Demetrios Chomatenos or Chomatianos ( el, Δημήτριος Χωματηνός/Χωματιανός, 13th century), Eastern Orthodox

Archbishop of Ohrid The Archbishop of Ohrid is a historic title given to the primate of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. The whole original title of the primate was Archbishop of Justiniana Prima and all Bulgaria ( gr, ἀρχιεπίσκοπὴ τῆς Πρώτης Ἰου ...

from 1216 to 1236, was a

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

priest and judge. His comprehensive legal education allowed him to exert substantial influence as judge, arbiter,

confessor Confessor is a title used within Christianity in several ways. Confessor of the Faith Its oldest use is to indicate a saint who has suffered persecution and torture for the faith but not to the point of death.Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

, and also one of the last legal practitioners in full command of Justinian's laws as recovered by the Macedonian legal renaissance. According to the eminent Byzantinist

Donald Nicol Donald MacGillivray Nicol, (4 February 1923 – 25 September 2003) was an English Byzantinist. Life Nicol was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, to a Church of Scotland minister, and received a classical education at King Edward VII School in ...

, Chomatenos' court at Ohrid was a rare centre of stability and law in an uncertain and tumultuous era; "From

Kerkyra Corfu (, ) or Kerkyra ( el, Κέρκυρα, Kérkyra, , ; ; la, Corcyra.) is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the margin of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The isl ...

in the west to

Drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

in the east, from Dyrrachion in the north to

Ioannina Ioannina ( el, Ιωάννινα ' ), often called Yannena ( ' ) within Greece, is the capital and largest city of the Ioannina regional unit and of Epirus, an administrative region in north-western Greece. According to the 2011 census, the c ...

and Arta in the south, plaintiffs and defendants brought their problems to the humane and learned Archbishop". Some 150 of Chomatenos' case files have survived, allowing legal historians to construct a reasonably complete picture of the legal and institutional framework of the late Byzantine Empire. He also played an important role in the rivalry of the two main post-

Fourth Crusade The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was a Latin Christian armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III. The stated intent of the expedition was to recapture the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, by first defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid S ...

Byzantine Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the Ottoman co ...

successor states, the

Empire of Nicaea The Empire of Nicaea or the Nicene Empire is the conventional historiographic name for the largest of the three Byzantine Greek''A Short history of Greece from early times to 1964'' by W. A. Heurtley, H. C. Darby, C. W. Crawley, C. M. Woodhouse ...

and

Epirus sq, Epiri rup, Epiru , native_name_lang = , settlement_type = Historical region , image_map = Epirus antiquus tabula.jpg , map_alt = , map_caption = Map of ancient Epirus by Heinrich ...

. Along with

John Apokaukos John Apokaukos ( el, Ἱωάννης Ἀπόκαυκος, ca. 1155 – 1233) was a Byzantine churchman and theologian. Having studied at Constantinople, he became bishop of Naupaktos and played a major role in the rivalry between the Epirote Chur ...

and

George Bardanes George Bardanes ( el, Γεώργιος Βαρδάνης, died. ca. 1240) was a Byzantine churchman and theologian from Athens. A pupil of Michael Choniates, he later became bishop of Corfu and played a major role in the rivalry between the Epirote ...

, Chomatianos championed the Epirote cause of political and ecclesiastical independence from Nicaea (where the exiled

Patriarchate of Constantinople The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople ( el, Οἰκουμενικὸν Πατριαρχεῖον Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, translit=Oikoumenikón Patriarkhíon Konstantinoupóleos, ; la, Patriarchatus Oecumenicus Constanti ...

had established itself), and in 1225 or 1227, it was he who crowned the Epirote ruler

Theodore Komnenos Doukas Theodore Komnenos Doukas ( el, Θεόδωρος Κομνηνὸς Δούκας, ''Theodōros Komnēnos Doukas'', latinisation of names, Latinized as Theodore Comnenus Ducas, died 1253) was ruler of Despotate of Epirus, Epirus and Thessaly#Late M ...

Byzantine Emperor This is a list of the Byzantine emperors from the foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD, which marks the conventional start of the Eastern Roman Empire, to its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. Only the emperors who were recognized as le ...

Thessalonica Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...

. An important ecclesiastical and jurisdictional dispute arose soon after his arrival in Ohrid (1216). In that time, the Eastern Orthodox eparchies in Serbia ( Raška,

Lipljan Lipjan ( sq-definite, Lipjani) or Lipljan ( sr-Cyrl, Липљан) is a town and municipality located in the Pristina District of Kosovo. According to the 2011 census, the town of Lipjan has 6,870 inhabitants, while the municipality has 57,605 i ...

and

Prizren ) , settlement_type = Municipality and city , image_skyline = Prizren Collage.jpg , imagesize = 290px , image_caption = View of Prizren , image_alt = View of Prizren , image_flag ...

) were still under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Ohrid. That changed in 1219, when Patriarch

Manuel I of Constantinople Manuel I, surnamed Karantenos/Sarantenos or Charitopoulos ( el, Μανουήλ Α΄ K/Σαραντηνός or Χαριτόπουλος), (? – May or June 1222) was Patriarch of Constantinople from December 1216 or January 1217 to 1222. He seem ...

(at that time residing in Nicaea), created a new Archbishopric for Serbia by appointing

Sava Nemanjić Saint Sava ( sr, Свети Сава, Sveti Sava, ; Old Church Slavonic: ; gr, Άγιος Σάββας; 1169 or 1174 – 14 January 1236), known as the Enlightener, was a Serbian prince and Orthodox monk, the first Archbishop of the autocephal ...

as the first Serbian Archbishop. Demetrios Chomatenos protested and in the spring of 1220 he sent bishop Jovan of

Skopje Skopje ( , , ; mk, Скопје ; sq, Shkup) is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre. The territory of Skopje has been inhabited since at least 4000 BC; r ...

as an envoy to Archbishop Sava, but with no result. Serbia was lost to his jurisdiction, and his later attempts to remedy the situation in 1233 were also unsuccessful.

References

Sources

* Günter Prinzing (ed.), Demetrii Chomateni Ponemata diaphora (

Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae {{Italic title The ''Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae'' (Latin: "Corpus of Byzantine history sources") or CFHB is an international project aiming to collect, edit and provide textual criticism on the historical sources from the time of the Byzant ...

38). Berlin 2002. * * * * Byzantine jurists 13th-century Eastern Orthodox bishops 13th-century Byzantine bishops 12th-century births 13th-century deaths Archbishops of Ohrid People of the Despotate of Epirus 13th-century jurists 13th-century Byzantine writers {{europe-law-bio-stub