Mani by Patrick Leigh Fermor Read Free Book Online Page B

Empire. The last emperor—Constantine XI Palaeologus Vatatses—died fighting in the breach on the day the imperial city was captured by Mohammed II. In another book [2] Ihave told the story of the tomb of Ferdinando Palaeologus in Barbados, whose granddaughter, Godscall Palaeologue, vanishes from historic record as a little orphan girl in Stepney or Wapping, her father having died at Corunna in 1692. Her imperial descent is based on the supposition that the emperor was survived by a third brother, a shadowy figure called John, as well as by the historically verified Thomas and Demetrius, joint despots of Mistra. There is no point in retracing here the slender putative thread of his line through Italy, Holland, Cornwall, Barbados, Spain and the East End of London. If John existed, which is open to question, this little girl may have been the last imperial princess of the house of Palaeologue. Alas, at the end of the seventeenth century she disappeared forever into the mists and fogs of the London Docks.
    It is the belief of the Maniots, the schoolmaster told me, that the Maniots descend in part from the ancient Spartans and in part from the Byzantines of the Peloponnese, both of them having sought refuge from their respective conquerors in these inexpugnable mountains; in the same way that many of the Byzantine families of Athens sought asylum in the isle of Ae-gina. (As we shall see later, there is a certain amount of colour to both these claims.) The founder of the church and the fortified building, I was told, was a member of the Mourtzinos family, who were reputed to be descendants of the Palaeologues. The Mourtzini were a prominent family, and one of them—Michael Troupakis Mourtzinos—was the Bey of the Mani (a virtually independent prince, that is) from 1779 until 1782, when he was beheaded by the Sultan.
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    Here I must anticipate a few weeks. Some days after this, in the Deep Mani, a young man gave me the name of his uncle, Mr. Dimitri Dimitrakos-Messisklis, the Athenian publisher, who,he said, had written a book about the Mani. Back in Athens, I sought him out above his bookshop, discovering him at last up a steep flight of stairs: a learned and delightful elderly gentleman in a long cavern of books overlooking Constitution Square. Over coffee we talked about the customs and the history of the Mani, and his discoveries corroborated, amended and increased the information I had by then accumulated about the towers and the blood-feuds and the dirges. How remote, as the traffic roared below us, that stony wilderness already seemed!
    When I left, he presented me with a copy of his book. [3] It is a wonderfully complete account of the Mani, its history and legends and topography and folklore; a model for county-historians anywhere. Here, in the part devoted to the Beys of the Mani, he sets down the traditional genealogy of the Troupakis-Mourtzinos family. The beginnings are far shakier than those of the Cornwall-Barbados-Wapping Palaeologi. The first one mentioned is a Michael Palaeologus in 1482, only twenty-nine years after the capture of the City, descendant of a branch, it seems, of the Palaeologi of Mistra, who had three sons: Panayioti, Dimitri and Tzanetto. The descendants of Panayioti were known by the surname of Troupaki, either, the book states, because they defended themselves from an ambush by taking up positions in a hole— trypa , or, in dialect, troupa —or because these shadowy Palaeologi, escaping from Mistra through the gorges of the Taygetus to the Mani, hid from the pursuing Turks in remote grottoes, where, like troglodytes, they lived for years.... Finally, when the coast was clear, they all settled in Kardamyli. The nickname stuck and the imperial surname fell into disuse.... The next of the family to be mentioned (perhaps the intervening names have been omitted asthey are of little interest to the general reader) is the ruling Bey already mentioned: Michael, whose name of