the byzantine background to the fourth crusade

Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 257–278, 1999

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The state of research

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

Michael Angold

Department of History

, University of Edinburgh, William Robertson Building, 50 George Square,

Edinburgh EH

8 9JY, Scotland, UK

The appearance of a second edition of D.E. Queller’s The Fourth Crusade together

with the publication of W. Treadgold’s massive History of the Byzantine State and

Society prompt a survey of the considerable literature that has accumulated in the past
decade or so on the Byzantine background to the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the
Venetians and the Fourth Crusade. Queller is a proponent of the view that it was an
accident, but then in one sense all history is an accident – ‘one damned thing after
another’. It is worth considering the parallel with 1066 and the fall of Anglo-Saxon
England: the contention is that it was an accident in the sense that history hung on the
outcome of a battle, but even a minute’s thought should be enough to reveal the
inadequacy of this line of approach. For fifty years or more Anglo-Saxon England had
been – and was known to be – vulnerable to foreign invasion . It is here that the parallel
with Byzantium is most apt. Byzantium too had long been seen as vulnerable. One
western interpretation of the origin of the crusades was that Byzantium had in the
aftermath of the defeat at Mantzikert (1071) forfeited its role as the eastern bulwark of

Christendom, thus opening the way for western intervention. The Norman conquest of
Thessalonica in 1185 and the crusader conquest of Cyprus in 1191 simply underlined
Byzantium’s vulnerability to attack by westerners.

The idea that an event is to be dismissed as an accident is extremely convenient for

those historians who see description and narrative as their main task. But historians have
a duty to penetrate beneath the surface of events. In the case of 1204 there has been a
reluctance to do so on the part not only of crusader historians. Byzantinists have equally
been at fault. They have tended to take their cue from Sir Steven Runciman – ‘There

was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.’ – and murmur
indignantly about plots involving the Venetians. It is to Treadgold’s credit that he does

MICHAEL ANGOLD is Professor of Byzantine History at Edinburgh University. His most recent book is

Church and Society in Byzantine under the Comneni

, 1081 –1261 (Cambridge, 1995). He is now engaged on

a book on the Fourth Crusade.

D.E. Queller and T.F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade

: the Conquest of Constantinople (Philadelphia, 1997).

W. Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society (Stanford, 1997).

William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, (Turnhout, 1986), vol. 1, 119–22.

S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades (Cambridge, 1954), vol. 3, 130.

257

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Michael Angold

not fall into this trap. He is unwilling to see the fall of the Empire in 1204 as a necessary
consequence of the weakness of the Byzantine Empire, but he does present the period
1025–1204 as one of progressive decline. He dismisses the Comnenian restoration as
largely cosmetic. He emphasises Byzantium’s vulnerability, which was a combination of
internal dissension, regional separatism, and foreign greed and suspicion.

Treadgold puts his finger on an essential problem: the nature of the Comnenian

restoration. Down to the death of Manuel Comnenus in 1180 the Byzantine state seemed
to function rather effectively under the emperors of the house of Comnenus. This
Treadgold has to acknowledge. He is caught between his own instincts which suggest
underlying weaknesses and the highly plausible interpretation set out by P. Magdalino in

his book on The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos,

which downplays any such

weaknesses. Magdalino is able to do this by insisting that Manuel left his successors a
sound legacy. The weaknesses that became increasingly clear after his death were not,
according to this interpretation, the emperor’s direct responsibility. Magdalino is trying
to get away from the interpretation of Byzantine history enshrined in Nicetas

Choniates’s History

which has dominated virtually all modern presentations. If we

accept Choniates, then 1204 follows inexorably from the weaknesses of Manuel
Comnenus’s rule. Magdalino dismisses this as tendentious and prefers to emphasise
those elements in Nicetas Choniates’s account which suggest the strength of Manuel
Comnenus’s achievements. He tests Nicetas against Cinnamus, the other major historian
of Manuel Comnenus’s reign. Where they differ, Magdalino, unlike Treadgold and the
majority of modern historians, prefers Cinnamus. He also makes use of the extensive
rhetorical literature that survives from Manuel Comnenus’s court. Its historical value is
its immediacy. These rhetorical pieces explain imperial policy. They were part of the
political process. They can also mislead and give a false impression of the strength of
the Empire and the success of Manuel’s policies. I think this is the case over the last
years of Manuel’s reign. His propagandists presented his diplomatic activity in the wake
of the defeat of Myriokephalon in 1176 as a resounding success, which restored the
position and the prestige of his Empire. That this was not the case is evident from events
that followed hard on his death. Manuel’s decision to bring in foreign rulers to guarantee
the succession of his young son Alexius II turned out to be a dangerous mistake and was
a sign of weakness rather than renewed strength.

The shadow of 1204 has undoubtedly distorted Manuel Comnenus’s reputation and

achievements. Magdalino has tried to restore the balance, but has tended to over-
compensate. But with his customary clarity he has set out the problem very well. He
argues that disasters cannot be laid at the foot of any one man, however dominant he
may have been in his lifetime. It is not individuals that should be called to account so
much as the system. Magdalino rejects the notion that at Byzantium the emperor
dominated the system. He was just part of it. In Magdalino’s opinion, the system was
working well at the end of Manuel Comnenus’s reign. If the fault lies anywhere, it was
with Andronicus I Comnenus, whom Magdalino accuses of dismantling the system of
government and patronage which he inherited. This is to personalise in a way he has

P. Magdalino, The empire of Manuel I Komnenos

, 1143 –1180 (Cambridge, 1993).

Now translated by H.J. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium

, Annals of Niketas Choniates (Detroit, 1984).

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

259

counselled against, but it raises a very important question, which I shall have to come
back to, when I consider R.-J. Lilie’s important contributions, which in many respects
anticipate Magdalino’s approach and treatment.

For the moment, the essential problem remains the Comnenian system of government.

Treadgold dismisses it as ‘Improvised Reconstruction’ which provided ‘Diminishing

Security’ to quote the titles of the chapters he devotes to the Comnenian emperors. His
intuition is that they were not able to find effective solutions to the deep-seated
weaknesses that manifested themselves in the course of the eleventh century. As a result,
Byzantium remained brittle and with little sense of direction. Treadgold criticises the
Comneni for the incoherence of their foreign policy. He accuses them of having no clear
aims. He also – and this is more surprising – suggests that they were simply not
ambitious enough. It is here that Treadgold is quite clearly at odds with the consensus of
recent scholarly opinion, which Paul Magdalino has felicitously summarised in the
following words: ‘Manuel’s policy was as complex and as changeable as the internation-
al situation to which he reacted, but . . . through all these twists and turns of policy, it is

possible to discern a basic consistency of aims and methods.’

Nor do many share

Treadgold’s conviction that the Comnenian reconstruction was only cosmetic. He is right
only in the sense that the Comneni made little effort to reform the old highly structured
bureaucratic system of government, which had proved more and more expensive, as it
increasingly escaped effective imperial control in the course of the eleventh century.
This does not mean that the Comneni dismantled the bureaucracy. They patched up and
made do. They rightly saw that political control was more important than administrative
reform. It is often forgotten that there is a difference between an administrative system
and politics, even in an ‘Absolutist State’. The Comneni instituted a more flexible
system of government, which relied on personal and family links to the emperor and
reasserted control over the bureaucracy. In this way, they restored clear direction to
Byzantine government for nearly a century, but then flaws in the system became more
obvious.

The most important interpretative study on Byzantium in the eleventh and twelfth

centuries to appear in the last twenty years is undoubtedly A.P. Kazhdan and A. Wharton

Epstein’s Change in Byzantine Culture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

As the

title suggests, it is not primarily about the political and administrative system at
Byzantium. It plots and analyses the currents of change at Byzantium. The authors
emphasise that literary culture was becoming more obviously secular under the
Comneni, the revival of the Hellenistic romance and a taste for Lucianic satire being
clear examples of this trend. There was a greater emphasis upon the individual and the
concrete. The ethos of the court was more clearly military. The image of the emperor
changed from the philanthropic bringer of peace to the warrior leader. The emperor was
equally the head of an aristocratic clan, where family ties were all important. The
implications of Kazhdan and Epstein’s study of Byzantine cultural life are that the

Treadgold, 612–37.

Treadgold, 638–66.

Magdalino, Manuel I Komnenos, 104–5.

A.P. Kazhdan (with A.W. Epstein), Change in Byzantine Culture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries

(Berkeley, 1985).

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Michael Angold

take-over of the Byzantine state by the Comneni not only brought dramatic change, but
also enabled them to harness changes. Under previous regimes these had worked against
effective government, as state revenues and sources of patronage increasingly passed
into private hands or the dead hand of the Church. This did not stop with the Comnenian
take-over, but the beneficiaries were now the imperial family and their allies and clients.
In other words, it went to bolster a new ruling class. The Empire was run in their
interests. Their solidarity was essential to the effective functioning of the Comnenian
system of government.

To understand why it broke down at the end of the twelfth century it is necessary to

start with the Comnenian reconstruction under Alexius I Comnenus. Not all that much

can be gleaned from a recent collection of studies on Alexios I Komnenos.

Paul

Magdalino suggests that Alexius paid more attention than has usually been allowed to
overhauling the imperial administration, but is less than convincing. The implications of

Alexius’s creation of the office of logothete of the secreta have long been appreciated,
while his reform of the Orphanotropheion seems to fit with a piecemeal approach to
administrative problems. Alan Harvey offers a much more substantial contribution

devoted to Alexius’s reform of the fiscal system.

This was his most important

administrative achievement and ensured the Byzantine state financial security until the
end of Manuel Comnenus’s reign. The so-called eleventh century crisis at Byzantium
had showed itself in the debasement of the coinage and the erosion of state revenues. It
was ten years into Alexius’s reign before he could even start to think of bringing some
order to the coinage, which was characterised by disparate issues of different fineness
and weight. Alexius was not able to restore the gold coinage to its original purity, but
succeeded in reestablishing clear correspondence between the gold, silver, and copper
currency and in circulating a sound gold coinage of some 22 carats fineness. The chaos
in the currency had meant that the fiscal system had been very hard to administer. Some,
monasteries especially, were able to escape very lightly; others, peasants mostly,
suffered at the hands of tax collectors and were forced to abandon their holdings or seek
the protection of the ‘powerful’. Alexius introduced new fiscal modalities in the shape of
the Nea Logarike, one of the most complicated tax documents to survive from any
period of history. The virtue of Harvey’s work is to unravel its workings and to show
how Alexius used it in order to improve tax revenues. It was typical of Alexius to
concentrate on essentials.

It is necessary to distinguish different aspects of the administrative system. Treadgold

is correct that there was no systematic overhaul carried out under the Comneni. For
effective government this was not strictly necessary. Getting in taxes was the essential;
so was the giving of justice. It was left to Manuel I Comnenus to reorganise the central
law courts of Constantinople, as we know from an exemplary piece of work by Ruth

Macrides.

The mobilisation of armies and the maintenance of a fleet were other

essential responsibilities of Byzantine government. Alexius I Comnenus inherited a

Alexios I Komnenos, ed. M.E. Mullett and D. Smythe (Belfast, 1994).

Alexios I Komnenos, 146–66.

Alexios I Komnenos, 167–84.

R. Macrides, ‘Justice under Manuel I Komnenos: four novels on court business and murder’, Fontes minores,

6 (1985), 99–204.

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

261

standing army, which he promptly lost at the battle of Dyrrakhion against the Normans
(1081). Thereafter until near the end of his reign he made do with a motley collection of
units recruited from here, there, and everywhere. His appeal to the papacy in 1095 was
an admission that he did not have an effective military organisation at his disposal, just
as his reliance on the Venetians was an admission that he could not afford to maintain an
adequate navy. By the time Alexius faced Bohemond’s second invasion of Albania in
1107 Byzantium’s military forces seemed to be on a much sounder footing. This was
confirmed in the reigns of John II Comnenus and Manuel I Comnenus, when Byzantine
armies were despatched to all points of the compass and recovered something of the
formidable reputation they had had in the tenth century. How it was done remains
something of a mystery. Treadgold’s study of the Byzantine army ends inconclusively in

1081

and Bartusis’s study of the late Byzantine army begins in 1204. The Comnenian

military organisation will more than repay study. Things stand more or less where

Ostrogorsky

and Lemerle

left the question. The introduction of the pronoia provided

a new way of financing the army. Kazhdan’s recent attempt

to play down its

importance was not convincing. It extended to the military organisation the methods of
financing that Alexius had used to support the imperial family. Soldiers too were now
granted through the pronoia a direct share in tax revenues. This only emphasises that the
Comnenian reconstruction was essentially political in the sense that it created a new
ruling class, which shared in the power and privileges of the imperial office.

J.-C. Cheynet’s Pouvoir et Contestations a Byzance

(963 –1210)

provides a

different perspective on Byzantine government. It is a study of rebellions and
conspiracies, which act as a seismograph of the Byzantine political process. It is a book
that has been much admired. The methodology has impressed many reviewers. What it
amounts to is quite simple: each rebellion or conspiracy is rehearsed in great detail.
Cheynet then goes back over his material to provide an analysis of its historical
significance; with curate’s egg like results. There is much stating of the obvious, but
there are also some original and occasionally profound insights, which make the book
more than worthwhile, because they could not have been obtained in any other way.
Cheynet charts 90 rebellions and conspiracies from the period from 1025 to 1081, with
no less than 19 in the decade from 1071 to 1081. These figures suggest that the political
system was breaking down. The pattern continued in the early years of Alexius I
Comnenus’s reign; the first twenty years seeing 19 rebellions or conspiracies. Contrast

W. Treadgold, Byzantium and its Army

, 284 –1081 (Stanford, 1996).

M.C. Bartusis, The Late Byzantine Army

: Arms and Society, 1204 –1453 (Philadelphia, 1992).

G. Ostrogorsky, ‘Die Pronoia unter den Komenen’, Zbornik Radova Vizantoloskog Instituta, 12 (1970),

41–54

P. Lemerle, ‘Recherches sur le regime agraire a Byzance: la terre militaire a l’epoque des Comnenes’,

´ ´

Cahiers de Civilisation medievale, 2 (1959), 265–81.

A.P. Kazhdan, ‘Pronoia: the history of a scholarly discussion’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 10

(1995–96), 133–63.

J.-C. Cheynet, Pouvoir et contestations a Byzance

(963 –1210) (Paris, 1990).

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Michael Angold

this with the last seventeen years which were almost free of dissidence – a sign that
Alexius had mastered the situation. Apart from family discontent the reigns of Alexius’s
son and grandson – a period of 62 years – were virtually trouble free. Cheynet’s figures
suggest that Alexius I Comnenus was able to impose a new political system, which
worked effectively.

After Manuel I Comnenus’s death in 1180 there was a dramatic change. Cheynet

documents 58 rebellions and conspiracies in the period from 1180–1204. This is a very
crude measure of the health of a political system. On the surface, it seems to support
Magdalino’s contention that the system was working well until Manuel I Comnenus’s
death and broke down thereafter. But why did it break down? At its most basic, it was
because the minority of Alexius II Comnenus (1180–83) provided an outlet for
discontents and strains that had been building up for much of Manuel Comnenus’s reign.
Manuel’s style of government had become increasingly remote and less family
orientated from the mid-1160s. Civil service families, such as the Kamateros, Tornikes,
and Hagiotheodoritai, became more prominent in Manuel Comnenus’s government.
Cheynet indicates that Andronicus I Comnenus’s seizure of power 1182–83 did not
produce any radical change of personnel. This is an important finding. In many ways,
Andronicus continued the autocratic style of government which had characterised the
last years of his cousin Manuel I Comnenus’s reign. At the time of the controversy over
‘The Father is greater than I’ (1166) Manuel’s arbitrary conduct was criticised and

opposed by two prominent members of the imperial court,

who were reflecting a more

general dissatisfaction.

Under Andronicus I the reaction was simply more intense. It is

clear from Cheynet that the character of dissidence after Manuel Comnenus’s death was
rather different from that before Alexius I Comnenus’s accession. This points to the
radical character of the Comnenian reconstruction, even if it was political rather than
administrative. In Constantinople the bulk of conspiracies came from within the imperial
family. This was undoubtedly a direct consequence of the role accorded to the imperial
family by Alexius I Comnenus. It was a permanent feature of the system of government
that he instituted and does not seem to have had serious repercussions, as long as the
imperial family remained a cohesive unit. However, by the end of Manuel Comnenus’s
reign it was beginning to split up into distinct lineages. It became increasingly difficult
to satisfy all the demands this created for revenues and position.

Cheynet’s other finding is not unexpected: that there was a large number of provincial

rebellions which built on separatist feeling. This, after all, is the theme of a book by J.

Hoffmann, which appeared in 1974.

Cheynet is nevertheless able to add a new

perspective, which underlines the novel features displayed by provincial dissidence in
the late twelfth century. He notes that in the eleventh century, even in the south of Italy,
provincial rebellions looked towards effecting a change of government in Constantino-
ple, or at least towards bringing influence to bear, not towards securing greater local
autonomy.

Alexius Kontostephanos and Nikephoros Bryennios: K. Varzos, Genealogia ton Komnenon, vol. 2,

(Thessalonica, 1984), 294–5.

M.J. Angold, Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni

, 1081 –1261 (Cambridge, 1995), 84–86.

J. Hoffmann, Rudimente von Territorialstaaten im byzantinischen Reich

(1071 –1210) (Munich, 1974).

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

263

Why should there have been a growing demand for provincial autonomy? This is a

contentious issue. As we shall see, when we examine the work of Lilie and Hendy, there
are two lines of approach: the first suggests that ties between capital and provinces
weakened, as the latter became more prosperous; the second that there was a provincial
reaction against the centralising tendencies of the Comnenian regime. But first there is
the question of how capital and provinces were linked. Until the eleventh century it had
been via the theme system. This became less effective as the theme armies were retired.
At the same time, there was a renewal of urban life in the provinces. Cities, rather than
the theme armies, became the focus of provincial life. They proved a less effective
instrument of central control than the theme armies, the more they became the focus of
local interests and traditions. At the centre of these developments was the bishop, who
often found himself under attack both by agents of the imperial government and by local
elements. Byzantine bishops were neither as wealthy nor as powerful as their western
counterparts. Underlying this was a combination of smaller dioceses and the failure to
evolve a tithe system. In the eleventh century this defect was partly remedied when Isaac
I Comnenus regulated the kanonikon, which had been a voluntary offering by the laity to
the bishop. His measure was confirmed by his nephew Alexius I Comnenus. This was
just one example of the favour shown by Alexius I Comnenus to the Church. His
‘Church settlement’ was an important part of his reconstruction of Byzantine

government.

He strengthened the patriarchal clergy. His creation of ‘professorial’

chairs attached to St Sophia was only one way in which its power and prestige was
enhanced. Increasingly, the most important sees of the Empire were filled from the
patriarchal clergy. The bishops became an essential link connecting the imperial
administration and the provincial centres. Under the Comneni they began to fulfil a role
not unlike that of the bishops of Ottonian Germany. Both were expected to compensate
for the lack of a solid apparatus of provincial administration. This is an area that has
been explored for the period after 1204, but much work remains to be done for the
twelfth century.

Thanks to Margaret Mullett’s long awaited study of Theophylact of Bulgaria

now have an exhaustive study of one Byzantine bishop’s network, as reflected in his
letters, and how it was used in the interests of his diocese. If Theophylact wanted to
exert influence, it was normally done through the provincial governors sent out from
Constantinople, whom he approached directly. If he wanted to bring pressure to bear
from Constantinople, he normally worked indirectly. But in the background were his
patrons, of whom the most powerful was Alexius I Comnenus’s brother Adrian. Mullett
is convinced and convincing that Theophylact used his network to good effect to defend
the interests of his diocese. The inference is that the bishop did function as the key link
between the provinces and the imperial administration. This contradicts her preliminary

study

which left the distinct impression that Theophylact exerted little influence in his

diocese, because ‘the state was strong enough to make trouble for Theophylact and his

Angold, Church and Society, 45–72.

M.E. Mullett, Theophylact of Ohrid

. Reading the letters of a Byzantine Archbishop (Aldershot, 1997).

M.E. Mullett, ‘Patronage in Action: the problems of an eleventh-century Bishop’, in: Church and People in

Byzantium, ed. R. Morris (Birmingham, 1990), 125–47.

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Michael Angold

like and too strong to allow the bishop to emerge as the powerful figure he might have
been’. Bishops only started to count ‘at the end of the twelfth century, when the
weakness of the state allowed bishops to assume a position of power’. Mullett’s change
of emphasis has far-reaching implications. By inference her earlier position stressed that
bishops counted for very little in the Comnenian scheme of things. Their prominence
was a function of the break down of the Comnenian system of government at the end of
the twelfth century. Her recent and very detailed rehabilitation of Theophylact suggests
the exact opposite. But it leaves another problem in its wake. If one accepts the role of
the bishop as a link between centre and periphery, why, in that case, should other studies
point to a weakening of such links, evident in a growing sense of local separatism?
Mullett has some interesting sidelights on this problem in a section entitled ‘Theophylact

the Bulgarian’.

Building on Obolensky’s portrait of Theophylact

she demonstrates

how, far from being a Byzantine imperialist, Theophylact promoted the Slavic traditions
and cults of his see. It was one way in which a local identity was fostered.

Mullet’s study reveals the value of exact and detailed analysis of the letters of a

Byzantine bishop. A similar analysis has yet to be undertaken for the letter collections of
other Comnenian bishops, of which that of Michael Choniates, archbishop of Athens, is

the richest and of the greatest significance for the late twelfth century. Such an analysis
is unlikely to shake the reputation he has as an exemplary bishop. He was loyal to the
imperial regime. He bravely and effectively opposed the activities of the local dynast
Leo Sgouras, which are a prime example of the growing separatism at the end of the
twelfth century. At the same time, Michael Choniates articulated local grievances against
the government in Constantinople. These centred around the collection of taxes, which

became increasingly arbitrary and irregular from the end of Manuel Comnenus’s reign.
The break-down of imperial administration meant that bishops were thrown into
prominence, in a way they had not been previously. But the foundations of their power
and influence had been laid earlier, most notably through the grant of privileges to
individual sees. The survival of these imperial chrysobulls is erratic. Though there are
plenty of references to the grant of privileges to bishoprics, the only full text which
survives is Manuel Comnenus’s chrysobull for the obscure Thessalian see of Stagoi

dated 1163.

The urban privileges that we know about for certain in the twelfth century

were for the bishop and his estates. However, when Thessalonica surrendered to the
Latin Emperor Baldwin in July 1204, it was on condition that he confirm the privileges

the city had previously received from the emperors of Byzantium.

It remains a

contentious issue whether Byzantine cities were privileged before the Latin conquest.
The example of Michael Choniates suggests that he was seeking to extend the privileges
granted to his church to the city at large. There is a possibility that at the time of the

Mullett, Theophylact of Ohrid, 266–74.

D. Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits (Oxford, 1988), 34–82.

Ed. Sp.P. Lampros (Athens, 1879–80; repr. Groningen, 1968), 2 vols.

Angold, Church and Society, 197–212.

Ed. C. Astruc in Bulletin de Correspondance hellenique, 83 (1959), 206–46; ed. E. Vranouse in

SYMMEIKTA, 7 (1987), 19–32. It is possible that the fragment of the survey ( praktikon) from Athens may
have been connected with privileges granted to the church of Athens: ed. E. Granstrem et al. in Revue des
Etudes byzantines, 34 (1976), 5–44.

Nicetas Choniates (599.39–40) and Villehardouin, ed. E. Faral (Paris, 1961), 88 are agreed on this.

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

265

Latin conquest a group of leading citizens or archontes simply appropriated episcopal
privileges. This is a problem that requires further clarification. What is not in doubt is
that with the weakening of central authority at the turn of the twelfth century the sources
throw the bishop and the archontes into much greater prominence.

But the growing sense of local identity evident in the activities of twelfth-century

bishops and archontes can be traced back to changes that began much earlier. The
Comnenian reliance on bishops was just another way of coming to terms with a new
situation. The bishop was an ideal mediator. His church remained at the heart of local
solidarities and the bishop could act or pose as a defender of local interests. At the same
time, he had close links with the capital. Bishops – especially senior ones – were
expected to attend the patriarchal synod on a regular basis. However, underlying this
was a shift in the structure of the Byzantine Empire. It was becoming, as much a
collection of dioceses under the aegis of the patriarch, as it was a collection of provinces
under the control of the imperial administration. While the Comnenian emperors were
firmly in control, this worked extremely well; much less so after the death of Manuel I
Comnenus, when bishops as a link with the centre became less effective. This was for a
number of reasons. Bishops relied on support from Constantinople, when faced with
local opposition. Eustathius’s experiences at Thessalonica were not just a consequence
of his rebarbative personality. His failure to put his full support behind local cults was
more damaging, but the weakness of his position stemmed very largely from a lack of

consistent support from the imperial government.

Another factor is perhaps more

important. The alliance that Alexius I Comnenus established with the patriarchate of
Constantinople was vital to Comnenian rule. He and his immediate successors
dominated the Church, but at the same time founded imperial prestige and authority in
the Church. Manuel Comnenus’s high handed treatment of the Church at the end of his
reign signalled that all was not well with this alliance. It was confirmed by Andronicus I
Comnenus’s humiliation of the Patriarch Theodosius. The patriarchs of the late twelfth
century were rather passive and resentful partners. Isaac II Angelus had no less than five

patriarchs in a reign of ten years.

One of the factors which made Byzantium so vulnerable at the end of the twelfth

century was the state of the Church. This is a feature that has been more or less
neglected. A notable exception is Katsaros’s study of John Kastamonites, bishop of

Chalcedon at the end of the twelfth century.

It soon becomes clear how riven the

Byzantine Church was by a combination of faction and doctrinal disagreement. It has
always been difficult to explain why John Kamateros (1198–1206), the patriarch who
had to face the Fourth Crusade, was so entirely ineffective. He gave no sense of purpose
nor unity. He made no objections to demands for an end of the schism on Rome’s terms;
he did not oppose the desecration of Church treasures to help pay for the crusader army.
His pusillanimity becomes much easier to understand in the light of Katsaros’s book. It
adds a new dimension to the state of Byzantium on the eve of the Fourth Crusade.

P. Magdalino, ‘Eustathios and Thessalonica’, in: PHILELLEN

. Studies in Honour of Robert Browning

(Venice, 1996), 225–38.

Angold, Church and Society, 116–36.

B. Katsaros, IOANNES KASTAMONITES (Thessalonica, 1988).

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III

On the eve of the Fourth Crusade the Patriarch John Kamateros washed his hands of

any responsibility for negotiations with the papacy and referred Pope Innocent III to the

superior wisdom of Alexius III Angelus.

But by then Byzantine foreign policy was

reduced to a series of desperate overtures, quite unlike the situation under the Comneni
where the initiative lay with the Byzantines. Treadgold’s insistence that Comnenian
foreign policy had no coherence and was not ambitious enough flies in the face of recent

work, notably R.-J. Lilie’s book on Byzantium and the Crusader State,

which was

received warmly, especially by British crusade historians. It was given a new lease of

life when it was revised and translated into English.

Lilie draws a sharp distinction

between the foreign policies of Alexius I and John II Comnenus, on the one hand, and
those of Manuel I Comnenus, on the other. Following Alexius’s break with Bohemond

over Antioch in 1098 – for our purposes whose fault it was really does not matter

–

Byzantine foreign policy was directed for half a century towards recovering Antioch by
force. The concrete results were negligible. The turning point was the passage of the
Second Crusade. Manuel Comnenus’s handling of the affair demonstrated a mixture of
the old suspicion of the crusade engendered by Bohemond’s ‘crusade’ of 1107 and a
new openness to cooperation with the West. This bore fruit in a marriage policy designed
to bring the crusader states and Byzantium closer. The marriage in 1158 of Baldwin III,
king of Jerusalem, to Theodora Comnena, one of Manuel’s many nieces, prepared the
way for the Byzantine emperor’s triumphant entry into Antioch in April 1159. But he
made it clear that his intention was not to annexe the principality, but only to exercise
rights of overlordship. It was part of the way Manuel Comnenus built up a network of
client states around the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire. But the crusader states were
particularly valuable to Byzantium because they provided it with ‘a window to the
West’.

Lilie is simply amplifying the thesis of P. Lamma

that Manuel Comnenus hoped to

use his support for the crusader states to create a favourable impression in the West. His
ultimate goal was to end the state of schism between eastern and western Christendom,
which the crusade was supposed to heal, but had only made worse. Manuel hoped for
Byzantium’s incorporation within a Western system, but on his terms, namely that he be
recognised as emperor in the West. This gives the lie to Treadgold’s strictures about
Comnenian policy not being sufficiently ambitious. Perhaps he means realistically
ambitious. The question is whether Manuel’s commitment to the crusader states
unbalanced his foreign policy. The failure in 1169 of the joint crusader–Byzantine
expedition to Damietta suggests as much. The defeat at Myriokephalon in 1176 is harder
to evaluate. Did Manuel undertake the invasion of Seljuq territories in order to boost his
crusading credentials, or was he hoping to cash in on his alliance with the crusader states

A. Papadakis and A.M. Talbot, ‘John X Camaterus confronts Innocent III’, Byzantinoslavica, 33 (1972), 35.

R.-J. Lilie, Byzanz und die Kreuzfahrerstaaten

. Studien zur Politik des byzantinischen Reiches gegenuber der

Kreuzfahrer in Syrien und Palastina bis zum vierten Kreuzzug

(1096 –1204) (Munich, 1981).

R.-J. Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States

, 1096 –1204 (Oxford, 1993).

See J. Shepard, ‘When Greek meets Greek’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 12 (1988), 185–277.

P. Lamma, Comneni e Staufer, vol. 2 (Rome, 1957), 19–35, 161–79.

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

267

to annex the Seljuq state, which was the long term aim of Byzantine foreign policy? The

latter surely! Manuel’s letter to Pope Alexander III

presenting his impending assault

on the Turks in crusading terms was propaganda or just good diplomatic manners. But
things were never the same again for Manuel after the defeat at Myriokephalon.
According to William of Tyre, the crusader historian, ‘the ever present memory of that
defeat so oppressed him that never again did he enjoy peace of mind or his usual

tranquillity of spirit’.

Many historians have taken their cue from William of Tyre and

have made a pessimistic assessment of the impact of the defeat of Myriokephalon on

Byzantine foreign policy. It was Lilie,

who first questioned whether it was such a

disaster. Except for a relic of the true cross Manuel seems to have lost very little. He
appeared to have little difficulty in safeguarding his Anatolian frontiers against Turkish
attack. There was a diplomatic offensive designed to restore any loss of prestige in the
West.

As indicated above, there are serious difficulties in accepting this line of argument,

but Lilie develops his arguments further in his ‘Des Kaisers Macht und Ohnmacht’.
This is not as well known as it deserves to be. Lilie considers that the essential strength
of the Comnenian system was the consensus between imperial authority and the
aristocracy. This was based on the fact that the first three Comnenian emperors were not
only emperors but also the heads of the Comnenian family. This consensus provided the
political stability that underlay Byzantium’s great power status under the Comneni. It
was fatally threatened, in Lilie’s opinion, by the minority that followed the death of
Manuel I Comnenus in 1180. His son and heir Alexius II Comnenus was only eleven
years old and in no position to wield imperial authority or head the Comnenian family,
which left the way open for Andronicus Comnenus. Lilie provides a masterly analysis of
the latter’s dilemma. He had come to power because he had aristocratic backing as the
senior surviving member of the house of Comnenus, but once in power his only claim to
legitimacy was as regent for the young Alexius. Worse he had no material basis of
support, because he had become an outsider, once he had been forced into exile by
Manuel I Comnenus. It was clear that from the moment Alexius II came of age
Andronicus was doomed. He took the logical step, which was to liquidate his charge.
Once this happened he lost any claim to legitimacy. His otherwise bizarre marriage to
the eleven year old Agnes of France – previously married to Alexius II Comnenus –
was a desperate attempt to find some justification for his claim to imperial authority and
was seen as such. Andronicus’s isolation, Lilie believes, will explain why he embarked
on his reforms of government. He had no support from the aristocracy. He therefore
hoped to find in a return to bureaucratic control over provincial administration a counter
to the aristocracy. The aristocracy will have seen this as an assault on their privileges
and position and responded with a series of revolts and conspiracies. Thus, Lilie
concludes, was the consensus destroyed on which Comnenian government was based.

Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. 15, 925–6; Dolger, Regesten, 1520.

William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, vol. 2, 977.25–32.

R.-J. Lilie, ‘Die Schlacht von Myriokephalon (1176): Auswirkungen auf das byzantinische Reich im

ausgehenden 12. Jahrhundert’, Revue des etudes byzantines, 35 (1977), 257–75.

R.-J. Lilie, ‘Das Kaisers Macht und Ohnmacht. Zum Zerfall der Zentralgewalt in Byzanz vor dem vierten

Kreuzzug’, in: VARIA

,I[ 5 POIKILA BYZANTINA 4] (Bonn, 1984), 9–120.

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Michael Angold

The emperors of the house of Angelos who followed Andronicus I’s overthrow were
never strong enough to restore the consensus. Instead, the unravelling of the Comnenian
system of government took a new turn: there was a series of provincial rebellions, which
had as their purpose, not the overthrow of imperial government in Constantinople, but
the establishment of separatist regimes. The most notable of these was the revolt of Peter
and Asen, which led to the establishment of the second Bulgarian Empire. Lilie
concluded that ‘potentially power within the Empire was now concentrated in the
provinces to the detriment of the emperor and his central administration at

Constantinople’.

This was to anticipate one of Cheynet’s major conclusions.

Lilie is too shrewd a historian to argue that it was only after Manuel Comnenus’s

death in 1180 that things started to go wrong. He identifies the fundamental cause of
weakness as a failure to provide a clear institutional and constitutional basis for the
Comnenian system of government. The charge is that Alexius I Comnenus imposed an
aristocratic regime without providing it with any clear legal or constitutional basis. In
Alexius’s defence it has to be pointed that he made far-reaching changes to the court
hierarchy which privileged the relatives of the reigning emperor. He did the right thing
honorifically. It is somewhat unrealistic of Lilie to expect more. Perhaps this was an
abiding weakness of the Byzantine system of government. People thought hierarchically
rather than constitutionally. Lilie’s analysis suffers from his tendency to fall back on
vague and general explanations: such as the failure on the part of Alexius I Comnenus
and his son and grandson to provide an adequate legal and constitutional framework for
the realities of power. A moment’s thought will reveal how unrealistic this is. The
realities of power almost always escape a legal and constitutional framework.

Lilie talks about ‘Aristokratie’ and ‘Hausmacht’ without having any very clear idea of

what these represent. Aristocracy in a Comnenian context is best identified with the
imperial clan. But there were certainly influential families, especially in the provinces,
who had little to do with either Constantinople or the imperial dynasty. There were also
bureaucratic families, whose fortunes seemed to have been eclipsed by the rise of the
Comneni. What has struck relatively few people is that the reappearance of these
bureaucratic families from the end of Manuel I Comnenus’s reign was the sign of an
important shift in the distribution of power among the upper echelons of the Byzantine
court. By the time of Manuel’s death the Kamateroi, Hagiotheodoritai, the Kastamonitai,

the Tornikai were among the most powerful forces among the Byzantine aristocracy.
Their rise to prominence is connected, in part, with the need that each emperor felt to
create his own core of supporters, his ‘Hausmacht’, but also with the need to control the
bureaux of government. These families first come to prominence in the last ten years of
Manuel’s reign. They point to a change – often denied – that occurred around 1166 in
Manuel’s style of government. Thereafter there is much greater emphasis on the emperor
as a reformer and a lawgiver. In other words, there is a reversion to a pre-Comnenian
ideal of government, of which the bureaucratic families were the main proponents.
Manuel’s death may have been the starting point for a period of political instability, but

R.-J. Lilie, ‘Das Kaisers Macht und Ohnmacht’, 110.

M.J. Angold, ‘The Imperial Administration and the Patriarchal Clergy in the twelfth century’, Byzantinische

Forschungen, 19 (1993), 17–24.

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

269

the one thing that did not change was the continuing ascent of these bureaucratic
families, whose influence increasingly extended to the highest ranks of the Church. The
Kamateros family provided two patriarchs of Constantinople: Basil (1183–87) and John
(1199–1206). Basil Kamateros was raised to the patriarchate by Andronicus I Comnenus
and was among his most loyal and effective supporters. He was only reflecting the initial
enthusiasm there was among this group for Andronicus. Its members were grateful to
Andronicus for giving them a clear constitutional role via the Senate and the patriarchal

synod, both of which they dominated.

They cannot have foreseen how quickly

Andronicus was going to forfeit aristocratic and popular support. His overthrow left the
bureaucratic families in an embarrassing position, which they were able to reverse by
emerging after the event as indignant critics of Andronicus’s barbarities. The reign of
Isaac II Angelus (1185–95) was a potentially difficult time for the bureaucratic families.
Basil Kamateros was dismissed from the patriarchal throne in 1187. Despite his role
under Andronicus I he still retained support. His dismissal was followed by a series of
short reigns as Isaac II attempted to impose his creatures on the patriarchal throne. This
came to an end in 1192 when George II became patriarch. He was a Xiphilinos, a family
with a good bureaucratic pedigree. Equally, Isaac Angelus came to rely on Theodore
Kastamonites, Constantine Mesopotamites, and Demetrius Tornikes, who all came from
powerful bureaucratic families. The emperor’s overthrow may have been engineered by
the heads of the great aristocratic clans of Palaiologos, Cantacuzenus, Branas, Raoul,
and Petraliphas, but his brother and successor, Alexius III Angelus (1195–1203), was
equally in thrall to the bureaucracy. Power passed into the hands of his wife Euphrosyne
Doukaina Kamatera, who came from the greatest of the bureaucratic families. By the eve
of the Fourth Crusade the position of the Kamateros family both in church and state
seemed unassailable. Bureaucratic ascendancy seems to me to be the major feature of
Byzantine politics on the eve of the Fourth Crusade. Its origins can be traced back to the
last years of Manuel Comnenus’s reign. Bureaucratic dynasties were the main
beneficiaries of the breakdown of the Comnenian system of government. Instead of
dominating the bureaucracy the emperors of the Angelus dynasty became increasingly
beholden to it. The consequence was that they forfeited the respect of the aristocracy and
perhaps the populace too.

Lilie’s failure to recognise this weakens his analysis of Byzantium’s situation in the

later twelfth century. But is he on any stronger ground when he investigates provincial
separatism? He is clear that the underlying cause was the economic growth of the
provinces which he explains in terms of Italian penetration. He developed this theme in

detail in his massive work on Byzantine relations with the Italian maritime republics.
His analysis is complicated and many-sided. He is at pains to emphasise that the
Byzantine government was not motivated by economic and commercial considerations
in its dealings with the Italians. Diplomacy and war were far more important. Lilie has
his doubts as to whether the imperial government gained very much materially from the
commercial activities of Italian merchants. Michael Hendy came independently to the

Nicetas Choniates, 276–77.

R.-J. Lilie, Handel und Politik zwischen dem byzantinischen Reich und den italienischen Kommunen Venedig

Pisa und Genua in der Epoche der Komnenen und der Angeloi

(1081 –1204) (Amsterdam, 1984).

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Michael Angold

same conclusion in his even more massive work on the Byzantine economy.

Both

Hendy and Lilie emphasise that Byzantium remained an overwhelmingly agrarian
economy and that the bulk of the revenues of the Byzantine state came directly or

indirectly from the peasantry.

From the point of view of the central government the

complete or partial exemption from the payment of customs duties enjoyed by Italian
merchants mattered very little. The Italians looked on things quite differently. Their
main interest in the Byzantine Empire was commercial. In the course of the twelfth
century – the Venetians to the fore – the Italians established an impressive presence in a
network of provincial cities.

This supposes that there must have been a massive Italian investment in the trade of

the Byzantine Empire. It is at this point that Hendy

parts company with Lilie. His

examination of the claims for reparations made by the Venetians and Genoese leads him
to conclude that making all allowances the Italian investment in the trade of the
Byzantine Empire at any given time during the mid to late twelfth century was under
one million hyperpyra. This, to Hendy’s way of thinking, was quite a modest
investment, being no more than ‘the equivalent of the total value of the fortunes of some

half a dozen, perhaps fewer, of the highest members of the Byzantine magnate classes’.
Hendy’s careful calculations command respect, but they do not undermine Lilie’s
contention that the trade of the Byzantine Empire was of major importance to the Italian
maritime powers nor his argument that Italian merchants stimulated the agrarian
economy by buying up agricultural products. There is good evidence of the purchase of
such commodities by Italian merchants from the local archontes.

It requires, however, a leap of faith to see this as the underlying cause of provincial

separatism. One of the major centres of provincial dissidence at the turn of the twelfth
century was Philadelphia in western Anatolia. Lilie has to exaggerate the degree of
Italian commercial penetration of Anatolia in order to fit Philadelphia into his pattern.

J.-C. Cheynet has made a special study of Philadelphia in the period 1182–1206.

The

Italians do not feature in his explanation for the series of rebellions centred on this city.
Philadelphia was in the first place of great strategic importance, commanding a frontier
zone separating Byzantium and the Turks. It was a garrison town – the residence of the
dukes of Thrakesion. From the end of Manuel I Comnenus’s reign the emperor’s
brother-in-law John Comnenus Vatatzes combined the functions of Grand Domestic (or
commander-in-chief) and of duke of Thrakesion, which underlines the military impor-
tance of Philadelphia in the aftermath of the defeat at Myriokephalon (1176). Vatatzes
rebelled against Andronicus I Comnenus in 1182, but this must be seen as part of the
struggle for the leadership of the Comnenus family rather than as local separatism.

M.F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy

, c. 300 –1450 (Cambridge, 1985).

Hendy, 613–18, where Hendy uses the Ottoman budget to support his contention about Byzantium’s

overwhelmingly agrarian base. The dangers of this approach are only too evident. Hendy is relying on one
interpretation of Ottoman history. More recently, following in the wake of H. Inalcik, there has been a
tendency to see the Ottoman Empire as a ‘merchant empire’: see P. Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and
Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany, 1994), 15–20, 123–74.

Hendy, Studies, 590–602.

Hendy, 597.

J.-C. Cheynet, ‘Philadelphie, un quart de siecle de dissidence, 1182–1206’, in: Philadelphie et autres etudes,

ed. H. Ahrweiler (Byzantina Sorbonensia-4) (Paris, 1984), 39–54.

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

271

Vatatzes’s success in holding the frontier against the Turks may have earned him
significant local support, but, when he fell ill and died in May 1182, it melted away and
was not transferred to his sons who were with him. The city preferred to negotiate a
settlement with Andronicus I Comnenus on its own behalf. Its independent stance was
confirmed by the career of one of its leading citizens, Theodore Mangaphas. Beginning
in 1188 he established himself as ruler of Philadelphia. He affected imperial dress and
minted coins, but his ambitions were strictly limited to the city and its surrounding
region. Mangaphas is a prime example of the growth of local separatism at the end of
the twelfth century. Cheynet sees this as a reaction to the failure of the imperial
government to provide for the defence of a frontier city. The Italians scarcely enter into
it. However, there must have been some Venetians in Philadelphia, because the city is
singled out along with Adrianople and Abydos in Isaac Angelus’s chrysobull to the

Venetians of 1187 as a possible centre for recruiting Venetians into the Byzantine navy.
Quite what this signifies in numbers of Venetians settled in these cities is not clear. They
were places, which appear to have been chosen to give clearer definition to the
hinterland of Constantinople, which was the general area of recruitment of Venetians

permitted to the Byzantine emperor by the chrysobull.

Nothing else suggests a

significant Venetian presence at Philadelphia.

By way of contrast, the Greek cities were deeply permeated with Italian commercial

interests, but nothing is said in the 1187 chrysobull about the Byzantine emperor being
allowed to recruit from the Venetians settled there. This region was the scene at the turn
of the twelfth century of a rebellion centred on the cities of Argos and Nauplion led by
Leo Sgouras – the head of a powerful local family. There is a good chance that he
would have had dealings with Italian merchants, as would the local rulers who appear in
the Peloponnese around the same time. However, other centres of revolt in Greece lay
beyond the range of Italian penetration. Dissidence was most marked further north in the
southern Balkans among Bulgarian and Vlach chieftains. Italian interests are not likely
to have had much effect, even indirectly. In other words, it is difficult to accept Lilie’s
assumption that provincial separatism was linked automatically to the presence of Italian
commercial interests. The roots of provincial separatism remain a big problem. It has to
do with the growth of local interests and solidarities. In the past, the local archontes
looked to an imperial governor to protect their interests and might support his political
ambitions, but increasingly in the late twelfth century they preferred to follow a local

G.L.F. Tafel and G.M. Thomas, Urkunden zur alteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig,

vol. 1 (Vienna, 1853), 199.

See D.M. Nicol, Byzantium and Venice

: a study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge, 1988),

112.

There is a story about a pseudo-Alexius who in 1189 raised the banner of revolt against Isaac II Angelus at

Harmala – a small town in the upper Maiander valley. The mastermind behind this uprising was, according
to Nicetas Choniates (pp. 420–22), a certain Latin, resident in the town, who took the impostor to the Seljuq
court at Konya. This story is the only specific evidence I know of for the presence of Latins in the interior of
Byzantine Anatolia at this time, but Lilie did not use it, presumably because it is difficult to know what to
make of it. The Latin bears comparison with Alexius Sikountenos Philadelphenos, the sinister figure behind
another pseudo-Alexius, the one who had the support of the Normans in their 1185 campaign against the
Byzantine Empire. Eustathius of Thessalonica describes him as passing for a Latin in all except his long
beard: Eustathios of Thessaloniki, The Capture of Thessaloniki, ed. J.R. Melville Jones (Canberra, 1988),
60.9–10.

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Michael Angold

leader or dynast, as he was called, who would not subordinate local interests to

Constantinopolitan ambitions.

In some areas, the presence of Italians may have been a significant factor in providing

the ground conditions for the development of local separatism. But first it is necessary to
establish the nature of Italian involvement in the Byzantine economy. The key question
which may never be answered is this: did the Italians create a market in agricultural
products where none had existed or were they attracted by an already existing market in
agricultural products? In terms of economic progress the growth of a market in
agricultural products is vital, much more so than a market in manufactured goods. It is
the essential foundation of sustained urban growth, which presupposes a market
economy. The consensus of economic and monetary historians is that before 1204 the
market played only the most peripheral of roles in the Byzantine economy. In global
terms, this is almost certainly the case, but even a small growth in the market sector can
have immense repercussions, favouring those who have access to and control over the
market. Given that there is clear evidence for urban prosperity in regions of the
Byzantine Empire where Italian involvement was minimal, it is much more likely that
the Italians were attracted by already existing markets. This is not to say that they did
not contribute to their development in areas, such as Greece, where their interests were
concentrated.

Such hypothesising hardly squares with a view put forward almost thirty years ago by

Judith Herrin in an article, where she argued that the ‘Angeloi inherited an economic

organisation crippled by non-productive sectors and drained by foreign merchants’.
The result was overtaxation of the peasantry and the abandoning of holdings. These
views were in marked contrast to those set out by Michael Hendy in a famous revisionist

article.

He argued that far from collapsing the Byzantine Empire was doing very well

in the twelfth century. His main evidence was numismatic. He noted that the production
of gold and electron coins by the Byzantine mints increased markedly over the first half
of the twelfth century and, even if it levelled off thereafter, there was no ‘hint of a
radical decline’. Hendy concluded that the Comnenian coinage was ‘certainly to be
regarded as a more flexible and efficient instrument of exchange than the stable but rigid,
sparse and in a word primitive system prevailing between the eighth and eleventh

centuries’.

He did not think that the Italians were a decisive factor behind the

prosperity of the Byzantine Empire under the Comneni. When twenty years later Hendy
reviewed his position in the light of subsequent work, he saw no reason to alter his

views.

Alan Harvey has little to add to Hendy in his study of the Byzantine economy.

The strength of Harvey’s book is his mastery of the eleventh-century documentation.
Much of it comes from the archives of the monasteries of Mount Athos, which are

See M.J. Angold, ‘Archons and Dynasts’, in: The Byzantine Aristocracy IX to XIII centuries, ed. M.J. Angold

(BAR – Oxford, 1984), 236–53.

J. Herrin, ‘The Collapse of the Byzantine Empire in the twelfth century: a study of a medieval economy’,

University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 12 (1970), 188–203.

M. Hendy, ‘Byzantium 1081–1204: an economic reappraisal’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,

20 (1970), 31–52.

Hendy, 45.

M.F. Hendy, The Economy

, Fiscal Administration and Coinage of Byzantium (Northampton, 1989), no. III.

A. Harvey, Economic expansion in the Byzantine Empire

, 900 –1200 (Cambridge, 1989).

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

273

notoriously poor for the twelfth century. There is still no proper study of the Byzantine
economy on the eve of the Fourth Crusade. Judith Herrin’s analysis relied very heavily

on Michael Choniates’s well known Hypomnestikon of 1198,

in which he set out the

sufferings of the peasantry of Attica. A strong sense of pastoral responsibility may have
led the archbishop to present his case in such a way as to emphasise the suffering of the
peasantry at the hands of local landowners. In any case, one reading of the document
would be that the last vestiges of a self-sufficient peasant economy were giving way
before market forces controlled by the local landowners. The growth of the market
notoriously discriminates between winners and losers.

Even if the evidence collected by Hendy suggests that the growth of the Byzantine

economy continued well into the thirteenth century, we still know next to nothing about
the state of the Byzantine economy on the eve of the Fourth Crusade. While it looks as
though Italian penetration of the Byzantine economy had a benign effect to the middle of
the twelfth century, its impact later on in the century is far from clear, but this may only
be a reflection of the disturbed political conditions of the time, which included the
growth of piracy in Byzantine waters. In his Handel und Politik Lilie shies away from
examining what was happening at the end of the twelfth century. He refuses to
pronounce on 1204 beyond noting that Venice needed Byzantium far more than
Byzantium needed Venice. This caps a powerful thesis. He argues that the Byzantines
and the Venetians were operating according to quite different principles and interests.
The Venetians were motivated by profit and loss. They understood the importance of
maintaining their control of Byzantine markets which they had built up in the first half
of the twelfth century. While Comnenian foreign policy retained its coherence, the
Byzantine government had a clear idea of what it wanted from the Italian republics:
support in Italy and the Adriatic and naval assistance. The trouble came when
Comnenian foreign policy lost its coherence. Lilie has made a massive contribution to
the study of the Byzantine Empire under the Comneni. If it strikes an old-fashioned
chord, it is because he has pointed to political and diplomatic factors as decisive in
determining the fate of Byzantium.

Lilie’s Handel und Politik is a very different – more probing – book from Donald

Nicol’s study of Byzantine–Venetian relations,

but both agree on the importance of

political and diplomatic factors. Nicol provides an admirable narrative which comple-
ments Lilie’s more analytical approach. Nicol suspects the Venetians of deliberately
using the Fourth Crusade to pursue commercial objectives. But like so many others he

finds his quarry elusive. His inaugural lecture as Gennadeios Librarian

allows him to

look at the problem in greater detail. The Venetians are slippery customers and he fails to
nail them, but he does show how the ‘crusade’ of 1122–24 provided a precedent for
Venice’s actions at the time of the Fourth Crusade. He also provides the most detailed
examination of the Venetian sources for the Fourth Crusade. The conquest of Con-
stantinople in 1204 was outwardly a Venetian triumph. It still remains hard to explain
why it failed to produce a Venetian historian contemporary with events to celebrate it.

G. Stadtmuller, Michael Choniates

, Metropolit von Athen (Rome, 1934), 284–6.

D.M. Nicol, Byzantium and Venice

: a study in diplomatic and cultural relations (Cambridge, 1988).

D.M. Nicol, Byzantium

, Venice and the fourth crusade (Athens, 1990).

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Michael Angold

The Venetians were uncharacteristically coy, but why? The answer may be that for at
least half a century after the conquest of Constantinople it was not clear whether this had
worked to Venice’s advantage. Venetian business activity declined at Constantinople
during the period of the Latin Empire. It recovered only after the restoration of the

Byzantine Empire to Constantinople in 1261.

C.A. Maltezou offers an even more

suggestive interpretation. She has examined the clash of interests produced by the

conquest of Constantinople between Venice and its colony in Constantinople.

Her

intuition is that this had its roots before 1204. She suggests that one of the major forces
behind the diversion of the Fourth Crusade was the Venetian community in Constantino-
ple. She points to the incident at Abydos in 1196 when 140 Venetian shipowners and
merchants refused to obey the doge’s order to return to Venice and put up the money to
continue their expedition in Byzantine waters. All that is missing is any attempt to
analyse who these 140 Venetians were and what interests they may have had.

The role of the Genoese has been examined by G.W. Day.

They clearly benefited

enormously from the expulsion of the Venetians in 1171, but Genoese merchants were
among the chief victims of the 1182 pogrom. Thereafter their position in Constantinople
remained uncertain. It depended on the patronage of the marquesses of Montferrat, who
had a long history of involvement in the Byzantine Empire. William of Montferrat
entered Manuel Comnenus’s service and was rewarded with revenues drawn on
Thessalonica. His son Renier was married in 1179 to Manuel Comnenus’s daughter
Maria and raised to the dignity of Caesar. Another son Conrad of Montferrat was one of
Isaac II Angelus’s chief backers at the beginning of his reign. He was responsible for
suppressing the rebellion of Alexius Branas in 1187. For whatever reason – western
sources suggest Byzantine duplicity; Nicetas Choniates is circumspect – Conrad almost
immediately abandoned Byzantine service and sailed to the rescue of the Franks of
Outremer. This left the Genoese in a difficult position at Constantinople. Their privileges
were renewed in 1192. It was only in 1201 that they recovered their factory there. This
was followed in May 1203 by a new – and more generous – grant of privileges on the

part of Alexius III Angelus.

It was perhaps enough to scare the Venetians, but events

happened too fast for the Genoese to provide the naval cover that Byzantium required.
Once again the treatment concentrates on political and diplomatic factors.

We are more or less back where we started. Economic and social explanations of the

collapse of the Byzantine Empire on the eve of the Fourth Crusade remain unconvincing.

L.B. Robbert, ‘Rialto Businessmen and Constantinople, 1204–61’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 49 (1995),

43–58.

C.A. Maltezou, ‘Venetian habitores, burgenses and merchants in Constantinople and its hinterland (twelfth–

thirteenth centuries)’, in: Constantinople and its Hinterland, ed. C. Mango and G. Dagron (Aldershot, 1993),
233–41.

G.W. Day, Genoa

’s Response to Byzantium 1155 –1204. Commercial Expansion and Factionalism in a

Medieval City (Urbana / Chicago, 1988).

P. Schreiner, ‘Genua, Byzanz und der 4. Kreuzzug. Ein neues Dokument im Staatsarchiv Genua’, Quellen

und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven, 63 (1983), 292–7.

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

275

Italian penetration of the Byzantine economy does not by itself explain provincial unrest.
The rise of market forces has been dismissed – I suspect a shade too hastily – by

economic and monetary historians.

These negative judgements reflect the lack of

adequate evidence for the condition of the provinces. The only exception is the island of
Cyprus, which always stood slightly apart from the mainstream of Byzantine history.
Catia Galatariotou has produced a quite original study of the island’s history by
examining ‘the life, times and sanctification of Neophytos the Recluse’ to quote the

subtitle of her book.

Neophytos was born in 1134 and died c. 1215. His life therefore

covered a tumultuous period of Cypriot history, which saw the island pass under
Frankish control in 1191. Neophytos provides a commentary on events, which
tangentially illuminates the situation of the island. Allowances have to be made for his
viewpoint. He was a ‘Holy Man’, convinced that God had chosen him as His instrument.
His mission was to call sinners to repentence. He also came from a peasant family – if a
prosperous one – and he displays a deep sympathy with the sufferings of the peasantry.
His description of the oppression that they suffered at the hands of the ruling group –
the archontes, an amalgam of local landowners, prominent clergy, and government
officials – was nothing new and constituted a Byzantine norm. What was new was the
charge Neophytos made that at the end of Manuel Comnenus’s reign there were
gatherings among this group which produced plots, conspiracies, and murders. He also
refers to civil wars. Galatariotou has not been able to pin these comments down more
concretely, but they show that by the end of Manuel’s reign there was deep discontent
and divisions among the archontes of Cyprus. The defeat of Manuel’s armies at
Myriokephalon in 1176 must have had a more immediate impact on Cyprus than almost
anywhere else in the Byzantine Empire on account of its effects on Byzantine influence
in the crusader states. Neophytos records the defeat as ‘truly worthy of tears’ and does
not minimise the losses suffered by the Byzantines. At the same time, he portrays the
battle as a moral victory for Manuel Comnenus because of the bravery he showed
extricating the remains of his army from defeat. The contradictions – even the
inaccuracies – of his treatment of the battle suggest that it was a cause of dissension
among the Cypriot ruling group. Neophytos represented those who wished to stay loyal
to Constantinople.

Because from the seventh to the tenth century Cyprus had been independent of

Constantinople and because the Church of Cyprus was autocephalous, the Cypriots had a
clearer sense of their separate identity than other Byzantine provincials. It is very
difficult to follow the shifts of provincial loyalties in Byzantium. The elite in capital and
provinces understood that they were Orthodox Romans, but this was an elite identity,
comparable to Ottoman or British. This sense of identity was rooted in the capital. Its
corollary was contempt for the provincial. Never was this better demonstrated than by

M.F. Hendy, The Economy

, Fiscal Administration and Coinage of Byzantium, no. III. On p. 25 he notes that

in Greece and Macedonia the most common coins in circulation in the twelfth century were the ‘lower value
copper tetarteron and its half’, while in the interior of the Balkans and Anatolia they were ‘the higher value
billon trakhy’. Hendy explains this in terms of the Byzantine government’s sensitivity to the differing
monetary needs of its provinces. He refuses to connect this with the better developed state of the market in
Greece and Macedonia!

C. Galatariotou, The Making of a Saint (Cambridge, 1991).

276

Michael Angold

the vignette penned by Constantine Manasses – a Byzantine diplomat – of his stay in
Cyprus in 1162, when he knocked a Cypriot to the ground during a church festival, just

because he smelt.

The resentment of provincials at Constantinopolitan arrogance was

rarely articulated, but it is apparent in the criticism which the Archbishop of Athens,
Michael Choniates, directed towards the people of Constantinople on the eve of the

Fourth Crusade for their neglect of their responsibilities to the provinces.

Resentment against Constantinople fuelled provincial separatism. In Cyprus it was

exploited by Isaac Comnenus, a scion of the imperial family. In 1184 he took over the
island, it would seem, with the active support of a large section of the ruling group. He
proclaimed himself emperor, but this was a gesture of independence and defiance. He
seems to have had no intention of aiming for the throne of Constantinople. His assertion
of imperial authority in a provincial context anticipated developments after 1204, when a
series of independent Greek states came into being. While the Cypriot archontes
expected their new emperor to further their interests, the latter had to satisfy the hopes of
his entourage. The result was that many of the archontes were dispossessed and forced
to flee to Constantinople. Neophytos records and possibly exaggerates how much they
suffered at Isaac’s hands. However, the Cypriot emperor had little native support when
Richard Coeur de Lion’s forces landed on the island. The swiftness and completeness of
the Frankish conquest of Cyprus are indicative of how vulnerable to foreign conquest
parts of the Byzantine Empire had become by the end of the twelfth century. The
Norman conquest of Thessalonica a few years earlier in 1185 tells a similar story,
though the circumstances are not quite the same. At Thessalonica the morale of the
defenders was sapped by the cowardice of the imperial governor and not improved by an
archbishop who was heartily disliked. Both at Thessalonica and in Cyprus western forces
were able to exploit a combination of local separatism and resentment of Constantinople.
Immediately after 1204 it helps to explain why the crusaders met so little resistance as
they carried out the conquest of the Greek lands and much of north western Asia Minor.

However, it does not explain why Constantinople itself should have been vulnerable

to western attack. Cheynet entitles the last chapter of Pouvoir et contestations:

‘Constantinople exclue de l’Empire’.

It deals with the situation pertaining after 1204,

when a series of independent Greek ‘states’ came into being in the provinces of the old
Byzantine Empire. Cheynet shows how this was prepared by the way the capital had
been progressively isolated from the rest of the Empire in the decades following Manuel
Comnenus’s death. One of the features of this period of increasing isolation was the
recovery by the people of Constantinople of a decisive political role. Their prominence
during much of the eleventh century is well known. Once the Comneni came to power,
they then disappear from the political scene. Why this should have been remains

mysterious and Cheynet sheds little light on the matter,

nor for that matter does L.

Garland.

Then just as mysteriously they reappear as a political force in their vociferous

K. Horna, ‘Das Hodoiporikon des Konstantin Manasses’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 13 (1904), 344.

Michael Choniates (ed. Lampros), II, 831.

J.-C. Cheynet, Pouvoir et contestations, 459–73.

Cheynet, 202–5.

L. Garland, ‘Political Power and the populace in Byzantium prior to the fourth crusade’, Byzantinoslavica, 52

(1992), 17–52.

The road to 1204: the Byzantine background to the Fourth Crusade

277

contribution to the theological debates in the later part of Manuel’s reign. It was marked
by a hatred of the Latins. A Latin theologian who was involved in these debates noted

that Latins were pointed out as objects of hatred on the streets of Constantinople.

This

anti-Latin sentiment was something new. It took ferocious form in the 1182 pogrom of
the Latin settlers in Constantinople.

This gave the role of the people of the capital a rather different quality, when

compared to their position in the eleventh century. This in turn reflected changes that

had come about in their sense of identity. Paul Magdalino

has demonstrated how a

specifically Constantinopolitan identity, as opposed to a Roman or Byzantine one,
developed over the late twelfth century. It sharpened the divide between the capital and
the provinces. It can also be associated with the appearance during Manuel Comnenus’s
reign of the term ‘Hellene’ to mean Byzantine. This was a precious usage confined to the
educated elite, but it had a distinctly anti-Latin twist, if on cultural and social grounds
rather than for religious reasons. It went to feed popular prejudices against Latins
resident in Constantinople. The populace was more dangerous than it had been in the
eleventh century, because it could justify criminal activities and gang warfare in terms of
the struggle against the hated Latin. But Nicetas Choniates is likely to have been right:
far from creating a united front against the Latins the rise of the populace introduced an
anarchic element into the politics of the capital, which made it impossible for any

emperor to follow a coherent policy, let alone provide leadership.

There was to be no

sustained resistance against the crusaders on the part of the people of Constantinople
either in August 1203 or in April 1204.

A review of the most recent literature on Byzantium on the eve of the Fourth Crusade

reveals the continuing uncertainties about the state of the Byzantine Empire in the period
1180–1204. The subject is still dominated by Charles Brand’s Byzantium confronts the

West

(1180 –1204), which is deservedly among the most enduring examples of modern

Byzantine scholarship. It has done much to shape approaches to 1204. Since Brand’s
book appeared in 1968 there has been very little in the way of new source material
published. Such as it is has mostly been in the form of rhetorical pieces delivered before
the Byzantine court or patriarchal church, but judging by the examples recently
published it seems most unlikely that this type of source will provide radical new
insights or information. How, in that case, has recent work modified Brand’s picture? If
it has failed in general terms to go much beyond the point reached by Brand, it has
clarified the critical points and areas. It is possible to analyse the collapse of the
Comnenian system of government with more confidence now that Paul Magdalino has
revealed how it functioned under Manuel I Comnenus. If it is correct that the Comnenian
reconstruction was political, its weaknesses were likely to be political rather than
structural. This is where Cheynet’s study is so valuable. He has been able to isolate the
political process at Byzantium, which has never been well understood because it has

A. Dondaine, ‘Hughes Etherien et Leon Toscan’, Archives d

’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age,

19 (1952), 126.

P. Magdalino, ‘Constantinople and the ‘‘EXO KHORAI’’ in the time of Balsamon’, in: TO BYZANTIO

KATA TON

12o AIONA, ed. N. Oikonomides (Athens, 1991), 179–97

Nicetas Choniates, 234.87–88.

C.M. Brand, Byzantium confronts the West

(1180 –1204) (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).

278

Michael Angold

usually been confused with the mechanism of government. In some ways, Cheynet
throws into relief the inadequacy of Brand’s approach which is essentially narrative, but
his own treatment of Byzantine politics on the eve of the Fourth Crusade is a shade

tentative. For example, he entitles one of his sections ‘Une branche des Comnenes

depourvue de charisme: les Anges’,

but fails to explain their lack of charisma. Brand is

weakest in his treatment of the Church, which he failed to integrate into the general flow
of his narrative. Perhaps the most important contribution has therefore been made by
Katsaros in his work on John Kastamonites, bishop of Chalcedon, because it draws
attention to the problems presented by the Orthodox Church in the late twelfth century.
The condition of the patriarchal church is vital and is an area that has only just started to

be explored. Galatariotou’s work on Cyprus reveals the need for more detailed work on
the Byzantine provinces. It is certainly true that no other part of the Byzantine world
boasts a writer quite like St Neophytos. It is still a surprise that there is no proper study
of Thessalonica in the twelfth century, nor for that matter is there a proper study of
Constantinople under the Comneni.

And Constantinople is surely the key to the political failures of the Angeli. What made

it so brittle and vulnerable at the end of the twelfth century? Hendy suggests that the
fundamental problems facing the Byzantine Empire at the end of the twelfth century ‘lay
in the basic structural contradiction between the Byzantine state apparatus . . . and the

continuing expansion of the regional economy’.

What he means by this is that it was

essential for a parasitical Constantinople to retain control over a regional base. What he
is inferring is that it was a failure to do this which left the capital in such a brittle and
vulnerable condition. Certainly, much of the discontent within the capital was generated
by the repeated failures of the Angeli emperors to assert effective control in the
provinces. But this is only part of the answer. What has to be explained is the condition
of stasis which affected all sections of Constantinopolitan society in the last decades of
the twelfth century. It was characterised by a burning hatred of the Latins and at the
same time by a barely concealed admiration for their military prowess, their political
nous, and their know-how. Any solution to Constantinople’s deep-seated political
problems was almost bound to involve westerners. It was not forgotten how Conrad of
Montferrat with a scratch force of Latins had been able to suppress Alexius Branas’s
revolt against Isaac Angelus. The Latins were ‘some sort of a solution’, but unlike
Cavafy’s Barbarians they failed to go away.

Cheynet, Pouvoir et contestations, 434–406.

Angold, Church and Society under the Comneni, 116–36.

Hendy, Economy

, Fiscal Administration and Coinage of Byzanrium, no. III, 43.

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