Crusades and Crusaders in Medieval Greece 35
VIII, effectively ended Charles’ designs in the East and along with them any
chance for a crusade aimed at buttressing or restoring Latin rule in Greece for
a long time.
In the wake of the Sicilian Vespers the major Western Mediterranean
powers were embroiled in a war that lasted twenty years, until the Peace
of Caltabellotta in 1302. It was only after the end of the Angevin-Aragonese
conflict that it was possible for the interested parties to reconsider crusading
involvement in Greece. The idea of a re-conquest of Constantinople had not
gone away. A number of crusade theorists in the late 13th and early 14th cen-
tury, such as Ramon Lull, William of Adam and Peter Dubois, included it in
their proposals for the recovery of the Holy Land.29
Some claimants to the Latin Empire appeared ready to give substance to
their title. In 1301, Charles of Valois, the brother of King Philip iv of France,
married the heiress of the Latin Empire, Catherine de Courtenay. In prepara-
tion for an expedition to pursue his claim on Constantinople, Charles gathered
an impressive array of allies. Besides the support of France, Charles enjoyed
the backing of the papacy. Benedict xi (1303–04) and Clement v (1305–14) put
in his service crusade preaching and indulgences as well as funds, for a cru-
sade that would bring the schismatic Greeks back to the Church and pre-empt
the fall of the empire in the hands of “Turks and other Saracens and infidels”.30
Venice, the duke of Burgundy, and Charles ii of Naples were numbered among
Charles’ allies, who also established contacts with the Serbian king, Stephen
Uros ii, with Latin lords in Greece, and even with discontented members of
the Byzantine elite. Most dangerously for Byzantium, Charles also tried to
make common cause with the Catalan Company, which would provide a body
of experienced warriors already in Romania. This band of mercenaries, vet-
erans of the war of the Sicilian Vespers and in search of a new employer after
29 Anthony Leopold, How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late
Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 32–33, 99–100, 138–44;
Joseph Delaville Le Roulx, La France en Orient au XIVe siècle: expéditions du maréchal
Boucicaut (Paris, 1886), pp. 48–54, 62–63, 70–77, 90–98; Felicitas Schmieder, “Enemy,
Obstacle, Ally? The Greek in Western Crusade Proposals (1274–1311),” in The Man of Many
Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways: Festschrift in Honour of Janos M. Bak, ed. Balázs
Nagy and Marcell Sebok (Budapest, 1999), pp. 357–71; William of Adam, How to Defeat the
Saracens, ed. and trans. Giles Constable (Washington DC, 2012), pp. 9–10, 62–63, 70–73,
75–79.
30 Charles Grandjean, ed., Le registre de Benoit xi, befar (Paris, 1903), nos. 1006–07 (how-
ever, Benedict cancelled his concessions to Charles of Valois, only one week after granting
them, on account of the turbulent circumstances in the kingdom of France: no. 1008);
Regestum Clementis Papae V, ed. monachi ordinis s. Benedicti, 10 vols. (Rome, 1885–92),
nos. 243–48, 1755–59; Thomas, Diplomatarium, 1: nos. 27–28.