Society, Administration And Identities In Latin Greece 117
The institutions of the Empire had already been put in place with the pact
of March 1204 between the crusaders and the Venetians regarding the division
of land and offices upon the capture of Constantinople. Baldwin, Count of
Flanders, was crowned the first Latin Emperor as Baldwin I and an upper
social stratum of Latin vassals/knights, feudal lords, soldiers and state officials
was formed.
Special committees undertook the regulation of various matters such as the
Committee of 24 for the partitioning of the Byzantine Empire (repartitores); of
particular importance were the two councils—the imperial council and the
emperor’s council—as well as the Parliament, whose members were knights
and clerics.
Within the framework of the administrative organisation, a series of offices
and titles were set up which were held by Latin knights, including the sene-
schal, constable and marshal, the chief cook (major cocus), the baker (panetar-
ius), the butler (buticularius), but also Byzantine official titles and honorifics
such as the protovestiarius (chamberlain), sebastokrator and caesar. A signifi-
cant place was held by the imperial secretariat at the head of which was the
chancellor, the judicial authority, the diplomatic service and the army.
With few exceptions, the officials and clerics of the former Byzantine regime
were removed from the administrative mechanism. Among the exceptions was
the Latinophile Theodore Branas and a number of essential staff (secretaries
and interpreters). With regard to the greater part of the Greek population, the
peasants, despite their initial forbearing stance towards the new rulers, soon
had cause for bitter resentment when they found themselves forced into serf-
dom. In this milieu, their new socio-administrative status in the Latin lord-
ships of Romania conduced to the emergence of new ideological trends of
both a social and an ethnic-religious character.
In contrast to the Latin Empire of Constantinople, in most of the remaining
dominions of Latin Greece the indigenous Greeks from early on gained posts
in the administrative mechanism. A case of particular interest is the short-
lived (1204–24) Kingdom of Thessalonica, which, in 1224, was surrendered
to the forces of Theodore Komnenos Doukas of Epirus.4 The region was not
included within the Partitio, instead comprising a fief of the empire and later
becoming a kingdom.
The internal clash between Thessalonica and Constantinople markedly
elevated the significance of the town’s large population of indigenous Greeks,
since the Emperor Baldwin acknowledged the privileges of Thessalonica,
4 Lock, Franks, pp. 57–60; Hendrickx, Οι θεσμοί της Φραγκοκρατίας, pp. 381–90. See also Michael
B. Wellas, Das westliche Kaiserreich und das lateinische Königreich Thessalonike (Athens,
1987).