Crusades and Crusaders in Medieval Greece 53
The two main arguments displayed notable longevity as far as crusading
against the Byzantines was concerned, and they persisted into the early 14th
century. Both arguments were used by Benedict xi and Clement v to support
the plans of Charles of Valois and Philip of Taranto.84 In crusade treatises and
actual plans alike, the conquest of Constantinople was often seen as a neces-
sary, or at any rate helpful, preliminary for a passagium generale to the Holy
Land.85 The connection was only made stronger by the fact that the titular
Latin Emperor, Charles of Valois, was the brother of Philip iv of France, and
thus the former’s claims were tied into the latter’s grand, but ultimately unful-
filled, crusade designs for Outremer.
Argumentation had to be adapted, of course, as the circumstances and
the orientation of crusading changed after the first quarter of the 14th cen-
tury and the Turks became the main opponent in the Aegean. As discussed
earlier, the change in both rhetoric and practice took place mostly in the
1320s, but the seeds were sown earlier. In the papal call of 1304 for a crusade
to recover Constantinople a new argument was added alongside the tradi-
tional points, namely that the empire, and therefore a large and ancient part
of Christendom, was at risk of falling to the hands of the Turks and other infi-
dels unless the Latins intervened and took control of it.86 These early signs
of alarm eventually morphed into the main concern of crusading in the area
as the new threat grew. Crusade rhetoric was loath to acknowledge that, in
fact, dealing with the Turkish expansion had overtaken even the reclamation
of Jerusalem as a crusade priority. But there were occasions when it very nearly
did so. In the 1370s, Pope Gregory xi, while repeating that Jerusalem remained
Christendom’s ultimate aim, admitted that the defence of the Principality
of Achaea and the Kingdom of Naples from the Turks was the most pressing
“work of faith”, stating that “it is easier and more important to help those in
danger, lest they perish, than to attempt, at present, the recovery of the Holy
Land, which has been occupied for so long”.87 As the Ottomans swept through
the Balkans and started to threaten Catholic Hungary, the emphasis on the
Turkish threat grew and crusade proclamations started to present the war as a
battle for Christendom’s own survival.88
84 Grandjean, Registre, nos. 1006–07; Regestum Clementis, nos. 243–44, 248, 7893; Laiou,
Constantinople, pp. 202–05.
85 See notes 29 and 36, above.
86 Grandjean, Registre, no. 1006; cf. Regestum Clementis, nos. 243–44.
87 Housley, Avignon Papacy, p. 117.
88 See for example: Odoricus Raynaldus, ed., Annales ecclesiastici ab anno 1198 usque ad
annum 1565, 7 vols. (Lucca, 1738–59), ad ann. 1394, nos. 23–24.