sacred items (altarpieces, works of religious art, icons, and so forth). In fact, no document written either before or after the pact reliably describes the process by which such objects were intended to be distributed or were in fact removed and dispersed. The only clear statement about plans for relics comes from the chronicler Robert of Clari, who writes that all the soldiers were required to swear an oath that they would not despoil churches or sacred objects.2 Despite such oaths, of course, churches were looted or systematically stripped of value. Over the next few decades, unprecedented numbers of significant holy objects and uncountable numbers of fragments and forgeries from Constantinople appeared in the Latin West.
Due to the memorializing efforts of people such as Pope Innocent III and the Greek chronicler Niketas Choniates, the looting of Constantinople, especially the looting of its churches, has been fraught with controversy. In an angry letter that he widely distributed, Innocent wrote,
How will the Greek Church . . . return to ecclesiastical unity and devotion to the Apostolic See, a church which has seen in the Latins nothing except an example of affliction and the works of Hell, so that now it rightly detests them more than dogs? . . . It was not enough for them [the Latins] to empty the imperial treasuries and to plunder the spoils of princes and lesser folk, but rather they extended their hands to church treasuries and, what was more serious, to their possessions, even ripping away silver tablets from altars and breaking them into pieces among themselves, violating sacristies and crosses, and carrying away relics.3
More verbosely, the Greek chronicler wrote,
Their [the Latins’] disposition was not at all affected by what they saw. . . . Not only did they rob them [the Greeks] of their substance but also the articles consecrated to God. . . . What then should I recount first and what last of those things dared at that time by these murderous men? O, the shameful dashing to earth of the venerable icons and the flinging of the relics of the saints, who had suffered for Christ’s sake, into defiled places! How horrible it was to see the Divine Body and Blood of Christ poured out and thrown to the ground! These forerunners of Antichrist, chief agents and harbingers of his anticipated ungodly deeds, seized as plunder the precious chalices and patens; some they smashed, taking possession of the ornaments embellishing them, and they set the remaining vessels on their tables to serve as bread dishes and wine goblets. Just as happened long ago, Christ was now disrobed and mocked, his garments were parted, and lots were cast for them by this race; and although his side was not pierced by the lance, yet once more streams of Divine Blood poured to the earth.4
The pope, the historian, and other medieval writers who agreed with their characterizations established the overarching narrative of sacrilegious pillaging that has remained the consensus ever since. Innocent and Niketas won the battle of memory.
There can be no doubt that horrific violence, rapine, and out-of-control looting filled the first three days after the conquest. Michael Angold has argued that the violence fell within medieval norms for a postconquest city, paling in comparison to the 1099 conquest of Jerusalem or the worst episodes of the Albigensian Crusade. Traditionally, commanders allowed their soldiers three days to pillage and then reasserted control, a process followed in 1204.5 Angold thus writes against a long tradition of scholarship that adopts the positions of Niketas and Innocent. For example, Steven Runciman described the sack of Constantinople as “unparalleled in history,” then declaimed, “There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.”6 In his text, the dispersal of sacred objects, linked to rapacious descriptions of looting and violence, serves as evidence for the atrocities of 1204. But even the myth-eroding work of Donald Queller and Thomas Madden implies a link between the taking of relics and the first three days of looting. After describing a prostitute dancing on the throne of the patriarch, they write, “Equally sought after in the churches and monasteries were Constantinople’s numerous relics. For most, this ‘pious thievery’ was embarrassing enough that they later tried to conceal it.”7 Some must indeed have concealed their actions, especially after the looting of churches became the focus of Innocent’s condemnation (the subject of chapter 2). Others, however, commissioned narrative accounts of their exploits, wrote letters and charters, or sponsored new liturgies. This evidence supports a more nuanced narrative than a tale of smash and grab, though plenty of smashing and grabbing occurred.
In this chapter, I argue against a loose conflation of the tumultuous initial looting of the city with the long-term extraction and dispersal of its sacred objects by the Latins in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. I offer an account of the various means, timing, and rationales employed by the victors of the Fourth Crusade to obtain and export relics. This account provides a context in which to examine the contested ways that crusaders and critics alike memorialized the treatment of Constantinople’s relics.
Certain distinctions among the various cases of relic acquisition serve as organizing principles for the chapter. One can distinguish between haphazard and targeted looting of relics and between authorized and unauthorized acts. Sometimes, crusaders just grabbed whatever they could (haphazard). Other looters consciously sought out relics from saints who were already venerated in their home churches, that were especially valuable, or whose loss would not garner unwanted attention (targeted). At other times, commanding nobles and elite clerics took whatever they wanted from churches under their control and sent or carried the relics west without fear (authorized). However, some had to creep secretly through the treasuries or find a way to trick the guardians of the relic (unauthorized).
I also divide the movement of relics from east to west into three distinct phases in order to highlight chronological separation among various acts of relic acquisition. The first phase took place in the weeks immediately after the sack. This period is the most obscured by the chaotic nature of conquest and the concomitant lack of solid documentation, but the available source material does reveal enough fragments of data to draw some rough conclusions about those initial days. The second phase occurred over the next few years, as Constantinople’s new occupants—people directly involved with the events of 1204—took possession of their city, took stock of their churches’ possessions, and, sometimes, chose to send relics west. The great and powerful men of the crusade and new empire figure largely in this period. Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice, cardinal and papal legate Peter Capuano, and Emperor Baldwin of Flanders stand out as the exemplars in this second phase. During the remaining years of the Latin Empire’s short existence, which I mark as the third phase, relics continued to trickle west via theft, sale, and gift, particularly the latter. The great translation of the relics of the Passion to King Louis IX and many lesser-known translations fall into this category.
The Plan and the Looting: Context for the Relics
The looting of churches took place in a broader environment of postconquest plundering. Despite the reputation of the sack of Constantinople for indiscriminate slaughter, rape, and pillage, the internal sources on the crusade reveal many preemptive efforts to control the looting. The extent to which such plans failed is a separate issue.8 The leadership, motivated by self-interest, sought to both monopolize distribution of the great city’s riches and gather the needed coin to pay off their debts. The March Pact represents the culmination of their planning. It proposed a system for apportioning the throne, churches, land, fiefs, and coin of the Byzantine Empire. Sacred items, notably, do not appear in the document.
Why this absence? The Latins were well aware of the sacred richness of the city; indeed, crusaders and Western pilgrims had been marveling at Constantinople’s relic collection throughout the history of the crusades. As early as 1106–7, a forged letter purporting to be from Alexius I invited Latin soldiers to come take possession of Constantinople in order to keep the relics safe from the Turks.9 Robert of Clari, a knight of Picardy and author of one of the two main Western eyewitness accounts of the Fourth Crusade, revels in the majesty of the city’s relics and grand churches.10 Thus, the armies of the Fourth Crusade knew that the relics were present but made no plans
