164 Coureas
the other Latin nobles did not distinguish between secular and ecclesiasti-
cal property seized during the Latin conquest, the latter referring to proper-
ties once held by the Greek Church, as appears from correspondence of Pope
Innocent iii in 1210. The Latin lords were accused of having granted churches,
abbeys and prebends to clergy and laity without first consulting the Latin
diocesans and of having had their own nominees ordained to vacant churches
as canons, disregarding the competent authorities. This pope wrote again to
Geoffrey and the Latin nobles of the Peloponnese over their retention of tithes
and church property in 1213, ordering them to appear before a panel of Latin
prelates over this issue and excommunicating them when they proved to be
contumacious.44
Properties considered as belonging to the Latin Church were also arro-
gated by the nobles outside the archdiocese of Patras, and in May 1212 the
pope wrote to Geoffrey requesting him to restore goods he had taken from the
church of Corinth. In another letter of 23 May 1212 to the Latin archbishop of
Thessalonica and the bishops of Sithonia and Karditsa he stated that Latins and
Greeks were withholding properties the Latin Church was entitled to because
they enjoyed proprietary rights, the so-called ius patronatus, over them. This
meant that they retained administrative powers over properties donated to the
Church, including the right to appoint an abbot or priest in the case of monas-
teries and churches subject to the ius patronatus. The pope had been informed
of this by no less than seven Latin archbishops of Greece and their suffragans,
and although he had initially assigned the recovery of such properties, previ-
ously belonging to the Greek Church, to the Latin archbishops of Thebes and
Neopatras and to the bishop of Nezero he now included the addressees of his
letter in this task so as to accelerate the process. The ius patronatus also existed
on Rhodes, where a number of Greek churches are recorded as subject to it,
and one notes that over 50 churches are recorded for the town and country-
side of the island, of which only a handful were Latin. As regards the Venetian
territories, the Ionian Islands, the Cyclades and Crete, only limited informa-
tion on tithing, restrictions on the number of Greek clergy and the apportion-
ment of properties belonging to the Greek Church following the conquest
of these places is available. Nonetheless, it must have resembled broadly the
situation on the Greek mainland and in Cyprus. The Benedictine nunnery of
St Catherine in Candia, Crete, for instance is recorded as paying tithes of four
hyperpers in 1316–17 as the first of three instalments.45
44 Aloysius L. Tautu, ed., Acta Honorii iii et Gregorii ix, pc/cico (Rome, 1950), no. 115;
Schabel, “Antelm the Nasty,” pp. 110–13; Claverie, Honorius iii, pp. 178–79.
45 Coureas, “Church at Patras,” p. 155; Tsirpanlis, Ανέκδοτα Έγγραφα, pp. 100–11.