The Myth of the White Monks' “Mission to the Orthodox”: Innocent III, the Cistercians, and the Greeks

Traditio ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 237-261
Author(s):  
Chris Schabel
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Cistercian Order ◽  
Pope Innocent Iii ◽  
Greek East ◽  
Almost All

In the early thirteenth century, numerous Cistercian monasteries were founded in the former Byzantine territories conquered in the context of the Fourth Crusade. According to the standard narrative, put forth in the 1970s, Pope Innocent III sent the Cistercians on a “mission to the Orthodox,” but the mission was a failure, because the White Monks soon abandoned almost all of their houses in Frankish Greece and Constantinople without having “converted” the Greeks. In the light of recent research on the aftermath of 1204 and on the Cistercian Order, this paper argues that the Frankish rulers took the initiative to found Cistercian monasteries in the Greek East for the same reason that they did so in the Latin West: to cater to the Latin rite aristocracy. This Cistercian mission was a success, since the Cistercian establishments in Greece generally existed as long as the Western nobility survived to patronize and protect them. There is no evidence that Innocent intended the Cistercians to be missionaries in Romania since, contrary to a once common assumption, the papacy did not view the Greeks as requiring the same kind of missionary activity that was deemed necessary in lands inhabited by pagans or heretics.

Innocent’s Ambivalence

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
George E. Demacopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Military Force ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Governing Body ◽  
Proper Sense ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Permanent Settlement ◽  
Pope Innocent Iii ◽  
Greek East ◽  
The Church

This chapter focuses on the correspondence of Pope Innocent III, his interlocutors, and his successors in order to understand more fully the conditions that gave rise to the first papal pronouncements asserting that Greek theological error was so egregious that it warranted violence, occupation, and larceny. The subjugation of the schismatic Greeks may have provided certain opportunities for those eager to assert the supremacy of the papacy as the governing body of the Church, but the use of military force to achieve and sustain Greek subjugation also called into question the integrity of the crusading endeavor and, more importantly, it upended previous assumptions regarding the boundaries of the Christian community. The events surrounding the Fourth Crusade and the subsequent maintenance of the Latin territory in the Greek East triggered a striking ambivalence in papal articulations of whether and to what extent the Greeks were “Christian” in the proper sense. As papal rhetoric gradually moved toward a more hostile characterization, the papacy became more willing to authorize a number of colonial enterprises previously inconceivable. These include violence against Greek Christians, the permanent settlement of Byzantine territory, and the extraction of Byzantine treasure.

The Khan as ‘Meta-Emperor’ in Marco Polo’s Devisement du Monde

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-410
Author(s):  
Maud Pérez-Simon
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Travel Narrative ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Marco Polo ◽  
Greek East ◽  
Universal Rule

Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du Monde (end of the thirteenth century) is one of the earliest, longest and more detailed travelogues of the Middle Ages. Widely read, the text not only describes the travels of its protagonist, but equally furnishes a comprehensive overview of Mongolian culture, society and territories. This article analyses the categories Marco Polo uses in order to describe the Khan’s realm and his exercise of power. The author rarely uses the notion of emperor in his narrative, although he clearly recognises the Khan’s claim to universal rule. The reasons behind this reluctance can be explained in several ways. First, Marco Polo became acquainted with the main languages in the regions under Mongolian rule; it might thus have seemed natural to him to use the ‘correct’ titles. Second, the French vernacular word ‘empire’ might have been reserved, in his mind, for the rulers of the ‘Roman Empire’ (in the Latin West and/or the Greek East). Finally, it seems that Marco Polo sought to ascribe to the Khans a kind of power and authority that surpassed even the might of the emperors in Europe, and this specificity could best be expressed by using a Mongolian title that, finally, was not entirely synonymous with the notion of empereur. All in all, these observations imply that the Devisement du Monde can be read not only as a travel narrative, but also as a treatise on the understanding of imperial power.

The Papacy Takes Charge

2021 ◽  
pp. 157-170
Author(s):  
James Morton
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
New Order ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Pope Innocent Iii ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council

Chapter 8 moves from the Norman kingdom of the twelfth century to the newly changed situation in the early thirteenth century, as the demise of the Hauteville dynasty and the minority of the young king Frederick II Hohenstaufen (r. 1198–1250) created an opportunity for Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) and his successors to enforce their authority in southern Italy. Meanwhile, the Latin conquest of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (1204) created an imperative for the papacy to develop a coherent policy towards the integration of Greek Christians into the Roman church’s administrative and legal structures. The chapter discusses how the papacy formulated this policy at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the resulting increase in papal interventions in the legal affairs of the southern Italian Greeks. It then looks at Pope Honorius III’s (r. 1216–1227) short-lived effort to organise Byzantine-rite monasteries into an Order of St Basil under Grottaferrata (a predecessor to Eugenius IV’s more successful fifteenth-century order). It examines the Grottaferrata Nomocanon (Marc. gr. 171), a manuscript produced at the monastery in c. 1220–1230 that was apparently intended to provide a legal guide for the new order yet was still entirely Byzantine in character. The chapter finishes by focusing on the conflict between the Holy Saviour monastery of Messina and the papacy in the 1220s–1230s as an important example of the papacy’s efforts to bring the royal monasteries of the Kingdom of Sicily under episcopal control.

“You are the Heretics!” Dialogue and Disputation between the Greek East and the Latin West after 1204

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 613-630
Author(s):  
Jeff Brubaker
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Greek East

AbstractIn the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade Byzantines and Latins engaged in numerous instances of dialogue and negotiation intended to unite the Greek and Roman Churches. The meeting between four mendicant friars and Patriarch Germanos II in Nicaea and Nymphaion in 1234 is indicative of a continuous trend in Byzantine diplomacy going back to the Komnenoi emperors that used ecclesiastical debate as a mechanism for diplomatic gain. In the years after 1204, however, church-union negotiation took on new purpose, serving to solidify Byzantine identity and resistance in the face of western invaders. Although the study of dialogue and disputation is enjoying a period of renewed focus among western medievalists, the field of Byzantine Studies, with few exceptions, has confined such material to the realm of theological research, neglecting the importance of such encounters, especially in the period after the Fourth Crusade. This study sets out to address why historians of Byzantium have been apprehensive about embracing the sources that describe ecclesiastical dialogue, and show how they can inform us about diplomacy, society and identity in the Eastern Mediterranean world after 1204.

scholarly journals Śaivism after the Śaiva Age: Continuities in the Scriptural Corpus of the Vīramāheśvaras

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 222
Author(s):  
Elaine M. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Academic Practice ◽  
The Common ◽  
Popular Work ◽  
First Time

This article makes the case that Vīraśaivism emerged in direct textual continuity with the tantric traditions of the Śaiva Age. In academic practice up through the present day, the study of Śaivism, through Sanskrit sources, and bhakti Hinduism, through the vernacular, are generally treated as distinct disciplines and objects of study. As a result, Vīraśaivism has yet to be systematically approached through a philological analysis of its precursors from earlier Śaiva traditions. With this aim in mind, I begin by documenting for the first time that a thirteenth-century Sanskrit work of what I have called the Vīramāheśvara textual corpus, the Somanāthabhāṣya or Vīramāheśvarācārasāroddhārabhāṣya, was most likely authored by Pālkurikĕ Somanātha, best known for his vernacular Telugu Vīraśaiva literature. Second, I outline the indebtedness of the early Sanskrit and Telugu Vīramāheśvara corpus to a popular work of early lay Śaivism, the Śivadharmaśāstra, with particular attention to the concepts of the jaṅgama and the iṣṭaliṅga. That the Vīramāheśvaras borrowed many of their formative concepts and practices directly from the Śivadharmaśāstra and other works of the Śaiva Age, I argue, belies the common assumption that Vīraśaivism originated as a social and religious revolution.

Aphrahat and Pauline Reception: 1 Corinthians 7 and Baptismal Reasoning in East and West

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-423
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Edsall
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Latin West ◽  
East And West ◽  
Paul's Letters ◽  
Present Argument ◽  
Greek East

In studies of Pauline reception, most scholars limit themselves to works in the second or early third century (often ending with Irenaeus or the Acts of Paul) and to material from the Latin West and Greek East. Although later Syriac sources are rarely engaged, those who do work on this material have long recognised the importance of Paul's letters for that material. The present argument aims to help broaden the dominant discourse on Pauline reception by attending to early Syriac sources, principally the work of Aphrahat the Persian Sage. I focus in particular on his discussion of baptism and marriage in Dem. 7.18–20, which has confounded scholars over the years. This passage displays a kind of Pauline ‘logic’ indebted to 1 Cor 7.20, which can be discerned among other early Christian applications of that passage in similar contexts, in both East and West.

Byzantine Scyphate Bronze coinage in Greece

1961 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 42-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The Other ◽  
Purchasing Power ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Unusual Form

The Byzantine coinage in the twelfth century was of three kinds. There were gold nomismata, with a purchasing power which must have been a good deal greater than that of a present-day five-pound note, and also nomismata of ‘pale gold’—gold alloyed with silver—of lower value; at the other extreme there were bronze coins, smaller than a modern farthing, which were the coinage of the market-place; intermediate, but still of low value, there were coins about the size of a halfpenny, normally made of copper lightly washed with silver. The silvered bronze and the gold were not flat, as are most coins, but saucer-shaped. The reason for their unusual form is not known. Numismatists describe them as scyphate, and refer to the middle denomination in the later Byzantine system of coinage as Scyphate Bronze, to distinguish it from the petty bronze coinage. Scyphate Bronze was first struck under Alexius I (1081–1118). Substantive issues were made by John II (1118–43), and such coinage became extremely plentiful under Manuel I (1143–80) and his successors Isaac II (1185–95) and Alexius III (1195–1203). After the capture of Constantinople in the course of the Fourth Crusade, the successor-states to the Byzantine Empire at Nicaea, Salonica, and in Epirus continued to issue scyphate bronze coinage, although in much smaller quantities, until after the middle of the thirteenth century.

Crusader Sources from the Near East (1099–1204)

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Edbury
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Near East ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Latin East

This chapter discusses the Crusader sources from the near East that originated between 1099 and 1204. There are no letter collections from the Latin east that were written during the twelfth century, but there are several letters from the east that contain invaluable contemporary evidence for relations between the crusaders and Alexios Komnenos. Aside from examining letters, the chapter studies the literary works that were composed by the Latins in the east, as well as the literary works written in the thirteenth century which relate to the events from before the Fourth Crusade.

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