Bibliographie - The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204-1500

Description :

The monastic and mendicant orders that were so central in the evolution of western religion and spirituality also played a pivotal role in the expansion of Latin Christendom after the eleventh century. In the thirteenth century, following the capture of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade, Cistercians, Benedictines, Franciscans, and Dominicans installed themselves in the former territories of the Byzantine Empire.

Here, they had to adapt and compromise in order to survive, whilst Latins, Turks, and Greeks struggled to gain supremacy in the Aegean. They were also, however, faced with the challenge of attracting the devotion of the Greek Orthodox population, advancing the cause of church union, and promoting the interests of their Frankish, Venetian, and Genoese patrons.

This volume follows the orders’ fortunes in medieval Greece, examines their involvement in the ecclesiastical and secular politics of the age, and looks at how the monks and friars pursued their spiritual, missionary, and Unionist goals in the frontier societies of Latin Romania.

L'auteur :

Nickiphoros Tsougarakis studied for an MA and then a PhD at the Institute for Medieval Studies of the University of Leeds. His PhD thesis, supervised by Prof. Graham Loud and Prof. Peter Lock and funded by the Onassis Foundation, examined the history of the Latin religious orders in Greece in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. After obtaining his PhD (2008), he taught medieval Latin at the University of Leeds and medieval palaeography at the University of Kent, before being appointed Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer of Medieval History at Edge Hill University. In 2022 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Medieval History at the University of Crete.

His research interests revolve around the interaction of Latins and Greeks in the late Middle Ages. He is particularly interested in the history of the Latin religious orders, and especially the Franciscans, in the Eastern Mediterranean. He is also interested in the history of late medieval pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Among other things, he has written on Venetian jurisprudence in medieval Crete, on the heresy of the Fraticelli in Greece, on the interaction of western pilgrims with eastern Christians, and on the impact of the Fourth Lateran Council on the organisation of the Church in Frankish Greece.

He is the author of The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204-1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); and the co-editor (with Peter Lock) of A Companion to Latin Greece (Leiden: Brill, 2015).