2025/08/11 by Nicholas Morton · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Medieval History and Crusades #Historical and Religious Studies of Rome #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · doi:10.1111/1468-229x.70043
openalex publication_date 2025/08/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Questions surrounding the papacy's engagement with the Eastern Mediterranean and adjoining regions during the fourteenth century have received a fair amount of attention in recent years. Major studies include Mike Carr's Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean (2015), discussing aspects of the Church's crusading and mercantile policies; Constantinos Georgiou's Preaching the Crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean (2018), covering the papacy's persistent and largely unsuccessful attempts to ignite a major crusade; and the wide-ranging essay collection Crusading, Society, and Politics in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of King Peter I of Cyprus (2023), edited by Alexander Beihammer and Angel Nicolaou-Konnari. Each of these works sheds light on aspects of the papacy's policies towards this region, but none take quite the approach adopted in this present work by James Hill – The Avignon Popes and the Eastern Mediterranean. Within the space of quite a short study, Hill manages to provide a wide-ranging survey of the papacy's broad interests across the entire area, the objective being to assess – firstly – the extent to which the papacy could exert power and influence events and – secondly – the degree to which communities in this region acknowledged the papacy's authority. These are very interesting questions. The Avignon interlude was scarcely a highpoint for papal authority and so, in the wake of both the collapse of the mainland Crusader States (1291) and the shambolic encroachments on the papacy's authority otherwise known as “The Trial of the Templars” (concluding in 1312), it is very interesting to get some insight from Hill into how much power and respect the papacy could still muster. Hill provides this answer within a sweeping analysis encompassing many different topics. These include (in no particular order) aspects of diplomacy with non-Christian powers, crusading policies, ongoing negotiations with various non-Catholic Christian communities on the question of Church union, and the provision of marriage licences to Latins living either in the kingdom of Cyprus or in Greece/the Aegean. In each case, Hill offers a detailed, well-evidenced and authoritative survey of the issue under discussion before reviewing the extent to which the papacy's authority was acknowledged and its influence felt. The results of this analysis are – to some extent – inevitable. The papacy could authorize crusades, but it lacked the resources to raise overseas campaigns on its own account; the papacy could engage in diplomacy with the Mongol Ilkhanate, but it lacked the means to enforce its will; the papacy could encourage other churches to engage fully with Church union, but ultimately it required their co-operation to implement this effectively, and so on. These boundaries are not surprising, although Hill does an admirable job of teasing out their nuances. Less predictable – but very interesting – are his conclusions on the papacy's rather variable efforts to enforce a trade blockade on Mamluk Egypt. Historians have often brushed off these embargos by presenting them as ineffective and routinely ignored (at least in my hearing). On this point, however, Hill offers an important corrective. Drawing upon the papacy's trading licences for his evidence, he shows that many people requested permission to trade with Egypt, a fact that indicates an acknowledgement of the papal embargo. Also striking is the fact that in 1326 the papacy ordered the Venetians to cease trade with Egypt and – despite their enormous dependency on commerce with Alexandria – they actually submitted to this ruling. Likewise, Hill shows that many aspiring pilgrims adhered to the requirement to acquire a licence from the papacy before travelling to the Holy Land, just as Latins seeking a spouse in the Eastern Mediterranean often proved attentive to the boundaries set by Church law and – if necessary – acquired the requisite marriage licences. Pooling this material together, Hill draws the conclusion that while the papacy's theoretical authority was widely acknowledged, its practical ability to enforce its policies depended in large part on the willing compliance of local – especially Latin – leaders. In such cases, the papacy could expect a fair degree of support if its interests happened to align with those of authorities located in the Eastern Mediterranean, but it was generally less successful if they did not align. This implies, by extension, a rather mediocre level of leverage on the Church's part because surely the strongest indicator of real power is the ability to make people carry out actions that do not align with their own goals and wishes. This point notwithstanding, The Avignon Popes and the Eastern Mediterranean probably still serves to revise upwards assessments of the papacy's powers during this era, in particular its influence among Latins, at least when contrasted with previous verdicts on this subject. Taken overall, this is a very admirable study. The sheer breadth of Hill's analysis and his grasp of so many different threads within the papal policies of this era is impressive. He shows an especially strong understanding of the voluminous papal registers from the Avignon period, and he interlaces them effectively with other sources. His arguments have the virtue of being plausible, sensitive to overlapping contexts, and highly nuanced – points which all underline this monograph's substantial contribution to scholarship on this topic.