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August 2, 2010 16 mins

Of all the Crusades, the Fourth Crusade was the least successful: It created a permanent divide between Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. But what exactly went wrong? Tune in and learn more in this podcast.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm King Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And there are
many crusades that today's topic. The Fourth Crusade from twelve

(00:22):
oh two to twelve oh four was the least successful.
Its aim was to take Jerusalem from the Muslim Turks
who had seized it in eighties seven, but the result
was an attack on Christian cities and a permanent divide
between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. So clearly

(00:42):
something went horribly horribly wrong, and we're going to talk
about what it was that went wrong today. So as
far as the Crusades in general, they were rooted in
both political and religious motives. The Byzantine Empire was threatened
by these Seldic Turks, and Pope Urban the Second agreed
to endorse a war against them. This is the first

(01:02):
crusade to both save the Christians who were supposedly being
tortured and to save Jerusalem from the infidels. By saving Jerusalem,
the crusaders themselves would save their own souls. The win
win deal, and these were seen as defensive wars because
the church was under attack. But of course there's a
lot more to it than that, And if you want

(01:23):
a little more background, definitely check out an older episode
recorded by Candis and Jane on the Crusades of the
whole you can get all the background information. And we've
actually got a really good article on this too, Yeah,
by Molly Edmunds of stuff Mom never told you how
the crusades worked. And an important thing to remember that
I got from her article quote many of the crusades

(01:45):
would begin with a goal to reach the Holy Land,
but would break down because of politics and warfare failure. Regardless,
religion was always the primary trigger for a crusade, so
remember that as we go along. So we have religion
and we have politics x, which go together like peanut
butter and jelly. And like I said to Sarah earlier,
a PPJ that blows up in your face sounds like

(02:07):
a sandwich that is far too dangerous for my taste.
But as we mentioned, Jerusalem is under the control of
the Muslims and the goal of the fourth Crusade is
to get it back. Sounds pretty simple, right, Hope Innocent
the third had been wanting a crusade of his own.
We all want a crusade of our own, and the
French answer is called they would take part. They would

(02:28):
make up the majority of the troops, and as their
leader they'll have an Italian count named Boniface molt Ferra.
The leaders of the crusade decide that the best way
to recapture Jerusalem is to go by sea to Egypt
and then invade from there. But they need a way
to transport all of their men and all of their
supplies by sea. They need help, and who is better

(02:50):
at all things seaworthy than the Venetian nations. So they
go to Venice and they meet with the ninety year
old blind Doge, Enrico din Dolo, who is in control
of Venice. And the crusaders want ships. They want about
thirty thousand men to man them, and they want food.
So the Doge agrees in exchange for eighty five thousand marks,

(03:13):
which is a ridiculously huge sum of money, but they
agree because after all, this is God, yeah, exactly, and
the Venetians do the work. It takes up almost all
of Venice's resources to build these ships and to man
them and to stock them, but more than thirty thousand
crusaders are supposed to congregate in Venice. So it all

(03:34):
work out because everybody will bring a little bit of money,
they'll have enough men for all the ships, and they'll
be together. They're all starting off in one group. Yeah,
you can really stir up morale that way. So from
there they would proceed on their mission. But there's a problem.
Only a third of the men show up because a
lot of the troops have decided, well, we don't want
to go all the way to Venice to meet with

(03:55):
you guys. We're going to leave from our own port.
Don't tell me what to do. So the result is
that there isn't enough money to pay Venice, and they
have way too much stuff because they have supplies, you know,
for thirty thou people, and they've only got twelve thousand.
They can't go back home. It would be dishonorable. They've
made this vow that they're going to do this religious thing,

(04:18):
and they can't not pay the Venetians. They have a
moral obligation to do so how can we resolve this? Fortunately,
the Doge makes them a pretty good offer. Attack the
city of Zara and we'll give you a little more
time to pay up. We're not going to write off
the debt, but you'll have more time to pay It's
not that great of a deal. Actually, it's kind of
a bad deal. Zara was on the Dalmatian coast and

(04:42):
Venice basically had had control over it until the Hungarian
king came along. But this presents a dilemma for the crusaders.
They need to pay their debt. But the Hungarian king
is Christian and under the Pope in realm to not
the the Eastern version of the Church, and he's a crusader,
so attacking him is attacking one of their own. What

(05:05):
can they do? Some refuse to attack, and others agree
to it because it's for the good of the crusade
as a whole. The ends justify the means that Pope
Innocent the Third is not pleased and basically sends them
a letter that says, don't you dare, I will excommunicate you.
But of course the Pope's message only gets to the

(05:26):
leadership the knights who are in charge, and they neglect
to pass it on to the common man because obviously,
under the threat of excommunication, which is the heaviest punishment
that the Church can give someone a lot of the
army would fall apart. So they keep this information to themselves,
and they attack, and they conquer, and the Pope excommunicates

(05:48):
them all again. The leaders are the only ones who
know that this has happened. They have all the information,
they have all the power, so they don't even know
that they're possibly damned. But meanwhile, there is a prince
in exile whose ears have perked up at the news
of what's going on in Zara. He is Alexius Angelos,

(06:09):
and his father, Isaac the Second had been Emperor of Byzantium,
but he had been deposed by his brother Alexius the Third,
who also ordered that his eyes be gouged out. Apparently
that was very popular style. So our exiled prince, the
rightful heir to the throne, goes to the leaders of
the Fourth Crusade and offers them a deal. He will

(06:31):
give them money and men to help them retake the
Holy Land if they will come to Constantinople, the capital
of the Byzantine Empire, and help him take the throne back.
And more importantly, he says that he will return what
is now the Greek Orthodox Church to the rule of
the Pope in Rome. This would be a huge coup.
Maybe the Pope would stop being so mad at the crusaders,

(06:54):
and also they would have reunited the church. So as
far as a religious mission goes, this is a word one.
And the doge supports the plan too, because he's thinking
of Venice's trade roots. And if Byzantium is an ally,
they're in a pretty good place all of a sudden,
so Boniface says, we're in And a note on Constantinople.

(07:16):
It is an incredibly rich city at the time, both
in culture and in a actual cash money. They have
the Hagia Sophia, for example, and founded by Constantine the
first in a d. Three thirty. It is the greatest
city of the Middle Ages, certainly better than anything Europe has.
They have, you know, the crown of Thorns relic, what

(07:37):
do you have? And it's the perfect place for trade.
It's right in between the East and the West. And
my favorite detail from a New Yorker article by Joan Acochella,
it's ladies watched over by twenty thousand eunuchs were silk
and jewels and white wigs. But it's not just the
ladies who are well defended. The city is really well

(07:57):
defended too. In nine years no one has taken it.
So this is the mark. We can imagine things are
going to be pretty tough from here on out. And
as far as this whole idea of going into Constantinople goes,
some of the other Crusaders are very unhappy because they're
supposed to be going to Jerusalem. What does Constantinople have
to do with any holes of well, and it's this

(08:20):
Christian cities. Why are we even getting involved in what
they're doing? Perhaps we're missing the point, regardless of what
some people think. The Crusaders arrive in Constantinople in twelve
o three and they're here to seize the throne from
Alexeius the third, return it to Isaac, who he doesn't
know this, but he's going to be co ruling with
his son who will be crowned Alexius the fourth, And

(08:42):
from there they can pay off Venice, they can reunite
the Eastern and Western churches, and hopefully finally be on
their way to Jerusalem. The people of Constantinople honestly aren't
all that interested in any of this. They're not perturbed
with this change in rule but Alexeius the Third is
he puts up a fight and he loses, and during
this fight the Frank's burned part of the city. Alexius

(09:05):
the Fourth has what he wanted, but the Venetians and
the Franks do not. Alexius doesn't have the money that
he promised, so he's forced to tax everyone, and he
begins melting down icons to try to raise it. The
citizens of Constantinople are not very happy. They're being taxed,
their icons are being melted down, and their city is

(09:27):
overrun by Franks, by Crusaders who are running amok and
trying to get what they can for themselves. So the
Greeks saith the Franks. The Franks saith. The Greeks were
constantly having skirmishes and Alexius the Fourth unpopularity catches up
with him. He is murdered. Um Isaac also mysteriously dies
around the same time, possibly murdered as well, and Alexius

(09:49):
the Fifth takes over. And Alexis the Fifth is not
interested in paying Alexius the Fourth debt. He says, I
don't have anything to do with this. You guys work
it out yourselves, so that's it. The Venetians want their money,
and the leaders of the Crusade vow to fight. Now
they see the Byzantines as an obstacle to be overcome,

(10:10):
and their fight is justified. They say they need to
save the Greeks from their own orthodox selves and punish
them for murdering their ruler, which isn't quite what this
is about, but we'll let them have it. And again
Innocence of third tells them in no uncertain terms not
to do this, but of course they do. For having
your own crusade. This is really not going according to plan.

(10:34):
For Innocent nobody's listening to him. So the Crusaders and
Alexius the Fifth Men fight, and the Greeks put up
a really good fight. This time Alexius flees, though, and
the fight still isn't over. This is in April twelve
o four. Finally, the Crusaders lay siege to the city
of Constantinople, and in three days it's over. So the

(10:54):
city that is not fallen in nine years it only
takes three days to fall. The crusade waters sacked the city, completely,
burned down parts of it, steal every piece of art
they can find, every religious relic, the patriarchal library is burned,
and precious religious icons in the Hockey Sophia destroyed. But
beyond the looting, the sacking of Constantinople is so notorious

(11:19):
because it wasn't just about the theft and the violence.
There was plenty of rapes and murders, but the atmosphere
was more like a big drunken party. It was jovial,
it was celebratory. They put a prostitute on the patriarch's
throne and the hockey Sophia and let her sing. They
get drunk, drinking out of chalices. This is the defilement

(11:42):
of all that the people in Constantinople held sacred. So
the Venetians claim their share of the loot, which is
most of it, as part of their payment. Have they
even fulfilled the debt entirely? Yet? I think they also
got some islands. How the Venetians come out okay, I guess.
So this is why you can still find Byzantine, aren't there.

(12:03):
It's it's part of that payment for all of these
ships and the men and the supplies. By the way,
a lot of our knowledge about the sacking of Constantinople
comes from a firsthand account from Nikita's kniatis. So that's
why some of these details about the prostitute singing from
the throne are so vivid and so out of this world.

(12:24):
So we started with this religious mission to quote unquote
save Jerusalem and we end with a prostitute on the
patriarchs throne in Constantinople. How did we get here? And
what's going to happen? While the aftermath is that the
people of the Byzantine Empire have seen what the Latins
can do and they would rather take their chances with

(12:46):
the Turks. The divide between what will be the Eastern
Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches is now permanent. This is
known as the Great Sism or the East West Sism,
and it's still that way today. The sacking of Constantinople
also marks the beginning of the end of the Byzantine Empire.
It's this sophisticated, wealthy, culturally rich city and it's never

(13:08):
quite the same again. It suffered a very serious blow, yeah,
and it would be taken again, finally falling to the
Turks in fourteen fifty three. So this crusade that begins
to save the Holy Land ends with Islam winning the
day in the East. Ironically, despite the complete and total
failure of this crusade, no one seemed to learn from it,

(13:32):
because these missions to save the Holy Land went on
for centuries, and it reminded me a lot of when
we were talking about the Reformation, and specifically the wars
between the Catholics and the Huguenots, which seemed to be
never ending. But compared to this, it's barely a drop
in the bucket. I mean, these go on for centuries.
It's ridiculous. And of course, while we're not still sailing

(13:55):
with ships with our red crosses on our chests, religious
war are still going on today. Speaking of France and
its religious wars, that brings us to our listener mail.
Of course, the ultimate result of those religious wars is
the rise of the Bourbon family, and our email today

(14:16):
is from Sam Sunnite, who requests a podcast on the
fabulous life of Madame du Pompadoor. But he also includes
a little tidbit on our podcast on who would have
been the Nazi King and Wallace Simpson and the radication crisis.
He says, I was remembering a picture of the Duke
and Duchess with my grandmother. She was a journalist for

(14:37):
the Boston Globe, but later had to leave because she
met my grandfather there and relationships were not allowed in
the workplace. Sorry, madman fans that didn't work out with
the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. My grandparents met the socialites,
movie stars, sports players and entertainers of the day, from
Katherine Hepburn to Judy Garland and JFK to Georgia O'Keefe,

(14:59):
who my grandfather. I said, it was horribly stuck up
and terrible more. We're not advocating at this point of view.
We're just reading a letter. He also said, I was
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(15:20):
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(15:42):
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(16:02):
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