Theorising the religious borders of the Latin East: some reflections on the inter-Christian landscape of Frankish northern Syria

Situated on the far reaches of Latin Christendom, the crusader states witnessed daily contact between numerous religious groupings, both between subjected peoples and their Frankish rulers, and regarding travellers passing in and out of the latter’s territories. Though this most obviously included Muslim communities, it also meant engaging with Eastern Christian populations whose presence far pre-dated, and extended beyond the limits of, Frankish authority. This posed distinct challenges for the ruling elites of Latin polities in imposing and maintaining power. This article discusses these difficulties by examining the nature of inter-Christian, or more specifically Latin–Syriac, contact in the principality of Antioch and county of Edessa, through theoretical frameworks proposed in Thomas Nail’s 2016 Theory of the Border. It will be argued that the realities of human movement in such a diverse and topographically fragmented region left little chance for impermeable borders between the Christian communities who lived there