Chrysa Savvidou

During the period of Frankish rule, Chalkida was called Negreponte, a name probably derived from a corruption of the Greek Egripos or Evripos. Its strategic position for the conduct of trade in the Aegean and the wider area of the Eastern Mediterranean meant that often in its history it became an apple of strife between many conquerors.

Contact between the town and the Westerners go back to the Byzantine period, when emperors of the Komnenian dynasty (Alexios I, John II and Manuel I), granted commercial privileges to the Venetians. In 1205, shortly after the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders, Boniface of Montferrat, the ruler of the Latin kingdom of Thessaloniki, captured Euboea on his way to the Peloponnese. Boniface divided the island into three fiefs, which he granted to three terzieri or triarchs, who were knights from Verona (Ravanno dalle Carceri, Percoraro de Mercanuovo and Giberto dalle Carceri). In this way the island was divided into three parts, excluding Chalkida, which was jointly owned by all three.

After the recapture of Constantinople (1261), Michael VIII Palaiologos entered into an agreement with the Genoese in order to confront the Franks and Venetians. This agreement did not produce the anticipated results. Relations between the Byzantines and the Venetians were regulated by treaties in 1302 and 1310, according to which Chalkida remained a Venetian possession, while south Euboea belonged to the Ghisi family and the north of the island to the dalle Carceri. After 1390 the Venetians were the sole rulers of the whole of the island. The Byzantines thus finally departed, while at the same time the Ottoman Turks began to make their presence strongly felt. They finally captured Chalkida in 1470 under Mohamed II.

Chalkida was the seat of an Orthodox bishopric, but after 1261 Negreponte became the seat of the Latin Patriarchate.¹ Because of its strategic and commercial significance, the Venetian part of the town was fortified in 1303 by Francesco Dandolo.² Very few traces of these walls have survived, since Mohamed II destroyed a large part of the town when he captured it.

Negreponte certainly had several Catholic churches, but most scholars are agreed that Ayia Paraskevi was the most important. According to the modern scholar J. Koder, it was not a parish church but a cathedral. If this is true, the residence still preserved opposite the church under examination has wrongly been considered the palace of the Venetian Baïlos and should be attributed to the Latin Patriarchate. Over the entrance to the house is a symbol of St Mark, but the façade is of a Renaissance style of the 15^th century, a period later then the erection of Ayia Paraskevi.