(PDF) A medieval effort toward unity: Latins, Greeks, Russians and the Mongol Khan, in: Journal of Medieval History, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2232377).

This article explores the little studied role of the Rus princes and the Rus prelates of the Byzantine Church in the establishment of immediate contacts between the papal court and the rulers of the Nicene Empire in the mid thirteenth century. These resulted in a new round of negotiations for the union of the Roman Church and the Byzantine Church. At the heart of these contacts was not only the mutual desire of the Latins and Greeks to restore church unity, but also the action of a third force, namely the political ambitions of the Mongol khan toward Christian rulers of the West and, above all, the pope. These rulers took the initiative to turn to him with a proposal for peace in the aftermath of the devastating Mongol invasion that reached Central Europe in 1241-2.

Journal of Medieval History ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmed20 A medieval effort toward unity: Latins, Greeks, Russians and the Mongol Khan Alexander V. Maiorov To cite this article: Alexander V. Maiorov (2023): A medieval effort toward unity: Latins, Greeks, Russians and the Mongol Khan, Journal of Medieval History, DOI: 10.1080/03044181.2023.2232377 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2232377 Published online: 09 Jul 2023. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rmed20 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2232377 A medieval eﬀort toward unity: Latins, Greeks, Russians and the Mongol Khan Alexander V. Maiorov Department of Museology, St Petersburg State University, Sankt-Peterburg, Russian Federation ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This article explores the little studied role of the Rus princes and the Rus prelates of the Byzantine Church in the establishment of immediate contacts between the papal court and the rulers of the Nicene Empire in the mid thirteenth century. These resulted in a new round of negotiations for the union of the Roman Church and the Byzantine Church. At the heart of these contacts was not only the mutual desire of the Latins and Greeks to restore church unity, but also the action of a third force, namely the political ambitions of the Mongol khan toward Christian rulers of the West and, above all, the pope. These rulers took the initiative to turn to him with a proposal for peace in the aftermath of the devastating Mongol invasion that reached Central Europe in 1241–2. Received 1 December 2021 Accepted 17 July 2022 KEYWORDS Latin Empire of Constantinople; Nicene Empire; Byzantine Church; Pope Innocent IV; King Béla IV of Hungary; Rus Archbishop Peter; Metropolitan Kirill II; Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes Following the ecclesiastical schism of the mid eleventh century, the Roman and Byzantine Churches sought in the next two centuries to restore former unity by overcoming their diﬀerences on matters of dogma. The capture and sack of Constantinople by a group of Western European crusaders in 1204 exacerbated the ecclesiastical schism, and, according to some scholars, marked the point at which relations between the Orthodox East and the Latin West ﬁnally disintegrated.1 The Greek prelates’ early eﬀorts to persuade the Rus that Latins (that is, Western Europeans in a general sense) were heretics seem to have borne substantial fruit only after the Catholics demonstrated that they too held this same belief about the adherents of Orthodoxy. By the thirteenth century, the papacy viewed Rus2 as territory to be won for the Church through missionary work, like in any heathen land, and relations deteriorated thereafter.3 CONTACT Alexander V. Maiorov a.v.maiorov@gmail.com Department of Museology, St Petersburg State University, Universitetskaia naberezhnaia, Sankt-Peterburg 199034, Russian Federation 1 See Joseph Gill, Byzantium and the Papacy, 1198–1400 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 12; J.M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 136; H. Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church. From Apostolic Times Until the Council of Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 277; Anthony Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 282. 2 Although thirteenth-century Latin writings regularly use the term Ruscia to refer to the corresponding region of Eastern Europe, Rus is used throughout this paper, as Russia and Russians can be considered anachronistic; Rus best represents the intention of the medieval terminology. Rus or Rus’ is accepted now among scholars as both an ethnonym and a political term. 3 See Sophia Senyk, A History of the Church in Ukraine, vol. 1: To the End of the Thirteenth Century (Rome: Pontiﬁcio Istituto Orientale, 1993), 298–326, 442–3; see also Stella Rock, Popular Religion in Russia: ‘Double Belief’ and the Making of an Academic Myth (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 63. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 A. V. MAIOROV In the context of a revival of ecumenical eﬀorts toward the mid thirteenth century, the Greeks’ success in the struggle to retake Constantinople in the 1230s and 1240s undoubtedly worried the papal curia and contributed to it altering its policy towards the Orthodox East. At the same time, the Mongol threat – one that had abruptly become common to all Christian groups through Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean – intensiﬁed contacts between the major Christian Churches. Both these factors led to several rounds of negotiations for a union of Churches which resulted in the proclamation of a successful union at the Second Council of Lyons (1274). Rapprochement and negotiations on the restoration of unity required the sanction and direct participation of the primates of the Churches – the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople – who both relied on the support of the secular rulers of the West and East. Moreover, these ecumenical processes of the thirteenth century unfolded not only in the Mediterranean, but also on the remote outskirts of medieval Christendom. Rus princes and Church authorities played an important role in related activities, and the level of their participation was greater than is usually considered in scholarship. This article attempts to present a new understanding of the relationship between the Roman and Byzantine Churches. More broadly, it explores the political and religious situation in Europe after the Fourth Crusade and the Mongol conquests had expanded the khan’s dominion to Western Christendom’s frontiers.4 Its initial focus is an obscure episode in the diplomatic history of the thirteenth century: the visit of a ﬁgure known in our surviving sources as ‘Archbishop Peter’ from Rus to Pope Innocent IV and this individual’s subsequent participation in the First Council of Lyons (1245). The study of this event requires a systematic revision of a wide, multi-lingual array of primary sources and the rejection of some established historiographic tropes. The struggle for Constantinople and the Mongol invasion The Nicene Empire’s gaze was ﬁxated on Constantinople in both geographical and ideological terms following the city’s conquest in 1204. The so-called ‘New Rome’ and a large part of longstanding Byzantine territory had fallen to the Latins and had to be won back; these areas were perceived as a lost fatherland. The aspiration for retaking the territory lost from Nicaea to the West, particularly the former capital, was promoted from the establishment of a Nicene state as its very raison d’être. Yet, in practice, relations between Nicaea and the Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204–61) were not simply characterised by military confrontations, but also diplomacy and agreements.5 The second Nicene emperor, John III Doukas Vatatzes (r. 1222–54), launched a successful oﬀensive against the Latin Empire early in his reign. Of signiﬁcance was his victory at Poimanenon in 1224, which resulted in the Latin Empire losing all its possessions in Asia Minor. In quick succession, John III conquered the islands of Lesbos, Rhodes, Chios, Samos and Kos, greatly weakening the inﬂuence of Venice in the 4 While the contacts between the Mongols and Europe’s authorities were unprecedented, exposure among Inner Asian peoples to Christianity was not novel – the Mongols had been long familiar with the Nestorian Christian communities distributed throughout Asia. 5 See Ilias Giarenis, ‘Nicaea and the West (1204–1261): Aspects of Reality and Rhetoric’, in Byzantium and the West: Perception and Reality (11th – 15th c.), eds. Nikolaos G. Chrissis, Athina Kolia-Dermitzaki and Angeliki Papageorgiou (London: Routledge, 2019), 206–19 (208). JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 3 Aegean Sea.6 Substantial support for the Nicene emperor was given by the new patriarch, Germanos II (r. 1223–40), who placed under his protection the Orthodox clergy and laity living in the territories occupied by the Latins.7 To continue its oﬀensive, the Nicene Empire needed military allies. One emerged for a period in the 1230s in the form of the Bulgarian tsar, John Asen II (r. 1218–41). With his support in 1234, Vatatzes managed to capture a foothold in Thrace from which to stage the subsequent retaking of Byzantine possessions in the Balkans. Nicaea’s consistent military and political success seriously worried the Apostolic See and led to its recognition of the need for peaceful negotiations and its search for new ways to overcome the schism of the Churches. Contacts between the Greek and Roman Churches were initiated following the arrival of ﬁve Franciscan friars in Nicaea in 1232. While staying there and aiming for rapprochement, the friars discussed the division between the two Churches with the patriarch. After speaking with these visitors about the Catholic-Orthodox schism of 1054, Germanos II, with the approval of Vatatzes, started correspondence with Gregory IX (r. 1227–41) and the Roman cardinals. In his response of 26 July 1232, the pope agreed to begin negotiations to discuss a union. The ﬁnal piece of correspondence between the pope and the patriarch came on 18 May 1233 and was delivered by the embassy that arrived for a disputatio in Nicaea in January 1234.8 The discussion, concerning the fundamental divergence of the Churches in matters of doctrine, gradually devolved into mutual accusations and ended in a scandal. Papal ambassadors directly asked the patriarch whether he believed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from Jesus. When he answered to the negative, the friars announced their ﬁnal verdict: Blessed Cyril, who presided over the third council, anathematises all those who do not believe this. Therefore, you are anathematised. Likewise, you believe and say that the body of Christ cannot be made from unleavened bread [i.e. the Eucharist]. But this is heretical, so you are heretics. Thus, we have found you [to be] heretics and excommunicates, and as heretics and excommunicates we leave you.9 6 See Michael Angold, A Byzantine Government in Exile: Government and Society under the Laskarids of Nicaea, 1204–1261 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 111–12, 197 ﬀ.; Filip Van Tricht, The Latin Renovatio of Byzantium. The Empire of Constantinople (1204–1228) (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 368–71. 7 See M. Stavrou, ‘Rassembler et rénover une Église en crise: la politique ecclésiale du patriarche Germain II (1223– 1240)’, in Le patriarcat oecuménique de Constantinople et Byzance hors frontières (1204–1586), eds. M.-H. Blanchet, M.-H. Congourdeau and D.I. Muresan (Paris: Centre d’études byzantines, néo-helléniques et sud-est européennes, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2014), 23–36. 8 For further reading, L. Exarchos, ‘“Und ihr wagt nicht euren Glauben zu bekennen”. Formen des Bekennens im Rahmen der Unionsverhandlung zwischen römischer und orthodoxer Kirche in Nikaia und Nymphaion 1234’, in Orthodoxa Confessio? Konfessionsbildung, Konfessionalisierung und ihre Folgen in der östlichen Christenheit Europas, eds. M.-D. Grigore and Fl. Kührer-Wielach (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 139–62. 9 ‘Set b. Kyrillus, qui prefuit tertio concilio, anathematizat omnes illos qui hoc non credunt; ergo vos estis anathematizati. Item vos creditis et dicitis quod Corpus Christi non potest conﬁci in azimo. Sed hoc est hereticum; ergo vos estis heretici. Quia invenimus vos hereticos et excommunicatos, pro hereticis et excommunicatis vos relinquimus’: G. Golubovich, ‘Disputatio Latinorum et Graecorum seu Relatio apocrisiarorum Gregorii IX de gestis Nicaeae in Bithynia et Nymphaeae in Lydia (1234)’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 12 (1919): 463. Note that the Greek Patriarch John VII had written treatises criticising Latin eucharistic practice in the 1100s and 1110s. See Johannes Pahlitzsch and Daniel Baraz, ‘Christian Communities in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1187 CE)’, in Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, eds. O. Limor and G.G. Stroumsa (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 207. 4 A. V. MAIOROV When the discussions ended abruptly, Pope Gregory IX renewed his calls to Hungarian prelates for a crusade, urging those who had failed to fulﬁl their vows to crusade at Constantinople to do so now under threat of papal interdict or excommunication (11 June 1234).10 Vatatzes lost no time as well in resuming hostilities with the Latins. After the capture of Lampsacus and Gallipoli, and the marriage of his heir to Tsar John Asen’s daughter, Vatatzes moved against Constantinople in alliance with the Bulgarian ruler, ravaging the area around the city (1234–6). By late 1235, there was a pressing need to redeploy the crusade to provide more assistance to Constantinople. Gregory took a step in this direction by issuing new crusading calls and by redirecting a portion of the resources that had initially been allocated to the Holy Land to Frankish Greece.11 Along with the increasing military-political strength of Nicaea and its growing threat to Latin Constantinople, another factor soon emerged that contributed to the resumption of negotiations for a union of the Churches. The Mongol conquests experienced by the Christians of the Middle East and Eastern Europe had induced further intensiﬁcation and expansion of ecumenical processes. In addition to the Christians of the Chalcedonian doctrinal tradition (i.e. Catholics and Orthodox Christians), these processes now involved the doctrinally alien ‘Jacobites’ of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Maronites, Nestorians and others. Following the death of Gregory IX, Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243–54) considered uniﬁcation with the Byzantine (Constantinopolitan Orthodox) and other Eastern Christian Churches to be one of his chief priorities.12 He proceeded with implementing his ecumenical strategy from the very beginning of his pontiﬁcate, relying on the support of mendicant friars, namely Dominicans and Franciscans. The pope’s letter, dated to 22 March 1244 and addressed to Master General of the Dominican Order John of Wildeshausen (Johannes Teutonicus), appears to be the ﬁrst document evincing Pope Innocent’s eﬀorts in this area.13 It contains the pope’s order to send preaching friars to various Christian communities in the East, including Jacobites, Nestorians and Greeks.14 Like his predecessor, Innocent IV avoided addressing the Nicene emperor and patriarch directly despite his ecumenical impulses. Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes had been already formally excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX. Most probably, this act of excommunication was a response to the siege of Constantinople by the Greeks in 1234–6 which followed the failure of negotiations for a union of the Churches in Nicaea and Nymphaion.15 The pope viewed the rulers of Nicaea as initiators of the 10 L. Auvray, ed., Les registres de Grégoire IX. 4 vols. (Paris: Fontemoing, 1896–1955), 1: no. 1957; A. Theiner ed., Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia maximam partem nondum. 2 vols. (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1859–60), 1: no. 212. 11 N. Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Byzantine–Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204–1282 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 97. 12 See Gill, Byzantium and the Papacy, 95–6; Hussey, Orthodox Church, 216. 13 Eﬀorts to send missionaries to Eastern Christians pre-dated Innocent IV as is demonstrated in a series of bulls commencing with Gregory IX’s Cum hora undecima in 1235, one by Innocent IV 1245, and indeed such eﬀorts continued into the fourteenth century. See James Muldoon, ‘From Frontiers to Borders: The Medieval Papacy and the Conversion of Those Along the Frontiers of Christendom’, in Frontiers and Borderlands, ed. Andrzej Janeczek, special issue of Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae, 16 (2011): 101–21; Felicitas Schmieder, ‘Cum hora undecima. The Incorporation of Asia into the Orbis Christianus’, in Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, eds. Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 259–65. 14 T.T. Haluščynskyj and M.M. Wojnar, eds., Acta Innocentii PP. IV (1243–1254) (Rome: Pontiﬁcia Commissio ad Redigendum Codicem Iuris Canonici Orientalis, 1962), 11–15 (no. 8, paras 25, 26). 15 Further references to this topic are found in J.S. Langdon, ‘The Forgotten Byzantino-Bulgarian Assault and Siege of Constantinople 1235–1236 and the Breakup of the “Entente cordiale” between John III Ducas Vatatzes and John JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 5 schism and expected them to approach him with a request for the resumption of these negotiations. The increase in missionary work among Christian communities in the Middle East on the one hand, and direct contacts with Christian rulers of Eastern Europe on the other, strengthened the standing of the Apostolic See in the negotiations with Nicaea. The next part of this article focuses on the ﬁrst stage of the negotiations (1245–7) that followed the Rus archbishop Peter’s visit to Lyons. It is argued here that, at the time of the visit, Peter acted in the capacity of Metropolitan of Rus – that is, the head of the Rus Church appointed by (and answerable directly to) the patriarch of Constantinople who was based in Nicaea at the time. If he were the acting head of the Rus Church, then Peter likely visited the West as the Byzantine patriarch’s representative entrusted with conducting negotiations related to the union of the Churches. Peter’s mission will be discussed in a wider context of the Eurasian diplomatic network that involved the Byzantine (Nicene) religious and secular authorities, the papacy, Emperor Frederick II, the Hungarian king, the Rus princes and the Mongol khan. The Rus Archbishop Peter at the Council of Lyons From his earliest days as pope, Innocent IV was concerned with Europe’s new Mongol threat and the risk of another devastating invasion. For almost two years, however, he delayed dispatching his agents who were to meet, observe and collect information about the Mongol ‘barbarians’ which would be useful to the West in preparing for resistance. It is likely that the pope’s hesitation resulted from fear of the Mongols caused by the horrendous eﬀects of their recent inroads into Poland and Hungary. The attitude to the Mongols only began to change after the visit of the Rus Archbishop Peter, who arrived at the papal court in the autumn of 1244. In his testimony, Peter tried to persuade the pope and the cardinals that the Mongols were kind or open (benignus) toward envoys and did not harm them.16 That information seems to have convinced Innocent IV that, while they were ferocious during invasions, the Mongols abided by rules of diplomacy; his envoys would not be slaughtered on arrival at the encampment of a Mongol magnate.17 The new information about the Mongols obtained from the Rus source encouraged the pope to dispatch several missions eastward simultaneously, without waiting for the Council of Lyons to reach an agreement on anti-Mongol eﬀorts. The role of the Rus Archbishop Peter at the papal court was not limited solely to sharing new information about the Mongols. The compiler of the Annals of Burton, composed at a Benedictine abbey in Staﬀordshire in the late thirteenth century, relied on documents obtained primarily from the central authorities of the English Crown and several diocesan archives.18 As a record of the driving political events of the period, Asen II in 1236 as Background to the Genesis of the Hohenstaufen-Vatatzes Alliance of 1242’, in Byzantine Studies in Honor of Milton V. Anastos, ed. S. Vryonis, special issue of Byzantina kai metabyzantinia 4 (1985): 105–35. 16 H. Dörrie, ‘Drei Texte zur Geschichte der Ungarn und Mongolen: die Missionsreisen des fr. Julianus O.P. ins Uralgebiet (1234/35) und nach Rußland (1237) und der Bericht des Erzbischof Peter über die Tartaren’, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen I: Philologisch-historische Klasse 6 (1956): 194. 17 See Peter Jackson, ‘The Testimony of the Russian “Archbishop” Peter Concerning the Mongols (1244/5): Precious Intelligence or Timely Disinformation?’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, 26, nos. 1–2 (2016): 73–5, 77. 18 See A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, vol. 1: c.550 to 1307 (London: Routledge, 1974), 408–9; H.-E. Hilpert, Kaiser- und Papstbriefe in den Chronica majora des Matthaeus Paris (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), 180. 6 A. V. MAIOROV including the newly arrived Mongol presence on Western Christendom’s borders, the source contains some important details about the participation of the Rus archbishop in the Council of Lyons that are missing in other sources: Among other prelates of the world, the Ruthenian archbishop named Peter arrived at the Council of Lyons. On return from the council, some participants stated that though he did not know Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, he brilliantly (peroptime) explained the Gospel before the Holy Father [the pope] through an [unnamed] interpreter. Being specially invited, he assisted in the Divine Service together with the Holy Father and other prelates, wearing sacred vestments [just as they did], but of diﬀerent appearance.19 The opinion of the Rus archbishop’s ‘brilliant’ knowledge of the Gospel could have only been reached by speciﬁc questions from Latin prelates at the Council aimed at ﬁnding out whether Peter interpreted the most important evangelical texts in a Greek Orthodox or a Catholic sense.20 Such questions may have been of interest to the pope and cardinals because the Rus cleric had not merely brought information about the Mongols; his responses would indicate if diﬀerences of dogma could be settled. This was taken as a necessary precondition to resuming negotiations for the union between the Roman and the Byzantine Churches. Peter was to appear in front of the Latin prelates in the course of discussing the ecclesiastical schism and ways to resolve it – something which the pope placed on the main agenda of the Council of Lyons and announced at its ﬁrst session.21 Innocent IV’s intention to discuss the question of a potential union is evident also from his letter to Koloman I Asen (r. 1241–6), dated 21 March 1245. In it, the pope urged the Bulgarian monarch to end the schism and send delegates to the Council of Lyons.22 A few days later, the pope addressed the same appeal to the Orthodox hierarchs of the Bulgarians, Vlachs, Serbs, Alans, Georgians, Nubians, Nestorians ‘and other Christians of the East’ in his bull, Cum simus super, of 25 March 1245.23 It can be assumed that the pope’s initial plan was to ensure that the representatives of several Eastern Christian Churches who were authorised to discuss the question of unity with Rome would participate in the Council of Lyons. That did not happen for various reasons, and eventually only one hierarch – Peter who was described as an archbishop of the Rus – arrived at the Council of Lyons on behalf of the Eastern Christians. Therefore, no comprehensive discussion of the union of the Churches took place. There was only a short disputatio about dogma with the Rus archbishop. It thoroughly satisﬁed the pope and the cardinals, who invited Peter to join them in the divine service.24 19 ‘Inter ceteros mundi prelatos venit ad concilium Lugdunum archiepiscopus Ruthenus nomine Petrus, qui, prout quidam asserebant de concilio venientes, neque Latinam neque Grecam neque Hebraicam novit linguam et tamen per interpretem peroptime coram domino papa exposuit euangelium. Ipse etiam seorsum vocatus cum domino papa ceterisque prelatis in divinis, sacris vestibus indutus, set non eo modo quo ipsi, divinorum assistebat celebrationem’: H.R. Luard, ed., Annales monastici. Rolls Series 36. 5 vols. (London: Longmans, 1864–9), 1: 272. 20 See Dörrie, ‘Drei Texte zur Geschichte der Ungarn und Mongolen’, 185. 21 L. Weiland, ed., Relatio de Concilio Lugdunensi, in Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum inde ab a. MCXCVIII usque ad MCCLXXII (1198–1272), ed. L. Weiland. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1896), 514 (no. 401); H.R. Luard, ed., Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica majora. Rolls Series 57. 7 vols. (London: Longman, 1872–83), 4: 434. 22 Haluščynskyj and Wojnar, eds., Acta Innocentii PP. IV, 46 (no. 20). 23 Haluščynskyj and Wojnar, eds., Acta Innocentii PP. IV, 48–9 (no. 21). ‘Hierarch’ designates an individual with the status of bishop of a diocese in the Eastern Orthodox Church. 24 For additional details, A.V. Maiorov, ‘The Rus Archbishop Peter at the First Council of Lyon’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71 (2020): 20–39. JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 7 Newly emerging insights in the research literature about the enigmatic ‘Archbishop Peter’ of the Latin sources allows us to deﬁne his status and role in the negotiations with the pope more precisely. Five medieval records of the testimony of Peter at the Council of Lyons have survived. Of particular importance for the present study is the version found in the so-called Linz Code of the early fourteenth century, which contains several unique elements.25 In particular, the Linz Code mentions Peter as the archbishop of Belgrab in Rus (Petrus archiepiscopus de Belgrab in Ruscia), i.e. his see was in Belgorod near Kiev.26 This additional information is more important than it might appear at ﬁrst glance. Although its origin remains unclear, it cannot be ascribed to a scribal error or some similar misunderstanding. The bishop of Belgorod played an important role in Church government, acting as a vicar of the metropolitan of Kiev during the latter’s lengthy travels outside Rus, e.g. to Constantinople. Likewise, the bishop of Belgorod performed the primate’s duties during the periods when the metropolitan see remained vacant. As Aleksandr Nazarenko has established, it is quite probable that, beginning in the mid twelfth century, bishops of Belgorod bore the title of archbishop.27 After Metropolitan Joseph’s ﬂight or death during the Mongol invasion of South Rus (1240), the bishop of Belgorod, Peter, must have become the Rus metropolitan ad interim until the oﬃcial appointment of a formal successor by the patriarch of Constantinople (Nicaea). Since the patriarchal see in Nicaea was vacant between 1240 and 1243, Peter must have acted in the capacity of the head of the Kiev metropolitanate for several years. The accession of the new patriarch, Manuel II, at some point between August and October 1243,28 appears to have enhanced Nicene political eﬀorts for reconciliation with the pope. Manuel supported John III Vatatzes’ strategy of seeking compromise with Rome. In the autumn of the following year, the arrival at the papal court of a hierarch of the Byzantine Church, namely the Rus Archbishop Peter, ought to be considered an apparent consequence. After defeating the main Seljuk forces led by the Sultan Kay Khusrau II of Rūm (r. 1237–45), together with his Armenian and Trebizondine allies, at the Battle at Köse Dağ (26 June 1243), the Mongols reached the borders of the Nicene Empire. John III had to interrupt a successful campaign in the Balkans and urgently conclude a military alliance with the Seljuk sultan to counter the common danger approaching from the east.29 Recent ﬁndings provided by Filip Van Tricht clearly indicate that Vatatzes had to interrupt his successful attack on Constantinople, which the Greeks initiated in the summer of 1243 to take advantage of the prior defeat of the Latin Emperor Baldwin II 25 See Jackson, ‘Testimony of the Russian “Archbishop” Peter’, 66–7. Anti Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols in the Middle of the Thirteenth Century. Encountering the Other (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2001): 154; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (Harlow: Longman, 2005), 87, 105; A. Selart, ‘Arkhiepiskop Petr i Lionskii sobor 1245 goda’ [Archbishop Peter and the Council of Lyons in 1245], Rossica Antiqua, 2011, no. 1: 108–9. 27 A.V. Nazarenko, ‘Arkhiepiskopy v Russkoi tserkvi domongol’skogo vremeni’ [Archbishops in the Pre-Mongolian Rus Church], Drevniaia Rus’: voprosy medievistiki, 2015, no. 4: 71–2. 28 V. Laurent, ‘La chronologie des patriarches de Constantinople au XIIIe siècle (1208–1309)’, Revue des Études Byzantines 27 (1969): 138–9; Dimiter Angelov, The Byzantine Hellene: The Life of Emperor Theodore Laskaris and Byzantium in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 358. 29 Dimitri Korobeinikov, Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 178–80. 26 8 A. V. MAIOROV (r. 1228–61) at the hands of the Mongols, an event which was followed by the spreading of false rumours about his death.30 The Mongol threat foiled the Greeks’ plans for Constantinople when they were already at its walls. John III urgently had to return to Nicaea and devote all his resources to the defence of his empire. He arranged for weapons – bows, arrows, shields, armour and catapults – to be stockpiled in public buildings in the cities. Blacksmiths were commissioned to manufacture additional arms. Wheat, barley and other cereals were stored in granaries and depots against the possibility of a poor harvest or a siege. The grain was secured with lead seals, and newly-wed husbands were required to list their arms in marriage contracts. A panegyric to Vatatzes dating to 1252–3 refers to villages and cities being well supplied with inexpensive foodstuﬀs.31 In this way, the empire’s urban populace was prepared for the likelihood of Mongol incursions.32 Unfortunately for Vatatzes, his gamble on a military alliance with the Seljuks did not pay oﬀ. By the end of 1243 or at the beginning of 1244, the Seljuk ruler had submitted to the Mongol khan, becoming his vassal. The kingdom of Cilician Armenia and the empire of Trebizond also submitted to Mongol rule.33 As a result, the end of confrontation with the papacy and an eﬀort toward rapprochement with the West became vital necessities for Nicaea. The new, implacable enemy, posing an equal threat to all Christian states in the region, demanded a uniﬁed opposition and an end to old enmities. As the Mongol threat reached the borders of Nicaea, John III Vatatzes had to reconsider the priorities of his foreign policy radically. For the next few years, he abandoned the continuation of his expansion in the Balkans and the struggle for Constantinople to focus completely on opposing the Mongols. His chosen strategy, of preparing to resist the enemy, was to build fortresses, strengthen others, and stockpile weapons and food.34 But it also had a diplomatic element, since, at the same time, Vatatzes had to take emergency measures to secure the western borders of his empire. For this, it was necessary to seek rapprochement with the papacy through the settlement of old disputes by allowing concessions on the most controversial political and dogmatic issues. It can be assumed that by the end of 1243 or beginning of 1244, the newly elected Patriarch Manuel II (r. 1243–54), together with the emperor, developed a plan for the resumption of negotiations with Rome for a union of the Churches. In these negotiations, the temporary head of the Rus metropolitan see of the Byzantine Church, Archbishop Peter, was to play the role of chief mediator and deliver to the West a signal about the readiness of the authorities of Nicaea to make an alliance with the papacy. It is no longer possible to determine why the emperor and the patriarch chose Peter in particular. One can only assume that the head of the Rus metropolitan see, which had suﬀered most 30 Filip Van Tricht, The Horoscope of Emperor Baldwin II: Political and Sociocultural Dynamics in Latin-Byzantine Constantinople (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 69–71. 31 Theodore Skoutariotes (?), Synopsis chronike, in Μεσαιωνική Βιβλιοθήκη=Bibliotheca Graeca Medii Aevi, vol. 7, ed. K.N. Satha (Venice: Typois tou Chrono, 1894), 506–7; S. Mercati, ‘Iacobi Bulgariae archiepiscopi opuscula’, Collectanea Byzantina 1 (1970): 89. 32 Angelov, Byzantine Hellene, 95–6. 33 J.S. Langdon, ‘Byzantium’s Initial Encounters with the Chinggisids: An Introduction to the Byzantino-Mongolica’, Viator 29 (1998): 116–19; Charles Melville, ‘Anatolia under the Mongols’, in The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 1, ed. Kate Fleet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 54. 34 Albert Failler and Vitalien Laurent, eds. and trans., Georges Pachymérès Relations historiques, vol. 1 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1984), 186–7; see Timothy May, ‘Mongol Conquest Strategy in the Middle East’, in The Mongols’ Middle East: Continuity and Transformation in Ilkhanid lran, eds. Bruno de Nicola and Charles Melville (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 27. JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 9 from the Mongol invasion, would have been considered the best person to convince the pope of the sincerity of the intentions of the Byzantine Church for unity with Rome in the face of the common danger. In any case, the Rus archbishop was able to fulﬁl the role successfully. There can be little doubt that the curia treated Peter as an oﬃcial head of the Rus metropolitan see. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that Western sources referred to him in Latin as ‘archbishop of Rus’ (archiepiscopus Russiae/Russcia) which corresponds to the Greek title ‘metropolitan of Rus’ (μητροπολίτης Ῥωσίας, μητροπολίτης πάσης Ῥωσίας) used in the oﬃcial documents of the Byzantine Church and evinced in the surviving seals of Kiev metropolitans.35 Until the mid thirteenth century, the seals of Rus metropolitans recorded the title ‘archbishop of Rus metropolitan see’ (ἀρχιεπίσκοπος τῆς μητροπόλεως Ῥωσίας).36 This directly corresponds to the terminology with which Peter was consistently described in the West. Mongol agent or envoy of the Nicene patriarch? According to Matthew Paris, the foremost English chronicler of the mid thirteenth century, Archbishop Peter headed for the West seeking from the Roman Church and Western princes support, advice and refuge after ﬂeeing Rus to escape the Mongols.37 Based on this information, some recent authors view Peter as someone seeking asylum in the West.38 Had this been the case, it is likely that he would have ﬂed before the capture of Kiev by the Mongols in December 1240. Where would Peter have spent almost four years in that case? No sources answer this question, resulting in a diﬃcult problem if Peter is to be viewed as a refugee. Although he collected extensive information about the Council of Lyons, Matthew Paris had received it second-hand in an incomplete and sometimes distorted form. Not having all the information about Peter, he did not know that the Rus archbishop spoke as a privileged guest of the pope at the council and took part in a joint divine service with the pope and cardinals. These details, known to us from another primary source, do not correspond well with the English chronicler’s description of Peter as a destitute wanderer who, over the course of several years, sought shelter in the West. The arrival of the Rus archbishop in the West only considerably after the Mongols had conquered Rus, overrun Poland and occupied Hungary requires a revisiting of the 35 A.V. Soloviev, ‘Metropolitensigel des Kiewer Russlands’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 55 (1962): 298–300; V.L. Yanin and P.G. Gaidukov, Aktovye pechati Drevnei Rusi X–XV vv. [Medieval Russian Pendant Seals of 10th–15th centuries], vol. 3 (Moscow: Intrada, 1998), 27, 118, 222, nos. 41, 43; V. Bulgakova, Byzantinische Bleisiegel in Osteuropa. Die Funde auf dem Territorium Altrußlands. Mainzer Veröﬀentlichungen zur Byzantinistik 6 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), 252–7, nos. 3.2.3.1–3.2.3.3. 36 Yanin and Gaidukov, Aktovye pechati Drevnei Rusi, vol. 3: 341, no. 53; Bulgakova, Byzantinische Bleisiegel in Osteuropa, 266–7, no. 3.2.3.10; see also A. Poppe, ‘Mitropolity i kniaz’ia Kievskoi Rusi’ [Metropolitans and princes of Kievan Rus], in G. Podskalski, Khristianstvo i bogoslovskaia literatura v Kievskoi Rusi (988–1237) [Christianity and Theological Literature in Kievan Rus (988–1237)] (St Petersburg: Vizantinorossika. 1996), 466–9, n. 13; 470–1, n. 15. 37 ‘Petrus archiepiscopus Russiae fugiens a facie Tartarorum, de vita eorum requisitus, haec ait. Et dum haec fatalis alea mundi resolvisset, quidam archiepiscopus de Russcia, Petrus nomine, vir, ut aestimari potuit, honestus, spiritualis, et ﬁde dignus, a Tartaris exterminatus, ut archiepiscopatu suo, immo ab ipso [regno] fugiens et eﬀugatus, ad partes se transtulit cisalpinas, consilium et auxilium et de sua tribulatione consolationem adepturus’: Luard, ed., Matthaei Parisiensis Chronica majora, 4: 386. 38 Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols, 153; Jackson, Mongols and the West, 87; Anti Selart, Livonia, Rus’ and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 211. 10 A. V. MAIOROV established opinion regarding Peter and the purposes of his visit to Lyons. It is relevant that his appearance there occurred in the aftermath and context of the Mongols having withdrawn their troops from Central Europe while retaining control of Kiev and Southern Rus. Some authors have already suggested that Peter pursued diﬀerent goals than would be expected from an individual merely seeking to escape the Mongols. Peter Jackson sees the Rus archbishop as an agent for the Mongols, who did his best to convince the pope to send envoys to Mongol rulers since the latter treated such missions as a tacit admission of a foreign ruler’s political dependence. Indeed, the Mongols received envoys favourably for the very reason that they regarded the arrival of an embassy as the ﬁrst stage in the process of submission. It was impossible to have peace with them without initiating that process; the Turkish-Mongol word el/il (Persian īlī) signiﬁed both ‘peace’ and ‘submission’.39 While agreeing with these points on the nature of diplomacy with the Mongols, there are equally justiﬁcations for considering Peter’s visit to the pope as related to instructions received from the new Nicene patriarch who was interested in restoring contacts with Rome. Unlike the Orthodox Church of Serbia which gained autonomy in 1219, and that of Bulgaria (the Tarnovo Patriarchate) whose independence was recognised by the patriarch of Nicaea in 1235, the Rus metropolitan see continued to remain part of the Byzantine Church. In the early thirteenth century, the Rus Church evidently did not enjoy any meaningful privileges, and quite probably did not even try to obtain any, aside from the ordination of Metropolitan Kirill II who was of Rus origin. Kievan metropolitans continued to be appointed and governed by the Constantinople (Nicene) patriarch. Out of four known Kievan metropolitans in the era of the Nicene Empire, three were of Greek origin.40 It is far from certain that Peter, as the head of Kiev (Rus) metropolitanate, demonstrated his loyalty to the pope at the Council of Lyons at his own behest or by order of any Rus prince, although we cannot totally exclude such a possibility.41 If he were ostensibly a high-ranking hierarch of the Byzantine Church as the sources hint, the possibility exists that Peter conducted negotiations with the pope and participated in the Council of Lyons primarily as an envoy of the Constantinople (Nicene) patriarch, who had authorised him to discuss the possible reconciliation between the Roman and the Byzantine Churches. This could explain why the pope welcomed Archbishop Peter as an invited participant at the Council of Lyons. Clearly, the pope did not treat Peter as a random refugee, a destitute person seeking the mercy and shelter of a strong patron, 39 Jackson, ‘Testimony of the Russian “Archbishop” Peter’, 73–5; see also Jackson, Mongols and the West, 46; Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols, 106–8. See J. Irmscher, ‘Das Nikäische Kaisertum und Russland’, Bvzantion 40, no. 2 (1970): 379 ﬀ.; D. Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500–1453 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), 240–2; P.I. Zhavoronkov, ‘Nikeiskaia imperiia i kniazhestva Drevnei Rusi’ [Nicene Empire and the Principality of Ancient Russia], Vizantiiskii Vremennik 43 (1982): 82 ﬀ.; J. Preiser-Kapeller, Der Episkopat im späten Byzanz. Ein Verzeichnis der Metropoliten und Bischöfe des Patriarchats von Konstantinopel in der Zeit von 1204 bis 1453 (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2006), 489–90. 41 Most scholars believe that Peter had been dispatched to Lyons by a Rus prince – perhaps Michael of Chernigov, Daniel of Galicia, Yaroslav Vladimir-Suzdal, or another lesser known prince – and acted on his behalf. For the most recent review of approaches to this issue, see Ivan Paslavs’kyi, Ukrains’kyi epizod Pershoho Lions’koho soboru (1245 r.) [Ukrainian Episode: First Council of Lyons (1245)] (Lviv: Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2009), 12–49. 40 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 11 but as a high-ranking guest whose appearance at the council was an important and evidently arranged event. This assertion is supported by the fact that several years before the Council of Lyons, the Nicene emperor communicated to the pope, through the king of Hungary, his proposal for the return of the Byzantine Church to unity with the Roman Church. This fact is recorded in a reply of Pope Gregory IX to Béla IV (r. 1235–70), dated 10 February 1241. Recognising the eﬀorts of King Béla, the pope wrote: … Through your mediation, the good man Vatatzes with all his lands and peoples, clergy, and churches which … are known to remain outside the unity of the Roman Church, upon reasonable, though belated, consideration, wished to return humbly to it … 42 In his determination to restore Greek rule over Constantinople, Vatatzes always combined political pressure and military action against the Latin Empire with diplomatic ruses and proposals to resume negotiations for Church union. The death of Gregory IX and the lengthy vacancy of the papal throne diverted the progress of Vatatzes’ reconciliation initiative for several years. The Mongol threat, which the Nicene Empire faced directly in 1243, forced its secular and ecclesiastical rulers to establish contacts with the newly elected Pope Innocent IV and resume negotiations on the union of the Churches. The Council of Lyons provided a convenient opportunity for this. Yet, at that time Nicaea was not represented in the negotiations with the pope by the king of Hungary who did not attend the Council of Lyons, but by a clergyman, namely a Rus archbishop (the Kiev metropolitan) of the Byzantine Church – something which better suited the situation. This interpretation breaks with the popular scholarly opinion that Peter’s arrival at Lyons occurred because some Rus princes, primarily the Galician-Volhynian prince Daniel Romanovich (r. 1205–64), sought an alliance with Rome to secure aid against the Mongols and enhance their own international status in the West through being crowned by the pope. Of course, it is entirely probable that such a motive lay behind some Rus rulers’ actions. However, Daniel’s contacts with Innocent IV were contingent on the negotiations for a Church union between the Holy See and Nicene rulers at the turn of the 1240s and 1250s. Moreover, recent research points to the conclusion that Nicaea’s refusal to continue those negotiations in the mid 1250s entailed an immediate end of relations with Rome on the Rus prince’s part.43 Along the lines of the foreign policy pursued by the Nicene Empire, the Rus rulers participated on diﬀerent occasions in negotiations for Church union which were initiated by the Greeks. It cannot be a mere coincidence that the negotiations for the union of the Roman and Byzantine Churches conducted in 1232–4 were preceded by communications from the Galician-Volhynian prince Daniel Romanovich to Pope Gregory IX, in which the former expressed his intention to ‘revere and obey the Holy See’. In a reply dated 18 July 1231, the pope asked the Rus prince ‘to piously accept and follow 42 ‘Cum enim, sicut per easdem nobis litteras intimasti, Graecorum populum quas caliginosum montem gratiae suae radiis Dominus videatur adeo illustrare, ut tuo studio mediante nobilis vir Battacius, cum terris suis et populis, cleris et ecclesiis universis, qui, ut Eﬀraim, quae dudum velut columba seducta invocavit Aegyptum, extra unitatem Bornanae Ecclesiae permansisse dinoscitur, ad eam, quasi ad caput et matrem ovium, sano, quamvis sero, usus consilio, desideret cum humilitate redire … ’: A.L. Tàutu, ed., Acta Honorii III (1216–1227) et Gregorii IX (1227–1241) (Rome: Pontiﬁcia Commissio ad Redigendum Codicem Iuris Canonici Orientalis, 1950), 347 (no. 265). 43 See A.V. Maiorov, ‘Ecumenical Processes in the Mid-13th Century and the Union between Russia and Rome’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 126, no. 1 (2015): 11–34. 12 A. V. MAIOROV the worship and rites of Latin Christians’ and to submit himself and ‘the entire realm’ to the authority of the Roman Church.44 In the course of negotiations with Rome, the Nicene authorities sought to emphasise their inﬂuence on many other Orthodox nations. In his letter to Roman cardinals dated 1232, the patriarch of Constantinople in Nicaea, Germanus II, mentioned legions of Christians that were ‘rock-solid in their Orthodox faith’ and regarded him as their supreme priest, listing among them the Ethiopians, Syrians, Georgians, Lazi, Alans, Goths, Khazars, the ‘victorious kingdom’ of the Bulgarians (regnum magnae victoriae Vulgarorum) and the ‘innumerable people of Rus’ (innumerable plebs Russiae).45 These claims were not mere rhetoric, at least in the case of Rus. In his letter to Kiev’s Metropolitan Kirill I (r. 1224–33) dated May 1228, the Nicene patriarch prohibited ordaining slaves into the priesthood and demanded that Rus bishops refrain from ordination until they were shown a deed of manumission. Moreover, under the threat of excommunication, Rus princes were not to interfere with clerical and monastic property or canonical competence in general.46 In making such claims, the patriarch presented himself as the ultimate authority in canon law and positioned himself as the sole arbiter qualiﬁed to settle disputes between clerical and secular authorities. However, by the nature of this letter, surviving only as a translation into Russian, one might conclude that the instructions of Germanus II were his reaction to an earlier letter received from Metropolitan Kirill. That would point to the desire to maintain unity in canonical decisions and practices emanating mutually from Nicaea and Kiev. The eﬀorts of the Nicene patriarch toward maintaining the unity of the Byzantine Church were also reﬂected in another document, the content of which was similar to the letter to Rus. Around 1228, the metropolitan of Kerkyra, George Bardanes, referred to Germanus II as a hierarch over even remoter northern peoples, namely, ‘Taurean Scytheans’ and ‘sombre Hyperboreans occupying the previously inaccessible and uncultivated [land] (τοῖς ζοφεροῖς Ὑπερβορέοις ἄβατα καὶ ἀνήροτα τὸ πρὸ τοῦ ἐπινεμομένοις) and starving for the Word of God’.47 Nicene patriarchs, particularly Germanus II, aspired to counter the disastrous reduction of imperial power after the loss of Constantinople in 1204 by enhancing the inﬂuence of the Byzantine Church and acting as arbiters in the relations between the hierarchs and their congregations across the entire Orthodox world.48 This policy was also intended to enhance the Nicene role in resisting the West. According to Jonathan Shepard, Germanus II was the ﬁrst to discover that his recognition as the supreme arbiter in the ﬁeld of clerical law by the Rus and other Orthodox peoples possessed a 44 Tàutu, ed., Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, 221–3 (no. 67); further references in A.V. Maiorov, ‘Church-Union Negotiations between Rome, Nicaea and Rus’, 1231–1237’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 84, no. 2 (2018): 385–405. 45 Tàutu, ed., Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, 251 (no. 179b); see also V. Laurent, Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, vol. 1, fasc. 4: Les regestes de 1208 à 1309 (Paris: Institut français d’Études byzantines, 1971), 65–8 (no. 1257). 46 The Old Russian translation of this document was published in A.S. Pavlov, ed., Pamiatniki drevnerusskogo kanonicheskogo prava [Monuments of Old Russian Canon Law], vol. 1. Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka 6 (St Petersburg: Imperial Archaeographic Commission, 1880), 79–84 (no. 5); see also Laurent, Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, vol. 1, fasc. 4: 53–5 (no. 1247). 47 R.J. Loenertz, ‘Lettre de Georges Bardanès, métropolite de Corcyre, au patriarche œcuménique Germain II, 1226– 1227 c. [1228 c.]’, Epeteris etaireias byzantinon spoudon 33 (1964): 107; see S.A. Ivanov, “Pearls before swine”: missionary work in Byzantium. Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, Monographies 47 (Paris: Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et de civilisation de Byzance, 2015), 165–6. 48 See Angold, Byzantine Government in Exile, 58. JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 13 certain weight in relations with the pope as a counterbalance to the universalist claims of the latter.49 It appears likely that the Rus princes and hierarchs who remained faithful to the Byzantine Church in the 1230s and 1240s were obliged to demonstrate the increasing role of Nicaea as the heart of the Orthodoxy in the relations with the papacy. By relying on its Rus representatives in negotiations with the papacy, the government of Nicaea sought to enhance its own negotiating capacity. Although he spoke only Russian and conspicuously lacked Greek or other languages, Archbishop Peter’s visit to the papal curia and speech at the Council of Lyons demonstrated to the Latin prelates that, despite the recent disaster, the Byzantine Church had not lost its status as the universal Orthodox Church and continued to unite numerous nations scattered all over the world and speaking diﬀerent languages. Having received instructions from Nicaea to start a new round of Church union negotiations with the pope probably in the spring of 1244, Archbishop Peter had to co-ordinate his actions with the new prince of Kiev, Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, who had been recently appointed by Batu, Chinggis Khan’s grandson and a senior prince in the Mongol Empire. As a vassal, Yaroslav would have known that his new masters were interested in establishing diplomatic contacts with the rulers of the Latin West to draw them into making a request for peace from the khan. Such appeals were unambiguously perceived by the Mongols as a statement of readiness to submit to their authority. By the conventions of Mongol international diplomacy, once their conditions for peace had been expressed to another party, it would be impossible for that party to reject submission without triggering war with the Mongols as a punishment for the disobedience of a heavenly command. Archbishop Peter was well suited for this mission, acting in negotiations with the pope as a diplomatic agent of both the Mongols and Nicaea. All this provided Peter with a quick and safe passage through the territory controlled by the Mongols. In the autumn of 1244, Peter had reached northern Italy where he encountered the papal curia which had, as the result of a confrontation with Emperor Frederick II, left Rome and was moving to Lyons, where it was more secure. Peter’s ﬁrst contact with the curia could have occurred in the late autumn when Innocent IV was in Genoa, where he stayed for several weeks due to illness.50 Peter followed the pope to Lyons and spent the next six or seven months there, and only after that was he able to return to Rus. Peter’s role at the Council of Lyons as an envoy of the Nicene government communicating Nicene intentions for an agreement with the pope is evidenced by other details, the signiﬁcance of which has been underestimated. Apart from the Rus archbishop, another indication of the readiness of the Nicene Greeks for unity with the Latins was delivered to Lyons by the oﬃcial envoy of Emperor Frederick II, Taddeo da Svecca. He announced the possibility of uniting the Greek Empire with the Roman Church at the preliminary session of the Council.51 By the time of the assembly of the 49 J. Shepard, ‘The Byzantine Commonwealth, 1000–1550’, in The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 5: Eastern Christianity, ed. M. Angold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 21–2. 50 H. Wolter and H. Holstein, Lyon I et Lyon II (Paris: É ditions de l’Orante, 1966), 49. 51 ‘Pro cujus pace et pristinae amicitae reformatione optulit pro domino suo conﬁdenter ad unitatem Romanae ecclesiae totum Romaniae, id est, Graeciae imperium, revocare’: Luard, ed., Matthaei Parisiensis Chronica majora, 4: 432. For information about this and other proposals of Frederick II and the pope’s response, see A. Folz, Kaiser Friedrich II. und Papst Innocenz IV. Ihr Kampf in den Jahren 1244 und 1245 (Strassburg: Schlesier & 14 A. V. MAIOROV Council of Lyons, therefore, the pope had received messages about the readiness for negotiations on a possible union of the Churches both from secular and clerical authorities of Nicaea; these had been delivered to him by the Rus Archbishop Peter and Emperor Frederick II’s envoy. Connections between the activities of John of Plano Carpini, Archbishop Peter and Metropolitan Kirill II Peter’s successful eﬀorts at Lyons to inspire the pope to send embassies to the Mongols – eﬀorts which would not have been made unless they had been sanctioned by the ecclesiastical and secular authorities of the Nicene Empire – explain why the Rus princes subsequently assisted Friar John of Plano Carpini, the papal legate to the East, not only to proceed safely to Mongolia, but also – more importantly – to carry out his missionary activity in Rus. According to Carpini’s report on his mission, the Volhynian prince Vasilko Romanovich (r. 1231–69), who had personally accompanied him on his journey from Poland to Rus, ‘told his bishops come to us’ so that We read them the letters of the Lord Pope in which he urged them to return to the unity of the Holy Mother Church. In fact, we did our best to urge and persuade the prince, the bishops and the others who were there to do this.52 It is noteworthy that there was no objection or surprise aroused by the call for unity with Rome on the part of either the bishops or other people listening to Carpini’s speech. Whatever the actual reaction of the Rus bishops to Carpini’s preaching might have been, their silent willingness to heed such an appeal from their own ruler suggests that the papal envoy’s visit was perceived in Rus to represent a new stage in the negotiations between the Roman and the Nicene Churches started at the Council of Lyons. Probably, Carpini’s task was not only to verify Peter’s claims regarding the Mongols, but also to conﬁrm – by discussion with the Rus princes and bishops – that the Byzantine Church was genuinely willing to reunite with Rome. Contrary to what one might expect, Carpini did not ever mention Archbishop Peter in his report about his mission to the Mongols. The absence of any mention in Carpini’s report can be explained by the nature of the friar’s assignment. The papal legate wanted to describe only those facts and circumstances of his travel that the witnesses he met on the way could conﬁrm.53 Archbishop Peter, personally known to the pope, could hypothetically have become a most important witness of Carpini’s stay in Rus, Schweikhardt, 1905), 65 ﬀ.; G. Baaken, Ius imperii ad regnum. Königreich Sizilien, Imperium Romanum und Römisches Papsttum vom Tode Kaiser Heinrichs VI. bis zu den Verzichterklärungen Rudolfs von Habsburg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993), 299–300; W. Stürner, Friedrich II, part 2: Der Kaiser 1220–1250 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), 533–4. 52 ‘ … et fecisset nobis venire episcopos suos de nostro rogatu, legimus eis litteras domini pape, in quibus monebat eos quos deberent redire ad Ecclesie unitatem sancte matris. Nos etiam monuimus eos et etiam induximus, in quantum potuimus, tam ducem quam episcopos et alios omnes qui convenerant ad illud idem’: Giovanni di Pian di Carpine, Storia dei Mongoli, eds. E. Menestò and others (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1989), 304; trans. E. Hildinger, The Story of the Mongols whom we call the Tartars … Friar Giovanni Di Plano Carpini’s Account of His Embassy to the Court of the Mongol Khan (Boston: Branden Publishing Company, 1996), 95. 53 ‘Dicto quomodo bello occuratur eisdem, ultimo dicemus de via quam fecimus, et de situ terrarum per quas transivimus, et ordinatione curie imperatoris et principum eius, et testibus qui in terra Tartarorum nos invenerunt’: Giovanni di Pian di Carpine, Storia dei Mongoli, 302; trans. Hildinger, Story of the Mongols, 36. JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 15 but for some reason Carpini failed to meet him. Possibly, by the time of the papal embassy’s arrival in Kiev (late January – early February 1246), Peter had set oﬀ on another journey to Nicaea. In any event, the Rus archbishop would have had to inform the Greek patriarch about the results of his visit to Lyons, and may have done that in person. Friar Carpini’s silence about the Russian guest at Lyons suggests that the latter was not connected with the Volhynian princes as has been sometimes suggested,54 but was instead close to their rival, Vladimir-Suzdal’s Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (r. 1238–46). When Yaroslav had become the Kievan prince owing to Batu’s decision in 1243, he was able also to control the Kiev metropolitanate through his protégé, Peter. Researchers have often made basically valid assumptions that Peter was personally connected to Prince Yaroslav and went to the West on his behalf.55 Prince Yaroslav was thus another participant in the ecumenical process which resumed in the mid 1240s. To compete against Archbishop Peter for the Rus metropolitanate, the Volhynian princes proposed their own candidate, Kirill, around 1243. Eventually, the Nicene patriarch approved Kirill as a new Rus metropolitan (Kirill II, r. 1246–80).56 Carpini would have probably learned of this on his way back to Lyons through Kiev in June 1247. Thus, the papal legate’s silence about Archbishop Peter might also have been the result of the latter’s departure from the political stage. The enterprise that Archbishop Peter began in Lyons was continued by the new Rus metropolitan, Kirill II. It appears plausible that Kirill set oﬀ for enthronement in Nicaea in early June 1246.57 By the end of that year, he must have returned to Rus in the capacity of a metropolitan. According to the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, on his way to Nicaea, Kirill was escorted by guards provided by King Béla IV.58 As the Nicene emperor’s ally and relative, Béla used his inﬂuence to assist in the approval of Kirill as the new Rus metropolitan. Kirill, although a priest, did not belong to the hierarchs of the Byzantine Church and had been beneath Archbishop Peter in rank. Before becoming the Kievan metropolitan, Kirill was most probably Prince Daniel’s chancellor, i.e. the head of the princely chancellery.59 In that capacity, Kirill must have accompanied Prince Daniel on his trip to Batu’s horde on the Volga and taken part in other important aﬀairs, besides being involved in the chronicle’s composition.60 54 See Paslavs’kyi, Ukrains’kyi epizod Pershoho Lions’koho soboru, 50 ﬀ. A.M. Ammann, Kirchenpolitische Wandlungen im Ostbaltikum bis zum Tode Alexander Newski’s. Studien zum Werden der russischen Orthodoxie (Rome: Pont. institutum orientalium studiorum, 1936), 246–7, n. 4; Dörrie, ‘Drei Texte zur Geschichte der Ungarn und Mongolen’, 183, 187; O.P. Tolochko, ‘Petro Akerovych – hadanyi mytropolyt vseia Rusi’ [Peter Akerovich – Imaginary Metropolitan of all Rus], Ukrains’kyi Istorychnyi Zhurnal, 1990, no. 6: 53. 56 For more on Metropolitan Kirill, see A. Avenarius, ‘Nikaia und Rußland zur Zeit der tatarischen Bedrohung’, Byzantinoslavica 41 (1980): 33–43; Poppe, ‘Mitropolity i kniaz’ia Kievskoi Rusi’, 468–71. 57 A.V. Maiorov, ‘“Cum quodam rege Rucsie singelariter in prelio dimicans … ”: byl li Daniil Galitskii uchastnikom bitvy na Leite?’ [“‘Cum quodam rege Rucsie singelariter in prelio dimicans … ”: Was Daniel of Galicia a Participant in the Battle of the Leitha River?], Drevniaia Rus’: voprosy medievistiki, 2016, no. 4: 48–9. 58 A.A. Shakhmatov, ed., Ipat’evskaia letopis’ [Hypatian Chronicle], in Polnoe Sobranie Russkikh Letopisei, vol. 2 (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 1998), 809. 59 There exists a historiographical debate about Metropolitan Kirill’s identity and whether he is the same person as Daniel’s chancellor/seal-bearer. See G. Stökl, ‘Kanzler und Metropolit’, Wiener Archiv für Geschichte des Slawentums und Osteuropas 5 (1966): 150–75; A. Jusupović, Elity ziemi halickiej i wołyńskiej w czasach Romanowiczów (1205– 1269). Studium prozopograﬁczne (Kraków: Avalon, 2016), 281–3. 60 See V.T. Pashuto, Ocherki po istorii Galitsko-Volynskoi Rusi [Essays on the History of Galician-Volhynian Rus] (Moscow: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1950), 90–2, 237; A.N. Uzhankov, Problemy istoriograﬁi i tekstologii drevnerusskikh pamiatnikov XI–XIII vv. [Problems of Historiography and Textology of 55 16 A. V. MAIOROV Immediately after Daniel returned from Batu’s headquarters in the early spring of 1246,61 the Hungarian king and the Galician-Volhynian princes made a political agreement that is described in the Rus chronicle. In exchange for reconciliation and dynastic union with Daniel, the Hungarian king helped his protégé, Kirill, receive an appointment as the Rus metropolitanate in Nicaea.62 The motivation of the Hungarian king was not only the threat of a new attack by Batu, whose vassal Daniel had become; he also wanted to obtain the Galician prince’s military assistance in the forthcoming war with Austria’s Duke Frederick the Quarrelsome (r. 1230–46).63 Additional testimony to the willingness of the Byzantine Church to unite with Rome can be found in Plano Carpini’s report. In the summer of 1247, on his return to Lyons, he revisited Volhynia where the princes Daniel and Vasilko, as well as the Rus bishops, were already expressing unreserved readiness for unity with Rome. The princes and the bishops assured the papal envoy that ‘they wished to obey the Lord Pope and have him as a special lord and father and to accept the Holy Roman Church in power and majesty.’64 The evident turn toward Rome by the ecclesiastical and secular rulers of Rus was likely due to the willingness of the Nicene authorities to recognise papal primacy in exchange for political concessions. Chief among these was assistance in the return of Constantinople to the Greeks. This was very much desired both by the Greeks themselves and other Orthodox Christians who had clearly overestimated the compliance that could be expected from the papacy. The possibility for the handover of the city would have been known in Rus after Metropolitan Kirill came back from Nicaea, having received the Nicene patriarch’s instructions and, probably, the authority to continue negotiations with Rome. The pope’s widely stated willingness to lead the resistance of the united forces of Christendom against the Mongols seems to have also played a role. In his narrative, Carpini explained that upon meeting him, the Volhynian princes and bishops ‘conﬁrmed everything about these things which had been communicated to them earlier by this abbot’.65 Such an opaque statement might mean that before Carpini arrived at Volhynia on his return from Mongolia, the Rus princes and bishops had sent their ambassador in the rank of hegumen or archimandrite to the pope with the same message that Carpini later heard and referenced. That embassy must have been sent to Lyons soon after Metropolitan Kirill returned to Rus, i.e. in the ﬁrst months of 1247. The Rus abbot mentioned by Carpini appears to have reached Lyons and held a new round of Church union negotiations with the pope. That Rus hierarch seems to have been Ancient Russian Monuments of the XI–XIII Centuries] (Moscow: Rukopisnye pamiatniki Drevnei Rusi, 2009), 318, 324, 335, 337, 356–7, 360–4. 61 On the chronology of this trip, see A.V. Maiorov, ‘Daniil Galitskii v puti k khanu Batyiu: k sporam o prodolzhitel’nosti poezdki kniazia v Ordu’ [Daniel Galitsky on the Way to Batu Khan: Two Disputes about the Length of the Prince’s Trip to the Horde], Stratum Plus, 2016, no. 6: 195–202. 62 Shakhmatov, ed., Ipat’evskaia letopis’, 809. 63 See Maiorov, ‘Cum quodam rege Rucsie singelariter in prelio dimicans … ’, 35–51. 64 ‘Medio tempore inter se et cum episcopis et aliis probis viris consilium habentes super iis que locuti fueramus eisdem, quando ad Tartaros procedebamus, nobis responderunt communiter dicentes quod dominum papam vellent habere in dominum specialem et in patrem, et sanctam romanam Ecclesiam in dominam et magistram’: Giovanni di Pian di Carpine, Storia dei Mongoli, 330; trans. Hildinger, Story of the Mongols, 118. 65 ‘ … conﬁrmantes etiam omnia que de hac materia prius per suum abbatem transmiserant’: Giovanni di Pian di Carpine, Storia dei Mongoli, 330; trans. Hildinger, Story of the Mongols, 118. JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 17 Gregory, abbot of the Mount of St Daniel (abbatis de Monte Sancti Danielis), mentioned by Innocent IV as the envoy of ‘our dearest son in Christ, Daniel, the king of Rus’ (‘carissimi in Christo ﬁlii nostri Danielis, regis Ruscie’) in his letter to the archbishop of Mainz and the archchancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, Siegfried III von Epstein, of 13 September 1247.66 The letter allows us to conclude that the pope was quite satisﬁed with the results of Abbot Gregory’s visit and the negotiations conducted with him. At the abbot’s request, the pontiﬀ asked the archbishop of Mainz to reward another participant in those negotiations – the cleric, Hezelo de Vilstorf – by appointing him to a remunerated position in Metz.67 Judging by the description, the Rus abbot Gregory was the hegumen of St Daniel’s Monastery near Ugrovsk mentioned in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle. It was there that the grand duke of Lithuania, Vaišvilkas (Vaišelga or Voishelk, r. 1264–7), a convert to Orthodoxy, took monastic vows for the second time.68 The remains of this monastery have recently been discovered by archaeologists on the right bank of the Western Bug near the village of Novougruzskoe (Novougruz’ke) in the Lyuboml district of the Volyn region (Ukraine).69 According to Carpini, in the summer of 1247 he accompanied another Rus embassy to Lyons that was sent by the Volhynian princes to discuss the proposed union further: ‘To this end he sent ambassadors and his letters with us to the Lord Pope.’70 In his reply of 12 September 1247, the pope, encouraging the aspiration of the Volhynian princes to reunite with the Roman Church, announced that he was accepting them under his special protection – along with their families and all their dominions, both those held at present and in the future, besides all their property and estates.71 The rapprochement went so far that the pope assumed the right to resolve controversial issues in the ﬁeld of matrimonial matters. In a letter of 6 December 1247, Innocent IV made a special dispensation to allow the marriage of Prince Vasilko Romanovich to Dubrawka, the daughter of the Polish duke Konrad I of Mazovia (r. 1194–1247), despite the fact that the parties were within the third degree of consanguinity to one another.72 In summary, 1247 was characterised by intensive contacts and the exchange of embassies between the Galician-Volhynian princes and the pope. Innocent IV’s increased interest in those contacts is evident from the letters to Rus preserved in the papal registers of 1246–8.73 As far as one can judge, contacts with Rus in that period were the most intensive in the entire history of the medieval papacy. 66 Élie Berger, ed., Les registres d’Innocent IV. 4 vols. (Paris: Thorin, 1884–1911), no. 3251; see P. Pelliot, Recherches sur les chrétiens d’Asie centrale et d’Extrême-orient (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1973), 72. 67 J. Ptaśnik, ed., Analecta Vaticana, 1202–1366. Monumenta Poloniae Vaticana 3 (Krakow: sumptibus Academiae litterarum Cracoviensis, 1914), 33 (no. 60). 68 Shakhmatov, ed., Ipat’evskaia letopis’, 867. 69 See S. Panyshko, ‘Do problemy lokalizatsii davn’orus’kogo Ugrovs’ka’ [On the Problem of Localisation of Old Russian Ugrovsk], Kyivs’ka Starovyna, 1997, no. 5: 168–77. 70 ‘Et super hoc nobiscum ad <dominum> papam suas litteras et nuntios transmiserunt’: Giovanni di Pian di Carpine, Storia dei Mongoli, 330; trans. Hildinger, Story of the Mongols, 118. 71 Haluščynskyj and Wojnar, eds., Acta Innocentii PP. IV, 91 (no. 48). 72 Haluščynskyj and Wojnar, eds., Acta Innocentii PP. IV, 94–5 (no. 51); see Dariusz Dąbrowski, Genealogiia Mstislavichei. Pervye pokoleniia (do nachala XIV veka) [Genealogy of the Mstislavichi. First Generations (Before the Beginning of the XIV Century)] (St Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 2015), 330. 73 For more on this topic, see A.V. Maiorov, ‘Poslaniia rimskogo papy Innokentiia IV k Daniilu Galitskomu: materialy dlia istoriko-arkheograﬁcheskogo kommentariia’ [Messages from Pope Innocent IV to Daniel of Galicia: Materials for Historical and Archaeographical Commentary], Rossica Antiqua, 2015, no. 1: 63–120. 18 A. V. MAIOROV The events described above took place shortly before the new round of high-level negotiations between the Apostolic See and the Nicene authorities for a union of Churches, likely in preparation for the talks. This could well explain the unprecedented political interest of the papacy in Rus, a distant periphery of the Christian world that was overlooked generally and had almost no inﬂuence on the policy of the Apostolic See save solely as an object of its proselytizing activities. The Hungarian royal family’s role in Nicaea’s negotiations with the papacy It is possible that the new metropolitan Kirill II returned to Rus not only with the conﬁrmation of his rights as primate, but also with a sanction from the Nicene authorities to continue the negotiations with the papacy that had begun with Archbishop Peter. This is evinced by several important details found in the Latin sources. The Rus princes and bishops had unanimously assured John of Plano Carpini in the summer of 1247 of their complete readiness to obey the pope and recognise the authority of the Roman Church, at the same time sending ambassadors to the pope to continue negotiations. Secondly, the Hungarian queen, Maria Laskarina (Béla IV’s wife and the sister of Vatatzes’ ﬁrst wife), informed Innocent IV in late 1246 about her recent contacts with the Nicene emperor John III Vatatzes and his willingness to negotiate with Rome for a Church union. In his surviving response to Queen Maria, dated 30 January 1247, the Roman pontiﬀ wrote with enthusiasm that her continual eﬀorts had made it so ‘that Vatatzes and his people returned to the bosom of the mother church, and we have truly rejoiced, having heard about it, and praise you for that’. Furthermore, the pope requested that the queen should continue her eﬀorts and send new envoys immediately to Vatatzes.74 The words of the pope suggest that in her letter to him – which no longer survives – Queen Maria may have discussed the successful journey to Nicaea made by the new Rus metropolitan, a result of the direct involvement of the Hungarian royal family, who wanted to help him arrive at the papal curia and provide conﬁrmation in person of Nicaea’s willingness to negotiate toward a Church union. This is even more likely considering that on the way to Nicaea, and therefore travelling through Hungary, Kirill was escorted by the guards provided by the Hungarian king.75 From the papal letter to the Hungarian queen, it can be concluded that in addition to the armed guards of Kirill, high-ranking Hungarian Franciscans headed by their provincial minister Jacob (Jacobo, ministro provinciali) also accompanied this party to Nicaea. It would have been these friars whom the queen then sent to the pope with a report on the events.76 This important detail shows that in late summer or autumn of 1246 in Nicaea, not only the fate of the metropolitan see in Kiev was being decided, but also the conditions for the forthcoming Church-union negotiations. These questions were undoubtedly linked to each other. Patriarch Manuel II certainly would have given preference to 74 ‘ … exultantes accepimus et referimus gloriantes, quod pro tuis insistis viribus et laboras, ut ad sinum matris Ecclesiae redeat Vatacius et gens eius, ex quo tanto tibi maiores actiones referimus gratiarum, quanto magis id ad laudem cedit et gloriam Jesu Christi, exaltationem contigit et commodum Sponsae suae, nostram et tuam utilitatem respicit pariter et honorem’: Haluščynskyj and Wojnar, eds., Acta Innocentii PP. IV, 77 (no. 34). 75 Shakhmatov, ed., Ipat’evskaia letopis’, 809. 76 Haluščynskyj and Wojnar, eds., Acta Innocentii PP. IV, 77 (no. 34). JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 19 Kirill over Archbishop Peter (who at that time was probably also in Nicaea as a claimant to the Rus metropolitan see), counting on the fact that the Hungarian royal family would help his protégé protect the interests of the Byzantine Church in future negotiations with the pope. The basis for such expectations was not only the connection by marriage of John III and Béla IV – their spouses were sisters – but also the long-term political alliance between them that reveals itself in Bela’s repeated speeches as a mediator in Vatatzes’ negotiations with the papacy. We can note at least two cases of such mediation which took place in the late 1230s and early 1240s.77 A few days after the letter to Queen Maria, on 4 February 1247, the pope sent another letter addressed to her husband, King Béla IV. In it, Innocent IV promised to provide Hungary with military assistance when necessary to combat the Mongols by redeploying crusaders who had vowed to ﬁght in the Holy Land or to defend the Latin Empire.78 The pope’s letters to Hungary’s rulers are connected and reﬂect important changes in the policy of the Apostolic See towards Latin Constantinople. According to Joseph Gill, Innocent IV, having arranged a generous measure of help for the Latin Empire in the council of 1245, decided that in reality there was little prospect of salvaging it, and so concentrated his eﬀorts on other projects and adopted other, more paciﬁc methods to win the East.79 For Nikolaos G. Chrissis, both papal letters cited above can be regarded as two sides of the same coin: On the one hand, resources which could be used for Constantinople were evidently more urgently needed elsewhere. On the other hand, Innocent was probably already looking, in a more positive light, at the possibility of resolving the situation in Romania through an understanding with the Greeks of Nicaea.80 On 6 November 1246, the pope had ordered his legate on the crusade, Eudes de Châteauroux, cardinal-bishop of Tusculum, to begin preparations for the Seventh Crusade which aimed ﬁrst at Egypt and then at the Holy Land. It was to be led by King Louis IX of France (r. 1226–70).81 This large-scale event quickly consumed all the ﬁnancial and organisational resources that the papacy otherwise would have had available to provide to Frankish Greece. Despite the decision of the Council of Lyons to mobilise ﬁnancial aid for the beleaguered Latin Empire, the papal order in September 1245 for Franciscans in Provence to preach a crusade to assist Latin forces in Constantinople, and the likely readiness of King Jaime I of Aragon (r. 1213–76) to lead the campaign,82 77 Theiner, ed., Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam, 1: 170–1 (no. 308); cf. Tàutu, ed., Acta Honorii III et Gregorii IX, 347, note; and 347 (no. 265). 78 Berger, ed., Les registres d’Innocent IV, nos. 2957, 4000; for the full text of the documents, see Theiner, ed., Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam, 1: 203–4, 206 (nos. 379, 388). 79 Gill, Byzantium and the Papacy, 80–1; see also Hussey, Orthodox Church, 216–17. 80 Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece, 159. In the usage of thirteenth-century Western authors, Romania was the region of south-east Europe that had historically been under Byzantine (‘Roman’) control. It had the same sense as the later Ottoman designation of this area as Rumeli (‘Land of the Romans’). 81 J.B. Hauréau, ‘Quelques lettres d Innocent IV extraites des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale (no. 1194–1203 du fonds Moreau)’, Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale 24, no. 2 (1876): 209; summary in Berger, Les registres d’Innocent IV, no. 2228. 82 Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 107; and compare José Manuel Rodriguez Garcia, ‘Henry III (1216–1272), Alfonso X of Castile (1252–1284) and the Crusading Plans of the Thirteenth Century (1245–1272)’, in England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216–1272), eds. Björn K.U. Weiler and Ifor Rowlands (Aldershot: Taylor and Francis, 2002), 99–120 (102) 20 A. V. MAIOROV Innocent IV completely abandoned this programme in 1247. On 29 October 1247, he ordered his legate, Eudes de Châteauroux, to transfer one tenth of the Church revenues collected in France for three years to King Louis IX for the needs of the crusade ‘before anything is collected for the Church of Rome or the Empire of Constantinople or under any other head whatsoever’.83 After that, aid to the Latin Empire of Constantinople from the Roman Church decreased signiﬁcantly and possibly stopped completely. This was undoubtedly also diminished by the expression of concern voiced by the pope in December 1247 at the burden borne by French churches and monasteries in meeting the stipulations of the decree issued at Lyons in regard to funds to support the defence of Romania.84 Indeed, the papacy gave up on active eﬀorts to prop up the Latin Empire through crusading action and turned to direct negotiations with the Byzantine Empire of Nicaea aimed at Church union.85 This shift was helped by the fact that, at least in France, Louis IX’s planned expedition to the Holy Land (1248–54) headed the list of crusading priorities at the time. The calls for aid for Frankish Greece quickly ﬁzzled out with little apparent response. Beyond limited permission for crusade preaching in Venice in 1253,86 the Latins in Greece seem to have been left to fend for themselves with little assistance.87 Around 1247 Innocent IV noticeably reduced his eﬀorts to support the Latin Empire with crusader forces. This may indicate that by that time the pope had received encouraging conﬁrmation of Nicaea’s willingness to abandon confrontation and resume the Church union negotiations on terms that he considered acceptable. On the other hand, the promise to redeploy crusader forces to the defence of the Hungarian kingdom against the Mongols might be interpreted as an expression of gratitude toward Hungary’s ruling couple for their assistance in stabilising relations with the Greeks. In such circumstances, the Nicene emperor abandoned further confrontation with the West and began peace negotiations with the pope. He had already set the groundwork for peaceful diplomacy when it was deemed necessary. The earlier eﬀorts of the Rus princes, Orthodox Church prelates and the Hungarian royal family, steadily undertaken in the years 1245–7, acquired new political relevance by paving the way for high-level negotiations and creating important preconditions for a subsequent compromise. Undoubtedly, these activities were abetted by the international political relations and dynastic ties of the Rus princes – foremost among them, the Galician-Volhynian prince, Daniel Romanovich, who was the pre-eminent ruler in South Rus by the mid 1240s. In 1246, Daniel renewed his military and political alliance with the Hungarian king, Béla IV, cementing it with the marriage of his son Lev to Béla’s daughter, Constance.88 Daniel 83 Hauréau, ‘Quelques lettres d’Innocent IV’, 213–14; summary in Berger, ed., Les registres d’Innocent IV, no. 3383. Berger, ed., Les registres d’Innocent IV, no. 3468. 85 See Antonino Franchi, La svolta politico-ecclesiastica tra Roma e Bisanzio (1249–1254): la legazione di Giovanni da Parma, il ruolo di Federico II (Rome: P. Athenaeum Antonianum, 1981); Bernard Stolte, ‘Vatatzes versus Baldwin. The Case of the Sovereignty of Constantinople’, in The Latin Empire. Some Contributions, eds. Victoria D. Van Aalst and Krijnie N. Ciggaar (Hernen: Bredius Foundation, 1990), 127–32; Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece, 159–72. 86 See Berger, ed., Les registres d’Innocent IV, nos. 6829, 6845. 87 N.G. Chrissis, ‘Crusades and Crusaders in Medieval Greece’, in A Companion to Latin Greece, eds. N.I. Tsougarakis and P. Lock (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 32–3. 88 Shakhmatov, ed., Ipat’evskaia letopis’, 809. 84 JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 21 Romanovich was the closest and most consistent ally of the Nicene Empire among the Rus princes as his father Roman Mstislavich had formerly been.89 Daniel’s mother came from the Angelos family which reigned in Constantinople in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.90 Her inﬂuence on the foreign and domestic policies of the Galician-Volhynian princes can be observed over several decades.91 As such, Daniel Romanovich was an ally and a relative of both key participants in the negotiations for the union of the Roman and Byzantine Churches in the 1240s and 1250s, the Hungarian king and the Nicene emperor. Having become a vassal of the Mongol khan, Daniel Romanovich took into account the political interests of his new suzerain, including in relation to the Latin West. Like other Rus princes, he was obligated to obey the demands of the Mongols. Engaging in an unprecedentedly intensive correspondence with the pope, exchanging several embassies with him, and in every possible way contributing to helping along the mission of the papal emissary to the Mongols, the Galician-Volhynian princes – much like Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich of Vladimir-Suzdal – voluntarily or involuntarily contributed to the promotion of the Mongol diplomatic network for the West. They actively sought the involvement of the Latin rulers in peace negotiations with the Mongol conquerors, who perceived such talks as one of several useful methods to establish their power over the world. Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr Stephen Pow (University of Calgary) for his help in preparing this article for publication. Funding This study was carried out with the ﬁnancial support of the Russian Science Foundation (Российский Научный Фонд), project no. 21-18-00166. Notes on contributor Alexander V. Maiorov is Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of Museology, St Petersburg State University. He specialises in the history of Rus-Byzantine and Rus-Mongol relations. 89 See A.V. Maiorov, ‘The Alliance between Byzantium and Rus’ before the Conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204’, Russian History 42 (2015): 272–303; see also idem, ‘Angelos in Halych: Did Alexios III visit Roman Mstislavich?’ Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 56 (2016): 343–76. 90 See A.V. Maiorov, ‘The Daughter of a Byzantine Emperor – The Wife of a Galician-Volhynian Prince’, Byzantinoslavica 72 (2014): 188–233. 91 See A.V. Maiorov, ‘The Cult of St Daniel the Stylite among the Russian Princes of the Rurik Dynasty’, Slavic and East European Journal 59, no. 3 (2015): 345–66; idem, ‘The Emperor Manuel’s Cross in Notre Dame: On its Origin and Path’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017): 771–91.

RELATED PAPERS

RELATED TOPICS

Log In

A medieval effort toward unity: Latins, Greeks, Russians and the Mongol Khan, in: Journal of Medieval History, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2232377).

A medieval effort toward unity: Latins, Greeks, Russians and the Mongol Khan, in: Journal of Medieval History, 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1080/03044181.2023.2232377).

Related Papers

RELATED PAPERS

RELATED TOPICS