entertaining details are either their fabrications or the hagiographer’s.
It is difficult to tell precisely when the theft or purchase occurred, but it could not have been in the initial days after the sack; this is a second-phase theft. Innocent sent Benedict of Santa Susanna to Constantinople sometime around May 1205, and he may not have arrived until the following spring.94 Furthermore, the text indicates that the knights tried to go to Jerusalem only after they were released from their crusade vow, probably in March 1206,95 and were subsequently turned back by harsh winds.96 If this is true, then they would have returned to Constantinople just when both papal legates were definitely in the city. Hence, probably more than two years after the sack, the outright theft of relics was still occurring.
After many years of troubled service, Capuano finally returned to Italy, while Benedict remained, both continuing to dole out relics as opportunity arose.97 Along his route through southern Italy, Capuano paused to distribute relics to various Latin religious houses. Amalfi, his hometown,98 received the head of its patron saint, St. Andrew, in May 1208. Here, Capuano acted similarly to Conrad and Nivelon. He bore relics back to his home church, the locals greeted the relics with celebration, and the late saint worked local miracles.99 Sometime between 1210 and the death of Capuano in 1214, an anonymous monk in Gaeta wrote a text celebrating Capuano’s gift of the head of St. Theodore. Although brief, this account is exceedingly useful because it lists other examples of Capuano’s generosity. The author begins with the gift of St. Andrew and then reports that Sorrento received the relics of the Apostle James. Naples received certain “true relics of other saints.”100 To the Abbey of Monte Cassino, Capuano gave an arm of St. Athanasius.101 Gaeta’s reception of St. Theodore finished the list.
This text serves as an excellent example of the most typical type of second-phase relic acquisition and translation. It was authorized, and the relics were physically carried by a high-ranking official and given to favored churches in his homeland. Capuano enriched the churches of southern Italy. Dandolo favored the churches of Venice. Baldwin sent relics to Flanders and the French king, just as Garnier did to Champagne. One notices a trend: relics of saints were often sent to places that already had a tradition of venerating those saints. St. Mamas went to the Cathedral of St. Mamas in Langres; a fragment of St. Stephen the Protomartyr went to the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Halberstadt; and St. Andrew went to Amalfi. In 1208, Henry of Ulmen brought the head of St. Pantaleon to Abbot Henry of the Monastery of St. Pantaleon in Cologne.102 Henry of Ulmen also brought a spectacular cross reliquary to Limburg, although the precise provenance remains a subject of debate among scholars.103 In 1222, the canon John the German of St. Victor’s asked Garnier’s former chaplain for letters of authentication concerning the relic of St. Victor that the abbey had received in 1205—yet another example of the trend. Many Western sites were dedicated to saints whose relics had long been housed in Constantinople; apparently, some of the leading figures on the crusade chose to use the conquest of 1204 as an occasion to fill these voids.
Dandolo, Baldwin, and Garnier sent relics west, but all of these men died in the East. For others, the voyage home marked the occasion when crusaders finally translated their gains, as well as the end of the second phase in the movement of the relics of 1204. Nivelon, Conrad, Capuano, and Martin are well known because they had the means to commission translatio narratives in their homelands. We know about the Venetian men who stole the body of St. Simon because a text that tells their story happens to have survived. A few fragmentary and non-narrative texts provide additional examples. According to one of these, Walon of Sarton, canon of Picquigny near Amiens, became a canon of a church in Constantinople. Having decided that he had experienced enough of the East after the disaster of Adrianople, he took a few silver reliquaries that he had found hidden in his new church and sold them to finance his journey home. He then gave the relics (a finger of St. George and yet another head of St. John the Baptist) to the cathedral at Amiens.104 In another legend, an English priest who served as Baldwin’s chaplain was sent back to the capital from the battle of Adrianople to fetch the Holy Rood, a relic of the True Cross traditionally borne into battle by the emperors of Constantinople, but which Baldwin had accidentally left behind. Unfortunately, Baldwin was killed before the chaplain made it back to the battlefield, so the chaplain hid the cross and took it with him back to Bromholm.105 Henry of Ulmen’s gifts also generated surviving documentation, including a new reliquary for the relic of St. Matthias that he had donated to Trier, with an inscription commemorating the donation.106 Several seventeenth-century French church historians describe two cross-shaped reliquaries holding fragments of the True Cross that Robert of Clari had allegedly brought to the Monastery of Corbie from the imperial palace chapel. The reliquaries and inscriptions that attributed these items to Clari were lost, probably during the French Revolution, but an inventory from Corbie from 1283 mentions the relics that “Robert of Clari, soldier, brought from Constantinople.”107 The attribution is credible; as noted above, Clari catalogued some of the more important relics of the imperial chapel in his chronicle. It is interesting that he returned with objects from the chapel but never described his acquisitions. Does this represent an outright theft or evidence of sacrilegious looting in the first three days, or did Nivelon perhaps give Clari, his soldier, the tiniest of fragments of the relics that the bishop claimed from the palace churches? The sole complete copy of Clari’s chronicle exists in a vellum book once belonging to Corbie’s library, so one can at least note a connection between the knight and the monastic institution.108 There must have been many more such relic translations as crusaders finished their terms of service or simply gave up. Clari made no note of his own translation, although Corbie’s inventory did. Surely other soldiers offered similar gifts to their favored churches.
Not only have accounts of relic translation been lost to modern historians, but some relics themselves were lost during the transition from Greek to Latin rule. Three of the bishops on the crusade took or sent relics home. A fourth prelate, bishop-elect Peter of Bethlehem, could not have returned to Muslim-controlled Bethlehem, and he died at Adrianople before he might have selected an alternative site for his sacred plunder. A Greek text blames Conrad of Halberstadt and bishop-elect Peter for stealing the relic of consecrated bread from the Last Supper.109 The “Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium” never mentions this relic and most certainly would have noted its possession if Conrad had held on to it. Alfred Andrea speculates that Peter lost the relic at Adrianople. No post-Adrianople record of the relic’s presence has been found.110
The second phase witnessed many translations of relics—some seized during the first weeks, some obtained later. Within about five years, although these dates are not firm, most of the people who participated in the crusade had died, gone home, or settled permanently in the Latin Empire. Many acquired relics—by theft, by gift, by purchase, or by authorized acquisition. As the participants’ movements ceased, the great exodus of relics slowed, but it never stopped. Forgeries complicate the matter. As late as 1215, criticisms of relic-selling in Canon 62 of the Fourth Lateran Council indicate that relics, including forgeries, were being sold and distributed throughout Europe.111 Invented items no doubt joined and perhaps even comprised the majority of the mass of looted relics in this black market of the sacred. When perusing the lists of Fourth Crusade relics, one sees many heads of St. John the Baptist, True Cross fragments, and other easily fabricated fragments of various objects. Authentication proved difficult, and the looting of Constantinople gave a reasonable provenance for the unscrupulous forger to employ.
The Third Phase: The Height of the Latin Empire
During the relatively short life span of the Latin Empire, Latins continued to send relics from Constantinople to the West. Again, one can divide the known cases of relic acquisition into two groups: authorized and unauthorized. The rulers of the Latin Empire and other newly conquered lands continued to use their relics as diplomatic gifts. The most important and best studied of these cases concerns the translation of the relics of the Passion to King Louis IX of France in 1239. But there were others. Emperor Henry (r. 1206–16) followed his brother’s pattern of doling out minor, or small, relics, as did his successors.112 Meanwhile,
