Settlement Pattern and Land Use under the Frankish Feudal System in the Northwestern Peloponnese (Thirteenth–Mid-Fifteenth Centuries)

Following the Fourth Crusade, one of the Frankish states that were established in former Byzantine territories was the Principality of Morea, in the Peloponnese. A strict hierarchy consisting of the prince, the barons, and the fief-knights quickly implemented a feudal system and imposed it on the locals; towers were erected and settlements were relocated. Fieldwork in the Patras area, in the northwestern Peloponnese, has focused on identifying the implementation of the feudal system on the level of the barony and that of the fief. Data are drawn from surface surveys and from historical records, including Ottoman tax registers. Spatial analysis in GIS is used to examine the role of the towers in the economic and social life of the subordinate settlements and how the exercise of power manifests itself in the landscape.

Vitae et Miracula Sancti Christoduli Patmensis

The Greek dossier on St. Christodoulos, founder of the monastery of Patmos (1088), consists of four texts, three vitae and a narrative of a miracle, all written within roughly two centuries after the saint’s death by brethren of his monastic community. They are not only important for the reconstruction of the course of life of one of the most famous Byzantine saints, but they are also a unique source for the political and social history of Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean from the late 11th to the 13th century. Despite their great importance, these texts have remained almost unknown until today because they are contained in a 19th century edition that is hardly accessible any more and was intended exclusively for the monks and visitors of the John Prodromos Monastery. The new critical edition, which is accompanied by a critical and exhaustive apparatus of sources as well as an index of personal names and of all passages of previous authors quoted or referred to in the texts, will be appreciated by historians and literary scholars alike. Historians will now have at their disposal an important source for the history of the Comnenian period and beyond, while scholars interested in Byzantine literature will have the opportunity to examine in depth four important and rather complex documents, which offer three different visions of the phenomenon of sanctity in Byzantium at the eve of the Fourth Crusade. The introduction discusses several literary, historical and text-critical aspects of the dossier. Extensive summaries in English make these texts available to a wider audience for the first time.

Turning Judas into a Crusader: Local Reform and Crusade Propaganda in Thirteenth-Century Cambrai

Crusade preaching in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has often been studied as a centralised programme devised and deployed by the papacy for reform purposes. This article examines the career of John of Cantimpré, a relatively low-profile priest operating at the local level, who none the less was deeply engaged in crusade campaigns as integral to the moral reform of European society. This study first analyses an unusually sophisticated ritual performance in which a usurer was transformed into a crusader as part of a preaching event orchestrated by John of Cantimpré on the eve of the Fourth Crusade, and then investigates the representation of him as a methodical preacher who associated local concerns, such as usury and predatory lordship, with the crusading enterprise.

The Captures of Constantinople

The emperor Alexius I Comnenus took power while promising to restore the strength of a battered empire but, by the mid-1080s, the empire had lost even more territory in Asia Minor. Alexius had built a working relationship with pope Urban II and, in 1095, the pope organized the first Crusade. The Crusading movement did help the Romans recover lands in Asia Minor, but Roman interactions with Crusaders were often fraught. The tensions culminated in the capture of Constantinople by soldiers of the Fourth Crusade, an action that they justified on the grounds that Roman virtue and piety had declined. Even with the capital captured, the rhetoric of Roman renewal continued in works like the history of Nicetas Choniates. It first helped galvanize resistance to the Crusaders in the city of Nicaea and then, in 1261, it provided a platform to celebrate the emperor Michael Palaeologus after he recaptured Constantinople.

A Quarta Cruzada e a identidade cristã: a abordagem pós-colonial de George E. Demacopoulos.

A presente resenha aborda a obra Colonizing Christianity. Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade de Geroge E. Demacopoulos e a sua abordagem pós-colonial.

The Papacy Takes Charge

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.

Greek Christianity in Medieval Italy

Chapter 2 offers a historical narrative of Greek Christianity in medieval southern Italy from the era of Byzantine rule in the early Middle Ages to the fifteenth century. It begins with the transformation of Byzantine Italy during the era of Iconoclasm (8th–9th centuries) and the Macedonian dynasty (9th–11th centuries). Faced with the external crisis of Islamic invasion and the internal political crises that resulted, the Byzantine authorities placed southern Italy under the patriarchate of Constantinople and established a military government (the katepanikion) over the region, bringing settlers from Greece and Anatolia to reinforce the Greek presence there. It then describes the impact of the Norman invasion of the eleventh century, noting the hostilities that flared between Greek and Latin Christians in southern Italy as a result. Next, the chapter moves on to address the aftermath of the Norman conquest for the Italo-Greeks, discussing the so-called ‘Italo-Greek Renaissance’ of the twelfth century and Norman patronage of Greek ecclesiastical institutions such as the Patiron of Rossano and the Holy Saviour of Messina. It then details the changing circumstances of the thirteenth century, with the demise of the Norman Hauteville dynasty and the arrival of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. It also highlights the significance of the Fourth Crusade and the Fourth Lateran Council as developments that heralded increased papal interference in Italo-Greek affairs. Lastly, the chapter examines the impact of the Angevin conquest and the relegation of the southern Italian Greeks to an ethnic minority within the hierarchy of the Roman Church.

Conclusion

The conclusion summarises the principle arguments of the book. Despite the Norman conquest of southern Italy in the late eleventh century, the Italo-Greeks continued throughout the twelfth century to view themselves as an outpost of Byzantine Christianity in Western Europe. Law played an important role in the construction of their religious identity: they were orthodox not simply because they held the right beliefs, but because they followed Byzantine canon law. They were able to do so because of the pluralistic legal culture of southern Italy and because of the Norman monarchs’ resistance to papal authority, a combination that allowed Norman kings such as Roger II to act out a similar role to that of the Byzantine emperor as patrons of Greek churches and monasteries. The situation began to change in the thirteenth century, however. The end of the Hauteville dynasty, the Fourth Crusade, and the Fourth Lateran Council created conditions that led to the progressive erosion of Byzantine canon law as a juridical system in southern Italy as the papacy was increasingly successful in asserting its legal authority. Nonetheless, even as nomocanonical manuscripts lost their utility as legal sources, they provided important sources of legitimacy with the aura of antiquity to the Italo-Greeks’ distinctive religious rites and customs. In Robert Cover’s terminology, the nomocanons shifted from being sources of imperial law to sources of paideic law. The conclusion ends with observations on the important role of law in the formation of medieval religion and culture.