Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantine

episode 306, Church Union.

Today's episode is longer than usual because I felt this story needed to be told all in one sitting, even though it covers events

across a 20-year period.

In many ways this is a follow-up to the Fourth Crusade. It's the story of another Latin attempt to silence the Romans and to reimpose Catholic rule on them.

Many of the same players are involved, many of the beats echo from 70 years earlier,

and so I am presenting this tale in a similar way to the events of 1203, 1204

as one long siege of Constantinople.

The news that Constantinople had been captured by the Byzantines was received with horror in Rome.

Though it couldn't compete with the wailing and gnashing of teeth which the fall of Jerusalem had caused,

you might be surprised at the level of anguish it provoked.

Pope Urban the 4th described the feeling as like a spear piercing our heart and he immediately wrote to

every corner of Christendom demanding that a crusade be recruited and directed

against the schismatic emperor of the Greeks.

This might all seem hysterical given that the Byzantine's were a Christian people

and that the Latin Empire had made precious little effort to enforce Catholic norms on the locals,

but the ideology of papal primacy had a momentum that could not be stopped.

For example, back in 1203 that could not be stopped.

For example, back in 1203, Pope Innocent had repeatedly told the leaders of the Fourth Crusade

that he did not want them to attack Christian cities, and had excommunicated the Venetians for doing so.

Yet now Pope Urban wrote to his clergy claiming that innocent had toiled to conquer Constantinople for the sake of Catholic unity.

The loss of the city and with it the Bishoprix which reported to Rome was completely

...