Episode 306 - Church Union

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 306,

Church Union.

Today's episode is longer than usual, because I felt this story needed to be told all in one sitting, even though it covers events across a twenty year period.

In many ways, this is a follow-up to the Fourth Crusade. It's the story of another Latin attempt to silence the Romans and to re-impose Catholic rule on them.

Many of the same players are involved, many of the beats echo echo from 70 years earlier, and so I am presenting this tale in a similar way to the events of 1203-1204 as one long siege of Constantinople.

The news that Constantinople had been captured by the Byzantines was received with horror in Rome.

Though it couldn't compete with the wailing and gnashing of teeth which the fall of Jerusalem had caused, you might be surprised at the level of anguish it provoked.

Pope Urban IV described the feeling as like a spear piercing our heart, and he immediately wrote to every corner of Christendom demanding that a crusade be recruited and directed against the schismatic emperor of the Greeks.

This might all seem hysterical given that the Byzantines were a Christian people, and that the Latin Empire had made precious little effort to enforce Catholic norms on the locals.

But the ideology of papal primacy had a momentum that could not be stopped.

For example, back in 1203, Pope Innocent had repeatedly told the leaders of the Fourth Crusade that he did not want them to attack Christian cities, and had excommunicated the Venetians for doing so.

Yet now Pope Urban wrote to his clergy claiming that Innocent had toiled to conquer Constantinople for the sake of Catholic unity.

The loss of the city, and with it the bishoprics which reported to Rome, was completely unacceptable, a slap in the face to the papacy's universal authority.

Fortunately for Byzantium, not everyone had forgotten the reality of the Fourth Crusade. Urban's call to arms fell on deaf ears.

There was no enthusiasm for a war with Christians, and the French and Spanish clergy complained that they were tapped out.

Between twelve oh four and twelve sixty-one there had already been a fifth, sixth, and seventh crusade, along with the Albigensian Crusade in the south of France, the Spanish Reconquista, and dozens of smaller efforts to eliminate heresy.

There was one figure who was interested in attacking Byzantium, someone I've not mentioned until now, Manfred of Sicily.

The Norman rulers of Sicily had been eliminated back in 1194.

Their kingdom, in southern Italy and Sicily, was taken over by a branch of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the descendants of Frederick Barbarossa, the leader of the Third Crusade and of course Holy Roman Emperor.

Barbarossa's great-grandson Manfred was now in charge of the kingdom.

It was a polyglot realm made up of different groups of Italians, Jews, Normans, Byzantines, and the descendants of North African Muslims.

If they were all at peace and paying their taxes, then their ruler was a rich and powerful figure.

During the reign of John Vitazis, Manfred found himself in this fortunate position and used it to launch an attack on the Balkan Adriatic coast.

Something rulers of southern Italy had been doing repeatedly since the days of Robert Giscard.

In 1257, his marines landed and captured Dirachium, the great port city on the coast, along with its supporting fortresses Avlona and Berat.

His fleet also seized Corfu.

These attacks came right in the midst of one of the many wars between Epirus and Nicaea, so rather than confuse things, I left it out until now. Epirus quickly adjusted to the new reality.

Michael of Epirus married his daughter to Manfred and gave up the Albanian coast as her dowry.

Manfred was thus another Latin figure squatting on formerly Byzantine territory.

He contributed troops to the coalition army which the Niceneans crushed at Pelagonia shortly before retaking Constantinople.

Now don't worry, none of that will be on the test, but it's important to know that the ruler of southern Italy has now occupied Dirachium.

The Pope, you see, was not interested in teaming up with Manfred, because Manfred was a Hohenstaufen, a relative of the Holy Roman Emperors who were butting heads with the papacy for control of Central Europe.

Pope Urban was much keener on working with Charles of Anjou, the brother of the King of France.

To cut a long story short, Charles was an impressive military commander and a typically rapacious Latin lord.

He inherited two large French counties, married his way into a third, and was receptive to gaining more. He soon accepted the Pope's invitation to take over Manfred's kingdom.

He was crowned king of Sicily in advance, in Rome, in 1266, marched south, killed Manfred in battle, and became one of the richest and most powerful lords in all of Europe.

Not satisfied with his astonishing portfolio, the thirty-nine-year-old Charles made it clear that his next goal was to conquer Constantinople itself.

Given the resources at his disposal and the backing of the Pope, this was no idle dream.

Over at Constantinople, Michael Palaeologos was well aware that he was in danger. The Latin world was bound to launch a counterattack, and so he did everything in his power to neutralize that threat.

As we discussed last week, he embraced the Genoese firmly. He had to have an active Latin navy working for him alongside his own ships.

But he didn't want to leave the Venetians out in the cold nursing their resentment, so he made moves to normalize relations with the Doge.

He offered Venice something close to the deal it had enjoyed under the Komni Noi.

No trade duties, some kind of emporium at Constantinople, and peace with Genoese ships in the Aegean.

For now, the Italians said no, but they were tempted.

Michael also wrote to Urban to offer church union. This was after all the ultimate ambition of both sides, to recognize each other as brother Christians, to end their conflict and to live in harmony.

Though Urban suspected that Michael was insincere, this was not a new proposal. Remember that both Vertazzis and Lascaris before him had explored this option.

In a recurring recurring refrain in this story, Pope Urban died before any decision could be made.

His successor, Clement IV, was in office as Charles of Anjou's armies captured Sicily. He was very receptive to Charles' plan to retake Constantinople and worked to bring together a Latin alliance.

At Viterbo, north of Rome, in May 1267, Clement hosted a meeting between Charles and Baldwin II, the Latin Emperor of Constantinople.

Baldwin agreed to cede a third of his empire to Charles in exchange for military assistance in getting it back.

He also promised that should his family line end at some point, his title would pass to Charles.

William of Vilhardouan agreed to a similar deal. He would remain Prince of Achaea, as in the Peloponnese, for his lifetime, but then his realm would pass to Anjou.

Finally, the Venetians were offered all their old rights and territories back if they would support this mission.

This was the Fourth Crusade resurrected, a French army on a Venetian fleet with the Pope's backing.

In a way, it was even more threatening since it wasn't weighed down with guilt about its ultimate goal.

It was also a recreation of the Norman threat which Giscard and Bohemond and their successors had been holding over the Romans for the past two centuries.

Whether he knew it or not, Charles re-enacted their tactics to justify his invasion.

Not only had he gathered legal claims to Byzantine land, but he also produced a blind boy and claimed that he was the deposed John Lascaris.

To be fair to Pope Clement, he didn't unilaterally shut the door on church union, but with Charles sharpening his sword, he felt he could dictate terms to the Byzantines.

The Pope wrote to Palaeologos explaining that the only way church union could happen is if the Byzantines simply accepted papal supremacy and everything that came with it.

The Greek Church must admit its errors, submit to papal authority, and come to Rome to be forgiven.

This was not what Michael wanted to hear. He had suggested hosting an ecumenical council to sort out the various issues between the two sides.

He'd even offered to help form a crusade against the Muslims, anything to stop the Pope from joining forces with the French. But Clement was clear.

No church council, no discussion of issues, just submission. Those were his terms.
If they weren't accepted, then Charles of Anjou would visit Constantinople to settle the matter.

With hands on hilts, Michael and Charles gritted their teeth, prepared to draw their swords when again the Pope slumped to the the floor.

Clement's unexpected death in 1268 gave the Romans a stay of execution. Michael worked swiftly to secure peace on every border.

He married his niece to the Tsar of Bulgaria, bloodied an epirate army that tried to cause trouble, and secured an agreement with the Venetians.

Now you might think that Venice would be backing Charles all the way, but the Venetian Republic was always looking out for Venetian interests first.

And as you know, the merchants of Venice were never happy when a state had bases on both sides of the Adriatic.

They had worked with the Komninoi precisely to stop the Normans from gaining such a foothold.

The Adriatic was their sea, and any power who could interfere with their shipping routes was a serious danger. So in twelve sixty eight they signed a deal with Palaeologus.

This exempted them from trade duties, gave them an emporium on the Golden Horn, and prevented them from aiding the Empire's enemies.

The Venetians wanted to get back to Constantinople and to the Black Sea.

Their profits had taken a serious hit since the Romans had returned, and they wanted to put a stop to piratical attacks on their shipping in the Aegean, which Michael had been sponsoring.

Michael also wrote to Charles's brother, King Louis IX, begging him to intervene.

The French king agreed that his brother should be fighting Muslims rather rather than Christians, and dragged Charles off on crusade for an ill fated attack on Tunis.

By the time Charles got back to business it was twelve seventy one. It was now ten years since the Romans had returned to their capital, and three years since Pope Clement had died.

There had been an interregnum in Rome with a struggle to agree on a new pontiff, pontiff, but at last the wait was over.

The new pope was Gregory X,

who, much to Charles's chagrin, agreed with Michael Palaiologos. Christians should be heading to the Holy Land, not Constantinople.
In fact, the Byzantines really should be aiding us in those efforts.

No, Charles, no invasion. We'll go for church union instead.

When Michael had finished cheering the news and dashing off a reply praising the the new Pope's zeal for peace, he had to face up to a reality that none of his predecessors had.

He now had to enforce church union.

There was no way out of it. The Pope was waiting, as was Charles of Arjou.

This is what the official Michael Stennakerim had been so vexed by when he heard that the Romans had retaken Constantinople.

How could Orthodoxy be protected when the Latins had a sword at your throat? The only way they would leave the Romans in peace is if they submitted entirely to papal practice.

Without rehashing all the differences between the Latins and the Orthodox, there were two main sticking points.

One was that the Latins had added words to the Nicene Creed, the Christian statement of faith agreed centuries earlier.

They now said that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, while the original text simply says from the Father.

This is commonly known as the Filioque, a Latin term meaning and from the Son.

The second issue was papal supremacy. No one bishop had ever had primacy over all the others.

At the original ecumenical councils, all five of the major archbishops had to agree on a change of doctrine for it to be accepted, those five being Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome.

To accept the Pope's dominance was to accept that he could introduce any innovations he liked into the Church, and there was no comeback.

An entirely unacceptable situation for the Orthodox, who believed that they had preserved Christianity in its true form.

On top of which, of course, the Latins and the Papacy were hated by many Romans for the past century of abuse, conquest, and humiliation.

The Pope arranged for a general council of the Church to be held at Lyon in 1274.

The council was going to discuss a new crusade and various organizational matters, and so Gregory invited Michael to send representatives to Lyon to make their submission to him.

Over the next three years, as Michael tried to win support for this idea, Charles of Anjou ratcheted up the pressure.

He began to ship men and supplies both to Durachium and to the Peloponnese, where William of Villardouan acted as his vassal.

The Romans sent fresh troops to Greece, and the two sides attacked from their castles when the other encroached on their turf.

Meanwhile, Charles was rebuilding his Sicilian fleet in anticipation of an invasion.

Michael now announced the plan for church union to a horrified Byzantium. No one wanted union with Rome on these terms.

The Patriarch's deputy, John Bekos, was given the fun task of explaining to Palaiologos why this was unacceptable, and his conclusion was that Latin practice was close to heresy.

The Vasilevs had him arrested and told him to look more closely at the matter while in his cell.

The Patriarch Joseph, an ally of Michael's, ended ended up retiring from public life.

He told the Emperor what he already knew, that the Orthodox could not accept the Filioque or to be dictated to by Rome. Only an ecumenical council could agree to the proposed terms.

The other assembled bishops made the Patriarch promise never to ratify the Union as stated, and so he fled to a monastery, threatening to abdicate if Michael went ahead.

Meanwhile Bekos, having read read the writings of the church fathers in prison, came to the conclusion that perhaps the Filioque wasn't quite as heretical as he'd thought.

Bekos now became Michael's clerical mouthpiece as they tried to browbeat the other bishops into accepting the emperor's logic.

In private, Michael was telling them, this is about Charles of Anjou. Do you want another Latin army to come to our doorstep? Do you want to see our city burn again?

In public, he was trying to finesse what the terms of union would really mean. He narrowed it down to three main points of issue.

Papal primacy, the right of appeal to Rome, and commemoration of the Pope in the liturgy. He and Bekos argued that nothing was really being given up.

The Pope was not going to come to Constantinople to enforce his orders, we can still interpret them.

And how many Byzantine bishops are going to travel to Rome to seek the Pope's adjudication on a dispute? And as for commemoration, well, what's wrong with that?

Michael was downplaying the reality of the situation just to get his bishops to agree in principle. The embassy he was putting together were going to Leon to accept the Pope's terms, no matter what.

He couldn't have debate still raging at home.

But his own sister told him she'd rather see him overthrown than tamper with orthodoxy. So she was sent into exile.

Michael then rounded up eleven members of the court who'd publicly objected to the plans and had them paraded through the streets. They were covered in intestines and whipped.
One of them was a woman.

His bishops begged him to stop, and asked him to pledge to limit union to the terms he'd explained, and no more. Michael put this in writing and everyone waited to see what would come back from Leon.

It was a fig leaf of acceptance that wouldn't stand up to papal scrutiny, but it put a temporary halt to the rancor.

Two ships set out for Leon in the summer of 1274. One was lost at sea, which was a bad sign.
The other made it through, depositing three shaken Byzantines onto the shore.

Acropolites, our historian, was the secular official, alongside two bishops.

They carried with them a letter from Michael and his son, acknowledging the Pope as the supreme authority in the Church, with a promise to enforce this on their subjects.

Acropolites, who had written anti-Latin tracts in the past, then swore an oath in the name of the Emperor that he held to the faith of Rome.

Prayers were chanted with the Filioque, and then Gregory preached a sermon.

In it he talked of his joy that the Greeks had returned to the fold, and that Michael was doing this of his own free will and for no ulterior motive.

It's really hard not to see the dark comedy in Byzantium's dealings with the West.

I guess it helps getting through the tragedy of it all.

So that was it. The churches were reunited, peacefully.
In one sense this was a diplomatic triumph for Michael.

The worst case scenario for all Romans was that another crusade would sail up the Golden Horn. The Emperor had prevented this.
Charles of Anjou huffed and puffed, but the Emperor's house stood.

No one in the West could authorise violence on the Byzantines anymore.

It also opened the door for Michael to attack his enemies more openly. His forces retook the fortress of Berat in the hills near Dorachium, which kept Charles' men confined to the coast.

Then the Romans fought to a stalemate with the Epirates in Thessaly before an important victory at sea. Michael took the extraordinary step of making a foreigner head of his fleet.

This was Licario, a Latin from Euboea, who had fallen out with his compatriots.

He smashed the other Latin pirates operating in the Aegean and captured most of Euboea itself, aside from its Venetian capital.

Michael also managed to keep the Venetians on side, extending their treaty with him up to 1279 and working out compensation payments for the losses they'd suffered during Licario's campaign.

A joint Greek and Latin liturgy was held at Vlachernai to commemorate the Pope. With the patriarch absent he was deemed to have abdicated, and John Bekos was elected in his place.

You have become franks, people supposedly yelled at the delegates, but much worse was to come.

Not only did people hate the idea that orthodoxy had been tainted, but many understandably felt that Michael should not be dictating church policy to the church.

Palaeologos felt confident he could ride out the storm, though, so long as he had the backing of Pope Gregory.

Church union was Gregory's great coup, and so as long as he was alive the two sides could well, you know where this is going. Gregory died on the 10th of January, twelve seventy six.

And the farce was set to continue. The next pope died after a month, the one after that lasted eight months, while his successor only managed two and a half years.

This was Nicholas III, who was not interested in aiding Charles of Anjou, but was concerned by reports that the Byzantines were not taking the Union as seriously as they should.

So in 1277, Michael convened a synod at which it was decreed that excommunication would be laid down for anyone who spoke against the Union.

Court officials had to sign loyalty oaths, and when people continued to dissent, persecutions began.

This wasn't directed at people in the street, but it was wide-reaching. Senior clergymen, monks and nuns, members of the aristocracy, and Michael's own family were all targeted.

People were whipped, mutilated, and blinded. Others were kept in jail for months at a time or dispatched into exile.

One monk had his tongue cut out for announcing that far from being a new Constantine, Michael was a new Julian.

Palaeologos must have been close to being overthrown. In addition to the horror at Union and the persecutions, remember that Michael was already very unpopular in some circles.

The Arsenites, supporters of his first patriarch, remained aloof from the church, as did partisans of the Lascarids.

The blind John Lascaris was still being held in Anatolia, where he attracted great sympathy.

Thanks to the Union, there was now a new group of dissenters, the Josephites. These were supporters of the deposed patriarch Joseph, who had clearly been railroaded out of office.

A whole new generation of martyrs were being created by Michael's actions.

Pope Nicholas now demanded a series of proofs of union.

This included written confessions of obedience from Byzantine priests, which duly arrived, including the names of imaginary bishops, since Michael knew he couldn't get the real ones to agree.

Papal legates then came to Constantinople, demanding that priests swear oaths and even ask for forgiveness for their initial errors.

Michael gave them a tour of the palace jail to show them his own kin living in squalor. As one exasperated clergyman wrote, Is this what we came back to Constantinople for?

To have Catholicism forced down our throats by our own emperor?

No one was more exasperated than Michael Palaiologos himself. He was doing whatever it took to make sure that Constantinople was not sacked again, but no one seemed to take his side.

Those standing against him were like the people who refused to desecrate churches to pay off the Latins in 1203.

What price do you put on your faith, your dignity, your relationship with God?

Those who could escape from New Rome did, and they had plenty of options for where to turn. The courts of Epirus and Trebizond welcomed exiles and proudly stated their own orthodox credentials.

In both Epirus and Thessaly, synods were held which excommunicated Michael, Beccos, and the Pope, condemning the Union of Leon.

With reports of insincerity reaching Rome, Charles of Anjou began to prepare for an invasion.

He had made friendly contact with Bulgaria, Serbia, and even the hypocrites of Epirus, all of whom were happy to support his venture.

He continued to woo the Venetians as well, though they remained on the fence.

It was a miserable few years for the Romans, and the noose seemed to be tightening.

When Pope Nicholas died in 1280, Charles began his invasion immediately.

He knew it would take the cardinals time to select a new pontiff, and the now 53-year-old king of Sicily had waited long enough. A fleet ferried men, horses, and siege equipment over to Dirachium.

Apparently, 8,000 troops were at the back of Hugh de Sully, a giant Burgundian knight.

His goal was to take the offending fort of Berat, which blocked the mountain passes, and then make straight for Thessaloniki.

The Byzantine commander at Berat sent an urgent SOS to Michael, who mobilized every soldier he could.

Hugh's forces camped out throughout the winter, while Byzantine soldiers smuggled food into the fort by loading it onto rafts and floating them down the river at night.

In spring 1281 Hugh de Sully decided to scout the Byzantine camp for himself.

He was confident that he could handle any Roman cavalry he encountered, but he hadn't counted on the skills of the Empire's Turkic mercenaries.

They ambushed Hugh, routed his bodyguard, and took him prisoner. The tall Frank was dragged into the Byzantine camp to much cheering.

His army fled back to Dirachium, and the Burgundian was eventually paraded through the streets of Constantinople.

Though it was a vital victory, it did not stop Charles's plans. The Lord of Anjou turned back to the sea and persuaded the Venetians to join him again.

The Doge had been frustrated by the slow uptick in trade. The Genoese were now embedded at Constantinople and in the Crimea, and Venice was struggling to keep up.

So they threw in their lot with the French. They did so in part because of the identity of the new Pope.

Charles had used his influence to see that Martin IV, a Frenchman, would be elected pontiff.

Martin fully supported Charles's plans, and without corresponding with the Romans, declared their adherence to the Union to be unsatisfactory.

Michael Palaiologos had sweated for twenty years and tortured his own own family to please Rome, only for their fickle politics to cast him out.

With the stroke of a pen, the Greeks were declared to be schismatics again.

On the third of July twelve eighty one, Charles signed an agreement with the Venetians and with Philip of Courtenay, the son of Baldwin II.

Pope Martin presided, declaring the campaign that would begin in spring twelve eighty three as a crusade for the glory of the faith, the mending of the schism, and the recovery of the empire usurped from the Latins by Michael Palaeologos.

It seemed that all was lost. It was the Fourth Crusade all over again.

Michael would have to withdraw troops from Anatolia, which was under attack from the Turks, and hope that the Genoese could be trusted.

Like Alexios Angelos Komnenos, he would watch the rest of his realm crumble while he hid behind the Theodosian walls.

But inaction wasn't Michael's style, and unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not shy away from interaction with the Latins.

He had a trusted cadre of Latin advisers and clergymen who he'd lent on to conduct all the Union negotiations.

He got on well with the Latin mercenaries in his army, and of course he'd entrusted the fleet to a Latin born in the Aegean.

He'd also made a significant business deal with a pair of Genoese brothers, Manuel and Benedetto Zachariah, who back in 1267 had been granted the right to mine alum in Phocaea, just north of Smyrna.

From this town on the Anatolian coast, the brothers made a fortune, since alum was a valuable commodity used in the dyeing of textiles.

The Zachariah were influential pro-Byzantine voices in Genoa, and they had connections across the western Mediterranean.

One of these contacts was Peter III of Aragon, a powerful Spanish lord who happened to be married to the daughter of Manfred, the former ruler of Sicily.

Many Hohenstaufen exiles had made their way to Barcelona, and with a fleet at his disposal and a legal claim to the island, Peter had always had one eye on Sicily.

Through the Zachariah brothers and other contacts, Michael had been writing to Peter for years, encouraging him to foment rebellion on Sicily in order to undermine Charles of Anjou.

The conspiring parties found fertile ground on the island. Charles's rule was much resented.

He rarely visited Sicily, but taxed it relentlessly to pay for his expanding military presence in the Adriatic.

The details are murky, but Michael seems to have offered up to 60,000 gold coins to the Aragonese to invade.

The Emperor debased his coins again around this time, indicating the strain he was under.

That gold would underwrite the Spanish fleet, giving Peter the confidence he needed to act.

On the 30th of March 1282, an incident took place in Palermo.

It was Easter Monday, and as people gathered for the evening service at the Church of the Holy Spirit, some French soldiers were accused of sexually harassing local women.

A brawl broke out, and the locals overwhelmed and killed the armed men.

As the church bells rang out, the crowds began chanting Death to the French, and an orgy of violence began. The mob chased down any Frenchmen they could find and massacred them.

The next morning, new leaders were chosen to take charge of the city. They sent word about what had happened to the rest of the island.

They asked their compatriots to strike at their French garrisons before they had time to organize. And they did.

Within six weeks, about 3,000 Frenchmen were dead, the rest had fled, and most significantly for Byzantium, the fleet in the harbour at Messina had had been torched.

The insurrection became known as the Sicilian Vespers, named for the evening service which congregants abandoned in order to attack their oppressors.

And it was this uprising which saved Michael Palaeologos and ultimately Constantinople itself.

Charles had to abandon all his plans and focus on restoring his kingdom. By August, Peter of Aragon landed troops on the island.

Though Byzantine gold can only have played a small role in what unfolded, it was enough for Michael to claim credit.

He wrote an autobiography of sorts listing the achievements of his reign, and this was one of them. Quote,

The Sicilians, who had only scorn for the forces remaining to the barbarian king, dared to take arms and deliver themselves from servitude and in fact if I dare to say that God prepared their liberty and that he did it by my own hands I would be telling only the truth

I don't think we need to doubt that Michael saved Constantinople from Latin rule of course ships can be lost in storms armies can fail at sieges but Michael successfully delayed Charles year after year after after year,

weakening his position as best he could and making Roman rule at Constantinople seem normal again. The longer that went on, the less likely the West was to rouse itself to attack.

There was no crusading enthusiasm for Constantinople. The only chance the Pope had of retaking the city was to find a man as capable as Charles.

Palaeologos recognized the danger, and with great effort and lots of luck, he had found a way to save the city.

Next time, we'll look at Michael's complex legacy in more detail. But given he's just prevented the Byzantines from facing another showdown with the Latins, I think he deserves to rest here.

And perhaps just this once, we'll hail him as the new Constantine.

Hi, folks, it's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman.

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