30 Chrissis
First Phase: Crusades Against Byzantium
Any mention of crusading against the Byzantines is most likely to bring to
mind a single event: the conquest of Constantinople by the army of the Fourth
Crusade. The sack of the greatest Christian city of the time by warriors of the
cross has made a powerful impression on subsequent historiography. The effort
to explain this turn of events has a long history. Theories of plotting and con-
spiracies to divert the crusade towards Constantinople were once proposed
by a number of scholars. These theories proved fanciful and ill-supported by
evidence. They were followed by more sombre analyses of the circumstances
surrounding the expedition and a series of more or less unanticipated dif-
ficulties that altered its course. The topic still fascinates to this day.15 Given
all this interest in this crusading attack on Christian Byzantium, it is rather
ironical that the crusades which were proclaimed in the 13th century with the
avowed intention of conquering or holding on to Byzantine territories have
remained in relevant obscurity. These actual anti-Byzantine crusades have not
drawn the same attention as the incidental one. Unlike the Fourth Crusade, the
expeditions which followed were explicitly directed at Romania, sanctioning
Holy War against the Orthodox Christians in the area. It is a fact that they lack
the high drama of the events of 1204. However, they constitute an important
aspect of the history of the area, as well as of the development of the crusad-
ing movement. The only alleged precedent of a crusade against the Byzantines
was the campaign led by Bohemond in 1107–08; but it is questionable whether
the attack on Byzantium was sanctioned by the pope, and in any case the
expedition’s character as a crusade was tied to its aim of reaching the Holy
Land and not to the operations against the empire.16
The crusade was, however, put in the service of consolidating the conquest
very soon after 1204. Tempted by the opportunities offered by the Latin con-
trol over the empire and the patriarchate of Constantinople, Pope Innocent
iii consented to the Latin Emperor’s requests and issued calls for new recruits
15 There was a spate of publications dedicated to the Fourth Crusade on the occasion of
the 800-year anniversary in 2004, for example: Michael Angold, The Fourth Crusade:
Event and Context (Harlow, 2003); Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of
Constantinople (London, 2005); Angeliki E. Laiou, ed., Urbs Capta: The Fourth Crusade
and its Consequences (Paris, 2005); Pierantonio Piatti, ed., The Fourth Crusade Revisited
(Vatican City, 2008). The most recent overview of relevant historiography is: Michel
Balard, “L’historiographie occidentale de la quatrième croisade,” in Urbs Capta, pp. 161–74.
16 A recent discussion, including an overview of earlier literature, in: Brett Edward Whalen,
“God’s Will or Not? Bohemond’s Campaign against the Byzantine Empire (1105–1108),”
in Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict, ed. Thomas F. Madden et al. (Farnham, 2010),
pp. 111–25.