The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

The crusaders also, with their enormous armies and the pilgrim hordes that followed them, made the Greek lines their camping-ground, their forage-fields, and their battle-sites, until Constantinople dreaded these fellow-Christians as much as it feared the Infidels. Richard of England took Cyprus from the Greeks and ultimately gave it to the Templars. Henry VI. of Germany forced from the emperor five thousand pounds of gold, as the price of the immunity of his lands from the ravages of Western armies. The imperial treasury was so depleted that the churches of Constantinople were rifled to raise what was thus called the “German tax.”

Beyond the actual aggressions of the Latin Christians upon their Greek brethren there was developed a deeper menace in the hatred which had sprung up between the two peoples. Throughout Europe the eagerness to exterminate the Moslems was almost matched by a purpose to subjugate the Greek power. For this antipathy there were other and special occasions, some of which we will narrate.

The Normans, who, under Robert Guiscard, had in 1062 conquered Sicily, were the inveterate foes of Constantinople. Robert and his son, Bohemond, invaded Epirus and Thessaly. In 1107 Bohemond repeated the attempt to capture the western borders of the empire. In 1130 Roger of Sicily made alliance with the German emperor for the same purpose. William, son of Roger, in 1156 pillaged Corfu, Corinth, and some of the Ægean Islands, and sent a fleet to parade his insults in the Bosporus and Golden Horn, where his sailors shot gilded arrows against the very palace walls.

About 1180 the Emperor Andronicus cruelly massacred the Latins in Constantinople, dragging the sick from their beds in the hospital of St. John, and decapitating the papal envoy, Cardinal John, whose head was tied to a dog’s tail and dragged about the streets. William II. of Sicily appointed a certain Tancred, his agent, to avenge these atrocities. Tancred sacked Salonica and ravaged Macedonia and Thrace. In 1194 Henry, King of Sicily, claimed all these lands and held Irene, daughter of the Emperor Isaac, as hostage. Thus the Sicilians were always ready to leap at the throat of the Greek empire in sheer vengeance, if not with thirst for the blood of spoil.

Another menace to the Eastern Empire was from the Italians, who were represented by large colonies throughout the imperial territories, and even in the capital itself, where they enjoyed for a time exceptional privileges, such as being directly governed by their own ambassadors, having favored rates of tariff on their commerce, often amounting to free trade, and at times receiving high appointments in the service of the empire. Yet these prosperous conditions were frequently interrupted by quarrels with the Greeks, reaching on occasions to civil war within the walls of the capital. Pisan and Genoese pirates ravaged the Ægean, and even blockaded the Dardanelles against the passage of Greek ships. In 1198 these freebooters defeated the imperial navy.

Venice, however, was the most formidable of these rivals for power within the empire, as she had been at times the most favored nation. In 1171 the Venetians attacked Dalmatia and pillaged the Ægean, until they were forced by herculean efforts of the Greek government to sue for peace. Henry Dandolo conducted the mission for treaty, and during his stay in Constantinople became blind. It is asserted by the Venetians that his affliction was due to torture perpetrated upon him by command of the emperor. It was a common practice of the Greeks to destroy the sight of those they would render impotent to do them harm. This ancient punishment was called abacination; the process was that of forcing the victim to gaze into a basin of highly polished metal, which by its shape concentrated the rays of sunlight and constituted a burning-mirror. Whether this is the true explanation of his blindness or not, it is certain that Dandolo ever after displayed an absorbing passion to wreak vengeance upon the Greek power, and we shall find him foremost among its foes in the fatal expedition called the fourth crusade.

But, aside from these inducements, the wealth of the city offered to the covetous a prize second to none in the world. The situation of Constantinople on the narrow highway of the Bosporus or Strait of St. George, which connects the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, made it mistress of the maritime commerce between Europe and Asia. Neighboring countries contributed by their very geographical relation to the power on the Bosporus. The Balkan peninsula, terminating in the classic land of Greece, and fringed with the islands of the Ægean and the Adriatic; the eastern provinces of Europe, drained by the Danube, whose mouth was hard by; Russia from the Siberian snows to the temperate climate of the Euxine; Asia Minor, the seat of ancient civilization in the middle Orient, even to the entrance of Persia; the Holy Land, and the fertile valley of the Nile—each of these, in extent and population enough for an empire, and all of them lying in easy accessibility, fitted Constantinople to be the natural capital of the greatest power in the world.

Its immediate site, too, was inviting. Enthroned upon magnificent hills, with the harbor of the Golden Horn as a safe refuge for its fleets, and a salubrious climate assured by the perpetual breeze from either of the great seas which lay at its feet, it was the especial abode of comfort and splendor. In its stately palaces, churches, and public squares was preserved the best art inherited from the ancient world, for which the temples of Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and the isles of the Mediterranean had been rifled. Its merchants lived with the splendor of princes, dwelling in palatial homes, adorning themselves with most costly robes and rarest gems, and clothing even their horses with gold. To outrank their subjects in splendor, princes lived in houses whose columns and walls were sheathed in golden plates. The palaces of Blachern and Bucolion were furnished with incredible treasures.

The Church of St. Sophia, says Benjamin of Tudela (1161), was richer than “all other places of worship in the world.” To its magnificence Ephesus had contributed eight pillars from the temple of Diana; Aurelian’s Roman temple of the sun, eight columns of porphyry; the temples of the Nile, twenty-four columns of polished granite. Its vestries contained “forty-two thousand robes embroidered with pearls and precious stones.” But St. Sophia was only one of many churches whose golden domes flashed over the Bosporus. Other structures vied with the temples. The hippodrome was nine hundred feet long, lined with tiers of white marble seats, from which the spectators, in the intervals of the races, admired the four horses in bronze which now surmount the entrance of St. Mark’s in Venice. Columns, statues, baths innumerable, feasted the eyes or invited the indulgence of the citizens.

Even more tempting to the covetous piety of the western Europeans were the stores of sacred relics possessed by the churches and monasteries. It was believed that more than half the objects of veneration associated with dead saints throughout the world were in case or crypt within Constantinople; and the common faith attributed to the army of saints thus honored, and whose ghosts were presumably guarding their bones, the preservation of the city during so many generations. Most of these relics had been purchased at or stolen from their original resting-places in different parts of the East; but many undoubtedly were manufactured to gratify the credulity of the foreigners who thronged the bazaars.