Building identity: Architecture as evidence of cultural interaction between Latins and Byzantines in medieval Greece

The mountainous landscape of the Greek Peloponnesos is marked by castles that attest to the settlement of predominantly French-speaking Western Europeans in the region following the Fourth Crusade in 1204 C.E. These Franks, as the Byzantines called all Westerners, gradually formed with upper echelon Greeks a mutually supporting elite. This mixed population left in its sacred and secular structures a material record of a syncretic society. My dissertation examines twelve churches built or adapted during the first hundred years of the Frankish domination and settlement of the Peloponnesos, then called the Principality of the Morea. I analyze the nature of hybridity in the built environment and show how a new architectural koiné developed to serve a mixed culture. Three elements of architectural practice—plans, construction methods, and ornamentation—serve as diagnostics in analyzing the character of “Moreote” architecture. For example, at the Cistercian church of Zaraka in Stymphalia, the Latin patrons commissioned a structure very like the churches of their central France even as it employed typically Byzantine construction. Greek adoption of Western elements can be seen at the church of the Panagia Rachiotissa in Phlious, where crocket capitals adorn a Middle Byzantine style church. I trace the introduction and adaptation by users of such elements as signals of exchange in this pluralistic landscape. I suggest that Moreote style cannot be explained by the traditional canons of medieval architectures (“Western” and “Byzantine”). Borrowing from anthropologists such as Sackett and Giddens, I propose rather that Moreote style cross-cuts such style labels to form a new, unique architectural tradition. I argue that Moreote style is defined not so much by specific forms and designs as by its patrons\u27 and builders\u27 working modes, their process of combining and adapting practices and forms. Moreote churches are thus examples of how architecture and other cultural products (and even non-tangible processes such as language) help define identity. The study is relevant not only to historians of medieval architectures, but those looking at other hybrid or plural societies through their material culture