A Companion to Latin Greece

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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 soci-
ety 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,