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 Ἰο ...
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, 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 b ...
in the east, from Dyrrachion in the north to Ioannina 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 CrusadeByzantine Greek successor states, the Empire of Nicaea 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 Heinri ...
. Along with John Apokaukos and George Bardanes, 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 as
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 Byzantine Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, to Fall of Constantinople, its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. On ...
in
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) were still under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Ohrid. That changed in 1219, when Patriarch Manuel I of Constantinople (at that time residing in Nicaea), created a new Archbishopric for Serbia by appointing Sava Nemanjić 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 List of cities in North Macedonia by population, largest city of North Macedonia. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre.
The territory of Sk ...
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.
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 Byzan ...