Crusades against the Catalans of Athens, c.1311-1334

Campaigns against the Catalans of Athens blended elements of crusading against political opponents in Italy with those used against the Byzantines in Greece and the Aegean. Because the Catalans had close ties with the rulers of Aragon and Sicily, their conquest of the duchy of Athens in 1311 brought them into conflict with the papacy and the Angevins of southern Italy, who laid claim to Athens. But the establishment of the Catalans in Greece also made them part of the Aegean theatre, where the papacy condemned them for allying with the Greeks and Turks, thus using well-established motifs of collusion with the enemies of the faith as a means of justifying crusading. Pope John XXII harmonised these two different, yet interconnected, strands of rhetoric when using the term “schismatic” in the only crusade preached against the Catalans in 1330. Although the paucity of sources regarding this crusade makes it difficult to establish how it was popularly perceived, it is evident that the leader of the crusade, Walter II of Brienne, was able to recruit a relatively large army for his campaign (in the context of the region and period), mostly from Italy. The crusade was ultimately a failure, but it is nevertheless an interesting example of how the motifs and justifications of crusading against different targets in two different theatres—Italy and Greece—could be blended together.