The Latins in Greece: a Brief Introduction

chapter 1 The Latins in Greece: A Brief Introduction Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis The Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders cast a long shadow on Greece’s subsequent history and on relations between Greeks and western Europeans down to the present day. Pope John Paul ii’s apology to the Orthodox for the events of the crusade, in 2001, and the satisfaction with which it was received by certain sections of the clergy and of wider Greek society serves to illustrate, if not the actual impact of the events themselves, at least popular perceptions of the events in Greece and the West as well as the use made of these events in 20th-century historiography. Today, the relations of the medieval western world with the Greek/Byzantine East may be more relevant than ever. The Eurozone crisis of the early 2010s has been accompa- nied by the re-emergence in segments of the press and society (both Greek and western European) of negative national stereotypes emphasising the differ- ences between Greek and western-European culture and questioning whether a union between the two is viable or indeed desirable. The terms ‘Latin Greece’, which features in the title of this volume, and ‘medieval Greece’, which also features in the book, may require some explana- tion. Here, they are used as shorthand to refer to the Latin polities that were founded on Byzantine lands in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. They can be taken therefore as rough synonyms for the political entity known as the Latin Empire of Constantinople or Romania, as it was more commonly called by Latin contemporaries. These polities were the product of conquest. Even before the conquest of Constantinople was achieved on 12 April 1204, the cru- sading army, comprised of Frankish knights and Venetians, had inadvertently laid the foundations of the new empire by agreeing on a pact, aimed at safe- guarding the interests of the participants in the expedition in the event of the siege’s success. Following the city’s capture and the installation of a Frankish knight, Baldwin of Flanders, in the throne of Constantine, the crusaders set about partitioning the Byzantine Empire amongst themselves. This was a daunting task not only militarily, but administratively as well, for the conquer- ors first had to determine what lands and resources were there for the taking and how they might be equitably divided. In the event, both the theoretical division and the conquest of the new lands were achieved rapidly if somewhat haphazardly. Out of this process a number of Latin crusader polities emerged, © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�84�04_00� 2 Tsougarakis which either owed allegiance to the emperor at Constantinople but were in practice governed independently, or, as was the case with Crete, were ruled as colonial appendages of western European powers. The first such state to be founded was also the shortest-lived one: Boniface of Montferrat, who had led the Fourth Crusade and had hoped to be elected emperor, conquered much of northern Greece and founded what would later be known as the Kingdom of Thessalonica. The suzerainty of Constantinople over the kingdom was implicitly acknowledged when, in 1209, Emperor Henry crowned Boniface’s orphaned son Demetrios as first king of Thessalonica. The kingdom’s fall to the Greeks of Epirus in 1224 was a stark reminder to the West of the precariousness of the new empire’s position. Faced only with sporadic resistance, Frankish contingents of knights carried the expansion southwards, eventually founding the lordship (later duchy) of Athens and Thebes, the counties of Boudonitsa and Salona, in central Greece and the Frankish state par excellence in the Aegean, the Principality of Achaea, in the Peloponnese. The new lords of these territories were the vassals of the emperor of Constantinople. The conquest progressed at an equally rapid pace in the islands. Euboea (called Negroponte by the Latins), in Latin hands since 1204, was assigned by Boniface of Montferrat to three Lombard nobles, known as triarchs, each ruling a third of the island. Between 1209 and 1216 the entirety of the island had come under the control of a single one of these lords, Ravano dalle Carceri, who placed himself under the suzerainty of Venice. Thereafter, the island occupied a peculiar position whereby it technically owed allegiance to the empire but was in all but name a Venetian appendage, ruled by the Serenissima. Venetian subjects, led by Marco Sanudo, also embarked on the conquest of the Aegean islands and the establishment of the Duchy of the Archi pelago, with its “capital” at the island of Naxos. The establishment of the Venetian nobility in the Aegean islands, again, meant that while technically the islands were held of the emperor (and of the prince of Achaea after 1248), their rulers had to balance their own interests and those of their suzer- ains against those of their motherland.1 Venice’s most important domain how- ever, was the island of Crete. Realising Crete’s advantageous position, Venice conquered the island and began a well-planned colonisation campaign in 1211. Though conquered as a direct result of the Fourth Crusade, Crete was not part of the Latin Empire and was subsequently ruled as a dependence of Venice, by colonial authorities appointed from the metropolis. Venice’s acquisition of 1 For an examination of this balancing act, see Marina Koumanoudi, “The Latins in the Aegean after 1204: Interdependence and Interwoven Interests”, in Urbs Capta: the Fourth Crusade and its Consequences, ed. Angeliki Laiou (Paris, 2005), pp. 247–65..

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