Sacred Plunder. David M. Perry
possessions of the churches, indeed, should be divided and distributed in accordance with the aforesaid agreement.14
The first part of this passage eventually gave control over Hagia Sophia to the Venetians. The subsequent text suggests that all sides would be claiming territory in the city as their own and that whoever took an area might also lay claim to the churches there. Any group of crusaders could seize an area and its churches, but it would not also receive all of the property and rents traditionally owned by a given church. Instead, such property (beyond “sufficient quantities”) went into the general pool of plunder, was split according to the aforementioned guidelines, and was then apportioned by a given faction’s leaders. The framers of the pact might have had relics in mind when they wrote about the “remaining possessions of the churches,” but if so, their plans did not come to fruition. In the end, a central committee handled the issue of control over the churches and their properties, though arguments on this matter continued for decades.15 Relics never received the same degree of citywide oversight as the churches themselves.
Evidence suggests that the leaders of the crusade made a strong attempt to keep to the terms of their pact, a finding that contrasts with the general tenor of external accounts of the days after the fall of the city. Some common soldiers, of course, had other ideas. Villehardouin, for example, laments that many soldiers did not deposit all of their plunder at one of the three central churches that the crusaders had set up as repositories, despite threats of execution for holding back loot.16 Clari angrily accuses the treasure’s guards of letting elite knights take whatever they wanted, leaving only the silver for the common soldiers.17 The anonymous author of the Devastatio Constantinopolitana scornfully characterizes the common shares of the spoil as “almost like certain down-payments.”18 Scholars argue about how to tally the total wealth collected. They also argue over why the shares were so low, whether the shares were actually as low as stated, how many people and what class of people were hanged for keeping back loot, the fate of jewels and other precious objects not easily divided, and other related issues.19 If Clari and the author of the Devastatio Constantinopolitana were correct, then the collection system more or less worked (as evidenced by how unhappy they were with the official distribution). If Villehardouin is correct, then common soldiers concealed much of the loot for their personal benefit. Niketas and Innocent ranted about the wild looting, but neither was in as good a position to know the truth as the soldiers present in Constantinople. On the other hand, soldiers were unlikely to confess to sacrilegious outbursts of violence and destruction in internally produced sources. The totality of the evidence suggests that the initial days of the looting were indeed quite chaotic, as described to various degrees by eyewitness sources. Eventually, however, Villehardouin and his fellow elites took control of the city and its wealth and then made an honest effort to collect the treasure centrally. After all, the debt still loomed unpaid.
Thus, we understand the Latin army’s approach to the secular wealth of Constantinople. The leadership tried to assert authority, the better to distribute loot and property in an organized and self-benefitting manner. The rank and file, risking serious punishment but aware of the great wealth available in the city and the difficulty that their leaders would have in enforcing their edict, helped themselves as they could. When able, the leaders punished those they caught, making an example out of the miscreants. Despite the many violent incidents that no doubt took place, no matter how much plunder the rank and file seized in bloody pillaging, the bulk of Constantinople’s vast wealth passed into the hands of the great men of the crusade by the simpler process of occupation, appropriation, and negotiation with one another. The same holds true for the relics.
Phase One: Relics and Looting Immediately Following the Conquest
The crusaders took the walls, frightened off the Greek army, opened the gates, and stormed the city. Many citizens, expecting a more-or-less orderly triumph, lined the streets to welcome the new emperor; alas, for them, no emperor had yet been named and no single leader of the crusade could claim control over the whole city.20 Instead, the various military commanders staked out their own territories. As was typical of the initial days following a conquest, chaos reigned, magnified more by scale than by ferocity. We will never know exactly what happened in the churches of Constantinople in these first hours and days, but out of the confusion and the scant textual evidence, a few faces and deeds emerge. We can begin to tease out a narrative based on scarce data points. An abbot sees soldiers looting the great monastic complex of the Pantocrator and uses that sacrilege to justify a more pious sacrilege of his own. He creeps into a remote part of the complex and bullies a Greek monk into revealing the location of relics, which he then takes into protective custody. A French bishop follows his friend, Boniface of Montferrat, into the Bucoleon Palace and takes command of one of the greatest collections of relics in the world. When the bishop leaves a month later, the collection is missing some pieces. Some Venetian crusaders take advantage of the confusion to scout out the crypt that holds the relics of their patron saint; a week later, while their comrades-in-arms are celebrating Palm Sunday, they steal them. A bishop from Troyes confiscates relics looted by soldiers and carefully apportions them to European and local churches. When he dies, the papal legate takes the bishop’s collection and does the same.
None of the standard reports of the conquest reveal much reliable information about its chaotic first few hours. The incendiary rhetoric of Niketas quoted above represents just the barest fragment of his detailed and horrific description of the sack of Constantinople, for which he mourns. In lurid, tragic tones, the chronicler describes the breaking of the altar, the destruction of priceless works of art, and the stabling of mules in the sanctuary. In an ultimate act of impiety, a prostitute was placed on the throne of the patriarch. After describing the outrages committed against women and the old, Niketas concludes by attacking the crusaders for violating their crusading oath. They had promised not to deviate from their planned course until they found the Saracens, but deviate they had. They had promised not to have sexual intercourse, but now they were raping Greek women. “In truth,” he wrote, “they were exposed as frauds. Seeking to avenge the Holy Sepulchre, they raged openly against Christ and sinned by overturning the Cross with the cross they bore on their backs, not even shuddering to trample on it for the sake of a little gold and silver. By grasping pearls, they rejected Christ.”21 Niketas attempts to present the incursion as an unholy war that played out in diametric opposition to the crusaders’ holy mission. With such an agenda, he found the violation of relics rhetorically useful. Of all the crimes committed against the city by the conquering Latins, the chronicler chose to recount the sacrilegious looting first and the breaking of the sacred oath last, thus bookending his account with the worst offenses. Niketas sought to convey his horror at the atrocities committed in the name of Christ by these “Franks,” who should have been trying to liberate the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. He evoked the Antichrist and Judgment Day. He compared the Latins to the most despised people in the New Testament—those who participated in the shaming and execution of Christ. He did not eschew describing the other iniquities of the conquerors but began with the violation of the sacred.22 That decision may reflect a quick sense on his part that the memory of the sack would be ruled by the postconquest behavior of the Latins. That said, his account must largely be rejected.
Niketas was working within the genre of lament, not history, and thus employed hyperbole as a rhetorical strategy. His goal was to blame and weep in prose, not to make a historical argument about causation. Even other elements of his own chronicle call his descriptions into question. Wisely, Niketas was in hiding during the initial chaos, so at best he knew only secondhand of the depredations. As Michael Angold has noted, when Niketas actually encountered crusaders, one Frank did try to rape a girl in his party, but several Italians intervened and threatened to hang the Frank if he did not give her back. She was returned unscathed. The Chronicle of Novgorod, naturally sympathetic to Orthodox clergy, complains about the robbing of clergy and nuns but not of their murder or rape.23 Another Greek eyewitness, Nicholas Mesarites, tells the story of his brother John, who took refuge in a monastery and faced crusaders who broke into the sacred house without fear. Impressed by his faith, the crusaders treated him with respect and did him no harm.24 If, as Angold has supposed, the leader of the Latins who met John Mesarites in the Monastery of St. George of the Mangana was Count Hugh of Saint-Pol, who took over St. George’s after