soldiers did abandon the enterprise (mostly because of internal dissent rather than papal machinations), but enough of them remained to provide a credible military force. Further undermining any sway Innocent might have had, clerics on the crusade preached to the rank and file that the diversion to Constantinople was part of the holy mission.4
Despite the crusaders’ defiance of the papacy, this crusade was not particularly irreligious. The soldiers had taken sacred oaths on which they staked their very souls. Nor did the diversion to Constantinople mean that the soldiers intended to abandon their quest to free Jerusalem. To the contrary, Constantinople initially represented a means to the ends of financing and supplying for the campaign against the Muslims. Even in February and March 1204, the crusaders still planned to leave Constantinople and campaign in Egypt. But the successful conquest changed everything. The clause mandating papal approval of the March Pact demonstrates that the crusaders knew the papacy would have to be part of the new empire’s future for it to survive. Moreover, the crusaders were operating under lingering burdens of excommunication. They now controlled a large region that would need to be assimilated into the Latin rite if the conquered people were to accept their Latin rulers. Most importantly, Jerusalem was nowhere in sight. The only military expedition the army would yet undertake was to pacify its new holdings and beat back both Greek and Bulgarian claimants to the throne. And only the pope or his representative could absolve the oath of a crusader.
Innocent knew that the crusaders cared about obedience to Rome, if not to the degree he might have wished. Throughout the Constantinople affair, Innocent and his legate remained optimistic that the force could be turned back toward Egypt and returned to the papal fold. To effect this desired turnabout, Innocent offered both spiritual inducements and threats. His main concern about the diversion to Constantinople had been that it might interfere with reconciliation talks or efforts to recover the Holy Land. Even after the death of Alexius IV, the idea that Constantinople could be conquered by the small Latin army, be ruled by a Latin emperor, and seemingly serve as a new beachhead for future crusades had not seemed likely to any of the parties involved.5 However, presented with the reality of the new emperor Baldwin, in the first few months after the fall, Innocent stated his belief in the providential nature of the conquest and was ready to deal with the conquerors.6
In the initial aftermath of the conquest, therefore, it was a foregone conclusion among all parties that some form of agreement between the papacy and the crusaders could be reached. The shift away from diversion and toward looting, particularly sacrilegious looting, took place in an atmosphere of mutual distrust yet mandatory engagement. Each side had much to gain by dealing with the other, but Innocent had the moral upper hand. The crusaders knew that they had strayed and required papal forgiveness to lift the edict of excommunication. On the other hand, the crusaders were in Constantinople, held the city, and had already apportioned the wealth of the East among themselves. With the moral high ground balanced against fait accompli, negotiations concerning reconciliation and the ecclesiastical future of the Latin Empire began; so too began the contest over memory.
The First Postconquest Communications: Cautious Optimism
After news of the conquest reached Rome, the pope turned his efforts in the East to four new issues. First, he wanted to recover all of the church property that had been looted or secularized—this included both objects, such as relics, and the lands of the Greek church in the city. Second, he desired complete papal control over the patriarchate of Constantinople. Third, he wanted the newly conquered lands to serve as a base of operations for further crusading activity. Fourth, and perhaps most significantly, he wanted to convert the Greek people to a true Roman Catholicism. The Franks and Venetians, meanwhile, were dealing with two issues of their own. They needed, first, papal ratification of the March Pact to stabilize the new empire while, second, maintaining their respective new possessions in Constantinople—including the churches and church property they had claimed as their own. These matters directly pertained to questions of church and papal prerogative. Where agendas came into conflict, the debate often unfolded along moral or spiritual lines. The specifics of the contest over memory and interpretation emerged from that debate.
A short letter from Innocent to Baldwin from November 1204 reveals the pope’s approach to the surprising conquest. Baldwin had sent his first letter to Innocent in May, but Genoese privateers captured the courier and delayed the letter’s arrival.7 Innocent began his letter by praising the miraculous nature of the conquest. This was not mere window dressing. The providential nature of the conquest was invoked by all involved across diverse genres (sermons, chronicles, diplomatic letters, poems, and so forth). But Innocent used his statement about God having miraculously effected the victory in order to assert his prerogatives over the new empire. He wrote, “[God] has deigned to work magnificent miracles with you for the praise and glory of His Name, for the honor and profit of the Apostolic See, and for the benefit and exaltation of the Christian people.”8 He placed Baldwin and his “land and people under the primary protection of St. Peter and under our special protection, resolutely ordering all archbishops, bishops, and all other church prelates, also kings, dukes, counts, and other princes, and all peoples that they support and defend your [Baldwin’s] lands and people, and they neither personally molest them nor have them molested by others.”9 Innocent promised to order his prelates to excommunicate and place under interdict any who might “molest” the new lands, and he instructed all of his clerics to assist the new emperor. He also extended the papal crusade indulgence, offering a remission of sins to those “lay crusaders” who helped defend the new Latin Empire. Innocent pledged to send Baldwin additional assistance, because he recognized that by helping Latin-ruled Constantinople, “the Holy Land might be more easily liberated from pagan hands.”10
Then Innocent issued a warning. In his view, the Byzantine Empire fell because God wished to punish the Greeks for defying Rome. He reasoned, “After the kingdom of the Greeks turned away from the obedience to the Apostolic See, it continuously descended from evil to worse evil until, by the just judgment of God, it was transferred from the proud to the humble, from the disobedient to the obedient, from the schismatics to followers of the Latin rite, so that it might rise through the virtue of obedience to goodness because through the sin of disobedience it fell into evil.”11 Therefore, Innocent continued, Baldwin had best remain “in obedience” to Rome lest the same fate befall his empire. Innocent informed Baldwin that to obey Rome he would have to “diligently and faithfully make sure that ecclesiastical goods, both fixed and moveable, are protected until they might be properly organized in accordance with our authoritative decision, so that those things that are Caesar’s might be rendered to Caesar, and those things that are God’s might be rendered to God without confusion.”12 Placed at the close of the first formal communication between pontiff and new emperor and closely approximating biblical phrasing, this reference has considerable rhetorical weight.13 Innocent linked the survival of the empire to obedience to Rome and questioned the fate of church property. He probably suspected that some “confusion” had already taken place.
Innocent’s letter epitomizes his approach to the postconquest situation. First, he affirmed the miraculous nature of the victory. Second, he demanded specific actions from crusaders who wanted to avoid divine retribution for their sins. He coupled his historical analysis and providential interpretations with specific warnings. Carrot and stick—Innocent offered his support while demanding obedience. The fate of the vast wealth of the Greek church particularly concerned him.
Although chaos had initially reigned in the days after the Latin soldiers took Constantinople, “confusion” was not the biggest obstacle to satisfying the pope—and the chaotic looting of church property might well be labeled “confusion.” Rather, it was the more systematic appropriation of church wealth and position that demanded papal action. Two tenets of the March Pact addressed church matters. Following passages that detailed how six Venetians and six Franks would elect an emperor, the next section mandated that whichever party—the Franks or the Venetians—lost the election, that party would receive authority over Hagia Sophia and the patriarchate. Moreover, as noted above, the pact stated that “sufficient
