Mistah
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Mistah
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To begin, there is an odd, polylingual etymology behind the name. I
doubted this origin when I first read it in the guidebook I purchased at the
site (written by a Greek professor), but when a pictorial guide to Greece
written in Italy attested to the same story, I began to accept it.
“Mistra” (which is Mystras in the Greek nominative form) is the
French pronunciation of myzethra, a Greek ricotta-like cheese.
According to various sources, the Franks gave this name to the hill either
because someone named Myzethra ruled there, because the cheese was produced
there in abundance, or because the hill itself, at the foot of Mt. Ta˙getos,
resembled a giant mound of cheese. (Although this seems to border on history
according to Monty Python.) The town was established when the Frankish prince
Guillaume II de
Villehardouin built a fortress atop the hill in 1249. It was taken, along with
the surrounding region, by the Byzantine emperor, Michael VIII Paleologus in
1262, who made Mystras the capital and seat of government for the Kingdom of
Morea. For the next 200 years the area was ruled by a succession of nobles who
were related to the Byzantine emperors and were given the title of Despot.
(Presumably this word did not carry the negative connotation it does today).
To help you recognize a Despot or Byzantine emperor when you hear of one,
their names ran in families like “Paleologus” or “Cantacuzenus” (like
the Habsburgs and Plantagenets of Western Europe).
Contrary to our expectations of the word, during these two centuries of
despotism (as outlined in the guidebook we purchased there —Mistra,
by Nikos V. Georgiadis, Athens, 1989), Mystras “became 'the Florence of the
East' and the intellectual movements it engendered and fostered came to be
regarded with respect beyond the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire and
throughout the countries of the West.” According to the Lonely Planet guide, a
school of humanistic philosophy was founded at Mystras by Gemistos Plethon
(1355-1452), and “his enlightened ideas attracted intellectuals from all
corners of Byzantium.” After the younger brother of Emperor Constantine,
Demetrios, ultimately surrendered Mystras to the Turks in 1460, many of the
pupils of Plethon moved to Florence, where they influenced the Italian
Renaissance.
Unlike the ruins of ancient Sparta below, the remains of
Mystras, well
preserved and restored, testify to the architectural and artistic achievements
here in the Eastern Renaissance. A map of the town shows three monasteries (one
now an active convent) and nine churches (one of them designated a cathedral)
distributed over the hillside. In modern times—the 1950s and 60s—the
churches were restored and the frescoes cleaned. Thanks to these efforts the six
churches I visited were intact, and the surviving frescoes had a brilliance
and a liveliness to them unlike anything I had seen at Byzantine churches and
monasteries in Crete.
The Pantanassa (an appellation of the Virgin Mary meaning “of all things,” or, loosely, “Queen of the Universe”—not to be confused with Barbarella) was a larger church in the convent with the same name. In this church the front sections (known as the sanctuary) were blocked off with a wooden screen (iconostasis) that was ornately carved and decorated with gilded icons. One arch in the main section featured a vivid fresco of Christ riding back into Jerusalem. Outside the church the courtyard of the convent was decorated with potted ferns. No nuns were to be seen, but the area was patrolled by a black and white cat, and several of her grown kittens. Two of them acquainted themselves with Maryl. She, unfortunately, was suffering from a terrible sinus headache and gave up trying to inspect the churches, but sat still on a ledge in the sunlight for an hour or more, which made her lap a popular place for the cats.
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© 2007 Rick VanderLugt |
The six kilometer drive west from Sparta to
My favorite was the small church in the monastery known as the
Perivleptos. The nativity fresco in one of its arches had a very pleasing,
almost modernistic, curve to the placement of madonna, child, animals and
angels. The ceiling of even a small Byzantine church is an intriguing study in
the geometry of interacting arches and domes. There are no simple flat spaces,
and none of the upper spaces are left undecorated by significant scenes from the
life of Christ.
