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This act was part of a more general picture in which the Crusaders on the one hand established Latin Kingdoms officially acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church, in the Middle East and in Greece and the Greek Islands, and also in parts of the Balkans. īy establishing communion with the Latin Patriarchs the Papacy in effect made official their position within the Roman Catholic Church.
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Understanding the situation of 1204 helps with the context of the reunion council. This threat of continued support prompted the new Greek emperor to seek out a reunion. When the last Latin emperor Baldwin II fled from Constantinople he was well received in Rome by Pope Urban IV who promised him support to regain the throne. Furthermore, those Orthodox bishops left in their place were made to swear an oath of allegiance to the pope. The pope recognised these " Latin" sees at the Fourth Council of the Lateran. The Pope, who was not involved, initially spoke out against the Crusade, writing in a letter to his legate, "How, indeed, is the Greek church to be brought back into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See when she has been beset with so many afflictions and persecutions that she sees in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs?" However the popes accepted the Latin patriarchate established by accompanying Catholic clergy, similar to Latin patriarchates in the Crusader states of the Holy Land. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade invaded, seized and sacked Constantinople, and established the Latin Empire. The tensions led in 1054 to a serious rupture between the Greek East and Latin West called the East–West Schism, which while not in many places absolute, still dominates the ecclesiastical landscape. There were complex cultural currents underlying these difficulties. The sees of Rome and Constantinople were often at odds with one another, just as the Greek and Latin Churches as a whole were often at odds both politically and in things ecclesiastical. In the West the Bishop of Rome was recognized as having superiority over the other Patriarchs, while in the East, the Patriarch of Constantinople gradually came to occupy a leading position. 2 List of Latin Patriarchs of Constantinopleīefore the East–West Schism in 1054, the Christian Church within the borders of the ancient Roman Empire was effectively ruled by five patriarchs (the " Pentarchy"): In descending order of precedence: Rome by the Bishop of Rome (who rarely used the title "Patriarch") and those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.