to the clerics and the churches so that they might live and be sustained in an honorable fashion. The remaining possessions of the churches, indeed, should be divided and distributed in accordance with the aforesaid agreement.”14 To secure this agreement, the parties asked that the pope “bind by the chain of excommunication” anyone who broke the pact.15 Innocent had no quarrel with much of this treaty, including the method of choosing an emperor, the clauses that refused access to the empire to anyone at war with Venice, the creation of a council to determine who received which fiefs, and even the means of dividing the secular loot. No pontiff, however, could have accepted the provisions for church property and the patriarchate, let alone given them official papal sanction.
The patriarch of Constantinople was arguably the second most powerful prelate in Christendom, following only the pope himself. Thomas Madden argues that the Venetians had always planned on losing the imperial election and taking control of Hagia Sophia, since Doge Enrico Dandolo had neither the authority to claim the city for the Venetian republic nor the desire to start his own imperial dynasty. Moreover, along with the title of patriarch came the control of the cathedral itself and all of its vast properties, leadership of the local church, and, most important, the ability to keep the newly Latin patriarchate from eroding the privileges of the Venetian-dominated patriarchate of Grado, the patriarchal seat located on an island not far from Venice.16 Under no circumstances would Innocent allow secular figures to determine the fate of the patriarchate, but his relationship with the Venetians and their leader had been especially fraught, and perhaps this contributed to the ensuing tensions over the issue.17 These tensions would linger well into the second decade of the Latin patriarchate’s existence.
The distribution of church property was an even more contentious problem.18 The pope’s urgent concern stemmed from the crusaders’ decision to give themselves the right to redistribute the vast wealth of the Greek church.19 The crusaders had agreed to reserve the churches—the actual buildings—for various clerics on the crusade, but such was the limit of their generosity. The churches of Constantinople controlled vast quantities of land and property throughout the medieval city. This city had served as the “new Jerusalem” for generations of Greek emperors and garnered wealth from the donations of pilgrims and the bequests of the devout.20 The crusade leadership decided that it would give its priests only as much of the goods and property of the churches as the priests would need to sustain themselves appropriately. All other plunder taken from the churches was fair game for the secular crusaders. Furthermore, these secular leaders decided how much a given church needed to support itself.
Innocent was likely aware of at least the basic tenets of the March Pact by the time he wrote that first letter to Baldwin in November 1204. The pact itself was not enregistered in Rome until January 1205, and Alfred Andrea speculates that Baldwin delayed sending it to Innocent because he knew that it would “provoke papal ire.”21 A long letter from Baldwin to Rome from May 1204 (as opposed to the short missive that was delayed, as mentioned above) details the course of the conquest but does not mention the fate of the churches. Baldwin describes the battles, the multiple elections to determine the emperor in the last weeks before the sack, and his own election, and offers many hopeful words for the future, but he obfuscates the details of the pact, already enacted. He pretends, for example, that the appointment of electors occurred nearly of its own accord, rather than having been scrupulously planned out in detail weeks before the final assault.22
One might posit that Baldwin suspected that the provisions concerning the churches would cause problems. He may have wanted more time to assess and divide church property before receiving a specific papal edict forbidding any such action. Throughout the crusade, the army’s leaders used fait accompli to counter papal objections, and they seem to have continued in this mode. This would explain Baldwin’s delay in informing the pope of what, precisely, was going on in Constantinople. The word “confusion” in Innocent’s first letter to the new emperor indicates that any attempts at suppression failed. The pope suspected that there would be problems, even if he did not yet know the details.
The March Pact, technically, was an agreement between the Venetians and the Franks. Thus, both Dandolo and Baldwin (as the leader of the Franks, once he took the throne) needed to send a copy to Rome and ask Innocent to ratify their agreement. The copy of the pact and their two letters requesting papal approbation arrived in January 1205.23 With these in hand, Innocent could respond more directly. The two letters betray a certain discomfort. Baldwin asked for papal ratification of the “articles of agreement,” then stressed the “good and faithful association” between himself and the Venetians, specifically Dandolo. He noted that, in order to show their devotion to Rome, the parties agreed to ask for papal approval even before they stormed the city. Innocent should ratify the agreement, Baldwin concluded, for the sake of the stability of the new empire, the “relief of the Holy Land, and . . . the preservation of church unity.”24 These three goals could not be achieved, he averred, without the Venetians’ help. Baldwin feared that Innocent would still be so angry at the Venetians that he would reject the agreement and throw the entire mechanism for apportioning the new empire into chaos. A papal rejection might also erode Baldwin’s legitimacy as emperor. In this letter, therefore, Baldwin emphasized the core goodness, faithfulness, and, above all, utility of the Venetians.25
Dandolo had an even tougher task in seeking papal approval. He had to retell the entire history of the crusade in such a way as to make his actions seem acceptable. His letter to Innocent constitutes the first known Venetian attempt at shaping the memory of the crusade—a text earlier than either the Venetian translatio texts discussed in part II or the Ravenna mosaics considered by Madden.26 Whether Dandolo actually expected to change Innocent’s mind is unknowable, but he did not necessarily have to persuade the pope of anything. The goal was to provide a willing pontiff a face-saving means out of the impasse between the two sides. He may have hoped that the pope would seek to make peace in order to play an active role in the new empire. Dandolo’s case relies partially on claiming that he did no wrong and had never intentionally defied papal will. More importantly, Dandolo suggested that the clear evidence of divine approval and even direct intervention in the campaign meant that the pope must forgive him. God, after all, could outrank the pope in religious matters.
This letter from Dandolo provides us with the earliest evidence of an internal counternarrative of the crusade that would resist the condemnatory voices from Rome and elsewhere. Dandolo employs the types of arguments later made by the translatio texts of the Fourth Crusade. He stresses the presence of a divine hand guiding events, explaining how, “with (as we believe) divine inspiration rather than human planning overtaking events,” Alexius Angelos met with the crusading army and asked for help. As a result of this “divine inspiration,” the crusaders and the Greek prince signed the Treaty of Zara, agreeing to attempt to place Alexius on the Byzantine throne.27 Dandolo was arguing that regardless of what had transpired in the past between the Venetians and the papacy, events had so clearly shown the signs of divine intervention that exoneration should be a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, he did offer an exculpatory account of events. For example, he claimed that the Venetians had attacked Zara only because it was unjustly (iniuste) engaged in rebellion against Venice. He had heard that Hungary (to whom the citizens of Zara had pledged their city) was under the protection of Rome, but Dandolo did not believe this could be true.28 He had “patiently endured” the edict of excommunication, but it had since been lifted by the papal legate Peter Capuano, so there was no need to ask for further official forgiveness on the matter of Zara anyway. Furthermore, the conquest of Constantinople was undertaken simply to correct a wrong (against Alexius and Isaac Angelos), and violence broke out after the Greeks proved to be treacherous liars (mendaces et fallaces).29 In the diversions to Zara and Constantinople, claims Dandolo, the Venetians and crusaders only sought to fight injustice. And, of course, the city of Constantinople “had to be conquered for the honor of God and the Holy Roman Church and the relief of Christendom.”30 Dandolo concluded that Innocent should grant his petitions because all of the Venetians’ actions had been only for the benefit of God and Rome.
Dandolo
