The Latins in Greece: A Brief Introduction 11
written the history of the Hospitallers in Rhodes;16 and David Jacoby, two of
whose essays grace the present volume, has published ceaselessly since the
1960s on almost every aspect and region of medieval Greece.17 Though the
work of all these scholars is diverse in its aim and in its subject matter, it is
characterised by its careful use of official/archival sources and by its preoc-
cupation to supplement the narrative political history of the period with an
account of the social realities of life in the Latin states of Greece, whether that
be through the examination of religious life, legal institutions, or commercial
and financial activity. One of the facets of this preoccupation which has been
increasingly prominent since 1970s and ’80s has been the study of the posi-
tion of the Greeks in the Latin states and their relations with their western
European rulers.
In the last 30 years the field of study of medieval Greece has been as lively
as ever, invigorated also by the contributions of Byzantinists (such as Michael
Angold18 and Angeliki Laiou19 to name but two) and by the reinterpretation
16 His work on the Order of St John, including its Rhodian period, has been collected in
five volumes: Anthony Luttrell, Latin Greece, the Hospitallers and the Crusades, 1291–1440
(London, 1982); idem, The Hospitallers in Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece and the West, 1291–
1440 (London, 1978); idem, The Hospitallers of Rhodes and their Mediterranean World
(Aldershot, 1992); idem, The Hospitaller State on Rhodes and its Western Provinces, 1306–
1462 (Aldershot, 1999); idem, Studies on the Hospitallers after 1306: Rhodes and the West
(Aldershot, 2007).
17 David Jacoby, La féodalité en Grèce médiévale: Les “Assises de Romanie”: sources, applica-
tion et diffusion (Paris, 1971); idem, Société et démographie à Byzance et en Romanie Latine
(London, 1975); idem, Recherches sur la Méditerranée orientale du xiie au xve siècle: Peuples,
sociétés, économies (London, 1979); idem, Studies on the Crusader States and on Venetian
Expansion (Northampton, 1989); idem, Byzantium, Latin Romania and the Mediterranean
(Aldershot, 2001); idem, Commercial Exchanges across the Mediterranean: Byzantium, the
Crusader Levant, Egypt and Italy (Aldershot, 2005); idem, Latins, Greeks and Muslims:
Encounters in the Eastern Mediterranean, 10th–15th Centuries (Farnham, 2009); idem,
Travellers, Merchants and Settlers across the Mediterranean, Eleventh-Fourteenth Centuries
(Farnham, 2014).
18 See for example, Michael Angold, “The interaction of Latins and Byzantines during the
Period of the Latin Empire (1204–1261): The Case of the Ordeal,” in Actes du xve congrès
international d’études byzantines, 3 vols. in 4 (Athens, 1979–81), 4:1–10; idem, “Greeks
and Latins after 1204: The Perspective of Exile,” in Latins and Greeks in the Eastern
Mediterranean after 1204, ed. Benjamin Arbel, Bernard Hamilton and David Jacoby
(London, 1989) [= Mediterranean Historical Review 4:1 (1989)], pp. 63–83; idem, The Fourth
Crusade: Event and Context (London, 2003).
19 See especially Angeliki E. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of
Andronicus ii, 1282–1328 (Cambridge Mass., 1972); eadem, Byzantium and the Other:
Relations and Exchanges (Farnham, 2012).