Brief account of the history of the Aegean Islands

Christianity spread quickly to the island. Initially Naxos was ruled by the Church of Rhodes, but in 1083 it became the seat of the Metropolis of Paronaxia. In 1207 the Venetian, Marco Sanudo, conquered the islands of the Cyclades and established the Duchy of the Aegean, with its headquarters on Naxos. For six weeks the islanders held out valiantly against the Venetians, barricading themselves inside the old Byzantine fortress at Apalyros, but finally had to admit defeat. Sanudo built a strong fortress and divided the island into 56 provinces which he shared out amongst his officers. The Duchy remained a powerful force for nigh on three centuries. In 1564 the island was conquered by the Turks, but the administration remained, to all intents and purposes, in the hands of the Venetians, the sole concern of the Turks being to collect taxes. Indeed, it is said that the Turks' fear of the Greeks and of pirates was so great that very few actually lived on Naxos; consequently Turkish influence on the island is virtually non-existent.

The history of the dukes of Naxos and the Aegean Islands

The history of Latin dominion in the islands of the Aegeans begins shortly after the fourth crusade, with the capture of Naxos by the Venetians Marco Sanudo. With a fleet of eight gallerys loaned him by the Venetian authories, Sanudo cast anchor in the harbour of Potamidides, in the south-west of the island of Naxos, and advanced upon the inland Greek fortress of Apalire, which fell to him after a five week seige, despite the ad rendered to the Greeks by the Genoses. A little later, while the Latin Emperor Henry was engrossed in his struggle with Theodore Lascaris of Nicaea , and the Venetian government was much occipied with the conquest of Crete, Sanudo with some adventurous companion, most of whom apparently paid their own expense, undertook the reduction of the other islands of the Aegean. Sanudo's islands were organised as a Duchy, with Naxos as its capital, and here the conqueror rule as Duke Marcos I for twenty years (1207-27). As a result of several similiar expedtions a dozen Venetains acquired as fiefs , more than two dozen islands in the Aegean, for which some of them did homage to the duke of Naxos or the Archipelago as the islands and the duchy were later called (that is, Egean pelago).The long and little Annuls of the Latin Archipelago, filled with the names of the Sanudo and Ghisi, Crispo and Sommaripa, Quirini, Barozzi and Gozzadini.

Besides the capital islands of Naxos, Marco Sanudo himself took over about eleven islands, including Paros, Antiparos, Nio and Amorgos as well as Cythnos, Siphnos and Melos. Marcos cousin, Marino Dandolo was enfeoffed with the important island of Andros. The brothers Andrea and Geremia Ghisi relatives of Doge Enrico acquired Tenos, Mykones , and the Northern Sporades, Skypros and Skiathos, to which they soon added shares in Seriphos and in Zia. Where the Greeks Metropolitian of Athens , Michael Choniates was then living in exile, within sight of his beloved Attica. Jacopo Barozzi became lord of the volcanic islands of Thera, called Santorin and Leonardo Foscolo of adjoining Namfio. Giovanni Quirini took over the neighbouring island of Astypalaea, called by the Latins Stampalia, which was added to the Quirini family name , and is presevered to this day in Venice in the Campiello Palazzo, and Pinacoteca Quirini-Stampalia. Marcos Venier received Cythera, and Jacopo Viaro , the island of Cerigotto, while entirely on his own initiative Filocalo Navigaioso took possession of Lemnos , of which the Latin Emperor Henry made him Grand Duke (Megadux). In the islands as on the mainland Latin feudalism supp;ied, in good parts the political and social structure under which the Greeks of high estate and low now lived as Vassals and serfs. The introduction of the feudal system was easy here, as in continentl Greece, because the inhabitants were familiar with the Byzantine Pronoia, which resembled the Western Fief Certain feudal rights of Latin origins survived in the island of Naxos and elsewhere untill their abrogation in 1720 by the Turks.

After Marco I Sanudo the ducal sceptre of the Archipelago was borne by his heirs for more than a century and a half. They were succeeded , violently, by the Crispos in 1383. Twenty-One dukes of the two-dynasties ruled, first as vassals of the Latin Emperors, next of the Villhardouin Princes of Achaia, and thereafter of the Angevins of Naples and Taranto, in 1418 they became vassals of the Serene Republic of Venice, and later tributaries of the Sublime Porte. The last Latin Christian duke, was Jacopo IV Crispo was desposed in 1566 by the Sultan Selim II , who appointed a rich Jew, Joseph Nasi, the last Duke of Archipelago (1566-79). Even now , however, latin Christian rule was not entirely extinguished for the Gozzadini, a family of Bolognese origins, survived, with many vicissitudes of fortune , as lords of Siphnos, Cythnos , and five other little islands in the Cyclades untill 1617, and the island of Tenos remained Venetian untill 1714. In the years following 1206-07, Marcos Sanudo built on a hill, on the west side of the island of Naxos, the castle, where a Roman Catholic colony still lives. Below the Castle there quickly appeared a walled town , know as Borgo, and below the Borgo there grew up , along the coast , the Modern town of Neochori. A large influx of westerners into the aristocratic clony on the hill caused Sanudo to build a Latin Cathedral in the Castro beside his own Palace,A full complement of canons was appointed to the new cathedral, and the name of Naxos was added by papal scribes to the Provinciale Romanum. The Archbishop of Naxos had under him the four suffragans of Melos Santorin, Tenos and Syra. Throughout the thirteenth century and much of the fourteenth , the Duchy of the Archipelago and the island of Naxos , and the capital city in particular, enjoyed a prosperity such as it had seldom know since the ancient Naxiotes had been members of the Delian League. From the later forteenth century, however , war and piracy again disrupted the economy of the Aegean destroyed much commerce, rendered agriculture unprofitable , and sapped the strenght and hope of the inhabitants . Rhodes fell to the Turks in JANUARY 1523, Chios in 1566, the same year in which the Naxiote Duchy of the Crispo came to an end. With the return of some slight measure of orderly rule under the Ottoman government just before the mid-sixteenth century, a little of the prosperity which the Aegean islanders had know under the Sanudi was theirs again and the population, sadly depleted in the fifteehth and earlier sixteenth centuries , grew again in numbers and in confidence.

DUCAL HOUSE OF CRISPO FAMILY TREE (PRESS HERE)