The Latin Church

After the Frankish conquest, the leadership of the Eastern Church was replaced by Latin leadership and the ecclesiastical property including 1/3 of the Peloponnese devolved upon the Latins. More specifically, in 1205 the archbishopric of Patras was founded including the bishoprics of Olena (Andravida), Coron, Modon, Zakinthos and Cephalonia and in 1210 the archbishopric of Corinth, which included the bishoprics of Argos, Lacedemon and Monemvasia. The military religious orders of the Hospitallers, the Templars and the Teutonic Knights had a property of four fiefs each.

The upper clergy had obligations analogous to feudal lords. Archbishops were granted eight and bishops four knight fiefs. They had the obligation to provide military service (chevauchee), but not guard the frontiers (garnison) of the principality. The bishops had judicial jurisdiction over their vassals (Assizes, art. 48), save for cases of murder (The Chronicle of the Morea ver. 2015).

Serious conflicts were not recorded among members of the Latin and the Orthodox Church. The lower Orthodox clergy maintained its position and performed its duties, although certain clerics had exiled themselves. At the second parliament of Ravennika (west of Lamia), in 1210, it was ruled that the Orthodox clergy should pay the acrosticon (land tax) and be exempted from the corvée.

Nevertheless, the relations between the prince and the Latin Church remained unsettled. During the second parliament of Ravennika (1210), the prince Geoffrey I, who had already been recognized vassal of the Latin emperor Henry I and bore the title of senescalus Romaniae (1209, first parliament of Ravennika), refused to sign the provision that all Latin churches and monasteries would be exempted from their feudal obligations, under the pretext that they represented the pope. Therefore, between 1221 and 1223, the prince seized the revenues of the Latin Church and, according to the Chronicle of the Morea, used them in order to construct Chlemoutsi (Clermont). The conflict was terminated by the treaty of Rome (concordatum), in 1223, according to which the Latin clergy was exempted from all obligations, with the exception of paying the acrosticon, as provided by the second parliament of Ravennika.