty, the three European powers dispatched their fleets and their representatives came officially into contact with the Greek government in Nafplio.17 The quasi-total destruction of the Ottoman and Egyptian fleet in the small bay of Navarino on the southwestern coast of the Peloponnese by a joint fleet of the three European powers on the afternoon of 20 October 1827 was from the outset an unexpected and contested event. In the imperial capital, the Ottomans tried to relativize their losses and the various representatives of the powers involved reported an unfortunate event, accidentally provoked by a provocation by the Egyptian-Ottoman fleet. The news spread like wildfire and aroused contrasting emotions among the Christian populations of the empire: the Greeks were relieved and jubilant about such a providential blow of divine salvation, while the Catholics of the Levant saw new dangers and persecutions.

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In the quarter of Pera in Istanbul, the Catholic missionaries were informed that the sultan prepared to order four binbashis of the regular army to massacre the Francs of Istanbul, but he was ultimately thwarted by the Imperial Council, which decided to refrain from initiatives that would have led to an escalation.18 In the following weeks, new reports on the efforts of the authorities to contain the Turkish mob from attacking the Europeans mobilized various Levantines in the city to seek protection from the Austrian, Prussian, or Sardinian representatives. Several rounds of debate involving European ambassadors and the Imperial Council gave the various European clerks, missionaries, and protégés a sense of temporary and fragile safety.19 Closer to the Archipelago, in Smyrna, rumors about mobilization of Tatar troops by the sultan also spread panic among the Catholics. The participation of the French navy in the act of destruction of the Egyptian fleet that had been organized and commanded by French officers, presented a conundrum to the Catholic clergy, who blamed the attack on a British plot designed to draw in the other forces with the aim of weakening the French presence in the area. “Whatever the case, this event caused among all the inhabitants of this city, and particularly among the subjects and protégés of the three Allied powers, a universal alarm and confusion which increased still further upon the notice received two days later, that the Greeks had attempted a landing in Chios.”20 The second major event that sealed the fate of Syra and marked its definitive passage to a new era was the failure of the Greek attempt to recapture Chios that started only a few days before the events at Navarino. As part of a broader project to include Chios, Samos, and Crete within the limits of the Greek state that was about to take shape, the expedition had been organized by a newly founded Committee of Chiots in Syros in contact with rich merchants and prominent Chiots of the diaspora with the involvement even of Adamantios Korais in Paris.21 However, as the Treaty of London had not been signed to make Greece independent but to fight piracy and restore “the tranquility of Europe,” the allied admirals were under orders to prevent all clashes between the two sides.22 Hence, despite the destruction of the Ottoman fleet and the efforts of the Greek government to legitimize an expedition to the island that had come to symbolize the Ottoman atrocities, among others through the assignment of the military command to a French veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, Charles Fabvier, the expedition was ill-prepared and ultimately failed. Lord Cochrane, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars but also of the wars of Chilean and Brazilian independence, hired by the Greek government in 1825, gradually aligned himself to the directives sent out by the British commander-in-chief of the British Mediterranean fleet and withdrew from the expedition. After the arrival of Count Capodistria as governor of the independent Greek state in January 1828, the war against piracy became the top priority for the legitimacy of the new entity. The forces that

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had landed at Chios in October 1827 continued their siege of the citadel as best they could until the end of February 1828, when the growing tensions between the irregulars and Fabvier, the lack of reinforcements and the landing of Ottoman troops from the coast of Çeşme prompted them to swiftly evacuate the island.23 The Chios expedition must have probably been the only Greek military endeavor that met with the most heartfelt support of the entire Syriot Latin community. Even if, at the diplomatic level, the creation of an independent Greek state seemed now inevitable, the reconquest of Chios by the Greek troops would have meant an imminent return for at least half of the crowds of forestieri who had flooded Syros, among which were some of the most outspokenly hostile and aggressive elements toward the Latin community, as we have seen in the previous chapter. Instead, the failure of the expedition resulted in the arrival in Syros of a few thousand more Chiot peasants who had meanwhile stayed on or returned to the island after the massacres of 1822. At the same time, the creation of the Greek state and the possible inclusion of the Cycladic islands in it, would entail that the same people who had temporarily settled on their encroached properties, desecrated their chapels, assailed their processions, threatened, insulted and assaulted them physically, would now remain there as legitimate citizens of a state in which, according to the first article of the Constitution voted by the Greek National Assembly in 1827, everyone could “freely professes his religion and have an equal right to defend its practice.” In which country also, however, as the article went on, “religion of the state (επικράτεια) [was] that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ.”24

Syra, like Malta, Gibraltar, and San Marino Meaning both state and the territory within which a state exercises its powers, the use of epikrateia to designate the nascent Greek state offered an option abstract enough as regards to its degree of autonomy or independence and its political regime. At the same time, it touches on the core of what was at stake since the beginning of the war on land and sea: the substitution of a complex chain of overlapping jurisdictions and parcelized sovereignties25 with a nation- state that claimed full sovereignty upon all territories under its control and all its inhabitants. Now that their age-old protector, the Most Christian King of France, had recognized the Greek government, their connection with the Levantine hubs was threatened by the new frontier that was about to emerge. Syra’s liminal position for centuries between Venice and Constantinople first, and then between two degrees of sovereignty in the Ottoman Levant, had

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constituted a conundrum for its French protectors since the island found itself in the dynamic field of war, revolution, and counterrevolution, “where the authority of the Turks had ceased to prevail.”26 In a letter sent in June 1823 by Pierre David to the State Secretary of Foreign Affairs François-René de Chateaubriand, the French general consul described the imperative dilemma posed by the territorial sovereignty claimed by the Greek insurgents: “Either Syra is Greek, they say, part of the paternal soil we want to set free, and in that case has to contribute to this enterprise, or Syra is Turkish, so, as an enemy [territory], is exposed to the conquest and the war contributions. What can France do in this respect?”27 Following the transformation of the port of Syra into a hub of free trade in the image of “Venice in the time of Crusades,” Blancis supported in early 1826 the concession to Syros of the status of a free port, tributary to the Greek state that, having no right of conquest or occupation, would maintain a bare sovereignty (alto dominio) on the Aegean Sea, without though turning the “most envied, and threatened island in the entire Archipelago” into a “foyer (ridotto) for all the scoundrels of Greece (tutte le canaglie della Grecia).” Instead, the Europeans should recognize the neutrality of the five communities and twelve thousand souls of Latins and fix a tribute to be paid by the local community to the Greeks “as conquerors.”28 As we have seen already, the prelates of the Catholic Church and the Latin communities of the Archipelago relied almost exclusively on French and Austrian ships for their communication with Smyrna, Constantinople, but also Rome, and the European capitals. Acquainted with the community and missionaries of Pera and in contact with the Austrian internuncio, Monsignor Blancis apparently gave shelter in Syros to Armenian Catholics expelled from Istanbul in 1828.29 During this eventful transition, he secured in collaboration with the archbishops of Naxos and Smyrna the reorganization and continuity the Catholic hierarchy across the Archipelago, with the appointment of Giorgio Gabinelli as bishop of Tinos in 1826, and of Ignazio Giustiniani in 1829 in the see of Chios, vacant since 1821.30 When in September 1827, after the recognition of the Greek state by the Treaty of London, the apostolic administrator was invited to formulate the objectives and expectations of the Catholic Church, he stipulated that “Syra implores unanimously to be restored to the state she was before 1821” and elaborated a plan of restitution of usurped properties and expulsion of the settlers.31 Adapting the previous free port project in the new realities, he invited the Allied powers to grant Syros a status similar to that of the Republic of San Marino: an island instead of a land enclave, protected by the Holy See and subject to a fixed annual tribute to the Greek government.32 The following year, when Greek independence seemed inevitable, Blancis reported to the prefect of the Propaganda Fide, Cardinal Mauro Cappellari,33 the discussions he had with Bishop Giorgio Gabinelli of Tinos

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and the initiatives they had jointly taken to promote, through the mediation of the French Commander de Rigny, a plan for the partial resettlement and gathering of all the Catholic populations of the Archipelago in one of the four islands with a substantial Catholic community.34 Finally, all the above projects elaborated and promoted by the Catholic hierarchy of the Archipelago, in close cooperation with the French officials and diplomatic agents, corresponded to a previous political setting and imperial balance of powers in the Eastern Mediterranean that was already obsolete. More familiar to their mindset and field of experiences, Malta of the Knights Hospitaller, Gibraltar as a bulwark of Christian Europe against Islam, or the medieval republic of San Marino as a paradigm of an autonomous micro-state under papal protection, were all mere projections of the previous imperial setting into the future. Hence, the multiple temporalities at play present a sort of panorama of the non-simultaneity of the simultaneous. From the French perspective, the white royal standard hoisted in the Archipelago functioned as a reminder of the Latins’ affinity to the political traditions of the monarchy and the ancien régime, and as a sign of truce and neutrality; at the same time, the cause of Greece/Hellas proved one that could be supported by radical liberals, republicans, and royalists alike.35 Like Chateaubriand, who received the news from the Archipelago in Paris during this transition marked by the gradual dissolution of the imperial context, secular and religious prelates of the Levantine Latins found themselves between two centuries as if at the confluence of two rivers, between two eras and two regimes of historicity, leaving the ancient strand and swimming toward a shore yet unknown. In a power vacuum after the demise of Ottoman rule in the Archipelago, a “world without consecrated authority,” they seemed lodged between an impossible past [as “the old society was breaking up”] and an impossible future.36

Sira Nostra Patria In March 1829, the French-language newspaper Courrier de Smyrne published a report about the aggressions of the Greeks against the Catholics of Syros, according to which, Everything that has been happening just demonstrates the impossibility for Catholics to live with those who regard them as enemies, and see their church as a perpetual source of hatred and persecution. If we then examine to whom the country can legitimately be devolved, the question is not in doubt when we remember that eight years ago there was not a single Greek established in Syra, whereas the Catholics, who lived in perfect harmony with the Turks, have inhabited this island from time immemorial.37

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That report was accompanied by the publication of a “secret appeal” by the religious and secular prelates of Syra to the supreme pontiff, imploring him to intervene with the three Allied powers so that they could exempt Syros from “that portion of the Greek lands” that the three Christian powers decided to make independent.38 Naturally, the Latin prelates of Syros denied the authenticity of this appeal in their correspondence with Governor Capodistria.39 Whether original or counterfeit, reiterating the claims of the island Catholics and making mention of a war between Greeks and Turks in which they had remained neutral from the outset, that appeal constituted a late expression of their distinct ethnoreligious identity that sought to be accommodated into the new setting. Symptomatically, in order to support the legitimacy of making Syros a free port in 1826, Blancis had already advanced the position of a distinct, European descent of the Archipelago Latins: [But] to reach this point it would suffice to make the allies understand, that these small colonies begging to be protected and maintained in their neutrality, are not Hellenes, but rather Latin Europeans, as demonstrated by the family lineage of each Grimaldi, Giustiniani, Vitali, Rossi; and if one looks back, at the number of Europeans who came to Greece to revive, waving their ancient ashes, the Ulysses, the Odysseys, the more it was their duty to defend the blood of their European ancestors shed here in an era when the Genoese and Venetian republics owned these islands.40

The assertion of the Latins’ European origin combined with a rather ironic use of the Hellenic identity of the Greek insurgents and accentuated by the claim that the Europeans were the ones who had revived the study of ancient Greece in these lands, were all recurrent themes of the Orientalist bias through which European travelers, merchants, and missionaries viewed the peoples of the Ottoman Levant.41 In this vein, the Courrier de Smyrne commented that, since the Catholics of the Archipelago seemed to be proscribed by right by the very fact that they belonged to a church other than the Greek Church, the new Greece came closer to ancient Greece, and the time of the Helots had returned.42 Based on the assumption that the late and ill-digested discovery of classical antiquity had led the Greeks to imitate the example of Sparta while speaking the language of Athens, this analogy with the Helots, already used by de Rigny in 1823, had taken new relevance now that a “more regular” government had been established under Count Capodistria. Even after the suspension of the Constitution of 1827 shortly after his arrival, the new governor was quick, from the very first weeks of his term of office, to guarantee religious freedom and equality to the inhabitants of the islands of the archipelago belonging to the Roman Church, and to ask his local representatives to treat them “with great care,” to “ensure peace between the citizens of the two churches,” and in-

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vite them to assume public offices on an equal footing.43 The effort to centralize power and combat piracy in the maritime space necessarily involved setting up a system of justice. As a result, in addition to the commercial courts established as early as 1826, courts of first instance were set up under Capodistria’s presidency, which in Syros deliberated on a number of complaints from Latins concerning their invaded or usurped properties. A year and a half after the establishment of these courts, in November 1829, the Catholic clergy of Syros declared they did not recognize them, since they were not constituted nor did they operate on the basis of the rule of law but imposed by coercion and intimidation, without the free consent of the Syriots.44 For nine years now, the Catholic island of Syros, which declared its neutrality from the very beginning and was formally acknowledged by the European Powers, the Turkish government (governo turco) and the Greek Nation (nazione greca), has been overrun by foreigners (forestieri) who number more than twenty-one thousand. Those foreigners, found in our homeland Syra (Sira nostra patria) comfort and security for their families, were received as brothers by our peaceful Catholic population and found here serenity and freedom they did not have in their lands. Instead of showing gratitude for the benefactions received from the Syriots, however, an important part of this crowd started encroaching and plundering the land belonging to individual Syriots, the episcopal see, priests and charitable foundations of the church, while at the same time they committed premeditated murders against our compatriots, even against priests who had previously helped them.45

Under Ottoman rule, from that part of Europe “that directs its gaze most closely towards the Orient,” the Archipelago had become part of the Levant, a meeting ground for foreigners and a field of battle for supremacy.46 Sira nostra patria, a phrase often found in the petitions of the priests of the late 1820s, expressed a pre-national conception of the homeland based on autochthony, a common Catholic faith, loyalty to the Sublime Porte, and protectorate of the Roi Christianissime that was soon to be obsolete. The debate as to whether the island belonged to Greece or to the Ottoman Levant added another layer of temporality to the palimpsest of names, reference texts, and myths that made up the hybrid, half-Western, half-Eastern identity of the islanders of the Archipelago. Finally, after a round of contacts and negotiations with the Greek government, the issue was finally settled by the plenipotentiaries of the Three Powers in the protocols signed in London on 3 February 1830. Annexed to the main protocol, which defined the frontiers of the independent Greek state and included all Cycladic islands in its territories, was a separate protocol (no. 3): His Most Christian Majesty owes it to himself, and he owes it to a people who have lived so long under the protection of his ancestors, to require that

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the Catholics of the continent and of the islands shall find in the organization which is about to be given to Greece, guarantees which may be substituted for the influence which France has hitherto exercised in their favour. The Plenipotentiaries of Great Britain and Russia appreciated the justice of this demand; and it was decided that the Catholic religion should enjoy in the new State the free and public exercise of its worship, that its property should be guaranteed to it, that its bishops should be maintained in the integrity of the functions, rights and privileges, which they have enjoyed under the protection of the Kings of France, and that, lastly, agreeably to the same principle, the properties belonging to the ancient French Missions, or French Establishments, shall be recognized and respected.47

Together with the end of the various forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the insular space, the protocol provided for the perfect equality of all citizens, “without regard to difference of creed in all their relations, religious, civil or political.” Soon after the Balfour Declaration, a legal expert would discern in this protocol the earliest instance of emancipation of the Jews in the Levant.48 A historian would feel the urge to clarify that this actually regarded the Jews who survived the massacres of 1821.49 As it happens, states have a very selective memory of their past, even more so the ones that are newly constituted. Like the massacres of Muslims and Jews, the series of raids, attacks, expropriations, and murders of Catholic Latins of the Archipelago remained long neglected or downplayed in national memory, as much as in the collective memories of both local communities, Orthodox and Catholic.

Faziolis: The Return of the Repressed The fact that the violence against Catholics remained diffuse and diverse for a long time after the establishment of the local authorities and the formation of a central administration counted among the main reasons why the Catholic clergy opposed the perspective of inclusion within the limits of the Greek state.50 Violent incidents against the Latins of the islands continued to recur until the late 1820s. Once released from detention, Nestor Faziolis returned to Syros in the fall of 1826, bringing a lawsuit against the Latin community and demanding compensation of 200,000 piastres for damages he had suffered during the events of 1823. His first appearance coincided with a new outburst of anti-Latin incidents in Syros.51 Faziolis’s legal case obviously reversed the story of the events, claiming that the Syriots had attacked his Cephalonian crew out of religious fanaticism and then invited the French to confiscate his property. The intervention of de Rigny, who requested from the Greek government and obtained on 20 November 1826 an order invalidating Fazolis’s

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appeal and ordering his dismissal from Syros, was rather the swan song of French protection in that intermediate period between the disintegration of the old imperial order and the establishment of a new national and territorial sovereignty in the Cycladic islands, now split from the wider Archipelago, the islands of the northern Aegean, Samos, Chios, the Dodecanese, and Crete. What followed next was interwoven with the subsequent twists and turns of the establishment of the modern Greek state. Faziolis left Syra in 1826, only to return in the summer of 1827, a few weeks after the entry into force of the new constitution, which introduced the division of powers. This time he presented a request for a legal judgment of his complaint, which was accepted by the Ministry of Justice and Education. Officially deprived of French protection, the community, rebranded “Community of Latins of Syra,” turned to the Phanariot Alexandros Mavrokordatos, through the intermediary of Georgios Xanthakis, presumably the same person as Giorgio Xantaky, the tithe collector threatened with excommunication by Blancis a few months earlier. Mavrokordatos greeted Faziolis’s transfer to the Peloponnese aboard a French ship and reassured the Syriots that the government had forbidden him to lodge new claims or to return to Syros. Under the Capodistria presidency, the Greek state established a system of local tribunals and Faziolis was the first to present once more his claims in July 1828. Rejecting the case as inadmissible, not in principle, but because it was directed against the leaders of the community in 1823 and not against its legal representatives at that time, the regional court of first instance, which at that time sat in neighboring Tinos, actually left in abeyance the claims made by Fazioli. In his attempt to centralize the administrative and fiscal functions of the new state under the authority of the central government, the governor met strong resistance from powerful regional factions and clans, among which were mainly those of Mani, Hydra, and Hermoupolis. Within this context, Capodistria responded favorably to the petitions of the Community of Syros by issuing in March 1830 an order that deemed Faziolis’s claims dangerous and provocative, qualified him a “foreigner” charged with criminal acts, and banned him from Nafplio and Syros.52 Shortly thereafter, the governor made a visit to Syros, during which a local revolt against his tax policy broke out among the small merchants of Hermoupolis. In the following year, the merchants of Hermoupolis actively participated in a large-scale rebellion against the administration of Capodistria, who would ultimately be assassinated in Nafplio by members of the Mavromichalis clan from Mani on 27 September/9 October 1831. At about that point, the story of the Latin community of Syros was ending, and another, or rather many more, were beginning. After a period marked by the clashes between parties and clans for political power, the refusal of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg to assume the Greek throne, the Three Powers offered

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the throne to the second-born son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria at the London Conference of 1832. At the same time, the community was preparing to participate in the celebrations welcoming the Catholic sovereign, in intensive communication with its representatives in the Fifth Greek National Assembly at Argos and Nafplio.53 Among those who served as deputies of the community after 1829, one finds various members of prominent Catholic Syriot families, but also, once more, Georgios Xanthakis, the former tax collector on behalf of the Greek authorities and then emissary of the community to the Greek government. During that same period, in an attempt to secure the presence and property of the Catholic Church in the new town, Monsignor Blancis raised funds for the rebuilding of the church of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Hermoupolis and to appoint as its guardian and representative (sindaco e procuratore) Cavaliere Gregorio Stefano,54 who had previously been among the most ardent supporters of Bishop Russin. By now, less than a decade later, all those disputes and controversies must have seemed long past and obsolete. Faziolis did not drop his claims. He returned to Syros in 1836 to lodge a complaint, this time against the commune of Ano Syros (Κοινότητα Άνω Σύρου), incorporated meanwhile into the Greek Kingdom as a separate administrative entity from the town of Hermoupolis.55 The litigation continued with a series of rulings that were overturned by the court of appeal or the court of annulment, to be finally dropped to no avail for the claimants, in 1847, three years after the death of the controversial Cephalonian ship captain. As it became clear in the trials that followed, Faziolis, who officially appeared to be a pauper, destitute of other revenues or resources, had the moral and material support of wealthy merchants and powerful agents in Hermoupolis,56 who apparently instrumentalized the affair in order to continue exerting pressure on the Catholic Church and community. A full history of one of the most long-lasting legal affairs that occupied the newly established justice system, which was tightly linked to the process of integration of the Catholics of Syros into the modern Greek state, still remains to be researched and written.57 Adding insult to injury, that politico-judicial adventure surely cast a long and heavy shadow over the collective memory and identity of the local Catholics. Turned in less than ten years from Latin subjects of the Sublime Porte into “Greeks of the Western Church,” and as the national borders that fragmented the once unified imperial space were consolidated, the inclusion of their history in the national memory seemed imperative, especially under the weight of different anti-Western, anti-Latin, and anti-Catholic prejudices, attitudes, and ideologies, the study of which constitutes another subject area still barely explored by scholarly research.58 The period 1823–27 in the Archipelago constitutes par excellence one of those in-between intervals determined by matters that are no longer and matters that are not yet. Revisiting how the paths of general history led to Syros

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Figure 10.1.  Syros: The Latin Town by Daniel Baud-Bovy and Frédéric Boissonnas. In Des Cyclades en Crète au gré du vent, 25. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation Library, reproduced with permission.

from the viewpoint of the Latin town on the hill above the port not only adds a missing piece to the history of the island, of the revolutions of the 1820s, but also of the mobility of people and ideas in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant during the long nineteenth century. The recurrent appeal to Sira nostra patria in the petitions of the Catholic priests of the island, at the very moment when the island was at the forefront of European politics, sounds like a nostalgic reminiscence of the times of the empire, or a prayer for the preservation of the “sweet freedom” of the islands that was finally not answered. Adopting, however temporarily, the perspective of the vanquished, the search was undertaken for mid- or long-term explanations as to why for them everything happened differently to how it had been planned or hoped.61 Taking this perspective into account does not simply emancipate the history of the Latin communities of the Archipelago from the subsequent distortions of national history, describing

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Map 10.1.  “Map of the Cyclades” by Daniel Baud-Bovy and Frédéric Boissonnas. In Des Cyclades en Crète au gré du vent, 25. © Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, reproduced with permission.

the formation of a nation while struggling for its independence: who belongs to the nation and who does not remained a matter of dispute for more than a century thereafter.60 Likewise, contrary to the received idea among the various histories of Hermoupolis that the Catholics withdrew subsequently to their hilltop settlement, by adopting their perspective, we were able to follow the many threads leading us to Smyrna, Istanbul, Rome, Paris, Vienna, and elsewhere: navigating the troubled waters of war and revolution, their secular and religious leaders intensified, methodically and persistently their links with the Levantine communities, the Holy See, and the European powers. Those threads reveal multiple spatial perspectives that present Syros as a Sattelraum, a transitional space where peoples of different background and religious affiliation, dignitaries, missionaries, traders, and adventurers of all sorts interacted and interrelated with the permanent population and with each other.61 After all, the renegotiation and transformation of the hybrid “half Oriental and half

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European”62 identity of the inhabitants of the Latin quarter of the dispersed maritime city of the Archipelago vis-à-vis a process of colonization and conquest by “barbarian Greeks” offers a privileged view to a major reshuffling of the political and cultural frontier between Europe and the Orient, but also of the long and twisted transition from one historical era to another. Notes Epigraph: de Chateaubriand, Memoirs.   1. See Karapidakis and Duteil-Loizidou, Bulletins français, 132–34.   2. Hence, last in a series of such letters to the SCPF was an affair of debt to a priest for his services as vicar during his previous stay in Rome in 1817 and on the administration of the revenues from the properties of the episcopal mense. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 37, f. 96–97v.   3. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 37, f. 230–232.   4. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 37, f. 231v-232r.   5. Born in Chios in 1755, Coressi was appointed archbishop of Naxos from 1800 until 1814, when he was named titular archbishop of Sardes.   6. Balta and Spiliotopoulou, “Έγγεια ιδιοκτησία και φορολογική απαίτηση στη Σαντορίνη.”   7. “Sicché, per esentar poi li beni ecclesiastici, si dovra far cadere tutta la tassa sopra le possessioni e terreni del popolo e dei poveri.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 515r.   8. Apparently, this explains the great number of Syriot priests, bound to the rural countryside or acting as chaplains of the French and other Europeans in the Ottoman Levant. See Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici, 142–43.   9. “cosi a loro arbitrio esentavan, o per dir meglio, non facevan comparire nei libri delle tasse li nomi dei loro sacerdoti, e delle possessioni dei medesimi.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 515v. 10. See, for example, APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 31, f. 31–34; vol. 35, f. 55. 11. Letter to the High Commission of the Aegean Sea, dated 8 October 1826. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 439. See Balta and Stamatopoulou, “Έγγεια ιδιοκτησία και φορολογική απαίτηση στη Σαντορίνη,” and Dimitropoulos, “Ένα συριανό κτηματολόγιο.” 12. See, for instance, Blancis’s letter of 25 December 1826 about properties of the Salacha family. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 437–438. 13. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 37, f. 15–16. 14. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 441–442. 15. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 441–442. 16. “L’anomalia di questi tempi, non permette a farsi simili contese; ma bisogna aspettare fin che le cose possan prendere una stabilità e consistenza. Onde per ora basta loro di aver riclamato contro questa specie di oppressione e di prepotenza che fu loro usata; e quando poi le cose ritorneranno al primiero loro stato, allora si vedrà se debban rientrare nei pristini loro privilegi”: APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 441–442. 17. Prokesch-Osten, Geschichte des Abfalls der Griechen, 2:163. 18. “Ed è si vera che appena giunse all’orecchio del Gran Signore, egli montò talmente sulle furie, che ordino a quattro Bin-Basci (capi di mille) delle truppe regolate di far man bassa sopra i franchi e di massacrarli tutti. Buon per noi, che il Gran Divano, o Supremo Senato

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19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

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della Porta, si oppose con tutto il calore immaginabile a questa misura.” APF, SC, Romania C/poli, vol. 26, f. 1185. “if another disgrace similar to that of Navarino were to be made to the Turks, then we will be surely lost.” APF, SC, Romania C/poli, vol. 26, f. 1186. Letter of 3 November 1827 sent by Vicar to Archbishop Cardelli who was absent in Rome: “Chechessia, questo avvenimento ha prodotto in tutti gli abitanti di questa città, e singolarmente nei sudditi e protetti delle tre Potenze Alleate, un alarme e confusione universale.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 599. See Droulia, “Προς την ανάκτηση της Χίου.” Mazower, The Greek Revolution, 427–28. Argenti, The Expedition of Colonel Fabvier; Drakakis, Ιστορία του οικισμού, 2:175–85. A digitalized copy of the 1827 Constitution is accessible on the website of the Greek Parliament: https://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/f3c70a23-7696-49db-9148-f24dc e6a27c8/syn09.pdf. On the Greek revolutionary constitutions, see: Alivizatos, Το Σύνταγμα και οι εχθροί του, 33-73; Vlachopoulos, “The Vision of the Rebellious Greeks” and Sotiropoulos, “‘United We Stand, Divided We Fall.’” Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, 399–431. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 40, f. 182. Letter of Count de Beaurepaire adjunct of the ambassador in Istanbul to the consul of Smyrna referring to the territories detached from the control of the Ottoman Empire, 24 April 1824. AMAE, CC, Smyrne, v. 38, f. 394–395. “E li latini avrebbero pagaro il loro tributo ai greci come conquistatori.” Letter of Monsignor Blancis to the Propaganda Fide, 10 April 1826, published in Hoffmann, Vescovadi Cattolici della Grecia, III. Syros, 152. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 37, f. 93–94. For the affair and the Austrian involvement, see Šedivý, “Austria’s Role in the Constantinople Armenian Catholics Affair.” As mentioned already (chapter 3, this volume), the bishop of Chios Xaverio Dracopoli died shortly after his visit to the dioceses of the Archipelago, in August 1821. “Governed by the native laws and by the Latin community alone, to which belongs, as it always did, the duty to retain in the country only that number of foreigners that the island can support, and to restore to their true and legitimate owners possession of their usurped funds.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 583r–v. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 583r–v. And future Pope Gregory XVI (1831–1846), For the recent assessment of his life and service in scholarly research, see Ugolini, Gregorio XVI tra oscurantismo e innovazione. Gabinelli advocated for France to obtain from Greece the maintenance of all local Latin governments in the islands. Blancis judged this solution positively but rather unfeasible. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 37, f. 88–89. Cf. Tabaki-Iona, “Philhellénisme religieux et mobilisation des Français pendant la révolution grecque de 1821–1827”. Hartog, Regimes of Historicity, 106, 194–95. Courrier de Smyrne, no. 57, 22 March 1829. Here is a translation of the entire text: “Most Holy Father, In the name of the entire people of the island of Syra, we have the honor to humbly submit our wishes and prayers to the feet of Your Holiness so that you intervene in our favor to the three allied powers.

Conclusion 181

39.

40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

The Greeks rose against their sovereign. Three Christian Powers decided to concede independence to a portion of the Greek lands. To our great displeasure, we were informed that our island is included in those territories. We always remained loyal to our sovereign, observing the rules of our religion and we made every sacrifice to fulfil this duty. If faith and loyalty are not a crime, then why should we be part of the insurgents and submit ourselves to their laws? In that case (may God save us from this misfortune), we will be forced either to abandon our homeland or to convert in order to coexist with such an intolerant people. We do hope, however, that the Christian powers, who supported the Greek Revolution, do not wish to force a poor people to betray its faith against their will. With the sweet expectation that a favourable mediation of Your Holiness will convince the allied powers to let us live in peace under the laws of our sovereign, we embrace your feet. Follow the signatures of the Archbishop in the name of all the clergy and of the prelates in the name of the people.” Courrier de Smyrne, no. 57, 22 March 1829. Manikas, “Σχέσεις ορθοδοξίας και ρωμαιοκαθολικισμού,” 297; Frazee, The Orthodox Church, 85–86. A handwritten version of this petition, and the text accompanying it in Italian is held in ACDS, Ekklisiastika, 1829, doc. 3, but, because of a lack of other elements, we cannot know if this an original or a translation of the French text published in the Courrier. Hofmann, Vescovadi Cattolici della Grecia, III. Syros. As we have seen in the visitations by the bishop of Chios and the archbishop of Smyrna in the Archipelago, this view did not exclude the local Catholic flock and clergy, the various superstitions and public displays of emotion that were seen as a symptom of ignorance and/or influence of other religions and denominations of the Orient and as causes of the corruption of the faith and the decline of Catholicism in the Levant that had to been countered by the post-Tridentine Catholic Church. See Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie. Courrier de Smyrne, no. 57, 22 March 1829. Bétant, Επιστολαί Ι. Α. Καποδίστρια, Κυβερνήτου της Ελλάδος, 87–89. “But neither the law of God nor of men gives the usurpers the right to become the owners of the properties they encroached upon, as they are currently attempting to do with tricks and barbaric actions in Syra.” ACDS, Ekklisiastika, 1829, doc. 176. ACDS, Ekklisiastika, 1829, doc. 176. Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans, 18, 293–95. Holland, The European Concert, 32–33. Wolf, Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question, 17. See on that subject, Doxiadis, State, Nationalism, and the Jewish Communities of Modern Greece, 19–46, esp. 33–35. In his report to the Propaganda Fide, for instance, Gabinelli noted: “Dalli oppressioni, ingiustizie, estorsioni che i Cattolici attualmente soffrono dalli Greci belligerenti, ben si deduce, cio che si deve da essi temere, in caso che si rendessero indipendenti, e dominassero, e per consequenza la ruina grande, che succedera al Cottolicismo di queste quattro isole, cioè di Tine, Sira, Naxia, e Santorino.” APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 590. See APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 36, f. 519 and 581r–v. Drakakis, Νέστωρ Φαζιόλης, 36–37. ACAS, Documents, f. 13. APF, SC Arcipelago, vol. 37, f. 336–337. Disputes around the jurisdictional boundaries of the two communes, including occasional violent episodes, continued for many years afterward, see, for instance, a letter from the

182

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

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police commander of Hermoupolis to the Community of Ano Syros in 1844, asking them to stop their children from getting involved in rock fighting around the contested frontier. see ACAS, Documents [Eggrafa], f. 64. Drakakis, Νέστωρ Φαζιόλης, 31–32. ACAS, Documents [Eggrafa], f. 57, contains documents of a later stage of this judicial affair in 1838–1839. For the transformations of the early modern Greek-Orthodox anti-Latinism through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see, for instance, Ware, Eustratios Argenti; Grigorovitch-Barski, Pérégrinations; Stamatopoulos, “Hellenism versus Latinism.” Koselleck, “Transformations of Experience and Methodological Change,” 76–77. See indicatively Doxiadis, “Defining a Hellene”; Vogli, Έλληνες το Γένος; Zanou, Stammering the Nation. See Lässig and Rürup, “Introduction: What Made a Space ‘Jewish’?” See Emerson Tennent, Letters from the Ægean, 11–12.

Chronology m m m

Years 1770– 1800

International/Regional Events Relative to the History of the Archipelago 1768–1774: Russian-Turkish War. Destruction of Ottoman fleet at Çeşme

Local Events 1770–1774: Russian occupation of the Cyclades

1770: The Orlov Revolt in the Peloponnese (1770) and its brutal 1800: Appointment of Monsignor suppression by the Ottoman army Russin as bishop of Syra 1789: Outbreak of the French Revolution 1797: Demise of the Venetian Republic 1800s

1801: Concordat between Napo- 1805: The Orthodox bishop of leon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII Andros buys the chapel of Holy Trinity from the heirs of its previ1806: British naval blockade of ous owners France and French Continental System against Britain

1810s

1814–1815: End of Napoleonic Wars. Congress of Vienna and creation of the concert of Europe

1810: Concession of the Holy Trinity chapel from the Community to the Capuchin Order

1814: Foundation of the secret 1814: Revolt of peasants against society Philiki Etaireia with the the people of the town and the aim to work for a revolution of the elected epitropos (governor) Greeks against Ottoman rule 1817: The 1805 purchase of Holy Trinity validated by Ottoman administration

184

The Island of the Pope

1820

January–July: Outbreak of liberal anti-Bourbon revolts in Spain and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

April: End of the canonical visitation of Chios Archbishop Dracopoli

1821

February: Alexander Ypsilantis declares the Greek Revolution in Moldavia, crossing the Russian-Ottoman border

April: First appeals of the Greek insurgents to the Aegean islanders

March: General uprising of the Greeks in the Peloponnese April: Ottoman reprisals. The sultan orders the execution of the Greek Orthodox patriarch. Outbreak of the revolt in Hydra and other islands May: End of the Laibach Congress, repudiation of the Greek revolt and preparation for intervention in Italy September: Capture of Tripolitsa by the Greeks and massacre of Muslims and Jews 1822

May: The Catholic communities of the Archipelago declares their neutrality in the Greek-Ottoman conflict and raise the French flag over their churches

June: Arrival of the first waves of Orthodox refugees from Asia Minor

September: Bishop Russin departs for Rome

January: The first Greek National Assembly in Epidavros votes in a republican Constitution

April: Administrative division of the Greek state excluding Syra

April: Ottoman massacres in Chios

July: Growing tensions between Orthodox and Catholics on the subject of Muslim prisoners

June: Greek reprisals: blowing up the Ottoman flagship off Chios

May–June: Peasant revolts in Naxos and Andros

September–October: Canonical visitation of the Catholic archbishop of Smyrna to Syra and the other islands. Plague epidemics in neighboring Tinos

October–December: Congress of November: Philippe Jourdain Verona. Greek delegates attempt proposes to concede Syros to the to approach the Holy See and Knights Hospitaller send representatives.



Chronology of Events

1823

January: Choice of Nafplio as seat January: Election of Giovanni of the provisional Greek governMarinello as epitropos (governor). ment. Nestor Faziolis’s first incursion against the Latins of Syra. Unearthing of a miraculous image in Tinos and beginning of the yearly March: Britain recognizes the Orthodox pilgrimage Greeks as a belligerent nation. Second Greek National Assembly in Argos

August: Death of Pope Pius VII

December: Lord Byron arrives to the besieged town of Missolonghi 1824

April: First forced collection of taxes from Syros by the Greek insurgents July: Second French intervention in Syra and arrest of Faziolis November: Official declaration of the Syra community reasserting neutrality and asking for reparations

February: First Greek loan contracted in London

January: Demands for the return of Bishop Russin to Syra

June: After having suppressed the Greek Revolution in Crete, the Egyptian fleet and army successfully attack the islands of Psara near Chios and Kassos in the Dodecanese. Massacres and refugees

March: Anti-Latin riots during the procession of the Annunciation

August: Decisive Greek victory in the naval battle of Gerontas

1825

185

April: Turco-Egyptian forces land in the Peloponnese

Summer: Arrival of mass waves of refugees fleeing Ottoman counter-attack October: Conscription of islanders ordered by the Greek government December: The plenipotentiary of the Knights Hospitaller is requested to leave Greece January: Creation of a local police force by the Greek eparch of Syra

June: Recapture of Tripolitsa by July: French intervention and arrest Turco-Egyptian forces. Greek of the Greek eparch of Syra appeal to Britain to take the Greek September: Appointment of Luistruggle under its protection gi-Maria Blancis as administrator December: Death of Tsar Alexof the Diocese of Syra ander and constitutional (Decembrist) revolt on his succession by Nicholas I

186

1826

The Island of the Pope

April: Protocol signed by Russia and Britain in Saint Petersburg for the establishment of an autonomous Greek state under Ottoman suzerainty. Fall of Missolonghi to the Ottomans

November: Greek government moves its seat to the island of Aegina

1827

January–March: Greek military victories in Attica March–May: The Third National Assembly votes in the Greek Political Constitution and elects Count Capodistria as governor July: Treaty of London, according to which the Three Powers offer to mediate for the creation of a Greek state as a tributary to the Ottoman Empire October: Joint naval squadrons of the Three Powers crush the combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleet at the naval Battle of Navarino Bay

1828

January: Arrival of Capodistria in Greece April: Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire November: London protocol signed by the Three Powers recognizes an autonomous Greek state under Ottoman suzerainty

Spring: Pirates in the neighboring Kea prepare expedition to Syria and Lebanon. Austrian squadron under Admiral Paulucci arrests the Greek eparch of Syra June: Wave of attacks against Latins in the countryside of Syra and Tinos Summer: Foundation of the new town of Hermoupolis by settlers and traders in the port of Syra. Appointment of Giorgio Gabinelli as bishop of Tinos and Mykonos January: Anti-Latin riot with casualties at the entrance of the old town of Syra

September: First plan of internationalization of Syros submitted by Blancis to the Propaganda Fide

October: Widespread fear among Catholics, European subjects, and protégés in Syros and the Levant after the naval Battle of Navarino. Beginning of the Greek military expedition to recapture Chios January: Failure of Chios expedition. Expulsion of Armenian Catholics from Istanbul July: Creation of local Greek tribunals. Lawsuit by Faziolis against the Syra community



Chronology of Events

1829

March: Signing of the London Protocol, according to which Greece would become independent under the rule of a hereditary Christian prince July: Fourth National Assembly in Argos

187

January: The clergy and the primates of the community of Syra appeal to the Holy See asking exclusion from the new Greek state July: The Latin community of Syra sends first time delegates to the Fourth Greek National Assembly in Argos

September: Treaty of Adrianople (Edirne) ends the Russian– August: Death of Bishop Russin Ottoman war. The Porte recogniz- in Rome es Greek independence 1830

February: Treaty of London signed by Britain, France, and Russia recognizes Greece as an independent state ruled by a Christian ruler

February: A special protocol of the Treaty of London guarantees religious freedom and political equality for the Catholics

1831

September: Following a revolt against him, Capodistria is assassinated in Nafplio by members of the Mavromichalis clan from Mani

December: Election of representatives for the Fifth National Assembly in Argos and Nafplio

1832

May: Treaty of London signed by the Three Powers, recognizing the frontiers of the Greek Kingdom, and offering its throne to the Bavarian Prince Otto

March: L. M. Blancis officially appointed bishop of Syra

Bibliography m m m

ARCHIVES Archive of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syros (ACDS) Archive of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Naxos, Tinos, Andros, and Mykonos (ACAT) Archive of the Community of Ano Syra (ACAS) General State Archives of Greece—Γενικά Αρχεία του Κράτους (http://arxeiomnimon.gak .gr/browse/resource.html?tab=tab02&id=1357&start=20) (GAK) Greek Parliament-Archives of Hellenic Palingenesis—Βουλή των Ελλήνων-Αρχεία Ελληνικής Παλιγγενεσίας (https://paligenesia.parliament.gr) (AEP) Historical Archive of the Congregation for the Propagation of Faith—Archivio Storico de Propaganda Fide (APF) Vatican Apostolic Archive—Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (AAV) Diplomatic Archive of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs—Archives Diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (AMAE) Austrian State Archives—Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (OeStA/ HHStA) Russian State Historical Archive (https://www.prlib.ru/en/node/411899) (RGIA) Nationaal Archief (Den Haag), Legatie Turkije en de Levant, 1814–1872, No 424.

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Index m m m

acculturation 21, 31n.12, 32n26 Albania, Albanians 28, 62, 63, 69, 77n13 Alexander I, Tsar 55–56, 58, 73, 74 Ancona 57, 73–76, 77n20 Andros, island 8, 19, 26, 30, 39–41, 45, 47, 54, 61, 81–82, 84, 88–89, 91, 184 anti–Catholicism 2, 39, 136, 176 anti–Latin (riots, attitude) 10, 60–61, 81, 116–17, 136–37, 150, 158, 174, 176, 182n59, 185–86 Arendt, Hannah 5, 13n22 Argos, town 176, 185, 187 Armenian 19, 97n38, 152, 170, 180n30 Asia Minor 19, 32n20, 33n29, 49n33, 63–64, 70, 84 Assizes (of Romania) 20, 24, 31n13, 32n25 Athens 4, 20, 74, 106, 118, 143n10, 172 Austria, Austrian 4, 8, 18, 35, 44, 55–58, 66n16, 69–70, 73, 82, 85–86, 91, 95, 105, 116–17, 126, 132, 134, 137, 144n20, 147, 154, 156, 166, 168, 170, 180n30, 186 Axiotis, Alexandros 109–10, 119–20, 122, 124, 134–38 Ayvalık 2, 64, 84, 130 Bais, family 89 Balis, Dimitrios 90, 97n32 Balkans 24, 54, 33n29 barbarism, (barbaric, barbarians) 27, 38, 59, 62, 72, 76n4, 109, 111–12, 115, 120, 179, 181n45 Barbarossa Hayreddin, Ottoman grand admiral 23 Bargigli, Joseph 149–50 Beaurepaire, Joseph Alexandre de (Count) 108–9, 137, 180n27 Benvenuti, Giovanni Antonio 57, 73, 75

bequests, pious 94, 129, 140, 156, 164–65 Black Sea 3, 14 Blancis, da Ciriè, Luigi-Maria, apostolic administrator, later bishop of Syros 11, 46, 146–47, 153–55, 158, 163–66, 172, 175–76, 179n12, 180n29, 185–86 boundaries [between ethno–religious communities] 7, 13n20, 18, 20, 22, 24, 28, 40, 61, 165, 182 Britain (Great), British 4, 10, 35, 42, 55–56, 73–75, 76, 82, 94, 99–100, 105-106, 110, 118, 135, 139, 167–68, 174, 183–87 Brusetto, Francesco 145n54 Byzantine 4, 17–18, 20, 23, 39 C(h)ristodoulou, Ang(h)elo 126, 138 Capella, Nikolaos 37 Cappellari, Mauro 164, 170 Capitulations 6–7, 22, 29–30, 48n58, 104, 132 Capodistria, Ioannis 55–56, 74, 135, 168, 172–73, 175 Caprano, Pietro 151, 156 captives, see: prisoners Capuchins 27–28, 32n23, 41–42, 45 Carbonari, Carbonarism 8, 56–57, 75 Cardelli, Luigi-Maria, archbishop of Smyrna 46, 93–95, 98n46, 99, 104, 108, 128n8, 135, 137, 140–42, 146–47, 154–54, 156, 158n36, 160n3, 180n20 Carga, Andrea, Catholic bishop of Syros 26, 34n56, 38, 41 Catalans 19–20 Catholicism 3, 8, 24, 26, 28, 38, 41, 61, 109, 123–24, 126, 141, 151–52, 181n45 Cephalonia, island, Cephalonian 10, 74, 101–2, 109, 124, 134–36, 147, 149–50, 158, 174

206

Index

Çesme, port of 19, 71, 169, 183 Chastelain, Philippe 152 Chateaubriand, François–René de 11, 163, 170 Chios, island 2, 9, 19, 26, 32, 33n43, 38, 42, 44, 47, 59, 63–64, 69, 69–72, 77n8, 84–87, 89, 91, 93, 97n32, 99, 105, 129 132, 134 146, 164, 168–70, 175, 179n5, 180n31, 181n42, 185 Christendom, Christianity 18, 19, 21, 75, 81, 116 civilization 27, 33n32, 53, 59, 111–12, 115–16, 120 class 8–9, 24, 36–37, 62, 92, 152, 165 classical (antiquity, Greece) 53, 55, 58, 172 clergy 27, 31; Catholic 29, 34n52, 38, 42–43, 45, 47, 62, 92–95, 97n42, 111, 116–17, 127n5, 129, 140–43, 147, 151–53, 155, 158, 164, 168, 173–74, 181n39, 187; Orthodox 25, 31n7, 54, 64 Collaro, Giovanni, bishop of Tinos 61, 76n34, 112n7 Colocotroni, brothers 68 colonization 3, 18, 92, 146, 151, 179 Commune 30, 39–40, 176, 182n56; communal council 140, 142, 158; communal institutions 23; communal government 141; communal police 136; communal courts (justice) 40, 129 communicatio in sacris 38 concubinage 93–94 Congress of Vienna (1815) 56, 183; of Laibach (1821) 55, 65n7; of Verona (1822) 6, 55, 68, 73–74, 184 connectedness, connectivity xii, 3–5, 8, 12n12, 126 Consalvi, Ettore, cardinal 8, 56–58, 65n10, 73–75, 77n26, 93 Constantinople, xiii, 8–10, 18, 21, 24, 26, 28–29, 31n7, 32n17, 39, 41–42, 44, 58–59, 63, 71, 77n13, 83–85, 92–3, 108, 123, 128, 132, 146, 148, 155–57, 164, 169–70, 178 Constitution 55, 85, 88, 116, 132, 169, 175, 180n24, 184–86 Consuls (also: vice-consuls) 8, 10, 26, 29, 35, 44–45, 60–61, 63, 65, 66n29, 68, 73, 77n20, 82–86, 89, 91, 94–95,

96n6, 99–106, 110–11, 115–25, 132, 135, 139, 146–50, 153, 157, 166, 170, 180n27 conversion 7, 21, 26, 28, 32n26, 39, 48, 61, 86, 137, 146, 151; converts 19, 24, 39, 86 Coressi, Vincenzo (Vinkentios) 44, 63, 710–72, 155, 164, 167, 179n5 Corfu, island 57, 73 Council of Florence (1439) 22; of Trent (1545–63) 22, 26, 40; Tridentine 7, 27, 43, 181n42 Crete, island 2, 19, 26, 28, 31, 53, 64, 129–31, 146, 175, 185 Crusades, crusaders 7, 10, 18, 32n17, 55, 81, 170 Cuculla, Francesco 141–42, 145n55, 164 culture xii, 5,12n19, 21; cultural 1, 5, 18–22, 31n4, 35, 48n2, 62, 179 Cunda, island 64 Cyclades islands 1, 3, 4, 7, 22, 27, 31n1, 54, 60, 72, 100, 102, 107, 178, 183 Cyprus, island 21, 33, 64 David, Pierre Étienne, French consul in Smyrna 61, 66, 96, 103–4, 106, 108, 110, 112–n8, 113n26, 114n50, 147, 152–54, 170 debt 41, 107, 126, 129, 133–34, 144n27, 158 Delenda, Caspar 43–44, 49n33, 61 Della Rocca, abbé 6, 11n1, 21, 32n23, 35, 48n2 Della Somaglia, cardinal 142, 145n59 Dikaios, Grigorios (Papaflessas) 115–17, 120 diocese 3, 9–11, 38–39, 42, 44, 46, 72, 93–94, 126, 139, 142, 146, 154–55, 163–64, 185 Division navale du Levant, see: Station du Levant Dominicans 95 Dracopoli, Xaverio, Catholic bishop of Chios 38–48, 93–94, 184 Dramalı, Mahmut, pasha 91 Drizza(s), Eleftherios 135, 147–50, 153, 158 Dutch, see Netherlands Egypt, Egyptian 87–88, 129–31, 146–48, 155, 167–68, 185–86

Index 207

Emerson Tennent, James 4, 99 encroachment xii, 3, 146 England, English see: Britain Enlightenment 89, 116 Eparch, see prefect Epitropos 8, 35, 37, 46, 92–94, 141, 183 Evia 97n32, 129, 156–57 Europe, Europeans 3–8, 11, 18, 21–22, 282–29, 36, 42, 45, 47, 55, 65, 69, 73–76, 82–84, 91, 95, 96n6, 100–1, 104–5, 115–21, 131–34, 139, 148–49, 154–57, 166–68, 170–73, 178–79, 183, 186 excommunication 41, 44, 56, 81, 98n46, 166, 175 extraterritoriality, extraterritorial xii, 6, 22, 30, 83, 110, 148, 174 Fabvier, Charles 157, 168–69, 180n23 Fauvel, Louis-François-Sebastien, 106, 113n32, 118 Faziolis, Nestor 99–102, 106–10, 121, 123–25, 135, 146–47, 149, 174–76, 185–86 Fontana, Francesco Luigi, cardinal 38 foreigners (forestieri) 6, 41–42, 62, 92, 96n6, 136, 141, 159, 173, 180n32, France 3, 8, 11, 29, 35, 55–56, 60, 72–73, 75, 82–83, 85, 89, 94, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107–8, 111, 119–22, 126, 146, 149–55, 157, 166–67, 169–70, 174, 180n35, 183, 187 Franciscan 12, 46, 93, 146, 152, 154 Francis I 29 Frangochiotika (documents in Greek language written with Latin script) 33n30, 50n44, 145n57 Franks 1, 5, 20, 22, 48n2, 59, 136, 154, 159 Friendly Society, see; Philiki Etaireia frontier xii, 20, 22, 42, 70, 111–12, 115–16, 169, 173, 179, 182n56, 187 Gabinelli, Antonio 166; Giorgio 170, 180n35, 181n51, 186 Genes, Genoese 19–20, 32n14, 33n47, 92, 172 Germanos, bishop of Patras 75 Gibraltar 169, 171

Giustiniani, 32n14, 42, 77n13, 172; Giacinto 41; Ignazio 170 Grecolatins 5, 59, 82–83 Greece xiii, 4, 12n11, 21, 32n20, 33n29, 53, 55, 58–59, 74, 75, 83, 88, 91, 107, 115–16, 123, 131, 152, 168, 170–74, 180n35, 185–87 Greek Revolution 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 12n5, 37, 39, 42, 47, 55, 167, 181n39, 184–85 Grivas, Michail 124 Guarchi, Giuseppe, Catholic bishop 42, 45–46 Habsburg Empire, see: Austria hajj 85 Hamilton, Gawen William Rowan, British commodore 147, 156 Hargous, Pierre, French naval officer, 106, 125 Hellenes 5, 75, 172 Hellenism xiii, 3 Helots 10, 108, 125, 127n5, 128n34, 172 Heptanesians 134–35, 147, 150 Hermoupolis, town xiii, 1–3, 12n4, 122, 143n8, 175–76, 182n56, 186 Holy See 3, 8, 27, 41, 47, 56–57, 68, 73–75, 81, 93, 126, 141–42, 170, 178, 184,187 Holy Trinity chapel 38–42, 45, 47, 137 homeland 6, 17, 90, 103, 135, 141, 167, 173, 181n39 hybridity, hybrid identities xii, 3, 7, 18, 20, 22, 24, 28, 35, 39, 48n2, 173, 179 Hydra, island 9, 31n11, 36, 47, 54, 58–59, 61, 64, 72, 76, 81, 84, 97n37 Ibrahim Pasha 136, 146, 148, 150, 155 identity 1–3, 7, 9, 13n24, 17–18, 22, 28, 32n17, 48, 59, 91, 108, 124, 136, 143, 151, 172, 176 Ierotheos, Orthodox metropolitan of Naxos 59–60, 89 Inglessis, Nikolaos 109 Ionian islands, Ionians (see also: Heptanesians) 10, 33, 73–74, 100, 102, 121, 124, 134 Ios, island 84 Islam 19, 24, 59, 171 Istanbul, see: Constantinople

208 Italy, Italians 8, 42, 46, 56, 77n13, 92, 166, 184 Janissaries 24 Jerusalem 22, 75, 152 Jesuits 27, 31–32, 34, 39, 45, 77n13, 94–95, 98n46 Jews 54, 69, 116, 146, 174, 184 Jourdain, Jean-Philippe-Paul 9, 74–76, 152, 184 Kanaris, Konstantinos 69, 85, 96n10 Kapudan pasha, Ottoman admirals 22, 24, 26, 60, 62, 71, 84–85, 107, 120, 127n20, 129 Karayannis (Karaioannis), Panayotis 88 Karmanioloi, political party 89 Karystos, town of 129 Kasos, island 84, 129, 146–48 Kea (Zia), island 64, 77n6, 90, 127n3, 156, 186 Kimolos, island 90, 127n3 Knights Hospitaller 9, 75–76, 92, 152, 171, 184 Korais, Adamantios 59, 66n26, 128 Kos (Stankoy), island 30 Kountouriotis, Georgios 135 Kriezis, Antonios 133 Kythnos (Thermia), island 64, 77n6, 90 Lalechos, Lazaros 107, 121 Lami, Pierre 110, 119–20, 148 landowners 10, 19, 24, 54, 61, 139–39 La Tour-Maubourg, Florimond de Faÿ de, Marquis, French ambassador, 66n29 and n31, 76n1, 85 law 20–21, 36–37, 45, 62, 105, 123, 148, 166, 173, 180n32, 181n39 Lazarist 62, 142 Lebanon 131, 156–57, 188 legato pio 129, 142, 145n47 Leopold of Saxe-Coburg 175 Levantine[s] xii, 1–3, 5–6, 11n1, 22, 29, 36, 42–44, 46–47, 76, 120, 126, 131–32, 148, 152, 165, 169, 171, 178 Livorno 57, 64, 65n12, 74 Logothetis, Lykourgos 71, 89

Index

London 64, 76, 152, 167–68, 173, 185–87 Loukaris, Cyril, Orthodox patriarch 34n54, 38 Louvaris (Zorzis and Niccolo) 41 Ludwig I of Bavaria, king 176 Lützow, Rudolf von, count 58 Ma[t]zaraki[s], Vang[h]eli[s] 60, 90 Macedonia 64, 84 Malta, Maltese 33n29, 72, 74, 100, 169, 171 Mamluk (empire) 22 Mani, Maniot 62, 131, 175, 187 Mantzis, family 89 Marinello, Giorgio 40–41; Giovanni (governor) 121–22, 124–25, 128n28, 139, 141–42, 144n36, 146–47, 150–55, 157, 159, 160n10, 185 Markopolitis, Michail 59–60, 89 marriage 45; mixed 19, 21, 27, 29, 97n42, 166; inter- 17, 23, 40; clandestine 93 Marseille 64, 72, 100 Masse, N., vice-consul of France 97n29 Mavrokordatos, Alexandros 74–75, 77n26, 175 Mavromichalis, family, 75, 187; Georgios 75; Petrobey 58, 65n6 merchants 1, 4, 9, 29, 36, 54, 61, 64–65, 91, 99–100, 105, 109–11, 118, 126, 127n10, 130–32, 134–35, 147, 152, 168, 172, 175–76 Metaxas Andreas 74–75, 78n26; Konstantinos 86–88, 90, 96n19, 135, 144n28, 153 Metternich, Klemens von 8, 55–56, 58, 66n16, 73, 75 Miaoulis, Andreas 122–23, 134 millet 22, 24–25, 35 Milos, island 54, 84, 88, 90, 127n3 Missolonghi 129, 185, 186 Morea, see: Peloponnese Moschonissia, see: Cunda multilingualism 21, 146 murder, murderer 37, 60, 62, 117, 136, 157, 173–74 Muslim 2, 6, 22, 26, 54, 55, 84–87, 96n12, 116, 132, 146, 166 Mykonos, island 54, 64, 101, 109, 124, 134–35, 166, 186

Index 209

Nafplio 89, 91, 150–51, 167, 175, 176, 185, 187 Naples 26, 42, 55–57, 65, 72, 106, 110, 142 Nasuhzade (Kara) Ali Pasha 85 nation-state xii–xiii, 2–3, 7, 57, 112, 115, 163, 169 nationalism 6–7, 115 Navarino, naval battle 11, 167–68, 180n19, 186 Naxos, island vi, xiii, 3, 8, 19, 23, 24, 30, 31n13, 42, 44, 47, 54, 59, 60–61, 63–64, 76n1, 77n13, 81–86, 88–93, 96n11, 107, 116, 127n3, 128n35, 136, 140, 145n56, 163–65, 167, 170, 179n5, 184 Negroponte, see: Evia Netherlands, Dutch 35, 86, 113n29, 115, 148, 166, 174, 184 orientalism, orientalist 43, 75, 94, 172 Ottenfels-Gschwind, Franz-Xaver 152, 155, 158, 161n29 Otto, king 187 Ottomans 2, 4, 6–7, 18, 25, 38, 58, 60, 63, 71–72, 82, 84, 88, 103, 129, 167, 186 Papantoniou, Theocharis 107, 124, 133–34 Paris xiii, 6, 29, 56, 59, 76, 91, 104, 108, 136, 147–48, 152, 154, 161n23, 168, 171, 178 Paros, island 54, 83, 84, 88, 90, 96n19, 100 Passarowitz (treaty of ) 28 Patriarchate, Ecumenical 7, 25, 31n7, 33n37, 38, 40, 59, 72 Paulucci, Amilcare 132, 157–58, 186 peasants, peasantry 10, 19–20, 36–37, 47, 53–4, 61, 71, 82, 89–90, 135, 156, 164–65, 169, 183 Pègues, Louis (l’Abbé) 62, 82, 90 Peloponnese (Morea) 8, 19, 20, 26, 31n4, 35, 45, 53–54, 59, 60, 68, 75, 87, 91, 97n32, 105, 109, 129–30, 136, 146, 148, 155, 167, 175, 183, 184 Pera (Community, neighborhood in Istanbul) 22, 61, 154, 168, 170 Peri, Giorgio 157 Phanariots 24, 25, 53, 63, 74, 175 philhellenism, philhellenes 4, 69, 73, 76n4, 85, 99, 111, 157, 158

Philiki Etaireia (Friendly Society) 54–55, 71, 81, 89, 97n32, 115, 166, 183 piracy, pirates 5, 10, 20, 48n2, 59, 62, 64, 117–18, 126, 131–32, 135, 148, 150, 152, 156–58, 168, 173, 186 police 74, 86–87, 100–1, 109–11, 112n5, 119, 134–36, 147–49 Popes: Pius VI 56; Pius VII 56, 74, 78n26, 183, 185; Gregory XVI 180n34 Pontifical Greek College of Saint Athanasius 27 Porte, Sublime, or Ottoman 5, 24, 31n7, 36, 53, 58, 66n31, 76n1, 123, 173, 176 Portugal 152 prefect (eparch) 62, 81–83, 87–88, 90–91, 96n23, 97n29, 101–2, 109, 134 Prefect of the Propaganda Fide 38, 93, 137, 142, 164, 172; of the Missions in Constantinople 46, 142, 154 preference (right of ) 36, 40, 47, 48n10 primates 9, 19, 60–61, 68, 85–88, 90–91, 102–3, 105, 107, 110, 112n8, 116, 118, 123, 125, 127n8, 128n33, 141, 187 Printezis, Antonios 46 prisoners (and captives) 9, 24, 54, 60, 66n32, 83–87, 93, 96n12, 105, 132 privateers 48n2, 114n45, 117–18 Privilegio, Gabriele 141, 144n46 Propaganda Fide, Sacra Congregatio de xiii, 4, 8, 27–29, 38, 40–41, 44–45, 71, 73, 92–93, 108, 111, 126, 137, 140–42,147, 154–56, 163–64, 166, 170, 186 prostitution, prostitutes 125–26, 128n30 protectorate 10, 29, 100, 152, 173 Provisional Government, the revolutionary Greek administration (1821–27) 3, 74, 82, 86, 88, 91, 103, 105, 109–110, 115, 118, 153 Psara, island 2, 9, 31n11, 59, 85, 126, 129–30, 132, 134, 146–48, 185 Radou, Konstantinos 88 Ragusa, Ragusans 20 refugees xii, 1–5, 9–10, 57, 63–64, 67n46, 70, 72–74, 83–85, 91, 93, 95, 99–101, 130, 134, 139, 143, 184–85 Renieris, Ioannis 88

210

Index

Res¸ id Mehmed (Kiutahi), pasha 91 Rigny, Henri de 103–8, 110–11, 113, 117–18, 125, 128n33, 147, 149–52, 155–58, 161n23, 171–72, 174 Roman, identity 17–18, 20, 24, 28–29; Church 39, 42, 44, 46–47, 95, 164, 172; Curia 29, 137 Romania 20–21, 32n20, 153 Rome xiii, 6, 8, 11, 18, 28–29, 38, 41, 45–46, 54, 56–57, 61, 63, 74–75, 91–93, 104, 109, 126, 140–142, 148, 154, 163, 170, 179n2, 180n20, 184 Rossi, Pierre 148, 172 Russia 35, 45, 55–56, 66n29, 75, 92, 167, 174, 186–87; Russo–Ottoman wars 7, 35, 56 Russin, bishop of Syra (1800-29) 8, 11, 39– 47, 49n21, 50n44, 54, 63–64, 92–94, 97n44, 109, 126, 139–43, 145n55, 154–55, 161n33, 163–65, 176, 184, 185, 187; Francesco Canonico 44, 50n51 Russo, Leonardo 141, 145n46 Salacha, family 38, 126, 138, 179n12; Ioannis 37; Giorgio 57, 63, 67n43, 92, 139 Samos, island 71, 81, 89, 168, 175 San Marino 169–71 Santorini, island 19, 43, 49, 54, 61–62, 66n16, 81, 88, 90, 95, 107, 116–17, 127n3, 136, 145n56, 164, 165, 167 Sargologo, Nicolas 50n44; Constantino 141 Sattelraum 5, 178 Scassi 92 Schism (1054) 18, 32n17; schismatic 27, 32n17, 38, 40, 48, 109, 117, 139, 141 Seljuk Empire 22 Septinsulars (see: Heptanesians) Serifos, island 88, 90 Sicily, Sicilians 30, 33n29, 184 Sifnos island 41, 84, 88–89, 97n29 Sinan Pasha 24 slave, slavery, slave trade 9–10, 37, 54, 71–72, 85–86, 96n15, 105, 130–32, 138, 144n19 sovereignty xii, 4–6, 10, 13n23, 30, 35, 83, 87, 103, 110–11, 115, 117–18, 120–22, 124–25, 132, 146–47, 150, 169–70, 175 Spadaro, Michail 101

Spain 55, 73, 152, 166, 184 Spetses, island 9, 36, 47, 48n10, 54, 59, 105, 126, 156 Spyridonos, Emmanouil 82, 95n3, 101–2, 112n12 Station du Levant 10, 110, 104, 107, 113n26, 129, 132, 149–50 Stefano[u] family 126, 138; Gregorio 141, 176; Giorgio 46, 63, 92, 94; Nikolas 50n44; Petros13n24 Stourdza, Alexandre 74 sultan 5, 6, 9, 24, 35, 55, 57–58, 61, 71, 74, 87, 112n10, 121, 148, 168, 184 Sylivos, Michail, Metropolitan 61 Symi, island 96n23 syncretism 28, 32n27, 40 Syria 86, 131, 143n12, 156, 186 Tatars 32, 168 taxation 6, 9–10, 25–26, 82, 107, 118, 126, 133, 137, 146, 151, 164 Thermia island, see: Kythnos Tinos, island xiii, 3, 9–10, 19, 34n56, 39, 42, 47, 50n51, 61, 64, 66n34, 77n6, 81–82, 84–86, 93, 95, 100–3, 105–6, 112n7, 116–17, 127n3, 128n35, 135–38, 170, 175, 184–86 tithe 9, 62, 69, 82–83, 87–90, 116, 118, 122, 127n8, 133, 148, 150, 152, 156, 164–66, 175 Tombazis, Iakovos 58, 81 Trieste 74 Tripolitsa, town of 53–54, 68, 184–85 tsar 55–56, 58, 73–74, 185 Turcophile 9, 37, 85, 95, 101, 160n4 Turin 154 Turks 39, 54, 57, 60, 68–69, 72, 84, 90, 97n32, 103–4, 117, 120, 153, 170–72, 180n19 Vafiopoulos 83, 88 Vehid Pasha 71 Valsamachi, Giovanni 74 Vatican xiii, 4, 6, 8, 27, 31n7, 42, 44, 46, 56, 61, 75, 92, 126, 134, 138 Veggetti, Andrea 60, 66n29, 76n1, 84–86, 91, 140, 163 Venice, Venetians 10, 21, 24, 26, 56, 74, 169–70

Index 211

Venturi, Domenico 45, 50n44, 94, 98n46 Vienna xiii–xiv, 55–57, 74, 148, 167, 178, 183 violence xii, 2, 41, 44, 47, 62; ethnic 10, 61, 108, 112n7, 116–17, 125, 133–34, 136, 144, 155, 157–58, 174; sexual 86  Vitali(s) family 172; Antonios 139 Vokos, Ioannis 134 Voropoulo, Zane (father) and Antonio (son) 97n44, 145n55 Vuccino, Michail 26; Natale 103, 110, 113n29, 121; Gaspare 140

Xantachi, Giuseppe (Don) 161n33 Xantaky, Giorgio 165–66, 175 Ypsilantis, Alexander 53–54, 59, 64n6, 184; Dimitrios 63, 68, 86 Zante, island 33n29, 57, 68, 110, 124, 135 Zea island, see: Kea Zizinia, Pandion 148 Zorzano, Constantino 92 Zygomalas, Theodosios 26