The Fourth Crusade and Its Effect on the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Relationship Ryan Martin
“How shall I begin to tell of the deeds wrought by these nefarious men! Alas, the images, which ought to have been adored, were trodden under foot! Alas, the relics of the holy martyrs were thrown into unclean places! Then was seen what one shudders to hear, namely, the divine body and blood of Christ was spilled upon the ground or thrown about.”1 Nicetas Choniates, a Byzantine historian, begins his tale of the Crusaders’ sack of Constantinople by describing the destruction brought by the Knights Templar. Although these warriors fought for a religious cause, they justified desecrating sacred Muslim sites and marring the Christian faith’s reputation in Vatican City to seek recompense of four years of unpaid military service. The Fourth Crusade and the downfall of Constantinople signaled the beginning of centuries of tension and discord between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. These events caused the tensions between the Christian sects to escalate by sowing seeds of doubt and distrust between the two organizations, which developed into greater problems evident even in modern society. In the twelfth century, the Roman Catholic Church issued a call to arms. With the rapidly growing Muslim empire sweeping its way through the Middle East, the Church felt the need to defend its Holy Land, Jerusalem. The Church inherited the laws of warfare from the Old and New Testament, as well as those created by the Roman Empire. In this sense, the Catholic Church viewed violence as a means to an end. According to historian Jonathan Riley-Smith, the Church considered violence to be “validated to a greater or lesser degree by the state of mind of those responsible, the ends sought, and the competence of the individual or body which authorized the act.”2 Here, Riley-Smith explains that the Church viewed violence as negative only if the end result was not in line with the goals of the Church. So when the Pope authorized an attack on the Holy Land in 1203 AD to reclaim it from the Muslims as Christian land, the violent approach was deemed appropriate. Tensions began between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church with the Great Schism of 1054. Due to ecclesiastical and theological differences, the two sects parted ways but maintained a somewhat amicable relationship. The sack of Constantinople, however, created an “insurmountable barrier of hatred between Greeks and Latins.”3 The Byzantine Greeks felt the goal of the Crusades was not in line with the Christian mission and that instead, the Holy War was an excuse for the Roman Catholic Church to extend and extort their power. War is never peaceful or rational; it is wholly brutal and destructive. The Crusaders were no different from other savage soldiers, even though they claimed to fight in the name of Christianity. It was a natural effect of war for the population of a city to suffer when the city was conquered. The same happened with Constantinople. The local Christians were treated as prisoners; no one was safe. The Eastern Christians held 1 Choniates, The Sack of Constantinople (1204). Fordham University. Internet History Sourcebook. 2 Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Oxford History of the Crusades, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 18. 3 Andrea, Alfred J. "Pope Innocent III as Crusader and Canonist: His Relations with the Greeks of Constantinople, 1198-1216." Church History 39, no. 1 (1970): 133-34.
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