Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Byzantine–Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204–1282

Abstract

In recent years there has been growth in interest in the history of the crusades and yet, despite the wide range of publications that consider various crusading frontiers, few authors have turned their attention to the campaigns fought in Frankish Greece following the capture of Constantinople in 1204. The Fourth Crusade itself has of course been exhaustively researched, and authors such as Longnon, Wolff, and Lock have devoted some attention to the Latin Empire of Constantinople and its satellites but – as Chrissis quite rightly points out – a great deal more remains to be said. Crusading in Frankish Greece seeks to redress this imbalance by offering a study of papal policy towards the Franks in Romania and its neighbours between 1204 and 1282, with specific emphasis on crusading. Some consideration is given to Byzantine perspectives and the objectives of European aristocrats active in the eastern Mediterranean, but it is the actions of the pontiffs that form of the core of this study. Structurally, this monograph works phase-byphase through this period, with chapters often dedicated to a particular pontificate. Chrissis starts his analysis in the wake of the conquest of Constantinople by considering the implications of the city’s fall for Pope Innocent III. In this section, the author ably reconstructs the various pressures that moulded papal policy at this time, examining the pontiff’s motives for launching the crusade to support the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1205. He presents this as the first crusade directed by the papacy to this region, following Rowe in his belief that Bohemond I’s campaign in 1107 was not authorised as an expedition against the Greeks. Chrissis then shows that Innocent’s commitment to this frontier was not maintained and seems to have declined somewhat after 1207. Under his successors, papal support for crusading in this area waxed and