Constantinople: The Story of the Old Capital of the Empire

by William Holden Hutton

The riches of Constantinople were well known to the Crusaders when they turned to besiege it. The stories of the earlier crusades were well known, when the Greeks had loved to show the treasures of the imperial city, the riches of S. Sophia, and even of the imperial palace. In the East were almost all the most sacred survivals, nearly all that remained in fact, or was believed to remain, of the relics of the Saviour, His Mother, and most of His Apostles. In the West, till the thirteenth century, there was practically nothing but the relics of Western, and, therefore, comparatively modern, saints, and the few more sacred treasures that had been given by Eastern sovereigns to those of the West.

For three days the pillage went on. Churches escaped no more than palaces or private houses. Indeed they were more greedily ransacked: and after the days of direct pillage there came weeks, months, of deliberate search for relics which had been concealed. The result was, as M. Riant says, to rob Constantinople of two distinct sorts of sacred objects; of relics, with or without their reliquaries, and of ecclesiastical furniture. It seems that the treasures taken were supposed to be placed in a common fund and divided proportionately among the nations concerned; but there was a great deal of chicanery and jobbery as well as of direct spoliation; ecclesiastical furniture certainly was supposed to be divided like the other booty, but the relics were regarded as too sacred for anything but direct robbery. It should be added, also, that much that was not taken at first was acquired during the period of the Latin Empire in ways more or less legitimate. The robbery went on for forty years.

Time would fail to tell of the wonderful things that were discovered and stolen. Almost every country in Europe received some fragments of the True Cross, found by S. Helena. Besides this there were drops of the Saviour's Blood, one of His teeth, some of His hair, the purple robe, some of the bread blessed at the Last Supper, and countless relics of the Blessed Virgin and the Apostles. The heads of S. John Baptist and of many of the Apostles found their way to the West. Venice was incomparably the largest gainer, but even the little church of Bromholm in Norfolk, by a gift which was the result of a double robbery, became the possessor of a fragment of the true Cross. The Crusaders were not content with taking relics of the primitive Church, but must needs take also the mortal remains of the Greek Fathers; you may see the head of S. Chrysostom to-day in the cathedral of Pisa.

The reliquaries, the exquisite examples of Byzantine art, that were scattered about the West, remain very often even now to witness to the completeness of the spoliation. But artistically the things that were destroyed, broken up or melted down, were far more precious than those that survived. If S. Mark's still possesses the horses that once stood in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, we know that magnificent statues of Juno, of Paris, of Bellerophon, an exquisite figure of Helen, of which Nicetas pathetically deplores that "she who had formerly led all spectators captive could not soften the heart of the barbarians," and many ancient works, statues, medallions, vases, were destroyed in the furnace. There are remains of ancient art in Constantinople to-day; but when we think of the pillage of 1204 and the Mohammedan Conquest we marvel that there is anything more ancient than the sixteenth century, or more valuable than a kettle or a candlestick of old time, to be found in the whole city.

The capture of the city was followed by the election, by twelve electors representing the Crusaders, of an Emperor for the throne of the Cæsars. Baldwin Count of Flanders, by what process of intrigue we do not know, was chosen. He was "heaved" upon the shield, as the ancient custom was; he received the reverence of those who had been his equals in the campaign; he was led in triumph to S. Sophia, and in a strange mixture of Latin and Greek rites was consecrated, crowned and enthroned a week after his election, as Cæsar and Augustus.

But this was not all. It is possible that in time the citizens, weary of their decadent rulers, might have come to accept without active discontent the rule of a gallant and chivalrous Christian knight such as Baldwin. But the Crusaders, and most of all the Pope, would not be content with this. If they were justified at all in the havoc they had made it was only because the Easterns were heretics and idolaters and schismatics. The Church of Constantinople was "rebellious and odious" to that of Rome. It must be brought to submission. So a century later the case is summed up, "God delivered the city into the hands of the Latins because the Greeks declared that the Holy Ghost proceeded only from the Father, and celebrated the mass with leavened bread." Such was the feeling,—though the expression of it is somewhat of an anachronism,—that animated now the leaders of the hosts, which, sated with their debauchery, began to feel something of an inevitable remorse.

But Innocent III. was of too pure a soul to countenance the iniquity that had been committed. Among all the shameless hypocrisies of the time his words of denunciation ring out true. Even the union of the Churches on which he had set his heart seemed to him now to be impossible. "Disappointment, shame, and anxiety weaken us when we ask whether the Greek Church can enter into union with the Apostolic see when that Church had seen among the Latins only the works of darkness."

Meanwhile the Venetians set canons in the Church of S. Sophia, and elected Morosini to be patriarch. It was an empty honour. In fifty-seven years a Greek again was seated on the throne of Justinian, and the Liturgy of S. Chrysostom was again sung in S. Sophia; but long before that revolts had made the Latin hold on the East more and more precarious, and the city more and more able to reassert its ancient independence.

4. From the Latin Conquest to the Conquest by the Turks.

It is unnecessary to tell of the division of the Empire among the conquerors, or of how a daughter of Alexius III. wedded the heroic Greek who still fought on, Theodore Lascaris, and was the ancestress of one who eventually brought back the old Empire; of how Mourtozouphlos was caught by the Latins and cast down from the top of the column of Arcadius, or of how Greek states sprang into existence on every side; how Baldwin the Emperor was captured by the Bulgarians and died a horrible death. These events all happened within two years. Henry, the brother of Baldwin, reigned in his stead. Henry Dandolo the old doge died "in the fulness of years and glory" and was buried, it would seem, in S. Sophia, where the great slab that covered his grave is still to be seen. Ten years later Henry the Emperor passed away, and Peter of Courtenay, husband of his sister Yolande reigned in his stead. He reigned though crowned in Rome, only to be captured on his way to Constantinople, and to pass away from history to an unknown fate. Robert, his son, was crowned in S. Sophia in 1221. His fate was hardly less ignominious. His successors, the child Baldwin II. (Courtenay) and John of Brienne, were besieged in Constantinople by the Greek so-called Emperor of Nicæa and John Asēn, the Bulgarian king, but the aged joint-Emperor successfully defended the city. The young Baldwin went as a beggar to the chief courts of Europe, was the pensioner of S. Louis, seated himself with difficulty on the throne, descended to an ignoble marriage treaty with a Mohammedan Sultan and sold the Crown of Thorns to the king of the Franks.