The battle of Castoria had a decisive significance for the restoration of the Byzantine Empire. The dominions of the Despot of Epirus were reduced to his hereditary land in Epirus. The Latin Empire could not rely on the defeated Principality of Achaia, and was itself under the direction of the feeble and apathetic Baldwin II.

Meanwhile, in order to make still more sure the success of the final attack on Constantinople, Michael Palaeologus concluded a treaty with the Genoese. The commercial interests of Genoa and Venice conflicted everywhere in the Levant. After the Fourth Crusade and the formation of the Latin Empire, Venice had gained quite exceptional trade power in the Latin dominions of the Levant, and Genoa could not reconcile herself to this state of affairs. Realizing this, Michael came to an agreement with the Genoese; although they knew that an understanding with the schismatic Greeks would evoke the severe censure of the Pope and the West in general, they were so desirous of driving out their Venetian rivals from the East that they concluded the treaty with Michael.

In March, 1261, at Nymphaeum, was signed the very important treaty which granted to the Genoese the commercial supremacy in the Levant so long enjoyed by the Venetians. This was a real offensive and defensive alliance against Venice.1 110 Free trade forever was granted the Genoese throughout the present and future provinces of the Empire. Very important grants at Constantinople and in the islands of Crete and Euboea, if Michael "by the mercy of God" should recover them, were included in the treaty; Smyrna, "a city fit for commercial use, having a good port and abounding in all goods," was assigned to the absolute control of the Genoese; commercial stations with churches and consuls were to be established in the islands of Chios and Lesbos,

110 The best text of the treaty is given in C. Manfroni, Le relazioni fra Genova, l'Impero Bizantino e i Turchi. Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, XXVIII (1896), 791-809. The text is also printed in Historiae Patriae Monumenta, VII. Liber jurium reipublicae genuensis (Augustae Taurinorum, 1854), I, coll. 1350-59. See Heyd, op. cit., I, 427-30. G. Caro, Genua und die Mächte am Mittelmeer, 1257-1311 (Halle a. S., 1895), pp. 105-07. W. Miller, in the Cambr. Med. Hist., IV, 510-11. C. Chapman, Michel Paléologue restaurateur de l'Empire Byzantin (Paris, 1926), p. 42.

and in some other places; the Black Sea (majus mare) was to be closed to all foreign merchants except the Genoese and Pisans, the faithful subjects of Michael. On their side the Genoese pledged themselves to grant free trade to the Emperor's subjects, to support him with their fleet, provided that the ships were not employed against the Pope and the friends of Genoa. The Genoese fleet was extremely important in Michael Palaeologus' plans to reconquer Constantinople. This treaty was ratified at Genoa a few days before Constantinople was taken by Michael's troops. This was a brilliant victory for Genoa which, after Saladin's victories in Syria, had suffered grievous losses. It was a new page in the economic history of Genoa. One of the best authorities on medieval Genoa says: "The vigor of the thirteenth century colonial life offers a sharp contrast with the halting, tentative character of that of the twelfth. Naturally this is the result of wide experience, of better organization, and especially of the amazing developments of trade."110a

On July 25, 1261, without striking a blow, the troops of Michael took possession of Constantinople. Michael himself was at that time in Asia Minor, where he received the news that Constantinople had been taken. He set out immediately and at the beginning of August entered the city, cheerfully greeted by the populace; shortly after, his second coronation was performed in St. Sophia. Baldwin II fled to Euboea (Negroponte). The Latin Patriarch and the chief members of the Catholic clergy had time enough to leave the city before it was taken. By Michael's order, the unfortunate John IV Lascaris was blinded. Michael Palaeologus became the restorer of the Byzantine Empire, Michael VIII, the founder of the last Byzantine dynasty of the Palaeologi, by his success in taking advantage of what had been prepared by the Emperors of Nicaea. The capital was transferred from Nicaea to Constantinople.

The fugitive Baldwin proceeded from Euboea to Thebes and Athens. There, "on the venerable rock of Athens was played the

110a E. H. Byrne, The Genoese Colonies in Syria, in the Crusades and other historical essays presented to Dana C. Munro by his former students (New York, 1928), p. 160.

last pitiful scene in the brief drama of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Then Baldwin sailed from the Peiraeus for Monemvasia; and leaving behind him not a few of his noble retinue in the Morea, set out for Europe, to solicit aid for his lost cause and to play the sorry part of an emperor in exile.'

99111

Thus, the Latin Empire, in the severe judgment of a German historian (Gregorovius), "a creation of West-European crusading knights, of the selfish trade-policy of the Venetians, and of the hierarchic idea of the Papacy, fell after a miserable existence of fifty-seven years, leaving behind it no other trace than destruction and anarchy. That deformed chivalrous feudal state of the Latins belongs to the most worthless phenomena of history. The sophistical maxim of the German philosopher who asserted that all that exists is rational, becomes here merely an absurdity."112 Another German historian (Gelzer) remarks: "The Latin ignominy belongs to the past.'

113

While Western sources, almost without exception, confine themselves to the mere mention of the taking of Constantinople by Michael and of the expulsion of the Franks, Greek sources express great joy on this occasion. George Acropolita, for example, wrote: "Because of this fact all the Roman people were then in merriment, great cheerfulness, and inexpressible joy; there was no one who did not rejoice and exult."11 Still a discordant note sounded in the words of a high official under Michael Paleologus, a teacher, commentator of Homer, and jurist, Senakherim, who after the taking of Constantinople by the Greeks exclaimed: "What do I hear! This has been reserved to our days! What have we done that we should live through and see such disasters? For the rest, no one can hope for good, since the Romans walk again in the city!"115

111 W. Miller, The Latins in the Levant, p. 115.

112 Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, I, 412.

413 Gelzer, Abriss der byzantinischen Kaisergeschichte, p. 1049.

114 Georg. Acrop., ch. 88 (I, 188).

415 Georg. Pachymeris, I, 149. See P. Yakovenko, Studies in the domain of Byzantine charters. The charters of the New Monastery in the island of Chios (Yuryev, 1917). pp. 133-35 (in Russian).

Ecclesiastical relations during the Nicene and Latin Empires. -The taking of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 took place, as we know, against the will of Pope Innocent III. But after the foundation of the Latin Empire the Pope clearly realized that the new state of things in the Near East, however disagreeable it might have been at first to the papal dignity, nevertheless had opened wide horizons for the further strengthening of Catholicism and the Papacy. The main ecclesiastical problem of the epoch consisted in establishing intercourse between the Eastern and Western Churches in connection with the political changes which had taken place in the Christian East. In the Latin dominions established by the crusaders on the territory of the Byzantine Empire Catholicism was to be planted. The first task of the Papacy was to organize the Catholic Church in the regions conquered by the Latins, and then to clear up its relation to the secular power and to the local Greek population, both laic and ecclesiastic. The second task was to render subject to Rome, as far as ecclesiastical matters were concerned, the Greek regions which after 1204 had remained independent and at the head of which stood the state of Nicaea. In a word, the problem of the union with the Greeks became the keystone of all ecclesiastical relations of the thirteenth century.

At the beginning of the political existence of the Latin Empire the position of the Pope was very complicated and delicate. According to the treaty concluded between the crusaders and Venice it was stipulated that, if the Emperor had been elected from the Franks, the Latin Patriarch should be elected from the Venetian clergy. The interests of the Roman curia were not taken into consideration, for in the treaty there was no suggestion either that the Pope should participate in the election of the Patriarch or that any revenues should go into the treasury of the curia.

In the letter of the first Latin Emperor to the Pope, Baldwin wrote of "the miraculous success" of the crusaders, of the fall of Constantinople, of the lawlessness of the Greeks, "who were producing nausea in God himself," of a hope to go on a crusade to the Holy Land in the future, etc.,116 but he did not mention the 416 Tafel und Thomas, Urkunden, I, 508-510.

election of the Patriarch. And when the new clergy of St. Sophia, consisting of Venetians, had elected to the Patriarchate a Venetian noble, Thomas Morosini, the Pope, though he at first proclaimed the election uncanonical, nevertheless was forced to yield and, "at his own initiative," confirmed this choice.

The problem of the relation of the papal throne to the Greek clergy who remained within the Latin dominions is also interesting. It is known that a great number of bishops and the majority of the lower clergy did not abandon their places. In this case the Pope held a conciliatory policy, allowing the Greek bishops to be ordained in the eparchies with an exclusively Greek population, and granting privileges concerning the preservation of the Greek rites and the church service, conceding, for example, the use of leavened bread for the Eucharist. However, the papal legates appeared in the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor and tried to persuade the Greek clergy to join the union.

In 1204, a papal legate made the first attempt to obtain the consent of the Greek clergy to the recognition of the Pope as the head of their church; the negotiations were held in St. Sophia, at Constantinople, and were of no avail. A very important role in the negotiations of that time was played by Nicholas Mesarites, later Bishop of Ephesus, whose personality and activity were first elucidated by A. Heisenberg. In the years 1205-06 the negotiations continued their course. Nicholas of Otranto, abbot of Casole, of southern Italy, took part in them as an interpreter; holding the orthodox opinions, he recognized, like the whole church of southern Italy of that time, the papal primate and was an adherent of the union. Nicholas of Otranto, who has left many poems and prose works, almost all of them unpublished, deserves, as Heisenberg justly remarks, a special monograph.118 The position of the Greek clergy became more complicated, when in 1206 the Patriarch of Constantinople, John Cameterus died in Bulgaria, having fled there before the crusaders. With the permission

117 Heisenberg, Neue Quellen . . 1. Der Epitaphios des Nikolaos Mesarites auf seinen Bruder Johannes (München, 1923), pp. 48-50, par. 37 (in Heisenberg's text a misprint-32)-38; see also pp. 7-8.

118 Idem, p. 8.