Sacred Plunder. David M. Perry
the details.
The March Pact, technically, was an agreement between the Venetians and the Franks. Thus, both Dandolo and Baldwin (as the leader of the Franks, once he took the throne) needed to send a copy to Rome and ask Innocent to ratify their agreement. The copy of the pact and their two letters requesting papal approbation arrived in January 1205.23 With these in hand, Innocent could respond more directly. The two letters betray a certain discomfort. Baldwin asked for papal ratification of the “articles of agreement,” then stressed the “good and faithful association” between himself and the Venetians, specifically Dandolo. He noted that, in order to show their devotion to Rome, the parties agreed to ask for papal approval even before they stormed the city. Innocent should ratify the agreement, Baldwin concluded, for the sake of the stability of the new empire, the “relief of the Holy Land, and . . . the preservation of church unity.”24 These three goals could not be achieved, he averred, without the Venetians’ help. Baldwin feared that Innocent would still be so angry at the Venetians that he would reject the agreement and throw the entire mechanism for apportioning the new empire into chaos. A papal rejection might also erode Baldwin’s legitimacy as emperor. In this letter, therefore, Baldwin emphasized the core goodness, faithfulness, and, above all, utility of the Venetians.25
Dandolo had an even tougher task in seeking papal approval. He had to retell the entire history of the crusade in such a way as to make his actions seem acceptable. His letter to Innocent constitutes the first known Venetian attempt at shaping the memory of the crusade—a text earlier than either the Venetian translatio texts discussed in part II or the Ravenna mosaics considered by Madden.26 Whether Dandolo actually expected to change Innocent’s mind is unknowable, but he did not necessarily have to persuade the pope of anything. The goal was to provide a willing pontiff a face-saving means out of the impasse between the two sides. He may have hoped that the pope would seek to make peace in order to play an active role in the new empire. Dandolo’s case relies partially on claiming that he did no wrong and had never intentionally defied papal will. More importantly, Dandolo suggested that the clear evidence of divine approval and even direct intervention in the campaign meant that the pope must forgive him. God, after all, could outrank the pope in religious matters.
This letter from Dandolo provides us with the earliest evidence of an internal counternarrative of the crusade that would resist the condemnatory voices from Rome and elsewhere. Dandolo employs the types of arguments later made by the translatio texts of the Fourth Crusade. He stresses the presence of a divine hand guiding events, explaining how, “with (as we believe) divine inspiration rather than human planning overtaking events,” Alexius Angelos met with the crusading army and asked for help. As a result of this “divine inspiration,” the crusaders and the Greek prince signed the Treaty of Zara, agreeing to attempt to place Alexius on the Byzantine throne.27 Dandolo was arguing that regardless of what had transpired in the past between the Venetians and the papacy, events had so clearly shown the signs of divine intervention that exoneration should be a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, he did offer an exculpatory account of events. For example, he claimed that the Venetians had attacked Zara only because it was unjustly (iniuste) engaged in rebellion against Venice. He had heard that Hungary (to whom the citizens of Zara had pledged their city) was under the protection of Rome, but Dandolo did not believe this could be true.28 He had “patiently endured” the edict of excommunication, but it had since been lifted by the papal legate Peter Capuano, so there was no need to ask for further official forgiveness on the matter of Zara anyway. Furthermore, the conquest of Constantinople was undertaken simply to correct a wrong (against Alexius and Isaac Angelos), and violence broke out after the Greeks proved to be treacherous liars (mendaces et fallaces).29 In the diversions to Zara and Constantinople, claims Dandolo, the Venetians and crusaders only sought to fight injustice. And, of course, the city of Constantinople “had to be conquered for the honor of God and the Holy Roman Church and the relief of Christendom.”30 Dandolo concluded that Innocent should grant his petitions because all of the Venetians’ actions had been only for the benefit of God and Rome.
Dandolo may have believed parts of his letter. He did not plan for the crusaders to become irrevocably indebted to Venice before they even departed from the city. He did not plan to divert the crusade to Constantinople. He probably did intend to use the newly constructed crusading fleet to pacify potential rivals in the Adriatic before sailing to Cairo, as this was in line with Venetian crusading tradition. Instead, he went so far as to use the crusading army to conquer the city of Zara.31 He did support both diversions as a means for the crusaders to pay off their debts to Venice; one central thesis of Madden’s work emphasizes the lack of his legal authority as doge to forgive those debts without such a solution.32 The recasting of Alexius and Isaac Angelos as perjurers only occurred after the Angeloi had been overthrown, since they had started as allies. Venetian secular accounts of the Fourth Crusade would come to include an invented papal directive to assault Constantinople, but Dandolo’s core argument did not rely on rewriting history or trying to alter papal perceptions.33 Instead, the concept of God’s will superveniente, which Andrea translates as “overtaking events,” reveals Dandolo’s hermeneutic.34 Events happened. Dandolo could justify his decisions, but such justifications were unnecessary, he claimed. With God’s will “overtaking” those events, the matter was moot. Dandolo did not admit to wrongdoing. He did not ask for forgiveness (Capuano had already absolved him, after all). He asked only for a favorable hearing of his petition. Later, the translatio texts of the Fourth Crusade would follow Dandolo’s approach to addressing morally questionable deeds: deny, blame the Greeks, admit sin when necessary, and invoke divine will. If God had worked a miracle to give Constantinople to the crusaders, should not the pope now treat Dandolo, one of God’s instruments in the affair, generously?
And the victory did seem to be a miracle. Before 1204, Constantinople had never fallen to an outside army. It is true that the Latins were greatly helped by internal dissension, but the city fell chiefly because French and Venetian soldiers made it over the walls. Only after this assault did the Greek army take flight.35 For the crusaders, the success of the whole venture (and the promise it seemed to indicate for future crusades) proved that the deviation was part of God’s providential plan. Medieval authors often argued that God’s plan unfolds through otherwise disagreeable events, a theme to which authors of the hagiographies of 1204 frequently returned.36 Dandolo turned Innocent’s conceptual framework back on the pontiff. Innocent had never denied the presence of God in the conquest of Constantinople; instead, he set himself up as the arbiter of the meaning of God’s presence. Dandolo offered an alternative interpretation.
In responding to the March Pact, the papacy tried to remain firm on certain points while otherwise staying positive and optimistic. The pope found much in which to rejoice when considering the new empire, despite any “confusion” about what should be “rendered” to the Church. Innocent’s writings suggest that he believed, in an apocalyptic sense, that the shocking conquest of Constantinople signified salvation for the Holy Land.37 His letter to the clergy of the crusade in November 1204, produced at the same time that he wrote his first official letter to Emperor Baldwin, contains a wondrous and complex invocation of both the Old and New Testament, including the book of Revelation. This letter argues that once the Greeks enter the Roman Church, “all Israel shall be saved.”38 The invocation of Revelation and the direct link between the conquest of Constantinople and the coming Judgment places the letter firmly in the category of apocalyptic writing. Innocent wrote that God, through the crusaders, had brought the reunification of Christendom to “divine completion.” That reunification was a prerequisite for the salvation of the Holy Land, itself a prerequisite for the end of days. For all this to come to pass, however, Innocent concluded that the new kingdom must be stable and that the Greeks must truly be converted. Only the Apostolic See of Rome could make sure this happened.39 Thus, Innocent’s letter, like Dandolo’s, contains an early attempt at control over the interpretation of the meaning of the conquest.