Venetian Crossroads. East and West and the Origins of Modernity in Twelfth-Century Mosaics in San Marco

In April 1204, a Western crusading army on its way to the Holy Land attacked and occupied the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople in the notorious debacle of the Fourth Crusade. Pope Innocent III had adamantly forbidden the detour but lost control over the army. After the siege was successful, he seems to have wanted at least to use the conquest to effect a forced reunion of the churches East and West. In this frame of mind Innocent later explained to Theodore Laskaris, Emperor of Nicaea, who had complained that an army commissioned to aid the Holy Land had instead turned their crusading swords against fellow Christians, that the conquest was the result of inscrutable divine providence of just judgment. Greek insubordination to Rome was an evil, as he explained, that met the evil of the crusaders’ greed and deception (Registrum, ed. Hageneder, vol. 11, 63). Innocent was not allowed to remain complacent, however; for when the reunion failed to happen and even citizens and soldiers began moving from Jerusalem to the conquered Eastern Roman capital, the pope again reproached the aggressors.

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Antony Eastmond ‘It began with a picture’: Imperial art, texts and subversion between East and West in the twelfth century

Power and Subversion in Byzantium ◽

10.4324/9781315601809-14 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 137-160

Keyword(s):

Twelfth Century ◽

East And West ◽

Imperial Art

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The Papacy and the Greeks (1122–1153)

Church History ◽

10.2307/3161452 ◽

1959 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 115-130

Author(s):

John Gordon Rowe

Keyword(s):

Twelfth Century ◽

Southern Italy ◽

New Developments ◽

General Terms ◽

Political Drama ◽

East And West ◽

Opening Section

It is the peculiar distinction of Steven Runciman to have directed our attention to the importance of the twelfth century in the “hardening” of the schism between the Greek and Latin Churches. In the main, Runciman attributes this unhappy development to those tensions which arose between East and West as a result of the crusades and the establishment of the Latin States in Syria-Palestine. While it is not our intention to question Runciman's arguments, it may be suggested that there are other fruitful approaches to the problem of relations between Rome and Constantinople in the twelfth century which Runciman has touched on only in passing. In general terms, it is the purpose of this article to suggest that the development of the schism must also be understood within the context of a complex political drama, centred on southern Italy, in which the Papacy, the Normans, the Germans and the Greeks were the chief protagonists. Our investigation will be confined to the period extending from the signing of the Concordat of Worms in 1122 to the death of Pope Eugene III in 1153. The purpose of the opening section which follows is: 1) to describe the genesis of this web of conflicting aims and objectives; 2) to indicate in what ways the problem of church union had become woven into the fabric of these political developments; 3) to delineate the various responses, both ecclesiastical and political, which the Papacy made to these new developments in her relations with the Greeks prior to the Second Crusade.

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