in order to acquire gems and precious metals. During such acts of pillage, some crusaders, who had long venerated the relics of Constantinople, must have stolen tiny pieces and risked death in doing so. This type of theft led to trafficking, forgeries, and the widespread, uncontrolled, and largely undocumented dispersal of relics in Europe over the decades to come. Furthermore, various individuals took advantage of the chaos to pick and choose the relics they most desired. Abbot Martin and the Venetians of St. Simon’s parish are the two best-documented examples. The abbot valued ease of access and safety, whereas the Venetians chose a specific relic that they wanted to steal regardless of the risk.
Once things had settled down, the leaders of the crusade began to claim the relics for themselves. The Latin bishops in Constantinople at the time of the conquest had prime access to the relics of their choice and also received important items as gifts. Garnier of Troyes died before he could disperse much of his collection, and papal legate Peter Capuano, who had missed the free-for-all of the initial conquest, took control of these relics. The secular leadership joined the bishops, perhaps using the power of confiscation to gain their plunder. By around 1210, the initial appropriation and apportioning of relics and territories in the East among Latins from and in the West had been accomplished. Many relics remained in the churches and monasteries of Constantinople, but they continued, in whole or in part, to be sent westward from time to time. The slow process of licensed relic translation joined with more illicit forms of relic trafficking to drain the sacred wealth of Constantinople; these translations included those that propagated the grand myths associated with the relics of the Passion, as well as the peripatetic wanderings of the Shroud on its way to Turin. In 1261, the “new Constantine,” Michael VIII Palaiologos, had to begin Constantine’s work of creating a “new Jerusalem” all over again.133
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Pope Innocent III and Sacrilege, 1204–1215
When news reached Pope Innocent III that Constantinople had been conquered, he rejoiced at this clear sign of God’s miraculous power. He publicly hailed the victory and predicted the speedy reunification of the Greek and Latin churches, which would then lead to the liberation of Jerusalem by the forces of a united Christendom and perhaps mark the beginning of the Apocalypse.
But the Greeks failed to convert in large numbers. Enemies of the new state pressed in from all sides, and the need to defend the empire sapped resources from other crusading activity. Jerusalem remained in Islamic hands. Worse, critical voices from the West questioned crusader conduct and papal complicity in that conduct. At the same time, the pontiff began negotiating with the secular leadership of the crusade over church property in Constantinople. The Orthodox churches of Constantinople had owned huge swaths of the most desirable property in the great city, and the secular powers in the new empire, Frank and Venetian alike, felt empowered to appropriate it. But for Innocent, all church property belonged to the “seamless garment of Christ,” and he demanded its immediate return.
By then, however, Innocent had lost his leverage. The crusaders had defied him in their diversion to Constantinople and had been excommunicated for their trouble. They had also vowed, on pain of damnation, to fight for the Holy Land; until released from their vow, damnation threatened. These were cudgels that Innocent could have wielded to influence the postconquest environment. But, after the conquest, Innocent’s papal legate, Cardinal Peter Capuano, released the crusaders from their vow and absolved them of their sins. In return, he demanded an additional year of service and little more. Innocent could not extract further promises in exchange for lifting the penalty of excommunication, nor could he demand further military action in lieu of a campaign against Muslim Jerusalem. Innocent needed a new approach.
This chapter argues that Innocent employed accusations of sacrilege and other sinful behavior during the postconquest looting as a source of new leverage and as a means of explaining the sudden loss of divine favor. Such accusations cited wide misconduct but named the violation of holy ground and the seizing of relics as the worst of the crusaders’ many crimes. These complaints were made most explicitly in the summer of 1205, just as crusaders and their relics began arriving back in the West.
Within a year of the creation of the Latin Empire, papal writings consistently raised the issue of sinful misconduct after the conquest in order to push recalcitrant Christians to support papal positions or desires. Thus, the pope moved the contest over the meaning of 1204 to a religious battlefield. Even when not discussing the looting, he made moral or spiritual judgments on crusader conduct, thus keeping the conversation on the papal battleground of religious matters. Over time, other critics of the crusade echoed the papal approach in its moral condemnation of the crusaders and focus on illicit looting. The persistent criticism from Rome and other sites cemented the crusaders’ conduct and moral decision-making during the pillaging of Constantinople as the locus of the conflict over memory and meaning of the Fourth Crusade.
Innocent and the Crusaders
The contest over the memory of the Fourth Crusade emerged out of a specific set of political, ecclesiastical, and economic postconquest issues with which the papacy and the leaders of the crusading army wrestled. As with so many other phases of the crusade, the terms of oaths sworn by the soldiers dictated the nature of the difficulties to follow.1 Key terms of the March Pact at once incurred Innocent’s wrath and mandated reconciliation between the crusaders and the papacy, a precarious situation indeed. The central passages—on election and division of secular spoils—caused no controversy with Rome. It was, rather, the lesser provisions that governed the disposal of the wealth of the church and the patriarchate of Constantinople that reignited tensions otherwise potentially eased by the victory. The lay leaders had disposed of church lands, other kinds of church property, and even the highest ecclesiastical office in Constantinople. Innocent could not let this stand. Meanwhile, in order to ensure that the co-signers of the pact would all meet the commitments to which they had agreed, the document mandated papal ratification. The crusade leadership, assuming that Innocent would eventually absolve them of their sins, actually wanted the coercive threat of papal excommunication in order to guarantee the crusaders’ adherence to the document. Without papal ratification, the pact could have been annulled, thus potentially rendering Baldwin’s ascension to the throne illegitimate and raising the chance for further internecine conflict.
Innocent’s responses to the crusade are found chiefly in the register of his correspondence covering the most important years of the crusade’s aftermath, 1204 to 1206.2 The Gesta Innocentii, a second key source for papal engagement in the contested memory of 1204, offers the perspective of the larger papal organization. Its author, an anonymous member of the curia writing between 1204 and 1209, benefitted from his hindsight of the events of the Fourth Crusade, the sack of Constantinople, and the failures of the early Latin Empire. One of the chief purposes of the Gesta was to exculpate Innocent from any blame that might have accrued to him as the sponsor of the initial crusade.3
The interactions between the army and Rome during the close of the crusade shaped the papal response in the years that followed. Over the course of the campaign itself, before the sack, the tone of papal letters builds from mild reprimand to outright fury and condemnation. Questions of morality, ecclesiastical privilege, and divine approval—topics on which Innocent could claim ultimate authority—appear within these sources from the very beginning. As plans began to go awry, the pope deployed his limited tools of coercion and persuasion in order to get the crusade back on course to Egypt without antagonizing allies or potential allies, particularly the king of Hungary and Emperor Alexius III. He reminded the crusaders of their oath and threatened excommunication; in fact, each time the crusade diverted, an edict of excommunication against the army went into effect, though the crusade leadership suppressed this news. Innocent tried to divide the crusaders from their defiant leaders,
