The poverty of the Patriarchate of Grado and the Byzantine-Venetian Treaty of 1082

摘要

The imperial chrysobull granted to the Venetian state in 1082 provided the Venetians with considerable economic advantages throughout the Byzantine Empire, and had a major impact on the political relationship of the two powers down to the Fourth Crusade. Yet the chrysobull also granted considerable monies to the metropolitan of Venice, the Patriarch of Grado. In the decades prior to 1082 Grado had suffered from systemic poverty, and various attempts by the Doge to solve this problem failed. The grant of large sums in gold in the chrysobull was aimed at solving this problem. Even this ultimately failed, and another proviso of the chrysobull, the grant of a merchant quarter in Constantinople to Venice, eventually became a funding tool for Grado and other Venetian ecclesiastical institutions.