This is a substantial addition to the growing literature on the post-Byzantine diaspora. It investigates some of the key issues that the phenomenon of migration from the Greek lands in this period raises: identity, integration, networks, and, perhaps most important of all: how is a ‘Greek’ to be defined in this period? It is this last point that gives the book its particular slant. Couderc spends several pages (16-20) considering the various possible definitions in a world that lacked a Greek state, without specifically endorsing any of them. He does, however, cast his net very wide in the individual migrants that he discusses.
To take one example, Michael Alligheri is included as an example of integration into a host society (296-7, 435-6). He arrived in the duchy of Burgundy in 1461as the envoy of Emperor David of Trebizond, subsequently settled there, and became adviser and chamberlain to Duke Philip the Good. His son Antoine was prominent at the court of Philip's successor, Charles the Bold. Now Michael certainly reached Flanders from an area that had once been part of the Byzantine empire, where Orthodox Christianity was practised and the Greek language spoken. On the other hand, his surname, apparently the same as that of the poet Dante, suggests that he was of Italian, and specifically Tuscan, origin. He may well have been a merchant based in Trebizond who had won Emperor David's confidence, hence his being entrusted with the embassy to the west. If that were so, he would belong to a different phenomenon from that of the post-Byzantine diaspora and, as a likely Catholic from birth and a speaker of a romance dialect, he would have faced less formidable barriers to integration in Burgundy. So his inclusion does rather muddy the waters.
Another unlikely Greek is Gerard Grace, who was living in Northampton in 1436 (p. 502). The source that lists him (Calendar of the Patent Rolls (1429-1436), p. 536) states that he hailed from ‘Tongre in Luke in the parts of Alamain’, which is apparently a reference to Liège. C. is well aware of this provenance and notes it but nevertheless keeps him in the book. Twelve others with the Grace surname are included. Two of them, Christopher, Jeronimus and John (501, 503-4), are tentatively tagged as being linked or related to Andronikos and Alexios Effomatos, two well-attested Byzantine émigrés who are known to have lived in London between 1441 and 1483. It is hard to discern what the author feels the link is. He suggests that John de Grace may have been the John Effomatos who is documented in London in 1467 (490-1) but the basis for the identification is not entirely clear.
The inclusion of these individuals is not as eccentric as it may appear at first sight. C. is grappling with a real problem here. The names that are recorded in contemporary archival records are often hopelessly garbled. They would have been completely unfamiliar to the clerks who compiled the documents and who generally either wrote an approximation of what they heard or contented themselves with ‘John of Greece’ or ‘George the Greek’. C. has apparently concluded that ‘Grace’ is a variant of ‘Grec’, ‘Grèce’ or ‘Greke’ (102) and it is on that basis that the identification is made. Not everyone will concur with him on that, especially when all these Graces are specifically marked down in the documentation as being from the Low Countries or Italy.
At the end of the day though, C.'s decisions as to who to include in no way detract from the value of the book. Alongside the analytical text, there are three very helpful documentary appendices. The first is devoted to the Bissipat family of Hannaches (Oise), the descendants of Byzantine émigré George Palaiologos Dishypatos (401-9). The second discusses the 1399-1402 visit of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos to the west (411-17). The third provides a table of names of Greeks living in London based on various classes of document from the National Archives such as the Alien Subsidy returns and the Patent Rolls (419-29). Perhaps most helpful of all is the prosopographical register of names attested in England, the Burgundian lands and France during the period (433-590). This both synthesizes and consolidates information scattered through previous publications and adds in the author's own research findings. The book will therefore act as a useful resource for others in the field of Byzance après Byzance.
