for suitable objects for translation. In some cases, the clergy simply sent the relics west in their original reliquaries. At other times, they seem to have shaved off small parts in order to form new relics. The Venetians proved particularly interested in claiming relics from their churches in an expanded Venetian quarter of Constantinople, and our sources present some of these translations as unauthorized.113
Riant’s collection of “Epistolae et Instrumenta” provides ample evidence of Henry of Flanders’s emulation of his brother. The letters and grants are all relatively short and contain little information about where and how Henry obtained relics. As emperor he would have encountered no difficulty in doing so, and he sometimes provided bills of authentication for them. A testimonium de reliquiis found in Lyons, dated April 6, 1208, bears witness to the transfer of relics of the True Cross, St. Stephen the Protomartyr (yet again), St. Thomas, and St. Eustachius to Archbishop Raynaldo. Pontio de Caponay bore the relics, and Henry provided him with this short authentica.114 Other texts give even less information. One simply records that Henry sent “infinite relics of the Savior, Mary, the apostles, the evangelists, the prophets, the martyrs, the confessors, and female saints, and pious benefactors” to two German monks, Thomas and Gerard.115 What could this list mean? Did Thomas and Gerard somehow acquire dozens of tiny fragments one by one, or did Henry give them a sack filled with them? A 1215 document from Clairvaux is clearer. Hugo, formerly abbot of St. Ghislain in Hainaut (Henry’s homeland), delivered a relic of the True Cross from Constantinople to Clairvaux as a gift from the emperor. The document provides a very brief history of the Fourth Crusade in order to show how the relic came to be in Henry’s hands. Again, the purpose of this account was authentication.116
Documents that testify to the movement of relics out of newly Latinized churches by their new owners demonstrate that the phenomenon spread beyond Constantinople and lasted for decades. In 1215, Archbishop John of Neopatras, from Thessaly, sent a finger of St. Nicholas “and other relics” to the Monastery of Gembloux in Belgium.117 In 1216, Archbishop Warinus of Thessalonica sent a finger of St. John the Baptist to a monastery in Phalempin, Flanders.118 In 1218, the Cathedral of St. Albans in Namur, Flanders, catalogued its relics, which included a spine from the Crown of Thorns and some of Christ’s blood, both from Constantinople.119 We do not know their provenance, but Baldwin’s and Henry’s generosity to the religious houses of their region has already been noted. A 1224 testimonial on relics is attributed to William of Villehardouin but was almost certainly produced for Geoffrey I Villehardouin, “prince of Achaia” and nephew to the marshal of Champagne.120 The prince sent a reliquary to the church of St. Remigius in Reims, Champagne, his family’s home city, via an old monk named Arnuld de Lotti. Inside the reliquary were drops of blood that he “believed” to have been shed from the side of Christ on the cross.121 We do not know where the prince acquired this relic. In 1230, Walter, reeve of Beata Maria of Cinctura in Constantinople, sent relics to Lambert, the reeve of Beata Maria in Bruges. These included an arm of the Apostle Bartholomew, an arm of St. Blasius, and relics of St. Laurence and Stephen the Protomartyr (again). In 1232, Anselm, the procurator of St. Mary Magdalene in Constantinople, brought together multiple relics of, yet again, St. Stephen the Protomartyr. Anselm, like Walter, sent these to Lambert of Bruges.122
The above are just a sampling of the relics sent from the Latin Empire and Frankish Greece to Western Europe. Relics had always flowed licitly from church to church in the Middle Ages at semiregular intervals. Guardians of relics rewarded friends and curried favor by offering small pieces of relics. Bishops redistributed relics within their sees.123 But now there was a sudden influx of relics, some very important, coming from long-established religious institutions in the East, all of which were under new ownership.124 Such institutions, backed by the Greek nobility and their churchmen, had gathered relics for centuries. Perhaps the Western clerics lacked a long-term commitment to their new properties and felt free to use them to enrich their old friends and allies back in the West. It is not clear that anyone tried to strip a newly acquired religious building of value entirely, but a certain amount of careful siphoning on behalf of the homeland definitely took place.
Venice figures prominently in the history of this siphoning. In 1222, the abbot of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice’s principle monastery, ordered the translation of a relic out of a daughter monastery, Christ Pantepoptes, which it had obtained in Constantinople after 1204. The prior of San Giorgio, who ruled the Pantepoptes, enlisted the help of the podestà, the chief official in Constantinople’s Venetian quarter, in finding transport for the relics of St. Paul the New Martyr.125 The translatio recording this story casts it as a sacred theft, as the abbot commands the prior to send the relic to him secretly (abscondite sibi mitteret). But it is not clear who the Venetians feared might catch them. The prior controlled the monastery. The podestà had absolute power within the Venetian quarter. Thus, we are left to question whether the translation of St. Paul’s relics was authorized or unauthorized.126 The timing is curious. Venice’s leading monastery had acquired this property after 1204 but decided to send the relic to Venice fifteen years later. Other Venetian sources describe the acquisition of the relics of St. Helen, John the Martyr, and Paul the First Hermit (taken to Venice in 1211, 1214, and 1239, respectively), and the purchase of precious objects for the express purpose of decorating the churches of Venice. Venice also acquired the relics of St. Theodore the Martyr (1257) and St. Barbara (1258) just as the Latin Empire was weakening in the face of the Palaiologoi threat.
The translation of the relics of the Passion to King Louis IX, in 1239, is justifiably famous for its transformative effect on French royal iconography and Western devotional practice.127 The art of Sainte-Chapelle, the eventual house for the relics, depicts the only two prior acts of translation in Christian history to rival it—the inventio of the True Cross by Constantine and his mother, Helen, and the recovery of the cross by Heraclius.128 This chapter demonstrates that the translation of relics to Louis, although exceptional in scale, occurred within a larger ongoing pattern. Many relics were taken out of the Latin Empire. More specifically, Baldwin I gave relics of the Passion to Philip II Augustus, setting a precedent for the later translation. Baldwin II had used the Crown of Thorns as collateral on a loan from Venice. He saw the translation to Louis as a better deal for him than any other. Louis had to send two Dominicans to redeem the crown before the king would choreograph the great translation.129 Using the great relics of Constantinople at the highest levels of statecraft was nothing new to the Latin emperors.
Unlicensed relic trafficking during the life of the Latin Empire completes the picture. We have almost no evidence of trafficking beyond the complaints of those who wanted to stop it.130 These relic sales most likely happened on a retail level—not from a commoner to a church, but from one commoner to another. Such transactions would not have been recorded. Forgeries, as well as actual bits and pieces of relics stolen by common crusaders, probably flooded the West, but, again, details about these were not preserved by the sources. Capuano and Benedict’s prohibition against purchasing a relic offers one piece of evidence for the phenomenon.131 Canon 62 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) represents a later, and broadly applied, attempt by the Church to restrict the unauthorized translation of relics. By this point, a decade after the conquest, Rome would have had a solid understanding of the problem it was trying to solve. The canon forbids the sale or unauthorized exhibition of relics. It also establishes that only Rome may approve new relics, giving it control of the means of authentication.132 While one cannot base claims about the quantity or frequency of the unauthorized sale of Constantinople’s relics on the canon, the law does indicate the existence of the problem.
Conclusion
The details of the long process of stealing, looting, and redistributing Constantinople’s relics after 1204 remain murky. The general patterns, however, are clear. The process began with a vow not to harm the Greek churches, but in the chaos of the conflict, that vow fell by the wayside. Undoubtedly, the translatio of St. Mamas, Niketas’s lament, and Innocent’s diatribe contain elements of truth in blaming the crusaders for destroying and desecrating relics, smashing
