Abstract

This chapter examines Pope Gregory IX's involvement in the Greek East, which revolved around three interconnected issues: crusade, Church Union, and heresy. Gregory used both force and negotiations in pursuit of the dual objectives of protecting Latin possessions in the area and effecting papal control over the Eastern Churches. He actively deployed the crusade to buttress the Latin conquest of Byzantium, while he was also involved in Greek-Latin ecclesiastical contacts in Greece, Cyprus, Syria, and southern Italy. In a striking – if short-lived – departure from precedent, Gregory explicitly accused the Greek Church of heresy. At the same time, his envoys’ (eventually unsuccessful) negotiations with the authorities of Nicaea were an implicit recognition of the government and hierarchy established there as continuators of Byzantium.

Keywords: Byzantium; Greek-Latin relations; Church Union; heresy; crusade

Crusade, Church Union, and heresy: these three interconnected issues delineate Pope Gregory IX's involvement in the Greek East. Gregory's activities ranged from the use of crusading force to ecclesiastical negotiations, in pursuit of the dual objectives of protecting Latin possessions in the area and achieving papal control over the Eastern Churches. The early thirteenth century was an important period for Greco-Latin interaction. Orthodox populations lived under Catholic rule not only in the recently conquered Byzantine territories in Greece, but also in Cyprus, Syria and Palestine, as well as in southern Italy; each of these theatres of interaction had its own distinctive characteristics and historical peculiarities. Over the fourteen years of his pontificate, Gregory devoted a considerable part of his activity to buttressing the Latin conquest of Byzantium by calling for reinforcements from the West. But he also dealt directly with the Byzantine ecclesiastical and secular authorities. As far as relations with the Orthodox were concerned, Gregory's pontificate was punctuated by two contrasting events. In 1232–1234, there were extensive negotiations with the Byzantine Church at Nicaea on the issue of ecclesiastical union. This was the first considerable unionist effort since 1204, as both Innocent III and Honorius III had adopted the view that the conquest had already resolved the schism by bringing the Greek Church back to obedience. In conducting these negotiations, Gregory not only distanced himself from that view, but his action also constituted a more or less direct acknowledgement of the government and patriarchate at Nicaea as the continuators of Byzantine institutions.