Latin-rite Christians encountered Christians who followed the Greek rite in increasing numbers and at multiple points of contact from the time of the First Crusade (1095-1099) onwards. Many, though not all, of these contacts were generated through western European conquest, territorial expansion or colonization of areas with substantial Greek Orthodox populations. The new areas of contact were principally Sicily, the Holy Land and Syria (from the 1090s), Cyprus (from 1191) and then, from 1204 onward, Constantinople itself and the Byzantine Empire in Greece, Crete and the Aegean islands. Many Latin-rite Christians who took part in the First Crusade had grown up in Calabria and Apulia, which also had predominantly Greek-rite populations, but in which Latins enjoyed increasing political hegemony. Contacts with Greeks, therefore, were "asymmetric" in the sense that they were often underscored or brought about by displays of force, either military or political. It is one of the virtues of Savvas Neocleous's book that he understands Latin attitudes to Greeks to have been inseparable from this political and military dynamic. Although much of the discussion in the book centres around theology and theologians, debates such as those between Anselm of Havelberg and Niketas of Nikomedia in 1136 or the polemical exchanges between Latins and Greeks in the years either side of 1204, they are set firmly within the parameters of an unfolding political narrative.
The book takes a chronological approach to the problem, which reinforces the
sense of continuity and change. Chapter 1 takes us from the 1070s--the period of
Pope Gregory VII's "Eastern Plan"--to the eve of the Second Crusade (1144),
setting the encounter of westerners with Byzantines on the First Crusade within
a broader framework of early Komnenian expansionism and the struggle for
northern Syria after the Crusade. Chapter 2 deals with the period covered by the
reign of Emperor Manuel Komnenos (1142-1180), though the emphasis throughout
lies with western approaches, initiatives and writers rather than Greeks, and is
dominated by the Second Crusade. Chapter 3 covers the period from 1180 to the
start of Pope Innocent III's pontificate in 1198, thus taking in the Third
Crusade (1189-1192) and its conquest of Cyprus. The timeline then becomes
narrower in the second half of the book, with a chapter on the Fourth Crusade
(1198-1204), and two chapters on reactions and attitudes to the events of 1204,
one dealing with "the official Latin Church"--in other words, Innocent and his
curia--and another with Latin narrative authors deemed to represent non-official
attitudes. The book's framing is thus governed by external events, largely in
the sphere of crusading, rather than by the development of theological or
ecclesiological argument. This has significant implications. Neocleous' emphasis
on crusading allows little room for consideration of what was happening in
Italy, even though it was in the
But this book is a study of the relationship between the political sphere and ecclesiastical attitudes, and Neocleous proves an expert guide to this landscape. The central argument of the book, that Latin attitudes to Greeks cannot be reduced to labels such as "schismatic" or "heretic," is sustained powerfully from detailed analysis of texts. Neocleous shows that although a writer such as Guibert of Nogent, in the early twelfth century, often labelled by historians as "anti-Byzantine," may have been disparaging about Greek ethnicity and culture, this did not amount to the rejection of Orthodox doctrinal claims, nor the right of the Orthodox to follow religious customs different from those in the Roman Church. Similar tensions are observed in the chronicle of the monk of Saint Denis Odo of Deuil, who accompanied Louis VII of France on the Second Crusade (1147-1148), and who in the space of a few pages mooted reasons why the French might reasonably attack Constantinople while also praising the beauty of the Greek liturgy. Neocleous is alive to the reasons for Odo's hostility to the Byzantines--their seeming betrayal of the French army in Asia Minor--while at the same time showing the complexities of attitude formation, and the ways in which personal experience could bleed into the articulation of views. Throughout the book the reader is confronted with the difficulty of distinguishing between a hierarchy of values. Latin writers at the time of the Fourth Crusade criticised the Orthodox veneration of icons, but as Neocleous shows, there is abundant evidence that Latins, especially in the Crusader States, valued and used icons as well. What made Latins intolerant of Greeks, or vice versa? In 1080, the metropolitan of Kiev's main concern with Latin Christianity seems to have been less about papal primacy or eucharistic custom than with Latin fasting and eating practices. As Tia Kolbaba has shown in her study of Greek Orthodox views of Latins, [1] the differences between religions that really have resonance among practitioners can often appear irrational and profoundly untheological. Neocleous shows that many Latin writers accepted throughout the twelfth century that the Greek use of leavened bread in the eucharist was perfectly acceptable theologically, even if they did not think it seemly.
Neocleous' analysis of the Latin authors is careful, scholarly and full of insight, and the embedding of these discussions within the framework of what was happening outside the cloister, bishop's palace or papal curia where most of them wrote is masterly. His scholarship straddles Byzantine and Latin worlds and he is equally at home in both. This book will provide a valuable and authoritative corrective to prevailing views of Latin and Orthodox Churches as either implacably opposed to each other, or as inevitably drifting apart throughout the twelfth century. It should be a final nail in the coffin of what is still erroneously referred to as the "eastern schism" of 1054.
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Note:
1. Tia Kolbaba,