Sacred Plunder. David M. Perry
leadership, especially over ecclesiastical properties.25 The Latin leadership did what it could to roll back the fog of war.
The Latin accounts support the notion that the churches of Constantinople were spared significant damage from the looting soldiers, although the fires certainly scorched them. Robert of Clari, representing the viewpoint of the rank-and-file soldier in the army, reserves harsh criticism for the conduct of many of his fellows. He finds the vast riches of Constantinople amazing but also witnesses the tensions that they caused within the army. He writes that, according to the Greeks, Constantinople had been filled with “two-thirds of the wealth of the world.”26 Now that wealth belonged to the Latins. Yet, Clari laments, little of the profit made its way into the hands of the common soldiers. Instead, the victors fought over how much each one should take from the spoils, and many “who ought to have guarded this wealth took the jewels of gold and whatsoever else they desired, and robbed the spoil.”27 These moments of anger and disappointment with his lack of loot stand in stark contrast to his commentary on the relics of the city.
Relics, in Clari’s narrative, receive nothing but words of wonder and praise. He exults in their capture, lists the major acquisitions, and recounts histories and provenance insofar as he knows them. He writes of the Holy Lance, the pieces of the Cross, the robe of Mary, the head of St. John the Baptist, and the shroud of Christ, and then adds that he saw even more relics than he could possibly describe. And these were just the relics that the crusaders found at the Bucoleon Palace. The chance for the Latins to view such holy objects as their “owners”—not as the somewhat unwelcome guests of the Greeks—delighted Clari.
The difference in tone between the descriptions of normal plundering and the capture of relics is striking. When a particular hoard of gold and gems or a piece of property fell into a crusader’s hands, Clari names the crusader (or group) or at least labels the acquisition’s point of origin.28 These statements are usually accompanied by words of condemnation for not properly sharing the plunder. When a crusader found a relic, however, Clari rarely mentions the individual who uncovered it. He reserves his narration for descriptions of the relic and its resting place, expresses wonderment at the miracles associated with the object, and then moves on to the next one. The chronicler was not afraid to document internal divisions in the force or to criticize when his fellows erred or sinned. He presents the acquisition of the relics, however, as a victory for all of the crusaders.
Curiously, the most complete account of the Fourth Crusade, that of Geoffrey of Villehardouin, never refers to the acquisition or looting of relics. As is typical of accounts of crusades, God and providence play active roles in the narrative. Sermons and other religious affairs appear regularly, and relics are mentioned when oaths are sworn over them. Villehardouin even refers to the relics of Constantinople, specifically, in one key passage. After Alexius III had fled and Alexius IV had taken the throne with his father, the chronicler writes, “Now you may know that many people from the army went to look at Constantinople, its sumptuous palaces, its many impressive churches and its great riches, of which no other city ever had as many. It is impossible even to begin to describe all the saints’ relics since there were as many in the city at that time as there were in the rest of the world put together.”29 Villehardouin notes the existence of the relics but omits any reference to the specific objects captured after the final conquest. He discusses plundering in general. He, like Clari, excoriates those who stole valuables for themselves and is quick to point out how the army’s leaders—of which he was one—punished the offenders. Regarding the looting, he writes, “Individuals began to come forward with their booty and it was gathered together. Some were honest in presenting their spoils, others deceitful. Greed, which is the root of all evil, knew no restraint; from that time forward greedy people started to hoard things for themselves, and Our Lord started to love them less. Oh God—they had behaved so loyally up to that point!”30 Villehardouin laments that even the threat of excommunication did not deter these men from keeping some portion of the booty for themselves instead of turning it over to their leaders to be divided “fairly.” That they could ignore the sacred sanctions they were risking seems to have infuriated the chronicler more than their lack of fear of being hanged—the bodily punishment for theft. Had crusaders been breaking into vaults and claiming relics or stripping away golden reliquaries from their sacred bones with wild abandon throughout the city, Villehardouin could have described it as yet another outrage. His silence on the subject might speak to ignorance of such sacrilege or embarrassment about the conduct of his fellow crusaders. On the other hand, perhaps Villehardouin, the best-informed of the Fourth Crusade chroniclers, was silent precisely because whatever pillaging of Greek churches took place did not seem egregious. Rather, it fell within normal medieval conduct of war.
Villehardouin was not alone in omitting any discussion of relics from his account. The Devastatio Constantinopolitana, a harsh critique of the crusade, never mentions the sacred objects removed from Constantinople. This text is a curious and brief account—only five pages in the single extant manuscript—that expends most of its fury on the perfidy of the crusade’s leaders. The author, who felt that the poor men of the crusade had been cheated, emphasized the misdeeds of the Frankish and Venetian leadership, especially when it came to the acquisition of wealth. Had the leadership immediately claimed the relics for themselves personally, rather than opening Constantinople’s shrines and their sacred objects to crusader veneration, one might expect the Devastatio Constantinopolitana to discuss it.31
Taken as a whole, these arguments suggest the lack of direct evidence for the kind of widespread sacrilegious looting of churches cited by both Innocent and Niketas. Indeed, in their omission of descriptions of persistent sacrilege, the major Greek and Latin eyewitness accounts of the crusade do more to dispel mischaracterizations of the looting than to support any particular chronology of such events. Of course, absence proves nothing, but it ought to introduce some doubt into the conversation about the plundering of the city. For more concrete information about the treatment of relics following the conquest, we must look to hagiographical sources. It is from these that one can reconstruct the deeds of specific crusaders, track the fate of relics, and more clearly demarcate the knowable from the unknowable.
Four hagiographical texts in particular open small windows into the history of relics in the postconquest city—the “Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium,” “The Land of Jerusalem” (De terra Iherosolimitana), the Historia Constantinopolitana, and the “Translatio Symonensis.” A fifth text, the “Translatio Mamantis,” also contains a description of the initial relic looting, although secondhand at best, and it will be treated more carefully during the discussion of phase two. The four texts describe four acts of relic acquisition. Two depict the risk-free (authorized) acquisition of relics by Bishops Conrad von Krosigk of Halberstadt and Nivelon de Chérisy of Soissons; the other two record careful and surreptitious (unauthorized) raids by Abbot Martin of Pairis and a group of lower-status Venetian crusaders.
Bishop Conrad von Krosigk of Halberstadt
To piece together this relic-centered narrative, we must begin before the final capture of Constantinople. The crusaders spent months camping just outside the city walls while ostensibly working for the rightful emperor, Alexius IV, and they were free to enter in small groups. Among the crusaders was Bishop Conrad von Krosigk of Halberstadt, a supporter and client of Philip of Swabia, Alexius’s brother-in-law and backer in the Latin West. During this time, Conrad ostensibly benefitted from a long-established practice of relic gifting. He later professed to have received several objects from Alexius, who in fact pillaged his own churches for gold and silver items to melt down in an attempt to pay off his debts. In the “Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium,” the anonymous author makes grandiose claims that Conrad returned to Halberstadt with “the blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ, [portions of] the Lord’s wood, the Lord’s Sepulchre, the Lord’s crown of thorns, His shroud and sudarium, the purple garment, the sponge and reed,” and other objects.32 These were among the most venerated relics in all of Christendom, but Conrad did not acquire the main Byzantine relics of the Passion. Those ultimately ended up in the hands of the French king Louis IX. Instead, the author of the “Gesta” is following typical medieval practice by equating tiny fragments of a relic with the whole. For example, Conrad’s “crown of thorns” was merely one thorn.33