70 Chrissis
not unrelated to the crusade calls in support of Frankish Greece against the
“schismatics” emanating from the papal curia. On the Byzantine side, the use
or threat of crusade force against them after 1204 hardened attitudes towards
the West even more. It confirmed Byzantine suspicions as to western motives,
expressed since the early days of crusading. The enmity between the two sides
was painted in religious terms. The crusade made the schism concrete: no lon-
ger only an issue of theological disputation, it took on, quite literally, flesh and
blood.
On the other hand, crusading in Greece and the Aegean could perform a
different function, particularly after the possibility of cooperation against the
Turks arose. It could be a means to bring Greeks and Latins together. Barlaam
of Calabria, Andronikos iii’s envoy to the pope in 1339, advocated common
Greco-Latin action against the Turks prior to any effort to enforce Church
Union. At the very least, he suggested, the pope could grant indulgences to
those Latins who would help the Greeks fight the Turks. Such gestures of good-
will, the Calabrian monk argued, would predispose the Byzantines positively
to the prospect of Church Union.154 Similarly, Demetrios Cydones, in the 1360s,
tried to convince his compatriots to accept western help against the Ottomans.
In order to make his point, he referred to the bravery and effectiveness that the
Latins had displayed in fighting for the faith during the crusades.155 Latin action
in the Aegean against the Turks, particularly when successful, could indeed
open a window for contacts with the Byzantines. Shortly after the Crusade of
Smyrna, envoys from the Greek city of Philadelphia in Asia Minor, by that time
an enclave entirely surrounded by Turkish territories, came to Avignon and
asked for papal protection against the Turks.156 This embassy led to nothing as
the pope insisted that they should first abandon their schism, but the incident
is indicative of the potential for the crusade to become a channel for commu-
nication between Greeks and Latins in the mid-14th century.
At the same time, that incident is also indicative of the limitations of this
potential. Mistrust hampered efforts of cooperation. In 1327, Andronikos ii
wrote to the king of France that though he was predisposed to work for
after 1204: Marc Carrier, L’autre chrétien pendant les croisades: Les Byzantins vus par les
chroniqueurs du monde latin (1096–1261) (Saarbrücken, 2012); and Savvas Neocleous,
“Imaging the Byzantines: Latin Perceptions, Representations and Memory, c. 1095–c. 1230”
(unpublished doctoral thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2009).
154 Tautu, Acta Benedicti xii, no. 43.
155 Judith Ryder, “Demetrius Kydones’ ‘History of the Crusades’: Reality or Rhetoric?” in
Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, pp. 97–112.
156 Setton, Papacy, 1:224–25.