Demetrios Chomatenos or Chomatianos (, 13th century), Eastern Orthodox Archbishop of Ohrid from 1216 to 1236, was a

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

priest and judge. His comprehensive legal education allowed him to exert substantial influence as judge, arbiter, confessor and advisor to the Byzantine imperial house. This makes him a characteristic representative of a time where judicial power was devolving from the weakened secular authorities to the

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

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

Drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

in the east, from Dyrrachion in the north to

Ioannina Ioannina ( ' ), often called Yannena ( ' ) within Greece, is the capital and largest city of the Ioannina (regional unit), Ioannina regional unit and of Epirus (region), Epirus, an Modern regions of Greece, administrative region in northwester ...

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; Greek: ) 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 F ...

successor states, the

Empire of Nicaea The Empire of Nicaea (), also known as the Nicene Empire, was the largest of the three Byzantine Greeks, Byzantine Greek''A Short history of Greece from early times to 1964'' by Walter Abel Heurtley, W. A. Heurtley, H. C. Darby, C. W. Crawley, C ...

and

Epirus Epirus () is a Region#Geographical regions, geographical and historical region, historical region in southeastern Europe, now shared between Greece and Albania. It lies between the Pindus Mountains and the Ionian Sea, stretching from the Bay ...

. 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 (, ; ; , "Roman Orthodox Patriarchate, Ecumenical Patriarchate of Istanbul") is one of the fifteen to seventeen autocephalous churches that together compose the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is headed ...

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

Byzantine Emperor The foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD marks the conventional start of the Eastern Roman Empire, which Fall of Constantinople, fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. Only the emperors who were recognized as legitimate rulers and exercised s ...

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

. 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 List of cities in Kosovo, town and Municipalities of Kosovo, municipality located in the District of Pristina in Kosovo. According to the 2011 census, the town of Lipjan has ...

and

Prizren Prizren ( sq-definite, Prizreni, ; sr-cyr, Призрен) is the second List of cities and towns in Kosovo, most populous city and Municipalities of Kosovo, municipality of Kosovo and seat of the eponymous municipality and District of 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 ( , ; ; , sq-definite, Shkupi) is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It lies in the northern part of the country, in the Skopje Basin, Skopje Valley along the Vardar River, and is the political, economic, and cultura ...

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