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The Lost Capital of Byzantium: The History of Mistra and the Peloponnese

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"The Lost Capital of Byzantium: The History of Mistra and the Peloponnese" is a reissue of Sir Steven Runciman's 1980 "Mistra: Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese", with a new foreword by author John Freely. In this book, Runciman tells the story of the city of Mistra, which began as a Crusader fortress built near the site of ancient Sparta. After its recovery by the Byzantines, it would go on to become not only the administrative center of the Byzantine Peloponnese, but also the cultural and intellectual center of the dying Byzantine Empire.

Runciman provides a very brief history of the Peloponnese prior to the Fourth Crusade in the first chapter, focusing on Sparta. The next seven chapters document the history of the region from the Latin conquest, through the Byzantine Despotate and the golden age of Mistra, to the final Ottoman conquest of the peninsula in 1460.

The next two chapters are a detour from what has been a fairly linear history to this point - the first covering the physical site, the layout of the city and its principal buildings, and the second chapter covering some of the highlights of the final Byzantine cultural renaissance centered at Mistra, particularly the contributions of George Gemistos Plethon. The final two chapters and epilogue document Mistra under the Ottomans and its final destruction and abandonment in the Nineteenth Century during the Greek war for independence.

As with any book dealing with the final centuries of the Byzantine Empire, there is no escaping a feeling a melancholy as you read about the final ineffectual efforts to revive the fortunes of the Byzantines, hampered as always by the squabbling of the imperial family and the nobles, and continually opposed by the usual multitude foreign enemies: Turks, Albanians, Venetians, the Catalan and Navarrese Companies, and various other Latin foes.

Runciman himself laments that portions of the history of Mistra are sketchy due to limited sources. The book itself weighs in at a scanty 144 pages (including foreword and index). Still, Sir Steven does his usual excellent job of organizing the material into an eminently readable and interesting account of this largely forgotten city. I would neither recommend nor expect a reader who has little familiarity with this period of history to read this, as the author assumes a certain amount of knowlege on the part of the reader.

This book should not be mistaken for a history of the Byzantine Empire as a whole. Runciman keeps his focus pretty exclusively on his subject, and does not spend much time on events outside of the Peloponnese if they have no bearing on Mistra itself (I recommend Donald Nicol's "The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453" for a thorough account of this period from the viewpoint of the Empire as a whole). If, however, you are interested learning about the history of Mistra and medieval Laconia, this is possibly the best source you are likely to encounter. If you have enjoyed any of Runciman's other books on Byzantium or the Crusades, you would probably enjoy this book as well.

This volume also includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos and engravings of Mistra, a map of the medieval Peloponnese, a map of the modern site of Mistra, and a family tree of the Palaeologi and Cantacuzeni.

Once you begin reading about the final centuries of Byzantium, you're sure to become intrigued by Mistra, the city crowning a conical hill five miles west of ancient Sparta that was the capital of the Byzantine province of the Peloponnese for the last two centuries of Byzantine rule (1262-1460). During this period, Mistra and the Byzantine Peloponnese constituted one of the most important (and thriving) of the Empire's surviving provinces. In the early 1400's, when the Turks had already reduced Constantinople itself to an island in an Ottoman sea, the Byzantines were successfully completing their reconquest of the Peloponnese from the descendants of the French knights who had seized it after Constantinople fell to the Fourth Crusade. Mistra remained Byzantine for seven years after the Turks conquered Constantinople itself; Sultan Mehmed II finally extinguished Byzantine rule there in 1460.

The legendary British historian Sir Steven Runciman's relatively short (150 pp.) monograph "Mistra" supplies all the detail anyone would need to satisfy their curiosity about this remarkable town, which, despite its small size and the decline of Byzantium's temporal power, became a center of learning, philosophy, and art that in some respects prefigured Renaissance Florence. Runciman's book will delight Byzantium buffs; it also provides an excellent introductory account of Medieval Greece for anyone who may be traveling to the Peloponnese. It is written in Runciman's elegantly concise and memorable style. The book's first paragraph gives a taste of Runciman's prose:

"The beauty of Greece lies mainly in contrast, the contrast between stark promontories and blue sea-gulfs and between barren mountainsides and fertile valleys. Nowhere is the contrast more marked than in the vale of Sparta, the 'hollow land' of the Homeric age. Travellers who take the main road that ran from Tegea in ancient days and runs from Tripolis today, climb up over the spurs of the Parnon range; and suddenly, as they go around a hairpin bend, with the Spartan mountain citadel of Selassia, the guardian of the pass, high above them to the east, there lies below them a valley lush with olive-trees and fruit-trees, with the River Eurotas winding between oleanders and cypresses, and behind the valley, rising steep from the plain, the sternest and most savage of all Greek mountain ranges, Taygetus, with its five peaks, the Five Fingers, covered with snow till late in the summer. In front of the mountain wall, if the morning sun is shining, they will notice a conical hill, dotted with buildings and crowned by a castle. This is Mistra."

Runciman wrote this book late in his life, and it was plainly a labor of love. (He also wrote an interesting account of his first visit to Mistra in the 1920's in a memoir entitled "A Traveller's Alphabet" (because it focused on one place beginning with each letter of the alphabet). He was traveling by yacht with his father, whom I think may have been a British diplomat, to Constantinople, and they stopped at Monemvasia and made their way up to Mistra from there.) The natives returned his affection: there is a street named for Runciman in the small town below the ruins today.

First off this is a great book. It focuses solely on the city of Mistra just south-west of Sparta. Mistra was the most important city after Constantinople by the time of the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Thessalonika had fallen. Adrianople had fallen. The Turkes surrounded Constantinople on all sides. Mistra was in the Peloponnese and it had no connection to Constantinople except by sea. When Constantine Palaeologos went from Mistra to the capital to claim his throne he had to book passage on a Venetian ship. So low had the fortunes of the Byzantines suffered. But Mistra had a history before that. It was founded by the Crusaders and had served as the major fortress in the Peloponnese for centuries.

The book's main strength is its topic. It is clear, focused, and interesting. While it sometimes drifts onto events elsewhere this is only natural given the importance placed on Mistra by the Emperors. It had an interesting history and the man in charge had the opportunity to directly affect the entire Peloponnese. The downside is that this book is short. The text only runs for 147 pages. Perhaps this was an inevitability given the lack of sources, but I think there must have been more than that. The later chapters on Turkish control of the region are especially brief. So while it makes for a nice light read it isn't as useful as it could have been. The early chapters deal with the Crusaders in the Peloponnese and the construction of Mistra. After that the next four chapters deal with the four Despots (a formal title) who ruled after the Byzantines recovered it. Then comes a chapter on the city itself and another on the philosophers who taught there. The last two chapters cover almost 400 years worth of the Turkish history at Mistra. Anyone who's read any of Runciman's books knows that he majorly loved the Byzantines and anything Greek. Given that none of his opinions in this book will come as a surprise.

Have always been a great admirer of Runciman's books but I got bogged down on this one. There were way too many names of people and their families that made it difficult to piece together without referring back to who they were- that is if you could find where you first read their name. I have been to Mistra a few times so I was ready to enjoy the book and was looking forward to its history and legacy but unfortunately I had to put it down halfway through.

I visited Mystra in 2005 and I came away wanting to know MORE about the history of the town and region. This book is very thorough and well-written. I can't wait to visit Mystra again with this book in hand.