Throughout this discussion of the naval leagues and their strategies, a fundamental question in understanding how they fit into the wider crusading movement needs to be addressed. Contrary to what is commonly thought, the leagues were not papal-led operations from the outset, neither were they always associated with a general crusade to the Holy Land; instead they were initiated by the resident Latin powers of the eastern Mediterranean, largely independent of papal control and with minimal influence from the great powers of western Europe. As a result only some of the participants in these campaigns received the rewards usually associated with a crusade. To understand how the leagues – and crusading against the Turks in general – fitted into wider crusade thinking, it is first necessary to analyse their connection with other papal crusade initiatives. Once this has been undertaken the implementation of crusading mechanisms in the Aegean theatre will be analysed, with specific attention given to the indulgences granted for the leagues and other campaigns against the Turks.

The Leagues in the Context of Papal Crusading Strategy

John XXII and the First Naval League

By the time of the election of John XXII in 1316, the Latin powers in the Aegean had already formed their own initiatives against the Turks. These soon evolved into the concept of a naval league which was adopted by the Venetian government in the mid 1320s. The Venetians set about recruiting other powers to the league and in the sketchy records of the negotiations that followed evidence emerges of formal attempts to bring the papacy into the coalition.

Marino Sanudo's words are characteristic of a Venetian writing in the early 1330s – a period of intense Turkish raids on the Republic's possessions in the Aegean, which eventually led to the formation of the first naval league in 1333. But Sanudo's words do not characterize all western views of the Turkish beyliks for the whole time-span of this study. Unsurprisingly, no single source can provide such a thing, as no uniform view ever existed. Instead the perception of the Turks in the eyes of western Christendom gradually evolved over time, from one of ambivalence and ambiguity to one of fear and aversion, as the beyliks emerged as the sole target of a crusade mid-way through the century. Still, even during this process of growing animosity, not all views of the Turks were necessarily negative; instead they remained complex and multifaceted, being constantly influenced by a plethora of external factors. It is these inconsistencies as well as the overlying trend of rising hostility that this chapter aims to map out.

The Emergence of the Turkish Beyliks in Anatolia

The expansion of Latin trade in the Aegean and Black Seas during the second half of the thirteenth century coincided with the emergence of Turkish warrior-nomads on the old Seljuk-Byzantine frontier. A pivotal point in this demographic transformation was the Mongol victory at the battle of Köse Dağ in 1243, which resulted in the reduction and submission of the Seljuk Sultanate to the Mongols in Anatolia. The gradual weakening of Mongol authority in the following decades led to the creation of numerous autonomous tribal domains in the area. These gradually evolved into a patchwork of Turkish principalities, known as emirates in Arabic, or beyliks in Turkish, centred around the ruling house of a head Turkish chieftain from which they often took their name.