Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade

Description

Colonizing Christianity employs postcolonial critique to analyze the transformations of Greek and Latin religious identity in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. Through close readings of texts from the period of Latin occupation, this book argues that the experience of colonization splintered the Greek community over how best to respond to the Latin other while illuminating the mechanisms by which Western Christians authorized and exploited the Christian East. The experience of colonial subjugation opened permanent fissures within the Orthodox community, which struggled to develop a consistent response to aggressive demands for submission to the Roman Church. Cover COLONIZING CHRISTIANITY Title Copyright CONTENTS Introduction 1 Robert de Clari 2 Gunther of Pairis’s Hystoria Constantinopolitana 3 Innocent’s Ambivalence 4 Demetrios Chomatianos: Colonial Resistance and the Fear of Sacramental Miscegenation 5 George Akropolites and the Counterexample(s) 6 The Chronicle of Morea Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index