In his compelling study, Savvas Neocleous aims to reassess and challenge the generally accepted idea that Latin animosity toward the Greeks, stemming from the schism of 1054 and that festered during the Crusades, led to the sack and capture of Constantinople in 1204. The author argues that a thorough analysis of twelfth-century primary sources does not support the belief of a deep-rooted cultural and religious antagonism between Western Christendom and Byzantium, but rather demonstrates that Latin attitudes to the Greeks were quite more nuanced than long-established views propagated in Crusade historiography.
The book's title initially lends itself to confusion, since “Catholics” is a denomination currently reserved for the followers of the Western Roman rite, and not the former Byzantines of the Eastern rite. While the use of this term is obviously intentional for the purposes of the study, the author dispels any anachronism in the preface by specifying that “catholic”...
