The Latin and Greek Churches in former Byzantine Lands 161
In Constantinople and Greece after the Fourth Crusade and the resul-
tant Latin conquest, the problem was similar. Henry, the Latin emperor of
Constantinople, proposed that one-fifteenth of the properties of the Greek
Church taken by the Latin nobles should be given to the Latin Church and
implemented this in an agreement with the Latin Church of 17 March 1206.
This proportion was later increased to one-twelfth in 1217 and to one-eleventh
in an agreement of 1219 that the Latin emperor Robert de Courtenay accepted
in June 1221 and Pope Honorius iii confirmed in March 1222.39 Meanwhile in
central Greece, the agreement of May 1210 at Ravennika concluded between
the Latin prelates of the Kingdom of Thessalonica and of central Greece
and the Latin secular lords of these regions, also agreed to by Tomasso the
Latin patriarch of Constantinople and the emperor Henry, favoured the Latin
Church even more. Under its terms the Latin lords agreed to restore to the Latin
Church all properties, incomes and serfs attached to such properties taken
from the Greek Church, remaining entitled only to the payment of the tax
known as the acrosticum, the old Byzantine land tax. This agreement, covering
the area north of the Gulf of Corinth and west of Makre, a town in Thrace, did
not mention tithes, but in a revised form that Pope Innocent iii confirmed on
23 January 1216 he inserted an additional clause stating that Latins and Greeks
had to pay tithes in full in accordance with the relevant ruling of the Fourth
Lateran Council of 1215, although the Greek Church was exempted from pay-
ing tithes on those properties that were in its possession before the time of the
council. One observes that Pope Innocent iii was instructing the Latins to pay
tithes even before the council. In 1208 he instructed the duke of Athens and the
nobles of Thebes, Euboea and Thermopylae to make their Latin and Greek sub-
jects pay tithes and in 1209 he ordered the Latin patriarch of Constantinople to
compel the Greeks to pay tithes on pain of ecclesiastical censure. In addition,
the pope in 1216 ordered the terms of the Ravennika agreement to be applied
to the Peloponnese.40
Latin lords both north and south of the Gulf of Corinth resisted the full
implementation of this agreement. Sometime in 1216 Gervais, the Latin patri-
arch of Constantinople, excommunicated Geoffrey de Villehardouin, the
prince of Morea, and Duke Otto de la Roche, and in 1218 the papal legate John
Colonna likewise excommunicated them, a sentence confirmed on 21 January
1219 by Pope Honorius iii. Although the pope instructed the Latin patriarch to
absolve Geoffrey and the other excommunicated lords in March 1221, he later
instructed his legate and the patriarch to delay granting absolution pending
39 Wolff, “Politics,” pp. 255–74.
40 Coureas, “Church at Patras,” pp. 151–52; Schabel, “Antelm the Nasty,” pp. 110 and 114–15.