Gibbon's The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
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Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade. Part I.
Schism Of The Greeks And Latins. -- State Of Constantinople. -- Revolt
Of The Bulgarians. -- Isaac Angelus Dethroned By His Brother Alexius. --
Origin Of The Fourth Crusade. -- Alliance Of The French And Venetians
With The Son Of Isaac. -- Their Naval Expedition To Constantinople. --
The Two Sieges And Final Conquest Of The City By The Latins.
The restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne was speedily
followed by the separation of the Greek and Latin churches. ^1 A
religious and national animosity still divides the two largest
communions of the Christian world; and the schism of Constantinople, by
alienating her most useful allies, and provoking her most dangerous
enemies, has precipitated the decline and fall of the Roman empire in
the East.
[Footnote 1: In the successive centuries, from the ixth to the xviiith,
Mosheim traces the schism of the Greeks with learning, clearness, and
impartiality; the filioque (Institut. Hist. Ecclés. p. 277,) Leo III. p.
303 Photius, p. 307, 308. Michael Cerularius, p. 370, 371, &c.]
In the course of the present History, the aversion of the Greeks for the
Latins has been often visible and conspicuous. It was originally derived
from the disdain of servitude, inflamed, after the time of Constantine,
by the pride of equality or dominion; and finally exasperated by the
preference which their rebellious subjects had given to the alliance of
the Franks. In every age the Greeks were proud of their superiority in
profane and religious knowledge: they had first received the light of
Christianity; they had pronounced the decrees of the seven general
councils; they alone possessed the language of Scripture and philosophy;
nor should the Barbarians, immersed in the darkness of the West, ^2
presume to argue on the high and mysterious questions of theological
science. Those Barbarians despised in then turn the restless and subtile
levity of the Orientals, the authors of every heresy; and blessed their
own simplicity, which was content to hold the tradition of the apostolic
church. Yet in the seventh century, the synods of Spain, and afterwards
of France, improved or corrupted the Nicene creed, on the mysterious
subject of the third person of the Trinity. ^3 In the long controversies
of the East, the nature and generation of the Christ had been
scrupulously defined; and the well-known relation of father and son
seemed to convey a faint image to the human mind. The idea of birth was
less analogous to the Holy Spirit, who, instead of a divine gift or
attribute, was considered by the Catholics as a substance, a person, a
god; he was not begotten, but in the orthodox style he proceeded. Did he
proceed from the Father alone, perhaps by the Son? or from the Father
and the Son? The first of these opinions was asserted by the Greeks, the
second by the Latins; and the addition to the Nicene creed of the word
filioque, kindled the flame of discord between the Oriental and the
Gallic churches. In the origin of the disputes the Roman pontiffs
affected a character of neutrality and moderation: ^4 they condemned the
innovation, but they acquiesced in the sentiment, of their Transalpine
brethren: they seemed desirous of casting a veil of silence and charity
over the superfluous research; and in the correspondence of Charlemagne
and Leo the Third, the pope assumes the liberality of a statesman, and
the prince descends to the passions and prejudices of a priest. ^5 But
the orthodoxy of Rome spontaneously obeyed the impulse of the temporal
policy; and the filioque, which Leo wished to erase, was transcribed in
the symbol and chanted in the liturgy of the Vatican. The Nicene and
Athanasian creeds are held as the Catholic faith, without which none can
be saved; and both Papists and Protestants must now sustain and return
the anathemas of the Greeks, who deny the procession of the Holy Ghost
from the Son, as well as from the Father. Such articles of faith are not
susceptible of treaty; but the rules of discipline will vary in remote
and independent churches; and the reason, even of divines, might allow,
that the difference is inevitable and harmless. The craft or
superstition of Rome has imposed on her priests and deacons the rigid
obligation of celibacy; among the Greeks it is confined to the bishops;
the loss is compensated by dignity or annihilated by age; and the
parochial clergy, the papas, enjoy the conjugal society of the wives
whom they have married before their entrance into holy orders. A
question concerning the Azyms was fiercely debated in the eleventh
century, and the essence of the Eucharist was supposed in the East and
West to depend on the use of leavened or unleavened bread. Shall I
mention in a serious history the furious reproaches that were urged
against the Latins, who for a long while remained on the defensive? They
neglected to abstain, according to the apostolical decree, from things
strangled, and from blood: they fasted (a Jewish observance!) on the
Saturday of each week: during the first week of Lent they permitted the
use of milk and cheese; ^6 their infirm monks were indulged in the taste
of flesh; and animal grease was substituted for the want of vegetable
oil: the holy chrism or unction in baptism was reserved to the episcopal
order: the bishops, as the bridegrooms of their churches, were decorated
with rings; their priests shaved their faces, and baptized by a single
immersion. Such were the crimes which provoked the zeal of the
patriarchs of Constantinople; and which were justified with equal zeal
by the doctors of the Latin church. ^7
[Footnote 2: ''AndreV dussebeiV kai apotropaioi, andreV ek sktouV
anadunteV, thV gar 'Esperiou moiraV uphrcon gennhmata, (Phot. Epist. p.
47, edit. Montacut.) The Oriental patriarch continues to apply the
images of thunder, earthquake, hail, wild boar, precursors of
Antichrist, &c., &c.]
[Footnote 3: The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Ghost
is discussed in the historical, theological, and controversial sense, or
nonsense, by the Jesuit Petavius. (Dogmata Theologica, tom. ii. l. vii.
-
362--440.)]
[Footnote 4: Before the shrine of St. Peter he placed two shields of the
weight of 94 1/2 pounds of pure silver; on which he inscribed the text
of both creeds, (utroque symbolo,) pro amore et cautelâ orthodoxæ fidei,
(Anastas. in Leon. III. in Muratori, tom. iii. pars. i. p. 208.) His
language most clearly proves, that neither the filioque, nor the
Athanasian creed were received at Rome about the year 830.]
[Footnote 5: The Missi of Charlemagne pressed him to declare, that all
who rejected the filioque, or at least the doctrine, must be damned.
All, replies the pope, are not capable of reaching the altiora mysteria
qui potuerit, et non voluerit, salvus esse non potest, (Collect. Concil.
tom. ix. p. 277--286.) The potuerit would leave a large loophole of
salvation!]
[Footnote 6: In France, after some harsher laws, the ecclesiastical
discipline is now relaxed: milk, cheese, and butter, are become a
perpetual, and eggs an annual, indulgence in Lent, (Vie privée des
François, tom. ii. p. 27--38.)]
[Footnote 7: The original monuments of the schism, of the charges of the
Greeks against the Latins, are deposited in the epistles of Photius,
(Epist Encyclica, ii. p. 47--61,) and of Michael Cerularius, (Canisii
Antiq. Lectiones, tom. iii. p. i. p. 281--324, edit. Basnage, with the
prolix answer of Cardinal Humbert.)]
Bigotry and national aversion are powerful magnifiers of every object of
dispute; but the immediate cause of the schism of the Greeks may be
traced in the emulation of the leading prelates, who maintained the
supremacy of the old metropolis superior to all, and of the reigning
capital, inferior to none, in the Christian world. About the middle of
the ninth century, Photius, ^8 an ambitious layman, the captain of the
guards and principal secretary, was promoted by merit and favor to the
more desirable office of patriarch of Constantinople. In science, even
ecclesiastical science, he surpassed the clergy of the age; and the
purity of his morals has never been impeached: but his ordination was
hasty, his rise was irregular; and Ignatius, his abdicated predecessor,
was yet supported by the public compassion and the obstinacy of his
adherents. They appealed to the tribunal of Nicholas the First, one of
the proudest and most aspiring of the Roman pontiffs, who embraced the
welcome opportunity of judging and condemning his rival of the East.
Their quarrel was embittered by a conflict of jurisdiction over the king
and nation of the Bulgarians; nor was their recent conversion to
Christianity of much avail to either prelate, unless he could number the
proselytes among the subjects of his power. With the aid of his court
the Greek patriarch was victorious; but in the furious contest he
deposed in his turn the successor of St. Peter, and involved the Latin
church in the reproach of heresy and schism. Photius sacrificed the
peace of the world to a short and precarious reign: he fell with his
patron, the Cæsar Bardas; and Basil the Macedonian performed an act of
justice in the restoration of Ignatius, whose age and dignity had not
been sufficiently respected. From his monastery, or prison, Photius
solicited the favor of the emperor by pathetic complaints and artful
flattery; and the eyes of his rival were scarcely closed, when he was
again restored to the throne of Constantinople. After the death of Basil
he experienced the vicissitudes of courts and the ingratitude of a royal
pupil: the patriarch was again deposed, and in his last solitary hours
he might regret the freedom of a secular and studious life. In each
revolution, the breath, the nod, of the sovereign had been accepted by a
submissive clergy; and a synod of three hundred bishops was always
prepared to hail the triumph, or to stigmatize the fall, of the holy, or
the execrable, Photius. ^9 By a delusive promise of succor or reward,
the popes were tempted to countenance these various proceedings; and the
synods of Constantinople were ratified by their epistles or legates. But
the court and the people, Ignatius and Photius, were equally adverse to
their claims; their ministers were insulted or imprisoned; the
procession of the Holy Ghost was forgotten; Bulgaria was forever annexed
to the Byzantine throne; and the schism was prolonged by their rigid
censure of all the multiplied ordinations of an irregular patriarch. The
darkness and corruption of the tenth century suspended the intercourse,
without reconciling the minds, of the two nations. But when the Norman
sword restored the churches of Apulia to the jurisdiction of Rome, the
departing flock was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Greek
patriarch, to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising
majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and
Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by
the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on
the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, ^10 which enumerates the
seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers,
and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his
angels. According to the emergencies of the church and state, a friendly
correspondence was some times resumed; the language of charity and
concord was sometimes affected; but the Greeks have never recanted their
errors; the popes have never repealed their sentence; and from this
thunderbolt we may date the consummation of the schism. It was enlarged
by each ambitious step of the Roman pontiffs: the emperors blushed and
trembled at the ignominious fate of their royal brethren of Germany; and
the people were scandalized by the temporal power and military life of
the Latin clergy. ^11
[Footnote 8: The xth volume of the Venice edition of the Councils
contains all the acts of the synods, and history of Photius: they are
abridged, with a faint tinge of prejudice or prudence, by Dupin and
Fleury.]
[Footnote 9: The synod of Constantinople, held in the year 869, is the
viiith of the general councils, the last assembly of the East which is
recognized by the Roman church. She rejects the synods of Constantinople
of the years 867 and 879, which were, however, equally numerous and
noisy; but they were favorable to Photius.]
[Footnote 10: See this anathema in the Councils, tom. xi. p.
1457--1460.]
[Footnote 11: Anna Comnena (Alexiad, l. i. p. 31--33) represents the
abhorrence, not only of the church, but of the palace, for Gregory VII.,
the popes and the Latin communion. The style of Cinnamus and Nicetas is
still more vehement. Yet how calm is the voice of history compared with
that of polemics!]
The aversion of the Greeks and Latins was nourished and manifested in
the three first expeditions to the Holy Land. Alexius Comnenus contrived
the absence at least of the formidable pilgrims: his successors, Manuel
and Isaac Angelus, conspired with the Moslems for the ruin of the
greatest princes of the Franks; and their crooked and malignant policy
was seconded by the active and voluntary obedience of every order of
their subjects. Of this hostile temper, a large portion may doubtless be
ascribed to the difference of language, dress, and manners, which severs
and alienates the nations of the globe. The pride, as well as the
prudence, of the sovereign was deeply wounded by the intrusion of
foreign armies, that claimed a right of traversing his dominions, and
passing under the walls of his capital: his subjects were insulted and
plundered by the rude strangers of the West: and the hatred of the
pusillanimous Greeks was sharpened by secret envy of the bold and pious
enterprises of the Franks. But these profane causes of national enmity
were fortified and inflamed by the venom of religious zeal. Instead of a
kind embrace, a hospitable reception from their Christian brethren of
the East, every tongue was taught to repeat the names of schismatic and
heretic, more odious to an orthodox ear than those of pagan and infidel:
instead of being loved for the general conformity of faith and worship,
they were abhorred for some rules of discipline, some questions of
theology, in which themselves or their teachers might differ from the
Oriental church. In the crusade of Louis the Seventh, the Greek clergy
washed and purified the altars which had been defiled by the sacrifice
of a French priest. The companions of Frederic Barbarossa deplore the
injuries which they endured, both in word and deed, from the peculiar
rancor of the bishops and monks. Their prayers and sermons excited the
people against the impious Barbarians; and the patriarch is accused of
declaring, that the faithful might obtain the redemption of all their
sins by the extirpation of the schismatics. ^12 An enthusiast, named
Dorotheus, alarmed the fears, and restored the confidence, of the
emperor, by a prophetic assurance, that the German heretic, after
assaulting the gate of Blachernes, would be made a signal example of the
divine vengeance. The passage of these mighty armies were rare and
perilous events; but the crusades introduced a frequent and familiar
intercourse between the two nations, which enlarged their knowledge
without abating their prejudices. The wealth and luxury of
Constantinople demanded the productions of every climate these imports
were balanced by the art and labor of her numerous inhabitants; her
situation invites the commerce of the world; and, in every period of her
existence, that commerce has been in the hands of foreigners. After the
decline of Amalphi, the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese, introduced their
factories and settlements into the capital of the empire: their services
were rewarded with honors and immunities; they acquired the possession
of lands and houses; their families were multiplied by marriages with
the natives; and, after the toleration of a Mahometan mosque, it was
impossible to interdict the churches of the Roman rite. ^13 The two
wives of Manuel Comnenus ^14 were of the race of the Franks: the first,
a sister-in-law of the emperor Conrad; the second, a daughter of the
prince of Antioch: he obtained for his son Alexius a daughter of Philip
Augustus, king of France; and he bestowed his own daughter on a marquis
of Montferrat, who was educated and dignified in the palace of
Constantinople. The Greek encountered the arms, and aspired to the
empire, of the West: he esteemed the valor, and trusted the fidelity, of
the Franks; ^15 their military talents were unfitly recompensed by the
lucrative offices of judges and treasures; the policy of Manuel had
solicited the alliance of the pope; and the popular voice accused him of
a partial bias to the nation and religion of the Latins. ^16 During his
reign, and that of his successor Alexius, they were exposed at
Constantinople to the reproach of foreigners, heretics, and favorites;
and this triple guilt was severely expiated in the tumult, which
announced the return and elevation of Andronicus. ^17 The people rose in
arms: from the Asiatic shore the tyrant despatched his troops and
galleys to assist the national revenge; and the hopeless resistance of
the strangers served only to justify the rage, and sharpen the daggers,
of the assassins. Neither age, nor sex, nor the ties of friendship or
kindred, could save the victims of national hatred, and avarice, and
religious zeal; the Latins were slaughtered in their houses and in the
streets; their quarter was reduced to ashes; the clergy were burnt in
their churches, and the sick in their hospitals; and some estimate may
be formed of the slain from the clemency which sold above four thousand
Christians in perpetual slavery to the Turks. The priests and monks were
the loudest and most active in the destruction of the schismatics; and
they chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord, when the head of a Roman
cardinal, the pope's legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the
tail of a dog, and dragged, with savage mockery, through the city. The
more diligent of the strangers had retreated, on the first alarm, to
their vessels, and escaped through the Hellespont from the scene of
blood. In their flight, they burnt and ravaged two hundred miles of the
sea-coast; inflicted a severe revenge on the guiltless subjects of the
empire; marked the priests and monks as their peculiar enemies; and
compensated, by the accumulation of plunder, the loss of their property
and friends. On their return, they exposed to Italy and Europe the
wealth and weakness, the perfidy and malice, of the Greeks, whose vices
were painted as the genuine characters of heresy and schism. The
scruples of the first crusaders had neglected the fairest opportunities
of securing, by the possession of Constantinople, the way to the Holy
Land: domestic revolution invited, and almost compelled, the French and
Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman empire of the East.
[Footnote 12: His anonymous historian (de Expedit. Asiat. Fred. I. in
Canisii Lection. Antiq. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 511, edit. Basnage)
mentions the sermons of the Greek patriarch, quomodo Græcis injunxerat
in remissionem peccatorum peregrinos occidere et delere de terra. Tagino
observes, (in Scriptores Freher. tom. i. p. 409, edit. Struv.,) Græci
hæreticos nos appellant: clerici et monachi dictis et factis
persequuntur. We may add the declaration of the emperor Baldwin fifteen
years afterwards: Hæc est (gens) quæ Latinos omnes non hominum nomine,
sed canum dignabatur; quorum sanguinem effundere penè inter merita
reputabant, (Gesta Innocent. III., c. 92, in Muratori, Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom. iii. pars i. p. 536.) There may be some exaggeration,
but it was as effectual for the action and reaction of hatred.]
[Footnote 13: See Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. vi. p. 161, 162,) and a
remarkable passage of Nicetas, (in Manuel, l. v. c. 9,) who observes of
the Venetians, kata smhnh kai jratriaV thn Kwnstantinou polin thV
oikeiaV hllaxanto, &c.]
[Footnote 14: Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 186, 187.]
[Footnote 15: Nicetas in Manuel. l. vii. c. 2. Regnante enim (Manuele) .
. . . apud eum tantam Latinus populus repererat gratiam ut neglectis
Græculis suis tanquam viris mollibus et effminatis, . . . . solis
Latinis grandia committeret negotia . . . . erga eos profusâ
liberalitate abundabat . . . . ex omni orbe ad eum tanquam ad
benefactorem nobiles et ignobiles concurrebant. Willelm. Tyr. xxii. c.
[Footnote 16: The suspicions of the Greeks would have been confirmed, if
they had seen the political epistles of Manuel to Pope Alexander III.,
the enemy of his enemy Frederic I., in which the emperor declares his
wish of uniting the Greeks and Latins as one flock under one shepherd,
&c (See Fleury, Hist. Ecclés. tom. xv. p. 187, 213, 243.)]
[Footnote 17: See the Greek and Latin narratives in Nicetas (in Alexio
Comneno, c. 10) and William of Tyre, (l. xxii. c. 10, 11, 12, 13;) the
first soft and concise, the second loud, copious, and tragical.]
In the series of the Byzantine princes, I have exhibited the hypocrisy
and ambition, the tyranny and fall, of Andronicus, the last male of the
Comnenian family who reigned at Constantinople. The revolution, which
cast him headlong from the throne, saved and exalted Isaac Angelus, ^18
who descended by the females from the same Imperial dynasty. The
successor of a second Nero might have found it an easy task to deserve
the esteem and affection of his subjects; they sometimes had reason to
regret the administration of Andronicus. The sound and vigorous mind of
the tyrant was capable of discerning the connection between his own and
the public interest; and while he was feared by all who could inspire
him with fear, the unsuspected people, and the remote provinces, might
bless the inexorable justice of their master. But his successor was vain
and jealous of the supreme power, which he wanted courage and abilities
to exercise: his vices were pernicious, his virtues (if he possessed any
virtues) were useless, to mankind; and the Greeks, who imputed their
calamities to his negligence, denied him the merit of any transient or
accidental benefits of the times. Isaac slept on the throne, and was
awakened only by the sound of pleasure: his vacant hours were amused by
comedians and buffoons, and even to these buffoons the emperor was an
object of contempt: his feasts and buildings exceeded the examples of
royal luxury: the number of his eunuchs and domestics amounted to twenty
thousand; and a daily sum of four thousand pounds of silver would swell
to four millions sterling the annual expense of his household and table.
His poverty was relieved by oppression; and the public discontent was
inflamed by equal abuses in the collection, and the application, of the
revenue. While the Greeks numbered the days of their servitude, a
flattering prophet, whom he rewarded with the dignity of patriarch,
assured him of a long and victorious reign of thirty-two years; during
which he should extend his sway to Mount Libanus, and his conquests
beyond the Euphrates. But his only step towards the accomplishment of
the prediction was a splendid and scandalous embassy to Saladin, ^19 to
demand the restitution of the holy sepulchre, and to propose an
offensive and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In
these unworthy hands, of Isaac and his brother, the remains of the Greek
empire crumbled into dust. The Island of Cyprus, whose name excites the
ideas of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by his namesake, a Comnenian
prince; and by a strange concatenation of events, the sword of our
English Richard bestowed that kingdom on the house of Lusignan, a rich
compensation for the loss of Jerusalem.
[Footnote 18: The history of the reign of Isaac Angelus is composed, in
three books, by the senator Nicetas, (p. 228--290;) and his offices of
logothete, or principal secretary, and judge of the veil or palace,
could not bribe the impartiality of the historian. He wrote, it is true,
after the fall and death of his benefactor.]
[Footnote 19: See Bohadin, Vit. Saladin. p. 129--131, 226, vers.
Schultens. The ambassador of Isaac was equally versed in the Greek,
French, and Arabic languages; a rare instance in those times. His
embassies were received with honor, dismissed without effect, and
reported with scandal in the West.]
The honor of the monarchy and the safety of the capital were deeply
wounded by the revolt of the Bulgarians and Walachians. Since the
victory of the second Basil, they had supported, above a hundred and
seventy years, the loose dominion of the Byzantine princes; but no
effectual measures had been adopted to impose the yoke of laws and
manners on these savage tribes. By the command of Isaac, their sole
means of subsistence, their flocks and herds, were driven away, to
contribute towards the pomp of the royal nuptials; and their fierce
warriors were exasperated by the denial of equal rank and pay in the
military service. Peter and Asan, two powerful chiefs, of the race of
the ancient kings, ^20 asserted their own rights and the national
freedom; their dæmoniac impostors proclaimed to the crowd, that their
glorious patron St. Demetrius had forever deserted the cause of the
Greeks; and the conflagration spread from the banks of the Danube to the
hills of Macedonia and Thrace. After some faint efforts, Isaac Angelus
and his brother acquiesced in their independence; and the Imperial
troops were soon discouraged by the bones of their fellow-soldiers, that
were scattered along the passes of Mount Hæmus. By the arms and policy
of John or Joannices, the second kingdom of Bulgaria was firmly
established. The subtle Barbarian sent an embassy to Innocent the Third,
to acknowledge himself a genuine son of Rome in descent and religion,
^21 and humbly received from the pope the license of coining money, the
royal title, and a Latin archbishop or patriarch. The Vatican exulted in
the spiritual conquest of Bulgaria, the first object of the schism; and
if the Greeks could have preserved the prerogatives of the church, they
would gladly have resigned the rights of the monarchy.
[Footnote 20: Ducange, Familiæ, Dalmaticæ, p. 318, 319, 320. The
original correspondence of the Bulgarian king and the Roman pontiff is
inscribed in the Gesta Innocent. III. c. 66--82, p. 513--525.]
[Footnote 21: The pope acknowledges his pedigree, a nobili urbis Romæ
prosapiâ genitores tui originem traxerunt. This tradition, and the
strong resemblance of the Latin and Walachian idioms, is explained by M.
D'Anville, (Etats de l'Europe, p. 258--262.) The Italian colonies of the
Dacia of Trajan were swept away by the tide of emigration from the
Danube to the Volga, and brought back by another wave from the Volga to
the Danube. Possible, but strange!]
The Bulgarians were malicious enough to pray for the long life of Isaac
Angelus, the surest pledge of their freedom and prosperity. Yet their
chiefs could involve in the same indiscriminate contempt the family and
nation of the emperor. "In all the Greeks," said Asan to his troops,
"the same climate, and character, and education, will be productive of
the same fruits. Behold my lance," continued the warrior, "and the long
streamers that float in the wind. They differ only in color; they are
formed of the same silk, and fashioned by the same workman; nor has the
stripe that is stained in purple any superior price or value above its
fellows." ^22 Several of these candidates for the purple successively
rose and fell under the empire of Isaac; a general, who had repelled the
fleets of Sicily, was driven to revolt and ruin by the ingratitude of
the prince; and his luxurious repose was disturbed by secret
conspiracies and popular insurrections. The emperor was saved by
accident, or the merit of his servants: he was at length oppressed by an
ambitious brother, who, for the hope of a precarious diadem, forgot the
obligations of nature, of loyalty, and of friendship. ^23 While Isaac in
the Thracian valleys pursued the idle and solitary pleasures of the
chase, his brother, Alexius Angelus, was invested with the purple, by
the unanimous suffrage of the camp; the capital and the clergy
subscribed to their choice; and the vanity of the new sovereign rejected
the name of his fathers for the lofty and royal appellation of the
Comnenian race. On the despicable character of Isaac I have exhausted
the language of contempt, and can only add, that, in a reign of eight
years, the baser Alexius ^24 was supported by the masculine vices of his
wife Euphrosyne. The first intelligence of his fall was conveyed to the
late emperor by the hostile aspect and pursuit of the guards, no longer
his own: he fled before them above fifty miles, as far as Stagyra, in
Macedonia; but the fugitive, without an object or a follower, was
arrested, brought back to Constantinople, deprived of his eyes, and
confined in a lonesome tower, on a scanty allowance of bread and water.
At the moment of the revolution, his son Alexius, whom he educated in
the hope of empire, was twelve years of age. He was spared by the
usurper, and reduced to attend his triumph both in peace and war; but as
the army was encamped on the sea-shore, an Italian vessel facilitated
the escape of the royal youth; and, in the disguise of a common sailor,
he eluded the search of his enemies, passed the Hellespont, and found a
secure refuge in the Isle of Sicily. After saluting the threshold of the
apostles, and imploring the protection of Pope Innocent the Third,
Alexius accepted the kind invitation of his sister Irene, the wife of
Philip of Swabia, king of the Romans. But in his passage through Italy,
he heard that the flower of Western chivalry was assembled at Venice for
the deliverance of the Holy Land; and a ray of hope was kindled in his
bosom, that their invincible swords might be employed in his father's
restoration.
[Footnote 22: This parable is in the best savage style; but I wish the
Walach had not introduced the classic name of Mysians, the experiment of
the magnet or loadstone, and the passage of an old comic poet, (Nicetas
in Alex. Comneno, l. i. p. 299, 300.)]
[Footnote 23: The Latins aggravate the ingratitude of Alexius, by
supposing that he had been released by his brother Isaac from Turkish
captivity This pathetic tale had doubtless been repeated at Venice and
Zara but I do not readily discover its grounds in the Greek historians.]
[Footnote 24: See the reign of Alexius Angelus, or Comnenus, in the
three books of Nicetas, p. 291--352.]
About ten or twelve years after the loss of Jerusalem, the nobles of
France were again summoned to the holy war by the voice of a third
prophet, less extravagant, perhaps, than Peter the hermit, but far below
St. Bernard in the merit of an orator and a statesman. An illiterate
priest of the neighborhood of Paris, Fulk of Neuilly, ^25 forsook his
parochial duty, to assume the more flattering character of a popular and
itinerant missionary. The fame of his sanctity and miracles was spread
over the land; he declaimed, with severity and vehemence, against the
vices of the age; and his sermons, which he preached in the streets of
Paris, converted the robbers, the usurers, the prostitutes, and even the
doctors and scholars of the university. No sooner did Innocent the Third
ascend the chair of St. Peter, than he proclaimed in Italy, Germany, and
France, the obligation of a new crusade. ^26 The eloquent pontiff
described the ruin of Jerusalem, the triumph of the Pagans, and the
shame of Christendom; his liberality proposed the redemption of sins, a
plenary indulgence to all who should serve in Palestine, either a year
in person, or two years by a substitute; ^27 and among his legates and
orators who blew the sacred trumpet, Fulk of Neuilly was the loudest and
most successful. The situation of the principal monarchs was averse to
the pious summons. The emperor Frederic the Second was a child; and his
kingdom of Germany was disputed by the rival houses of Brunswick and
Swabia, the memorable factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines. Philip
Augustus of France had performed, and could not be persuaded to renew,
the perilous vow; but as he was not less ambitious of praise than of
power, he cheerfully instituted a perpetual fund for the defence of the
Holy Land Richard of England was satiated with the glory and misfortunes
of his first adventure; and he presumed to deride the exhortations of
Fulk of Neuilly, who was not abashed in the presence of kings. "You
advise me," said Plantagenet, "to dismiss my three daughters, pride,
avarice, and incontinence: I bequeath them to the most deserving; my
pride to the knights templars, my avarice to the monks of Cisteaux, and
my incontinence to the prelates." But the preacher was heard and obeyed
by the great vassals, the princes of the second order; and Theobald, or
Thibaut, count of Champagne, was the foremost in the holy race. The
valiant youth, at the age of twenty-two years, was encouraged by the
domestic examples of his father, who marched in the second crusade, and
of his elder brother, who had ended his days in Palestine with the title
of King of Jerusalem; two thousand two hundred knights owed service and
homage to his peerage; ^28 the nobles of Champagne excelled in all the
exercises of war; ^29 and, by his marriage with the heiress of Navarre,
Thibaut could draw a band of hardy Gascons from either side of the
Pyrenæan mountains. His companion in arms was Louis, count of Blois and
Chartres; like himself of regal lineage, for both the princes were
nephews, at the same time, of the kings of France and England. In a
crowd of prelates and barons, who imitated their zeal, I distinguish the
birth and merit of Matthew of Montmorency; the famous Simon of Montfort,
the scourge of the Albigeois; and a valiant noble, Jeffrey of
Villehardouin, ^30 marshal of Champagne, ^31 who has condescended, in
the rude idiom of his age and country, ^32 to write or dictate ^33 an
original narrative of the councils and actions in which he bore a
memorable part. At the same time, Baldwin, count of Flanders, who had
married the sister of Thibaut, assumed the cross at Bruges, with his
brother Henry, and the principal knights and citizens of that rich and
industrious province. ^34 The vow which the chiefs had pronounced in
churches, they ratified in tournaments; the operations of the war were
debated in full and frequent assemblies; and it was resolved to seek the
deliverance of Palestine in Egypt, a country, since Saladin's death,
which was almost ruined by famine and civil war. But the fate of so many
royal armies displayed the toils and perils of a land expedition; and if
the Flemings dwelt along the ocean, the French barons were destitute of
ships and ignorant of navigation. They embraced the wise resolution of
choosing six deputies or representatives, of whom Villehardouin was one,
with a discretionary trust to direct the motions, and to pledge the
faith, of the whole confederacy. The maritime states of Italy were alone
possessed of the means of transporting the holy warriors with their arms
and horses; and the six deputies proceeded to Venice, to solicit, on
motives of piety or interest, the aid of that powerful republic.
[Footnote 25: See Fleury, Hist. Ecclés. tom. xvi. p. 26, &c., and
Villehardouin, No. 1, with the observations of Ducange, which I always
mean to quote with the original text.]
[Footnote 26: The contemporary life of Pope Innocent III., published by
Baluze and Muratori, (Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. pars i. p.
486--568, is most valuable for the important and original documents
which are inserted in the text. The bull of the crusade may be read, c.
84, 85.]
[Footnote 27: Por-ce que cil pardon, fut issi gran, si s'en esmeurent
mult li cuers des genz, et mult s'en croisierent, porce que li pardons
ere si gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our philosophers may refine on the
causes of the crusades, but such were the genuine feelings of a French
knight.]
[Footnote 28: This number of fiefs (of which 1800 owed liege homage) was
enrolled in the church of St. Stephen at Troyes, and attested A.D. 1213,
by the marshal and butler of Champagne, (Ducange, Observ. p. 254.)]
[Footnote 29: Campania . . . . militiæ privilegio singularius excellit .
. . . in tyrociniis . . . . prolusione armorum, &c., Duncage, p. 249,
from the old Chronicle of Jerusalem, A.D. 1177--1199.]
[Footnote 30: The name of Villehardouin was taken from a village and
castle in the diocese of Troyes, near the River Aube, between Bar and
Arcis. The family was ancient and noble; the elder branch of our
historian existed after the year 1400, the younger, which acquired the
principality of Achaia, merged in the house of Savoy, (Ducange, p.
235--245.)]
[Footnote 31: This office was held by his father and his descendants;
but Ducange has not hunted it with his usual sagacity. I find that, in
the year 1356, it was in the family of Conflans; but these provincial
have been long since eclipsed by the national marshals of France.]
[Footnote 32: This language, of which I shall produce some specimens, is
explained by Vigenere and Ducange, in a version and glossary. The
president Des Brosses (Méchanisme des Langues, tom. ii. p. 83) gives it
as the example of a language which has ceased to be French, and is
understood only by grammarians.]
[Footnote 33: His age, and his own expression, moi qui ceste uvre dicta,
(No. 62, &c.,) may justify the suspicion (more probable than Mr. Wood's
on Homer) that he could neither read nor write. Yet Champagne may boast
of the two first historians, the noble authors of French prose,
Villehardouin and Joinville.]
[Footnote 34: The crusade and reigns of the counts of Flanders, Baldwin
and his brother Henry, are the subject of a particular history by the
Jesuit Doutremens, (Constantinopolis Belgica; Turnaci, 1638, in 4to.,)
which I have only seen with the eyes of Ducange.]
In the invasion of Italy by Attila, I have mentioned ^35 the flight of
the Venetians from the fallen cities of the continent, and their obscure
shelter in the chain of islands that line the extremity of the Adriatic
Gulf. In the midst of the waters, free, indigent, laborious, and
inaccessible, they gradually coalesced into a republic: the first
foundations of Venice were laid in the Island of Rialto; and the annual
election of the twelve tribunes was superseded by the permanent office
of a duke or doge. On the verge of the two empires, the Venetians exult
in the belief of primitive and perpetual independence. ^36 Against the
Latins, their antique freedom has been asserted by the sword, and may be
justified by the pen. Charlemagne himself resigned all claims of
sovereignty to the islands of the Adriatic Gulf: his son Pepin was
repulsed in the attacks of the lagunas or canals, too deep for the
cavalry, and too shallow for the vessels; and in every age, under the
German Cæsars, the lands of the republic have been clearly distinguished
from the kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants of Venice were considered
by themselves, by strangers, and by their sovereigns, as an inalienable
portion of the Greek empire: ^37 in the ninth and tenth centuries, the
proofs of their subjection are numerous and unquestionable; and the vain
titles, the servile honors, of the Byzantine court, so ambitiously
solicited by their dukes, would have degraded the magistrates of a free
people. But the bands of this dependence, which was never absolute or
rigid, were imperceptibly relaxed by the ambition of Venice and the
weakness of Constantinople. Obedience was softened into respect,
privilege ripened into prerogative, and the freedom of domestic
government was fortified by the independence of foreign dominion. The
maritime cities of Istria and Dalmatia bowed to the sovereigns of the
Adriatic; and when they armed against the Normans in the cause of
Alexius, the emperor applied, not to the duty of his subjects, but to
the gratitude and generosity of his faithful allies. The sea was their
patrimony: ^38 the western parts of the Mediterranean, from Tuscany to
Gibraltar, were indeed abandoned to their rivals of Pisa and Genoa; but
the Venetians acquired an early and lucrative share of the commerce of
Greece and Egypt. Their riches increased with the increasing demand of
Europe; their manufactures of silk and glass, perhaps the institution of
their bank, are of high antiquity; and they enjoyed the fruits of their
industry in the magnificence of public and private life. To assert her
flag, to avenge her injuries, to protect the freedom of navigation, the
republic could launch and man a fleet of a hundred galleys; and the
Greeks, the Saracens, and the Normans, were encountered by her naval
arms. The Franks of Syria were assisted by the Venetians in the
reduction of the sea coast; but their zeal was neither blind nor
disinterested; and in the conquest of Tyre, they shared the sovereignty
of a city, the first seat of the commerce of the world. The policy of
Venice was marked by the avarice of a trading, and the insolence of a
maritime, power; yet her ambition was prudent: nor did she often forget
that if armed galleys were the effect and safeguard, merchant vessels
were the cause and supply, of her greatness. In her religion, she
avoided the schisms of the Greeks, without yielding a servile obedience
to the Roman pontiff; and a free intercourse with the infidels of every
clime appears to have allayed betimes the fever of superstition. Her
primitive government was a loose mixture of democracy and monarchy; the
doge was elected by the votes of the general assembly; as long as he was
popular and successful, he reigned with the pomp and authority of a
prince; but in the frequent revolutions of the state, he was deposed, or
banished, or slain, by the justice or injustice of the multitude. The
twelfth century produced the first rudiments of the wise and jealous
aristocracy, which has reduced the doge to a pageant, and the people to
a cipher. ^39
[Footnote 35: History, &c., vol. iii. p. 446, 447.]
[Footnote 36: The foundation and independence of Venice, and Pepin's
invasion, are discussed by Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. A.D. 81), No. 4,
&c.) and Beretti, (Dissert. Chorograph. Italiæ Medii Ævi, in Muratori,
Script. tom. x. p. 153.) The two critics have a slight bias, the
Frenchman adverse, the Italian favorable, to the republic.]
[Footnote 37: When the son of Charlemagne asserted his right of
sovereignty, he was answered by the loyal Venetians, oti hmeiV douloi
Jelomen einai tou 'Rwmaiwn basilewV, (Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de
Administrat. Imperii, pars ii. c. 28, p. 85;) and the report of the ixth
establishes the fact of the xth century, which is confirmed by the
embassy of Liutprand of Cremona. The annual tribute, which the emperor
allows them to pay to the king of Italy, alleviates, by doubling, their
servitude; but the hateful word douloi must be translated, as in the
charter of 827, (Laugier, Hist. de Venice, tom. i. p. 67, &c.,) by the
softer appellation of subditi, or fideles.]
[Footnote 38: See the xxvth and xxxth dissertations of the Antiquitates
Medii Ævi of Muratori. From Anderson's History of Commerce, I understand
that the Venetians did not trade to England before the year 1323. The
most flourishing state of their wealth and commerce, in the beginning of
the xvth century, is agreeably described by the Abbé Dubos, (Hist. de la
Ligue de Cambray, tom. ii. p. 443--480.)]
[Footnote 39: The Venetians have been slow in writing and publishing
their history. Their most ancient monuments are, 1. The rude Chronicle
(perhaps) of John Sagorninus, (Venezia, 1765, in octavo,) which
represents the state and manners of Venice in the year 1008. 2. The
larger history of the doge, (1342--1354,) Andrew Dandolo, published for
the first time in the xiith tom. of Muratori, A.D. 1728. The History of
Venice by the Abbé Laugier, (Paris, 1728,) is a work of some merit,
which I have chiefly used for the constitutional part. *
- Note
- * It is scarcely necessary to mention the valuable work of Count
Daru, "History de Venise," of which I hear that an Italian translation
has been published, with notes defensive of the ancient republic. I have
not yet seen this work. -- M.]
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