24 Chrissis
empire and the crusaders soon deteriorated. Many of the westerners felt that
Byzantium failed to provide adequate assistance to the Christian cause and
accused the emperors of treachery in their dealings with the “infidels”. The
Byzantines regarded with suspicion the armies marching through their ter-
ritory, while the establishment of crusader states in the East was seen as an
infringement of the empire’s rights in the area. A particularly bitter point was
the possession of Antioch, a city of great strategic importance for Byzantium,
by the Normans, whose relations with the empire over the previous decades
had been troubled to say the least. Nevertheless, the intimate connection of
Byzantium with the crusades persisted throughout the 12th century. All the
major campaigns for the Holy Land made contact with the empire one way
or another. The armies of the First and the Second Crusade passed through
Byzantine territory. In the Third Crusade, the same route was followed by the
German contingent under Emperor Frederick i Barbarossa, while the English
king, Richard I, who chose the sea-route to Palestine, captured Cyprus on his
way to the East. The passage of the crusaders was negotiated and agreed upon
with the Byzantine authorities but frictions and tensions invariably arose
on the march. These large armies put a major stress on the resources of the
areas they travelled through, while it was inevitable that there would be occa-
sions of violence and looting, particularly by the less disciplined troops. The
local inhabitants, in turn, were less than welcoming to the crusaders: there
were complaints that they refused to offer markets or that they sold their
goods at exorbitant prices; there were even rumours of intentional poisoning.
Meanwhile, Byzantine forces monitored the progress of the western soldiers,
harassing those who were perceived to cause trouble. During the Third Crusade
the Byzantine army actively obstructed the crusaders’ passage. Frederick i had
to force his way through the Balkans and across the Bosporus. So, crusaders
made their appearance repeatedly in Byzantine lands in the 12th century—
but they were in transit. This was going to change with the Fourth Crusade,
which was diverted from its aim of reclaiming Jerusalem and ended up seizing
Constantinople in 1204. A number of Latin states were then set up in the for-
merly imperial territories. Soon, Holy War was deployed to help defend these
states. Thus, Frankish Greece became another active crusade front.
The interaction between Byzantium and the crusades down to the conquest
of Constantinople has been examined in some detail.3 But it is the implemen-
tation of the crusade in the area after 1204 that will be the focus of the present
essay. Approaching the area as a crusading front is profitable, or even neces-
3 Jonathan Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades (London, 2003); Ralph-Johannes Lilie,
Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1095–1204, trans. J.C. Morris and Jean E. Ridings (Oxford,
1993); Charles M. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West, 1180–1204 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).