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79 Mysterious because of its unique geographical character. At its narrowest only some thirty yards across, its currents change direction six or seven times a day, sometimes more. The cause is still not fully understood; Aristotle is said to have been so frustrated at his failure to solve the problem that he flung himself in.
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80 This medieval word for the Peloponnese is unknown before the early twelfth century. It is thought to have derived from the Greek word for a mulberry tree, either because of its shape or because of the number of mulberry trees that grow there.
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81 Essentially, the northwestern Peloponnese.
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82 The various fates of all the individual islands of the Aegean would be, for the general reader, hard going indeed. Those seeking further information should refer to W. Miller, The Latins in the Levant, pp. 40–45.
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83 See Chapter VI.
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84On the Art of Hunting with Birds.
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85 The political factions of Guelf and Ghibelline, which were to dominate Italian politics for almost two centuries, derived their names from those of the two great German clans, the house of Welf and that of Waiblingen (or Staufen). As time went on they came to be associated with the papal and imperial houses respectively.
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86 See Chapter VI.
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87 The Albigensian Crusade (Chapter VII.)
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88 She is also known as Isabella; in this book, however, she will be Yolande, if only to prevent confusion with Frederick’s third wife, Isabella of England.
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89 Even then, however, his career was not over. In 1224, when he was in his middle seventies, he became regent once again–in the Latin Empire of Constantinople, where the child Emperor Baldwin II had married John’s four-year-old daughter Maria. This time the old ruffian assumed the title of emperor rather than king–a title which he was to retain until his death in 1237.
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90 This was already an ominous sign: it was Gregory VII–the formidable Cardinal Hildebrand–who had brought Frederick’s great-great-great-uncle Henry IV to his knees at Canossa exactly 150 years before.
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91 See Chapter VII.
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92 Of the three great military orders–Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights–the last was the most recent, having been instituted only at the time of the Third Crusade. It too began with a hospital in the Holy Land, but from about 1230 onwards it was involved principally with the conquest of Prussia and the Baltic territories.
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93 It has been plausibly suggested that its octagonal shape may have been the model for Frederick’s magnificent hunting lodge, Castel del Monte in Apulia.
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94 Most probably by the Sicilian Giacomo da Lentini, at least twenty-five of whose sonnets have come down to us.
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95 She was the granddaughter of Henry II of England, whose daughter Eleanor had married Alfonso IX of Castile. She had already acted as regent during her son’s minority, when she had given ample proof of her statesmanship.
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96 Her sister Eleanor was married to the English King Henry III.
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97 The coinage struck at Tours, which in the thirteenth century was preferred to that struck in Paris.
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98 It continued to exist until the end of the century, but as little more than a Mongol puppet.
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99 The Nestorians held that Christ had two separate persons, the human and the divine. (The Orthodox view is that He was a single person, at once God and man.) A relatively small number survives today, mostly in Iraq, where they are known as Assyrian Christians.
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100 The famous story of Edward’s life being saved by his wife, Eleanor of Castile, who is said to have sucked out the poison from the wound, derives only from a single obscure Dominican chronicler, Ptolomaeus Lucensis. According to the old Dictionary of National Biography, it is ‘utterly unworthy of credit’; the new (Oxford) DNB is equally dismissive. Eleanor, in fact, had not even accompanied him on the Crusade.
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101 He had bought the title in 1277 from Princess Maria of Antioch, granddaughter of King Amalric II of Jerusalem, and had immediately sent out to Acre a certain Roger of San Severino as his viceroy.
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102 At this time the English kings still ruled over a considerable part of what is now France.
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103 By this time the titular Kings of Jerusalem were also Kings of Cyprus, where they understandably preferred to live.
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104 The best is that of Sir Steven Runciman in A History of the Crusades, vol. III, pp. 412–23.
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105 ‘The land of the three promontories’–a reference to Sicily’s triangular shape. The Greeks identified it with Homer’s Thrinacia, where Helios, the sun god, kept his sheep and cattle ( Odyssey, XI, 121).
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106 See Chapter XII.
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107 This is believed to be the origin of the grim reputation of the date.
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108 The French writer Maurice Druon, in his brilliant series of novels Les Rois Maudits, suggests that de Molay also cursed King Philip from the stake, and with some effect: Philip and his five immediate predecessors had reigned a total of 177 years, while the next six kings of France covered only sixty-six.
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109 Contrary to popular belief, they do not absolutely forbid it; the Persians never felt inhibited, nor very often did the Ottoman Turks. But in North Africa and Muslim Spain such productions by a Muslim artist would have been unthinkable.
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110 See Chapter XI.
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111 ‘We want a Roman, or at least an Italian!’
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112 Othman did not live to see it, but Orhan had his father’s body brought there for burial in the citadel. The town thus became something of a shrine, and the burial place of all the early Ottoman Sultans.
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113 In fact, since the serrata (looking) del Maggior Consiglio in 1298, when the Greater Council was closed to all but those families whose names were inscribed in the Golden Book of the Republic.
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114 See Chapter XI.
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115 The circumstances of his election and subsequent deposition have denied him a place on the canonical list of Popes. It was none the less somewhat surprising that Cardinal Angelo Roncalli should have adopted the same name on his election to the Papacy in 1958.
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116 See Chapter VI.
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117 In Rome Bessarion was to found an academy for the translation and publication of ancient Greek authors. By the time of his death in 1472 he had amassed an important library of Greek manuscripts, all of which he left to Venice, where they became the nucleus of the Biblioteca Marciana.
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118 The Morea–better known to us as the Peloponnese–had seen its Frankish occupiers gradually wither away, and had been an autonomous despotate within the Byzantine Empire since the middle of the preceding century. It was usually entrusted to a senior member of the Emperor’s family.
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119 Unlike the ancient vessels of the same name, Turkish biremes and triremes possessed a single bank of oars only. In the triremes there were three rowers to each oar, in the biremes they sat in pairs.
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120 It must sadly be recorded that, in defiance of their promise, on the night of 26 February seven Venetian ships, carrying some 700 Italians, slipped out of the Golden Horn and headed for home.
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121 Columbus, who was just setting out on his historic voyage from Genoa, was obliged to alter course because the sea ahead of him was so crowded with Turkish ships bringing Jewish refugees to safety.
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122 See Chapter I.
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123 The Pope ruled that the Catholic Kings were to be awarded all the land and islands, already discovered or thereafter to be discovered, that lay to the west of a line drawn from pole to pole, which itself ran 100 leagues to the west of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. Lands to the east of that line were allotted to Portugal (a concession which was later to allow the Portuguese to claim Brazil). This decision was ratified in 1494 by the Treaty of Tordesillas between the two countries.
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124 Not to be confused with Ferdinand of Spain, husband of Isabella.
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125 Venice had maintained a continuous embassy to the court of France since 1478–the first permanent diplomatic representation outside Italy.
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126 See Chapter X.
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127 Maximilian was never to receive his imperial coronation by the Pope. In 1508, however, he was to issue the Proclamation of Trent, which allowed him to assume the title of Emperor without it, and which was reluctantly accepted by Pope Julius II.
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128 See Chapter VIII.
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129 The Bolognesi celebrated their liberation by toppling Michelangelo’s magnificent bronze statue of the Pope and selling it for scrap to the Duke of Ferrara–who, in his turn, recast it into a huge cannon which he affectionately christened Julius.
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130 ‘Knight without fear and without stain’.
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131 Now to be seen in the National Gallery, London.
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132 After his defeat Cem (pronounced ‘Jem’) fled first to Egypt and later to Rhodes, where Bayezit paid the Knights 45,000 gold pieces annually to keep him out of the way. He was in fact an invaluable hostage in the hands of Christendom. He died in Naples in 1495–quite possibly poisoned by Pope Alexander VI, with the connivance of his brother the Sultan.
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133 ‘Extremely melancholic, superstitious and obstinate’.
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134 As always, numbers given by contemporary chroniclers at this period must be taken with a pinch of salt.
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135 Pope Leo X had died at the end of 1521. His successor, Adrian VI–a Dutchman from Utrecht and the last non-Italian Pope until John Paul II–lasted less than two years before being himself succeeded by Leo’s cousin, Giulio de’ Medici, as Clement VII.
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136 To describe them–as the Oxford English Dictionary does–as ‘German mercenary footsoldiers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’ is not to say the half of it. Their preposterous clothes, slashed and swashbuckling, are reflected in the court cards of a European pack, and inspired Michelangelo when he came to design the uniforms of the Swiss Pontifical Guard. There is still a French card game called lansquenet. See Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts, pp. 84–86.
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137 Near the church of Santo Spirito, an inscription still commemorates the papal goldsmith, Bernardino Passeri, who fell at that spot in the defence of Rome.
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138 J. Hook, The Sack of Rome.
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139 The other principal Spanish enclave on the African coast, Ceuta, was to be appropriated only in 1580.
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140 Where polygamy is the rule, so large a family is less surprising than it would be otherwise.
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141 Where the Emperor Tiberius had had a villa and had converted a neighbouring cave (which can still be seen) into a banqueting hall. One night, according to Suetonius, while he was feasting with his companions, part of the roof suddenly caved in. Many of his guests and serving-men were killed, but the Emperor escaped.
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142 Both are commemorated in modern Istanbul: Ibrahim Pasha by his palace on the north side of the Hippodrome, now the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art; Rüstem Pasha by one of the loveliest small mosques in the city, built by the great architect Sinan in 1561, its walls covered with superb Iznik tiles.
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143 See Chapter VII.
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144 Jurien de la Gravière, Doria et Barberousse, Paris 1886. Quoted in Bradford, The Sultan’s Admiral. (Byng’s execution in fact took place in 1757.)
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145 Tripoli had fallen in 1510 to Spain, which in 1535 had offered it to the Knights to garrison.
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146 It is actually sandstone, and roughly eighteen miles by nine.
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147 This first hospital still stands in Triq Santa Scholastica. It is now a convent of Benedictine nuns.
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148 A galleass might be described as a cross between a galley and a galleon. It was basically a cargo ship, largely dependent upon sail but also fitted with oars and a fair weight of guns.
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149 The additional ‘l’ in the place name cannot be satisfactorily explained.
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150 Preti (1613–99) was a painter of the Neapolitan school who spent the last thirty-eight years of his life in Malta.
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151 See Chapter XIII.
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152 To remind the reader:
Galley: single deck, 120–180 feet long, 200-foot beam. Normally moved under sail, but always propelled by oars when in battle. Five guns mounted in bow, several smaller ones amidships. A metal beak of 10–20 feet was used for ramming.
Galleon: far heavier than galley, two decks, both thickly mounted with guns. No oars. Tall, unwieldy: a floating fortress.
Galleass: half-way between the two. High poop and forecastle (providing cover for oarsmen), 50–70 guns, lateen rigged.
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153 Among the Christian wounded was Miguel de Cervantes, aboard the Marquesa. He was struck twice in the chest, a third shot permanently maiming his left hand–‘to the greater glory,’ as he put it, ‘of the right.’ He was to describe Lepanto as ‘the greatest occasion that past or present ages have witnessed or that the future can hope to witness’, and to remain prouder of his part in it than of anything else in his life.
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154 On the unexpected death of Francesco II Sforza in 1535 the Milanese state had returned to the control of Charles V, who in 1540 had invested his son–later Philip II–with the duchy. Milan was to remain under Spanish rule until 1706.
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155 Gardiner, History of England, vol. 3.
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156 Readers hungry for the full details–if such there be–are advised to turn to Vol. II of Horatio Brown’s Studies in the History of Venice, pp. 245–95, where the whole story is set out in remorseless detail.
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157 It is still there, next to the Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni.
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158 Until his accession in 1640, Ibrahim had spent his entire life a virtual prisoner in the Seraglio. After a brief reign marked only by cruelty, frivolity and vice, he was destined to be executed in 1648 by his own exasperated subjects.
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159 The name (the Greek word for cape) is given to the land jutting out to the northeast of Canea and protecting the an
chorage of Soudha Bay just beyond.
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160 Philibert de Jarry, Histoire du siège de Candie.
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161 Those former Muslims whose families had converted to Christianity–at least in theory–as a result of the persecutions by Queen Isabella. See Chapter XIII.
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162 In the early part of the sixteenth century the Netherlands had, as we have seen, become a province of the Spanish Habsburgs. Then, during the Reformation, the northern provinces had been converted to Calvinism and Prince William of Orange (William the Silent) had led them in a revolt against Spain. In 1579 they shook off Spanish rule and became the United Provinces of the Netherlands–though Spain did not recognise their independence till 1648. The southern provinces remained Spanish.
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163 Born Marie-Anne de la Trémouille in 1642, she married in 1675 as her second husband Flavio degli Orsini, Duke of Bracciano; their palace in Rome became the centre of French influence in Italy. Widowed again in 1698, she returned to France, gallicised her name and became Mistress of the Robes to the Queen. From the day of her arrival in Spain she virtually ran the country.
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