The Latin and Greek Churches in former Byzantine Lands 157
The papacy appointed a Greek vicar for those priests under the jurisdic-
tion of the Latin archbishop of Crete in 1326, when Pope John xxii instructed
Archbishop Alexander, a Dominican, to have appointed a Greek as the pre-
sul for the pastoral care of the Greeks. The papal letter does not make clear
whether his authority extended to all the Greek priests or only to those subject
to Archbishop Alexander’s jurisdiction, nor does it refer to him as a bishop, as
Joseph Gill and Sally McKee titled him. The letter that Pope Urban V wrote to
the Latin archbishop of Crete in July 1368, expressly instructed him to prohibit
the ordination of Greek priests by a person other than a Latin bishop or a Greek
Catholic, and likewise accords no ecclesiastical rank to the latter, although
Joseph Gill considered him to hold episcopal office. Georgios Rampani, whom
the Latin archbishop of Crete appointed as archpriest (protopapas) of those
Greek clergy under the archbishop’s jurisdiction, had no episcopal title.33 One
observes that the papacy and Venice, despite their differences over which of
them should exercise jurisdiction over the Greek clergy of Crete, were united
in their resolve to prohibit the entry of Greek bishops, priests and monks from
outside Crete who did not accept papal primacy, or to allow Greek Cretan
clergy ordained outside the island by such clergy to exercise their ministry
within it.
The situation in Crete, where two Latin authorities, the papacy and Venice,
were in dispute over the exercise of jurisdiction over the Greek Church found
its parallel in Rhodes, conquered by the Hospitallers from Byzantium in
around 1309. Few Latins resided in Rhodes, a situation similar to the other
smaller Greek islands of the Aegean, and the Latin archbishop of Rhodes, who
had displaced the Greek metropolitan following the conquest, was provided
for by the pope, a situation prevailing from the 14th century onwards in Cyprus,
Crete and Latin Greece in general, although the Latin cathedral chapters in
13th-century Cyprus had been more active in electing bishops and the arch-
bishop of Nicosia. One notes that cathedral chapters in the Latin churches
of former Byzantine territories, consisting of secular canons, were not large.
Their size when known ranged from 12 at Athens, Thebes and Nicosia, to 24 at
Constantinople, with most Latin dioceses having far fewer chapter members,
Limassol for example having only six. The Latin archbishop of Rhodes had two
suffragans, the bishops of Kos and Nisyros, and enjoyed iurisdictio libera over
the lay and clerical Greeks of Rhodes, which meant that he was entitled to
perform episcopal visitations and received the required procuration payments
33 Aloysius L. Tautu, ed., Acta Ioannis xxii(1317–1334), pc/cico (Rome, 1952), no. 81; Aloysius L.
Tautu, ed., Acta Urbani pp. V, pc/cico (Rome, 1964), no. 153; Joseph Gill, “Pope Urban V
(1362–1370) and the Greeks of Crete,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 39 (1973), 461–68.