Crusades Against the Byzantines

It is one of history’s great ironies that the crusades, launched with the avowed intention of assisting the Eastern Christians, resulted in the sacking of Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the East, in 1204. Yet, despite rising tensions between the crusaders and the Byzantines during the twelfth century, it was only in the thirteenth century that crusades were actually proclaimed against the latter, in order to defend the Latin states created in Byzantine lands after the Fourth Crusade. In the process, the ‘schismatic Greeks’ came to be counted among the various ‘infidels’, while Constantinople took its place alongside Jerusalem. Crusading activity against the Byzantines petered out by the 1330s, when the Turks gradually emerged as the greatest threat in the Aegean against both Latins and Greeks. Nevertheless, elements of crusading aggression against Byzantium persisted to the end of the empire, hindering cooperation against the Ottomans. This chapter traces the development of crusader hostility towards the Byzantines, and explores the rhetoric deployed to justify the use of Holy War against Orthodox Christians. It outlines the evolution of crusading mechanisms (indulgences, preaching, vows, tithes, etc.) in the Byzantine front, and places these expeditions in the wider context of politics and intercultural relations in the medieval Mediterranean.