The Crusades and the Near East
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Thus high regard for Manuel in particular could readily be assimilated within, and even employed to reinforce, disdain for Byzantium and its people in general.
Manuel’s concern with his image in Latin eyes reflects his awareness of the potential for the empire to take centre stage in the drama of the crusade in a much less welcome role than the one he sought to fill. Although present from the early years of the crusading movement, this potential also largely eluded fulfilment for some decades. The passage of large crusading armies through imperial territory was invariably marked by sporadic outbreaks of violence. Even during the first two major crusading expeditions, long before the deepening of antagonism that marked the late twelfth century, the possibility of capturing Constantinople was discussed among their leaders.18 Within only a few years of the First Crusade the Latin case against Byzantium and its rulers as negligent and even actively 59
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treacherous in their response to the common Christian cause, a critique with a long history ahead of it, had already been set out in its essentials.19 As early as 1107 Bohemond of Taranto was able to invade the empire at the head of a crusading army raised by papal mandate and through a recruitment campaign which had emphasised Alexios I’s alleged misdeeds against crusaders and espoused the explicit aim of overthrowing him.20 This bears witness to the scope for diverting crusading energies against the empire which already existed only a dozen years after Alexios’s appeal to the pope and almost a century before the Fourth Crusade.21
The detachment of the goals of crusading from the empire’s concerns contributed greatly to the scope for hostility. The lack of compatibility between the crusade and Byzantine ideology ensured there was never any prospect of the empire or its people becoming committed to crusading on the basis of the religious enthusiasm which fuelled the movement in the West.22 Policy towards the crusades was therefore dependent on calculations of self-interest and imperial prestige, and since Latin control of Jerusalem did not figure as a high priority in this regard, the adoption of a detached and ambivalent stance was liable to be commonplace. Had the empire become largely irrelevant to crusading it might safely have stood aloof, but its geographical situation ensured that it remained inextricably engaged. The conduct of successive emperors and their people was under searching scrutiny on each expedition and the empire was expected to pull its weight in supporting them. Hard-headed considerations such as safeguarding the imperial capital and its Balkan provinces, the assertion of the empire’s right to retrieve former territories, the wish to avoid exposing the emperor and his armies to excessive risks far from home and the pursuit of diplomatic advantage in relations with Muslim powers contributed to policies that attracted the resentment and suspicion of crusaders.23 What might have seemed unremarkable behaviour in the normal dealings between rulers was potentially dangerous in the context of a movement whose proponents felt that such considerations should be set aside for the benefit of a divinely appointed mission.
Perceptions of inadequate commitment to the crusade were likely to do much deeper and more lasting damage to the empire’s reputation than they would to any Latin power because Byzantium could much more readily be cast as a society whose full membership of the Christian community was subject to doubt. The cultural and religious divide between Byzantium and the Latin peoples, more marked than those separating different western groups from one another, meant that the empire was susceptible to being seen not as one more individual Christian power alongside a range of other individual powers, but as a partially alien outsider alongside a single Latin community. The emerging ecclesiastical schism lent formal definition to this divide, while the friction arising from the crusades entrenched the schism, hitherto a liturgical and diplomatic technicality. The crusaders’ installation of a Latin Church hierarchy in conquered lands, expelling eastern incumbents, and the maintenance in defiance of this of titular patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem by Byzantium, began the rupture’s growth into a 60
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concrete reality.24 The sense of difference arising from religious controversy made the empire the obvious choice of scapegoat when crusading expeditions went awry, fuelling stories of treacherous Byzantine guides leading crusading armies to disaster and emperors encouraging Muslim rulers to attack them.25 Such allegations were both encouraged by and reinforced perceptions that the empire occupied a position outside the mainstream of Christendom. They reached a climax in the late twelfth century with the charge that the agreements between Isaac II and Saladin amounted to an alliance to conquer the crusader states and thwart the Third Crusade, bringing about Isaac’s efforts to bar the passage of Frederick I’s army through Byzantine territory. The question of whether the allegations against Isaac were well founded remains a matter of considerable disagreement, but they were clearly consonant with the existing Latin critique of Byzantium.26
From a Byzantine perspective, the perception among Latins that the crusade constituted the common cause of Christendom implied the empire’s displacement from the unique and central role it claimed in the Christian world. According to traditional imperial ideology, the emperor held a unique divine mandate as the pre-eminent worldly authority and the protector of the Church.27 A common military enterprise on behalf of Christian society as a whole could be ordered and directed only by the emperor. Besides the unpalatability of crusade theology, with its violation of the taboo against clerical involvement in bloodshed, for the papacy to issue a call to war on behalf of the entire Christian world amounted to a usurpation of the emperor’s prerogatives.28 The emergence of the religious schism, itself stimulated in large part by the grandiose claims made for papal authority from the eleventh century onwards, may have rendered this challenge to the empire’s idea of its own central place in the Christian world still harder to accept. The fact that the crusades tended to marginalise the empire in the leadership and defence of the Christian world was accidental but probably far from fortuitous, considering the movement’s origins in the midst of the ideological and material struggle for supremacy between the papacy and the western empire.
This was a troubling challenge in itself and also increased the likelihood of conflict. Byzantine writers in the twelfth century insisted that the expedition to Jerusalem was a cloak for the true aim of seizing Constantinople and overthrowing of the empire. Thus Anna Komnene said of the First Crusade:
Peter [the Hermit] had in the beginning undertaken his great journey to worship at the Holy Sepulchre, but the others (and in particular
Bohemond) cherished their old grudge against Alexius and sought a
good opportunity to avenge the glorious victory which the emperor
had won at Larissa. They were all of one mind and in order to fulfil their dream of taking Constantinople they adopted a common policy. I have
often referred to that already: to all appearances they were on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; in reality they planned to dethrone Alexius and seize the capital.29
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The Second Crusade drew a like response from the historian John Kinnamos: Normans and French and the nation of Gauls and whoever lived around
old Rome, and British and Bretons and simply the whole western array had been set in motion, on the handy excuse that they were going to
cross from Europe to Asia and fight the Turks en route and recover the church in Palestine and seek the holy places, but truly to gain possession of the Romans’ land by assault and trample down everything in front of them.30
The court oratory of ‘Manganeios Prodromos’ conveyed similar sentiments.31 This conspiracy theory of crusading may reasonably be interpreted as being in part a way of avoiding the implications of this challenge to imperial preconceptions. If the crusaders’ supposed aims could be dismissed as merely a pretext for aggression against Byzantium, the prospect of the empire being left on the sidelines of a common Christian enterprise could be ob
scured and events construed instead in the reassuringly familiar terms of barbarian conspiracy. The suspicions thus encouraged were reinforced by an apocalyptic tradition of prophecies predicting the downfall of Constantinople at the hands of western barbarians, which seems to have had a particular influence on Emperor Isaac II through the influence of the Patriarch Dositheos.32 If such thinking shaped imperial policy, some of the more blatantly provocative Byzantine actions become more comprehensible, notably the attempt by Isaac II to block the advance of Frederick I’s army through the Balkans during the Third Crusade.33 This directly confrontational approach pushed the German emperor into laying serious plans for the capture of Constantinople.34
Isaac’s willingness to risk provoking such a response can more readily be understood if he believed that Frederick’s intentions were malign in any case. The unwillingness of the empire’s rulers to accept the sincerity of an ideology and a movement whose existence brought their own vocation and status into question may thus have contributed to actions that threatened to turn the conspiracy theory into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The empire’s relegation to the periphery of the crusading movement thus had considerable potential to do it harm. Yet the precedent set by Bohemond in 1107
was not followed for decades, and this too was in part a product of Byzantium’s marginal place in the movement. On each major land expedition some toyed with the idea of attempting the conquest of Constantinople, but none ultimately went ahead with a serious attempt. This was in large part due to the persistence in the twelfth century of reluctance to turn the crusade against Christians, and the widespread persistence of the belief that, whatever its faults, Byzantium remained entitled to the protection of Christian solidarity. Though widely espoused from an early stage, the case against Byzantium never secured universal approval in the West, and suspicions and grievances arising from crusading never eradicated more positive perceptions.35 However, the avoidance of outright hostility also owed much to the compensations of the empire’s early displacement from the heart of 62
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the movement. One of the most powerful restraints on those interested in turning crusading expeditions against the empire was the eagerness of participants to complete their journey to the Holy Land and their preoccupation with aiding the Latin position there.36 When Bohemond approached Godfrey of Bouillon in 1096
with a proposal to attack Constantinople, his urgings were rejected on the basis both of revulsion at the idea of turning the crusade against Christians and of the overriding priority of the expedition to Jerusalem:
When he had heard this legation from Bohemond the duke put off
making any reply to it until the next sunrise when, after taking counsel with his men, he replied that he had not left his homeland and family for the sake of profit or for the destruction of Christians, but had embarked on the journey to Jerusalem in the name of Christ, and he wished to
complete the journey and to fulfil the intentions of the emperor, if he could recover and keep his favour and goodwill.37
The Bishop of Langre’s similar suggestions to Louis VII during the Second Crusade were opposed on similar grounds, as reported by the crusade’s historian Odo of Deuil:
He [Louis VII] knows, and we know, that we are to visit the Holy
Sepulchre and, by the command of the supreme pontiff, to wipe out our sins with the blood or the conversion of the infidels. At this time we can attack the richest of the Christian cities and enrich ourselves, but in so doing we must kill and be killed. And so, if slaughtering Christians wipes out our sins, let us fight. Again, if harbouring ambition does not sully our death, if on this journey it is as important to die for the sake of gaining money as it is to maintain our vow and our obedience to the
supreme pontiff, then wealth is welcome; let us expose ourselves to
danger without fear of death.38
Frederick I’s swift abandonment of his preparations to seize Constantinople once Isaac II agreed to let him cross to Asia, despite the extent of the provocation offered by Isaac’s previous actions, can be explained only by the centrality of Jerusalem and the insignificance of Byzantium to the aims of Frederick’s expedition.39 The pilgrimage model of crusading diminished not only the movement’s potential benefits to Byzantium but its potential threat.
While the conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade displays the eventual failure of such considerations to save the empire, the earlier course of the expedition shows that they had not ceased to apply. In his vain efforts to convince the crusaders not to turn aside to Constantinople, Innocent III insisted that, despite the chance of bringing an end to the schism, the defence of the Holy Land was a higher priority.40 The diversion was brought about only in the teeth of sustained opposition from large numbers of participants, many of whom left, or 63
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never joined, the army travelling on the Venetian fleet.41 Many others argued against going to Constantinople and secured a guarantee that they would be transported on demand to the Holy Land after the installation of Alexios IV
Angelos on the imperial throne, a pledge whose fulfilment they later unsuccessfully demanded.42 These crusaders’ objections to the plans of the army’s leadership were once again based on a combination of opposition to targeting Christians and opposition to diverting the campaign away from the Holy Land, a tendency which had led even the original plan to direct the crusade to Egypt rather than Palestine and Syria to be kept secret.43 The leaders argued for the crusade’s redirection on the grounds that only by this means would the expedition have any chance of going on to achieve its original aims, supported by the longer-term benefits for the Holy Land which would accrue from a Byzantine regime dedicated to the crusade.44 Just as Manuel I’s schemes to focus crusading energies on helping the empire had necessarily been couched in terms of aiding the struggle for Jerusalem, so the same argument was key to making the case for aggressive interference in the empire.
The pact between the crusaders and Alexios Angelos presented another unfulfilled potential model for the intimate involvement of Byzantium in crusading, one that subordinated the empire to the Latin agenda through formal and enduring obligations to assist. This deal envisaged the empire not only contributing vast sums of money and joining their expedition with ten thousand men, but maintaining a permanent force of five hundred knights in the Holy Land.45
Thus the empire was to be permanently integrated into the crusading movement as a source of funds. Such a model had been foreshadowed by the German Emperor Henry VI’s attempt in 1196–7 to blackmail Byzantium into paying for his own crusade under threat of invasion.46 These ideas may be seen as part of a wider trend towards a more strategic approach to crusading, manifested also in the emergence of Egypt as the prime target for expeditions. This shift undermined the traditional centrality of pilgrimage as a model for the conduct of crusades and broadened the geographical and methodological scope of what might be done in the course of a crusade for the sake of Jerusalem, within the parameters of the indulgence.47 It may in part explain why the arguments which had hitherto led crusaders to reject the temptations of Constantinople failed to avert the diversion of the Fourth Crusade, by reducing the emphasis on the journey to the Holy Land and by encouraging a more pragmatic and calculating attitude to what might be justified in the service of the cause.
The conquest of Constantinople and much of the rest of the empire by the forces of the Fourth Crusade was not the product of a fundamental shift in the nature of the dealings between Byzantium and the crusade from the long-standing pattern of ambivalence to one of habitual enmity. It did however bring about such a transformation, for a time. Innocent III had repeatedly expressed his opposition to the diversion of the crusade from its proposed destination to attacks on Christian targets.48 Yet the apparent opportunities for fulfilling the ambitions of the papacy opened by the capture of Constantinople were such that he 64
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exuberantly welcomed it as an act of divine providence for the purpose of subjecting Byzantium to papal supremacy:
Moreover, in our age we see this in the kingdom of the Greeks, and we rejoice in its accomplishment because He, who has dominion in the
kingdom of humanity and who will give it to whom He might wish, has
transferred the empire of Constantinople from the proud to the humble, from the disobedient to the obedient, from schismatics to Catholics, namely from the Greeks to the Latins. Surely, this was done by the Lord and is wondrous in our eyes. This is truly a change done by the right hand of the Most High, in which the right hand of the Lord manifested power so that He might exalt the most holy Roman Church while
He returns the daughter to the mother, the part to the whole, and the member to the head.49
The establishment of a Latin hierarchy in the core of the empire, existing in parallel with a Byzantine hierarchy in exile headed by the patriarch at Nicaea, fully consummated the schism between East and West, completing the process which had begun with the installation of a Latin hierarchy in Syria and Palestine.50
However, the papacy maintained hopes that it would bring that rupture to an end, through the exertion of authority by the new Latin masters of erstwhile imperial territories and churches on the population under their control. Such hopes led the papacy to take up the cause of the Latin Empire, promoting a series of crusading projects to defend it against the counter-attacks of the Byzantine successor states and, after its dissolution, to attempt to re-establish it.51 These intermittent efforts were interspersed with attempts to bring about Byzantine submission to papal authority by diplomacy; the main incentive for imperial involvement in such negotiations was the prospect of an end to crusading hostility as a reward for imperial compliance.52 This pattern reached its climax with the Union of Lyon of 1274, by which Michael VIII conceded all papal demands so as to forestall the crusading plans of Charles of Anjou, but which was rendered a dead letter by his failure to convince his subjects to accept the terms of the settlement.53 By raising up a Latin alternative to supplant Byzantium, the Fourth Crusade for the time being largely resolved the ambiguity of the empire’s position from the perspective of crusading, casting it clearly in the role of a defiant renegade which must be induced to submit or destroyed. Thus crusades finally appeared which placed Byzantium centre-stage, but with the aim of crushing rather than supporting it.