The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204–1500 by Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis (review)

This book has two objectives. The first is to provide histories of various (non-military) religious orders in medieval Greece. Considering the variable survival of source material, the lack of evidence for many houses, and the disproportionate scholarly attention given to some orders over others, this aim has been met brilliantly. This book charts, as comprehensively as possible, the Cistercians, Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Italian Crociferi, Augustinian Friars, and a range of other orders in Greece and Crete. The author has a systematic approach to building a picture of when individual houses appeared and disappeared, and to providing commentary on their operation when sources allow. But this is not just a history of houses. Rather, Nickiphoros Tsourgarakis fleshes out the particular objectives, operating principles, and successes and failures of each order.

The second of the book’s objectives is ‘to place the monastic colonization of Greece within the wider context’ of Latin expansion into Greece (p. xix). It is in this that the order histories prove particularly illuminating, showing, for instance, that there are notable differences between monastic experiences in Frankish Greece and Venetian Crete. How each ethnic and cultural group brought orders in to suit their own purposes is extremely interesting, and how these orders navigated their various duties, responsibilities, and allegiances, reveals a great deal about the medieval colonial processes at work. Tsourgarakis illustrates, for example, how the Franciscans and Dominicans played a greater missionary role than the Cistercians and Benedictines.

Many Parergonreaders will be interested in the story of the Italian Crociferi, ‘a little-known hospital-order’ (pp. 213–32), whose relationship with the Venetian settlement again shows colonial processes at work in interesting ways. The presence of a confraternity-like scuole, associated with this order, reveals an easily overlooked yet significant point of intersection between professed religious and the laity. This section also shows expressions of popular piety, social welfare, and identity, and explores relationships between colonial centres and peripheries.

Tsougarakis’s study goes a considerable way towards rectifying any perception that the Latin religious in Greece were ‘an insignificant side-effect of the Latin conquest’ (p. 305). For anyone interested in the subject, this book will be the place to start for quite some time.