Thomas F. Madden - The Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade (Memory and the Conquest of Constantinople) (2012)

The Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade: Memory and the Conquest of Constantinople in Medieval Venice By Thomas F. Madden

O n a busy day in October 1202, Walframo of Gemona, a resident of Venice living in the parish of San Stae, made his will. Although still a young man, he was anxious to put his affairs in order because, as he put it, “preparing to go in the service of the Lord and his Holy Sepulcher, I am mindful of the day of my death.” 1 Walframo was apparently a man of some wealth. In his will he left his wife, Palmera, her dowry of seventy Venetian lire as well as three houses and four household slaves that Walframo had given to her as a morning gift after their nuptials. He also directed her to spend three hundred Venetian lire for the benefit of his soul. Days later, Walframo boarded one of the hundreds of vessels that made up the great fleet of the Fourth Crusade and sailed out of the Venetian lagoon.2 Whether he ever returned home is unknown. But if he did, he must have had quite a story to tell—one that is largely lost to us today. Modern historians know a great deal about the events of the Fourth Crusade, yet very little about the thousands of Venetians and other Italians who joined it or about the experiences that they brought back with them. The Fourth Crusade was, by any measure, an unusual expedition. For most Venetians it began in April 1201, when envoys from the crusade leaders, Thibaut of Champagne, Baldwin of Flanders, and Hugh of St. Pol, concluded a treaty with Venice.3 In it, the Venetians agreed to provide provisions and a fleet to carry 33,500 crusaders Research for this study was funded by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Mellon Faculty Development Fund. 1 “… paratus essem ire in servicio domini et sancti eius sepulcri cepi cogitare de die mortis mee”: Venice, Archivio di Stato, S. Lorenzo di Venezia, B. 21. That the notary, Venerando Marin, was a priest at the church of San Marco was unusual for a private document at this time. Given the date and the fact that a priest from San Stae witnessed the will, it is possible that this was one of many wills made in the Piazza San Marco as the crusaders prepared for departure. 2 Venetian legal documents at this time bore only the month, year, and indiction. Because this will is dated October 1202 and the crusade fleet departed during the first week of October (the octave of St. Remi, October 2–8, according to Geoffrey de Villehardouin), only a few days could have elapsed between the execution of the document and the departure of the crusade. See Geoffrey de Villehardouin, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. and trans. Edmond Faral, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge 18–19, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1938–39), 1:76; Alfred J. Andrea, “The Devastatio Constantinopolitana, a Special Perspective on the Fourth Crusade: An Analysis, New Edition, and Translation,” Historical Reflections 19 (1993): 107–49, at 132; and Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium, ed. Ludwig Weiland, MGH SS 23 (Hannover: MGH, 1874), 73–123, at 117. 3 For a complete description of the Fourth Crusade see Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

doi:10.1017/S0038713412001017

311

312

Madden

and 4,500 horses to the East in return for payment of eighty-five thousand silver marks. In addition, the Venetians agreed to join the crusade themselves, providing fifty manned war galleys at their own expense. Their leader, Doge Enrico Dandolo (1192–1205), suspended all Venetian overseas commerce for eighteen months to allow citizens of the republic to devote themselves fully to the effort.4 Half of the able-bodied men of Venice took the cross, after being selected by a state lottery.5 Thousands more were recruited among Venice’s allies in northern Italy and Dalmatia.6 In June 1202 the crusaders from the north—whom contemporary sources and modern historians refer to collectively as the “Franks”— began to arrive in Venice. By the end of the summer only about 11,000 Frankish crusaders had made the rendezvous. The rest, who were the majority, found transportation to the East at other ports. Since the Venetians had prepared a fleet and provisions for 33,500 men, the collective decisions of the other crusaders posed a serious problem for those at Venice. Unable to pay the contracted price, the Fourth Crusade stalled until October 1202, when the Venetians finally agreed to suspend the outstanding debt if the Franks would help them conquer the rebellious city of Zara on the Dalmatian coast. Thus the fleet, carrying the Frankish crusaders, Doge Enrico Dandolo, Walframo of Gemona, and some 15,000 other unnamed Venetians, sailed out of Venice and into the Adriatic Sea.7 Despite threats of excommunication by Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), the crusaders captured Zara, a Catholic city that was under papal protection. There the Fourth Crusade spent the winter of 1202/3. By March 1203 the crusaders were virtually penniless and had consumed all of their contracted provisions.8 To further complicate matters, although the Franks had obtained a papal absolution for the attack on Zara, the Venetians had been formally excommunicated—a fact concealed from them by the leaders.9 To preserve the troubled enterprise, the crusade barons agreed to support a Byzantine imperial claimant, young Alexius Angelus, who had recently arrived at Zara with envoys of his brother-in-law, Philip of Swabia. In return for overthrowing his uncle, Alexius III (1195–1203), and putting him on the throne, Alexius promised the crusaders provisions, military support, the union of the Byzantine and Roman churches, and two hundred thousand silver marks. Against the wishes of the pope and a majority of the 4 Robert de Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. Philippe Lauer (Paris: É. Champion, 1924), 7, p. 8, and 11, pp. 9–11. 5 Ibid. 11, pp. 9–10. 6 Ibid. 13, p. 13; Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, ed. G.L. Fr. Tafel and G.M. Thomas, 3 vols. (Vienna: Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1856–57; repr., Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1964), henceforth cited as TTh., here 1:387–88, no. 96 (incorrectly dated) and 1:96–98, no. 97; Andrea, “Devastatio,” 132; Roberto Cessi and Fanny Bennato, eds., Venetiarum historia vulgo Petro Iustiniano Iustiniani filio adiudicata (Venice: Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1964), 134–35. 7 On the number of Venetians see Thomas F. Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 130. 8 On the problem of provisions see Thomas F. Madden, “Food and the Fourth Crusade: A New Approach to the ‘Diversion Question,’” in Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, ed. John H. Pryor (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 209–28. 9 Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. Othmar Hageneder and Anton Haidacher (Graz: Böhlau, 1964–), henceforth cited as Reg., here 6, no. 100.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

313

rank-and-file Frankish crusaders, the fleet sailed to Constantinople. After a brief assault on the city in July 1203, Alexius III fled, and the citizens accepted the young Alexius and his formerly deposed father, Isaac II (1185–95, 1203–4), as their new rulers. Once crowned, Alexius IV (1203–4) paid roughly half of the money that he owed to the crusaders and convinced them to winter at Constantinople, promising to pay the remainder before spring. However, relations quickly soured between the Byzantines and the crusaders, so much so that by December 1203 open warfare had broken out. In February 1204 a new imperial claimant in Constantinople deposed and killed Alexius IV and was crowned Alexius V Mourtzouphlus (1204). In retaliation and exasperation the crusaders conquered and sacked Constantinople on April 12, 1204. Thus the Fourth Crusade ended, and the new Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204–61) was born. Those, in brief, are the basic events of the Fourth Crusade. They are drawn from a range of sources that include crusader memoirs, papal correspondence, and Western and Byzantine chronicles. Historians of the Fourth Crusade are blessed with a diverse array of perspectives on the event—ranging from those of low-level knights to churchmen to barons to Greek aristocrats.10 And yet, although the majority of the crusaders were, like Walframo, men of Venice or other allied towns, there is no Venetian memoir of the Fourth Crusade. As a result, with the exception of Doge Dandolo, the Venetian crusaders usually fade into the background of modern narratives. Because they had little contact with them, Franks had little to say about Venetians in their accounts of the expedition. Indeed, with the exception of the doge, none of the thousands of Venetians on the crusade are identified by name in any contemporary chronicle. The lack of a Venetian perspective on the Fourth Crusade does not simply constrain a complete understanding of the event itself. It also deprives the historian of an element in the formation of medieval Venice’s civic and religious identity. Today a visitor to the Great Council chamber (Sala del Maggior Consiglio) in the Palace of the Doges can see walls covered in scenes depicting one celestial and numerous historical events. Along the inner wall are found paintings of the events of the Peace of Venice of 1177, in which the Venetian people and their leaders are seen aiding and defending Pope Alexander III in his struggle against Frederick I Barbarossa. Covering the outer wall, interspersed with windows looking out to the sea, are eight paintings depicting the events of the Fourth Crusade. At the head of the chamber is Tintoretto’s famous Paradise. Although the present paintings date from the sixteenth century, many are updated replacements of earlier medieval frescoes destroyed by fire in 1577.11 Venetians chose to have these 10 On sources for the Fourth Crusade see Alfred J. Andrea, “Essay on Primary Sources,” in Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 299–313. 11 The original fresco decorations were completed in stages between 1365 and 1416. In 1578 the overall goal of the palace’s reconstruction was to restore what had been lost, while updating the artistic style. With regard to the Great Council chamber, this is apparent when comparing the partially destroyed Coronation of the Virgin fresco completed by Guariento of Padua in 1368 with the Paradise of Tintoretto that replaced it. The former is preserved in the Sala dell’Armamento. An order of 1366 to strike out the portrait of Doge Marin Faliero in the chamber is likewise reflected in the sixteenthcentury replacement portraits, which still include a place for Faliero but depict a cloth covering an implied image with the words “Hic est locus Marini Faletro decapitati pro criminibus.” Nothing

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

314

Madden

events always before the members of the Great Council, the source of all political authority in the Republic of St. Mark. One can appreciate readily enough the utility of a depiction of heaven, reminding members of the final rewards for valorous or selfless actions in the council. For its part, the Peace of Venice was well remembered by Venetians as an example of loyalty to the papacy—a loyalty that brought the German emperor to the Piazza San Marco to kiss the feet of the pope. The crusade, however, is more problematic. As both a papal initiative and an element in ecclesiastical reform, crusading was embraced early on by Venetians. In 1099 Doge Vitale Michiel (1096–1101) commanded a Venetian crusade fleet of some two hundred vessels—the largest single contribution to the First Crusade. Although the Venetian crusaders arrived in Syria after the conquest of Jerusalem, they nonetheless assisted with the capture of Haifa.12 In 1120 Pope Calixtus II called on Venice to mount a crusade to defend the crusader states after the serious defeat at the Field of Blood. Doge Domenico Michiel (1118–29) oversaw the creation of a large fleet carrying some fifteen thousand Venetian crusaders. When it reached Acre, it defeated the Fatimid navy and assisted with the conquest of Tyre.13 Like other medieval Europeans, the Venetians were proud of their crusading victories, not merely as evidence of military prowess, but as a visible indication of the favor that God showed to those who defended his people and church. The decision, then, to depict the events of the Fourth Crusade in the room that was at the political heart of Venice is surprising. While Pope Innocent III did urge the Venetians to crusade, it can hardly be said that they otherwise acted in accord with his will or to the benefit of Christendom.14 Against papal commands, the Venetians diverted the crusade to Zara and not only captured the city but leveled it to the ground.15 They then piloted their vessels to Christian Constantinople, where they assisted with its capture and sack. All of this was in violation of papal directives, and all of it occurred while the Venetian crusaders

remains of the original frescoes that depicted the Peace of Venice. It is not clear whether the Fourth Crusade appeared in the medieval frescoes or was an addition to the chamber in 1578. See Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 39–42 and 261–65; Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting 1460–1590, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 303; Elena Bassi and Egle R. Trincanato, Guide for Visitors to the Ducal Palace in Venice (Milan: Martello, 1964), 78; Elena Bassi and Egle R. Trincanato, The Palace of the Doges in the History and Art of Venice (Milan: Martello, 1964), 96–113; and Terisio Pignatti, The Doge’s Palace (New York: Reynal, 1965), 9. 12 Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, aa. 46–1280 d.C., ed. Ester Pastorello, Rerum Italicarum scriptores 12.1 (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1938), 220–23; Monk of the Lido, Historia de translatione sanctorum Magni Nicolai, in Recueil des historiens des croisades, 5: Historiens occidentaux (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1895), 1:259–78; Cessi and Bennato, eds., Venetiarum historia, 86; Donald E. Queller and Irene B. Katele, “Venice and the Conquest of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” Studi veneziani, n.s. 12 (1986): 21–25. 13 William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, CCCM 63A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 546– 49; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1913), 452–53; Queller and Katele, “Venice,” 31–39. 14 Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 119–20. 15 On the destruction of Zara, see ibid., 150.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

315

were under the ban of excommunication. Pope Innocent had no doubt that Dandolo and the Venetian crusaders had treacherously waylaid his crusade, even referring to them as the thieves in the parable of the good Samaritan.16 It is an odd artistic program indeed that glorifies acts of disobedience to God’s church alongside depictions of the joys of heaven. When the members of the Great Council convened, they were historically and architecturally sandwiched between selfless devotion to the Holy See (the Peace of Venice) and the selfish corruption of a papal project to rescue Jerusalem. Although the restoration committee in 1578 wished to display Venice’s major military victories along the walls of the Great Council chamber and nearby Sala dello Scrutinio, they had a great many from which to choose.17 Why give such prominence to the Fourth Crusade? There can be no doubt that the Fourth Crusade remained an important event to medieval and early modern Venetians. In addition to decorating the Great Council chamber with its scenes, they had filled the central civic and religious spaces of San Marco with its spoils. Its prominent depiction in the Great Council chamber seems out of place only because it appears to contradict a program that highlights Venice’s good relations with popes, kings, and other important leaders, as well as Venetian religious devotion. Yet that assessment itself is not based on any Venetian evidence. Rather, it rests on a narrative of the Fourth Crusade drawn from French, German, Roman, and Byzantine sources. We should not assume that medieval Venetians experienced or remembered the event in precisely the same way as their contemporaries. The purpose of this study, then, is to attempt to excavate fragments of a contemporary Venetian narrative of the Fourth Crusade, reconstructing as much as possible the perceptions of the Venetian crusaders and the stories they brought home. In addition, this essay will suggest some of the outlines of the subsequent production and evolution of Venetian memory of the Fourth Crusade in later centuries.

T he most important contemporary source for the Fourth Crusade is Geoffrey de Villehardouin, the marshal of Champagne, who took part in the expedition and whose memoirs, written in Old French sometime between 1207 and 1218, would see a wide readership across medieval Europe. Modern historians are accustomed to having a range of sources from which to draw when investigating the Fourth Crusade. However, most of those sources were hardly known in the Middle Ages. Gunther of Pairis’s Hystoria Constantinopolitana, for example, survives in only three late copies.18 Robert de Clari’s La conquête de Constantinople, commonly used today to complement Villehardouin, exists in only one manuscript, which was tucked away in the monastery library of Corbie.19 Villehardouin’s Reg. 5, no. 160 (161). Girolamo Bardi, Dichiaratione di tutte le istorie, che si contengono ne i quadri posti novamente nelle Sale dello Scrutinio, e del Gran Consiglio, del Palagio Ducale della Serenissima Republica di Vinegia, nella quale si ha piena intelligenza della più segnalate vittorie; conseguite di varie nationi del mondo dai Vinitiani (Venice: Felice Valgrisio, 1587), fols. 1r–2v. 18 Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria Constantinopolitana, ed. Peter Orth (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1994), 95–99. 19 See Edgar Holmes McNeal’s introduction to his translation, The Conquest of Constantinople (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 7–9. 16 17

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

316

Madden

account, on the other hand, was reasonably available during the Middle Ages: Edmond Faral used six manuscripts to produce his edition in 1938–39.20 Unfortunately, there is no Venetian Villehardouin—or at least none that has survived. Michael Angold has suggested two reasons for this vacuum. First, Venetians had not yet developed a tradition of chronicle writing. Second, in the years immediately following the fall of Constantinople the crusade was an embarrassment to the Venetians, partly because it had failed to win victories comparable to the crusade of 1122 and also because it had produced an unstable and dangerous Byzantine world that would sap Venetian energy and blood for years. The subsequently poor relations with Innocent III likewise embarrassed a people who prided themselves on their devotion to Rome.21 Angold is certainly correct about the state of Venetian chronicle writing in the early thirteenth century: it was virtually nonexistent. It is difficult, however, to detect much Venetian embarrassment over the Fourth Crusade during the Middle Ages. The four bronze horses looted from Constantinople and placed prominently on the facade of San Marco were an extravagant statement of pride, not embarrassment. Similarly, while relations between Innocent III and Venice were strained after the Fourth Crusade, they were not bad enough for most Venetians to notice. We should not transfer Innocent’s problems with the Venetian patriarchs of Constantinople onto Venice itself. Despite the lack of a Venetian Villehardouin, it is nonetheless possible to uncover a few of the basic components of the story that Venetian crusaders brought home with them in 1205. The earliest Venetian written accounts of the Fourth Crusade are brief, but useful. The oldest is contained in a letter from Enrico Dandolo to Innocent III, probably sent in June 1204.22 The doge informed the pope that he “took up the Cross in service of Jesus Christ and the Holy Roman Church.” He and the crusaders departed from Venice but were forced to stop at Zara because of the winter. Since the city was rebellious, “I justly (so I judged) took vengeance on the city and citizens, according to the custom of mutual enemies.” Dandolo admits to hearing a rumor that Zara was under papal protection but dismissed it since he did not believe that Innocent would extend protection to someone (King Emeric of Hungary) who had taken the cross only as a pretext for stealing and keeping others’ property. As for the excommunication, Dandolo tells the pope that he and the Venetians “patiently and humbly endured it” until they were finally absolved by the papal legate in June 1204. Dandolo relates the mission to put the young Alexius on the throne of Constantinople, but he reports only the prince’s promise to place the Greek church under obedience to Rome. Alexius and his father, Isaac, however, proved to be liars, so the crusaders disavowed them. After they were murdered, Dandolo continues, the Greeks attacked the crusaders on land and sea by means of burning vessels launched against the fleet. For that reason, “we decided that the city of Constantinople had to be conquered for the honor of God and the Holy Roman Villehardouin, Conquête, 1:xxxvii–xxxix and xliv–li. Michael Angold, “The Venetian Chronicles and Archives as Sources for the History of Byzantium and the Crusades (992–1204),” Proceedings of the British Academy 132 (2007): 59–94, at 84–85. 22 Reg. 7, no. 202. Translations from Alfred J. Andrea, ed. and trans., Contemporary Sources for the Fourth Crusade (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 128–30. 20 21

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

317

Church and the relief of Christendom.” Against all expectations, Dandolo continues, the city fell; Mourtzouphlus fled; and a great many Greeks were killed. Although Dandolo omitted much, his account was essentially accurate. It had to be, since it would be compared with the accounts that the other barons were sending to the pope. However, Dandolo’s version of the crusade is not particularly useful for uncovering a Venetian perspective. He was, after all, a very special Venetian. Unlike his countrymen, Dandolo was an important member of the barons’ council, with full access to information used to make decisions for the crusade. In any case, he brought no story home. Innocent III refused his petition to be relieved of his crusader vow, and he died in Constantinople in May 1205. Another, and until recently overlooked, early Venetian source for the Fourth Crusade is the Translatio Symonensis, an account of the transfer of the relics of St. Simon from Constantinople to Venice. David Perry has convincingly dated this work to around 1205.23 It, therefore, must have been compiled from eyewitness accounts. As might be expected, it is largely concerned with the body of St. Simon and the means by which it was acquired and transported to Venice.24 Only a short section is devoted to the crusade. It records that because God hated the sinful Greeks, he incited Dandolo and the other barons to take up the cross of the crusade: “They did this willingly in order to bring about justice by returning the son of the emperor to the throne of his father, from which he had been wickedly and impiously removed and expelled.” Later they fought a just war against the “impious prince” in which the Venetian ships approached the walls of Constantinople and the crusaders scrambled over and set many fires. Thus they captured the city and the empire. According to this contemporary Venetian account, therefore, the purpose of the Fourth Crusade was to right the wrong done to the young Alexius by placing him on the Byzantine throne. Nothing at all is said of the crusade’s plan to fight against Muslims in the East. Aside from that error, the brief testimony of the Translatio Symonensis is accurate as far as it goes. The crusaders did capture the city by attacking the harbor walls from Venetian vessels, and they did set fires in the city. Another account of the Fourth Crusade with ties to Venice was produced a few years later in nearby Ravenna. There, in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, an abbot identified only as William ordered a new mosaic floor to be laid in 1213. Included in the decorations was a program of images depicting events that had recently occurred during the Fourth Crusade. The floor was used for three centuries before being covered in the sixteenth century. It was rediscovered during an excavation in 1763.25 The current condition of the mosaic 23 David M. Perry, “The Translatio Symonensis and the Seven Thieves: A Venetian Fourth Crusade Furta sacra Narrative and the Looting of Constantinople,” in The Fourth Crusade: Event, Aftermath, and Perceptions, ed. Thomas F. Madden, Crusades: Subsidia 2 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 89–112, at 92–102. 24 The text is published in Paolo Chiesa, “Ladri di reliquie a Costantinopoli durante la Quarta Crociata: La traslazione a Venezia del corpo di Simeone profeta,” Studi medievali 36 (1995): 431– 59. Translations are from Perry, “Translatio,” 107. 25 Antonio Carile, “Episodi della IV Crociata nel mosaico pavimentale di S. Giovanni Evangelista di Ravenna,” Corsi di cultura 23 (1976): 109–30; Raffaella Farioli Campanati, I mosaici pavimentali della chiesa di S. Giovanni Evangelista in Ravenna (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 2009), 55–57.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

318

Madden

fragments is poor; however, ten of the images relating to the crusade were identified and subsequently mounted on a side wall of the church, where they still remain. The best known of them depicts the conquest of Constantinople with bound Greeks being expelled from the city (Fig. 1). There is also a similar, yet less well known, depiction of the conquest of Zara (Fig. 2). These images are important for they do not rely on the major memoirs and histories of the crusade. In 1213, when the mosaic artist laid these stones, Villehardouin’s text and the other principal sources for the crusade were unavailable in Ravenna or Venice.26 In other words, these images offer a narrative uncontaminated by the later flood of Fourth Crusade textual accounts. They are, instead, depictions of a contemporary account still in oral form. This was a story that was important to the monks of San Giovanni Evangelista. The first Latin patriarch of Constantinople, Thomas Morosini, was the abbot of Santa Maria in Porto, a nearby dependency of their own abbey.27 Indeed, the Fourth Crusade cycle may have been a tribute to Morosini, who died shortly before the floor was laid (1211). The close temporal proximity between the mosaics and the return of the Venetian and Italian crusaders—a space of only six or seven years— suggests that these images came directly from the testimony of those crusaders. The mosaic artist may have been a Venetian himself or relied on Venetians in Ravenna. Since many of the “Venetians” on the Fourth Crusade were men levied from Italian and Dalmatian allies, it is also possible that crusading sailors or marines from Ravenna provided the information for the artist. The unique perspective of the source is evident in the scenes depicted. Rather than the mounted nobles and hard-fought land battles of Villehardouin’s history, the focus here is on the fleet. While the details of the crusade vessels are largely ignored in Frankish sources, the depiction of the Venetian ships in the Ravenna mosaics is strikingly accurate (Fig. 3). In two fragments crusaders can be seen using scaling ladders mounted on the ships (with sails appropriately furled) to attack the walls of Constantinople—something corroborated in non-Venetian accounts and implied in the Translatio Symonensis (Fig. 4). In another fragment, a crusader blows a horn from the top of a mast, perhaps to signal the Venetian maritime assault on the city walls (Fig. 5). Unreported in other sources, the horn blast is the sort of detail one would expect from a crusader who had served aboard the Venetian fleet. Interestingly, one of the San Giovanni Evangelista mosaics depicts an event that no Venetian crusader could have witnessed. In it a bishop or pope is seen with 26 Villehardouin’s chronicle was begun in Greece after 1207, although it appears to have remained unfinished at his death between 1212 and 1218. See Faral, ed., Conquête, xiii–xvi; and Jean Longnon, Recherches sur la vie de Geoffroy de Villehardouin (Paris: É. Champion, 1939), 104–8. Other principal sources include papal letters, which were obviously unavailable to most contemporaries, as well as works still unwritten, such as the chronicle of Robert de Clari (probably dictated after 1216) and the history of Nicetas Choniates (largely completed by 1215). See Robert de Clari, Conquête, p. 7; and Nicetas Choniates, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. Harry J. Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), xv–xvi. Although Gunther of Pairis’s account was probably written in 1205, there is no evidence that it left the monastery of Pairis in the thirteenth century. See Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria, 94–99. 27 Carile, “Episodi,” 114–16; Campanati, Mosaici, 58–59.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Fig. 1 (top). The conquest of Constantinople. Mosaic. San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna. Fig. 2 (bottom). The conquest of Zara. Mosaic. San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna. (Photographs of Figs. 1–6: Author.)

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Fig. 3 (top). Venetian crusade vessel. Mosaic. San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna. Fig. 4 (bottom). Crusader scaling the walls of Constantinople. Mosaic. San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna. Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Fig. 5 (top). Venetian crusade vessel with man blowing a horn. Mosaic. San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna. Fig. 6 (bottom). Innocent III and Alexius Angelus. Mosaic. San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna. Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

322

Madden

what appears to be a boy or young man (Fig. 6). Given its association with the other images of the Fourth Crusade, this can only be a depiction of Pope Innocent III and young Alexius Angelus. The prince and the pope are each holding parchments while the latter seems to be instructing the former. Alexius did indeed meet with Innocent in Rome in February 1202, although only Boniface of Montferrat and perhaps a handful of other crusade leaders knew about the meeting. It did not, in any case, go well. Innocent declined to use the Fourth Crusade to help the young man acquire the throne of Constantinople and ordered Boniface to have nothing to do with the scheme.28 What is depicted here is something altogether different. The parchments alone make it clear that some sort of business is being conducted. This mosaic depicts an episode absent from all contemporary narrative sources yet sufficiently well known in Ravenna in 1213 to have been reproduced graphically for public consumption. In other words, it appears to be an element in a uniquely Venetian/Italian narrative of the Fourth Crusade. What is needed, however, is a contemporary written source from Venice, Ravenna, or elsewhere in the regions where Venice recruited sailors to help decipher it. The earliest surviving Venetian chronicle to reference the Fourth Crusade is the Historia ducum Veneticorum, written sometime after 1229, probably in the late 1230s.29 Unfortunately, the manuscript leaves that contained the entries between 1178 and 1203 are lost. What is left is a fairly terse account of the installation of Alexius IV in Constantinople and his subsequent refusal to pay more than forty thousand marks to the crusaders.30 It recounts the murder of Alexius IV by Mourtzouphlus, who then pretended that the emperor died of natural causes, assumed the diadem, and promised to pay the Venetians all that was still owed to them. Instead, Mourtzouphlus sent burning ships against the crusader fleet in an attempt to destroy it in the harbor. With God’s help, the Venetians saved the fleet, although a Pisan merchant vessel did catch fire and sink. Because of the deceitful murder of Alexius IV and the targeted attempt to kill Venetians, the crusaders decided to attack Constantinople. After making a pact regarding the division of the empire—today known as the Pact of March—the crusaders scaled the walls, put Mourtzouphlus to flight, and peacefully took the city. Enrico Dandolo subsequently died and was laid to rest in Hagia Sophia.31 The Historia ducum Veneticorum’s truncated account offers only a little that is not referenced in non-Venetian sources. According to Robert de Clari (who is not always good with numbers), Alexius IV paid the crusaders one hundred thousand silver marks, which was divided between the Franks and the Venetians.32 Since subsequent events suggest that Clari’s figure is approximately correct, the Historia ducum Veneticorum’s forty thousand marks is a fair approximation of

Reg. 5, no. 121 (122). On the dating see Luigi Andrea Berto, ed., Testi storici veneziani (XI–XIII secolo), Medioevo europeo 1 (Padua: CLEUP, 1999), x–xii. 30 Historia ducum Veneticorum, ibid. 38, p. 70. 31 Ibid. 38, pp. 70–72. 32 Clari, Conquête 56, p. 56. 28 29

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

323

the amount paid to the Venetians.33 It is true that Doge Dandolo met with Mourtzouphlus in late January or early February 1204, and Mourtzouphlus may well have promised to pay the outstanding debt. Dandolo, in any case, certainly demanded it.34 Alexius IV (and probably not Mourtzouphlus) did launch fireship attacks against the Venetian fleet in December 1203 and on January 1, 1204, but these preceded the meeting between Mourtzouphlus and Dandolo.35 Mourtzouphlus murdered Alexius IV after that meeting, on the night of February 8/9, and did indeed pretend that the death was natural.36 The Historia ducum Veneticorum’s rationale for the attack on Constantinople is interesting. The justifications that the crusading clergy had preached to the host were the Greeks’ murder of their rightful lord, Alexius IV, and their removal of the Byzantine church from Roman obedience.37 The Venetian author replaces ecclesiastical schism with the Byzantines’ attempt to destroy Venetian property and lives. The placement of the fire-ship attack directly before the decision to attack Constantinople suggests that the Venetian author or his source saw the latter attack as a natural and just response to the former one—much as Doge Dandolo implied in his letter to the pope. The remainder of the Historia ducum Veneticorum’s narrative is accurate. Mourtzouphlus did flee Constantinople after its capture, and the doge was buried in Hagia Sophia. The earliest surviving complete description of the Fourth Crusade in a Venetian chronicle appears in Martin Da Canal’s Les estoires de Venise. The first part of the Estoires, the portion that includes the account of the crusade, was written in 1267. Unlike all subsequent Venetian chroniclers, Da Canal wrote in Old French. His aim was to make the history of the republic available to a wide audience— although, judging by the fact that it survives in only one manuscript, it does not appear to have achieved that result.38 Da Canal’s familiarity with Old French did not lead him to use Villehardouin or other non-Venetian vernacular works in his account of the Fourth Crusade. Indeed, in style and content Da Canal’s work bears no resemblance to that of Villehardouin.39 Da Canal’s version of events is

See Villehardouin, Conquête 193, 1:96; and Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 266 n. 16. The meeting is referred to only in the letter of Baldwin of Flanders to Innocent III (Reg. 7, no. 152) and in the history of Nicetas Choniates: Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. Jan Louis van Dieten, Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae 11.1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975), 567–68. On the details of this meeting see Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 168; and Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 166–67. 35 Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 157–58. 36 Choniates, Historia, 564; Villehardouin, Conquête 223, 2:22; Clari, Conquête 62, p. 61; Andrea, “Devastatio,” 136. 37 Villehardouin, Conquête 224, 2:22–24. 38 Gina Fasoli, “La Cronique des Veneciens di Martino da Canale,” Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 2 (1961): 42–74; Agostino Pertusi, “Maistre Martin da Canal interprete cortese delle Crociate e dell’ambiente veneziano del secolo XIII,” in Venezia dalla Prima Crociata alla conquista di Costantinopoli del 1204, ed. Steven Runciman (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), 103–35. 39 Antonio Carile, La cronachistica veneziana (secoli XII–XVI) di fronte alla spartizione della Romania nel 1204, Civiltà veneziana, Studi 25 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1969), 187–88; Alberto Limentani’s introduction in his edition of Martin Da Canal, Les estoires de Venise: Cronaca veneziana in lingua francese dalle origini al 1275, Civiltà veneziana, Fonti e testi, 3rd ser., 12 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1972), xlii. 33 34

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

324

Madden

so different from contemporary Frankish accounts that, like the Ravenna mosaics executed nearly sixty years earlier, it could only have been drawn from independent sources. The story that Da Canal tells fits closely with that of the Ravenna mosaics. It is a sailor’s tale, one that puts the Venetians and their vessels at center stage. Da Canal relates details of the production of the crusader fleet in Venice, even contending that the doge began minting a new silver coin, the grosso, in order to pay the shipwrights.40 Rarely are the French barons mentioned by name. Indeed, Da Canal depicts the Franks as little more than bellicose and mildly foolhardy cargo. No mention is made of their inability to pay for the fleet and provisions that they had ordered. Instead, the crusade simply departs Venice with great fanfare.41 Throughout his narrative of the crusade Da Canal is quick to describe vessels, winds, and waters.42 He reports that bad weather forced the crusade to stop near Zara, which would not welcome them. While on the island of Malconsiglio, Dandolo informed the French barons of the rebelliousness of the Zarans, who should have provided shelter for the Venetian fleet. The barons insisted on attacking the city, yet Dandolo refused their aid. Instead, the Venetians alone captured the city, destroyed its walls, and then invited the French to spend the winter there.43 Da Canal says nothing of the pope’s protection of Zara or the crusaders’ subsequent excommunication. It is at this point in his history that Da Canal turns to the episode depicted in the puzzling mosaic image in Ravenna. He writes: The news [that the crusade was at Zara] spread everywhere, finally reaching the pope. And just then a young man of few years was brought before the pope, and his relatives said to the pope: “Sire, this small child is emperor of Constantinople. The Greeks are so arrogant that they do not want him for their lord. He asks you, as a son to a father, to help him and to aid him to reclaim his empire.” Then the pope said: “The child is welcome and you with him. He is a descendant of the dynasty of France,44 and a great army of French and Venetians is going to Outremer.

40 On the accuracy of this statement (and the debate surrounding it) see Louise Buenger Robbert, “Reorganization of the Venetian Coinage by Doge Enrico Dandolo,” Speculum 49 (1974): 48–60; Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice: Coins and Moneys of Account (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 114–15 and 501; and Alan Stahl, “The Grosso of Enrico Dandolo,” Revue belge de numismatique 145 (1999): 261–62. 41 Da Canal, Estoires 37–38, p. 46. 42 E.g., “Li tens estoit clers et biaus, et li marinier drecerent les voiles au vent et li vent se feri dedens, que soef estoit et bien portant: si adrecerent lor nes et lor galies parmi la mer, et s’en alerent tant de jornee en jornee, que il furent venus a Costantinople”: ibid. 44, pp. 50–52. 43 Ibid. 39–40, p. 48. 44 Da Canal is apparently referring here to the fact that the sister of King Philip II Augustus, Agnes, was formerly the empress of Byzantium. In 1179, at the age of eight, she married Alexius II Comnenus. Four years later she married Andronicus I Comnenus, who had deposed and murdered her first husband. In 1185, at the age of fourteen, she became a dowager empress and later married the Byzantine general Theodore Branas. Robert de Clari relates that in 1203 the crusade barons visited her in her home, but she treated them poorly, complaining of their removal of Alexius III Angelus. In her thirties, Agnes spoke through an interpreter, claiming that she could no longer speak French—which might well have been true given the young age at which she came to Constantinople. See Clari, Conquête 53, pp. 53–54. Young Alexius Angelus was in no way related to Agnes. The belief that the French

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

325

Currently they are delayed in a city called Zara because of the winter, which does not allow them to leave. Let us do what is best. I will command them in a message that they are to abandon the passage to Jerusalem and take the passage to Constantinople and put this boy in possession of his city.” 45

Here Da Canal’s history provides a narrative context for the Ravenna mosaic.46 In it, Innocent is shown giving Alexius a message that orders the crusaders to divert from the Holy Land to Constantinople. Da Canal continues: The legation came before Enrico Dandolo, the doge of Venice, and he received the document that the pope had sent to him and to the barons of France, in which he said that for nobly taking the young man to Constantinople and making it so that the Greeks would accept him as lord the pope would give them an identical absolution as if they had gone to Outremer. And when the doge heard the command of the pope, he held a council of French barons and Venetian nobles who were with them, and he said to them: “Lords, what is your opinion about the pope’s command?” And they said that they would do all that he advised. “Lords,” said the doge, “the commands of the pope must not be refused, as he is the spiritual father and everyone must be obedient to him in all things. I exhort you to do just as he has commanded us.” And they all agreed with great good will.47

Historians have traditionally dismissed Da Canal’s description of the Fourth Crusade as a pack of transparent lies told to exonerate the Venetians. Angold, for example, has described Da Canal’s version of events as “a travesty.” 48 Yet

favored the claims of Alexius because he was related to the Capetians remained prevalent in Venice for many years. See, e.g., Dandolo, Chronica, 277. 45 “La novelle cort par totes pars, tant qu’ele fu venue devant l’apostoile; et droitement a celui point estoit conduit devant l’apostoile un enfant de petit aage, et li parens de celui enfant distrent a l’apostoile: ‘Sire, cestui petit enfant est enpereor de Costantinople: li Gres sont si orguillos, que il ne le veulent pas por seignor. Il vos requiert aide come fis a pere, et que vos l’aidés a recovrer son enpire.’ Lors lor dist monseignor l’apostoile: ‘Li enfant soit bienvenus, et vos aveuc. Il est estrait dou lignage de France: et un grant host de Franceis et de Venisiens s’en vet dela la mer: il sont arestés en une vile que l’en apele Jadre por li tens d’iver, qui ne les laisse aler. Faisons le bien; je lor envoierai mon mesage, que il leissent la voie d’aler es parties de Jerusalem et tiegnent la voie d’aler en Costantinople et metent cestui enfant en saisine de sa vile’”: Da Canal, Estoires 41–42, pp. 48 and 50. 46 Marco Meschini has noted in a picture caption the similarity between the floor mosaic and the narrative provided by Martin Da Canal: 1204: L’incompiuta. La Quarta Crociata e le conquiste di Costantinopoli (Milan: Ancora, 2004), plate II. 47 “Li alegat fu venus devant monseignor Henric Dandle, li dus de Venise, et li rent la chartre que monseignor l’apostoile li mandoit et as barons de France, que por lor debonaireté conduent li petit enfant en Costantinople et tant facent que li Gres le tiegnent por seignor; e que autretel solucion lor fait monseignor l’apostoile con se il pasassent dela la mer. Et quant monseignor li dus oï le mandement de monseignor l’apostoile, il prist conseil as barons de France et as nobles Venisiens que estoient aveuc yaus, et lor dist: ‘Seignors, que vos est avis dou mandement de monseignor l’apostoile?’ Et il distrent que il en feront dou tot a son consoil. ‘Seignors,’ fait li dus, ‘li mandement de l’apostoile ne doit nus refuser, come de pere esperitel, ains le doivent trestuit obeïr dou tot. Je vos lo que il soit fait tot enci con il nos a mandé.’ Et il s’acordent tuit debonairement”: Da Canal, Estoires 43, p. 50. 48 Michael Angold, The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context (London: Pearson Longman, 2003), 19; Angold, “Venetian Chronicles,” 84.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

326

Madden

the Ravenna mosaics and the Translatio Symonensis suggest something very different. Da Canal was not inventing a narrative in 1267 but repeating one that went back to at least 1213 and quite probably to 1205, a narrative that had been current among those Venetians who took part in the crusade. There is no doubt that Da Canal’s version of events is completely false. Yet the fact that it appears in the Translatio Symonensis in 1205, was told to a mosaic artist in 1213, and appears in a Venetian chronicle of 1267 suggests that it was widely accepted among Venetians in the thirteenth century. This poses, however, an interesting problem. How could this narrative—so clearly at variance with the events of the crusade—have thrived in Venice if thousands of Venetians who had participated in the crusade could contradict it? Of course, it could not. Therefore, barring the most elaborate and successful conspiracy of silence in medieval history as a hypothesis, we must conclude that Venetian and other Italian crusaders believed that the pope had directed the crusade to Constantinople—and that they believed it while the crusade was still taking place. At first glance this seems improbable, since it would require Venetian crusaders to accept what their Frankish counterparts could dismiss as fantasy. However, the unusual internal dynamics of the Fourth Crusade could have allowed the development of two different narratives within the same host. The Frankish narrative is well known, described with various permutations in the Western sources. In them the crusade was diverted to Constantinople by poverty and a lack of provisions, although some also saw leaders willing to nudge the fleet in the direction of Constantinople.49 Non-Venetian sources agree that the crusade leaders’ decision to sail to Constantinople was unpopular among the rank and file, who wished to fulfill their vows and feared incurring the wrath of the pope.50 The Venetian narrative was dramatically different. As the Ravenna mosaic and Da Canal’s history attest, the Venetians perceived a crusade that was firmly under the control of Innocent III. The pope commanded, and the Venetians obeyed. The strongest argument against these parallel narratives forming within the same crusade host is that they are contradictory. Yet that is problematic only if we assume that Venetians and Franks interacted on the crusade—and were therefore able to contradict each other. The weight of the evidence suggests that they did not do so to any significant extent. None of the Frankish memoirs describe the Venetian crusaders in anything other than the most generic terms. Villehardouin, for example, knew Doge Dandolo well and considered him to be a friend. Yet he evidently did not know any other Venetians. He never mentioned them by name, although he routinely provided long lists of Frankish knights on the crusade. There are other reasons to believe that interaction between the Venetian and Frankish crusaders was minimal. The two groups had very different jobs. The Venetian sailors and marines were kept busy with their round ships and galleys. The Franks were soldiers, mounted or on foot. During periods of inactivity the two groups were carefully separated. In Venice, for example, the Frankish 49 E.g., Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium, ed. Weiland, 118; Villehardouin, Conquête 93, 1:92; Clari, Conquête 34–36, pp. 35–38. 50 Hugh of St. Pol, Epistola, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 17 (Hannover: MGH, 1861), 812; Villehardouin, Conquête 113–17, 1:116–20; Clari, Conquête 33, p. 32 and 39, p. 40.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

327

crusaders were kept isolated on the island of San Nicolò (the modern Lido).51 During the winter of 1202/3 the city of Zara was divided between the two groups, although a small war broke out between them, which convinced the leaders to separate them even further.52 Likewise at Constantinople the two groups made camp at separate locations—the Franks before the land walls and the Venetians on the harbor shore.53 During the first attack on the city in 1203 they launched completely separate assaults.54 And, of course, there was the barrier of language, which would have been significant for common crusaders without access to translators. It is well known that the leaders of the Fourth Crusade, Dandolo included, closely restricted information that was disseminated to the rank and file of the expedition. Papal letters sent to the crusade were suppressed by the leaders.55 Although Innocent subsequently demanded that his letters be published to the host, they were not.56 The excommunication of the Venetians was likewise suppressed. Only a few crusade leaders knew of it.57 Even the papal absolution of the Franks was suppressed, since the Franks and the Venetians believed that they had all been absolved months earlier by their own bishops. The crusade leaders also tried to keep the covenanted departure date from Constantinople from the common soldiers, although their representatives insisted that it be made public.58 In this atmosphere of separation and secrecy very different explanations for events not only could but did coexist. Given the agreement of the earliest Venetian and Italian sources and the internal dynamics of the crusade itself, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that Doge Dandolo and perhaps other leaders informed the Venetian crusaders that the pope had sent Alexius to them with orders to place the young man on the Byzantine throne. Dandolo’s apparent willingness to mislead his people on this matter fits precisely with his refusal to inform them of their own excommunication. In a letter to Innocent III, for example, Boniface of Montferrat reported that he had been advised—certainly by Dandolo, who is mentioned subsequently in the letter—that if the Venetians knew of their excommunication they would abandon the crusade.59 In other words, the Venetian crusaders had the same misgivings about diverting the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople as their Frankish counterparts. The solution was to invent a narrative that placed the Venetians in the comfortable position of serving the church. While the Frankish rank-and-file crusaders knew nothing of the Venetians’ excommunication or the

51 The anonymous author of the Devastatio Constantinopolitana complained that the Franks were purposely isolated on the island. See Andrea, “Devastatio,” 132; and Clari, Conquête 10, p. 9. 52 Villehardouin, Conquête 88–90, 1:88–90; Clari, Conquête 15, p. 15; Andrea, “Devastatio,” 133. 53 Villehardouin, Conquête 162, 1:160–62; Clari, Conquête 44, pp. 43–44. 54 Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 119–34. 55 Alfred J. Andrea, “Conrad of Krosigk, Bishop of Halberstadt, Crusader and Monk of Sittichenbach: His Ecclesiastical Career, 1184–1225,” Analecta Cisterciensia 43 (1987): 30–41. 56 Reg. 6, no. 101. 57 Reg. 6, no. 100. 58 Hugh of St. Pol, Epistola, MGH SS 17:812; Villehardouin, Conquête 115–17, 1:118–20. 59 Reg. 6, no. 100. On the excommunication and subsequent absolution of the Venetians see Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 145, 150–52, 167–68, and 178.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

328

Madden

papal prohibition against sailing to Constantinople, they were nonetheless fearful that the expedition would incur the pope’s condemnation. They did not, in any case, believe that the pope had commanded the diversion. Yet the interaction between the Venetians and Franks in the host was so slight that the discrepancy in narratives was irrelevant. Nothing during the subsequent course of the crusade challenged the Venetian version of events. When the papal legate lifted the excommunication of the Venetians in 1205, that, too, was kept secret, since the Venetians were unaware that they had ever labored under it. They returned home as heroes, and the narrative they brought with them fit perfectly into the larger context of Venetian history and identity. The agreement of the Translatio Symonensis, the Ravenna mosaics, and Da Canal on this point suggests that the Da Canal narrative should receive more attention than has traditionally been the case in Fourth Crusade historiography. Undoubtedly, six decades had altered and augmented the stories from which Da Canal drew. Nonetheless, the closer one examines his account, the more it seems to reveal the perspective of a Venetian crusader. It is particularly striking that Da Canal’s testimony is most fallacious when it relates the conversations and deliberations of the doge, pope, and other leaders, yet it is strikingly accurate when it describes vessels, battles, and major events. In other words, Da Canal is largely right when he reports on what a rank-and-file Venetian crusader could have seen, but he is usually wrong on those matters that the same crusader could only have heard about. In this way, the Estoires is not unlike the chronicle of Robert de Clari, a low-level French knight who wove together accurate descriptions of events that he saw with imagined dialogues and decisions of the leaders. In the case of Da Canal, however, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the most important of the inaccuracies were invented and sustained by the Venetian crusade leaders. Viewing the crusade from the deck of a ship, Da Canal accurately (if briefly) describes the departure of the crusade from Zara in the spring of 1203 and its arrival at Constantinople. There the papal legate sent a messenger into the city stating that the pope commanded the citizens to receive their rightful lord. They refused. The doge then prepared his vessels to attack the walls of Constantinople. Da Canal speaks proudly of the Venetians becoming carpenters, preparing the ships’ defenses, ladders, war machines, and shields mounted on the galleys and transports. With only minor inaccuracies, Da Canal describes the Venetian assault on the city walls. He gives the Venetians slightly more credit than they are due for the toppling of Alexius III, but this appears to be the result of a conflation of events rather than purposeful misrepresentation.60 At this point in his narrative Da Canal returns to the conversations and motivations of leaders, thus veering into gross inaccuracies. Alexius III is completely omitted from the story. Instead, his usurpation is conflated with that of Mourtzouphlus, who Da Canal reports was ruling Constantinople when the crusaders arrived. After the Venetian entry into the city, Mourtzouphlus begged the crusaders to have mercy on him and his people, promising to accept the young

60

Da Canal, Estoires 44–48, pp. 50–54.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

329

Alexius as lord and to repay double the crusaders’ expenses.61 In council Doge Dandolo asked the Frankish barons for their advice on the matter. They responded, “Sack the city and divide the money, because they [the Greeks] are traitors.” But Dandolo replied: “Lords, … we are on a crusade; therefore we must not rob anyone. We should take the money that we have spent and put the child in possession of his city and then cross the sea and give battle to the pagans, just as we have promised.” 62 The barons agreed, and so the young Alexius was released to the Greeks, who swore on the Gospels that they would accept him as their lord. When Dandolo later asked for the promised funds, Mourtzouphlus responded that he could not gather the money because the Greeks had fled the city and were scattered. He asked the crusaders to vacate Constantinople so that the citizens would return. However, no sooner had the Franks and Venetians departed then Mourtzouphlus and the Greeks rose up against the young Alexius, murdering him in his bath. When the crusaders subsequently requested their money, the Greeks refused, saying that they no longer feared them. Greatly angered, the French told the doge, “Sire, the Venetians took this city without our help, and we wish to take it without their help.” With Dandolo’s assent, the French attacked the sea walls from the ships’ scaling ladders. The battle was long and brutal with much slaughter on both sides, but in the end the French soldiers failed to capture Constantinople.63 Here again, Da Canal’s narrative conforms closely with what a Venetian crusader might infer given the evidence of his eyes but incomplete information about the dynamics driving events. The crusade was delayed at Constantinople for months, and it was known at all levels of the army that the leaders were waiting for the payment promised to them by the young man, now Alexius IV.64 Da Canal’s source, however, says nothing of the emperor’s promises. Instead, the crusaders are described as waiting for double reimbursement of their expenses. While not strictly accurate, the identification of the funds as reimbursement rather than reward is likely how a Venetian would have viewed them. When the fleet sailed from Venice in October 1203, there remained a great many expenses that had not yet been reimbursed, since the crusaders could not pay the contracted fees. Few, if any, of these expenses would have been covered by the Venetian government.65 Instead, individual ship owners, merchants, and tradesmen had absorbed

Ibid. 49, p. 54. “Et il distrent: ‘Soit derobee la vile et departis li argent, car il sont traitres.’ ‘Seignors,’ ce dist monseignor li dus, ‘nos somes de la crusee, si ne devons pas derober nului. Prenons l’argent que nos avons despendu et soit mis li enfant en saisine de sa vile; et passons la mer et soit donee la bataille as paiens, enci con nos l’avons promis’”: ibid. 49, p. 56. 63 Ibid. 50–51, p. 56. 64 See, e.g., Clari, Conquête 52, p. 54. 65 The days of wealthy Venetian banks and the famous Arsenal were still in the future. In times of danger in the twelfth century, the Venetian government had pressed its wealthiest citizens for loans. There is no evidence that it did so in 1202. It is sometimes said that the Arsenal was founded in 1104 and therefore could have been used in 1202. However, that oft-repeated date is, in fact, drawn from a commemorative plaque mounted in the Arsenal in 1825 and referenced by an engineer, Giovanni Casoni, in his history of the Arsenal of 1846. Modern studies have demonstrated that the Arsenal was likely built more than a century later to meet the needs of Venice’s maritime empire in 61 62

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

330

Madden

the costs, contributing to the crusade with the expectation of being repaid. Most, if not all, of the standard transport vessels on the crusade were private merchant ships.66 Alexius IV’s initial payments during July and August 1203, which are not mentioned by Da Canal, made good those initial losses. But the new emperor also contracted the vessels for an additional year—several months of which had already elapsed when he ceased payments in November 1203.67 Like the Frankish crusaders, the Venetians wanted their promised reward, but they were also faced with continued expenses on the fleet, in the form of upkeep and lost commercial revenue, with no additional funds to offset them. It is not surprising, then, that the details of Alexius IV’s failed promises were less important to the Venetians than their worries about the fleet. Da Canal also conflates or confuses several other events here. It was Alexius IV and his father, Isaac II, who asked the crusaders to leave Constantinople and camp across the Golden Horn.68 It was Alexius, not Mourtzouphlus, who refused to make further payments to the crusaders in November 1203.69 It was months later, on the night of February 8/9, 1204, that the newly crowned Alexius V Mourtzouphlus killed Alexius IV.70 The failed attack on Constantinople took place on April 9, 1204, and it was not a purely French attack. Indeed, it was the first time that the Franks and Venetians had fought together from the Venetian vessels.71 Assigning this assault to the French, however, allowed Da Canal—and perhaps his source—to sidestep a humiliating Venetian defeat. Da Canal devotes considerable space to dwelling on the French failure and the subsequent Venetian preparations for the final assault on April 12. Doge Dandolo magnanimously excused the French deficiencies while extolling Venetian prowess. According to Da Canal, the doge called all of the Venetians together and told them not to be surprised at the inability of the French to capture Constantinople, since they were not used to waging war on ladders mounted on ships, as the Venetians were. He reminded the Venetians of their ancestors’ victories in Tyre, Syria, the Byzantine Empire, and Dalmatia as well as their own previous victory against Constantinople. He then promised to distribute out of the collected booty of Constantinople one thousand hyperpers to the first man to plant the standard of St. Mark on the wall of the city, eight hundred to the second man who made it onto the high wall, five hundred to the third, three hundred to the fourth, two hundred to the fifth, and one hundred to all the rest who made it. He reminded them of the support of Jesus Christ and St. Mark, who had guided and helped their ancestors and kinsmen and would ever do so.

the wake of the Fourth Crusade. See, e.g., Giorgio Bellavitis, L’Arsenale di Venezia: Storia di una grande strutture urbane (Venice: Marsilio, 1983), 21–36; and Ennio Concina, L’Arsenale della Repubblica di Venezia (Milan: Electa, 1984), 9–21. 66 Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 129–31. 67 Villehardouin, Conquête 193–95, 1:196–200; Clari, Conquête 56, p. 56. 68 Reg. 7, no. 152; Villehardouin, Conquête 191, 1:195; Clari, Conquête 55, pp. 55–56; Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria, 142. 69 Villehardouin, Conquête 215–16, 2:14; Clari, Conquête 59, pp. 58–59. 70 Choniates, Historia, 564; Villehardouin, Conquête 223, 2:22; Clari, Conquête 62, p. 61. 71 Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 177–79.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

331

With their protection, the doge promised, they would take Constantinople and become rich. With that, the Venetians got to work preparing their vessels for the assault the next day.72 Da Canal reports that Dandolo then went over to the French camp, where he found the leaders dejected by their failure to capture Constantinople. Their mood changed quickly, though, when the doge assured them that by the very next evening the city would no longer be in Greek hands. Early that morning, however, the Greeks sent a group of fire ships against the fleet. The Venetian sailors expertly moved their vessels out of danger. Shortly thereafter Dandolo ordered his men to attack the Virgiot Tower, a strong point in the defenses. When the Venetians asked why they should do so, he responded that if the Greeks saw it fall they would despair and flee. The Venetians did as they were commanded and after much fighting captured the tower, from which they flew the standard of St. Mark. As Dandolo predicted, the Greeks fled the remaining fortifications, allowing the Venetians to enter the city and open the gates for the Frankish crusaders to enter. Thus the city was taken. Mourtzouphlus was captured and executed by being thrown from the top of a high column.73 Here again, Da Canal’s testimony is remarkably accurate when describing events that a Venetian crusader could have witnessed. It even correctly characterizes the mood of the Franks after the failed attack of April 9. As Villehardouin tells us, “The men of the army were greatly dismayed because of their misfortune that day.”74 Unlike Villehardouin or any other contemporary source, though, Da Canal provides some insight into Dandolo’s encouragement of his own people before the final assault. While the speech he recounts is no transcript, its invocation of the protection of Christ and St. Mark rings true. Similarly, Dandolo’s scheme to encourage warriors fighting forty feet or more above the ground is the sort of detail that a returning Venetian crusader would remember. Frankish sources confirm that the Venetians were zealous about planting the standard of St. Mark on the walls of Constantinople. According to Villehardouin, the banner of the winged lion was hoisted up on one of the towers during the attack of July 17, even while the battle for the wall still raged.75 Da Canal’s source also correctly notes that Dandolo traveled to the Frankish camp to offer encouragement. That meeting took place in a church during the early evening of April 9, 1204. With no information about the meeting, the Venetian crusaders would naturally assume that the doge informed the Franks that the men of the lagoon would succeed where the previous assault had failed. In truth, the situation was more complex. Dandolo had to contend with various groups who insisted on a different strategy or on simply leaving Constantinople altogether. Villehardouin, who was there, tells us that the doge successfully convinced them to try another assault on the same portion of the harbor walls on April 12, after the Venetians had an opportunity to repair their vessels.76 Da Canal, Estoires 51, pp. 56–58. Ibid. 52–54, pp. 58–60. 74 Villehardouin, Conquête 239, 2:40; Clari, Conquête 59, pp. 58–59. 75 Villehardouin, Conquête 174, 1:176. 76 Ibid. 239–40, 2:40–42. 72 73

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

332

Madden

Like the Historia ducum Veneticorum, Da Canal places the Byzantine fireship attack directly before the final attack on the city, almost as if there was a causal link between the two. The conflation of these events, therefore, was likely an early feature of the Venetian narrative. The attack of the fire ships during the nights of December 20, 1203, and January 1, 1204, were spectacular events, which merited descriptions in most contemporary accounts. Villehardouin, who was an eyewitness, remarked, “The flames burned so high that it seemed as if the whole world was on fire.” This strategy was particularly harmful to the Venetians, who not only relied on their vessels but owned them. Preserving the fleet from this threat was no easy task. According to Villehardouin: “Geoffrey, the marshal of Champagne, who dictates this work, is your faithful witness that no people ever defended themselves more effectively at sea than did those Venetians. They leapt into galleys and into barges and nefs, took hold of the burning vessels using grappling irons and by sheer force dragged them out of their harbor towards the enemy; they released the boats into the current and sent them, ablaze, down the straits.”77 Because Venetian lives and property were specifically targeted in this attack, Venetians viewed the conquest of Constantinople as a just response and, thereby, linked the two events. The error was not, in any case, confined to Venetian sources. In his letter to Innocent III, Baldwin of Flanders also placed the fire-ship attack after the coronation of Mourtzouphlus and before the final assault.78 Da Canal is the only source to describe the attack focusing on the Virgiot Tower of the sea walls. This was the Venetian name for a tower near the Petrion Gate, which was itself close to the monastery of Christ Evergetes.79 The Chronicle of Novgorod, which was based on the recollections of an unknown eyewitness, confirms that this was the location of the attack.80 As Da Canal’s source notes, this was a strong point along the fortifications. Indeed, it was the only point where a double wall protected the gate.81 Oddly, Da Canal does not record that Dandolo ordered the large transport vessels to be bound together two by two so as to concentrate more bridges and ladders on a given tower. According to Villehardouin, after a morning of fierce fighting, two of the largest vessels, the Paradise and the Pilgrim, crashed against a tower. The first across was a Venetian. One can imagine him bearing the standard of St. Mark, envisioning his reward of a thousand

77 Ibid. 218; translation from Geoffrey de Villehardouin, “The Conquest of Constantinople,” in Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. Caroline Smith (New York: Penguin, 2008), 58. 78 Reg. 7, no. 152. Benjamin Hendrickx and Corinna Matzukis, “Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlus: His Life, Reign, and Death (?–1205),” Hellenika 31 (1979): 108–32 argue that Baldwin (and thereby Da Canal) was correct and that therefore there were three separate fire-ship attacks. 79 See, e.g., TTh. 2:48, no. 179. 80 The Chronicle of Novgorod (1016–1471), trans. Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes, Camden Third Series 25 (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1914), 46. 81 Bryon C.P. Tsangadas, The Fortifications and Defense of Constantinople, East European Monographs 71 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 19; Raymond Janin, Constantinople byzantine: Développement urbain et répertoire topographique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1964), 262–63; Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls: Byzantion–Konstantinupolis–Istanbul bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Wasmuth, 1977), 287 and 290.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

333

hyperpers. Unfortunately, the waves tossed the vessels back, and the crusader— later Venetian chronicles named him Pietro Alberti—was left alone against the Byzantine defenders. They quickly dispatched him. Later the ships were again able to bring their bridges to the tower, and Frankish soldiers captured it. Rather than the winged lion, the banners of the bishops of Soissons and Troyes were raised above the tower. Another tower was taken by a Venetian and a French knight named Andrew Dureboise.82 However, the Greeks held firm, refusing to give up the remaining towers. On the ground below, Peter of Amiens and a party of about ten knights and sixty sergeants managed to pick their way through a walled gate, enter the city, and put the defenders in the area to flight.83 It was these French warriors, and not the Venetians, who opened the city gates. Yet this was information that even Villehardouin did not possess. Instead, it is preserved in the single manuscript of Robert de Clari, who was among the warriors who broke through the gate, and in the Greek history of Nicetas Choniates. A Venetian crusader in the fray would have known only that the Venetians had fought a hard battle and that they were among the first to scramble onto the walls. Although he would have no direct knowledge as to how the city gates were opened, he would naturally favor a narrative that gave full credit to his countrymen. Mourtzouphlus was captured by the crusaders, just as Da Canal maintains, however not immediately after the conquest. Instead, the emperor fled the city to the court of the emperor-in-exile (and Mourtzouphlus’s father-in-law), Alexius III. To rid himself of a potential rival, Alexius III blinded Mourtzouphlus.84 The crusaders subsequently captured Mourtzouphlus and returned him to Constantinople where he stood trial in November 1204, seven months after the conquest.85 Condemned to death, he was led to the Forum Tauri and up the spiral staircase of the Column of Theodosius, a no-longer-extant structure modeled on the columns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan in Rome. From there Mourtzouphlus was forced to leap to his death more than one hundred feet below.86 The execution must have been well attended because it is remarked upon by several contemporary sources. The running joke was, “for a high man, high justice.” 87 Indeed, Robert de Clari attributed the quip to Doge Dandolo himself.88 Da Canal’s narrative of the Fourth Crusade concludes with the election of the new emperor and the partition of the empire. It maintains that the French barons told the doge, “Sire, take the empire, which you have well earned.”89 Dandolo refused, saying that he would be pleased to have one of them as emperor. After the election of Baldwin of Flanders, Dandolo received three-eighths of the empire and the patriarchate of Constantinople. The pope confirmed this division, saying that since the empire was without an heir the crusaders should divide it among themselves. Da Canal concludes by giving Enrico Dandolo full credit for Villehardouin, Conquête 242, 2:42–44. Clari, Conquête 75–76, pp. 75–76; Choniates, Historia, 569–70. 84 Villehardouin, Conquête 306, 2:114; Clari, Conquête 108, p. 103. 85 Hendrickx and Matzukis, “Alexius V,” p. 130 n. 1. 86 Choniates, Historia, 608–9; Villehardouin, Conquête 306, 2:114; Clari, Conquête 109, pp. 103–4. 87 Villehardouin, Conquête 307, 2:116; Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria, 165. 88 Clari, Conquête 109, p. 104. 89 “Sire, prenés l’enpire, que vos l’avés bien deservi”: Da Canal, Estoires 55, p. 60. 82 83

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

334

Madden

the conquest of Constantinople. Much as the doge maintained in his letter to the pope, Da Canal reports that “this he did in the service of Holy Church.” 90 There is no doubt that Venetians long believed that Baldwin of Flanders became emperor only after Enrico Dandolo declined the honor. Antonio Carile has traced this enduring story through the Venetian chronicle tradition of subsequent centuries, so there is no need to do so here.91 Frankish sources, however, refer only to Baldwin of Flanders and Boniface of Montferrat as imperial contenders. But this version itself implies that Dandolo had removed himself from consideration. Since six of the twelve imperial electors were Venetians, the doge needed only one Frankish vote to win the throne. Baldwin and Boniface competed fiercely to place their partisans among the six Frankish electors—something comprehensible only if the Venetian electors were uncommitted to their doge. Although the barons certainly did not offer the crown to Dandolo, the dynamics of the election were such that he could have had it if he wished. He must, therefore, have declined it, just as Da Canal reports.92 Da Canal finishes his Fourth Crusade narrative where he began: with Venetian obedience to the papacy. Innocent III, he insists, confirmed the partition of the Byzantine Empire because Alexius IV, whom he had sent to Constantinople, died without an heir. In truth, the pope refused to confirm the Pact of March because it treated ecclesiastical property in Constantinople as spoils of war and because its provision for amendment allowed laymen to invoke excommunication at will. He also refused to confirm Venetian control of the patriarchate of Constantinople, which, according to the pact, was to go to a Venetian because a Frank was elected emperor. Enrico Dandolo appointed Venetian canons to Hagia Sophia, who in turn elected Thomas Morosini as patriarch. Innocent declared the canons and the election invalid.93 All of this papal opposition, however, would have gone unnoticed by a common Venetian crusader. In June 1204 two high-profile delegations of Venetians went to Rome to seek confirmation of the partition and patriarchal election. One was led by Andrea da Molin and the doge’s nephew, Leonardo Navigaioso.94 The other consisted of Venetian churchmen from the cathedral chapter at Hagia Sophia.95 Although the pope refused their requests, that refusal had no visible effect on conditions in Constantinople. The city was divided among the emperor, Franks, and Venetians just as the Pact of March had stipulated and with no special provision for ecclesiastical properties. As for the patriarchal election, although Innocent invalidated it, he nonetheless appointed Thomas Morosini on his own authority.96 In short, there was every reason for the Venetian crusaders in Constantinople to believe that the pope had “… et ce fist il au servise de sainte Yglise”: ibid. 55, p. 62. Carile, Cronachistica, esp. 343, 363, 401, 411, 431, 466, and 479. 92 For a full discussion of this problem, with complete references, see Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 296 n. 78; and Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 175–78. 93 Reg. 7, no. 206. 94 Reg. 7, no. 202. 95 Reg. 7, no. 203. 96 Ibid. See also Innocent’s letters to Vice-Doge Ranieri Dandolo of February 8, 1205 (TTh. 1:534– 38, no. 134), and March 30, 1205 (TTh. 1:538–39, no. 135), neither of which appears in the papal register. In the latter, Innocent tells Ranieri that he appointed Thomas Morosini “to please your father.” 90 91

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

335

confirmed everything. And why should they not? Despite great hardship and the risk of financial ruin, the Venetian crusaders had willingly obeyed the pope throughout the expedition—or so they believed. Although they were misled, they nonetheless saw their sacrifices—for sacrifices they were—as service to Holy Church. That is the story, in thousands of iterations formed out of the perspectives of thousands of sailors and marines, that the Venetians brought home with them. Because Da Canal’s chronicle survives in only one Old French manuscript, it is difficult to see how it could have shaped the evolving memory of the Fourth Crusade among medieval Venetians. Instead, it serves as a window, however cloudy, onto the Venetian perspective of an event that was passing out of living memory. The loss of the generation that witnessed the Fourth Crusade allowed the Venetian narrative, which remained unrecorded in any widely distributed form, to mutate and break apart into diverse strands. This trend must have been accelerated by the increasing availability of Frankish accounts of the crusade. By the late thirteenth century, manuscripts of the chronicle of Villehardouin were found across Europe.97 The various forms of the continuation of William of Tyre known as the Eracles or the Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le tresorier were even more widespread and, despite a few errors, provide a roughly accurate description of the events of the Fourth Crusade.98 Although a complete manuscript of Villehardouin arrived in Venice to great fanfare in 1541, we should not conclude that the chronicle was unknown to Venetians before that.99 Indeed, Faral identified an additional manuscript of Villehardouin in Venice that could predate 1541.100 Furthermore, even a cursory examination of Fourth Crusade narratives in Venetian chronicles written after Da Canal reveals clear contamination from Frankish chronicles. Contamination is evident, for example, in the so-called Chronicle of Marco, a Latin work written in Venice in 1292. The original manuscript survives as the lone witness.101 The chronicle tells the story of the young Alexius Angelus fleeing Constantinople to the safety of the court of Philip of Swabia. Philip sent

Edmond Faral, “Pour l’établissement du texte de Villehardouin,” Romania 64 (1938): 288–312. John H. Pryor, “The Eracles and William of Tyre: An Interim Report,” in The Horns of Hattin: Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, Jerusalem and Haifa, 2–6 July 1987, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1992), 270–93; Peter W. Edbury, “The Lyon Eracles and the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre,” in Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and Rudolf Hiestand (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997), 139– 53; Helen Nicholson, s.v. “Eracles,” in The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan V. Murray (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006). 99 Serban Marin, “A Humanist Vision regarding the Fourth Crusade and the State of the Assenides: The Chronicle of Paul Ramusio (Paulus Rhamnusius),” Annuario 2 (2000): 51–120, at 68–69. Fasoli, “Cronique des Veneciens,” 57 argues that “la cronaca del Villehardouin arrivò a Venezia solamente nel 1541.” 100 Faral, “Pour l’établissement du texte.” 101 The manuscript—Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (henceforth cited as BNMV), MS cl. It., XI 124 (= 6802)—has placement errors, which were meant to be corrected in a subsequent copy. The description of the Fourth Crusade is found at fol. 41r–v, incorrectly under the year 1172. The crusade is then addressed again, with a reference to the error, at fol. 43r, under the year 1203. This 97 98

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

336

Madden

Alexius directly to Enrico Dandolo and the crusade leaders: “And because the aforesaid counts did not have all the necessary things for their journey, they accepted the boy’s offer of so much gold and silver if they brought him to Constantinople.” 102 After celebrating Easter at Zara, the crusaders sailed to Constantinople, where Alexius III fled and the young Alexius was crowned. After the coronation, however, Alexius IV refused to pay the crusaders. Then Mourtzouphlus rose up, killed Alexius, and took the throne for himself. Dandolo and the barons subsequently decided to capture Constantinople.103 There is nothing in the Chronicle of Marco’s description that could not have been drawn from Villehardouin. It correctly records that the young Alexius fled to Philip of Swabia and then promised the crusaders a great deal of money for their support at Constantinople. It accurately records that the fleet departed Zara immediately after Easter. These details, all found in Villehardouin, are absent in Da Canal. The Chronicle of Marco also lacks elements found in previous Venetian narratives. It says nothing of the fire-ship attack, which merits special attention in Da Canal and the Historia ducum Veneticorum. It furthermore omits all reference to the pope. It is Philip of Swabia who sends Alexius to the crusaders, not Innocent III, as the Translatio Symonensis, the Ravenna mosaics, and Da Canal assert. This new narrative element may have been drawn directly from Villehardouin, although it was common knowledge among the Frankish crusaders and thus appears in numerous accounts.104 But the Chronicle of Marco’s willingness to part with a prominent role for the pope may also have been influenced by current events. Eight years before the Chronicle of Marco’s writing, the Great Council in Venice declined to join a crusade against the kingdom of Aragon on behalf of Charles of Anjou. Pope Martin IV responded to the decision angrily, placing Venice under interdict. The pope justified his action on the grounds that Venice had earlier committed to crusading with Charles. Yet the objective of the crusade that was planned in 1281 was the restoration of Constantinople to Latin rule. This new crusade was not only headed in the wrong direction but aimed against a man whose principal crime was being elected king by the Sicilians after the revolt of the Vespers. Although Martin’s successor, Honorius IV, lifted the ill-considered interdict in 1286, the memory of it and the questions that it raised about obedience to the pope in the matter of crusading were still fresh in Venetian minds when the Chronicle of Marco was composed.105 It is beyond the scope of this essay to wade too deeply into the wide and turbulent waters of Venetian chronicle writing in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The various Fourth Crusade narratives, both written and oral,

error has gone unnoticed in modern scholarship, leading even Carile to believe that the chronicle’s description of the crusade was much more abbreviated than it is. See Carile, Cronachistica, 188. 102 BNMV cl. It., XI 124 (= 6802), fol. 41r. 103 Ibid., fol. 41r–v. 104 Villehardouin, Conquête 91, 1:90; Clari, Conquête 17, p. 16; Andrea, “Devastatio,” 133; Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium, ed. Weiland, 118. 105 Francis Cotterell Hodgson, Venice in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: A Sketch of Venetian History from the Conquest of Constantinople to the Accession of Michele Steno, A.D. 1204– 1400 (London: G. Allen & Sons, 1910), 180–81.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

337

that flowed into the busy commercial city naturally diluted the original stories brought back by Venetian crusaders. Carile’s thorough study on the partition of the Byzantine Empire in the Venetian chronicle tradition was the first attempt to follow the twists and turns of these narratives.106 More recently, Serban Marin has examined several other strands, such as the identification of non-Venetians in late Fourth Crusade narratives.107 Much work remains to be done. Although historians have rightly rejected these later chronicles as a source for the Fourth Crusade itself, they can, nonetheless, provide a powerful tool with which to chart the complex landscape of late-medieval and early modern Venetian civic identity as seen through the lens of constructed memories. For the purposes of this essay, though, it is important only to note that Venetian chroniclers in the fourteenth century and beyond were drawing on a much richer collection of sources for the Fourth Crusade than their predecessors in the thirteenth century. For example, the famous Chronica per extensum descripta by the humanist doge Andrea Dandolo (1343–54) accurately reports that the young Alexius went to Zara with the recommendation of Philip of Swabia and correctly describes Alexius’s offer to the crusaders as one of supplies, church unification, and a great deal of money.108 The amount of money, however, posed a problem for Andrea Dandolo. He initially recorded that the Venetians were offered thirty thousand silver marks, which, he claimed, was the amount still owed to them under the reparations agreement with Byzantium for the latter’s seizure of Venetian property and people in 1171. For their part, the French were offered sufficient funds to settle their debt with the Venetians.109 Later in his account, though, Andrea Dandolo records that after Alexius IV’s coronation he paid the French in full but gave nothing at all to the Venetians, “as is contained in their [the Venetians’] history.” He goes on, “However, the history of the French tells of two hundred thousand marks given willingly to the French and the Venetians.” 110 This is a remarkable statement—the first reference in a Venetian chronicle to a foreign version of the crusade. The French history that Andrea Dandolo references is almost certainly that of Villehardouin, since it was the only one available at that time to record the correct figure of two hundred thousand silver marks.111 Dandolo seems, however, either to have misread Villehardouin’s Carile, Cronachistica. Serban Marin, “Venetian and Non-Venetian Crusaders in the Fourth Crusade, according to the Venetian Chronicles’ Tradition,” Annuario 4 (2002): 111–71. See also Serban Marin, “The Venetian ‘Empire’ in the East: The Imperial Elections in Constantinople in 1204 in the Venetian Chronicles’ Representation,” Annuario 5 (2003): 185–245; Serban Marin, “Dominus quartae partis et dimidiae totius imperii Romaniae: The Fourth Crusade and the Dogal Title in the Venetian Chronicles’ Representation,” Quaderni della Casa Romena di Venezia 3 (2004): 119–50. 108 Doge Andrea Dandolo was a cousin four times removed of Doge Enrico Dandolo. See Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 202. On the Chronica see H. Simonsfeld, “Andrea Dandolo e le sue opere storiche,” Archivio veneto 14 (1877): 49–149. 109 Dandolo, Chronica, 277. 110 “… ut in eorum continetur ystoria; Francorum tamen ystoria narat CCm marcharum data comiter Francis et Venetis”: ibid., 278–79. 111 Robert of Auxerre records that Alexius paid the two hundred thousand marks in full to the crusaders: Chronicon, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SS 26 (Hannover: MGH, 1882), 265–66. However, Robert’s chronicle is known to have existed in only one copy that did not leave his monastery, 106 107

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

338

Madden

account or to have known of its assertion secondhand, since it does not state that the promised funds were paid in full. The remainder of Andrea Dandolo’s account of the crusade provides further evidence of familiarity with Villehardouin. Its description of the first conquest of Constantinople in 1203 follows that of the marshal of Champagne, describing the Frankish attacks on the land walls and the sallying forth of a large Byzantine force. Like Villehardouin, Andrea Dandolo praises Enrico Dandolo’s bravery in battle as the Venetians scrambled over the walls and captured the city. Like previous Venetian accounts, however, Dandolo reports that the Venetians took the city themselves. He correctly notes that the newly crowned Alexius IV and his father, Isaac II, confirmed their commitment to aid the Holy Land and to place the Byzantine Church under obedience to Rome. He briefly describes the murder of Alexius IV and the elevation of Mourtzouphlus, followed by a long description of the Pact of March likely drawn from the document itself. When describing the second conquest of Constantinople, Dandolo correctly records that the Paradise and the Pilgrim were tied together and extended their ladders against the walls, allowing the attackers to enter the city.112 Villehardouin was the only available contemporary source to record the names of the two vessels and the fact that they were lashed together.113 Andrea Dandolo ends his account with the meeting of the twelve electors, recounting the well-established Venetian tradition that the French electors nominated Enrico Dandolo to be emperor but the Venetians declined, instead nominating Baldwin of Flanders.114 Andrea Dandolo’s influential chronicle makes it plain that, in one form or another, Villehardouin’s narrative of the Fourth Crusade had arrived in Venice by the mid-fourteenth century and was actively altering Venetian perspectives on the event. Yet it by no means replaced them. Venetian chroniclers continued to incorporate shifting local traditions and were not above inventing new ones. The arrival of Villehardouin’s memoirs did not stabilize Venetian memory of the Fourth Crusade but rather contributed to its diversity. For example, Antonio Morosini’s fourteenth-century chronicle adopted some information drawn ultimately from Villehardouin. Morosini correctly recorded that the young Alexius was recommended to the crusaders by Philip of Swabia and that he promised to pay two hundred thousand silver marks in return for their assistance.115 Nevertheless, Morosini’s account of the crusade is otherwise a jumble of fact and fiction. It accurately reports that the Venetians and French successfully installed Alexius in

so it is difficult to see how Dandolo could have had access to it. The Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard incorrectly states that Baldwin of Flanders, Boniface of Montferrat, and Enrico Dandolo were each offered one hundred thousand marks; Hugh of St. Pol was to receive fifty thousand marks: Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. Louis de Mas Latrie (Paris: V. Jules Renouard, 1871), 364. 112 Dandolo, Chronica, 278–79. 113 Villehardouin, Conquête 242, 2:45. In his letter to Innocent III, Baldwin of Flanders also identified the two vessels, but this letter would not have been available to Andrea Dandolo: Reg. 7, no. 152 (= TTh. 1:506). 114 Dandolo, Chronica, 279. 115 Michele Pietro Ghezzo, John R. Melville-Jones, and Andrea Rizzi, eds., The Morosini Codex, Archivio del litorale adriatico 3 (Padua: Unipress, 1999), 6.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

339

Constantinople and received a portion of their reward. Yet Morosini maintains that, before receiving full payment, the Venetians suggested that the crusaders continue their voyage to the Holy Land. As they left Constantinople, Alexius IV promised, “On your return, may it please you to visit these regions, and I will be ready to complete the payment of what I should give you.” The crusaders then sailed to the East “doing many marvelous and wonderful deeds against the infidels, which it will take too long to relate in full.” After completing their vows, the crusaders returned to Constantinople, where they found that Mourtzouphlus had killed Alexius IV and seized the throne. Dandolo and the Venetians, therefore, took the city and the empire from the unworthy Greeks.116 Thus by a clever mechanism Morosini managed to extract the conquest of Constantinople from the Fourth Crusade, setting it instead within the sphere of Venetian, not crusade, history. The introduction of foreign narratives of the Fourth Crusade into the fourteenth-century Venetian memory of the event did not, however, completely erase the earlier tradition that the pope had promoted the diversion to Constantinople. Although Andrea Dandolo and Antonio Morosini omitted the pope from their accounts, at least two other fourteenth-century chronicles— the anonymous Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1356 and the Cronaca veneta attributed to Enrico Dandolo (not the doge)—included Innocent as a proponent of the cause of Alexius Angelus.117 Just as importantly, Venetian chronicles in the fourteenth century continued to say nothing of the excommunication of the Venetians during the crusade. This omission suggests that the Chronique d’Ernoul had little or no exposure in Venice since it reports the excommunication of the crusaders.118 Villehardouin, on the other hand, refers to a delegation to the pope seeking forgiveness for the conquest of Zara but is silent on the matter of excommunication.119 Other sources for the excommunication—Robert de Clari, Gunther of Pairis, and the papal register—were unavailable in late-medieval Venice. The narrative thread of papal support for the crusade’s diversion to Constantinople returned to Venetian chronicles with vigor in the fifteenth century. In an excellent study, Marin has identified twelve Venetian chronicles from the fifteenth century that report papal support for the crusade’s plan to place Alexius on the Byzantine throne.120 Thus, the story that the Venetian crusaders had been

Ibid., 8–9. Both are unpublished: Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1356, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 2543 (= 12435), fol. 46v; Enrico Dandolo, Cronaca veneta, BNMV, MS cl. It., VI 102 (= 8142), fol. 39v. 118 Chronique d’Ernoul, 351. 119 Villehardouin, Conquête 105–6, 1:104–6. 120 They are Cronaca della città di Venezia dalla sua fondazione fino all’anno 1400, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 1577 (= 7973), pp. 257–58; Cronaca di Venezia, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 559 (= 7888), fol. 44r; Antonio Donà, Cronaca veneta dall’anno 687 al 1479, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 10 (= 8607), fol. 30r; Cronaca veniera, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 791 (= 7589), fol. 68r; Cronaca veneta dall origine della città sino all’anno 1478, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 798 (= 7486), fol. 21v; Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1432, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 2560 (= 12452), fol. 68r–v; Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1441, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 2563 (= 12455), fol. 11r; Cronaca dell’origine di Venezia sino all’anno 1442, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 550 (= 8496), fol. 72r; Gasparo Zancaruolo, Cronaca veneta, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 116 117

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

340

Madden

told—the story recorded by the Translatio Symonensis in 1205, the mosaic artist in Ravenna in 1213, and Martin Da Canal in 1267—remained, in one form or another, persistently vibrant in the fifteenth century. It survived because it was not directly contradicted by Villehardouin or any other potentially available nonVenetian source and because it complemented an established civic identity that prized obedience to Rome.121 Despite its longevity, the fact that many Venetian chroniclers from the late thirteenth century onward omitted the narrative of papal support for the crusade’s diversion suggests that they either questioned or outright rejected it. The willingness of other chroniclers to include this narrative suggests a contested space within Venetian historical memory. This, and the numerous other strands of contradictory narrative regarding the Fourth Crusade in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venice, must have posed a problem when the Great Council chamber was restored after the fire of 1577. Which memory of the crusade should be privileged and which ignored? The problem was made more acute with the formal presentation to the Council of Ten of a manuscript of Villehardouin that was brought from the court of Charles V in Brussels. The Ten commissioned Paolo Ramusio to translate Villehardouin into Latin, but the humanist scholar did much more than that.122 Instead, he produced a new critical history of the Fourth Crusade based not only on Villehardouin but also on a long list of other Byzantine, Venetian, and Continental sources.123 While not without its errors, Ramusio’s De bello Constantinopolitano was the most accurate description of the crusade produced to date. It describes the diversion of the crusade in support of Alexius Angelus as an act of charity and righteousness that would benefit Christendom, but not as a papal project.124 Although it says nothing of the excommunication of the crusaders, this was not an intentional omission since that detail was left out in the sources on which Ramusio relied. The learned treatise was presented to the Ten in September 1572, but it remained unpublished in 1577, when fire destroyed the Great Council chamber.125 It is not unreasonable to assume, however, that it may have been made available to the members of the government’s restoration committee. The extant cycle of paintings that depict the Fourth Crusade in the Great Council chamber consists of eight scenes, seven of which were executed between

1274 (= 9274), fol. 190v; Cronaca veneta dal principio della città fino al 1450, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 1586 (= 9611), fol. 35v; Marcantonio Erizzo, Cronaca veneta, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 56 (= 8636), fols. 105v–106r; and Marino Sanudo, “Vitae ducum Venetorum,” in Rerum Italicarum scriptores, ed. Lodovico Antonio Muratori (Milan: Ex typographia Societatis Palatina, 1733), 22, col. 529. See Marin, “Venetian and Non-Venetian Crusaders,” 142. 121 Thomas F. Madden, “Venice, the Papacy, and the Crusades before 1204,” in The Medieval Crusade, ed. Susan J. Ridyard, Sewanee Medieval Studies 15 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), 85– 95; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 101–19. 122 Marin, “Ramusio,” 66–72. 123 An alphabetical list of twenty-seven sources appears on the eighth page of the unnumbered prefatory material: Paolo Ramusio, De bello Costantinopolitano et imperatoribus Comnenis per Gallos et Venetos restitutis historia Pauli Ramnusii (Venice: apud Marc. Ant. Brogiolum, 1634). 124 Ibid., 33–35. 125 The Latin version was published in 1609 and then again in 1634: Marin, “Ramusio,” 72.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

341

1578 and 1582: The Doge Taking the Cross by Giovanni Leclerc (completed in 1620), The Conquest of Zara by Andrea Vicentino, The Surrender of Zara by Domenico Tintoretto, The Petition of Alexius by Vicentino, The Storming of the Walls of Constantinople by Jacopo Palma il Giovane, The Conquest of Constantinople by Tintoretto, The Election of the Emperor by Vicentino, and Dandolo Crowning Baldwin as Emperor by Vicentino.126 All of these paintings have something to say about the Venetian memory of the Fourth Crusade. However, it is with the fourth painting in the cycle that the artist, Vicentino, was forced to deal with the question of the diversion of the Fourth Crusade (Fig. 7). In the background of this work the Venetian fleet can be seen preparing for its departure from Zara. At its center is the young Alexius in the act of petitioning Doge Dandolo to assist him at Constantinople. Dandolo is surrounded by crusader barons in various costume; the one to the right of the doge wears a crusader’s cross on his breast. Directly behind Alexius at the foot of the stairs is a richly dressed man clutching a book of some sort. The focal point of this scene is particularly interesting. All eyes—including those of the doge and the prince—are fixed on a piece of paper or parchment, held jointly by Dandolo and Alexius, which is addressed to the doge (Fig. 8).127 Art historians have long puzzled over this item, which is not part of the historical event.128 Given the testimony of the Ravenna mosaic and Da Canal, as well as the subsequent narrative strand that asserted a papal endorsement of Alexius’s claim to the throne, it is tempting to see here the counterpart to the 1213 floor mosaic of San Giovanni Evangelista (Fig. 6): the delivery of Innocent III’s letter to the crusaders. The richly dressed figure behind Alexius could be (and has been) interpreted as the papal legate holding a prayer book. The extraordinary attention and reverence the page evokes from the onlookers also suggest a papal letter of endorsement. Yet this identification is not without its own problems. The program for the decoration of the restored rooms was principally the product of a committee composed of the learned Florentine monk Girolamo Bardi and two members of the Great Council.129 In 1587 Bardi wrote a short work describing the duties of the 126 Giulio Lorenzetti, Venezia e il suo estuario: Guida storico-artistica (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1956), 273. 127 The words on the leaf are small and partially covered by hands. The most likely construction of the full address is “Al Ser[enissimo] Princ[ipe] di Vene[zia]” and the location “Zara.” My thanks to Philip Gavitt for suggesting this form. 128 Wolfgang Wolters, for example, has suggested that it was meant to refer to the treaty made between Alexius and the crusaders. There is no evidence that such a treaty existed, nor do Venetian chronicles suggest that it did. A treaty, furthermore, would likely be depicted with the seals of the participants attached, rather than as a simple page. In any case, Wolters’s description of the crusade is generally problematic: throughout he refers to the doge as “Andrea Dandolo”: Wolfgang Wolters, Der Bilderschmuck des Dogenpalastes: Untersuchungen zur Selbstdarstellung der Republik Venedig im 16. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983), 182–88. Umberto Franzoi describes the leaf as a letter from Isaac II, imprisoned in Constantinople, requesting the crusaders’ aid; but this, too, is neither historical nor a feature of Venetian tradition: Umberto Franzoi, Storia e leggenda del Palazzo Ducale di Venezia (Verona: Storti, 1982), 255 and 257. 129 Juergen Schulz, Venetian Painted Ceilings of the Renaissance, California Studies in the History of Art 9 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 109.

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade

343

Fig. 7 (left). Andrea Vicentino, The Conquest of Zara. Oil on canvas. Palazzo Ducale, Venice. Fig. 8 (above). Detail of Fig. 7. (Photograph: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y. Available in color in the online edition of this article.)

committee and the historical background of the new paintings.130 According to Bardi, “And in the third space, which is between the balcony and the second window, was executed by Jacopo Tintoretto the departure from Zara of Alexius, the young son of Isaac Comnenus, emperor of Constantinople, an event that is read in Villehardouin in this manner.”131 What follows is a brief description of Alexius’s flight from Constantinople and refuge with Philip of Swabia. Unable to assist him because of his war with Otto of Brunswick, Philip sent Alexius to the crusade barons at Zara with “letters of recommendation.” 132 Unlike the other paintings in the series, Bardi makes it clear that this one is drawn from Villehardouin. Yet Villehardouin’s account includes no letters of recommendation from Philip, which

Bardi, Dichiaratione, fols. 1r–2v. “Et nel terzo vano, che è tra il verone, et la seconda finestra, è stato rappresentato da Iacopo Tintoretto l’andata di Zara di Alessio, figliuolo d’Isaccio Comneno Imperadore di Costantinopoli, accaduta per quello, che se ne legge nel Villarduino in questo modo”: ibid., fol. 41r. 132 Ibid., fol. 41v. 130 131

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)

344

Madden

Doge Dandolo (who was blind) could not have read in any case. Villehardouin also does not describe Alexius as the son of Isaac Comnenus but, accurately, as the son of Isaac II Angelus. The fact that Bardi attributes the work to Jacopo Tintoretto, who was commissioned to produce the paintings but died before doing so, suggests that Bardi was reporting on the original plan for the artistic program rather than its final execution. Indeed, his description suggests that he never saw the completed project. Despite those problems, as a member of the committee Bardi clearly intended that the painting include letters of recommendation from Philip of Swabia. But the artist, Vicentino, leaves the identification of the depicted document ambiguous. With only a simple address visible, the viewer is free to project any narrative onto the manuscript. The richly dressed figure behind Alexius could serve just as well for a German ambassador as a papal legate. In short, Vicentino appears to have struck a middle course between two competing memories of the diversion of the Fourth Crusade, producing a work that could accommodate both. It was a scene that all members of the Great Council could view with approval for it evoked both shared and contested memories without rejection or privilege. By the sixteenth century, Venetian memory of the Fourth Crusade had become a body of complex, multilayered strata of competing narratives.133 That was not true in 1205. When Walframo of Gemona returned home (if he returned home), he would have told Palmera a simple story in which the imperatives and ambiguities that drove the troubled Fourth Crusade were transformed into a clear triumph of good over evil. Some of that story was untrue, but Walframo would have believed it nonetheless. Over subsequent centuries that narrative would be challenged but never completely abandoned by Venetians. Driven by a desire to hold together a fracturing crusade, Enrico Dandolo, and perhaps other leaders, fashioned a narrative that informed not only the perceptions of Venetian crusaders during the expedition but those of generations of Venetians afterward. 133 Indeed, it would even be turned into an epic or “heroic” poem—a Venetian Aeneid of sorts—by Lucrezia Marinella. It was published in 1635 under the title L’Enrico overo Bisanzio acquistato. In this tale Dandolo is a valiant character of virtue and wisdom. Interestingly, Marinella wrestles with the problem of the diversion of the crusade, providing Dandolo with an innovative rationale for choosing to support Alexius’s just claim to the Byzantine throne. He proclaims, “We are not depriving God of his right by doing this; in fact, everybody toils in his service. I will not believe that God appreciates less that we reclaim his funeral cradle from the hands of the cruel Scythians than that we take a usurped kingdom and life away from an evil man.” See Lucrezia Marinella, Enrico, or, Byzantium Conquered, trans. Maria Galli Stampino (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), canto 1, lines 66–67, p. 98.

Thomas F. Madden is Professor of Medieval History at Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63108 (e-mail: [email protected]). Speculum 87.2 (April 2012)