The Fourth Crusade

The Fourth Crusade was launched in 1202 at the command of Pope Innocent III. He couldn’t get anyone to listen to him until he threatened to excommunicate anyone who didn’t agree. A tax was imposed on all Christendom, and French and Venetian armies gathered their forces.

The Venetians were having a hard time getting enough money or supplies, however, so they convinced the French army to join them in the destruction of a Christian seaport called Zara. They earned the money they needed, but they also earned a sentence of excommunication by the pope.

Remember, Byzantine was the eastern half of Christendom and the pope would have very much liked to have had it under his control. Word was sent from Byzantine and its capital of Constantinople that the emperor there had been deposed and blinded by his brother. The pope declared that if the crusaders would get involved in that battle and return the throne to the correct brother, all would be forgiven. So the Venetian and French Christian crusaders forgot about the Muslim people and went to attack the Christian capital of Constantinople instead.

Eventually, the combined forces conquered Constantinople with the use of special bridges. The bridges attached to the masts of ships and then to the city walls. Crusading soldiers were able to invade the watchtowers simultaneously and quickly overran the entire city. The crusading army did a bit more than chase the bad brother off one of the city walls to his death. They also murdered and raped the Christian people of Constantinople including the nuns; burned down libraries containing the only copies of ancient Greek texts; removed all the gold, jewels and holy relics from churches; and melted down ancient Greek statues for their metal. Needless to say, the people of that area weren’t too interested in merging their form of eastern Christianity with the western kind they saw in the crusaders. Byzantine was no longer. (The eastern Roman Empire declined, but it held out until 1453.) It was renamed Romania, and the eastern and western church factions never were united. The crusaders never did get near Jerusalem. The year was 1204.