Thomas F. Madden - The Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade (Memory and the Conquest of...

The Venetian Version of the Fourth Crusade:Memory and the Conquest of Constantinople

in Medieval Venice

By Thomas F. Madden

On a busy day in October 1202, Walframo of Gemona, a resident of Veniceliving in the parish of San Stae, made his will. Although still a young man, hewas anxious to put his affairs in order because, as he put it, “preparing to go inthe service of the Lord and his Holy Sepulcher, I am mindful of the day of mydeath.”1 Walframo was apparently a man of some wealth. In his will he left hiswife, Palmera, her dowry of seventy Venetian lire as well as three houses andfour household slaves that Walframo had given to her as a morning gift aftertheir nuptials. He also directed her to spend three hundred Venetian lire for thebenefit of his soul. Days later, Walframo boarded one of the hundreds of vesselsthat made up the great fleet of the Fourth Crusade and sailed out of the Venetianlagoon.2 Whether he ever returned home is unknown.

But if he did, he must have had quite a story to tell—one that is largely lost tous today. Modern historians know a great deal about the events of the FourthCrusade, yet very little about the thousands of Venetians and other Italians whojoined it or about the experiences that they brought back with them. The FourthCrusade was, by any measure, an unusual expedition. For most Venetians it be-gan in April 1201, when envoys from the crusade leaders, Thibaut of Champagne,Baldwin of Flanders, and Hugh of St. Pol, concluded a treaty with Venice.3 In it,the Venetians agreed to provide provisions and a fleet to carry 33,500 crusaders

Research for this study was funded by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Mellon FacultyDevelopment Fund.

1 “… paratus essem ire in servicio domini et sancti eius sepulcri cepi cogitare de die mortis mee”:Venice, Archivio di Stato, S. Lorenzo di Venezia, B. 21. That the notary, Venerando Marin, was apriest at the church of San Marco was unusual for a private document at this time. Given the dateand the fact that a priest from San Stae witnessed the will, it is possible that this was one of manywills made in the Piazza San Marco as the crusaders prepared for departure.

2 Venetian legal documents at this time bore only the month, year, and indiction. Because this willis dated October 1202 and the crusade fleet departed during the first week of October (the octaveof St. Remi, October 2–8, according to Geoffrey de Villehardouin), only a few days could have elapsedbetween the execution of the document and the departure of the crusade. See Geoffrey deVillehardouin, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. and trans. Edmond Faral, Les classiques de l’histoirede France au Moyen Âge 18–19, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1938–39), 1:76; Alfred J. Andrea,“The Devastatio Constantinopolitana, a Special Perspective on the Fourth Crusade: An Analysis,New Edition, and Translation,” Historical Reflections 19 (1993): 107–49, at 132; and Gesta epis-coporum Halberstadensium, ed. Ludwig Weiland, MGH SS 23 (Hannover: MGH, 1874), 73–123,at 117.

3 For a complete description of the Fourth Crusade see Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden,The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1997).

Speculum 87.2 (April 2012) doi:10.1017/S0038713412001017 311

and 4,500 horses to the East in return for payment of eighty-five thousand silvermarks. In addition, the Venetians agreed to join the crusade themselves, provid-ing fifty manned war galleys at their own expense. Their leader, Doge EnricoDandolo (1192–1205), suspended all Venetian overseas commerce for eighteenmonths to allow citizens of the republic to devote themselves fully to the effort.4

Half of the able-bodied men of Venice took the cross, after being selected by astate lottery.5 Thousands more were recruited among Venice’s allies in northernItaly and Dalmatia.6 In June 1202 the crusaders from the north—whom contem-porary sources and modern historians refer to collectively as the “Franks”—began to arrive in Venice. By the end of the summer only about 11,000 Frankishcrusaders had made the rendezvous. The rest, who were the majority, found trans-portation to the East at other ports. Since the Venetians had prepared a fleet andprovisions for 33,500 men, the collective decisions of the other crusaders poseda serious problem for those at Venice. Unable to pay the contracted price, theFourth Crusade stalled until October 1202, when the Venetians finally agreed tosuspend the outstanding debt if the Franks would help them conquer the rebel-lious city of Zara on the Dalmatian coast. Thus the fleet, carrying the Frankishcrusaders, Doge Enrico Dandolo, Walframo of Gemona, and some 15,000 otherunnamed Venetians, sailed out of Venice and into the Adriatic Sea.7

Despite threats of excommunication by Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), the cru-saders captured Zara, a Catholic city that was under papal protection. There theFourth Crusade spent the winter of 1202/3. By March 1203 the crusaders werevirtually penniless and had consumed all of their contracted provisions.8 To fur-ther complicate matters, although the Franks had obtained a papal absolutionfor the attack on Zara, the Venetians had been formally excommunicated—a factconcealed from them by the leaders.9 To preserve the troubled enterprise, the cru-sade barons agreed to support a Byzantine imperial claimant, young AlexiusAngelus, who had recently arrived at Zara with envoys of his brother-in-law, Philipof Swabia. In return for overthrowing his uncle, Alexius III (1195–1203), andputting him on the throne, Alexius promised the crusaders provisions, militarysupport, the union of the Byzantine and Roman churches, and two hundredthousand silver marks. Against the wishes of the pope and a majority of the

4 Robert de Clari, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. Philippe Lauer (Paris: É. Champion, 1924),7, p. 8, and 11, pp. 9–11.

5 Ibid. 11, pp. 9–10.6 Ibid. 13, p. 13; Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, ed.

G.L. Fr. Tafel and G.M. Thomas, 3 vols. (Vienna: Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1856–57; repr.,Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1964), henceforth cited as TTh., here 1:387–88, no. 96 (incorrectly dated) and1:96–98, no. 97; Andrea, “Devastatio,” 132; Roberto Cessi and Fanny Bennato, eds., Venetiarumhistoria vulgo Petro Iustiniano Iustiniani filio adiudicata (Venice: Deputazione di storia patria per leVenezie, 1964), 134–35.

7 On the number of Venetians see Thomas F. Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 130.

8 On the problem of provisions see Thomas F. Madden, “Food and the Fourth Crusade: A NewApproach to the ‘Diversion Question,’” in Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, ed. JohnH. Pryor (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 209–28.

9 Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. Othmar Hageneder and Anton Haidacher (Graz: Böhlau, 1964–),henceforth cited as Reg., here 6, no. 100.

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rank-and-file Frankish crusaders, the fleet sailed to Constantinople. After a briefassault on the city in July 1203, Alexius III fled, and the citizens accepted theyoung Alexius and his formerly deposed father, Isaac II (1185–95, 1203–4), astheir new rulers. Once crowned, Alexius IV (1203–4) paid roughly half of themoney that he owed to the crusaders and convinced them to winter atConstantinople, promising to pay the remainder before spring. However, rela-tions quickly soured between the Byzantines and the crusaders, so much so thatby December 1203 open warfare had broken out. In February 1204 a new im-perial claimant in Constantinople deposed and killed Alexius IV and was crownedAlexius V Mourtzouphlus (1204). In retaliation and exasperation the crusadersconquered and sacked Constantinople on April 12, 1204. Thus the Fourth Crusadeended, and the new Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204–61) was born.

Those, in brief, are the basic events of the Fourth Crusade. They are drawnfrom a range of sources that include crusader memoirs, papal correspondence,and Western and Byzantine chronicles. Historians of the Fourth Crusade areblessed with a diverse array of perspectives on the event—ranging from those oflow-level knights to churchmen to barons to Greek aristocrats.10 And yet, al-though the majority of the crusaders were, like Walframo, men of Venice or otherallied towns, there is no Venetian memoir of the Fourth Crusade. As a result,with the exception of Doge Dandolo, the Venetian crusaders usually fade intothe background of modern narratives. Because they had little contact with them,Franks had little to say about Venetians in their accounts of the expedition. Indeed,with the exception of the doge, none of the thousands of Venetians on the cru-sade are identified by name in any contemporary chronicle.

The lack of a Venetian perspective on the Fourth Crusade does not simply con-strain a complete understanding of the event itself. It also deprives the historianof an element in the formation of medieval Venice’s civic and religious identity.Today a visitor to the Great Council chamber (Sala del Maggior Consiglio) inthe Palace of the Doges can see walls covered in scenes depicting one celestialand numerous historical events. Along the inner wall are found paintings of theevents of the Peace of Venice of 1177, in which the Venetian people and theirleaders are seen aiding and defending Pope Alexander III in his struggle againstFrederick I Barbarossa. Covering the outer wall, interspersed with windows look-ing out to the sea, are eight paintings depicting the events of the Fourth Crusade.At the head of the chamber is Tintoretto’s famous Paradise. Although the presentpaintings date from the sixteenth century, many are updated replacements of ear-lier medieval frescoes destroyed by fire in 1577.11 Venetians chose to have these

10 On sources for the Fourth Crusade see Alfred J. Andrea, “Essay on Primary Sources,” in Quellerand Madden, Fourth Crusade, 299–313.

11 The original fresco decorations were completed in stages between 1365 and 1416. In 1578 theoverall goal of the palace’s reconstruction was to restore what had been lost, while updating the ar-tistic style. With regard to the Great Council chamber, this is apparent when comparing the partiallydestroyed Coronation of the Virgin fresco completed by Guariento of Padua in 1368 with the Paradiseof Tintoretto that replaced it. The former is preserved in the Sala dell’Armamento. An order of 1366to strike out the portrait of Doge Marin Faliero in the chamber is likewise reflected in the sixteenth-century replacement portraits, which still include a place for Faliero but depict a cloth covering animplied image with the words “Hic est locus Marini Faletro decapitati pro criminibus.” Nothing

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events always before the members of the Great Council, the source of all politi-cal authority in the Republic of St. Mark. One can appreciate readily enough theutility of a depiction of heaven, reminding members of the final rewards for val-orous or selfless actions in the council. For its part, the Peace of Venice was wellremembered by Venetians as an example of loyalty to the papacy—a loyalty thatbrought the German emperor to the Piazza San Marco to kiss the feet of the pope.

The crusade, however, is more problematic. As both a papal initiative and anelement in ecclesiastical reform, crusading was embraced early on by Venetians.In 1099 Doge Vitale Michiel (1096–1101) commanded a Venetian crusade fleetof some two hundred vessels—the largest single contribution to the First Crusade.Although the Venetian crusaders arrived in Syria after the conquest of Jerusalem,they nonetheless assisted with the capture of Haifa.12 In 1120 Pope Calixtus IIcalled on Venice to mount a crusade to defend the crusader states after the seri-ous defeat at the Field of Blood. Doge Domenico Michiel (1118–29) oversaw thecreation of a large fleet carrying some fifteen thousand Venetian crusaders. Whenit reached Acre, it defeated the Fatimid navy and assisted with the conquest ofTyre.13 Like other medieval Europeans, the Venetians were proud of their crusad-ing victories, not merely as evidence of military prowess, but as a visible indica-tion of the favor that God showed to those who defended his people and church.

The decision, then, to depict the events of the Fourth Crusade in the roomthat was at the political heart of Venice is surprising. While Pope Innocent IIIdid urge the Venetians to crusade, it can hardly be said that they otherwise actedin accord with his will or to the benefit of Christendom.14 Against papal com-mands, the Venetians diverted the crusade to Zara and not only captured thecity but leveled it to the ground.15 They then piloted their vessels to ChristianConstantinople, where they assisted with its capture and sack. All of this was inviolation of papal directives, and all of it occurred while the Venetian crusaders

remains of the original frescoes that depicted the Peace of Venice. It is not clear whether the FourthCrusade appeared in the medieval frescoes or was an addition to the chamber in 1578. See PatriciaFortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1988), 39–42 and 261–65; Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice:Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting 1460–1590, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1990), 303; Elena Bassi and Egle R. Trincanato, Guide for Visitors to the Ducal Palacein Venice (Milan: Martello, 1964), 78; Elena Bassi and Egle R. Trincanato, The Palace of the Dogesin the History and Art of Venice (Milan: Martello, 1964), 96–113; and Terisio Pignatti, The Doge’sPalace (New York: Reynal, 1965), 9.

12 Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, aa. 46–1280 d.C., ed. Ester Pastorello, RerumItalicarum scriptores 12.1 (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1938), 220–23; Monk of the Lido, Historia detranslatione sanctorum Magni Nicolai, in Recueil des historiens des croisades, 5: Historiens occiden-taux (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1895), 1:259–78; Cessi and Bennato, eds., Venetiarum historia, 86;Donald E. Queller and Irene B. Katele, “Venice and the Conquest of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,”Studi veneziani, n.s. 12 (1986): 21–25.

13 William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, CCCM 63A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 546–49; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg:Carl Winter, 1913), 452–53; Queller and Katele, “Venice,” 31–39.

14 Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 119–20.15 On the destruction of Zara, see ibid., 150.

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were under the ban of excommunication. Pope Innocent had no doubt thatDandolo and the Venetian crusaders had treacherously waylaid his crusade, evenreferring to them as the thieves in the parable of the good Samaritan.16

It is an odd artistic program indeed that glorifies acts of disobedience to God’schurch alongside depictions of the joys of heaven. When the members of the GreatCouncil convened, they were historically and architecturally sandwiched be-tween selfless devotion to the Holy See (the Peace of Venice) and the selfish cor-ruption of a papal project to rescue Jerusalem. Although the restoration commit-tee in 1578 wished to display Venice’s major military victories along the walls ofthe Great Council chamber and nearby Sala dello Scrutinio, they had a great manyfrom which to choose.17 Why give such prominence to the Fourth Crusade?

There can be no doubt that the Fourth Crusade remained an important eventto medieval and early modern Venetians. In addition to decorating the GreatCouncil chamber with its scenes, they had filled the central civic and religiousspaces of San Marco with its spoils. Its prominent depiction in the Great Councilchamber seems out of place only because it appears to contradict a program thathighlights Venice’s good relations with popes, kings, and other important lead-ers, as well as Venetian religious devotion. Yet that assessment itself is not basedon any Venetian evidence. Rather, it rests on a narrative of the Fourth Crusadedrawn from French, German, Roman, and Byzantine sources. We should not as-sume that medieval Venetians experienced or remembered the event in preciselythe same way as their contemporaries. The purpose of this study, then, is to at-tempt to excavate fragments of a contemporary Venetian narrative of the FourthCrusade, reconstructing as much as possible the perceptions of the Venetian cru-saders and the stories they brought home. In addition, this essay will suggest someof the outlines of the subsequent production and evolution of Venetian memoryof the Fourth Crusade in later centuries.

The most important contemporary source for the Fourth Crusade is Geoffreyde Villehardouin, the marshal of Champagne, who took part in the expeditionand whose memoirs, written in Old French sometime between 1207 and 1218,would see a wide readership across medieval Europe. Modern historians are ac-customed to having a range of sources from which to draw when investigatingthe Fourth Crusade. However, most of those sources were hardly known in theMiddle Ages. Gunther of Pairis’s Hystoria Constantinopolitana, for example, sur-vives in only three late copies.18 Robert de Clari’s La conquête de Constantinople,commonly used today to complement Villehardouin, exists in only one manu-script, which was tucked away in the monastery library of Corbie.19 Villehardouin’s

16 Reg. 5, no. 160 (161).17 Girolamo Bardi, Dichiaratione di tutte le istorie, che si contengono ne i quadri posti novamente

nelle Sale dello Scrutinio, e del Gran Consiglio, del Palagio Ducale della Serenissima Republica diVinegia, nella quale si ha piena intelligenza della più segnalate vittorie; conseguite di varie nationidel mondo dai Vinitiani (Venice: Felice Valgrisio, 1587), fols. 1r–2v.

18 Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria Constantinopolitana, ed. Peter Orth (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1994),95–99.

19 See Edgar Holmes McNeal’s introduction to his translation, The Conquest of Constantinople(New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 7–9.



account, on the other hand, was reasonably available during the Middle Ages:Edmond Faral used six manuscripts to produce his edition in 1938–39.20

Unfortunately, there is no Venetian Villehardouin—or at least none that has sur-vived. Michael Angold has suggested two reasons for this vacuum. First, Venetianshad not yet developed a tradition of chronicle writing. Second, in the years imme-diately following the fall of Constantinople the crusade was an embarrassment tothe Venetians, partly because it had failed to win victories comparable to the cru-sade of 1122 and also because it had produced an unstable and dangerous Byzantineworld that would sap Venetian energy and blood for years. The subsequently poorrelations with Innocent III likewise embarrassed a people who prided themselveson their devotion to Rome.21 Angold is certainly correct about the state of Venetianchronicle writing in the early thirteenth century: it was virtually nonexistent. It isdifficult, however, to detect much Venetian embarrassment over the Fourth Crusadeduring the Middle Ages. The four bronze horses looted from Constantinople andplaced prominently on the facade of San Marco were an extravagant statement ofpride, not embarrassment. Similarly, while relations between Innocent III and Venicewere strained after the Fourth Crusade, they were not bad enough for mostVenetians to notice. We should not transfer Innocent’s problems with the Venetianpatriarchs of Constantinople onto Venice itself.

Despite the lack of a Venetian Villehardouin, it is nonetheless possible to un-cover a few of the basic components of the story that Venetian crusaders broughthome with them in 1205. The earliest Venetian written accounts of the FourthCrusade are brief, but useful. The oldest is contained in a letter from EnricoDandolo to Innocent III, probably sent in June 1204.22 The doge informed thepope that he “took up the Cross in service of Jesus Christ and the Holy RomanChurch.” He and the crusaders departed from Venice but were forced to stop atZara because of the winter. Since the city was rebellious, “I justly (so I judged)took vengeance on the city and citizens, according to the custom of mutual en-emies.” Dandolo admits to hearing a rumor that Zara was under papal protec-tion but dismissed it since he did not believe that Innocent would extend protec-tion to someone (King Emeric of Hungary) who had taken the cross only as apretext for stealing and keeping others’ property. As for the excommunication,Dandolo tells the pope that he and the Venetians “patiently and humbly en-dured it” until they were finally absolved by the papal legate in June 1204.Dandolo relates the mission to put the young Alexius on the throne ofConstantinople, but he reports only the prince’s promise to place the Greek churchunder obedience to Rome. Alexius and his father, Isaac, however, proved to beliars, so the crusaders disavowed them. After they were murdered, Dandolo con-tinues, the Greeks attacked the crusaders on land and sea by means of burningvessels launched against the fleet. For that reason, “we decided that the city ofConstantinople had to be conquered for the honor of God and the Holy Roman

20 Villehardouin, Conquête, 1:xxxvii–xxxix and xliv–li.21 Michael Angold, “The Venetian Chronicles and Archives as Sources for the History of Byzantium

and the Crusades (992–1204),” Proceedings of the British Academy 132 (2007): 59–94, at 84–85.22 Reg. 7, no. 202. Translations from Alfred J. Andrea, ed. and trans., Contemporary Sources for

the Fourth Crusade (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 128–30.

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Church and the relief of Christendom.” Against all expectations, Dandolo con-tinues, the city fell; Mourtzouphlus fled; and a great many Greeks were killed.

Although Dandolo omitted much, his account was essentially accurate. It hadto be, since it would be compared with the accounts that the other barons weresending to the pope. However, Dandolo’s version of the crusade is not particu-larly useful for uncovering a Venetian perspective. He was, after all, a very spe-cial Venetian. Unlike his countrymen, Dandolo was an important member of thebarons’ council, with full access to information used to make decisions for thecrusade. In any case, he brought no story home. Innocent III refused his petitionto be relieved of his crusader vow, and he died in Constantinople in May 1205.

Another, and until recently overlooked, early Venetian source for the FourthCrusade is the Translatio Symonensis, an account of the transfer of the relics ofSt. Simon from Constantinople to Venice. David Perry has convincingly datedthis work to around 1205.23 It, therefore, must have been compiled from eye-witness accounts. As might be expected, it is largely concerned with the body ofSt. Simon and the means by which it was acquired and transported to Venice.24

Only a short section is devoted to the crusade. It records that because God hatedthe sinful Greeks, he incited Dandolo and the other barons to take up the crossof the crusade: “They did this willingly in order to bring about justice by re-turning the son of the emperor to the throne of his father, from which he hadbeen wickedly and impiously removed and expelled.” Later they fought a justwar against the “impious prince” in which the Venetian ships approached thewalls of Constantinople and the crusaders scrambled over and set many fires.Thus they captured the city and the empire. According to this contemporaryVenetian account, therefore, the purpose of the Fourth Crusade was to right thewrong done to the young Alexius by placing him on the Byzantine throne.Nothing at all is said of the crusade’s plan to fight against Muslims in the East.Aside from that error, the brief testimony of the Translatio Symonensis is accu-rate as far as it goes. The crusaders did capture the city by attacking the harborwalls from Venetian vessels, and they did set fires in the city.

Another account of the Fourth Crusade with ties to Venice was produceda few years later in nearby Ravenna. There, in the church of San GiovanniEvangelista, an abbot identified only as William ordered a new mosaic floor tobe laid in 1213. Included in the decorations was a program of images depictingevents that had recently occurred during the Fourth Crusade. The floor was usedfor three centuries before being covered in the sixteenth century. It was rediscov-ered during an excavation in 1763.25 The current condition of the mosaic

23 David M. Perry, “The Translatio Symonensis and the Seven Thieves: A Venetian Fourth CrusadeFurta sacra Narrative and the Looting of Constantinople,” in The Fourth Crusade: Event, After-math, and Perceptions, ed. Thomas F. Madden, Crusades: Subsidia 2 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008),89–112, at 92–102.

24 The text is published in Paolo Chiesa, “Ladri di reliquie a Costantinopoli durante la QuartaCrociata: La traslazione a Venezia del corpo di Simeone profeta,” Studi medievali 36 (1995): 431–59. Translations are from Perry, “Translatio,” 107.

25 Antonio Carile, “Episodi della IV Crociata nel mosaico pavimentale di S. Giovanni Evangelistadi Ravenna,” Corsi di cultura 23 (1976): 109–30; Raffaella Farioli Campanati, I mosaici pavimentalidella chiesa di S. Giovanni Evangelista in Ravenna (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 2009), 55–57.



fragments is poor; however, ten of the images relating to the crusade were iden-tified and subsequently mounted on a side wall of the church, where they stillremain. The best known of them depicts the conquest of Constantinople withbound Greeks being expelled from the city (Fig. 1). There is also a similar, yetless well known, depiction of the conquest of Zara (Fig. 2).

These images are important for they do not rely on the major memoirs andhistories of the crusade. In 1213, when the mosaic artist laid these stones,Villehardouin’s text and the other principal sources for the crusade were un-available in Ravenna or Venice.26 In other words, these images offer a narrativeuncontaminated by the later flood of Fourth Crusade textual accounts. They are,instead, depictions of a contemporary account still in oral form. This was a storythat was important to the monks of San Giovanni Evangelista. The first Latinpatriarch of Constantinople, Thomas Morosini, was the abbot of Santa Mariain Porto, a nearby dependency of their own abbey.27 Indeed, the Fourth Crusadecycle may have been a tribute to Morosini, who died shortly before the floorwas laid (1211). The close temporal proximity between the mosaics and the re-turn of the Venetian and Italian crusaders—a space of only six or seven years—suggests that these images came directly from the testimony of those crusaders.The mosaic artist may have been a Venetian himself or relied on Venetians inRavenna. Since many of the “Venetians” on the Fourth Crusade were men lev-ied from Italian and Dalmatian allies, it is also possible that crusading sailors ormarines from Ravenna provided the information for the artist. The unique per-spective of the source is evident in the scenes depicted. Rather than the mountednobles and hard-fought land battles of Villehardouin’s history, the focus here ison the fleet. While the details of the crusade vessels are largely ignored in Frankishsources, the depiction of the Venetian ships in the Ravenna mosaics is strikinglyaccurate (Fig. 3). In two fragments crusaders can be seen using scaling laddersmounted on the ships (with sails appropriately furled) to attack the walls ofConstantinople—something corroborated in non-Venetian accounts and impliedin the Translatio Symonensis (Fig. 4). In another fragment, a crusader blows ahorn from the top of a mast, perhaps to signal the Venetian maritime assault onthe city walls (Fig. 5). Unreported in other sources, the horn blast is the sort ofdetail one would expect from a crusader who had served aboard the Venetianfleet.

Interestingly, one of the San Giovanni Evangelista mosaics depicts an event thatno Venetian crusader could have witnessed. In it a bishop or pope is seen with

26 Villehardouin’s chronicle was begun in Greece after 1207, although it appears to have remainedunfinished at his death between 1212 and 1218. See Faral, ed., Conquête, xiii–xvi; and Jean Longnon,Recherches sur la vie de Geoffroy de Villehardouin (Paris: É. Champion, 1939), 104–8. Other prin-cipal sources include papal letters, which were obviously unavailable to most contemporaries, as wellas works still unwritten, such as the chronicle of Robert de Clari (probably dictated after 1216) andthe history of Nicetas Choniates (largely completed by 1215). See Robert de Clari, Conquête, p. 7;and Nicetas Choniates, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. Harry J. Magoulias(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), xv–xvi. Although Gunther of Pairis’s account was prob-ably written in 1205, there is no evidence that it left the monastery of Pairis in the thirteenth cen-tury. See Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria, 94–99.

27 Carile, “Episodi,” 114–16; Campanati, Mosaici, 58–59.

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Fig. 1 (top). The conquest of Constantinople. Mosaic.San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna.Fig. 2 (bottom). The conquest of Zara. Mosaic.San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna.(Photographs of Figs. 1–6: Author.)


Fig. 3 (top). Venetian crusade vessel. Mosaic.San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna.Fig. 4 (bottom). Crusader scaling the wallsof Constantinople. Mosaic. San GiovanniEvangelista, Ravenna.


Fig. 5 (top). Venetian crusade vessel with manblowing a horn. Mosaic. San GiovanniEvangelista, Ravenna.Fig. 6 (bottom). Innocent III and Alexius Angelus.Mosaic. San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna.


what appears to be a boy or young man (Fig. 6). Given its association with theother images of the Fourth Crusade, this can only be a depiction of PopeInnocent III and young Alexius Angelus. The prince and the pope are each hold-ing parchments while the latter seems to be instructing the former. Alexius didindeed meet with Innocent in Rome in February 1202, although only Bonifaceof Montferrat and perhaps a handful of other crusade leaders knew about themeeting. It did not, in any case, go well. Innocent declined to use the FourthCrusade to help the young man acquire the throne of Constantinople and or-dered Boniface to have nothing to do with the scheme.28

What is depicted here is something altogether different. The parchments alonemake it clear that some sort of business is being conducted. This mosaic depictsan episode absent from all contemporary narrative sources yet sufficientlywell known in Ravenna in 1213 to have been reproduced graphically for publicconsumption. In other words, it appears to be an element in a uniquelyVenetian/Italian narrative of the Fourth Crusade. What is needed, however, is acontemporary written source from Venice, Ravenna, or elsewhere in the regionswhere Venice recruited sailors to help decipher it.

The earliest surviving Venetian chronicle to reference the Fourth Crusade isthe Historia ducum Veneticorum, written sometime after 1229, probably in thelate 1230s.29 Unfortunately, the manuscript leaves that contained the entries be-tween 1178 and 1203 are lost. What is left is a fairly terse account of the instal-lation of Alexius IV in Constantinople and his subsequent refusal to pay morethan forty thousand marks to the crusaders.30 It recounts the murder of Alexius IVby Mourtzouphlus, who then pretended that the emperor died of natural causes,assumed the diadem, and promised to pay the Venetians all that was still owedto them. Instead, Mourtzouphlus sent burning ships against the crusader fleet inan attempt to destroy it in the harbor. With God’s help, the Venetians saved thefleet, although a Pisan merchant vessel did catch fire and sink. Because of thedeceitful murder of Alexius IV and the targeted attempt to kill Venetians, the cru-saders decided to attack Constantinople. After making a pact regarding the di-vision of the empire—today known as the Pact of March—the crusaders scaledthe walls, put Mourtzouphlus to flight, and peacefully took the city. EnricoDandolo subsequently died and was laid to rest in Hagia Sophia.31

The Historia ducum Veneticorum’s truncated account offers only a little thatis not referenced in non-Venetian sources. According to Robert de Clari (who isnot always good with numbers), Alexius IV paid the crusaders one hundred thou-sand silver marks, which was divided between the Franks and the Venetians.32

Since subsequent events suggest that Clari’s figure is approximately correct, theHistoria ducum Veneticorum’s forty thousand marks is a fair approximation of

28 Reg. 5, no. 121 (122).29 On the dating see Luigi Andrea Berto, ed., Testi storici veneziani (XI–XIII secolo), Medioevo

europeo 1 (Padua: CLEUP, 1999), x–xii.30 Historia ducum Veneticorum, ibid. 38, p. 70.31 Ibid. 38, pp. 70–72.32 Clari, Conquête 56, p. 56.

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the amount paid to the Venetians.33 It is true that Doge Dandolo met withMourtzouphlus in late January or early February 1204, and Mourtzouphlus maywell have promised to pay the outstanding debt. Dandolo, in any case, certainlydemanded it.34 Alexius IV (and probably not Mourtzouphlus) did launch fire-ship attacks against the Venetian fleet in December 1203 and on January 1, 1204,but these preceded the meeting between Mourtzouphlus and Dandolo.35

Mourtzouphlus murdered Alexius IV after that meeting, on the night of February8/9, and did indeed pretend that the death was natural.36 The Historia ducumVeneticorum’s rationale for the attack on Constantinople is interesting. The jus-tifications that the crusading clergy had preached to the host were the Greeks’murder of their rightful lord, Alexius IV, and their removal of the Byzantine churchfrom Roman obedience.37 The Venetian author replaces ecclesiastical schism withthe Byzantines’ attempt to destroy Venetian property and lives. The placementof the fire-ship attack directly before the decision to attack Constantinople sug-gests that the Venetian author or his source saw the latter attack as a naturaland just response to the former one—much as Doge Dandolo implied in his let-ter to the pope. The remainder of the Historia ducum Veneticorum’s narrative isaccurate. Mourtzouphlus did flee Constantinople after its capture, and the dogewas buried in Hagia Sophia.

The earliest surviving complete description of the Fourth Crusade in a Venetianchronicle appears in Martin Da Canal’s Les estoires de Venise. The first part ofthe Estoires, the portion that includes the account of the crusade, was written in1267. Unlike all subsequent Venetian chroniclers, Da Canal wrote in Old French.His aim was to make the history of the republic available to a wide audience—although, judging by the fact that it survives in only one manuscript, it does notappear to have achieved that result.38 Da Canal’s familiarity with Old French didnot lead him to use Villehardouin or other non-Venetian vernacular works in hisaccount of the Fourth Crusade. Indeed, in style and content Da Canal’s workbears no resemblance to that of Villehardouin.39 Da Canal’s version of events is

33 See Villehardouin, Conquête 193, 1:96; and Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 266 n. 16.34 The meeting is referred to only in the letter of Baldwin of Flanders to Innocent III (Reg. 7, no.

152) and in the history of Nicetas Choniates: Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. Jan Louis van Dieten,Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae 11.1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975), 567–68. On the detailsof this meeting see Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 168; and Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 166–67.

35 Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 157–58.36 Choniates, Historia, 564; Villehardouin, Conquête 223, 2:22; Clari, Conquête 62, p. 61; Andrea,

“Devastatio,” 136.37 Villehardouin, Conquête 224, 2:22–24.38 Gina Fasoli, “La Cronique des Veneciens di Martino da Canale,” Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 2

(1961): 42–74; Agostino Pertusi, “Maistre Martin da Canal interprete cortese delle Crociate edell’ambiente veneziano del secolo XIII,” in Venezia dalla Prima Crociata alla conquista diCostantinopoli del 1204, ed. Steven Runciman (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), 103–35.

39 Antonio Carile, La cronachistica veneziana (secoli XII–XVI) di fronte alla spartizione dellaRomania nel 1204, Civiltà veneziana, Studi 25 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1969), 187–88; AlbertoLimentani’s introduction in his edition of Martin Da Canal, Les estoires de Venise: Cronaca venezi-ana in lingua francese dalle origini al 1275, Civiltà veneziana, Fonti e testi, 3rd ser., 12 (Florence:Leo S. Olschki, 1972), xlii.



so different from contemporary Frankish accounts that, like the Ravenna mosa-ics executed nearly sixty years earlier, it could only have been drawn from inde-pendent sources.

The story that Da Canal tells fits closely with that of the Ravenna mosaics. Itis a sailor’s tale, one that puts the Venetians and their vessels at center stage. DaCanal relates details of the production of the crusader fleet in Venice, even con-tending that the doge began minting a new silver coin, the grosso, in order topay the shipwrights.40 Rarely are the French barons mentioned by name. Indeed,Da Canal depicts the Franks as little more than bellicose and mildly foolhardycargo. No mention is made of their inability to pay for the fleet and provisionsthat they had ordered. Instead, the crusade simply departs Venice with great fan-fare.41 Throughout his narrative of the crusade Da Canal is quick to describe ves-sels, winds, and waters.42 He reports that bad weather forced the crusade to stopnear Zara, which would not welcome them. While on the island of Malconsiglio,Dandolo informed the French barons of the rebelliousness of the Zarans,who should have provided shelter for the Venetian fleet. The barons insisted onattacking the city, yet Dandolo refused their aid. Instead, the Venetians alone cap-tured the city, destroyed its walls, and then invited the French to spend the win-ter there.43 Da Canal says nothing of the pope’s protection of Zara or the cru-saders’ subsequent excommunication.

It is at this point in his history that Da Canal turns to the episode depicted inthe puzzling mosaic image in Ravenna. He writes:

The news [that the crusade was at Zara] spread everywhere, finally reaching the pope.And just then a young man of few years was brought before the pope, and his relativessaid to the pope: “Sire, this small child is emperor of Constantinople. The Greeks areso arrogant that they do not want him for their lord. He asks you, as a son to a father,to help him and to aid him to reclaim his empire.”

Then the pope said: “The child is welcome and you with him. He is a descendant ofthe dynasty of France,44 and a great army of French and Venetians is going to Outremer.

40 On the accuracy of this statement (and the debate surrounding it) see Louise Buenger Robbert,“Reorganization of the Venetian Coinage by Doge Enrico Dandolo,” Speculum 49 (1974): 48–60;Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice:Coins and Moneys of Account (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 114–15 and 501;and Alan Stahl, “The Grosso of Enrico Dandolo,” Revue belge de numismatique 145 (1999): 261–62.

41 Da Canal, Estoires 37–38, p. 46.42 E.g., “Li tens estoit clers et biaus, et li marinier drecerent les voiles au vent et li vent se feri dedens,

que soef estoit et bien portant: si adrecerent lor nes et lor galies parmi la mer, et s’en alerent tant dejornee en jornee, que il furent venus a Costantinople”: ibid. 44, pp. 50–52.

43 Ibid. 39–40, p. 48.44 Da Canal is apparently referring here to the fact that the sister of King Philip II Augustus, Agnes,

was formerly the empress of Byzantium. In 1179, at the age of eight, she married Alexius II Comnenus.Four years later she married Andronicus I Comnenus, who had deposed and murdered her first hus-band. In 1185, at the age of fourteen, she became a dowager empress and later married the Byzantinegeneral Theodore Branas. Robert de Clari relates that in 1203 the crusade barons visited her in herhome, but she treated them poorly, complaining of their removal of Alexius III Angelus. In her thir-ties, Agnes spoke through an interpreter, claiming that she could no longer speak French—which mightwell have been true given the young age at which she came to Constantinople. See Clari, Conquête53, pp. 53–54. Young Alexius Angelus was in no way related to Agnes. The belief that the French

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Currently they are delayed in a city called Zara because of the winter, which does notallow them to leave. Let us do what is best. I will command them in a message thatthey are to abandon the passage to Jerusalem and take the passage to Constantinopleand put this boy in possession of his city.”45

Here Da Canal’s history provides a narrative context for the Ravenna mosaic.46

In it, Innocent is shown giving Alexius a message that orders the crusaders todivert from the Holy Land to Constantinople. Da Canal continues:

The legation came before Enrico Dandolo, the doge of Venice, and he received the doc-ument that the pope had sent to him and to the barons of France, in which he said thatfor nobly taking the young man to Constantinople and making it so that the Greekswould accept him as lord the pope would give them an identical absolution as if theyhad gone to Outremer.

And when the doge heard the command of the pope, he held a council of Frenchbarons and Venetian nobles who were with them, and he said to them: “Lords, what isyour opinion about the pope’s command?”

And they said that they would do all that he advised.“Lords,” said the doge, “the commands of the pope must not be refused, as he is the

spiritual father and everyone must be obedient to him in all things. I exhort you to dojust as he has commanded us.”

And they all agreed with great good will.47

Historians have traditionally dismissed Da Canal’s description of the FourthCrusade as a pack of transparent lies told to exonerate the Venetians. Angold,for example, has described Da Canal’s version of events as “a travesty.”48 Yet

favored the claims of Alexius because he was related to the Capetians remained prevalent in Venicefor many years. See, e.g., Dandolo, Chronica, 277.

45 “La novelle cort par totes pars, tant qu’ele fu venue devant l’apostoile; et droitement a celui pointestoit conduit devant l’apostoile un enfant de petit aage, et li parens de celui enfant distrent a l’apostoile:‘Sire, cestui petit enfant est enpereor de Costantinople: li Gres sont si orguillos, que il ne le veulentpas por seignor. Il vos requiert aide come fis a pere, et que vos l’aidés a recovrer son enpire.’ Lors lordist monseignor l’apostoile: ‘Li enfant soit bienvenus, et vos aveuc. Il est estrait dou lignage de France:et un grant host de Franceis et de Venisiens s’en vet dela la mer: il sont arestés en une vile que l’enapele Jadre por li tens d’iver, qui ne les laisse aler. Faisons le bien; je lor envoierai mon mesage, que illeissent la voie d’aler es parties de Jerusalem et tiegnent la voie d’aler en Costantinople et metent ces-tui enfant en saisine de sa vile’”: Da Canal, Estoires 41–42, pp. 48 and 50.

46 Marco Meschini has noted in a picture caption the similarity between the floor mosaic and thenarrative provided by Martin Da Canal: 1204: L’incompiuta. La Quarta Crociata e le conquiste diCostantinopoli (Milan: Ancora, 2004), plate II.

47 “Li alegat fu venus devant monseignor Henric Dandle, li dus de Venise, et li rent la chartre quemonseignor l’apostoile li mandoit et as barons de France, que por lor debonaireté conduent li petitenfant en Costantinople et tant facent que li Gres le tiegnent por seignor; e que autretel solucion lorfait monseignor l’apostoile con se il pasassent dela la mer. Et quant monseignor li dus oï le mande-ment de monseignor l’apostoile, il prist conseil as barons de France et as nobles Venisiens que es-toient aveuc yaus, et lor dist: ‘Seignors, que vos est avis dou mandement de monseignor l’apostoile?’Et il distrent que il en feront dou tot a son consoil. ‘Seignors,’ fait li dus, ‘li mandement de l’apostoilene doit nus refuser, come de pere esperitel, ains le doivent trestuit obeïr dou tot. Je vos lo que il soitfait tot enci con il nos a mandé.’ Et il s’acordent tuit debonairement”: Da Canal, Estoires 43, p. 50.

48 Michael Angold, The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context (London: Pearson Longman, 2003),19; Angold, “Venetian Chronicles,” 84.



the Ravenna mosaics and the Translatio Symonensis suggest something very dif-ferent. Da Canal was not inventing a narrative in 1267 but repeating one thatwent back to at least 1213 and quite probably to 1205, a narrative that had beencurrent among those Venetians who took part in the crusade.

There is no doubt that Da Canal’s version of events is completely false. Yetthe fact that it appears in the Translatio Symonensis in 1205, was told to a mo-saic artist in 1213, and appears in a Venetian chronicle of 1267 suggests that itwas widely accepted among Venetians in the thirteenth century. This poses, how-ever, an interesting problem. How could this narrative—so clearly at variance withthe events of the crusade—have thrived in Venice if thousands of Venetians whohad participated in the crusade could contradict it? Of course, it could not.Therefore, barring the most elaborate and successful conspiracy of silence in me-dieval history as a hypothesis, we must conclude that Venetian and other Italiancrusaders believed that the pope had directed the crusade to Constantinople—andthat they believed it while the crusade was still taking place.

At first glance this seems improbable, since it would require Venetian crusad-ers to accept what their Frankish counterparts could dismiss as fantasy. How-ever, the unusual internal dynamics of the Fourth Crusade could have allowedthe development of two different narratives within the same host. The Frankishnarrative is well known, described with various permutations in the Westernsources. In them the crusade was diverted to Constantinople by poverty and alack of provisions, although some also saw leaders willing to nudge the fleet inthe direction of Constantinople.49 Non-Venetian sources agree that the crusadeleaders’ decision to sail to Constantinople was unpopular among the rank andfile, who wished to fulfill their vows and feared incurring the wrath of the pope.50

The Venetian narrative was dramatically different. As the Ravenna mosaic andDa Canal’s history attest, the Venetians perceived a crusade that was firmly un-der the control of Innocent III. The pope commanded, and the Venetians obeyed.

The strongest argument against these parallel narratives forming within the samecrusade host is that they are contradictory. Yet that is problematic only if we as-sume that Venetians and Franks interacted on the crusade—and were thereforeable to contradict each other. The weight of the evidence suggests that they didnot do so to any significant extent. None of the Frankish memoirs describe theVenetian crusaders in anything other than the most generic terms. Villehardouin,for example, knew Doge Dandolo well and considered him to be a friend. Yet heevidently did not know any other Venetians. He never mentioned them by name,although he routinely provided long lists of Frankish knights on the crusade.

There are other reasons to believe that interaction between the Venetian andFrankish crusaders was minimal. The two groups had very different jobs. TheVenetian sailors and marines were kept busy with their round ships and gal-leys. The Franks were soldiers, mounted or on foot. During periods of inactivitythe two groups were carefully separated. In Venice, for example, the Frankish

49 E.g., Gesta episcoporum Halberstadensium, ed. Weiland, 118; Villehardouin, Conquête 93, 1:92;Clari, Conquête 34–36, pp. 35–38.

50 Hugh of St. Pol, Epistola, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 17 (Hannover: MGH, 1861), 812;Villehardouin, Conquête 113–17, 1:116–20; Clari, Conquête 33, p. 32 and 39, p. 40.

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crusaders were kept isolated on the island of San Nicolò (the modern Lido).51

During the winter of 1202/3 the city of Zara was divided between the two groups,although a small war broke out between them, which convinced the leaders toseparate them even further.52 Likewise at Constantinople the two groups madecamp at separate locations—the Franks before the land walls and the Venetianson the harbor shore.53 During the first attack on the city in 1203 they launchedcompletely separate assaults.54 And, of course, there was the barrier of language,which would have been significant for common crusaders without access to trans-lators.

It is well known that the leaders of the Fourth Crusade, Dandolo included,closely restricted information that was disseminated to the rank and file of theexpedition. Papal letters sent to the crusade were suppressed by the leaders.55

Although Innocent subsequently demanded that his letters be published to thehost, they were not.56 The excommunication of the Venetians was likewise sup-pressed. Only a few crusade leaders knew of it.57 Even the papal absolution ofthe Franks was suppressed, since the Franks and the Venetians believed that theyhad all been absolved months earlier by their own bishops. The crusade leadersalso tried to keep the covenanted departure date from Constantinople from thecommon soldiers, although their representatives insisted that it be made pub-lic.58 In this atmosphere of separation and secrecy very different explanations forevents not only could but did coexist.

Given the agreement of the earliest Venetian and Italian sources and the inter-nal dynamics of the crusade itself, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusionthat Doge Dandolo and perhaps other leaders informed the Venetian crusadersthat the pope had sent Alexius to them with orders to place the young manon the Byzantine throne. Dandolo’s apparent willingness to mislead his peopleon this matter fits precisely with his refusal to inform them of their own excom-munication. In a letter to Innocent III, for example, Boniface of Montferrat re-ported that he had been advised—certainly by Dandolo, who is mentioned sub-sequently in the letter—that if the Venetians knew of their excommunication theywould abandon the crusade.59 In other words, the Venetian crusaders had thesame misgivings about diverting the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople as theirFrankish counterparts. The solution was to invent a narrative that placed theVenetians in the comfortable position of serving the church. While the Frankishrank-and-file crusaders knew nothing of the Venetians’ excommunication or the

51 The anonymous author of the Devastatio Constantinopolitana complained that the Franks werepurposely isolated on the island. See Andrea, “Devastatio,” 132; and Clari, Conquête 10, p. 9.

52 Villehardouin, Conquête 88–90, 1:88–90; Clari, Conquête 15, p. 15; Andrea, “Devastatio,” 133.53 Villehardouin, Conquête 162, 1:160–62; Clari, Conquête 44, pp. 43–44.54 Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 119–34.55 Alfred J. Andrea, “Conrad of Krosigk, Bishop of Halberstadt, Crusader and Monk of

Sittichenbach: His Ecclesiastical Career, 1184–1225,” Analecta Cisterciensia 43 (1987): 30–41.56 Reg. 6, no. 101.57 Reg. 6, no. 100.58 Hugh of St. Pol, Epistola, MGH SS 17:812; Villehardouin, Conquête 115–17, 1:118–20.59 Reg. 6, no. 100. On the excommunication and subsequent absolution of the Venetians see Madden,

Enrico Dandolo, 145, 150–52, 167–68, and 178.



papal prohibition against sailing to Constantinople, they were nonetheless fear-ful that the expedition would incur the pope’s condemnation. They did not, inany case, believe that the pope had commanded the diversion. Yet the inter-action between the Venetians and Franks in the host was so slight that the dis-crepancy in narratives was irrelevant. Nothing during the subsequent course ofthe crusade challenged the Venetian version of events. When the papal legate liftedthe excommunication of the Venetians in 1205, that, too, was kept secret, sincethe Venetians were unaware that they had ever labored under it. They returnedhome as heroes, and the narrative they brought with them fit perfectly into thelarger context of Venetian history and identity.

The agreement of the Translatio Symonensis, the Ravenna mosaics, and DaCanal on this point suggests that the Da Canal narrative should receive moreattention than has traditionally been the case in Fourth Crusade historiography.Undoubtedly, six decades had altered and augmented the stories from which DaCanal drew. Nonetheless, the closer one examines his account, the more it seemsto reveal the perspective of a Venetian crusader. It is particularly striking that DaCanal’s testimony is most fallacious when it relates the conversations and delib-erations of the doge, pope, and other leaders, yet it is strikingly accurate when itdescribes vessels, battles, and major events. In other words, Da Canal is largelyright when he reports on what a rank-and-file Venetian crusader could have seen,but he is usually wrong on those matters that the same crusader could only haveheard about. In this way, the Estoires is not unlike the chronicle of Robert deClari, a low-level French knight who wove together accurate descriptions of eventsthat he saw with imagined dialogues and decisions of the leaders. In the case ofDa Canal, however, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the most impor-tant of the inaccuracies were invented and sustained by the Venetian crusadeleaders.

Viewing the crusade from the deck of a ship, Da Canal accurately (if briefly)describes the departure of the crusade from Zara in the spring of 1203 and itsarrival at Constantinople. There the papal legate sent a messenger into the citystating that the pope commanded the citizens to receive their rightful lord. Theyrefused. The doge then prepared his vessels to attack the walls of Constantinople.Da Canal speaks proudly of the Venetians becoming carpenters, preparing theships’ defenses, ladders, war machines, and shields mounted on the galleys andtransports. With only minor inaccuracies, Da Canal describes the Venetian as-sault on the city walls. He gives the Venetians slightly more credit than they aredue for the toppling of Alexius III, but this appears to be the result of a confla-tion of events rather than purposeful misrepresentation.60

At this point in his narrative Da Canal returns to the conversations and mo-tivations of leaders, thus veering into gross inaccuracies. Alexius III is com-pletely omitted from the story. Instead, his usurpation is conflated with that ofMourtzouphlus, who Da Canal reports was ruling Constantinople when the cru-saders arrived. After the Venetian entry into the city, Mourtzouphlus begged thecrusaders to have mercy on him and his people, promising to accept the young

60 Da Canal, Estoires 44–48, pp. 50–54.

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Alexius as lord and to repay double the crusaders’ expenses.61 In council DogeDandolo asked the Frankish barons for their advice on the matter. They re-sponded, “Sack the city and divide the money, because they [the Greeks] are trai-tors.” But Dandolo replied: “Lords, … we are on a crusade; therefore we mustnot rob anyone. We should take the money that we have spent and put the childin possession of his city and then cross the sea and give battle to the pagans, justas we have promised.”62 The barons agreed, and so the young Alexius was re-leased to the Greeks, who swore on the Gospels that they would accept him astheir lord. When Dandolo later asked for the promised funds, Mourtzouphlusresponded that he could not gather the money because the Greeks had fled thecity and were scattered. He asked the crusaders to vacate Constantinople so thatthe citizens would return. However, no sooner had the Franks and Venetians de-parted then Mourtzouphlus and the Greeks rose up against the young Alexius,murdering him in his bath. When the crusaders subsequently requested theirmoney, the Greeks refused, saying that they no longer feared them. Greatly an-gered, the French told the doge, “Sire, the Venetians took this city without ourhelp, and we wish to take it without their help.” With Dandolo’s assent, the Frenchattacked the sea walls from the ships’ scaling ladders. The battle was long andbrutal with much slaughter on both sides, but in the end the French soldiers failedto capture Constantinople.63

Here again, Da Canal’s narrative conforms closely with what a Venetian cru-sader might infer given the evidence of his eyes but incomplete information aboutthe dynamics driving events. The crusade was delayed at Constantinople formonths, and it was known at all levels of the army that the leaders were waitingfor the payment promised to them by the young man, now Alexius IV.64 DaCanal’s source, however, says nothing of the emperor’s promises. Instead, the cru-saders are described as waiting for double reimbursement of their expenses. Whilenot strictly accurate, the identification of the funds as reimbursement rather thanreward is likely how a Venetian would have viewed them. When the fleet sailedfrom Venice in October 1203, there remained a great many expenses that hadnot yet been reimbursed, since the crusaders could not pay the contracted fees.Few, if any, of these expenses would have been covered by the Venetian govern-ment.65 Instead, individual ship owners, merchants, and tradesmen had absorbed

61 Ibid. 49, p. 54.62 “Et il distrent: ‘Soit derobee la vile et departis li argent, car il sont traitres.’ ‘Seignors,’ ce dist

monseignor li dus, ‘nos somes de la crusee, si ne devons pas derober nului. Prenons l’argent que nosavons despendu et soit mis li enfant en saisine de sa vile; et passons la mer et soit donee la bataille aspaiens, enci con nos l’avons promis’”: ibid. 49, p. 56.

63 Ibid. 50–51, p. 56.64 See, e.g., Clari, Conquête 52, p. 54.65 The days of wealthy Venetian banks and the famous Arsenal were still in the future. In times of

danger in the twelfth century, the Venetian government had pressed its wealthiest citizens for loans.There is no evidence that it did so in 1202. It is sometimes said that the Arsenal was founded in1104 and therefore could have been used in 1202. However, that oft-repeated date is, in fact, drawnfrom a commemorative plaque mounted in the Arsenal in 1825 and referenced by an engineer,Giovanni Casoni, in his history of the Arsenal of 1846. Modern studies have demonstrated that theArsenal was likely built more than a century later to meet the needs of Venice’s maritime empire in



the costs, contributing to the crusade with the expectation of being repaid. Most,if not all, of the standard transport vessels on the crusade were private merchantships.66 Alexius IV’s initial payments during July and August 1203, which arenot mentioned by Da Canal, made good those initial losses. But the new em-peror also contracted the vessels for an additional year—several months of whichhad already elapsed when he ceased payments in November 1203.67 Like theFrankish crusaders, the Venetians wanted their promised reward, but they werealso faced with continued expenses on the fleet, in the form of upkeep and lostcommercial revenue, with no additional funds to offset them. It is not surpris-ing, then, that the details of Alexius IV’s failed promises were less important tothe Venetians than their worries about the fleet.

Da Canal also conflates or confuses several other events here. It was AlexiusIV and his father, Isaac II, who asked the crusaders to leave Constantinople andcamp across the Golden Horn.68 It was Alexius, not Mourtzouphlus, who re-fused to make further payments to the crusaders in November 1203.69 It wasmonths later, on the night of February 8/9, 1204, that the newly crowned AlexiusV Mourtzouphlus killed Alexius IV.70 The failed attack on Constantinople tookplace on April 9, 1204, and it was not a purely French attack. Indeed, it was thefirst time that the Franks and Venetians had fought together from the Venetianvessels.71 Assigning this assault to the French, however, allowed Da Canal—andperhaps his source—to sidestep a humiliating Venetian defeat.

Da Canal devotes considerable space to dwelling on the French failure andthe subsequent Venetian preparations for the final assault on April 12. DogeDandolo magnanimously excused the French deficiencies while extolling Venetianprowess. According to Da Canal, the doge called all of the Venetians togetherand told them not to be surprised at the inability of the French to captureConstantinople, since they were not used to waging war on ladders mounted onships, as the Venetians were. He reminded the Venetians of their ancestors’ vic-tories in Tyre, Syria, the Byzantine Empire, and Dalmatia as well as their ownprevious victory against Constantinople. He then promised to distribute out ofthe collected booty of Constantinople one thousand hyperpers to the first manto plant the standard of St. Mark on the wall of the city, eight hundred to thesecond man who made it onto the high wall, five hundred to the third, threehundred to the fourth, two hundred to the fifth, and one hundred to all the restwho made it. He reminded them of the support of Jesus Christ and St. Mark,who had guided and helped their ancestors and kinsmen and would ever do so.

the wake of the Fourth Crusade. See, e.g., Giorgio Bellavitis, L’Arsenale di Venezia: Storia di unagrande strutture urbane (Venice: Marsilio, 1983), 21–36; and Ennio Concina, L’Arsenale dellaRepubblica di Venezia (Milan: Electa, 1984), 9–21.

66 Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 129–31.67 Villehardouin, Conquête 193–95, 1:196–200; Clari, Conquête 56, p. 56.68 Reg. 7, no. 152; Villehardouin, Conquête 191, 1:195; Clari, Conquête 55, pp. 55–56; Gunther

of Pairis, Hystoria, 142.69 Villehardouin, Conquête 215–16, 2:14; Clari, Conquête 59, pp. 58–59.70 Choniates, Historia, 564; Villehardouin, Conquête 223, 2:22; Clari, Conquête 62, p. 61.71 Queller and Madden, Fourth Crusade, 177–79.

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With their protection, the doge promised, they would take Constantinople andbecome rich. With that, the Venetians got to work preparing their vessels forthe assault the next day.72

Da Canal reports that Dandolo then went over to the French camp, where hefound the leaders dejected by their failure to capture Constantinople. Their moodchanged quickly, though, when the doge assured them that by the very next eve-ning the city would no longer be in Greek hands. Early that morning, however,the Greeks sent a group of fire ships against the fleet. The Venetian sailors ex-pertly moved their vessels out of danger. Shortly thereafter Dandolo ordered hismen to attack the Virgiot Tower, a strong point in the defenses. When theVenetians asked why they should do so, he responded that if the Greeks saw itfall they would despair and flee. The Venetians did as they were commandedand after much fighting captured the tower, from which they flew the standardof St. Mark. As Dandolo predicted, the Greeks fled the remaining fortifications,allowing the Venetians to enter the city and open the gates for the Frankish cru-saders to enter. Thus the city was taken. Mourtzouphlus was captured and ex-ecuted by being thrown from the top of a high column.73

Here again, Da Canal’s testimony is remarkably accurate when describing eventsthat a Venetian crusader could have witnessed. It even correctly characterizes themood of the Franks after the failed attack of April 9. As Villehardouin tells us,“The men of the army were greatly dismayed because of their misfortune thatday.”74 Unlike Villehardouin or any other contemporary source, though, Da Canalprovides some insight into Dandolo’s encouragement of his own people beforethe final assault. While the speech he recounts is no transcript, its invocation ofthe protection of Christ and St. Mark rings true. Similarly, Dandolo’s scheme toencourage warriors fighting forty feet or more above the ground is the sort ofdetail that a returning Venetian crusader would remember. Frankish sources con-firm that the Venetians were zealous about planting the standard of St. Mark onthe walls of Constantinople. According to Villehardouin, the banner of the wingedlion was hoisted up on one of the towers during the attack of July 17, even whilethe battle for the wall still raged.75

Da Canal’s source also correctly notes that Dandolo traveled to the Frankishcamp to offer encouragement. That meeting took place in a church during theearly evening of April 9, 1204. With no information about the meeting, theVenetian crusaders would naturally assume that the doge informed the Franksthat the men of the lagoon would succeed where the previous assault had failed.In truth, the situation was more complex. Dandolo had to contend with variousgroups who insisted on a different strategy or on simply leaving Constantinoplealtogether. Villehardouin, who was there, tells us that the doge successfully con-vinced them to try another assault on the same portion of the harbor walls onApril 12, after the Venetians had an opportunity to repair their vessels.76

72 Da Canal, Estoires 51, pp. 56–58.73 Ibid. 52–54, pp. 58–60.74 Villehardouin, Conquête 239, 2:40; Clari, Conquête 59, pp. 58–59.75 Villehardouin, Conquête 174, 1:176.76 Ibid. 239–40, 2:40–42.



Like the Historia ducum Veneticorum, Da Canal places the Byzantine fire-ship attack directly before the final attack on the city, almost as if there was acausal link between the two. The conflation of these events, therefore, was likelyan early feature of the Venetian narrative. The attack of the fire ships duringthe nights of December 20, 1203, and January 1, 1204, were spectacular events,which merited descriptions in most contemporary accounts. Villehardouin, whowas an eyewitness, remarked, “The flames burned so high that it seemed as ifthe whole world was on fire.” This strategy was particularly harmful to theVenetians, who not only relied on their vessels but owned them. Preserving thefleet from this threat was no easy task. According to Villehardouin: “Geoffrey,the marshal of Champagne, who dictates this work, is your faithful witness thatno people ever defended themselves more effectively at sea than did thoseVenetians. They leapt into galleys and into barges and nefs, took hold of theburning vessels using grappling irons and by sheer force dragged them out oftheir harbor towards the enemy; they released the boats into the current andsent them, ablaze, down the straits.”77 Because Venetian lives and property werespecifically targeted in this attack, Venetians viewed the conquest ofConstantinople as a just response and, thereby, linked the two events. The errorwas not, in any case, confined to Venetian sources. In his letter to Innocent III,Baldwin of Flanders also placed the fire-ship attack after the coronation ofMourtzouphlus and before the final assault.78

Da Canal is the only source to describe the attack focusing on the Virgiot Towerof the sea walls. This was the Venetian name for a tower near the Petrion Gate,which was itself close to the monastery of Christ Evergetes.79 The Chronicle ofNovgorod, which was based on the recollections of an unknown eyewitness, con-firms that this was the location of the attack.80 As Da Canal’s source notes, thiswas a strong point along the fortifications. Indeed, it was the only point where adouble wall protected the gate.81 Oddly, Da Canal does not record that Dandoloordered the large transport vessels to be bound together two by two so as to con-centrate more bridges and ladders on a given tower. According to Villehardouin,after a morning of fierce fighting, two of the largest vessels, the Paradise and thePilgrim, crashed against a tower. The first across was a Venetian. One can imag-ine him bearing the standard of St. Mark, envisioning his reward of a thousand

77 Ibid. 218; translation from Geoffrey de Villehardouin, “The Conquest of Constantinople,” inChronicles of the Crusades, trans. Caroline Smith (New York: Penguin, 2008), 58.

78 Reg. 7, no. 152. Benjamin Hendrickx and Corinna Matzukis, “Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlus:His Life, Reign, and Death (?–1205),” Hellenika 31 (1979): 108–32 argue that Baldwin (and therebyDa Canal) was correct and that therefore there were three separate fire-ship attacks.

79 See, e.g., TTh. 2:48, no. 179.80 The Chronicle of Novgorod (1016–1471), trans. Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes, Camden Third

Series 25 (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1914), 46.81 Bryon C.P. Tsangadas, The Fortifications and Defense of Constantinople, East European

Monographs 71 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 19; Raymond Janin, Constantinoplebyzantine: Développement urbain et répertoire topographique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Institut Français d’ÉtudesByzantines, 1964), 262–63; Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls:Byzantion–Konstantinupolis–Istanbul bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Wasmuth,1977), 287 and 290.

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hyperpers. Unfortunately, the waves tossed the vessels back, and the crusader—later Venetian chronicles named him Pietro Alberti—was left alone against theByzantine defenders. They quickly dispatched him. Later the ships were againable to bring their bridges to the tower, and Frankish soldiers captured it. Ratherthan the winged lion, the banners of the bishops of Soissons and Troyes wereraised above the tower. Another tower was taken by a Venetian and a Frenchknight named Andrew Dureboise.82 However, the Greeks held firm, refusing togive up the remaining towers. On the ground below, Peter of Amiens and a partyof about ten knights and sixty sergeants managed to pick their way through awalled gate, enter the city, and put the defenders in the area to flight.83 It wasthese French warriors, and not the Venetians, who opened the city gates. Yet thiswas information that even Villehardouin did not possess. Instead, it is preservedin the single manuscript of Robert de Clari, who was among the warriors whobroke through the gate, and in the Greek history of Nicetas Choniates. A Venetiancrusader in the fray would have known only that the Venetians had fought a hardbattle and that they were among the first to scramble onto the walls. Althoughhe would have no direct knowledge as to how the city gates were opened, hewould naturally favor a narrative that gave full credit to his countrymen.

Mourtzouphlus was captured by the crusaders, just as Da Canal maintains, how-ever not immediately after the conquest. Instead, the emperor fled the city to thecourt of the emperor-in-exile (and Mourtzouphlus’s father-in-law), Alexius III. Torid himself of a potential rival, Alexius III blinded Mourtzouphlus.84 The crusad-ers subsequently captured Mourtzouphlus and returned him to Constantinoplewhere he stood trial in November 1204, seven months after the conquest.85

Condemned to death, he was led to the Forum Tauri and up the spiral staircaseof the Column of Theodosius, a no-longer-extant structure modeled on the col-umns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan in Rome. From there Mourtzouphlus wasforced to leap to his death more than one hundred feet below.86 The executionmust have been well attended because it is remarked upon by several contempo-rary sources. The running joke was, “for a high man, high justice.”87 Indeed,Robert de Clari attributed the quip to Doge Dandolo himself.88

Da Canal’s narrative of the Fourth Crusade concludes with the election of thenew emperor and the partition of the empire. It maintains that the French bar-ons told the doge, “Sire, take the empire, which you have well earned.”89 Dandolorefused, saying that he would be pleased to have one of them as emperor. Afterthe election of Baldwin of Flanders, Dandolo received three-eighths of the em-pire and the patriarchate of Constantinople. The pope confirmed this division,saying that since the empire was without an heir the crusaders should divide itamong themselves. Da Canal concludes by giving Enrico Dandolo full credit for

82 Villehardouin, Conquête 242, 2:42–44.83 Clari, Conquête 75–76, pp. 75–76; Choniates, Historia, 569–70.84 Villehardouin, Conquête 306, 2:114; Clari, Conquête 108, p. 103.85 Hendrickx and Matzukis, “Alexius V,” p. 130 n. 1.86 Choniates, Historia, 608–9; Villehardouin, Conquête 306, 2:114; Clari, Conquête 109, pp. 103–4.87 Villehardouin, Conquête 307, 2:116; Gunther of Pairis, Hystoria, 165.88 Clari, Conquête 109, p. 104.89 “Sire, prenés l’enpire, que vos l’avés bien deservi”: Da Canal, Estoires 55, p. 60.



the conquest of Constantinople. Much as the doge maintained in his letter to thepope, Da Canal reports that “this he did in the service of Holy Church.”90

There is no doubt that Venetians long believed that Baldwin of Flanders be-came emperor only after Enrico Dandolo declined the honor. Antonio Carile hastraced this enduring story through the Venetian chronicle tradition of subsequentcenturies, so there is no need to do so here.91 Frankish sources, however, referonly to Baldwin of Flanders and Boniface of Montferrat as imperial contenders.But this version itself implies that Dandolo had removed himself from consider-ation. Since six of the twelve imperial electors were Venetians, the doge neededonly one Frankish vote to win the throne. Baldwin and Boniface competed fiercelyto place their partisans among the six Frankish electors—something comprehen-sible only if the Venetian electors were uncommitted to their doge. Although thebarons certainly did not offer the crown to Dandolo, the dynamics of the elec-tion were such that he could have had it if he wished. He must, therefore, havedeclined it, just as Da Canal reports.92

Da Canal finishes his Fourth Crusade narrative where he began: with Venetianobedience to the papacy. Innocent III, he insists, confirmed the partition of theByzantine Empire because Alexius IV, whom he had sent to Constantinople, diedwithout an heir. In truth, the pope refused to confirm the Pact of March becauseit treated ecclesiastical property in Constantinople as spoils of war and becauseits provision for amendment allowed laymen to invoke excommunication at will.He also refused to confirm Venetian control of the patriarchate of Constantinople,which, according to the pact, was to go to a Venetian because a Frank was electedemperor. Enrico Dandolo appointed Venetian canons to Hagia Sophia, who inturn elected Thomas Morosini as patriarch. Innocent declared the canons andthe election invalid.93 All of this papal opposition, however, would have gone un-noticed by a common Venetian crusader. In June 1204 two high-profile delega-tions of Venetians went to Rome to seek confirmation of the partition and pa-triarchal election. One was led by Andrea da Molin and the doge’s nephew,Leonardo Navigaioso.94 The other consisted of Venetian churchmen from thecathedral chapter at Hagia Sophia.95 Although the pope refused their requests,that refusal had no visible effect on conditions in Constantinople. The city wasdivided among the emperor, Franks, and Venetians just as the Pact of Marchhad stipulated and with no special provision for ecclesiastical properties. As forthe patriarchal election, although Innocent invalidated it, he nonetheless ap-pointed Thomas Morosini on his own authority.96 In short, there was every rea-son for the Venetian crusaders in Constantinople to believe that the pope had

90 “… et ce fist il au servise de sainte Yglise”: ibid. 55, p. 62.91 Carile, Cronachistica, esp. 343, 363, 401, 411, 431, 466, and 479.92 For a full discussion of this problem, with complete references, see Queller and Madden, Fourth

Crusade, 296 n. 78; and Madden, Enrico Dandolo, 175–78.93 Reg. 7, no. 206.94 Reg. 7, no. 202.95 Reg. 7, no. 203.96 Ibid. See also Innocent’s letters to Vice-Doge Ranieri Dandolo of February 8, 1205 (TTh. 1:534–

38, no. 134), and March 30, 1205 (TTh. 1:538–39, no. 135), neither of which appears in the papalregister. In the latter, Innocent tells Ranieri that he appointed Thomas Morosini “to please your father.”

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confirmed everything. And why should they not? Despite great hardship and therisk of financial ruin, the Venetian crusaders had willingly obeyed the popethroughout the expedition—or so they believed. Although they were misled, theynonetheless saw their sacrifices—for sacrifices they were—as service to HolyChurch. That is the story, in thousands of iterations formed out of the perspec-tives of thousands of sailors and marines, that the Venetians brought home withthem.

Because Da Canal’s chronicle survives in only one Old French manuscript, itis difficult to see how it could have shaped the evolving memory of the FourthCrusade among medieval Venetians. Instead, it serves as a window, howevercloudy, onto the Venetian perspective of an event that was passing out of livingmemory. The loss of the generation that witnessed the Fourth Crusade allowedthe Venetian narrative, which remained unrecorded in any widely distributed form,to mutate and break apart into diverse strands. This trend must have been accel-erated by the increasing availability of Frankish accounts of the crusade. Bythe late thirteenth century, manuscripts of the chronicle of Villehardouin werefound across Europe.97 The various forms of the continuation of William of Tyreknown as the Eracles or the Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le tresorier wereeven more widespread and, despite a few errors, provide a roughly accurate de-scription of the events of the Fourth Crusade.98 Although a complete manuscriptof Villehardouin arrived in Venice to great fanfare in 1541, we should not con-clude that the chronicle was unknown to Venetians before that.99 Indeed, Faralidentified an additional manuscript of Villehardouin in Venice that could pre-date 1541.100 Furthermore, even a cursory examination of Fourth Crusade nar-ratives in Venetian chronicles written after Da Canal reveals clear contaminationfrom Frankish chronicles.

Contamination is evident, for example, in the so-called Chronicle of Marco, aLatin work written in Venice in 1292. The original manuscript survives as thelone witness.101 The chronicle tells the story of the young Alexius Angelus flee-ing Constantinople to the safety of the court of Philip of Swabia. Philip sent

97 Edmond Faral, “Pour l’établissement du texte de Villehardouin,” Romania 64 (1938): 288–312.98 John H. Pryor, “The Eracles and William of Tyre: An Interim Report,” in The Horns of Hattin:

Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the LatinEast, Jerusalem and Haifa, 2–6 July 1987, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar (Jerusalem: Israel ExplorationSociety, 1992), 270–93; Peter W. Edbury, “The Lyon Eracles and the Old French Continuations ofWilliam of Tyre,” in Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, ed.Benjamin Z. Kedar, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and Rudolf Hiestand (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997), 139–53; Helen Nicholson, s.v. “Eracles,” in The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan V. Murray (SantaBarbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006).

99 Serban Marin, “A Humanist Vision regarding the Fourth Crusade and the State of the Assenides:The Chronicle of Paul Ramusio (Paulus Rhamnusius),” Annuario 2 (2000): 51–120, at 68–69. Fasoli,“Cronique des Veneciens,” 57 argues that “la cronaca del Villehardouin arrivò a Venezia solamentenel 1541.”

100 Faral, “Pour l’établissement du texte.”101 The manuscript—Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (henceforth cited as BNMV), MS cl.

It., XI 124 (= 6802)—has placement errors, which were meant to be corrected in a subsequent copy.The description of the Fourth Crusade is found at fol. 41r–v, incorrectly under the year 1172. Thecrusade is then addressed again, with a reference to the error, at fol. 43r, under the year 1203. This



Alexius directly to Enrico Dandolo and the crusade leaders: “And because theaforesaid counts did not have all the necessary things for their journey, theyaccepted the boy’s offer of so much gold and silver if they brought him toConstantinople.”102 After celebrating Easter at Zara, the crusaders sailedto Constantinople, where Alexius III fled and the young Alexius was crowned.After the coronation, however, Alexius IV refused to pay the crusaders. ThenMourtzouphlus rose up, killed Alexius, and took the throne for himself. Dandoloand the barons subsequently decided to capture Constantinople.103

There is nothing in the Chronicle of Marco’s description that could not havebeen drawn from Villehardouin. It correctly records that the young Alexius fledto Philip of Swabia and then promised the crusaders a great deal of money fortheir support at Constantinople. It accurately records that the fleet departed Zaraimmediately after Easter. These details, all found in Villehardouin, are absent inDa Canal. The Chronicle of Marco also lacks elements found in previous Venetiannarratives. It says nothing of the fire-ship attack, which merits special attentionin Da Canal and the Historia ducum Veneticorum. It furthermore omits allreference to the pope. It is Philip of Swabia who sends Alexius to the crusaders,not Innocent III, as the Translatio Symonensis, the Ravenna mosaics, andDa Canal assert. This new narrative element may have been drawn directly fromVillehardouin, although it was common knowledge among the Frankish crusad-ers and thus appears in numerous accounts.104 But the Chronicle of Marco’s will-ingness to part with a prominent role for the pope may also have been influ-enced by current events. Eight years before the Chronicle of Marco’s writing, theGreat Council in Venice declined to join a crusade against the kingdom of Aragonon behalf of Charles of Anjou. Pope Martin IV responded to the decision an-grily, placing Venice under interdict. The pope justified his action on the groundsthat Venice had earlier committed to crusading with Charles. Yet the objectiveof the crusade that was planned in 1281 was the restoration of Constantinopleto Latin rule. This new crusade was not only headed in the wrong direction butaimed against a man whose principal crime was being elected king by the Siciliansafter the revolt of the Vespers. Although Martin’s successor, Honorius IV, liftedthe ill-considered interdict in 1286, the memory of it and the questions that itraised about obedience to the pope in the matter of crusading were still fresh inVenetian minds when the Chronicle of Marco was composed.105

It is beyond the scope of this essay to wade too deeply into the wide and tur-bulent waters of Venetian chronicle writing in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and six-teenth centuries. The various Fourth Crusade narratives, both written and oral,

error has gone unnoticed in modern scholarship, leading even Carile to believe that the chronicle’sdescription of the crusade was much more abbreviated than it is. See Carile, Cronachistica, 188.

102 BNMV cl. It., XI 124 (= 6802), fol. 41r.103 Ibid., fol. 41r–v.104 Villehardouin, Conquête 91, 1:90; Clari, Conquête 17, p. 16; Andrea, “Devastatio,” 133; Gesta

episcoporum Halberstadensium, ed. Weiland, 118.105 Francis Cotterell Hodgson, Venice in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: A Sketch of

Venetian History from the Conquest of Constantinople to the Accession of Michele Steno, A.D. 1204–1400 (London: G. Allen & Sons, 1910), 180–81.

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that flowed into the busy commercial city naturally diluted the original storiesbrought back by Venetian crusaders. Carile’s thorough study on the partition ofthe Byzantine Empire in the Venetian chronicle tradition was the first attempt tofollow the twists and turns of these narratives.106 More recently, Serban Marinhas examined several other strands, such as the identification of non-Venetiansin late Fourth Crusade narratives.107 Much work remains to be done. Althoughhistorians have rightly rejected these later chronicles as a source for the FourthCrusade itself, they can, nonetheless, provide a powerful tool with which to chartthe complex landscape of late-medieval and early modern Venetian civic identityas seen through the lens of constructed memories.

For the purposes of this essay, though, it is important only to note that Venetianchroniclers in the fourteenth century and beyond were drawing on a much richercollection of sources for the Fourth Crusade than their predecessors in the thir-teenth century. For example, the famous Chronica per extensum descripta bythe humanist doge Andrea Dandolo (1343–54) accurately reports that the youngAlexius went to Zara with the recommendation of Philip of Swabia and cor-rectly describes Alexius’s offer to the crusaders as one of supplies, church uni-fication, and a great deal of money.108 The amount of money, however, posed aproblem for Andrea Dandolo. He initially recorded that the Venetians were of-fered thirty thousand silver marks, which, he claimed, was the amount still owedto them under the reparations agreement with Byzantium for the latter’s seizureof Venetian property and people in 1171. For their part, the French were of-fered sufficient funds to settle their debt with the Venetians.109 Later in his ac-count, though, Andrea Dandolo records that after Alexius IV’s coronation hepaid the French in full but gave nothing at all to the Venetians, “as is containedin their [the Venetians’] history.” He goes on, “However, the history of the Frenchtells of two hundred thousand marks given willingly to the French and theVenetians.”110 This is a remarkable statement—the first reference in a Venetianchronicle to a foreign version of the crusade. The French history that AndreaDandolo references is almost certainly that of Villehardouin, since it was the onlyone available at that time to record the correct figure of two hundred thousandsilver marks.111 Dandolo seems, however, either to have misread Villehardouin’s

106 Carile, Cronachistica.107 Serban Marin, “Venetian and Non-Venetian Crusaders in the Fourth Crusade, according to the

Venetian Chronicles’ Tradition,” Annuario 4 (2002): 111–71. See also Serban Marin, “The Venetian‘Empire’ in the East: The Imperial Elections in Constantinople in 1204 in the Venetian Chronicles’Representation,” Annuario 5 (2003): 185–245; Serban Marin, “Dominus quartae partis et dimidiaetotius imperii Romaniae: The Fourth Crusade and the Dogal Title in the Venetian Chronicles’Representation,” Quaderni della Casa Romena di Venezia 3 (2004): 119–50.

108 Doge Andrea Dandolo was a cousin four times removed of Doge Enrico Dandolo. See Madden,Enrico Dandolo, 202. On the Chronica see H. Simonsfeld, “Andrea Dandolo e le sue opere storiche,”Archivio veneto 14 (1877): 49–149.

109 Dandolo, Chronica, 277.110 “… ut in eorum continetur ystoria; Francorum tamen ystoria narat CCm marcharum data co-

miter Francis et Venetis”: ibid., 278–79.111 Robert of Auxerre records that Alexius paid the two hundred thousand marks in full to the

crusaders: Chronicon, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SS 26 (Hannover: MGH, 1882), 265–66. How-ever, Robert’s chronicle is known to have existed in only one copy that did not leave his monastery,



account or to have known of its assertion secondhand, since it does not statethat the promised funds were paid in full.

The remainder of Andrea Dandolo’s account of the crusade provides furtherevidence of familiarity with Villehardouin. Its description of the first conquestof Constantinople in 1203 follows that of the marshal of Champagne, describ-ing the Frankish attacks on the land walls and the sallying forth of a largeByzantine force. Like Villehardouin, Andrea Dandolo praises Enrico Dandolo’sbravery in battle as the Venetians scrambled over the walls and captured thecity. Like previous Venetian accounts, however, Dandolo reports that the Venetianstook the city themselves. He correctly notes that the newly crowned Alexius IVand his father, Isaac II, confirmed their commitment to aid the Holy Land andto place the Byzantine Church under obedience to Rome. He briefly describesthe murder of Alexius IV and the elevation of Mourtzouphlus, followed by along description of the Pact of March likely drawn from the document itself.When describing the second conquest of Constantinople, Dandolo correctlyrecords that the Paradise and the Pilgrim were tied together and extended theirladders against the walls, allowing the attackers to enter the city.112 Villehardouinwas the only available contemporary source to record the names of the two ves-sels and the fact that they were lashed together.113 Andrea Dandolo ends his ac-count with the meeting of the twelve electors, recounting the well-establishedVenetian tradition that the French electors nominated Enrico Dandolo to be em-peror but the Venetians declined, instead nominating Baldwin of Flanders.114

Andrea Dandolo’s influential chronicle makes it plain that, in one form or an-other, Villehardouin’s narrative of the Fourth Crusade had arrived in Venice bythe mid-fourteenth century and was actively altering Venetian perspectives on theevent. Yet it by no means replaced them. Venetian chroniclers continued toincorporate shifting local traditions and were not above inventing new ones. Thearrival of Villehardouin’s memoirs did not stabilize Venetian memory of the FourthCrusade but rather contributed to its diversity. For example, Antonio Morosini’sfourteenth-century chronicle adopted some information drawn ultimately fromVillehardouin. Morosini correctly recorded that the young Alexius was recom-mended to the crusaders by Philip of Swabia and that he promised to pay twohundred thousand silver marks in return for their assistance.115 Nevertheless,Morosini’s account of the crusade is otherwise a jumble of fact and fiction. Itaccurately reports that the Venetians and French successfully installed Alexius in

so it is difficult to see how Dandolo could have had access to it. The Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernardincorrectly states that Baldwin of Flanders, Boniface of Montferrat, and Enrico Dandolo were eachoffered one hundred thousand marks; Hugh of St. Pol was to receive fifty thousand marks: Chroniqued’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. Louis de Mas Latrie (Paris: V. Jules Renouard, 1871), 364.

112 Dandolo, Chronica, 278–79.113 Villehardouin, Conquête 242, 2:45. In his letter to Innocent III, Baldwin of Flanders also iden-

tified the two vessels, but this letter would not have been available to Andrea Dandolo: Reg. 7, no.152 (= TTh. 1:506).

114 Dandolo, Chronica, 279.115 Michele Pietro Ghezzo, John R. Melville-Jones, and Andrea Rizzi, eds., The Morosini Codex,

Archivio del litorale adriatico 3 (Padua: Unipress, 1999), 6.

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Constantinople and received a portion of their reward. Yet Morosini maintainsthat, before receiving full payment, the Venetians suggested that the crusaderscontinue their voyage to the Holy Land. As they left Constantinople, Alexius IVpromised, “On your return, may it please you to visit these regions, and I will beready to complete the payment of what I should give you.” The crusaders thensailed to the East “doing many marvelous and wonderful deeds against the infi-dels, which it will take too long to relate in full.” After completing their vows,the crusaders returned to Constantinople, where they found that Mourtzouphlushad killed Alexius IV and seized the throne. Dandolo and the Venetians, there-fore, took the city and the empire from the unworthy Greeks.116 Thus by a clevermechanism Morosini managed to extract the conquest of Constantinople fromthe Fourth Crusade, setting it instead within the sphere of Venetian, not crusade,history.

The introduction of foreign narratives of the Fourth Crusade into thefourteenth-century Venetian memory of the event did not, however, completelyerase the earlier tradition that the pope had promoted the diversion toConstantinople. Although Andrea Dandolo and Antonio Morosini omitted thepope from their accounts, at least two other fourteenth-century chronicles—the anonymous Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1356 and the Cronaca veneta attrib-uted to Enrico Dandolo (not the doge)—included Innocent as a proponent ofthe cause of Alexius Angelus.117 Just as importantly, Venetian chronicles in thefourteenth century continued to say nothing of the excommunication of theVenetians during the crusade. This omission suggests that the Chronique d’Ernoulhad little or no exposure in Venice since it reports the excommunication of thecrusaders.118 Villehardouin, on the other hand, refers to a delegation to the popeseeking forgiveness for the conquest of Zara but is silent on the matter of ex-communication.119 Other sources for the excommunication—Robert de Clari,Gunther of Pairis, and the papal register—were unavailable in late-medievalVenice.

The narrative thread of papal support for the crusade’s diversion toConstantinople returned to Venetian chronicles with vigor in the fifteenth century.In an excellent study, Marin has identified twelve Venetian chronicles from thefifteenth century that report papal support for the crusade’s plan to place Alexiuson the Byzantine throne.120 Thus, the story that the Venetian crusaders had been

116 Ibid., 8–9.117 Both are unpublished: Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1356, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 2543 (= 12435),

fol. 46v; Enrico Dandolo, Cronaca veneta, BNMV, MS cl. It., VI 102 (= 8142), fol. 39v.118 Chronique d’Ernoul, 351.119 Villehardouin, Conquête 105–6, 1:104–6.120 They are Cronaca della città di Venezia dalla sua fondazione fino all’anno 1400, BNMV, MS

cl. It., VII 1577 (= 7973), pp. 257–58; Cronaca di Venezia, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 559 (= 7888), fol.44r; Antonio Donà, Cronaca veneta dall’anno 687 al 1479, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 10 (= 8607), fol.30r; Cronaca veniera, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 791 (= 7589), fol. 68r; Cronaca veneta dall originedella città sino all’anno 1478, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 798 (= 7486), fol. 21v; Cronaca di Venezia finoal 1432, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 2560 (= 12452), fol. 68r–v; Cronaca di Venezia fino al 1441, BNMV,MS cl. It., VII 2563 (= 12455), fol. 11r; Cronaca dell’origine di Venezia sino all’anno 1442, BNMV,MS cl. It., VII 550 (= 8496), fol. 72r; Gasparo Zancaruolo, Cronaca veneta, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII



told—the story recorded by the Translatio Symonensis in 1205, the mosaic artistin Ravenna in 1213, and Martin Da Canal in 1267—remained, in one form oranother, persistently vibrant in the fifteenth century. It survived because it wasnot directly contradicted by Villehardouin or any other potentially available non-Venetian source and because it complemented an established civic identity thatprized obedience to Rome.121

Despite its longevity, the fact that many Venetian chroniclers from the late thir-teenth century onward omitted the narrative of papal support for the crusade’sdiversion suggests that they either questioned or outright rejected it. The willing-ness of other chroniclers to include this narrative suggests a contested space withinVenetian historical memory. This, and the numerous other strands of contradic-tory narrative regarding the Fourth Crusade in fifteenth- and sixteenth-centuryVenice, must have posed a problem when the Great Council chamber was re-stored after the fire of 1577. Which memory of the crusade should be privilegedand which ignored? The problem was made more acute with the formal presenta-tion to the Council of Ten of a manuscript of Villehardouin that was brought fromthe court of Charles V in Brussels. The Ten commissioned Paolo Ramusio to trans-late Villehardouin into Latin, but the humanist scholar did much more thanthat.122 Instead, he produced a new critical history of the Fourth Crusade basednot only on Villehardouin but also on a long list of other Byzantine, Venetian, andContinental sources.123 While not without its errors, Ramusio’s De belloConstantinopolitano was the most accurate description of the crusade producedto date. It describes the diversion of the crusade in support of Alexius Angelus asan act of charity and righteousness that would benefit Christendom, but not as apapal project.124 Although it says nothing of the excommunication of the crusad-ers, this was not an intentional omission since that detail was left out in the sourceson which Ramusio relied. The learned treatise was presented to the Ten in September1572, but it remained unpublished in 1577, when fire destroyed the Great Councilchamber.125 It is not unreasonable to assume, however, that it may have been madeavailable to the members of the government’s restoration committee.

The extant cycle of paintings that depict the Fourth Crusade in the GreatCouncil chamber consists of eight scenes, seven of which were executed between

1274 (= 9274), fol. 190v; Cronaca veneta dal principio della città fino al 1450, BNMV, MS cl. It.,VII 1586 (= 9611), fol. 35v; Marcantonio Erizzo, Cronaca veneta, BNMV, MS cl. It., VII 56 (= 8636),fols. 105v–106r; and Marino Sanudo, “Vitae ducum Venetorum,” in Rerum Italicarum scriptores,ed. Lodovico Antonio Muratori (Milan: Ex typographia Societatis Palatina, 1733), 22, col. 529. SeeMarin, “Venetian and Non-Venetian Crusaders,” 142.

121 Thomas F. Madden, “Venice, the Papacy, and the Crusades before 1204,” in The MedievalCrusade, ed. Susan J. Ridyard, Sewanee Medieval Studies 15 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), 85–95; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981),101–19.

122 Marin, “Ramusio,” 66–72.123 An alphabetical list of twenty-seven sources appears on the eighth page of the unnumbered pref-

atory material: Paolo Ramusio, De bello Costantinopolitano et imperatoribus Comnenis per Galloset Venetos restitutis historia Pauli Ramnusii (Venice: apud Marc. Ant. Brogiolum, 1634).

124 Ibid., 33–35.125 The Latin version was published in 1609 and then again in 1634: Marin, “Ramusio,” 72.

340 Madden


1578 and 1582: The Doge Taking the Cross by Giovanni Leclerc (completedin 1620), The Conquest of Zara by Andrea Vicentino, The Surrender of Zaraby Domenico Tintoretto, The Petition of Alexius by Vicentino, The Stormingof the Walls of Constantinople by Jacopo Palma il Giovane, The Conquest ofConstantinople by Tintoretto, The Election of the Emperor by Vicentino, andDandolo Crowning Baldwin as Emperor by Vicentino.126 All of these paintingshave something to say about the Venetian memory of the Fourth Crusade. How-ever, it is with the fourth painting in the cycle that the artist, Vicentino, wasforced to deal with the question of the diversion of the Fourth Crusade (Fig. 7).In the background of this work the Venetian fleet can be seen preparing forits departure from Zara. At its center is the young Alexius in the act of peti-tioning Doge Dandolo to assist him at Constantinople. Dandolo is surroundedby crusader barons in various costume; the one to the right of the doge wearsa crusader’s cross on his breast. Directly behind Alexius at the foot of the stairsis a richly dressed man clutching a book of some sort. The focal point ofthis scene is particularly interesting. All eyes—including those of the dogeand the prince—are fixed on a piece of paper or parchment, held jointly byDandolo and Alexius, which is addressed to the doge (Fig. 8).127 Art historianshave long puzzled over this item, which is not part of the historical event.128

Given the testimony of the Ravenna mosaic and Da Canal, as well as the sub-sequent narrative strand that asserted a papal endorsement of Alexius’s claim tothe throne, it is tempting to see here the counterpart to the 1213 floor mosaicof San Giovanni Evangelista (Fig. 6): the delivery of Innocent III’s letter to thecrusaders. The richly dressed figure behind Alexius could be (and has been) in-terpreted as the papal legate holding a prayer book. The extraordinary atten-tion and reverence the page evokes from the onlookers also suggest a papal let-ter of endorsement.

Yet this identification is not without its own problems. The program for thedecoration of the restored rooms was principally the product of a committee com-posed of the learned Florentine monk Girolamo Bardi and two members of theGreat Council.129 In 1587 Bardi wrote a short work describing the duties of the

126 Giulio Lorenzetti, Venezia e il suo estuario: Guida storico-artistica (Rome: Libreria dello Stato,1956), 273.

127 The words on the leaf are small and partially covered by hands. The most likely construction ofthe full address is “Al Ser[enissimo] Princ[ipe] di Vene[zia]” and the location “Zara.” My thanks toPhilip Gavitt for suggesting this form.

128 Wolfgang Wolters, for example, has suggested that it was meant to refer to the treaty madebetween Alexius and the crusaders. There is no evidence that such a treaty existed, nor do Venetianchronicles suggest that it did. A treaty, furthermore, would likely be depicted with the seals of theparticipants attached, rather than as a simple page. In any case, Wolters’s description of the crusadeis generally problematic: throughout he refers to the doge as “Andrea Dandolo”: Wolfgang Wolters,Der Bilderschmuck des Dogenpalastes: Untersuchungen zur Selbstdarstellung der Republik Venedigim 16. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983), 182–88. Umberto Franzoi describes the leaf as a let-ter from Isaac II, imprisoned in Constantinople, requesting the crusaders’ aid; but this, too, is neitherhistorical nor a feature of Venetian tradition: Umberto Franzoi, Storia e leggenda del Palazzo Ducaledi Venezia (Verona: Storti, 1982), 255 and 257.

129 Juergen Schulz, Venetian Painted Ceilings of the Renaissance, California Studies in the Historyof Art 9 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 109.




committee and the historical background of the new paintings.130 According toBardi, “And in the third space, which is between the balcony and the second win-dow, was executed by Jacopo Tintoretto the departure from Zara of Alexius, theyoung son of Isaac Comnenus, emperor of Constantinople, an event that is readin Villehardouin in this manner.”131 What follows is a brief description of Alexius’sflight from Constantinople and refuge with Philip of Swabia. Unable to assist himbecause of his war with Otto of Brunswick, Philip sent Alexius to the crusadebarons at Zara with “letters of recommendation.”132 Unlike the other paintingsin the series, Bardi makes it clear that this one is drawn from Villehardouin. YetVillehardouin’s account includes no letters of recommendation from Philip, which

130 Bardi, Dichiaratione, fols. 1r–2v.131 “Et nel terzo vano, che è tra il verone, et la seconda finestra, è stato rappresentato da Iacopo

Tintoretto l’andata di Zara di Alessio, figliuolo d’Isaccio Comneno Imperadore di Costantinopoli,accaduta per quello, che se ne legge nel Villarduino in questo modo”: ibid., fol. 41r.

132 Ibid., fol. 41v.

Fig. 7 (left). Andrea Vicentino, The Conquest of Zara. Oil on canvas.Palazzo Ducale, Venice.Fig. 8 (above). Detail of Fig. 7.(Photograph: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y. Available in colorin the online edition of this article.)



Doge Dandolo (who was blind) could not have read in any case. Villehardouinalso does not describe Alexius as the son of Isaac Comnenus but, accurately, asthe son of Isaac II Angelus. The fact that Bardi attributes the work to JacopoTintoretto, who was commissioned to produce the paintings but died before do-ing so, suggests that Bardi was reporting on the original plan for the artistic pro-gram rather than its final execution. Indeed, his description suggests that he neversaw the completed project.

Despite those problems, as a member of the committee Bardi clearly intendedthat the painting include letters of recommendation from Philip of Swabia. Butthe artist, Vicentino, leaves the identification of the depicted document ambigu-ous. With only a simple address visible, the viewer is free to project any narra-tive onto the manuscript. The richly dressed figure behind Alexius could servejust as well for a German ambassador as a papal legate. In short, Vicentino ap-pears to have struck a middle course between two competing memories of thediversion of the Fourth Crusade, producing a work that could accommodate both.It was a scene that all members of the Great Council could view with approvalfor it evoked both shared and contested memories without rejection or privilege.

By the sixteenth century, Venetian memory of the Fourth Crusade had becomea body of complex, multilayered strata of competing narratives.133 That was nottrue in 1205. When Walframo of Gemona returned home (if he returned home),he would have told Palmera a simple story in which the imperatives and ambi-guities that drove the troubled Fourth Crusade were transformed into a clear tri-umph of good over evil. Some of that story was untrue, but Walframo wouldhave believed it nonetheless. Over subsequent centuries that narrative would bechallenged but never completely abandoned by Venetians. Driven by a desire tohold together a fracturing crusade, Enrico Dandolo, and perhaps other leaders,fashioned a narrative that informed not only the perceptions of Venetian crusad-ers during the expedition but those of generations of Venetians afterward.

133 Indeed, it would even be turned into an epic or “heroic” poem—a Venetian Aeneid of sorts—byLucrezia Marinella. It was published in 1635 under the title L’Enrico overo Bisanzio acquistato. Inthis tale Dandolo is a valiant character of virtue and wisdom. Interestingly, Marinella wrestles withthe problem of the diversion of the crusade, providing Dandolo with an innovative rationale for choos-ing to support Alexius’s just claim to the Byzantine throne. He proclaims, “We are not deprivingGod of his right by doing this; in fact, everybody toils in his service. I will not believe that God ap-preciates less that we reclaim his funeral cradle from the hands of the cruel Scythians than that wetake a usurped kingdom and life away from an evil man.” See Lucrezia Marinella, Enrico, or,Byzantium Conquered, trans. Maria Galli Stampino (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009),canto 1, lines 66–67, p. 98.

Thomas F. Madden is Professor of Medieval History at Saint Louis University, St. Louis,MO 63108 (e-mail: [email protected]).

344 Madden


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