Empire of the Two Sees

By the 14th century, the power of the Byzantine Empire was waning, and with it the last vestiges of the Roman Empire. Orthodoc Christianity remained one of the few things uniting former Byzantine lands. On the other side of the Great Schism, the Catholic Church found itself in a series of endless entanglements with the Holy Roman Emperors. The East-West divide of Christendom reached a climax during the Fourth Crusade, when Venice sacked Constantinople. However, the situation cooled as the need to outmaneuver its rival Genoa forced Venice become much more friendly with both the Emperor and Pope. The Third Triumvirate of the Doge, the Pope and the Emperor formed unofficially in 1305, intending to re-create the Roman Empire. The Catholic and Orthodox spheres officially merged in 1309 as the Empire of the Two Sees, with Pope Boniface IX as Western Emperor, Andronikos II as eastern Emperor, and Doge Lucio II as Archduke.