The road to 1204 : How the speech at Clermond was one of the causes

which allowed for the sacking of Constantinople and temporary end of

the Greek empire in 1204
Théodore Zarpas

The fourth crusade led to some actions that seem very difficult to explain from a christian
perspective. When Geoffroy de Villehardouin describes with horror the pillaging of the Hagia
Sophia, a christian church, by the christian crusaders [A world of crusades, a collection of
western sources], the speech of pope Urban II in Clermont as given by Fulcher of Chartres
(maybe one of the more reliable versions, Fulcher of Chartres actually went on crusade)
asking for the west to help their christian brothers in the east seems ironical and can leaves
us puzzled over what happened in order for this to happen.
The exact events of the 4th crusade happened specifically because of a specific set of
events on which I am not going to dwell on leading to the crusade being deviated to
Constantinople and ultimately leading to the sack of the city. But, looking at it throughout the
twelfth century this wasn’t the first time when Byzantium had faced danger coming from the
west. Moreover there had been a gradual worsening of the relations between the greek and
latins which ultimately culminated with the events of 1204 and later. While, it would be a
mistake to fully explain the 4th crusade through these increasing tensions (the geopolitical
situation between Venice and Byzantium definitely also was a major role in it) as even at that
time the 4th crusade had been heavily criticized by many westerners, the rize of a mutual
antagonisation between east and west definitely explains why there even was an open door
for justifying the conquest of Constantinople by the latins.
This paper will therefore show the mutual misunderstanding of each other between east and
west by looking at the events of the crusades during the 12th century from each side's point
of view in order to give some explanation to how conflict between latins and greeks started.
My argument is going to be that the byzantines treatment of the crusaders first as if they
were mercenaries, than as new players in the middle east looking to interfere with the greek
sphere of influence, while the latins expected the byzantine to have no foreign diplomacy
with the islamic world and them to be part of a common christian front united under the
papacy; was a relationship where both sides were going feel betrayed by the other sides
ending up in hostilities.
Through my research I haven’t found any articles making this specific point, or just going
through these long term causes explaining the events of the fourth crusade. To give him
credit in Chris Wright's article On the margins of Christendom : The impact of the crusades
on Byzantium he points out how Byzantine attitude and general paranoïa towards the latin’s
ultimately may have been one of the reasons for the fall of Constantinople.

The causes for the crusade may well originate in the Byzantine empire. Following the death
of Basil II niece Theodora in 1055, the Macedonian dynasty which had restored byzantine
prestige and stability came to an end a period of instability started, where no emperor
seemed to be able to maintain himself for longer periods of time, and there was an
increasing amount of infighting. Following the ravaging defeat at Manzikert in 1071 the
Byzantines didn’t only lose most of Anatolia but were also extremely impoverished, still the
infighting continued until Alexius Comnenus claimed power in 1081 and miraculously stayed
in power and alive. Alexius had to fight off the normands lead who were invading Epirus.
This background of a weakened empire depicted by Peter Charanis in A History of the
crusades : Volume I the first hundred years Chapter VI the Byzantine empire in the Eleventh
century, is very important, not only most of the byzantine professional army from the empire
had died during this period, but more importantly it hadn’t been replaced, meaning that
Alexius’s army was mostly composed of mercenaries. There was no Tagmata left and not
enough people with the knowledge on how to restore it.
This made any possibility of reconquering Byzantine lands difficult. Recruitment of foreign
mercenaries was a common custom for the byzantine’s, Varangians and slavs had been an
integral part of the imperial army for the last centuries, these mercenaries could also gain
titles in Byzantium after their service and become a part of the imperial payroll. [Christopher
Tyerman, The World of the Crusades, chapter : Byzantium and the crusades]In the
Byzantine struggle with the Turks, western knights as mercenaries had proven to be a very
effective fighting force, but attracting them in large numbers was a difficult task.
On the History of Byzantium podcast, in Episode 208 – The Call from the East the Historian
Peter Francopan makes the point that their had been since the start of Alexius’s reign an
intense medieval lobbying, through gifts of reliques and stories about turkish cruelty in order
to give the west incentive to fight in the east. This is where the Byzantine relationship with
the papacy came in handy. The papacy had been allied to Byzantium against the normans in
the 1050, furthermore Alexius had proven to be friendly to Urban II as he restored the pope
on the diptychs at Constantinople. Therefore when pope Urban II received envoys of the
Byzantines at Piacenza it is likely that they were asking for skilled mercenaries, and not for a
holy war involving the whole Latin world. It was Urban’s initiative to declare a holy war in
order to try to unite christianity and to fortify papal authority. The scale of involvement that
the speech held by pope Urban II in Clemon unleashed in Europe wasn’t expected at all, by
any side. While Urban had declared a holy war Alexius still was expecting mercenaries. In
the Alexiad a biography of Alexius’s life by his daughter Anna she describes how Alexius
would talk to each leader of the crusade individually,cover them with gifts and ask them to
swear oaths to give to him any conquered lands [Alexiad 10:7]. This attitude doesn’t fit the
idea of a united christian front wanting to liberate the holy land. It indicates how Alexius'
priority was to bind these arrivants to him and to ultimately integrate them into the byzantine
system. The relationship between the crusaders and the Greeks was complicated from start
on as Bohemont of Tarenta, a Norman who had been part of the invasion of the empire
years prior, was one of the leaders of the crusade. During the siege of Antioch, the
Byzantine envoy for the crusaders Tatikios left (most likely threatened away) leading to the
latins not feeling bound by their oaths longer and from now down to the establishment of
latin states in the holy land. While the first crusade was therefore an incredible and incredibly
lucky success [Hillenbrand - First Crusade Muslim Perspective] it was perceived as a failed
mercenary expedition for the Greeks whose goal was to recover their lands. Therefore the
wars that followed between the Byzantines and the principality of Antioch belonging to
Bohemont started the process of the worsening relationship between latins and greeks. This
first attempt at cooperation therefore was in many ways a failure from a diplomatic point of
view, the Greeks had lost any initiative in the making of any further crusade, they didn’t know
yet was coming.
As we had seen with the marriage of Theophano to emperor Otto, the Byzantines didn’t
make a lot of distinctions in their foreign policies, as the rest of the world in general was
regarded as barbarian. In the Alexiad Anna is profoundly hostile towards westerners as
brutal barbarians.
Byzantine foreign policy only served itself; on the other hand, at least a part of the west was
crusading for truly pious reasons and was expecting the byzantines to join in an common
christian front against islam (it would later try to reach out to the mongols or even the non
existent prester John to achieve that). These two points of view just weren’t compatible and
would lead to further conflicts. When the pope called for a second crusade, after the fall of
Edessa, the Byzantines started to understand that the latin estates were going to last longer
than expected. While the Byzantines were fine with the idea of westerners coming to
Byzantium to fight for it they didn’t like them using it as a stepping stone to strengthen their
own states, which rivaled their position as the protectors of the christians in the east. The
Byzantines decided to play their own game, moving one step further away from the latins,
and signed a 12 year truce with the turks.
From this point onwards the Greeks became an ideal scapegoat for the failures of the latins
in later crusades [On the margins of Christendom : The impact of the crusades on
Byzantium]. Byzantium was a necessary passing point for early crusades, and while the
Byzantine emperors tried to make use of the situation to their benefit this was a dangerous
game as it meant massive armies coming through Constantinople. When emperor Frederic
Barberossa went to the third crusade he first pillaged Greek lands for provisions, then
threatened to lay siege to Constantinople in order to cross the Bosphorus. While the Greeks
didn’t want to be the enemies of the latin, they didn’t want to be their allies either which
made them, at least in the rhetoric of some latins an enemy.
Emperor Isaac’s brief alliance with Saladin shows that the Byzantine empire put it’s interest
before hatred towards islam [Le moyen âge en orient, chapter 14 and 16 by Alain Ducellier,
Michel Kaplan, Bernadette Martin, Françoise Micheau and Michel Balard]. While the islamic
front was for once united the byzantines seemed more and more not to be part of any
possible christian unity. These rising tensions between latins and greeks are also due to a
control of Byzantine trade by the Italian city state led to mutual distrust t which ultimately led
to hostilities : The sack of Thessalonica in 1085, Richard Lionhart seizing Cyprus in 119 or
the Byzantines trying to escape Venetian influence. The fact that the Byzantines had proven
to be enemies of the crusades while they might have been the ones who orchestrate them
ultimately might be an explanation to how and why the fourth crusade wasn’t, when it
happened in 1204, as unimaginable as it might have seemed like a hundred years earlier.

To conclude, while the first crusade resulted, to some degree from a sense of connection
between christians of east and west, both sides' different understanding of its goals the first.
This maybe didn’t cause the 4th crusade, but it definitely providet a possibility for it to
happen.
While Greeks and latins had been able to put their differences aside in the past, with the
creation of latin estates in the east, the east became of much more significance to the west,
leading to even more focus on an already struggling empire. The irony of this tragedy is how
it all can be traced back to a small misunderstanding. The latins had been disappointed in
their expectations from the greeks that the greeks never wanted to live up to.
This badening of relations would maintain itself until the ultimate end of the Byzantine empire
in 1453 when all calls to help for a crusade against the Ottomans had been left unheard.
References

Hillenbrand - First Crusade Muslim Perspective Nice introduction to a non romanticized

point of view on the first crusade
Medieval Worlds: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2003) pp. 87-110 [BB]
A collection of Islamic sources about the crusades in: Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of
the Crusades, transl. by E.J. Costello, Routledge Revivals Edition (London: Routledge,
2009) [BB] : The siege of Antioch
Medieval Sourcebook:Anna Comena:The Alexiad:On the Crusades
Alan V. Murray, ‘Representations, expulsion, and enslavement in the crusades to the
Holy Land’,in A Cultural History of Genocide in the Middle Ages, ed. by Melodie H.
Eichbauer, A Cultural History of Genocide, 2 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021),
pp. 145-164 [Blackboard]
The world of the crusades a collection o Western sources
- 4.5 Geoffroy de Villehardouin: The Conquest of Constantinople
- Uprising of the Greeks at Demotica and Adrianople: Their Defeat at Arcadiopolis
- 4.6 An account of the sack and the desecration of Hagia Sophia, 1204
Le moyen age en orient partie 3 by Alain Ducellier, Michel Kaplan, Bernadette Martin and
Françoise Micheau
Herodotcom youtube channel, series on the first crusade
The Social Structure of the First Crusade (Leiden: Brill, 2008) Christopher Tyerman, The
World of the Crusades (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019) (the rest)
The History of Byzantium podcast : Episode 224 – The Coup of Anna Komnene with
Leonora Neville, and Episode 208 – The Call from the East with Peter Frankopan
A History of the Crusades: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, edited by H. W. Hazard.
Chapter II Byzantium and the crusades 1261-1354 by Dena Geanakoplos
On the margins of Christendom : The impact of the crusades on Byzantium by Chris Wright
A History of the crusades : Volume I the first hundred years Chapter VI the Byzantine empire
in the Eleventh century by Peter Charanis