Conclusion

Abstract

The conclusion summarises the principle arguments of the book. Despite the Norman conquest of southern Italy in the late eleventh century, the Italo-Greeks continued throughout the twelfth century to view themselves as an outpost of Byzantine Christianity in Western Europe. Law played an important role in the construction of their religious identity: they were orthodox not simply because they held the right beliefs, but because they followed Byzantine canon law. They were able to do so because of the pluralistic legal culture of southern Italy and because of the Norman monarchs’ resistance to papal authority, a combination that allowed Norman kings such as Roger II to act out a similar role to that of the Byzantine emperor as patrons of Greek churches and monasteries. The situation began to change in the thirteenth century, however. The end of the Hauteville dynasty, the Fourth Crusade, and the Fourth Lateran Council created conditions that led to the progressive erosion of Byzantine canon law as a juridical system in southern Italy as the papacy was increasingly successful in asserting its legal authority. Nonetheless, even as nomocanonical manuscripts lost their utility as legal sources, they provided important sources of legitimacy with the aura of antiquity to the Italo-Greeks’ distinctive religious rites and customs. In Robert Cover’s terminology, the nomocanons shifted from being sources of imperial law to sources of paideic law. The conclusion ends with observations on the important role of law in the formation of medieval religion and culture.