Sacred Plunder. David M. Perry
intervals. Guardians of relics rewarded friends and curried favor by offering small pieces of relics. Bishops redistributed relics within their sees.123 But now there was a sudden influx of relics, some very important, coming from long-established religious institutions in the East, all of which were under new ownership.124 Such institutions, backed by the Greek nobility and their churchmen, had gathered relics for centuries. Perhaps the Western clerics lacked a long-term commitment to their new properties and felt free to use them to enrich their old friends and allies back in the West. It is not clear that anyone tried to strip a newly acquired religious building of value entirely, but a certain amount of careful siphoning on behalf of the homeland definitely took place.
Venice figures prominently in the history of this siphoning. In 1222, the abbot of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice’s principle monastery, ordered the translation of a relic out of a daughter monastery, Christ Pantepoptes, which it had obtained in Constantinople after 1204. The prior of San Giorgio, who ruled the Pantepoptes, enlisted the help of the podestà, the chief official in Constantinople’s Venetian quarter, in finding transport for the relics of St. Paul the New Martyr.125 The translatio recording this story casts it as a sacred theft, as the abbot commands the prior to send the relic to him secretly (abscondite sibi mitteret). But it is not clear who the Venetians feared might catch them. The prior controlled the monastery. The podestà had absolute power within the Venetian quarter. Thus, we are left to question whether the translation of St. Paul’s relics was authorized or unauthorized.126 The timing is curious. Venice’s leading monastery had acquired this property after 1204 but decided to send the relic to Venice fifteen years later. Other Venetian sources describe the acquisition of the relics of St. Helen, John the Martyr, and Paul the First Hermit (taken to Venice in 1211, 1214, and 1239, respectively), and the purchase of precious objects for the express purpose of decorating the churches of Venice. Venice also acquired the relics of St. Theodore the Martyr (1257) and St. Barbara (1258) just as the Latin Empire was weakening in the face of the Palaiologoi threat.
The translation of the relics of the Passion to King Louis IX, in 1239, is justifiably famous for its transformative effect on French royal iconography and Western devotional practice.127 The art of Sainte-Chapelle, the eventual house for the relics, depicts the only two prior acts of translation in Christian history to rival it—the inventio of the True Cross by Constantine and his mother, Helen, and the recovery of the cross by Heraclius.128 This chapter demonstrates that the translation of relics to Louis, although exceptional in scale, occurred within a larger ongoing pattern. Many relics were taken out of the Latin Empire. More specifically, Baldwin I gave relics of the Passion to Philip II Augustus, setting a precedent for the later translation. Baldwin II had used the Crown of Thorns as collateral on a loan from Venice. He saw the translation to Louis as a better deal for him than any other. Louis had to send two Dominicans to redeem the crown before the king would choreograph the great translation.129 Using the great relics of Constantinople at the highest levels of statecraft was nothing new to the Latin emperors.
Unlicensed relic trafficking during the life of the Latin Empire completes the picture. We have almost no evidence of trafficking beyond the complaints of those who wanted to stop it.130 These relic sales most likely happened on a retail level—not from a commoner to a church, but from one commoner to another. Such transactions would not have been recorded. Forgeries, as well as actual bits and pieces of relics stolen by common crusaders, probably flooded the West, but, again, details about these were not preserved by the sources. Capuano and Benedict’s prohibition against purchasing a relic offers one piece of evidence for the phenomenon.131 Canon 62 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) represents a later, and broadly applied, attempt by the Church to restrict the unauthorized translation of relics. By this point, a decade after the conquest, Rome would have had a solid understanding of the problem it was trying to solve. The canon forbids the sale or unauthorized exhibition of relics. It also establishes that only Rome may approve new relics, giving it control of the means of authentication.132 While one cannot base claims about the quantity or frequency of the unauthorized sale of Constantinople’s relics on the canon, the law does indicate the existence of the problem.
Conclusion
The details of the long process of stealing, looting, and redistributing Constantinople’s relics after 1204 remain murky. The general patterns, however, are clear. The process began with a vow not to harm the Greek churches, but in the chaos of the conflict, that vow fell by the wayside. Undoubtedly, the translatio of St. Mamas, Niketas’s lament, and Innocent’s diatribe contain elements of truth in blaming the crusaders for destroying and desecrating relics, smashing altar plates, and breaking other sacred items in order to acquire gems and precious metals. During such acts of pillage, some crusaders, who had long venerated the relics of Constantinople, must have stolen tiny pieces and risked death in doing so. This type of theft led to trafficking, forgeries, and the widespread, uncontrolled, and largely undocumented dispersal of relics in Europe over the decades to come. Furthermore, various individuals took advantage of the chaos to pick and choose the relics they most desired. Abbot Martin and the Venetians of St. Simon’s parish are the two best-documented examples. The abbot valued ease of access and safety, whereas the Venetians chose a specific relic that they wanted to steal regardless of the risk.
Once things had settled down, the leaders of the crusade began to claim the relics for themselves. The Latin bishops in Constantinople at the time of the conquest had prime access to the relics of their choice and also received important items as gifts. Garnier of Troyes died before he could disperse much of his collection, and papal legate Peter Capuano, who had missed the free-for-all of the initial conquest, took control of these relics. The secular leadership joined the bishops, perhaps using the power of confiscation to gain their plunder. By around 1210, the initial appropriation and apportioning of relics and territories in the East among Latins from and in the West had been accomplished. Many relics remained in the churches and monasteries of Constantinople, but they continued, in whole or in part, to be sent westward from time to time. The slow process of licensed relic translation joined with more illicit forms of relic trafficking to drain the sacred wealth of Constantinople; these translations included those that propagated the grand myths associated with the relics of the Passion, as well as the peripatetic wanderings of the Shroud on its way to Turin. In 1261, the “new Constantine,” Michael VIII Palaiologos, had to begin Constantine’s work of creating a “new Jerusalem” all over again.133
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Pope Innocent III and Sacrilege, 1204–1215
When news reached Pope Innocent III that Constantinople had been conquered, he rejoiced at this clear sign of God’s miraculous power. He publicly hailed the victory and predicted the speedy reunification of the Greek and Latin churches, which would then lead to the liberation of Jerusalem by the forces of a united Christendom and perhaps mark the beginning of the Apocalypse.
But the Greeks failed to convert in large numbers. Enemies of the new state pressed in from all sides, and the need to defend the empire sapped resources from other crusading activity. Jerusalem remained in Islamic hands. Worse, critical voices from the West questioned crusader conduct and papal complicity in that conduct. At the same time, the pontiff began negotiating with the secular leadership of the crusade over church property in Constantinople. The Orthodox churches of Constantinople had owned huge swaths of the most desirable property in the great city, and the secular powers in the new empire, Frank and Venetian alike, felt empowered to appropriate it. But for Innocent, all church property belonged to the “seamless garment of Christ,” and he demanded its immediate return.
By then, however, Innocent had lost his leverage. The crusaders had defied him in their diversion to Constantinople and had been excommunicated for their trouble. They had also vowed, on pain of damnation, to fight for the Holy Land; until released from their vow, damnation threatened. These were cudgels that Innocent could have wielded to influence the postconquest environment. But, after the conquest,