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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.
List of contents
Introduction 1
1. Robert de Clari 13
2. Gunther of Pairis's Hystoria Constantinopolitana 35
3. Innocent's Ambivalence 49
4. Demetrios Chomatianos: Colonial Resistance and the Fear of Sacramental Miscegenation 73
5. George Akropolites and the Counterexample(s) 89
6. The Chronicle of Morea 103
Conclusion 123
Acknowledgments 131
Notes 133
Index 177
About the author
George E. Demacopoulos is Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of four monographs, most recently
The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity and
Gregory the Great: Ascetic Pastor and First-Man of Rome. With Aristotle Papanikolaou, he co-founded the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University. He presently serves as co-editor of the
Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies.
Summary
Colonizing Christianity employs postcolonial critique to analyze the transformations of Greek and Latin religious identity in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. It argues that the experience colonization splintered the Greek community, which could not agree how best to respond to the Latin other.
