Tension between bishop and count in 12th century + existence of "chaplains"

[rosesnake]

Hello everyone,

I'm not so much looking for answers to a question here as advice and suggestions (hope that's ok).

My situation is this :

Comments

[sollersuk]

The big complication here is the Outremer element, as the bishop would not be the same religion as the bulk of the local population. In the Levant they were a mosaic of various kinds of Muslim, various kinds of Christian, Jews and Samaritans. However, the psychological importance of the King of Jerusalem gets in the way of your political setup. What would be a better fit is Lamorie (The Morea - Greece) where there really was an autonomous Duke of Athens, like Theseus in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; the Parthenon was the church of Our Lady of Satines" [Athens]. Here the locals were Orthodox with a strong resentment of barbarian heretics.

So the only local Catholics would be the Count's followers and opportunists who had come along later, mostly merchants and artisans providing the specific goods needed by the invaders - the only townsfolk who would support him would be the inhabitants of bastides like Conwy in North Wales, but I don't think they existed at the time. The Bishop would have problems with the Orthodox hierarchy, and, unlike the situation in Europe, would depend heavily on the Count's support, particularly in financial matters.

Sorry if this is more another set of problems than any help.

[rosesnake]

Thanks for your answer.

So what you are saying (correct me if I misunderstood) is that because of the variety of religions at the time (and the Franks/Latins being basically invaders), the bishop wouldn't have much support in the local population (most of whom would be muslims, jews and orthodox or eastern christians). So he wouldn't have that power base to oppose the count.

But (like I explained below), I'm mainly considering the conflict for power inside this small community of Frank/Latin invaders. They are both part of the minority ruling class, imposing their decision on the rest of the population. The conflict is in the fact that they both want to be the only one who rules as he sees fit. The large majority of the population has no choice but to obey and probably no preference between the two of them (since no matter whoever rule it doesn't change much for them).

And so both the count's and the bishop's allies are from among this small community of Frank/Latin peoples (the knights, the vassal lords, the merchants, the small part of the population who is from Europe or descended from pilgrims).

Given those things, I will reformulate my question : what could either of them do in order to get the upper hand in this conflict (and be the one who rule) ?

Thanks for your help.