Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

Byzantium and the Crusades

The Fourth Crusade and Byzantium 

Page 17

But the state of mind of the pope changed when he had become acquainted in more detail with all the horrors of the sack of Constantinople and with the text of the treaty concerning the partition of the Empire. The treaty had a purely secular character with a clear tendency to eliminate the interference of the Church. Baldwin had not asked the pope to confirm his imperial tide; and Baldwin and Dandolo had independently decided the question of St. Sophia, of the election of the patriarch, of ecclesiastical property, and other religious affairs. During the sack of Constantinople many churches and monasteries as well as a great number of highly honored sanctuaries had been denied and polluted. All this evoked in the heart of the pope alarm and discontent with the crusaders. He wrote the Marquess of Montferrat: Having neither right nor power over the Greeks you seem to have imprudently deviated from the purity of your vow, when you marched not against the Saracens, but against the Christians, meaning not to reconquer Jerusalem, but to take Constantinople, preferring earthly riches to heavenly riches. But it is much more important that some (of the crusaders) spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex.

Thus, the Latin Empire in the East, established on feudal grounds, possessed no strong political power; moreover, in church affairs, the Empire was unable for a time to establish relations with the Roman curia that were entirely satisfactory.

The aim of the western knights and merchants was not thoroughly attained, for not all Byzantine territories were in the power of the new Latin possessions in the East. After 1204 there were three independent Greek states. The Empire of Nicaea, under the dynasty of the Lascaris, in the western part of Asia Minor, situated between the Latin possessions in Asia Minor and the territories of the Sultanate of Iconium or Rum, and possessing a part of the seashore of the Aegean, was the biggest independent Greek center and the most dangerous rival of the Latin Empire. Then, in the western part of the Balkan peninsula, in Epirus, there was founded the Despotat of Epirus under the rule of the dynasty of the Comneni-Angeli. Finally, on the remote southeastern shore of the Black Sea, in 1204, was founded the Empire of Trebizond with the dynasty of the Great Comneni.

If the Latins in the East had no political unity, they had no religious unity either, for these three Greek states remained faithful to the doctrine and practice of the Greek Eastern Church; from the point of view of the pope they were schismatic. Nicaea was particularly displeasing to the pope; there the Greek bishop, paying no attention to the residence of the Latin patriarch in Constantinople, was called the patriarch of Constantinople. In addition, the Greeks of the Latin Empire, despite their political subjugation by the Latins, did not adopt Catholicism. The military occupation of the country did not signify ecclesiastical union.

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