Byzantines reconquer southern Italy and Rome by 1100, how does Christendom develop from there?

[Silver01]

Since China is mentioned however, I would just say that China is another monumental example of why centralization is not really an effective thing in the pre-modern world.During the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring states period when the country was feudal, it had no problems beating nomads despite being divided into multiple states. By the time the country was united however,it has tremendous difficulty fighting nomads whenever there was a long time of peace within the interior. The reason was surprisingly similar when you look at parallels with the ERE. The landlords usually just gobbles land reserved for the military and did not invest the resources they gained from them on their own military forces. This forced the various Chinese empires to spend significantly more resources on fairly unreliable and corruption prone regular militaries which, when failed, exposes the interior of the country to invasion--with nothing to stop them except natural barriers along the Huai River and the Qin mountains where the Chinese regimes could regroup and rebuild a capable military force to stop foreign invasion.

An ok example but then again in the warring state period the chinise did ok against the nomads
But then again the zhou kicked the nomads out ,

Also the( Di Cosmo 1999, 892–893 & 964 ) it was the qi empire that kicked out also many nomads and heck forced the nomads to become more united and was part of the formation of the xiongnu Confederacy.

there is also the case of the han destroying the xiongnu empire in fact china is in my opinion not solid proof sure in divided times some parts of china could deal with the barberians ( not always as seen by chingis attacking a disunited china and destroying the tangut kingdom and the jin or the case .
and also that the nomadic tribes would do damage to mostly when a dynasty was new or doing bad but then again the success of the zhou han and tang undermine this sure some of them had more difficultly than others but then destroyed the tribes .

heck a good comparison would be the hre in the late 10th century having no problem dealing with minor incursions and bearing the arabs and bulgarians back and conquering them .

But the comparison with china does have it's problems there were many reasons why period in chinese dynasties that led to the rot of the army
Which almost had to with politics in fact
In one of them been the tang giving the Jeidushi to much power caused a massive diaster as they were tied to the court to have loyalty but this was not the case do to li linfu and you had an lushan

Also the Jeidushi become defacto hereditary and did more to undermine the tang recovery post a lushan rather than defend which they failed to as seen by the tibetan attacks .

Corruption of what you mentioned of the central state was a part and heck china had some cultural things later on that made the military even weaker ( but these don't apply for the byzantine) but the Jeidushi are enough proof that a divided china is not always better .

 

[Silver01]

It's very worthwhile to note that Hungary was not feudal to the extent as other countries until AFTER the first Mongol invasion. Hungary only began building stone castles in earnest in response to the Mongol invasion, and it worked perfectly well. Hungary repelled the second invasion easily.It was an actually an example of how well feudalism worked. As for your example of the Ottomans, that happened after the advent of gunpowder, which rendered castles obsolete. Firearms is really a big game changer. After it was introduced, civilians could be trained into soldiers much faster than before. The necessity of warriors like knights, who were trained from birth, became much reduced. The state that could mobilize a larger percentage of their pop

Yeah hungary was as fuedal again you seem to be confusing castle defenses with feudalisim
Which broadly meant that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labor
The lord's of hungary were doing that by joining king bela .

As for the second" invasion " ( it was actually a raid ) been kicked of easily ....eh like the first one civilian civilian casualties were heavy in fact the second invasion due to the barrons and lords doing more than the king created a political crisis in hungary so I would not call it a great example of feudalism when it was a smaller mongol force that manged to murder a lot of civilians repulsed but then created a crisis .

It would not be the first time as the lord's of hungary created a crisis after Segismund lost nicopolis as for pre suleiman invasion it quite proves the contrary Jonh hunyadi and especially mathias we're able to make hungary stronger by having it be more centralized rather than local and the later more feudal hungary after the crisis was crushed .
So again sure it might be good at defending as seen by the second mongol invasion but it also like the second mongol invasion , after Segismund defeat or before mohacs .

Feudalisim can lead to just as much political instability also if we want to use the mongols again the invading force of nogai was a raiding party
While the mameluks with a system similar to themes and the tegmata ( in regards of border armies controled by mameluks but also having a standing army ) were able to deal with actual invasions .

So yeah the argument for feudalisim for the ere doesn't convince me the china example is a hit and miss and so is the countering the mongol one .

 

[jackson3]

Can you two take this to messages at this point, you’ve driven the thread way off track from the initial question

 

[Vitalis]

Yeah, guys... I appreciate all the comments, but my initial question was purely about religious side of things. Maybe I didn't make it clear in my initial post?

What I'm interested in is how the Byzantines being more involved with Latin Europe, and controling Rome itself would affect Christianity as a whole, with focus on Latin rite (Catholicism).

What would it mean for TTL Catholic kingdoms, in a world where the Pope is either subjugated by the Eastern Romans, or lives in exile somewhere in France, for example.

 

[M79]

Without a uniting influence out of Rome there lilely emerges the Pentapatriarchy and a series of proto-national churches, perhaos starting in Iberia or Ireland. We might see a papcy restored and a series of Crusades to retake Rome. Whether they succeed or not is another question.

Another area of interest is the Norman Kingdom of Africa, stretching from Tripoli to eastern Algeria. If the Byzantines can hold against the Almohads successfully they may be able to stunt or even reverse the gains of Islam in northwestern Africa while simultaneously setting up a potential reconquest of Leptis Magna and Cyrenaica. Should the population grow large enough, the Pentapatriarchy might grow into a SeptaPatriarchy of even larger.

 

[Basileus_Komnenos]

Without a uniting influence out of Rome there lilely emerges the Pentapatriarchy and a series of proto-national churches, perhaos starting in Iberia or Ireland. We might see a papcy restored and a series of Crusades to retake Rome. Whether they succeed or not is another question.

I don't think its really feasible, or really plausible for there to be a Crusade against this resurgent Rhomania. The Papacy would most definitely be intact, as it was a recognized institution co-equal to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The issue was that the Pope tried to assert his sovereignty over the Eastern which was seen as the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople

You might have an anti-pope selected within some parts of Europe leading to a temporary Western Schism or something. Though like in our own history, its likely some sort of compromise would have to be arranged.

a series of proto-national churches

This is a likely outcome as well. Though alternatively Rhomania might co-opt the political structure setup around the Papal states to re-orient the Church's focus and the center of Christendom around the Eastern Empire. In a way it would be restoring the old dynamic prior to the Islamic conquests where the Empire was seen as the primary Christian power. This was after all where the idea of the "universal empire" came from.

Another area of interest is the Norman Kingdom of Africa, stretching from Tripoli to eastern Algeria. If the Byzantines can hold against the Almohads successfully they may be able to stunt or even reverse the gains of Islam in northwestern Africa while simultaneously setting up a potential reconquest of Leptis Magna and Cyrenaica. Should the population grow large enough, the Pentapatriarchy might grow into a SeptaPatriarchy of even larger.

Well before this they'd have to retake Egypt and the Levant. Depending on the right pod, this is not impossible.

After all Ioannes Tzimiskes had a successful campaign in the levant. Before he died it was said that he had planned to try and siege Damascus as part of a larger campaign to retake the Levant (Jerusalem). A more successful Ioannes would give Basil II more resources as well and would likely push into the Roman psyche a desire for expansion continuing with the renewal occurring during the Macedonian Renaissance.

Though its more likely that rather than an outright conquest he'd probably take a chunk of land while carving out various pseudo-protectorates/buffer states which would probably end up eventually being integrated into the Empire.

Ioanes also living longer means that its likely that the conquest of Bulgaria is likely completed much earlier which frees up Basil to do other things. You might see a more younger Basil focus on Sicily and Southern Italy.