MALVASIA (from the Greek Monembasia, i.e , the city of the single approach or entrance; the Italian Napoli di Malvasia, the Turkish Mengeshe or Beneshe), one of the principal fortresses and commercial centres of the Levant during the Middle Ages, still represented by a considerable mass of ruins and a town of about 1000 inhabitants, stood on the east coast of the Morea, contiguous to the site of the ancient Epidaurus Limera, of which it took the place. So extensive was its trade in wine that the name of the place became familiar throughout Europe as the distinctive appellation of a special kind—the Italian Malvasia, Spanish Malvagia, French Malvoisie, English Malυesie or Malmsey. The wine was not of local growth, but came for the most part from Tenos and others of the Cyclades....
As a fortress Malvasia played an important part in the struggles between Byzantium, Venice, and Turkey. The Byzantine emperors considered it one of their most valuable posts in the Morea, and rewarded its inhabitants for their fidelity by unusual privileges. Phrantzes (lib. iv. cap. xvi. ) tells how Mauricius Tiberius made the city (previously dependent in ecclesiastical matters on Corinth) a metropolis or archbishop’s see, and how Alexius Comnenus, and more especially Andronicus Palaeologus, gave the Monembasiotes freedom from all sorts of exactions throughout the empire. In 1147 Malvasia bade defiance to the Normans, and in 1205 obliged V illehardouin, after a four years’ siege, to swear to preserve its liberties and privileges (Fallmerayer, i∙*pp. 408-409). It was defended against the Turks by Manuel Palaeologus in 1460. In 1689 it was the only town of the Morea which held out against Morosini, and Cornaro his successor only succeeded in reducing it by famine. In 1715 it capitulated to the Turks, and on the failure of the insurrection of 1770 the leading families were scattered abroad. As the first fortress which fell into the hands of the Greeks in 1821, it became in the following year the seat of the first national assembly.
See Curtius, Peloponneses, ii. pp 293 and 328; Castellan, Lettres sur la Mprée (1808) for a plan; and Valic·ro, Hist, della gueι∙ra di Candia (Venice, 1679) for details as to the fortress.
[374 words — estimated reading time: 3 minutes]