The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #238 ｜ The Fourth Crusade： Part III with Marcus Furius

00:00:00.000 Epochs!

00:00:20.360 So in essence, the Byzantines having this sort of capacity

00:00:24.620 for gathering intelligence and almost having like a predecessor

00:00:30.340 to like, is it MI6 that's the foreign one?

00:00:33.480 In Britain, yeah, MI6.

00:00:34.820 Or like CIA, whatever, gathering intelligence

00:00:37.680 and learning about all these people,

00:00:39.980 some who are closer to the periphery vampire

00:00:42.840 and some that are distant.

00:00:44.780 You know, for instance, it covers a number of depth tribes

00:00:50.980 of sort of like long lost memory.

00:00:52.400 So, I mean, really, to some degree, even like the Peschnigs 1.00

00:00:54.780 went extinct after the two battles they fought against Alexios

00:00:57.940 and John Kumnernus.

00:00:59.360 You know, we know about the Peschnigs because of them existing 1.00

00:01:01.900 in the Imperio Administrando.

00:01:04.760 So, you know, this is really, you might say,

00:01:08.360 the first case of like a real, in an official sense,

00:01:12.800 as a matter of government policy.

00:01:14.800 As I mentioned before, the process sort of begins

00:01:19.040 towards the end of, you know, when you say about that east-west split

00:01:22.260 under Theodosius, you know, with Arcadius and the eastern emperors,

00:01:26.160 that the Byzantines cultivate and refine this mechanism

00:01:29.480 which assists them, you know, both in a diplomatic context

00:01:32.380 and also in a military context.

00:01:33.500 They sort of learn how to fight against different enemies

00:01:36.160 and they sort of gather intelligence as to what their enemies might be,

00:01:40.440 what their strengths are.

00:01:41.360 There's an example whereby I've got a feeling it was against the Bulgars

00:01:47.340 and I can't remember if they invite the Cumans or the Peschnigs,

00:01:51.120 whoever it was, and they got too powerful so they invited the Kievan Rus 0.57

00:01:55.460 to sort of like counter-invade them, you know, because it's like,

00:01:59.080 oh, we can't have one image that's too powerful on the Danubian frontier.

00:02:02.420 You know, and Byzantine history to this point is quite replete

00:02:07.420 with these examples.

00:02:08.340 You know, often even like the eastern campaigns,

00:02:11.060 and I suppose we'll get to the presurgence in the eastern in a bit,

00:02:16.200 but for instance, the emir of Aleppo or, you know, Homs

00:02:22.520 would be a paid-up tributary of the Byzantine Empire

00:02:25.700 rather than to the caliphate in Baghdad or in Egypt.

00:02:29.000 But you've got to make the point about the Kievan Rus earlier,

00:02:32.660 if you might remember where you were going to go with that.

00:02:35.620 Well, it's just a whole massive story, isn't it?

00:02:38.160 It's a whole massive element to the Byzantine story.

00:02:44.400 Well, it's so big that, you know, whole books are written about it,

00:02:47.240 whole PhDs will be written about it.

00:02:50.520 I think what's important or what's worth mentioning is that, you know,

00:02:54.980 sadly it's sort of overshadowed by the present situation in the Donbass,

00:02:58.720 it's been 20, 25 and all.

00:03:00.980 But the establishment of the – because actually in many ways

00:03:07.960 this is the beginning of the Vranging Guard, well, it could be further forward,

00:03:12.520 but under the reign of John Zemiskis that the failed raid on Constantinople

00:03:19.680 by the Kievan Rus, and then he marries off his – was it his sister or his daughter,

00:03:23.760 I can't remember – to the prince of Kiev.

00:03:28.480 And, you know, and then in succession you have, you know,

00:03:32.240 Olga and these other leaders of Kiev who sort of embrace orthodoxy.

00:03:37.120 And what you actually have is the genesis of what we sort of understand

00:03:41.140 as modern orthodox Russia.

00:03:44.040 And you have another example of that at the very end of the empire

00:03:47.280 where Sophia Paleologos is the – and I think she's what,

00:03:53.080 the niece of Constantine, the last Constantine of the empire.

00:03:59.980 Therefore, another sort of – another influx of royal Byzantine blood

00:04:08.660 into these sort of Russian aristocratic lines.

00:04:11.460 And so it creates this sort of – sort of kinship between Greeks and Russians

00:04:16.780 and it sort of acts as the basis of how the Russians have this sort

00:04:20.660 of self-identification between themselves and their civilisation

00:04:23.200 and their orthodox religiosity.

00:04:25.260 It has its basis with these interactions with East Rome, with Byzantines.

00:04:29.980 Yeah.

00:04:31.620 God, there's so much to say.

00:04:32.780 When you try and – I always find this – whenever you try and condense

00:04:37.540 down centuries' worth of history, you can only ever really –

00:04:42.240 you can only ever do it at sort of low resolution, right?

00:04:46.220 You can only ever –

00:04:47.380 It's hard to hyper-focus on.

00:04:48.120 Hit the highlights.

00:04:49.960 Yeah.

00:04:50.520 So, like, I don't know if – we haven't really got time to go

00:04:52.840 into sort of the whole Kievan Rus thing and the Varangian guard

00:04:57.120 and all the ins and outs of that.

00:04:59.300 I mean, one or two episodes could be an hour, hour and a half long

00:05:02.960 episode of Epochs on it.

00:05:05.260 Frankly, the entire duration of this discussion could actually

00:05:08.980 in itself be like a miniseries.

00:05:11.060 It really could.

00:05:11.700 Yeah.

00:05:12.140 Oh, good.

00:05:12.760 Yeah, easily.

00:05:13.560 Yeah.

00:05:13.980 Yeah.

00:05:14.440 I think a few months ago, AM and I did a discussion on the Komennoi

00:05:17.820 and it was like a three and a half hour stream on one period,

00:05:21.540 which, I mean, we're going to canvas it, but we'll have to just do it briefly.

00:05:24.220 But it's very easy to do that once you start going to sort of depth

00:05:28.280 and resolution, as you say.

00:05:29.560 Yeah.

00:05:31.180 Okay.

00:05:31.700 So you mentioned before the period of iconoclasm.

00:05:36.260 Yes.

00:05:37.580 If you want to say a few words about that, how that all played out.

00:05:41.180 Well, there were people who will know more about it than myself.

00:05:44.420 So it's probably hard for me to sort of cast, you know,

00:05:48.340 a lot of light onto that.

00:05:49.540 My expertise in history is sort of light elsewhere.

00:05:52.880 It's more, you know, linguistics and warfare and, you know,

00:05:57.420 the bureaucracy and like the state and all that, you know.

00:06:00.640 Okay.

00:06:00.980 So religion is probably less of a forte for me in that sense.

00:06:04.060 But it is intriguing that the Byzantines stumble into this sort of period

00:06:08.540 of iconoclasm whereby up until this point and even after iconoclasm,

00:06:13.780 and it's a hallmark, certainly of Catholic and of Orthodox Christianity.

00:06:17.860 I know in Protestantism there's a slightly different, you know,

00:06:21.740 a slightly different interpretation of like icons and statues and whatever.

00:06:25.460 And as we know,

00:06:26.560 the Muslims are very much against the representation of religious figures 1.00

00:06:30.180 in their religion.

00:06:33.460 But they were so sort of beset and were probably rightly concerned that the world

00:06:40.040 as they knew it was coming to an end, you know,

00:06:41.760 when the Arabs are brushing aside Roman armies from, you know,

00:06:44.760 Syria to Tunisia and they're knocking on the doors of the Taurus mountains 0.94

00:06:48.280 and they, you know, literally around the walls of Constantinople, you know.

00:06:51.700 Are the Byzantines thinking, you know, have we forsaken our God?

00:06:54.840 Have we done something wrong?

00:06:55.820 You know, are we being punished for our sins?

00:06:57.220 It's, you know, a bit like that, the comment used with Genghis Khan,

00:07:02.200 it's like, you know, God has brought me here to punish me for your sins.

00:07:05.920 You know, it's, I am the, you know, I'm the scourge of God as it were.

00:07:10.120 Yeah.

00:07:11.120 And that coincides with the iconoclastic period and the Byzantines having this belief

00:07:15.420 that, you know, maybe this representation of icons we have, you know,

00:07:18.260 sinned gravely and it ended up being an internal ideological dispute

00:07:21.900 for the better part of a century.

00:07:23.500 And it was only kind of reversed towards the end of the Phrygian dynasty,

00:07:28.660 of which, like I said to you, I've mentioned Michael the Drunkard.

00:07:32.260 And it's kind of a bit of an unfair epithet,

00:07:33.760 but he was probably the real last fervent iconoclast emperor.

00:07:38.260 Well, they're smashing the faces off all their images and mosaics.

00:07:42.720 Very much like hardline Protestants did during the Reformation.

00:07:49.020 Very much so.

00:07:49.660 It's just that was wrong, so we're going to smash it.

00:07:52.780 Yeah, yeah. 0.93

00:07:53.320 We're just going to rip it down, rip it out, get rid of it.

00:07:55.760 Yeah.

00:07:56.260 I mean, I think it's a fair comparison.

00:07:58.080 What I would say is that I think there's a distinction between,

00:08:03.560 I think the Protestants were more concerned, 0.99

00:08:07.640 and I mean, I'm not an Englishman, so correct me if I'm wrong,

00:08:10.000 but I think the Protestants were more concerned

00:08:11.460 with the internal management of the realm

00:08:14.660 and this internal context of Catholicism and Protestantism within England.

00:08:19.280 Whereas I think the Byzantines were like, 1.00

00:08:20.360 we are beset by an outside force that is going to overwhelm us.

00:08:23.280 Right.

00:08:23.540 And we wish to achieve some kind of salvation lest we lose our country.

00:08:27.860 No, fair point.

00:08:28.700 If the net result is the images of people get their faces ripped off

00:08:34.780 or ripped down or their nose broken off or something,

00:08:37.560 if the net result is very, very similar,

00:08:39.800 the motivations are very dissimilar.

00:08:42.460 Yeah.

00:08:42.760 Correct.

00:08:42.960 And the way it happened, it played out in Germany or in France

00:08:46.160 during the French Revolution, say,

00:08:47.700 or how it played out in Britain during like the 17th century or something,

00:08:51.340 they're all very different.

00:08:52.400 They've all sort of got their own story.

00:08:54.780 So, yeah, although there are massive parallels there,

00:08:58.440 they're also very different things.

00:09:00.200 Different means and motivations, but similar outcomes

00:09:04.520 and similar desire, you might say.

00:09:07.420 So, okay, let's mention, let's talk about the Great Schism then. 0.87

00:09:11.040 We must have a bit about sort of Irene.

00:09:13.140 Yeah.

00:09:13.820 Well, maybe just before that, I was going to say,

00:09:16.440 because there's a period between the end of the Phrygian dynasty,

00:09:18.800 which is sort of the beginning of the, you might say,

00:09:21.180 the resurgence period.

00:09:23.320 Because what you have is the emergence of a number of these

00:09:27.480 sort of landed aristocratic families, magnates,

00:09:30.000 as they're often called.

00:09:32.320 Deonatoi, to use the Greek word.

00:09:33.660 The Phokoi, they're a famous example because, I mean, 1.00

00:09:40.960 Nicophorus Phokos becomes an emperor.

00:09:43.380 You have John Zemiskis, you have the Korkuos family.

00:09:47.760 John Korkuos, for instance, was probably one of the most successful generals

00:09:50.400 in this period.

00:09:51.540 Again, unless you're like a Byzantus, you don't really come across him.

00:09:54.200 But these are the men who, you know, very famously lead to the victory

00:10:00.460 of Katakalon, which is in sort of eastern Anatolia.

00:10:05.500 It's one of the real successes they have against the caliphate. 0.82

00:10:09.880 They absolutely destroy an Arab army. 0.87

00:10:13.620 Because right at the end of the Phrygian dynasty, actually,

00:10:15.600 the Arabs do sack Amorion, which at this point is like the second capital 0.92

00:10:18.780 of the empire because that's where the Phrygian dynasty is from.

00:10:21.560 Amoria or Amorion, the city, is in Phrygia, which is sort of –

00:10:26.100 I'm just trying to help people here.

00:10:29.540 West of Monde, Ankara, if you sort of drove south directly from Istanbul,

00:10:34.400 you'd eventually hit it more or less.

00:10:35.640 Like it's in that western half of – or the western third of Anatolia.

00:10:39.500 Amorion was a very, very wealthy city and a very powerful city,

00:10:44.360 sort of not too far from Dorileon or something like that or Gordion.

00:10:48.980 But it was a very, very, very powerful city this time, and the Arab sack it. 1.00

00:10:54.040 And after you have the emergence of the Macedonian dynasty and these magnates

00:10:58.060 and generals who end up rising, permeating to the top of Byzantine society,

00:11:02.000 engage in these eastern campaigns.

00:11:03.540 And it actually almost gets to a point where they're almost annual.

00:11:06.180 They recapture Melatine, which is one of the biggest successes they have

00:11:10.080 at this time period.

00:11:10.800 And the capture of Melatine sent shockwaves to the Arab world 0.93

00:11:14.560 because it's the first time they've actually genuinely suffered a reversal

00:11:17.420 whereby a foreign power has retaken a city that Islam has captured.

00:11:22.740 It's actually a seismic event.

00:11:24.980 It in some ways is – in the same way that Tours Portiers is important to us

00:11:29.660 in the West, in the Latin West, the recapture of Melatine is an equivalent example.

00:11:34.300 And in some ways actually more important because it's not just a battle,

00:11:37.220 a victorious battle, it's the recapturing of the city.

00:11:40.240 It's the first one that Islam loses to Christianity in a reconquest context. 0.98

00:11:45.480 Right.

00:11:46.260 And when is that roughly?

00:11:47.880 Do you know?

00:11:48.560 Oh, gosh.

00:11:49.380 I'm trying to dig my memory now.

00:11:51.040 It's quite a long time after –

00:11:52.740 I'm thinking like 9, 10, 9, 20.

00:11:55.240 Sorry if I get dragged through the comments, but –

00:11:57.120 No, no.

00:11:57.140 That's the sort of –

00:11:57.900 It's like early 900s.

00:11:58.760 That's the sort of time I was thinking, which is to say –

00:12:01.140 And the Sac of Amorion is like 880s or something like that.

00:12:03.860 Which is to say quite a long time after –

00:12:06.740 They've been reeling –

00:12:07.320 The original Arab conquests. 0.63

00:12:09.040 They're reeling for two and a half centuries, practically.

00:12:11.400 Yeah.

00:12:11.420 Yeah.

00:12:11.820 That's the point.

00:12:12.420 Yeah.

00:12:12.820 I mean, they fight off the siege and they hold the frontiers,

00:12:16.980 but it's a long time until they actually go back on the counterattack

00:12:19.520 in a fairly comprehensive manner.

00:12:21.420 I mean, a couple of centuries.

00:12:23.060 We're just not used – in the modern world, postmodern world,

00:12:25.440 we're just not used to those sorts of timeframes on things, are we?

00:12:28.400 Yeah.

00:12:28.920 Well, think of this, right?

00:12:29.960 So America's about to turn like 250 years old, thereabouts, right?

00:12:33.760 But the time in which the Byzantines reverse the Arab conquest

00:12:39.100 and recapture a city from Islam is the lifespan of the American nation. 0.98

00:12:43.840 Yeah.

00:12:44.020 Like, imagine that.

00:12:45.180 Yeah.

00:12:45.460 That's fairly comprehensive.

00:12:47.880 And this is the thing.

00:12:48.820 We have to think in similar time spans because this is how civilizations are.

00:12:55.100 Like, they don't just crop up every five minutes and vanish in 10 minutes.

00:12:59.280 Like, you know, civilization is a complicated thing.

00:13:03.680 And the fate of nations is something that doesn't – I mean,

00:13:07.460 calamities can be suffered overnight, granted.

00:13:09.900 But, you know, say in the case of the Byzantines, you've got to think,

00:13:13.400 you know, from the moment that – you've got to think.

00:13:15.900 Yarmulke is 636.

00:13:18.180 Constantinople is 1453.

00:13:19.260 It's a long time between – you know, it's like you're almost looking at,

00:13:23.020 you know, 1,000 years, 800 years.

00:13:25.060 It's a long time.

00:13:27.400 So with the Great Schism, then, there's this period where there's no male emperor

00:13:34.420 in Rome.

00:13:36.560 Yeah, because you have two princesses of the Macedonian dynasty,

00:13:42.360 Theodoro and Irene.

00:13:43.780 Irene.

00:13:44.320 Yes.

00:13:45.240 And so, I mean, people –

00:13:47.680 Who are descended from Basil the Bulgur Slayer, of course.

00:13:49.740 Right.

00:13:50.160 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:50.480 And people, scholars, historians, argue about the details and various motivations

00:13:57.400 of various people.

00:13:58.160 But some have said – I don't know if you agree with this –

00:14:01.860 There's something in the Western Christian mind or something in the Pope at the time

00:14:13.960 that sees this as an excuse or a reason or an opportunity to say we don't recognize

00:14:26.960 or we can't recognize a female empress. 0.98

00:14:31.120 And therefore, we're not going to recognize – we're not going to recognize your empire

00:14:39.120 or your religion anymore.

00:14:41.480 We're not going to recognize, yeah, your version.

00:14:46.280 Or the primacy of the patriarch.

00:14:47.800 Yeah, we don't recognize your version of Christianity, like formally, same.

00:14:54.240 We're formally not recognizing it from now, go.

00:14:57.540 Yeah.

00:14:57.800 And so we are now the real church, the Catholic church. 0.83

00:15:01.400 We're the real ones.

00:15:02.080 And you can call yourself whatever you want, but we're different things now.

00:15:07.120 Yeah.

00:15:08.020 The full spiritual authority is in Rome, and you tried to usurp it for a few centuries

00:15:15.520 there, but you failed, and now we split.

00:15:20.760 It's a full schism.

00:15:22.060 Yeah.

00:15:22.340 Some people say schism.

00:15:23.840 I say schism.

00:15:25.180 I prefer schism.

00:15:25.820 Yeah.

00:15:26.080 I think it's schism.

00:15:27.980 Schism. 0.91

00:15:28.420 Yeah.

00:15:29.820 Schism. 0.91

00:15:30.260 Yeah, it's – schism sounds so much like incision, like it's –

00:15:35.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:36.900 You're trying to say the word scissors and didn't finish.

00:15:39.500 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:39.660 Yeah, exactly.

00:15:40.460 Schism. 0.91

00:15:41.200 Schism, yeah. 0.99

00:15:43.160 Well, this sort of has a little bit of a back story and precedence with the crying

00:15:47.200 of Charlotte, mate.

00:15:48.440 Okay.

00:15:49.480 When he's made –

00:15:50.720 Which is that 800?

00:15:52.180 Yeah, it's 800.

00:15:52.760 It's bang on 800, isn't it?

00:15:53.620 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:53.860 Right, okay, yeah.

00:15:54.640 And it's around – I'm trying to think it's around Christmas or New Year or something.

00:15:58.080 Yeah, was it Christmas Day or New Year's Day?

00:15:59.660 I always forget that detail.

00:16:01.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:01.220 But it's like – it's an important part of the calendar, right?

00:16:04.240 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:04.800 I think it's New Year's Day or New Year's Eve, I think it was.

00:16:06.920 Yeah, something like that.

00:16:07.600 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:07.940 Anyway.

00:16:09.520 And there's always that what if scenario is that had he married the empress at the time,

00:16:14.140 you would have had a unification of the Frankish kingdom and the East Roman Empire,

00:16:17.740 which would have been quite a tantalizing prospect.

00:16:19.320 However, it didn't occur.

00:16:22.600 And see, what you have here is this sort of coincides with the absolute erosion of Byzantine authority

00:16:27.460 in the Italian peninsula.

00:16:29.120 And we sort of touched on the feats of the Byzantines who were suffering at that time

00:16:33.340 and them just trying to survive the Arab consulate.

00:16:36.220 And so the Pope, with the degree of legitimacy in this context,

00:16:43.220 felt that the Byzantines could no longer ensure the protection of Rome

00:16:47.740 and the safeguarding ship of what we understand to be the Vatican City today,

00:16:52.060 but of St. Peter's Basilica and the head of the church.

00:16:55.660 And the most logical option for the Pope in that sense was obviously Charlemagne.

00:16:59.920 I mean, Charlemagne, by this point in time, had accumulated a lot of power in Francia.

00:17:03.140 Oh, God, yeah, he was the most powerful man in Europe easily, by a long, long way.

00:17:07.440 And the kingdom of Charlemagne was a very powerful and a very unified and strong entity.

00:17:12.740 And you've got to think it's like two or three generations have moved from Charles Martel.

00:17:15.860 Charles Martel was his grandfather, right?

00:17:17.360 Yes.

00:17:17.880 So, you know, from Poitiers, where the Franks dismounted from their horses

00:17:22.320 and made a stand against the Arabs in southern France,

00:17:24.740 to, you know, you're talking about a kingdom that spans from Brittany

00:17:28.260 to the border of modern-day Hungary down to, from central Italy,

00:17:33.520 like almost up to Denmark.

00:17:34.880 It's a very powerful kingdom, a very strong kingdom.

00:17:37.640 And Charlemagne is also engaging in something of a,

00:17:40.240 like a mini-Renaissance in the Frankish kingdom.

00:17:43.380 You know, monastic scholarship is, you know, coming to the fore once again.

00:17:48.240 Frankish armies are very strong.

00:17:49.760 They're building, you know, new towns and cities and trades flourishing.

00:17:53.600 You know, Europe hasn't seen this kind of stability since Roman times.

00:17:58.700 Well, I mean, not to its full extent, but something resembling it.

00:18:02.280 Oh, yeah.

00:18:03.000 Yeah.

00:18:03.240 Charlemagne doesn't return to those high watermarks,

00:18:05.700 but it's the closest thing they've had.

00:18:08.400 If you lived within Frank here, it's the most sort of peace that you've had.

00:18:12.540 You know, I mean, not that the same person would be alive three centuries prior,

00:18:15.460 but it's the most prosperity that any of those people would have, you know, lived under.

00:18:19.600 And also as well is that the Frankish kingdom, if you sort of look into the real nitty-gritty history of the Franks,

00:18:26.480 they're the Germanic tribe who adopt the most Roman sort of features, I suppose.

00:18:32.080 They're the most Romanized of the Germanics.

00:18:35.360 And it also transponds in their language.

00:18:37.500 Like the reason why French is a Romance language,

00:18:39.880 but with German affectations is because of that,

00:18:43.660 essentially in ethnogenesis of the closing Gaul,

00:18:45.720 you know, the Franks are this sort of melding of the Germanic and the Gallo-Roman.

00:18:50.420 And so, you know, for the Pope, there's a strong degree of familiarity with them,

00:18:54.180 which they find far more, shall I say,

00:18:58.720 truly European or true to the Latin heart of Rome itself

00:19:05.180 than with the Greek East in Constantinople.

00:19:07.800 Well, if the Holy Roman Emperor,

00:19:12.760 Charlemagne himself,

00:19:14.980 Cal de Grosso,

00:19:16.100 if they were going to re-imagine

00:19:18.800 and sort of resurrect

00:19:23.200 the idea of having a Roman Emperor,

00:19:27.780 there's absolutely no question it's going to be Charlemagne.

00:19:31.280 He's certainly the closest.

00:19:31.960 There's no question. It's obviously him.

00:19:34.000 He's by far the closest.

00:19:34.980 It's obviously him.

00:19:36.060 In fact, it couldn't be anyone else.

00:19:38.300 They only resurrect it because Charlemagne exists.

00:19:41.940 Yes.

00:19:42.060 Because he's already done it.

00:19:43.100 In his form as he was.

00:19:44.580 Yeah, right.

00:19:44.940 Yeah.

00:19:45.120 Correct. Yeah.

00:19:45.860 So, obviously you have that precedent

00:19:48.700 to cleave back to the original question.

00:19:50.600 Yeah.

00:19:51.220 There's this precedent already where

00:19:52.860 the Pope doesn't acknowledge the authority of Constantinople.

00:19:57.060 Yeah.

00:19:57.360 Certainly from a, let's call it like an imperial secular sense.

00:20:00.880 We're now in the 11th century again we're talking.

00:20:02.500 We've just jumped ahead.

00:20:03.100 Yeah.

00:20:03.300 So we go back to the 11th century, right?

00:20:05.500 So the, and this is sort of the argument between the Pope

00:20:10.460 and by the Patriarch, Michael Keraladios,

00:20:13.460 is a dispute over actual authority.

00:20:16.300 And so you have this situation whereby the Patriarch

00:20:18.940 and the Pope excommunicate one another.

00:20:20.940 And there's a sort of series of furious letters sent back and forth.

00:20:23.500 Yeah.

00:20:23.600 Because what's sort of interesting is that the Byzantines have this really strange example 0.98

00:20:27.300 and, in my opinion, a more fitting and effective example of where the Patriarch

00:20:32.880 and the Emperor do quite a good job of coexisting with each other.

00:20:37.040 Whereas.

00:20:38.560 In the East.

00:20:39.480 In the East.

00:20:40.000 Constantinople.

00:20:40.520 Patriarch and the Emperors of Constantinople.

00:20:43.980 For the most part, coexist fairly well and mostly to the benefit of, you know, the empire

00:20:49.180 subjects.

00:20:50.120 Whereas what we sort of see is from this point onwards and into the medieval period, this

00:20:55.560 idea that the Pope would have, you know, religious and spiritual dominion over everybody

00:21:01.040 in the West, including the aristocracy and kings of Europe, if you get what I mean.

00:21:06.140 So in Byzantium, they sort of sit like this.

00:21:08.040 Whereas in the West, you have, like, the Pope and then all the monarchies underneath.

00:21:12.600 So there's sort of a bit of a power play, a cynicism towards papal power play that one

00:21:17.400 has to kind of acknowledge.

00:21:19.900 Oh, God.

00:21:20.320 The religious and doctrinal questions notwithstanding.

00:21:24.620 But yeah, sort of, and the sad thing is a bit like Yarmouk in a sort of military context.

00:21:33.020 The Great Schism has immense political and civilizational, you know, repercussions that

00:21:39.660 again, survive to Isaiah.

00:21:41.660 You know, go ahead and think about the Greek church and the Pope are still technically not

00:21:46.660 in communication with one another.

00:21:48.140 Yeah.

00:21:48.440 I mean, they engage in dialogue, but I mean, the two churches are still in technical

00:21:53.020 dispute with each other.

00:21:54.040 Oh, absolutely.

00:21:54.800 Yeah.

00:21:54.940 You know, I mean, they will meet occasionally, but there's modern photographs of the patriarch

00:21:59.660 and the Pope standing next to each other.

00:22:02.700 And it's quite cordial.

00:22:04.120 Yeah, it's quite cordial.

00:22:05.380 But yeah, we don't agree on what God thinks and wants and what heaven is like.

00:22:11.380 Correct.

00:22:11.920 And all sorts of things.

00:22:12.640 And also, too, is that, and maybe I do have a bit of a Byzantine bias, despite the fact I'm

00:22:17.520 Catholic, is that there was a Pentarch, you know, and there are five heads of each

00:22:24.120 church.

00:22:24.460 There's Rome and Constantinople and Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria.

00:22:30.620 But the Pope in Rome feels as if his position is above the Pentarchy.

00:22:34.680 Whereas even though the patriarch within the empire, and you got to think there was a time

00:22:38.620 where all five of those churches existed under the Byzantine East Roman sphere, under its

00:22:44.140 dominion, the patriarch never was above them as such.

00:22:49.080 He was only maybe technically above them in a judicial sense because of his proximity to

00:22:52.440 the emperor.

00:22:52.860 But, you know, the Pope in Constantinople is technically no more powerful than the Pope

00:22:58.780 in Antioch, sorry, than the sort of the representative of Antioch or of Alexandria.

00:23:03.760 Sorry, the patriarch is what I meant to say.

00:23:05.220 Whereas the Pope in Rome has fashioned himself into something else.

00:23:10.000 And, you know, if you want to go into the whole, like, thing, again, it could be like

00:23:14.060 on another stream.

00:23:14.780 But the idea that in some ways, Peter, as in the original St.

00:23:18.500 Peter, you know, fashions himself as Pontifux Maximus, which is, obviously, we know, a Roman

00:23:23.660 pagan position.

00:23:26.900 Absolutely.

00:23:27.160 And those two become melded into what we understand as the Pope in Rome.

00:23:32.320 And that's its own thing because, you know, the equivalent patriarch in Alexandria or Jerusalem

00:23:38.720 or Constantinople doesn't do that.

00:23:41.340 I still find it interesting.

00:23:43.220 There's a whole can of worms there.

00:23:45.020 Yeah, right.

00:23:45.480 I wish our esteemed friend was here because I think Mr. Majesty would have a better take

00:23:49.520 on that from a religious standpoint.

00:23:51.180 Even the Pope today is sometimes called the pontiff or the chief pontiff or something.

00:23:54.640 But also any inscriptions like, you know, pont max.

00:23:58.760 Yeah.

00:23:59.000 Pontifux Maximus.

00:23:59.720 Yeah, right.

00:24:00.300 Yeah, yeah.

00:24:00.660 We hope you enjoyed that video.

00:24:02.000 And if you did, please head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video.

00:24:06.140 We hope you enjoyed that video.

00:24:13.480 We hope you enjoyed it.

00:24:17.440 We hope you enjoyed it.

00:24:18.240 Thank you.

00:24:18.680 Thank you.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 23, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #238 ｜ The Fourth Crusade： Part III with Marcus Furius

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