When Jean Richard traced the history of Cistercian Jubin Abbey on the Black Mountain in Syria and its ties with Frankish Cyprus, he could not have known that the monastery also held property on Venetian Crete in the early thirteenth century.Footnote ¹ The register that may have contained Pope Innocent iii's confirmation of Jubin's possessions, dated 24 September 1215, does not survive, and the Archivio di Stato di Genova's copy from 1456 is incomplete, listing in full only Jubin's still accessible incomes from Cyprus.Footnote ² The only known mention of the Cretan holding, in a letter of Pope Honorius iii dated 22 November 1223 and surviving in a copy in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, was intentionally obliterated in Flaminio Cornelio's work on the church of Torcello, published in Venice in 1749: ‘the abbey of Jubin on the Black Mountain of the Cistercian Order’ was changed to ‘the abbey of San Tommaso di Torcello of the Cistercian Order on the Black Mountain’.Footnote ³ Perhaps after the monks of Jubin had taken refuge in Genoa that city's rival, Venice, really did give Jubin's Cretan property to San Tomasso di Torcello, but Cornelio's edition is nevertheless a forgery. No doubt he mistakenly thought that ‘the Black Mountain’ was on Crete, lost to the Ottomans in the seventeenth century, so he changed the syntax accordingly. It was only through a check of Cornelio's transcription in situ in 2014 that his forgery was detected, but this probably would not have been necessary had Innocent's register survived.

The loss of the papal registers covering the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth years of Innocent iii's reign, from 22 February 1214 until his death on 16 July 1216, constitutes a general problem for European historiography, but it is a catastrophe for places where contemporary archives do not survive, such as the Latin East. In particular, the high level of attendance at the Fourth Lateran Council, which convened on 11 November 1215 and continued in session until the end of the month, must have generated an extraordinary amount of work for the papal chancery, since every prelate and magnate who made the trip or sent an envoy would have wanted to take care of business. Yet since few of the council's canons deal directly with matters pertaining to the Church in the Greco-Latin East, most historians have inferred that, by the time that the council convened, the issue had become secondary for the pope and that the council treated it almost as an afterthought. Colin Morris, for instance, concluded that the pope ‘continued to assume that the Latin conquest had provided a definitive solution to inter-church relations and made no serious attempt to seek for new initiatives in the Lateran Council’.Footnote ⁴ R. J. Cleary, in a study devoted to Innocent's relations with the Greeks, asserts that the council neglected the Greek Church and that by 1215 the matter of Church union had faded into insignificance.Footnote ⁵

Other sources, however, often misdated or overlooked, help to fill in this unfortunate gap in the history of Frankish Greece and Cyprus and they tell a different story. Some pertinent letters of Innocent survive, independently of the registers – although they have usually been dated, wrongly, to the period before Lateran IV.Footnote ⁶ There is also a list of some of the participants at the council, rubrics for many letters of Innocent's last year and Pope Honorius iii's letters. These sources demonstrate that the pope and the delegates from the East expended considerable time and energy at the council in regulating the affairs of the Church in former Byzantine lands.

Evaluating their decisions in terms of Innocent's policy after the conquest of 1204 is complicated, because there is no consensus among historians as to that policy.Footnote ⁷ According to an older and rather extreme view, in the eyes of the papacy the conquest de facto achieved the union of the Churches, a process of converting the Greeks to Latin Christianity in both rite and doctrine was initiated, and this conversion was to be completed under a strictly Latin episcopal hierarchy by means of missionary activity by the Cistercians.Footnote ⁸ From this perspective the papal and conciliar decisions of late 1215 and early 1216 could be interpreted as lacking in ambition, an admission of failure. Recent research has shown, however, that once Innocent was fully informed about the nature of the conquest, he adopted a pragmatic policy, avoiding doctrinal and ritual issues, trying to maintain Greek bishops in sees that were predominantly Greek in population, and defending Greek monasteries, as long as the prelates took the standard oath to the pope and the Roman Church.Footnote ⁹ Although partly successful, this policy was frustrated, on the one hand, by Latin lords desiring Latin bishops and monasteries and, on the other, by many Greek bishops and abbots refusing to take the oath. Seen in this light, documents from Lateran IV reflect continuity in Innocent's intense interest in the former Byzantine lands and in his particular policy toward the Greeks, with some success regarding Greek monasteries and a clever device allowing for the appointment of Greek vicars. As in his general policy in the East, Innocent's successor Honorius iii largely implemented Innocent's decisions from the time of Lateran IV, which in many ways formed the basis of the organisation of the Church in much of the Greco-Latin East for the following three centuries.

On 19 April 1213 Pope Innocent iii wrote to the prelates and sovereigns of Latin Christendom announcing a universal council to be held in Rome on 1 November 1215, two and a half years hence.Footnote ¹⁰ Innocent ordered archbishops, bishops, abbots and priors to attend, but to leave one or two suffragan bishops in each province to carry out the ministry. Cathedral chapters were to send provosts or deans and kings and emperors were to designate nuncios to attend the council. The copy of this letter in the papal register records its addressees in Romania and Cyprus:Footnote ¹¹ besides the emperor of Constantinople and the king of Cyprus, although not the king of Thessaloniki,Footnote ¹² the letter was addressed to the prelates of the province of Cyprus and to those of every single European province, except that the chancery forgot to write ‘Thebes’ in the register: Crete; Patras and Corinth in the principality of Achaia; Athens in that lordship (Thebes being missing); Neopatras (now Ypati), Larissa, Thessaloniki, Serres and Philippi in the kingdom of Thessaloniki; and Adrianople, Herakleia, Vrysis and Constantinople itself on the European side of the empire of Constantinople.Footnote ¹³ In addition to fifteen provinces (counting Thebes), the letter to the vacant see of Constantinople apparently also covered the Asian archdioceses, since it was addressed to ‘both the Latin and the Greek archbishops, bishops and abbeys throughout the province of Constantinople’.

Over a century ago Achille Luchaire found a manuscript in Zurich which listed the prelates who actually attended (their names have been provided from other sources):Footnote ¹⁴ from Cyprus, Archbishop [Eustorge] of Nicosia and Bishop [Caesarius] of Famagusta; from the principality of Achaia, Archbishop [Antelm] of Patras with Bishops [John?] of Modon, [Eudes of Villehardouin] of Coron and [Hugh?] of Nikli, and Archbishop [Walter] of Corinth with the bishop of Argos; from the lordship of Athens, Archbishop [C.?] of Athens with the bishops of Avlonari and Negroponte (both outside the lordship, in Negroponte), and Archbishop [Hardouin] of Thebes with the bishop of Kastorion (today's Thisvi, not Kastoria); from the kingdom of Thessaloniki, Archbishop [Warin] of Thessaloniki, Archbishop [John] of Neopatras and Bishop [Bartholomew] of Gardiki representing the province of Larissa; from the empire of Constantinople, Patriarch [Gervase] of Constantinople, Archbishop [Nicholas?] of Herakleia and Archbishop [John?] of Mytilene. That is, the archbishop of Nicosia and eight European metropolitans, in addition to the archbishop of Mytilene in the eastern Aegean, plus nine suffragan bishops, the bishop of Gardiki representing another European archdiocese. Thus two-thirds of the provinces specified in 1213 were represented. Geography and stability seemed to have played a role: except for Famagusta on distant but secure Cyprus, all the suffragan bishops came from sees in the relatively safe far south of Greece, on or near the coast. Foreshadowing their future demise, the areas north and east of Gardiki and Neopatras, representing Romania at its greatest extent, sent a mere four prelates out of a possible nineteen. The absence of Cretan prelates is perhaps striking, but the Venetian colonisation of Crete had only just started in 1211. Candia already had in residence a Latin archbishop, whose career was less than exemplary, but being a faithful Venetian citizen and therefore inclined to cooperate with the Venetian regime of Crete, he may have avoided attending the council.Footnote ¹⁵ Many of the prelates of mainland Greece, in contrast, were locked in dispute with the lay authorities over ecclesiastical matters: this would have provided a strong incentive to make the journey.

The decisions of the council itself were of paramount importance for Romania and Cyprus, but there is evidence that the representatives of former Byzantine lands did take care of business too. In 1863 Augustin Theiner published the rubrics of some letters from the lost registers of Innocent iii, from a manuscript now known as Reg. Vat. 8A. Of these, two concern Cyprus and between thirty-five and forty – depending on the identification of proper nouns – involve Romania.Footnote ¹⁶ Of the letters whose rubrics Theiner had printed, in 1902 Karl Hampe published the full text of twenty-five from the end of Innocent's reign. These had survived, although undated, in a formulary in a Paris manuscript. Of these six concern Romania and Cyprus.Footnote ¹⁷ Hampe dated these six approximately to January 1216, and another, the full text of which survives elsewhere, was composed on 23 January 1216. These seven letters fall between numbers sixty-three and ninety-five in the relevant section (pp. 65–6) of Theiner's list. The first letter of interest in Theiner's list, number fourteen, is the rubric for the letter listing those who attended the Fourth Lateran Council, while the second pertinent letter, number twenty-two, Innocent's somewhat amusing account of his transfer of the relics of yet another St Dionysius to Saint-Denis, also survives complete and is dated 4 January 1216, although Migne misdated it to 1215. At the end of this section is the complete text of the fourth to last pertinent letter on Theiner's list, number 118, to Otto de la Roche, dated 12 January 1216, again misdated by its editor to 1215.Footnote ¹⁸ Judging from their relative position in Reg. Vat. 8A, between numbers fourteen and 122, it can safely be assumed that all the rubrics pertaining to Romania and Cyprus are from letters composed in January 1216. Another surviving letter, confirming the Teutonic Knights' privileges and possessions, among them a property in Cyprus, is dated 18 February 1216 (also misdated to 1215);Footnote ¹⁹ its absence from Theiner's list suggests that the rubrics in Reg. Vat. 8A for the year 1216 all date from 1 January to mid-February. That is, all of these three dozen or so texts concerning Romania and Cyprus date from the immediate aftermath of the council itself. It should be noted that only a fraction of papal letters made it into the registers, so the actual number of letters that Innocent composed concerning Romania and Cyprus around the time of the council was probably much higher.

At least two secular rulers from Romania seem to have used the council as an opportunity to improve ties with the papacy. Otto de la Roche, lord of Athens, had granted the castle of ‘Lavadia’ (Livadeia) in his lordship to the Roman Church via Cardinal Pelagius, papal legate in Romania, who granted it back to Otto as a fief, making Otto the Church's liege and man, liable to pay to the Apostolic See two marks annual rent. On 21 June 1214 Pelagius wrote to the clerics of the church of the castle, taking the castle, church, and its rights and property under papal protection, exempting it from episcopal and other jurisdiction, and granting them the tithes of the people of the castle and casale of ‘Lavadia’. On 12 January 1216 Innocent iii wrote to Otto confirming this arrangement, which explains why Honorius could write to the clergy of ‘Livadia’ castle in 1223, taking them, their property and what Pelagius had conceded them under papal protection. At the same time Innocent iii thanked Count Matthew of Cephalonia and Zakynthos for the fifty hyperpera that he had donated to the Roman Church, and confirmed the count's conditional bequest to the effect that, if he died without legitimate heirs, the Roman Church should possess and freely dispose of his goods.Footnote ²⁰

Religious institutions and individuals used the council to secure papal protection. An example is the ‘praepositus’ of Constantinople (either the provost of the church of Constantinople or a prior of one of the various collegiate churches of the capital, who had a say in the election of the patriarch). Likewise, Archdeacon James of Corinth obtained confirmation of his position. The master and brothers of the Hospital of St Sampson of Constantinople received confirmation for their hospital and their goods, although they had to pay three hyperpera annually for the papal protection that they sought.Footnote ²¹

Finally, several Greek-rite monasteries from across the Balkans (and perhaps also the Holy Land) gained concessions from the pope. Canons 53 and 55 of Lateran IV implied that Greek monasteries should pay tithes, which was not a Greek tradition. A number of Greek monasteries must have had representation at the council, because several received tithe exemptions soon afterward. In the Acta Innocentii III, presumably concerning non-Latin houses, Theodosyj Haluscynskyj included the exemption that five monasteries received for lands that the monks cultivated with their own hands, with Innocent also taking the abbeys and their possessions under papal protection. These were St Demetrius, SS Cosmas and Damian, St Luke de Stirio (‘Strio’ in the manuscript and in Theiner), St Theodosius de Montesegor and St Demetrius of the Greeks of Hungary (although Haluscynskyj skipped St Demetrius super Sabam). With the Greek monastery of St Luke of Stiris (Hosios Loukas) in the lordship of Athens, we have evidence from Honorius iii's time that the abbot was using his protection and exemption to escape all episcopal control.Footnote ²² Haluscynskyj does not mention six other possibly Greek abbeys to which Innocent granted an unspecified tithe exemption: Holy Apostles de Mireno, St Mary Costhime, that of dompnus Meletius, Holy Savior de Sagniaca, St Mary Agriotisse and one referred to simply as de Campis. It is not clear how many of these monasteries were situated in Romania and Cyprus, but most of them probably followed the Greek rite. Besides St Luke of Stiris, we know that dompnus Meletius was Greek-rite, since ‘following the example of Pope I[nnocent iii]’, in 1218 Honorius wrote to the abbot and monks of Hosios Meletios of Mt Myoupolis, taking them, their monastery, and their possessions under papal protection and, because the Greeks did not have the tradition of paying tithes, he confirmed their exemption on lands that they possessed before Lateran IV.Footnote ²³ St Mary Agriotissa was also certainly located in Romania or Cyprus, although its location is unknown.Footnote ²⁴ There is some debate over whether St Demetrius of the Greeks in Hungary and St Demetrius super Sabam are in fact one and the same house, that of St Demetrius of Sremska Mitrovica (ancient Sirmium), on the Sava River, in modern-day Serbia.Footnote ²⁵ If so, then the papal curia must have remained in confusion over this for a while, for the two monasteries reappear side by side in a letter of Honorius iii, dated October 1216, confirming the privileges and possessions of St Theodosius de Laberia, which is understood as the monastery of St Theodosius in Palestine, near Bethlehem.Footnote ²⁶ Given that St Theodosius de Laberia appears in the same document as the two SS Demetrii in the kingdom of Hungary (indeed it seems to own them) and one of the privileges confirmed is, again, a partial exemption of tithes, St Theodosius de Laberia was probably the St Theodosius de Montesegor that appears on our list. Later still, in 1218, Honorius granted a further tithe exemption to the brothers of St Theodosius.Footnote ²⁷ The Holy Apostles de Mireno, St Mary Costhime, the monastery de Campis and the Holy Saviour de Sagniaca are harder to identify, but since they appear listed among demonstrably Greek abbeys, it seems reasonable to assume that they too were Greek-rite monasteries, even if they were not located within Romania.Footnote ²⁸ The nature of the exemptions granted to these houses can also be surmised, if those mentioned above are any guide.

Greek monasteries continued to function while in the possession of Latin institutions, as was probably the case with St Phocas in Constantinople. Cardinal Benedict apparently granted St Phocas to the dean and chapter of St Michael of Boukoleon (a collegiate church in the capital) when legate in Romania in 1205–7, but when Cardinal Pelagius, bishop of Albano, was legate in 1213–14 he brokered an agreement over St Phocas between Boukoleon and the Cistercian abbey of St Angelus in Constantinople. It is, therefore, perplexing that just after Lateran IV Innocent iii wrote to the dean and cantor of St Mary of Blachernae (another collegiate church) and the prior of Langurio, confirming the agreement between them, on one side, and St Angelus, on the other, over St Phocas. Yet in the next rubric, Innocent ordered the bishop of Selymbria to carry out certain tasks that Pelagius had assigned to him concerning the case between the deans and chapters of Boukoleon and Blachernae, which may have involved St Phocas. Since the bishop of Selymbria was also told to absolve the deans and chapters from laying violent hands on clerics (unless the infractions were very serious), it appears that the dispute became physical. If St Phocas was the focus of the quarrel, the bishop of Selymbria found in favour of Boukoleon, since Honorius iii wrote three pertinent letters for Boukoleon in April 1217.Footnote ²⁹

In his letter of April 1213 Innocent stated that two things were most dear to his heart, the recovery of the Holy Land and the reform of the Church, the latter being the motivation for the council. The attendance of both prelates and members of cathedral chapters meant that Innocent informed himself of the internal problems of the churches of Romania. The rubrics of two letters from January 1216 record that Innocent instructed the new Patriarch Gervase and Archbishop Hardouin and a canon of Thebes, the first two and perhaps all three still in Rome, to enforce a sentence against three other attendees, Archbishop Walter of Corinth, Bishop Bartholomew of Gardiki, and the bishop of Kastorion, all described as ‘criminals’. The sentence must have involved their actual deposition, since the addressees were to enjoin their chapters to provide their churches with ‘good persons’. In particular, it seems that Archbishop Walter was a monk and was to be forcibly returned to the cloister whence he came.Footnote ³⁰

Honorius iii's letters provide some confirmation of these actions. In April 1217 Honorius wrote that Innocent iii had removed Bishop Bartholomew from Gardiki because of certain charges, no doubt brought to the pope's attention at the council. The former bishop of Gardiki, too, was to become (again?) a monk, although Honorius compromised somewhat on his removal. In early April 1218 we learn that the bishop of Coron had become archbishop of Corinth after Honorius' election to the papacy in the summer of 1216, so it is probable that Innocent's will was also done in the case of Corinth. Kastorion first comes to attention in February 1218 when, because of the bishop's poverty, Honorius granted him the bishopric of Avlonari on Negroponte, whence Innocent iii had removed the bishop of Davleia, although the latter bishop remained there with patriarchal support. Whether the bishop of Kastorion was the ‘criminal’ bishop's replacement or not is not known. Perhaps Innocent tried to deal with the bishop of Davleia at or soon after the council as well, but many papal letters were never entered into the registers. The same is the case with the notorious Archbishop Antelm of Patras, another participant at Lateran IV, who was not punished until 1224, after a long series of attempts by Honorius. In June 1224 Honorius began his letter describing Antelm's crimes and punishment thus: ‘When repeated complaints concerning our venerable brother Archbishop [Antelm] of Patras, which had climbed to the Apostolic See from the time of our predecessor, Pope Innocent of happy memory, finally very frequently battered our ears'. As far as Antelm is concerned it is clear that members of his chapter wanted him to be punished, and they would have had a representative at Lateran IV. Certainly some of the people later assigned to investigate Antelm were there.Footnote ³¹

One of the first canons of Lateran IV, canon 5, officially pronounced that Constantinople ranked first after Rome, a theory that can be found evolving in Innocent's registers following the capture of Constantinople, and which featured prominently in contemporary debates and polemical writings between Latin and Greek prelates.Footnote ³² During the council itself Innocent made Archbishop Gervase of Herakleia the second Latin patriarch of Constantinople, filling a see that had been vacant for years following Thomas Morosini's death. Unless the list of attendees counts Gervase twice, both as patriarch and archbishop of Herakleia, Innocent probably named the next metropolitan of Herakleia, perhaps the N[icholas?] who resigned in 1223. Soon after Gervase's appointment, in January 1216, Innocent granted him the pallium and many of the usual privileges, along with others that survive in rubrics. Although when he received the pallium Gervase had taken an oath not to sell, alienate, give, or pawn possessions belonging to his patriarchal demesne, Innocent allowed him to do so when useful for his church, with the advice of prudent men, without consulting the pope. Innocent's successor, Honorius, would later accuse Gervase's successor, Matthew, of doing exactly this, so Matthew did not inherit Gervase's indulgence. Innocent also granted that Gervase could absolve forgers of his and his church's seals and those who laid violent hands on clerics, except in serious cases, and while Honorius objected when the patriarch absolved those who abused bishops, he renewed the privilege for Matthew. Gervase was also allowed to anoint the emperors of Constantinople, although Honorius himself crowned Emperor Henry's successor, apologising to Gervase. In addition, Innocent gave the patriarch permission to promote worthy persons to subdeacon on Sundays and especially solemn days and to invest people in ecclesiastical dignities with the insignia of their offices. Sending the patriarch on his way, Innocent ordered the archbishops, bishops and other prelates subject to the church of Constantinople to obey Gervase. A year after Gervase's return from the council, however, Honorius iii had to tell the prelates of the city and diocese of Constantinople, whom Gervase had represented at Lateran IV, to pay for the expenses that the patriarch had incurred in Rome.Footnote ³³

Innocent also dealt with issues of the chapter at Lateran IV. He confirmed the number of canons in the church of Constantinople as thirty-five and prebends as forty. Later, Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, as legate in 1218–21, would reduce the number of prebends to thirty-eight. Honorius would reduce it further in 1225, to twenty-four prebends, because of the continual decline in the economic situation of the empire and the Church. Innocent instructed Patriarch Gervase to provide Archdeacon M. of Constantinople with a benefice, so that he could afford the necessities of life, noting that the legate Pelagius had granted the archdeacon certain incomes in 1213–14. Since the office of archdeacon had not been functioning during the Latin period, Innocent also made the provision that the archdeacon could carry out his duties in accordance with canon law. This was significant, because the pope went on to urge all clerics of the diocese of Constantinople to receive the archdeacon kindly when he made visitations (in accordance with canon 3 of Lateran IV).Footnote ³⁴

Innocent apparently put all the churches of Constantinople in order around the time of the council. According to a letter of Honorius iii dated July 1218, the dean and chapter of Boukoleon claimed that, while legate, Cardinal Pelagius had granted them the church of Arkheion ‘until that and other churches of the city of Constantinople would be arranged on apostolic authority’. The bishop-elect of Arkheion countered that, since ‘the provision of the churches of Constantinople was arranged in the General Council’, he was elected canonically. Because the papal letter (of Innocent?) that Boukoleon obtained in its favour made no mention of the arrangements made at the council, the bishop-elect argued that Boukoleon's letter was invalid.Footnote ³⁵

Unfortunately, what exactly Innocent decided about the capital's ecclesiastical institutions in general is not known, although from an early letter of Honorius iii it is clear that, at Emperor Henry's request, Innocent established and confirmed a provision for the churches of Constantinople of a twelfth of all possessions located in the empire of Constantinople proper (east of the border with the kingdom of Thessaloniki), belonging to both churches and laypersons. Patriarch Gervase also claimed that Innocent had ordered, again at the emperor's request, that a twelfth of the possessions of the emperor himself and his barons and knights be given to the churches of Constantinople.Footnote ³⁶

Perhaps Innocent approved this arrangement at the council, but as details of attendance at the council suggest, by late 1215 things were not going well for the empire. Emperor Henry must have sent nuncios as requested, and he also figures in some of the letters that followed. Aside from granting the emperor the right to hear offices in the imperial chapel of Constantinople while under interdict, Innocent's letters paint a dark picture. The pope ordered three unnamed bishops to hear the case that Henry was bringing against certain people who were contesting his rights in some monasteries, to compel certain barons and nobles to pay the emperor the rights and incomes that they owed him, and to stop some of the same barons from claiming for themselves the rights on regalia belonging to the emperor.Footnote ³⁷

Innocent also tried to comfort Emperor Henry regarding his poverty, while urging him to defend the churches against the incursions of evil men.Footnote ³⁸ Henry's financial troubles, and those of the empire in general, may have caused some foot-dragging on the part of some of the nobility, however. Innocent exhorted Henry to implement an arrangement over tithe payments in his lands, and the pope addressed a letter to Patriarch Gervase, urging him to encourage the emperor to carry it out.Footnote ³⁹ Neither the agreement over the twelfth nor the tithe arrangement was enforced, however, and in August 1217 Honorius iii explained to Gervase that he had suspended the churches' lawsuit on that issue, citing the crisis in the empire following Henry's death and the capture of his successor, Peter of Courtenay, as well as the papal legate, by Theodore, despot of Epirus. Honorius noted that nobles might not risk fighting while excommunicated because of the property dispute, so he had the sentence against them relaxed. It is unclear when exactly the sentence was promulgated and by whom. Gervase could not have arrived in Constantinople until early June 1216, since he issued a charter in Corinth on 29 May.Footnote ⁴⁰ According to Honorius, Innocent wrote to Emperor Henry with some instructions and gave certain judges the authority to promulgate the sentence, which they did, since Henry had neglected to follow Innocent's orders. In further explaining his actions to Gervase, Honorius noted in private that by the time that the mandate reached the judges who promulgated the sentence, both Henry and Innocent had died, in June and July respectively, so legally the case had no parties.Footnote ⁴¹ Given the sequence of events, Innocent must have addressed the emperor and judges in the last months of his papacy.

While there are few details about arrangements for the empire proper, there is precise information about proposals for the kingdom of Thessaloniki, Negroponte and the lordship of Athens. In May 1210, at Ravennica, near the border of Thessaloniki and Athens, the ecclesiastical and secular authorities of Romania came to an agreement for the territory between the eastern confines of the kingdom of Thessaloniki and Corinth. The text of this wide-ranging pact, which involves property, serfs on ecclesiastical land, taxes, the lower Greek clergy, and other matters, has been widely known for centuries, since it was incorporated into a letter of Honorius iii from 1223 containing a revised agreement for the principality of Achaia.Footnote ⁴² It is less well known that a previous letter of Honorius, dated early 1219, also contains the Ravennica accord, but this time as part of Innocent iii's confirmation. Innocent explains that, after Ravennica, Cardinal Pelagius, while legate in Romania in 1213–14, actually made arrangements that were to the detriment of the churches. Thus Innocent confirmed the Ravennica agreement instead and extended it to all areas further west, including Achaia and, should it be conquered in the future, Epirus. Honorius' letter containing Innocent's confirmation was printed by Spyridon Lampros in an obscure Greek publication in 1906, but it was later printed in more accessible editions, in Acta Innocentii III and Acta Honorii III. These two publications date the letter to 25 and 23 January 1215 respectively, well before the Fourth Lateran Council, despite the fact that Innocent himself, just before quoting the agreement, states:Footnote ⁴³ ‘We also add that, according to what was recently established at the holy General Council, tithes should be paid to the churches in full, both by Greeks and Latins.’ In fact, the 1215 date was merely a miscalculation on the editors' part: the letter actually dates to 23 January 1216 and corresponds to Theiner's rubric number eighty-six:

That is to say, it was at Lateran IV that Pope Innocent iii arranged for all major aspects of ecclesiastical-secular relationships for the whole of the empire of Constantinople and its vassal states.

Indeed, Innocent did the same for important questions of Church structure. The rubric of one letter grants that, acting in conjunction with the legate, Patriarch Gervase can unite bishoprics in Romania. This is exactly what happened: when the legate Cardinal Giovanni Colonna arrived in Romania after Despot Theodore released him from captivity, one of his early reports to Honorius iii included – besides the information that the archdeacon of Negroponte was allowing people to trade with Alexandria, against the Holy Land decrees of Lateran IV – recommendations on the unification of dioceses. Honorius responded in August 1218 that the cardinals had escaped the summer heat of the Eternal City and he could not decide alone, and it was not until March 1222 that Honorius approved the absorption of some fifteen bishoprics into neighbouring sees.Footnote ⁴⁵

It could be argued that the most ambitious reforms for Frankish Greece and Cyprus are reflected in the decisions of the council itself. To an extent, of course, all seventy canons of the council applied to the former Byzantine territories now under Latin rule, and the Holy Land decrees affected Romania and Cyprus more than most places, because both areas were considered vital for the crusading effort. One might think that canon 1, affirming the Filioque, was inspired by and directed at the Greeks, but canon 2 makes it clear that Joachim of Fiore's understanding of the Trinity was its target,Footnote ⁴⁶ while there is no evidence that the popes tried to impose the Filioque on the Greeks in Romania or Cyprus. Likewise, the canon's assertion that there is one Universal Church outside of which there is no salvation was mostly directed at western heretics.

Some canons applied specifically to the former Byzantine lands, however. Canon 5 officially made the patriarch of Constantinople second in rank after the pope, and in his letter confirming and extending the Ravennica agreement Innocent interpreted the council's decrees on tithes to apply to all Greeks as well as Latins. This explains the council's choice of words at the beginning of canon 53: ‘In some regions there are intermingled certain peoples who by custom, in accordance with their own rites, do not pay tithes, even though they are counted as Christians.’Footnote ⁴⁷ This caution is also present in how Lateran IV phrased the most important pronouncement on the Greeks relating to doctrine, canon 4:

The council did not, however, attack the Greeks' doctrine or rites, but only their rejection of Latin rites, forbidding them, on pain of excommunication and deposition, from washing altars after their use by Latins, ‘as if the altars had been defiled thereby’, and from rebaptising those who had already received the sacrament according to the Latin rite.

Finally, canon 9 made an important structural change. Innocent had hoped that Greek bishops would remain in place under Latin rule and take the ordinary oath to the Roman Church, at least in areas where the population remained overwhelmingly Greek. The local secular rulers in Frankish Greece seem to have had other ideas, however, although some Greek bishops remained in the kingdom of Thessaloniki,Footnote ⁴⁹ a parallel Greek hierarchy had been left in place in Cyprus, and Filip Van TrichtFootnote ⁵⁰ has recently proposed that some of the prelates in the empire proper were Greeks as well, which would explain Innocent's 1213 letter to ‘both the Latin and the Greek archbishops and bishops and abbeys throughout the province of Constantinople’.

The evidence for the continuing existence of Greek bishops in the empire proper is actually stronger than Van Tricht recognised. Three letters addressed by members of the Greek clergy to Innocent in the period 1206–13/14 attest to this. The first, written in the aftermath of the death of Patriarch John Kamateros in June 1206, petitions the pope to allow the Greek clergy to elect its own patriarch in Constantinople.Footnote ⁵¹ In doing so, it refers to the letter's authors as bishops (ἀρχιερεῖς). The second letter, undated and usually attributed to the period of Pelagius' legation in 1213–14, may actually predate the convocation of Lateran IV, since it does not refer to the summons.Footnote ⁵² This letter is often cited as evidence of the Greek clergy's fidelity to Emperor Henry, but it is worth noting that, again, the authors refer to themselves as co-bishops with the Latins. Basileios Pediadites, metropolitan of Corfu, wrote the final letter, probably late in 1214, as a direct response to Innocent's inviting the Greeks to the council.Footnote ⁵³ In a sarcastic tone different from that of the two letters composed by clergy under Latin dominion, Pediadites declares Innocent personally responsible for the removal of the Greek ‘western’ bishops (i.e., those of mainland Greece), implying that the bishops of the empire proper had remained in place. Although only Pediadites's letter directly related to Lateran IV, all three bear witness to the continuity and constancy of the Greek clergy's demands: with the election of a Greek patriarch as a pre-condition for the convocation of an ecumenical council, all three imply (or state) that only through discussion of doctrinal differences at such a council could the two Churches truly be united. In demanding a Greek patriarch alongside the established Latin one, the Greeks were essentially asking for two parallel hierarchies in Constantinople, the precise issue that canon 9 would address, although clearly not in the way that the Greeks were hoping.

Canon 9 began by remarking that, ‘in many places peoples of different languages live within the same city or diocese, having one faith but different rites and customs’.Footnote ⁵⁴ The council ordered the bishops of these areas to appoint ‘suitable men’ to minister to those people. Although the same city and diocese could not have more than one bishop, Lateran IV urged that the Latin bishop should appoint a ‘prelate’ as his vicar for the subject population of a different rite and language.

The canon certainly precluded the possibility of a Greek patriarch in Constantinople, but how it was implemented in the empire proper or in the kingdom of Thessaloniki is not known, in part because within a few years the latter had disappeared completely and the former had shrunk to a tiny area around the capital. Farther south, however, Bishop John of Negroponte assigned a Greek vicar to the church of Oreoi, which Giovanni Colonna had joined to Negroponte. This sort of arrangement may have occurred in other locales in Romania: there is information on this occasion only because the Latin bishop of Oreoi complained that the bishop of Negroponte had tricked the legate into uniting the churches, according to a letter of Honorius iii from January 1224 recording the complaint.Footnote ⁵⁵

The most significant consequence of canon 9 was the reorganisation of the church in Cyprus. From the installation of a Latin hierarchy in 1196 until 1222, four Latin bishops (including the archbishop of Nicosia) existed side-by-side with fourteen or fifteen Greek bishops (with their archbishop). The experienced Cardinal Pelagius was now acting as legate on the Fifth Crusade and in Cyprus. In effect, in brokering a revised agreement between the ecclesiastical and secular authorities in Cyprus parallel to those reached in Romania, Pelagius managed in one blow to bring Cyprus into compliance with canon 9 and to eliminate poor dioceses, as Giovanni Colonna was accomplishing on the mainland. In September 1222 all but four of the Greek bishoprics were eliminated and the remaining four had their episcopal seats in places different from the Latin ones, although the dioceses were co-extensive. The four Greeks who served their Greek flocks retained the title of bishop, but they were subordinated to their Latin counterparts, becoming in a sense their vicars. This was to be the ecclesiastical organisation of Cyprus for the next 350 years, until the Ottoman conquest of 1571.Footnote ⁵⁶

According to a myth that developed around the time of the Ottoman conquest, Queen Alice of Cyprus, a teenager, wrote to Innocent iii at the Fourth Lateran Council, requesting that he relieve the tension between the Latin and Greek clergies on Cyprus.Footnote ⁵⁷ The loss of the papal registers for the end of Innocent iii's reign means that the precise background to his initiative on Cyprus will never be known, but the stray sources at our disposal indicate that, rather than being a single response to a young queen, it was part of a comprehensive reform programme that involved all the former Byzantine territories conquered by the Franks in the course of the Third and Fourth Crusades, a programme that Innocent implemented with the help of his successor, Honorius iii, and two legates, Giovanni Colonna and Pelagius, all of whom participated in the Fourth Lateran Council.Footnote ⁵⁸ Far from neglecting the Church in the former lands of the Byzantine Empire, Lateran IV actually represents the culmination of Innocent's efforts to stabilise and regulate it, following the ad hoc experimentation of the lay and ecclesiastical authorities in the period immediately after the conquest. A significant number of prelates from the Greek lands attended the council, seeking to resolve problems in their sees and monasteries, while the canons of the council also legislated on some of the major issues resulting from the planting of the Latin Church in Romania, such as the payment of tithes and the status of the Greek episcopacy. Naturally, some of the solutions adopted represent compromises, but this was in keeping with Innocent's careful approach to Greco-Latin coexistence. The disappearance of a portion of Innocent's registers, along with the general scarcity of sources from Latin Romania, has meant that much material has been irretrievably lost. The careful collation of the surviving sources, however, can still offer new insights and help to correct the often distorted image of the ecclesiastical affairs of those lands.