The Fourth Crusade and Its Effect on the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox Relationship

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.

The Fourth Crusade and Its Effect on the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Relationship

Ryan Martin

no advantage, and, in many instances, it was even a change for the worse. Their former conquerors had been more tolerant than Christians of the West and had allowed the Orthodox to continue their Church life as they had lived it prior to the invasion. The Crusaders tried to convert the Orthodox to Latin Christianity, even going so far as to confiscate their Church buildings, imprisoning their clergy and treating them as though they professed a wholly alien religion.4 Prior to the sacking of Constantinople, the dissension between the Eastern and Western sects of Christianity was confined primarily to the prelates of the church; the majority of Eastern Christians still saw themselves as brothers and sisters in Christ with those in the West. The atrocious acts caused the mass of Eastern Christians to cut ties with the Latin population of Christians. For the next two centuries, the two sects struggled for cohabitation and dominance.5

Prior to the Fourth Crusade, the Roman Catholic Church began planning to launch the ships necessary to take the knights to the Middle East. The Fourth Crusade, called forth by Pope Innocent III, focused on capturing the largest Muslim Empire at the time, Egypt. The most logical way for the crusading knights to reach the area was by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately, there were not enough ships to accommodate the 33,500 Crusader knights traveling to fight. It was at this point that the Pope made a deal with the Venetians to acquire more ships.6

The relationship between the Venetians and the Roman Catholic Church began in 1202. The Crusaders struck an agreement with the Venetians to aid in transport across the sea. But the price set by the Venetians exceeded the affordability of an organization already a century into war debt. To pay off the rest of the debt, the Crusaders agreed to sack the nearby city of Zara, which was a constant source of turmoil between the Venetians and the neighboring nations of Croatia and Hungary. This marked the first time the Crusaders attacked a Catholic-run city.7 In fact, Pope Innocent III issued a proclamation that strictly forbade the Crusader knights from attacking their fellow Christians. Not bothering to read the Pope’s letter, the Crusaders attacked the city. After the Crusaders defeated the soldiers in Zara, the area came under Venetian control.8 Upon hearing of the attack and the subsequent pillaging, the Pope excommunicated the knights from the Church. Upon further review and the realization that the knights were essentially forced by the Venetians to make the siege, the Pope revoked the excommunication and instructed the knights to continue to the Holy Land.9

The Crusader knights continued their quest to the Holy Land. But, rather than proceed along their path directly, they arranged for another stop on their journey. The Byzantine Empire, specifically the city of Constantinople, had been going through tumultuous times. The citizens deposed their emperor, Isaac II Angelos. Due to his incompetence in recent battles, usurpers captured him, blinded him, and placed him in

4 Yuri Koszarycz, “The 11th to the 13th Centuries: Innocent III and The Great Schism,” http://mahan.wonkwang.ac.kr/link/med/christianity/history/ mod5.htm. 5 Ibid. 6 Donald E. Queller and Gerald W. Day, "Some Arguments in Defense of the Venetians on the Fourth Crusade," The American Historical Review 81, no. 4 (1976): 717-37. 7 Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople, Fordham University. Internet History Sourcebook. 8 Thomas F. Madden, "The Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade: Memory and the Conquest of Constantinople in Medieval Venice," Speculum 87, no. 2 (2012): 311-313. 9 Ibid.

The Fourth Crusade and Its Effect on the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Relationship

Ryan Martin

the palace dungeon. His son, Alexios IV Angelos, reached out to the Venetians as well as the Crusaders with a plea to restore his father to the throne.10 Knowing the position of both parties, Alexios promised silver, ships, and soldiers if the group would come to his aid. With little else to give them hope in the success of the Crusade, the Venetians and the Crusader knights set sail for Constantinople in 1203.11 The Crusaders’ lack of hope stemmed from their lack of funds and the dwindling number of knights willing to join the cause. Alexios’ promise solved the problems that had temporarily seized the Crusaders’ hope and morale.

In considering the main goal of the knights when taking up the cross, one can find a few issues with the redirection of the Crusader fleet to Constantinople. First and foremost, they again were attacking a fellow Christian city. As with the siege of Zara, the Crusader knights were going against their original mission of returning Jerusalem to Christian control. They had been bribed with the lure of ships and silver to intervene in domestic politics. Some may argue the Crusaders had to redirect to Constantinople due to the lack of resources. The fact remains, however, that the knights were going directly against their Christian vows.

The Crusaders were not able to march directly into Constantinople and take the city. In order to gain access, the knights had to cross the Bosphorus Strait. Using galleys and horse transports, the group crossed the strait to meet the awaiting Byzantine Army. The knights immediately charged, resulting in the Byzantine Army fleeing to the Tower of Galata. From there, the Crusaders laid siege, effectively outlasting the soldiers and killing many of them. The Tower of Galata fell, and the Crusader knights, along with the Venetian fleet, had access to the Golden Horn, allowing them to sail along the coast to the city of Constantinople.12

Starting in July of 1203, the Crusaders began the fight for the city of Constantinople. Initially, the odds of winning were not in the Crusaders’ favor. The knights were severely outnumbered. A fire broke out, damaging many of their resources, and Alexios IV Angelos fearfully fled, abandoning the Crusaders. Their apparent bad luck continued when a faction within Constantinople’s city walls captured Alexios IV Angelos and killed him.13 Alexios was the one who promised the payment to the Venetians and the Crusader knights. With him gone, the Crusaders worried their reward was no longer going to come to fruition.14 Thus, a new fire was lit within the besieging army, and the sack of Constantinople began.

At first, the conditions were not favorable. Roaring thunder, lightning, and wind caused the Crusaders as well as the Venetians to lose ground. Eventually, the tides turned, and the Venetian ships located the harbor and used the wind to get closer to the city walls. The knights, with renewed fervor, broke holes in the walls surrounding the city. Using the weaknesses they had found, the knights entered Constantinople, and the siege began.

With renewed focus and energy, the Crusader knights launched a new attack on Constantinople. Crusade historian Jonathan Phillips describes the Crusader attack as a group of men with a “lack of

10 Warren T. Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000), 650-654. 11 Ibid. 12 David M. Perry, Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), 199-205. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

The Fourth Crusade and Its Effect on the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Relationship

Ryan Martin

humanity, of ‘madmen raging against the sacred,’ of murderous men who…anticipated ungodly deeds.”15 With such savagery, it should be no surprise that Pope Innocent III sent another letter to the Crusaders forbidding them from continuing the attack. Again, the clergy kept the information from the crusading knights, fearing it would cause them to abandon the cause to save the Holy Land. Without the knowledge of their potential excommunication, the knights continued with their plan of taking the city.

Upon entering the city, the Crusaders wounded and killed the men, raped the women, burned the buildings, and stole valuable items. Phillips describes the atrocities committed as “the merciless slaughter of Christians of all ages, men and women alike, staining with blood Christian swords that should have been used on pagans.”16 The Christians described the Crusaders as savage and ruthless with nothing to lose. In many ways, this attack evokes a similar slaughter campaign employed by the Vikings, who took over Northern Europe between 793 AD and 1093 AD. Christians watched as churches, palaces, and shops were “swallowed up in the inferno” and burned to the ground, leaving nothing.17 Three days of looting followed, with the knights taking all the valuable items they could carry back to Europe.

After the looting, the Crusaders, Venetians, and Byzantine Greeks wrote a treaty called Partitio Romaniae, which split the entire Byzantine Empire between the Venetians and their allies. The Venetians took three-eighths of the Byzantine Empire, including the Ionian Islands, Andros, Crete, Euboea, and Naxos. With these territories, they were able to control all trade through the Mediterranean Sea.18 The Latin Empire received the majority of the land, controlling the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles Strait, and access to the Black Sea through the city of Constantinople.19 This initial attempt to repair the severed relationships caused by the Crusaders’ unauthorized raid could not smooth out the lingering tensions between the religious groups.

Not only did the sack of Constantinople divide the Empire; it also delivered the crushing blow that destroyed the relations between the Western Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Church. When Pope Innocent III heard of the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity, he sent a letter to the Cardinal Priest condemning the acts. In the letter, he wrote: How, indeed, is the Greek church to be brought back into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See when she has been beset with so many afflictions and persecutions that she sees in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, whose swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, are now dripping with Christian blood they have spared neither age nor sex. . . . Not satisfied with breaking open the imperial treasury and plundering the goods of princes and lesser men, they also

15 Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, (USA: The Penguin Group, 2004), xiii. 16 Ibid, 302. 17 Ibid, 305. 18 Ibid, 305. 19 Ibid, 305.

The Fourth Crusade and Its Effect on the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Relationship

Ryan Martin

laid their hands on the treasures of the churches and, what is more serious, on their very possessions. They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics.20

Even the Pope publicly acknowledged that the actions of the knights had weakened the relationship between the two Christian denominations. Despite the Crusaders’ misguided efforts to reestablish Christianity, the Muslim empire continued to grow. As the Muslims expanded their empire throughout Africa and Europe, Constantinople and other land controlled by the Eastern Orthodox Church was under a constant threat of domination. A peaceful people with little to nothing in the way of an army, the prelates of the Eastern Orthodox Church sought to repair ties with the Roman Catholic Church in an effort to gain an ally in the struggle against the Muslims. From 1274 through 1439, the bishops of both sects managed to reconcile; unfortunately, the reconciliation achieved nothing due to the stubbornness of the middle class and peasants.21 This action continued to repeat itself. No matter the actions of the prelates to attempt to resolve the dispute, the outcome was always a failure.

There have been numerous reconciliation efforts throughout the centuries. The most recent occurred in 2016 between Patriarch Kirill of Russia and Pope Francis when they signed an agreement in an effort to resolve the thousand-year rift between the two sides.

The Fourth Crusade and the downfall of Constantinople sparked the beginning of centuries of tension and discord between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Crusaders’ selfish decision to invade Constantinople against the Pope’s demands caused the tensions between the Christian sects to escalate into a painful rift, radiating problems even into the twenty-first century. In short, the Sack of Constantinople solidified the divide created by the Great Schism. The reunification efforts of the prelates over the centuries accomplished little. And the indignation caused by the treatment of the Orthodox people during the Sack of Constantinople created a lasting legacy of bitterness not soon forgotten.

20 Pope Innocent III. “The Reprimand of the Legate.” Fordham University. Internet History Sourcebook.

21 Jacoby David, "The Encounter of Two Societies: Western Conquerors and Byzantines in the Peloponnesus after the Fourth Crusade," The American Historical Review 78, no. 4 (1973): 875.

The Fourth Crusade and Its Effect on the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Relationship

Ryan Martin

Primary Sources Fordham University Archive Bibliography

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University. Internet History Sourcebook.

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Fairbairn, Donald. Eastern Orthodoxy through Western Eyes. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. Firth, John B. Constantine the Great; the Reorganisation of the Empire and the Triumph of the Church. New York:

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Madden, Thomas F. "The Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade: Memory and the Conquest of Constantinople in Medieval Venice." Speculum 87, no. 2 (2012): 311-44. Mavrogordatos, George Th. "Church-State Relations in the Greek Orthodox Case." Church and State in Europe

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The Fourth Crusade and Its Effect on the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Relationship

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Queller, Donald E., and Gerald W. Day. "Some Arguments in Defense of the Venetians on the Fourth Crusade."

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