With the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and its dismemberment by the western crusaders (Partitio Romaniae), the whole of Macedonia became subject to the Frankish kingdom of Thessalonica, of which Boniface, marquis of Montserrat was appointed ruler. Despite the fact that they had prevailed, however, the new lords had to cope both with rivalries amongst themselves, and with the expansionist visions of Kalojan, the Bulgarian tsar Ioannitzes, who in 1207, the year of his death, arrived with his armies before the walls of Thessalonica, having first captured Serrhai and taken prisoner Baldwin, emperor of Constantinople.
The situation became increasingly confused as time went on: the Bulgarian state was consumed by inter-dynastic quarrels and after the death of Boniface, the Frankish kingdom of Thessaloniki fell into the hands of guardians of minors: the new despot of the so-called "Despotate" of Epirus, the ambitious Theodore Komnenos Doukas Angelos (121 5-1230), brother of the founder of the state, Michael II Komnenos Doukas Angelos, systematically extended his pos sessions from Skodra in Illyria to Naupaktos (Lepanto) and, by steadily advancing his armies, succeeded in capturing the bride of the Thermaic gulf and dissolving the second largest Latin bastion in the Balkans (1224). He was defeated, however, by the Bulgarian tzar lvan Asen II in 1230, at the battle of Klokotnitsa, as a result of which his kingdom contracted to the area around Thessaloniki and shortly afterwards became subject to the rising power of the period, the empire of Nicaea. In December 1246, loannis III Vatatzes, after a victorious advance, during which he captured Serrhai, Melenikon, Skopje, Velessa and Prilep, entered the city of saint Demetrios in triumph, and installed as its governor the Great Domestic Andronikos Palaiologos.
Caught at the center of expansionist designs, struggles for survival and domination and at tempts to recover lost prestige, Macedonia re pulsed the attacks of the "Despotate" of Epirus, warded off the united armies of king Manfred of Sicily and Villehardouin, ruler of Achaia, and re captured Kastoria, Edessa, Ochrid, Skopje and Prilep, before eventually being incorporated into the Byzantine Empire, which was reconstituted on the morrow of 1261 with the capture of the Queen of Cities by Michael VIII Palaiologos.
These were ephemeral, "Pyrrhic victories", for the final page of the Byzantine epic augured the demise of a legend that had been kept alive for over a thousand years. The wretched condition of the empire in every sphere enabled the Serbs of Stephen Dusan to make deep advances to the south (1282ff.), and the mercenaries of the Catalan Company to devastate the Chalkidike and Mount Athos (1308ff.), fuelled fratricidal dynastic strife between the Palaiologoi and the Kantakouzenoi, and gave rise to social turbulence such as that provoked by the Zealots in Thessaloniki.
And as the fortresses of moral and material resistance, buffeted by the maelstrom of the times, fell one after the other on the altar of short- term political planning and superstitious delusion, the myopic response to the reality of the situation brought the pagan hordes to European soil and shackled the right hand of Western civilization and Christianity. The last defenders of cities and ideals - an outstanding example of whom was the restless Manuel, governor of Thessaloniki from 1369 and subsequently emperor in Constantinople as Manuel II - felt the death rattle of Serrhai (1383) as the 14th century expired, and heard the protracted screams of Drama, Zichna, Beroia, Serbia and Thessaloniki itself - once in 1395 and once, for the last time, in 1430 - with the crescent moon flying on its battlements.
Amidst the ruins of the nation, the only beacons of endurance for the enslaved population, the only points of reference to the glorious past for those who abandoned the sinking ship in good time, making their way to the West, were the books in which they took refuge in the harsh centuries that followed - the deeply philosophical treatises, the pained verses, the inspired compositions of men like Thomas Magistros, Demetrios Triklinios, Theodore Kabasilas, Gregorios Palamas, Demetrios Kydones, and the wise jurist Constantine Armenopoulos. The strikingly warm monuments of the Christian faith, created by named and anonymous mosaicists, painters of cosmic universe, architects of the un domed divine: in the Peribleptos at Ochrid (1295), in Saint Nikolaos Orphanos, in the Holy Apostles (1312- 1315), in Saint Elias (at Thessaloniki), in Saint Nikolaos Kyritzes (at Kastoria), in the Church of Christ at Beroia (1315), in the Basilica of the Protaton at Karyes on Mount Athos (end of the 13th century). In the field of myth, masters of the palette such as the painter Manuel Panselinos and his fellow artists Eutychios and Michael Astrapas and Georgios Kalliergis.
And it was precisely at this period, when the rumored impending judgment of the souls in heaven was menacing terrified mortals on earth with its sword, that there occurred a change in the consciousness of the Byzantine world which led oppressed Hellenism to an unprecedented self awareness, taking it back to the roots of its origins.
Faced with Ottoman predomination, the imposition of the Muslim religion by forced conversions to Islam where necessary, the arrival in Macedonia a few years after the fall of Constantinople of thousands of Jewish refugees from Spain, and the migrations of Vlachs- and Slav- speaking groups, the Greek element in the Empire - the "Romaioi" (Romans) as they were called by the Turks - acquired an inner strength and rallied round the Great Idea of casting off the foreign yoke and its alien language and religion. Through the encouragement of the crusading Orthodox Church, the preservation of Greek- speaking schools, and revolutionary remittances from the Greeks of the Diaspora, especially those in Italy, it kept alive its knowledge, its language and its dreams. And as time went on and the deep wounds of the first decades of slavery were forgotten, it achieved great things in commerce and trade, on the diplomatic front, in administration, and in public relations.
Tyranny
While ruined cities like Thessaloniki, victims of the conquest, were repopulated with peoples from every region of the Ottoman Empire, others, such as Giannitsa (Yenice), were new creations with a purely Turkish population. About the middle of the 15th century, Monastir had 185 Christian families, Velessa 222 and Kastoria 938. Thessaloniki, a century later, counted 1087 families and Serrhai 357. In Drama, Naousa and Kavala, the main language spoken was Greek. The same was true of Serbia, Kastoria, Naoussa and Galatista. Stromnitsa, like Giannitsa, was a Turkish city. Jewish communities of some importance were to be found in Beroia, where there were equal numbers of Moslems and Christians, and in Serrhai, Monastir, Kavala and Drama. Few Slav speakers remained in the countryside of Eastern Macedonia - the remnants of Stephen Dusan's empire - though there were more in Western and the north of Central Macedonia.
The inhabitants, new and old, lived in separate communities, and were jointly responsible for the implementation of orders from the central authority, for the preservation of order and, most importantly of all, for the payment of taxes. The administration of the community was in the hands of the local aristocracy, which was permitted certain initiatives of a philanthropic or cultural nature. This local autonomy in matters of administration also extended to the hearing by archbishops of cases involving family and inheritance law, in accordance with Byzantine custom-law.
The administrative system of the Ottoman Empire was based on its military organization and, at the beginning of the period, the European conquests formed a single military and political district (the Eyalet of Roumelia), governed by the Beyrle Bey, a high-ranking official. In time, this broad unit was divided and Macedonia was broken up into smaller sections, of which Western Macedonia was assigned initially to the Sanjak of Skopje and later to those of Ochrid and Monastir. By contrast, both Central and Eastern Macedonia formed separate Sanjaks, with their capitals at Thessaloniki and Kavala respectively. The northern areas were assigned to the Sanjak of Kyustendil.
As during the Byzantine period, cereals, apples, olives, flax and vegetables were cultivated on the fertile plains of Macedonia. As the centuries passed, tobacco, cotton and rice were added to them. The creation of settlements in the mountainous areas and the intensification of stock-raising led to a reduction in the forested area. Trout from the rivers and lakes supplied the markets of Constantinople. From the numerous metal, silk and textile workshops - which owed much to the skills of the Jewish element - the empire ordered objects for daily use and also luxury goods. Goldsmiths, builders, chandlers, furriers, armoire's, dyers of thread and cloth-makers in a few years turned the villages and towns in which they settled into bustling production and distribution centers. They were a source of prosperity, economic strength, building activity, and intense competition. The caravans that trans ported the labor and skills of these craftsmen to Vienna, Sofia and Constantinople competed with the boats from the ports of Thessaloniki and Kavala, which discharged their cargoes at both ends of the Mediterranean. And since Hermes Kerdoos (the god of commerce) invariably walked hand in hand in Greece with Hermes Logios (the god of letters), as soon as the tempest of the conquest had subsided and the Greeks had gained control of trade and production, the Greek expatriates achieved great things in the free lands of Austro-Hungary, Germany, France and Italy (both before and after the fall of Constantinople); the church assumed a leading role, supplanting the imperial authority; thirst for knowledge and the imparting of knowledge led initially to the foundation of church schools and then to the building of community educational institutions, to which flocked not only the Greeks but also the Greek-speakers of the Balkans.
Through benefactions from wealthy Macedonians such as Manolakis (1682) and Demetrios Kyritzis (1697) from Kastoria, young men were educated in Beroia, Serrhai, Naousa, Ochrid Kleisoura and Kozani. Thanks to the inspired teaching of men like Georgios Kontaris, scholarch (head of school) at Kozani (1668-1673) Georgios Parakeimenos, headmaster in the same city (1694-1707), Kallinikos Varkosis. scholarch at Siatista (until 1768), and Kallinikos Manios in Beroia (about 1650), the Macedonians were able to partake of ancient and ecclesiastical literature and were initiated into the new achievements of science, which the intellectual pioneers of the Greek spirit were transporting from the educated West. There were many too however, who, either as refugees to the West or as willing emigrants, transmitted their own precious lights to the regenerated world of Europe: men like loannis Kottounios (1572-1657), lecturer in the Universities of Padua, Bologna and Pisa. Demetrios, the Patriarch's envoy to Wurtemberg (1559), and Metrophanis Kritopoulos, teacher of Greek in Venice (1627-1630).
Up until the beginning of the 19th century, though with a substantial break during the period of the Russian-Turkish confrontations (1736-38 and 1768-77), the Macedonian countryside prospered greatly and was at the same time the scene of unprecedented building activity. New villages were constructed and existing townships extended and beautified; amidst a climate of prosperity and expanding trade, two-storey archontika (mansions) were erected at Siatista, Kozani, Kastoria, Beroia and Florina; their tiled roofs, carved wooden ceilings, and elegant built in wooden cupboards, their reception rooms lavishly painted with floral, narrative and other motifs, and their spacious cellars and shady court yards, all reflected the wealth of their owners and the achievements of a popular art that skill fully combined the lessons of tradition with a wide variety of borrowings from East and West.
For some time after the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the subject Christians of Macedonia were content to fulfill their Christian duties by using the churches that had escaped pillaging by the conquerors. As the flock steadily increased, however, and the old buildings began to feel the adverse effects of time, while the inhabitants grew more prosperous, the need to repair and beautify the houses of God under the jurisdiction of the Greek communities and also to erect new ones became inescapable. Painters from Kastoria, and then from Crete, Epirus, and Thebes, in guilds or individually, crisscrossed Macedonia from as early as the 15th century, and hymned the glories of the Orthodox faith with their palettes, some in a primitive style, others with a more academic, refined intent. Yet others from Hionades, Samarina, and Selitsa near Eratyra immortalized human vanity in secular buildings and, in the encyclopedic spirit of the age, portrayed philosophers, fantastic landscapes, the dream of the soul - Constantinople - and the vision of progress - cities of Western Europe.