The pope also railed against the fact that King Emico of Hungary and his brother, Duke Andrew, were signed with the cross. Innocent reminded the crusading army of his earlier prohibitions against turning against Christian territories.
50
Clearly he had disapproved of Peter Capuano’s advice to the crusaders that the greater good of sustaining the crusade took precedence over the necessary evil of attacking Zara. It is noticeable that Peter did not rejoin the crusade until 1204, a delay that may be explained by Innocent’s anger.
The pope could not let this flagrant disregard for his authority pass and he concluded his missive with a punishment. He reminded his audience that, had they listened to his earlier letters, they would remember that those who contravened his orders were to be excommunicated and —crucially for a crusader—denied the benefit of the indulgence (the remission of all sins), one of the principal reasons for taking the cross in the first instance. Such a sentence would have enormously perturbed many of the crusaders. Innocent also mentioned that the Venetians had knocked down walls and buildings and robbed churches in Zara and he ordered, in the strongest possible terms, that this should stop. The letter closed with another reminder that the granting of the remission of sins was withdrawn from the excommunicate army.
Here, for the first time during the crusade, the limitations of papal authority are clearly revealed. Innocent had the power to call a crusade and to direct its preaching and aspects of its fundraising. In spite of having legates to represent him, however, he could not exert direct control over them especially if, as in Peter Capuano’s case, they exercised their own judgement. While he could threaten excommunication and expressly forbid certain actions, Innocent’s power, to a large extent, relied on the consent of the other parties involved. At Zara the crusade leaders faced the terrible dilemma of attacking a Christian city or seeing their great enterprise fold. In the circumstances they chose to suppress Innocent’s letter in order to pursue their own ends and to prevent widespread disquiet amongst the crusader host. In acting thus, they ignored papal authority and Innocent could do little to undo what had already happened.
The Venetians, of course, had a different agenda from the papacy. Their basic religiosity should not be underestimated, but it was a faith coupled with an intensely practical edge. As we have seen, they had (in common with the Pisans and the Genoese) engaged in commercial relations with the Muslims. With the failure of the crusaders to deliver the promised men and payment, the doge felt that his city’s survival was threatened; in such a case the interests of Venice were placed first and those of the papacy had either to fall in line with those needs or be turned aside.
After the capture of Zara, Innocent must have been painfully aware of his restricted ability to direct the crusade. The disobedience to papal commands, the Venetians’ insouciance and the sacking of a crusader city were not forgotten as he tried to steer the expedition in a way pleasing to God. Innocent was not, of course, powerless—the mission seeking papal absolution for the conquest of Zara was proof of that—but recent events had given him much to be concerned about.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘It is your duty to restore their possessions to those who
have been wrongfully dispossessed’
The Offer from Prince Alexius, December 1202-May 1203
I
N LATE DECEMBER 1202, with the army settled down to winter at Zara, ambassadors arrived seeking an audience with the doge and the crusade leaders. The envoys represented Philip of Swabia and Prince Alexius and they put forward an intriguing proposition, artfully phrased and carefully calculated to fulfil the wishes of the Byzantine prince, the crusaders and, by association, Pope Innocent III. Also present was Boniface of Montferrat who had now joined his fellow-crusaders at Zara. The envoys’ message began:
Since you are on the march in the service of God, and for right and justice, it is your duty to restore their possessions to those who have been wrongfully dispossessed. The Prince Alexius will make the best terms with you ever offered to any people and give you the most powerful support in conquering the land overseas ... Firstly, if God permits you to restore his inheritance to him, he will place his whole empire under the authority of Rome, from which it has long been estranged. Secondly, since he is aware that you have spent all your money and now have nothing, he will give you 200,000 silver marks, and provisions for every man in your army, officers and men alike. Moreover, he himself will go in your company to Egypt with 10,000 men, or, if you prefer it, send the same number of men with you; and furthermore, so long as he lives, he will maintain, at his own expense, 500 knights to keep guard in the land overseas.
1
Clearly the young Alexius was not deterred by his earlier rebuttals from Boniface and Pope Innocent and now continued in his efforts to convince the westerners to help him. The prince’s approach was based on a combination of moral justification—linking the purpose of the crusade in restoring Christian lands to the recovery of his own claim to the Byzantine inheritance—and the prospect of material and political advantages.
Undeniably, on the surface, these were hugely attractive inducements that seemed to answer the needs and aspirations of almost all the parties involved in the expedition. The first part of the offer concerning the recognition of the primacy of Rome was primarily aimed at the pope. Prince Alexius and his advisers knew of Innocent’s profound hostility to deploying the army against the Christians of Zara; they were also aware of his earlier rejection of the idea of removing Emperor Alexius III. To overcome this opposition would require something of singular allure. The prince had just such an idea: if the usurper were deposed, he indicated that the long-desired acknowledgement of papal authority over the Orthodox Church would follow. Perhaps Prince Alexius had already made this suggestion to Innocent at their meeting in early 1202. At Zara, however, he was hoping to persuade the crusader churchmen to agree to the plan, counting on the fact that the material advantages for the expedition could help to win them over. The prince might have calculated that the need to keep the crusade going, coupled with the submission of the Orthodox Church to Rome, formed an irresistible combination. If the churchmen at Zara could be convinced, might not Innocent too be persuaded? Or, more cynically, if the agreement was already
a fait accompli,
Innocent could have little hope of preventing the deal going through—in the same way that his pronouncements on Zara had been ignored.
Gunther of Pairis pointed to a more aggressive undercurrent to the envoys’ offer to the crusaders: ‘It helped that they knew that this very city [Constantinople] was rebellious and offensive to the Holy Roman Church, and they did not think its conquest by our people would displease very much either the supreme pontiff or even God.’
2
While this was not Innocent’s position thus far stated, it is interesting that he was perceived as having such a viewpoint and it might help to explain the envoys’ chosen line of approach.
For the French crusaders, Prince Alexius held out a tantalising prospect: relief from the debts that had crippled their expedition for so long. The capture of Zara had not alleviated their financial position—it had only been intended as a means to defer payment - and, as the envoys so candidly pointed out, the crusaders had nothing. Thus the sum of 200,000 silver marks, plus provisions for the entire army, would remove these worries in one sweep. Coupled with this financial bonanza, the addition of 10,000 men to the crusader army would do much to make up for the initial shortfall at Venice and would help replace those who had slipped away from the army en route. The terms of Prince Alexius’s offer had an eye to the future as well: the notion of a fully financed garrison of 500 knights to help sustain the Christian hold on the Holy Land was also highly desirable. Experience had shown that after completing their vows most crusaders returned home, leaving only the limited resources of the Frankish settlers in the Levant to face the inevitable Muslim counter-attack. An extra 500 knights would massively strengthen the army of the Holy Land and do much to secure the Christian presence in the eastern Mediterranean.
In return for all of this, however, there was the need to restore the prince to power, an enterprise that required the crusade to divert to, and possibly attack, the Christian city of Constantinople. For a second time therefore the expedition would have to turn its weapons against people of its own faith, rather than the infidel. The envoys assured their audience that they had full power to conclude such an agreement and closed their address by pointing out that ‘such favourable conditions have never been offered to anyone, and the man who could refuse to accept them can have little wish to conquer anything at all’.
3
The doge and the crusade leaders could not be rushed into a decision of this importance. They realised that a wider assembly of the nobles and leading churchmen had to debate the matter and a meeting was called for the following day.
The Fourth Crusade had already endured a series of crises: the death of Thibaut of Champagne, the lack of men arriving at Venice, the decision to attack Zara and the papal bull of excommunication. This new proposal was, however, potentially the most inflammatory and destructive of all. The deficit in men and money at Venice continued to exert a terrible grip on the crusade and the continuing requirement to redress these issues was the prime reason why the expedition found itself in such an invidious position.
‘There was a great divergence of opinion in the assembly.’
4
With masterly understatement, Villehardouin opened his account of the meeting: the lines of argument were familiar and the manner in which each side expressed its case as unbending and forceful as ever. The events at Zara had shown that there were already sharp divisions amongst the crusaders and, here again, it was Abbot Guy of Vaux-Cernay who opened the debate by emphasising the most basic reason for his opposition to any agreement with the prince - that ‘it would mean marching against Christians. They [the crusaders] had not left their homes to do any such thing and for their part they wished to go to Syria [as the Holy Land is sometimes called].’
5
‘We must insist,’ came the fairly predictable response ‘that only by way of Egypt and Greece [in other words, Constantinople] can we hope to recover the land overseas.’
6
So deep were the differences amongst the crusaders that even the Cistercian abbots on the crusade disagreed with one another. Guy of Vaux-Cernay found a bitter opponent in his fellow white monk, Abbot Simon of Loos. Simon was a close associate of Count Baldwin of Flanders and represented those who wished to keep the expedition going. He preached to the crusaders and exhorted them to accept the agreement because ‘it offered the best chance of winning back the lands overseas’. Guy of Vaux-Cernay was unmoved - this plan was flawed and the expedition should go to Syria to achieve something of worth.
Those in favour of the campaign could claim that the crusade was not, in a formal sense, being directed against the Greeks but, according to Prince Alexius’s reasoning, was a morally justifiable war to reinstate the rightful ruler of Byzantium. To their opponents, the distinction was not so plain and the image of men bearing the cross of Christ fighting their way into another Christian city - particularly one of the five great patriarchal seats of the faith (the others were Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch and Alexandria) - was utterly repugnant and abhorrent.
Some may have raised questions about the validity of Prince Alexius’s claim. He was born before his father’s reign began and not, therefore, ‘in the purple’ (a reference to the colour of the purple chamber in the Bucoleon palace where the consorts of reigning emperors gave birth to their children) and so by custom had no legitimate right to the throne. Innocent himself demonstrated his awareness of the issue in a letter of November 1202 and knowledge of this point was probably widespread.
7
The prince’s emphasis on the wrongful deposition of his father was, however, a stronger basis to claim redress. Some opponents of the diversion, however, might have remembered that Alexius’s father, the blinded Isaac Angelos, had been supportive of Saladin at the time of the Third Crusade. Why should the army of Christ assist Isaac and his son now? Alexius would argue, of course, that he was not party to that agreement and now desired to help the crusaders. Underlying this high-level debate were the opinions of the lesser men, illuminated for us by Robert of Clari. Unlike Villehardouin, Robert’s first concerns during the winter in Zara were not matters of high politics, but of an immediate and practical nature. Their stay in the city was cutting into the crusaders’ supplies and, for all the descriptions of Zara’s apparent prosperity, it seems that the conquest had yielded little real profit to those in the lower ranks. Robert describes the crusaders talking anxiously with one another and fretting because they had insufficient money to get to Egypt or Syria, or indeed to accomplish anything of value anywhere. All these needs might be answered, however, if they accepted Prince Alexius’s offer. On the other hand, there still remained the moral dimension to the debate. These men had taken the cross out of a fervent desire to help recover the Holy Land for the Christian faith. The balance between what was necessary to keep the crusade going and the outright distortion of that vow was proving extraordinarily difficult to achieve and required the men to make some very uncomfortable choices. The other source from around the camp-fire, the
Devastatio Constantinopolitana,
shows that for some the two issues could not be reconciled and a section of ‘the rank and file ... swore that they would never go [to Constantinople]’.