blood, the arm of St. George, a piece of the head of St. John the Baptist, the body of St. Lucy, and the body of St. Agatha, which Enrico gave to an unspecified Sicilian pilgrim.55 The chronicle depicts Enrico Dandolo as a grand distributor of relics. He probably brought back many more items, but any records of plunder housed in the treasury of the church of San Marco would have been largely destroyed in a great fire in 1231. However, relics from the conquest had also been distributed to other sites in Venice. And, in the 1260s, Doge Ranieri Zeno claimed that a small set of relics had miraculously survived the fire. These came to constitute the “official list” of crusade plunder that could be traced to Enrico Dandolo, and Andrea Dandolo’s chronicle reflects that list.56
How Enrico Dandolo acquired most of his relics is unclear. According to a late fourteenth-century translatio, Baldwin of Flanders gave the relic of St. Lucy to Dandolo for Venice, raising the possibility that the doge received other relics as gifts.57 Dandolo made some effort to acquire precious objects for the commune of Venice and San Marco, including, for example, the relics listed above, the relics of St. Simon the Prophet (although he failed), the quadriga that eventually adorned the church,58 and large quantities of marble and other precious materials.59 One cannot imagine the old, blind doge personally rummaging through a church treasury in Constantinople. Unlike the bishops of Soissons and Halberstadt, Dandolo was not a cleric who could inspect and seize relics in the course of taking charge of a formerly Greek church. Perhaps Dandolo sometimes succeeded in using bribery and threats against lesser crusaders, as detailed in the story of St. Simon and the Venetian thieves, even though he failed to seize those relics. His experience with negotiation and exchange could only have helped him in such an environment. Shortly after Dandolo’s death, the Venetians demanded an icon of the Virgin in exchange for supporting Henry of Flanders’s ascension to the imperial throne after his brother Baldwin died.60 One suspects that the Latins traded with, offered gifts to, coerced, and bribed one another in order to acquire specific relics as the chaos of the capture subsided and they assessed their newfound lands and riches.
Baldwin of Flanders
Emperor Baldwin I figures in a number of letters and charters concerning relics. He used them in imperial diplomacy, thus continuing the practice of the emperors before him.61 Like Dandolo, Baldwin of Flanders sent relics to his homeland, but not exclusively. He also included relics and other sacred items among the gifts that he sent to Pope Innocent III and the Templars in Lombardy. Genoese privateers captured the ship bearing Baldwin’s emissary and pillaged it. According to the Genoese chronicles, the city’s leaders sanctioned this expedition in order to profit from the fall of Constantinople in their own way; moreover, they hoped to limit the gains of the Venetians.62 In November 1204, Innocent sent a letter to the archbishop of Genoa demanding restitution. By this time, the privateers had either released or received a ransom for the emissary, a Venetian named Brother Barozzi, who was the master of the Temple of Lombardy and about whom nothing else is known. Barozzi made his way to Rome, gave Innocent a letter from Baldwin (which survives), and told the pope about the piracy. As the relics and precious objects remained in Genoese hands, Innocent threatened to interdict Genoa if it did not immediately return them. Items intended as gifts for the pope, Innocent argued, became papal property immediately. He listed the objects owed to him and added those due to the Temple as well, insisting upon their return. These items included many gems and silver marks, in addition to two icons, a gilt reliquary, two golden crosses, a silver ampoule, and a relic of the True Cross that was bound for the Temple.63 We do not know what, if any, response Innocent’s letter inspired, but he did not place Genoa under interdict. One must assume an arrangement was worked out.64
Innocent listed only the one relic, a fragment of the True Cross. However, the Genoese chronicle of Orgerio Pane claims that many relics (multas reliquias sanctorum) were seized and eventually distributed among Genoese churches.65 John Fotheringham argues that the medieval cross reliquary still in the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa is the True Cross relic mentioned in the letter.66 It was given to Genoa by the men of Porto Venere, who owned one of the privateer vessels, in exchange for certain economic privileges. Fotheringham notes that the Cronaca of Jacopo da Voragine (who was Genoese) claims not only that the privateers captured many relics but that Jacopo himself obtained relics for the Dominican order in Genoa many decades later. The chronicler does not provide a specific list of these relics.67 There are some likely explanations for the discrepancy. First, the Genoese texts could be confusing relics with altar cloths, icons, reliquaries (not the relics themselves), and other valuable items associated with the church. Multas reliquias sanctorum, however, seems to clearly describe relics.68 Why, then, did Innocent not demand their return as well? Perhaps Brother Barozzi did not tell Innocent about the other relics, although why he would omit such a detail is unknown. Or perhaps the other relics were intended as gifts for other dignitaries and thus were considered to be outside papal purview. Regardless, the important detail is that Baldwin’s envoy bore both a letter to the pope and sacred gifts for the Holy Father.
Baldwin had sent these gifts in hopes of easing the recommencement of papal-crusader negotiations after more than a year of discord. The letter to Rome, enregistered in October 1204, survives, as do three additional copies. These copies are addressed by Baldwin to the archbishop of Cologne, the abbot of Cîteaux and his Cistercian colleagues, and to “all the Christian people.”69 We do not know who received the last letter (and there may have been many other copies), but one can speculate that if Baldwin sent relics to Rome, he likely would have sent them to Cologne and particularly to Cîteaux. The Cistercians had been major players in the Fourth Crusade and would continue to be important to the Latin Empire.70 Baldwin had plenty of relics to go around. Riant published a number of instrumenta, various types of documents mentioning relics, that describe cases in which an individual or institution received relics from the emperor. These are especially prevalent in Flanders and Hainault.71 For example, Count Hugh of Beaumetz received a reliquary of the True Cross from Baldwin for his service as a crusader. The Picard count installed the relic in the Abbey of Mont Saint-Quentin.72 Baldwin also sent relics to his titular liege lord, King Philip II Augustus of France. In a letter to the king from September 5, 1205, Baldwin records these gifts as a piece of the True Cross, Christ’s suckling clothes and some of his hair, a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, some of the purple garment Christ wore before Pontius Pilate, and a rib of the Apostle Philip, which Baldwin perhaps included because the apostle was the king’s namesake.73 Notably, these relics overlap with those sent to France by Bishop Nivelon of Soissons, a detail supporting the argument that Nivelon acquired his relics from the same imperial treasury as Baldwin. The bishops of Beauvais, Noyon, and Senlis witnessed the arrival of the relics at Saint-Denis. The ritual reception of these gifts may have provided a template for the more famous translation of the relics of the Passion to Paris in 1239, after King Louis IX purchased them from Emperor Baldwin II through the agency of the emperor’s Venetian creditors.74
The Papal Legates and Other Clerics
Baldwin sent relics to his homeland of Flanders, to the neighbors of Flanders, to the great ecclesiastical and political powers with whom he was already on good terms, and to those with whom he hoped to cultivate good relations as a result of the gifts, such as the papacy. Meanwhile, Rome’s papal legates, Peter Capuano and cardinal-priest Benedict of Santa Susanna, played multiple roles in the history of the postcrusade translation of relics. Unlike Nivelon of Soissons, Conrad of Halberstadt, or Martin of Pairis, Capuano was not present when Constantinople fell in April 1204. Having left the crusade earlier because the crusaders were ignoring papal edicts, he did not want his presence to imply that the diversion to the city had papal sanction. He joined the “forgotten second front” of the crusade in Acre.75 Once Constantinople fell, however, Capuano went there to take advantage of this sudden windfall on behalf of the pope. He lifted edicts of excommunication and absolved the crusaders of their sins. Reconciliation followed and the papacy’s voice returned to the crusade.76 Capuano’s activity over the next few years exemplifies all of the roles played in the relic trade by the highest-status individuals connected to the crusade;
