Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade by George E. Demacopoulos

Abstract

Reviewed by: Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade by George E. Demacopoulos Mateusz J. Ferens George E. Demacopoulos, Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019), 184 pp. George Demacopoulos positions his book as a sort of extended thought experiment in which he applies postcolonial critique to several literary sources written in the wake of the Latin occupation of Constantinople in 1204. While this thought experiment is certainly no tour de force of postcolonial study of the Byzantine world, it provides its readers with a serious foray into the issue of colonialism that will inevitably shape the next stage of discourse in the field. As such, the book functions as a kind of bridge inviting medievalists to engage in postcolonial critique and inviting scholars in the field of postcolonial studies to further investigate the curious case of European colonization of an indigenous Christian population. Colonizing Christianity supports two parallel theses and addresses two distinct audiences. First, it sets out to affirm the increasingly popular claim that European colonialism originated with the establishment of crusader states in the Near East. Demacopoulos is thus contributing to the field of postcolonial studies by bringing attention to the overlooked case of the European colonial enterprise in Greek territories. The thesis is certainly not original, but medievalists will take notice of the epistemic shift that Demacopoulos proposes in his reappraisal of selected texts. The book's second thesis may catch some scholars off guard because it addresses the modern-day Christian audience concerned with the possibility of ecclesial union between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Demacopoulos [End Page 248] argues that the long-standing religious polemic between Catholics and Orthodox Christians attained a new postcolonial modality in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. This modality was characterized by political and cultural alienation and a lack of theological development. In the final pages of the book, the author encourages his Christian readers with high hopes for Catholic–Orthodox unity on the basis that the historical source of alienation was primarily political, economic, and cultural and that "there was nothing theologically insurmountable about East/West theological difference" (130). In other words, Demacopoulos contributes to today's pro-union efforts of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches by suspending the significance of theological and dogmatic incommensurability. This second thesis should not be disregarded by readers as merely an addendum to the book or a speculative attempt at connecting medieval history to the contemporary moment. On the contrary, it sustains the author's larger objective articulated in his previous publications (George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds., "Orthodox Naming of the Other: A Postcolonial Approach," in Orthodox Constructions of the West [New York: Fordham University Press, 2013], 1–22, and George Demacopoulos, "'Traditional Orthodoxy' as a Postcolonial Movement," The Journal of Religion 97, no. 4 [2017]: 475–99). Indeed, Colonizing Christianity should be read as an extension of the 2017 article in which Demacopoulos attempts to discredit the theological claims of Orthodox "traditionalism" by positing it as a postcolonial, cultural reaction against the Western "other." The author cites both of these previous publications at key moments in his book, strongly suggesting that the true impetus behind Colonizing Christianity lies in the meta-thesis spanning all three publications. The metathesis is predominantly concerned with the contemporary ecclesiological polemic over Christian unity, and the author should be commended for disclosing his pro-union inclinations so openly. That said, the dual trajectory in this book weakens its analytical rigor. The author's argument that the events of 1204 shifted religious thinking away from theological development is based on the weak logic that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Demacopoulos is considering a very small sample of works from the literati sphere and uses this selection to stand for perspectives at all levels of society. At multiple points in his analysis, he insists that the authors in the selected case studies are not concerned with issues of theology and dogma. Demacopoulos ignores the overwhelming number of scholars and writers during this "postcolonial" period who contributed crucial expositions on these matters, including such eminent figures...