Previous to 1204 the Kings of England were vassals to Byzantium
Afterwards they were vassals to Rome
In the "Calendar of entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland," published in 1893 by Mr. W.H. Bliss, appear numerous mandates from the Papal See to both the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England, the nature of which clearly proves them to have been vassals of Rome. Under the year 1201-2 appears a
>"Letter from Otho, emperor-elect of the Romans, to the pope, informing him that the king of England (John) is bound to give help to the Emperor against all enemies, and to make peace with France, as he himself is bound by order of the pope, whom he thanks, next to God, for his promotion."
Yes the Byzantine Roman emperor still held important symbolic significance because the Byzantine empire was not only economicaly important but also provided an important link with the east geopoliticaly.
The medieval royal aristocracies did not think in terms of borders they way think of now. For the time of the crusades the geography they understood as having major importance were Rome, Constantinople and Jersusalem. The major difference being that Rome did not have an actual army or big state backing it, but clerics. Hence the long rivalry of the pope with the HRE emperor over the investiture controversy. This is also why the Pope pushed so hard for the east-west schism in 1054 as well,for which explanation was poorly understood at the time and not realy accepted, but was realy felt in the 1204 crusade.
>Previous to 1204 the Kings of England were vassals to Byzantium
They weren't and your evidence doesn't even make any sense. John submitted to be a Papal fief in exchange for support which was the first time England had moved to a sort of vassalage to anybody else. Also Emperor-elect is a term for the German Kingship where one as not been made King through election and made undisputed King.
>Not only are there no mint indentures before the fourteenth century, there are no national laws of any kind previous to the Fall of Constantinople. The earliest entry in the Statutes at Large is an altered copy of Magna Charta, not drawn from any official registry, but fished out of an antiquarian collection. Hardly more creditable is the appearance of the ordinances which follow it, down to the reign of Edward III. They have all the appearance of having been "restored" in modern times. If the kings of England previous to Edward III. were not vassals, why have we none of their ordinances; and if the Pope or the Emperor was not their suzerain, why do the marks of the latter's superior authority appear in this, as indeed they do in every kind of literary record, except indeed upon the pages of recently written British history?
It is not coincidental that the Magna Carta was established right after the sacking of Constantinople.
That's poor 19th century scholarship. There is nothing too special about the Magna Carta in contemporary terms, similar documents guaranteeing rights and such were being issued all over Europe (including England) all the time in that era, as well as before and after.
The only thing that really makes the Magna Carta special is how big a deal of it English scholarship did starting in the 16th century when it started anachronistically pushing it as some sort of unique development.
And where was it said England or the Magna Carta was special?
Otho (Otto) was the Holy Roman Emperor, not the Byzantine Emperor. And the Holy Roman Emperor being the superior and at least nominally the secular overlord of all Christian kings was a generally known notion at the time, though to what extent anyone (and especially the kings) followed it varied. Kings generally didn't.
Catholic Kings being answerable to the Pope was much more commonly accepted if not uncontroversial. King John accepted it very openly because his own barons wanted to depose him and offer the English crown to the King of France, and the Pope was instrumental in stopping this, again as the nominal boss of the King of France.
If you really want to be thrown for a loop regarding King John's loyalties in all this, consider that there are sources for him sending emissaries to the Almohad Sultan to discuss an alliance against the French and a possible conversion to Islam. He was pretty desperate and casting the net very wide to keep his throne.
>King John accepted it very openly because his own barons wanted to depose him and offer the English crown to the King of France, and the Pope was instrumental in stopping this, again as the nominal boss of the King of France.
You were doing well until this point. The Roman Pope was meddling in England and wanted to encourage the nobility to rebel against John, a weaker king who had lost a bunch of land to France. This was the policy of the Roman government at the time, just as had been done against the HRE/German Emperor during the Investiture Controversy.
The Pope in Rome had been the one to give the French King "permission" to invade England in the first place, just as he had given Simon de Montfort the Elder the invitation to steal Toulouse from the Count of Toulouse in the 12th century. The French invasion paired with the internal rebellion over his military failures is what prompted John to attempt to vassalize himself to the Pope's envoy. At this point, the Barons and Stephen Langton turned hard against John and proclaimed that his oath to keep the Charter of Liberties was void, which is what led to the creation of the Magna Carta. The Roman Pope called off his French lackeys, having accomplished his "aim" of subjugating John, but they didn't listen. And the war only ended with John's death and the English acceptance of Henry III as the new King.
The English Barons were the ones who sent the French invaders home.
Isn't this why Henry VIII had to start his own religion before he could kill his wife?
>year 1201-2
>Letter from Otho, emperor-elect of the Romans
That is referring to emperor Otto the 4th, HRE emperor, nothing to do with byzantium.
What do you think the R in HRE means? Holy moron
Are you fricking moronic? the byzantine empire and the holy roman empire are 2 distinct entities, op said england was a vassal to the byzantines, which is wrong.
>Are you fricking moronic? the byzantine empire and the holy roman empire are 2 distinct entities, op said england was a vassal to the byzantines, which is wrong.
Yet the mainstream basedboy historians are coming to the exact same conclusions. English silver came from Byzantine.
Research fresh off the press (2 weeks ago)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/04/240408225713.htm
>Byzantine bullion fueled Europe's revolutionary adoption of silver coins in the mid-7th century, only to be overtaken by silver from a mine in Charlemagne's Francia a century later, new tests reveal. The findings could transform our understanding of Europe's economic and political development.
The article you linked literally said this was the case only in the 7th century and also specifies that the trade of these coins must have occurred in the first half of the century due to political reasons, and not once it implies the anglo saxons had any singificant diplomatic relations with the byzantine empire.
>the exact same conclusions
what conclusions are you talking about? If your post is about the holy roman empire, i hope you realize nobody denies that at times english kings recognized nominal sovereignty of the holy roman emperor over england, or even paid tribute.
Charlemagne was a Byzantine vassal. Coinage of gold, the sign of true sovereignty, wasn't a thing under Charlemagne, just like it wasn't a thing in England.
>Coinage of gold, the sign of true sovereignty
No true Scotsman
The HRE reverted to the denarius under Charlemagne. Most peoples through history had a silver standard rather than gold, not due to lack of sovereignty but rather because gold can be consolidated too easily, among other factors. Gold coinage and other metals was available in both kingdoms.
Even if you don't believe that, Charlemagne changed the gold/silver ratio's at the request of the Basileus, showing the Suzerainty
That I can believe, as someone who understands monetary policy and trade in a rudimentary way, but that doesn't imply he was a vassal at all.
The Carolingians were independent in every way. For decades they rejected Byzantium as even being Christian but as heretics. Charlemagne went to war with Irene multiple times in Southern Italy and won.
>Why did the Greek court refuse the hand of Irene to Charlemagne and thus miss an opportunity to reunite and reestablish the Roman Empire, if it did not fear to lose in such a marriage that attribute, still claimed at Constantinople, without which the restored Empire, though Roman in name, would have been in reality merely an empire of Franks? And what attribute could this be but the sacred character of the Basileus? Was this character not inscribed upon thousands of marble tablets and millions of coins; was it not graven in the minds and hearts of fifty generations of men, entwined into all the customs of private life, and imbedded in the very language of Christendom?
>The statement which appears in Eginhard that the Greek embassadors were permitted to allude to Charlemagne as "Imperatorum eum et Basileum appellantes" is, as it stands, simply incredible, and is contradicted by the style afterwards used in addressing his son and successor, which was "Imperatori Francorum." Imperator was the usual title of any victorious military commander, but Basileus was reserved for the Sacred emperor. Charlemagne never pretended to have inherited, and he never wore the sacerdotal veil of Constantine. The Decretals of Isidore were not yet forged. Who then was the head of the Christian Church, who was pontifex-maximus in the year 803, unless it was the Emperor of the Roman, mis-called the Eastern empire?
>The Roman Empire had been divided by Diocletian and by Constantine, yet these sovereigns had not divided the sacred office of pontifex-maximus. That was undivisible, and so were those peculiar prerogatives, such as the regulation of the calendar, the granting of high titles, and the coining of gold, which belonged to it, and were invested with a sacerdotal character. What more natural than to follow those hallowed precedents in the settlement or treaty of the year 803?
https://heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=delmar&book=middle&story=treaty
Oh frick the del mar gay is back.
>>Why did the Greek court refuse the hand of Irene to Charlemagne and thus miss an opportunity to reunite and reestablish the Roman Empire
Most likely it was never actually proposed. Not a single Frankish source mentions it. Not to mention the braindead lack of understanding how either the Frankish Kingdom or the Byzantine Empire actually operated to think somehow that they could ever 'unite'.
>Imperator was the usual title of any victorious military commander
Imperator/Autokrator was the exclusive title of the Emperor. It was not for victorious military commanders, the only man who ever received the title in the Empire was the Emperor, or his family.
>Charlemagne never pretended to have inherited
He called himself Ruler of the Roman Empire, it's pretty clear.
>Who then was the head of the Christian Church, who was pontifex-maximus in the year 803, unless it was the Emperor of the Roman, mis-called the Eastern empire?
The Frankish Kingdom and Byzantium were not in communion with each other so to the Franks it would be the Pope. Nor was the Emperor Pontifex Maximus anymore. The title was hardly used even from the time of Gratian and stopped being used completely in the 7th century.
They had no such leverage over Western Europe anon. If (and it's still a big if) Charlemagne changed monetary policy at the request of Basileus, he had something substantial to gain in the form of trade or trade networks for the HRE.
>They had no such leverage over Western Europe anon.
Why didn't they coin gold with their faces on it then, anon?
Because nearly everyone, and I mean everyone, who ran a functioning kingdom, state polity of any sort used a silver standard until like 1873.
You should read more of what Del Mar was actually somewhat good at, what he failed to stop in fact was the change to a gold standard in the 1870's. This act that he recommended against no less led to the loss of the dollar, the transformation of it into an asset owned by private institutions. Gold standard = private goldsmiths control your money supply. If the state has a shit ton of the gold it can work, but it's far from ideal. And historically many will just begin to inflate the currency anyway, you're always one crisis away from losing your sovereignty under a gold standard.
Not the case with silver. Or even just a fiat currency controlled by a state (or kingdom whatever) treasury, instead of a central bank.
>Because nearly everyone, and I mean everyone, who ran a functioning kingdom, state polity of any sort used a silver standard until like 1873.
European rulers started gold coinage after Constantinople was sacked by Venice in 1204. Even before that gold transactions were conducted yearly between Byzantine and its vassals. It was just the exclusive right of the Basileus to do mint the coins. We know exactly what Christian rulers started gold coinage and when. And it was not before the sacking of Constantinople
HRE and Anglo-Saxons both had their own gold coinage thoughbeit. Nearly all others did, this is when many were changing from a system of ingots to coinage in NW Europe. Christians, pagans all had gold coins. What right or system of control would Byzantines even have over Western rules exactly?
>inb4 unfounded implications and anything Del Mar ever wrote (ever)
They could buy cheap gold in east asia for an infinite profit loop and an ability to drain rulers/regions of precious metals. Of course only those with control over the Eurasian trade routes had this option.
That's insufficient leverage to create vassals of Franks and the like anon. The Tang Dynasty also used a silver standard during these time frames, were they the vassals of Byzantines as well anon? Or perhaps they were a Phoenician colony as well? Go run and check what Del Mar has to say.
You can buy Tang Dynasty gold coins on auction sites today, moron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiyuan_Tongbao
As you can with Anglo-Saxon and HRE gold coinage. Kind of takes the wind out of your gay little thread doesn't it.
If you read the earliest Arthurian Romances, it is clear the people in Western Europe were dead set on their own eventual greatness in all nations nearly 1000 years ago. My how time flies.
But they had such a strong affinity for Eastern Romans on a cultural level that Arthur was willing to raise an army to protect the honor of one of their princes, who married a German or some type of HRE princess. The prince ended up outwitting the usurpers back in "Greece" though, and Arthur then crowned Eric (distinctly Germanic name) and in Camelot he officiated Eric's wedding to Enide (Celtic name), which was said to be the richest wedding that had had ever occured.
They were treating the old stories of Arthur similar to how poets of Antiquity treated the peoples of Italy and other parts of the Mediterranean not in the Aegean, trying to build up the legacy of each other through heroic poetry. And at the time any connection to Eastern Romans was seen as of great and exotic importance, a vehicle of such ennobling. Always found this soulful tbh
OP you say this like it's some hidden dirty little secret.
What faces were the kings putting on coins? Because earlier they used to put the emperor even though we classify these people as independent rulers, dejure europe was still the roman empire but in reality by the time you're talking it had shifted tremendously.
The christian church is the universal church. That's why the emperor title was supposed to elevate him among other christian monarchs
Is this "England was originally Greek Orthodox" schizoposting, or a misconception (purposeful or not) of what the common understanding of the term "vassal" is?
it must be trolling. nobody should be both stupid enough to confuse the HRE and Byzantium and to post here.