Abstract
Raiding in the Middle Ages is often portrayed as an ad hoc adventure with little or no planning and assumed to involve brute force applied relatively indiscriminately. The reality is that successful raids involved detailed planning, diplomacy, and timing. Moreover, items targeted by the raiders often were not what one would expect. A raid of the Aegean Sea by the Catalan Aragonese fleet during the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1302) is a perfect example of this. Through planning and execution, Roger de Lauria not only solidified the fleet’s position as one of the most potent naval forces in the Mediterranean, but also managed to generate enough income from the raid to pay for the fleet’s operations for over a year.
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Notes
- 1.
Archivo de la Catedral de Valencia (herafter cited as ACV), Pergamino 738. For a description of the various vessels mentioned in the accounts, see: Lawrence V. Mott, Sea Power in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Catalan-Aragonese Fleet during the War of the Sicilian Vespers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 186–209.
- 2.
ACV Perg. 738. A prothontinus was the commander for a naval district responsible for the arsenal, equipment, and food production for the fleet, and for recruiting.
- 3.
ACV Perg. 738. Unfortunately, the account lumps together the amounts from the raids into North Africa and the Aegean, so it is not possible to ascertain exactly how much money came from the raid in the Ultramarina.
- 4.
Gabriella Airaldi, “Roger of Lauria’s Expedition to the Peloponnese,” Mediterranean Historical Review 10.2 (1995): 21.
- 5.
Giuseppe La Mantia, Codice diplomatico dei re aragonesi di Sicilia. 2 vols. (Palermo: Ristampa Anastatica, 1990), Codice: vol. 2, doc. 36, 51–2.
- 6.
The order for this payment was made on January 21, 1292 and noted in the fleet account. La Mantia, Codice, vol. 2, doc. 58, 77–9. The only amount of the promissio noted in each of the districts was money to pay Roger. ACV Perg. 737.
- 7.
Roger was able to float significant loans to the fleet because of various privileges, duty and tax emptions, income from raids, and a private fleet of transports. It was good to be the admiral, but there was a significant quid pro quo, and some the loans were not paid back. Mott, Sea Power, 103–5.
- 8.
La Mantia, Codice, vol. 2, doc. 65, 84–5.
- 9.
Mott, Sea Power, 250–1; Fig. 20.
- 10.
We know the fleet put in at Cotrone because three sailors deserted there. ACV Perg. 737. Bartholomaeus de Neocastro, Historia Sicula, in Cronisti e Scrittori Sincroni Napoletani, edited by Giuseppe del Re (Naples, 1868), Volume II, 409–627, chap. 121.
- 11.
ACV Perg. 737. The money is listed as ounces.tarens.grains of gold.
- 12.
ACV Perg. 738.
- 13.
This description from Muntaner is badly misplaced chronologically in his work, but other aspects appear to match the raid. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, in Les quatre grans cròniques, edited by Ferran Soldevila (Barcelona, 1983), chap. 159; Neocastro, Historia Sicula: chap. 122; Nicolaus Specialis, Rerum Sicularum. In Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, edited by L. A. Muratori. Vol. 13 (Milan: Typographia Societatis Palatinae in Regia Curia, 1727): Book 2, chap. 19.
- 14.
This estimate is based on entries in the account for 1292. In sailing from Cephalonia to Monemvasia the fleet covered approximately 400 kilometers in 14 days for an average speed of 1.2 kilometers per hour. It is not known if the fleet stopped or sailed directly to Monemvasia. In another example, the fleet took approximately five days to sail approximately 300 kilometers from Chios to Monemvasia for an average speed of 2.5 kilometers per hour, or 2.7 knots. Estimates for the average speed of a galley fleet fall between two and three knots, which coincides with the values generated from the account.
- 15.
ACV Perg. 737. The time the fleet actually was underway is unknown as we only have the dates on which the ransom was paid in each location.
- 16.
The resin comes from a Mediterranean shrub (Pistacia lentiscus) with dense twisted branches, 1–4 m (3–l3 ft) in height. The resin occurs in the bark and is made to flow by making about 10–20 incisions (called “hurts”) in the trunk and main branches. About 100 cuts are made over the season, though “hurting” younger trees inhibits future yields. The resin is collected as the tree “weeps” the “tears” of resin. Harvesting is from June to September during which time the syrup coagulates as the gum mastic drips from the cuts. These “tears” are collected and then rinsed in barrels and dried. A second cleaning is done by hand. At its prime, a tree will yield 4.5 kg (l0 lbs.) of mastic in one season. Mastic—Copyright 2005 The Epicentre, http://www.theepicentre.com/Spices/mastic.html.
- 17.
Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1973), 79, 128. Freddy Thiriet. La Romanie Vénitienne au moyen-áge: le développment et l’exploitation du domaine colonial vénitien (XIIe–XVe siècles) (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1959), 103.
- 18.
A new navi cost 106 ounces of gold, while a used galley sold for 80 ounces in Palermo. Clearly, the price of the transport was below market value. ACV Perg. 738; La Mantia, Codice, vol. 2, doc. 241, 620, 622.
- 19.
ACV Perg. 737.
- 20.
ACV 737. The price per cantaria of mastic is equal to 173 tarens (1 ounce of gold = 30 tareni; 1 tarenus = 20 grani). The entry does not tell us what type of mastic was sold but using the above figure the 158.7 metric tons of mastic was worth approximately 11,526 ounces of gold. Please note that in the illustrative tables appended to this chapter, “metric tons” has been abbreviated as “mt.”
- 21.
11,103.15.15 ounces of gold. ACV Perg. 737.
- 22.
See Note 14.
- 23.
The name Portus Junctus does not appear in any of the lexicons. Fortunately, Specialis, in describing the attack by the admiral on Modon, states: “And when sailing to Muton he came, in the port, which in the vulgar they call Juncis.” Specialis, Rerum Sicularum: Book 2, chap. 19.
- 24.
ACV Perg. 737.
- 25.
ACV Perg. 737.
- 26.
Muntaner states that Patras was attacked sometime during the voyage, but there is no entry for ransom from the town and the dates for the fleet either going to or returning from the Aegean Sea do not appear to permit enough time for the fleet to have stopped there. Muntaner, Crònica: chap. 117.
- 27.
ACV Perg. 737.
- 28.
Libro de los Fechos et Conquistas de Principado de la Morera compilado por comandamiento de don fray Johan Ferrandez de Heredia maestro del Hospital de S. Johan de Jerusalem. Publications de la Société de l’Orient latin. Série historique; IV (Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1968), 108–110.
- 29.
Neocastro, Historia Sicula, chap. 123.
- 30.
See Note 30.
- 31.
Las Siete Partidas del Rey Don Alfonso El Sabio (Madrid: La Real Academia de la Historia, 1804), Book II, Title XXVI, Law XXXII. A good example of an auction of a captured ship can be found in Andrés Díaz Borras. “La lucha anticorsaria en Valencia durante la Edad Media: El episodio protagonizado por Pere Cabanyelles (1417–1418).” Revista de Historía Naval 7 (1989): 105–129.
- 32.
ACV Perg. 737.
- 33.
ACV Perg. 737.
- 34.
ACV Perg. 737.
- 35.
The dates, goods seized, and prices paid for those goods come from the Fleet Accounts of Roger de Lauria for 1292 (Archivo de la Catedral de Valencia, Perg. 737, fol. 1).
- 36.
See Note 16.
- 37.
This high-quality, solid scarlet colorant was obtained from the pregnant female kermes parasite (coccum ilicis L.), which after being killed was dried, crushed, and mixed with water. Because of its high cost, kermes was only used for the dyeing of high-quality yarns. The kermes parasite settles mainly on the holly oak (quercus coccifera), an arborescent bush common in Boeotia, Euboea, and practically the entire Peloponnese. David Jacoby, “Silk in Western Byzantium before the Fourth Crusade,” Trade, Commodities and Shipping in the Medieval Mediterranean, Variorum series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), VII, 483.
- 38.
David Jacoby, “Silk production in the Frankish Peloponnese: the evidence of fourteenth century surveys and reports.” Trade, Commodities and Shipping in the Medieval Mediterranean, Variorum series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), VIII, 53–4.
- 39.
David Jacoby, “Silk in Western Byzantium before the Fourth Crusade,” 496.
- 40.
Miguel Gual Carmena (ed.). El primer manual hispanico de mercaderia (siglo XIV) (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1981); Francesco Pegolotti. La Pratica della Mercatura (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Medieval Academy of America, 1936).
- 41.
Angeliki E. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of Andronicus II 1282–1328 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 72–3.
- 42.
David Jacoby, “Silk production in the Frankish Peloponnese,” 49.
- 43.
Neocastro, Historia Sicula, chap. 122.
- 44.
Klaus-Peter Matschke, “Commerce, Trade, Markets and Money: Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries,” In The Economic History of Byzantium: from the seventh through the fifteenth century, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2002), 780; Haris Kalligas, “Monemvasia, Seventh-Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Economic History of Byzantium, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou, 890–1.
- 45.
ACV Perg. 738.
- 46.
La Mantia, Codice, vol. 1, doc. 203, 480–1.
- 47.
Andrea Caffaro, Annali genovesi di Caffaro e de’ soui continuatori dal MXCIX al MCCXCIII, vol. 5 (Rome: Fonti per la Histori D’Italia, 1929), No. 14.2: 131–132; Steven A. Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 182.
- 48.
F. C. Hodgson, Venice in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: George Allen and Sons, 1910), 253.
- 49.
Lawrence V. Mott, “Trade as a weapon during the War of the Sicilian Vespers,” Medieval Encounters 9:2/3 (2004) Special Edition: 236–43.
- 50.
ACV Perg. 737.
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Mott, L.V. (2022). The Art of Raiding: The Catalan-Aragonese Raid of the Aegean in 1292. In: Sohmer Tai, E., Reyerson, K.L. (eds) Mapping Pre-Modern Sicily. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04915-6_4
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