“There never was a greater crime against humanity,” wrote the famed Byzantine scholar Sir Steven Runciman, “than the Fourth Crusade.” And although unfortunately untold numbers of atrocities could easily compete for this claim, certainly the sack of the glorious city of Constantinople marks a horrifyingly violent chapter in the history of Christianity.
The city had been refounded as Ancient Rome’s new capital in the early fourth century, and vast amounts of the Empire’s treasures were reposited there. For nearly a millennia after, Constantinope was an unconquered and wealthy hub of the Roman world, surviving attempts to take it over by mighty outside forces such as the Abbasid Caliphate.
It was finally undone by fellow Christians and a weak and insidious puppet ruler, who gave all sort of vain and ultimately undeliverable promises to his Christian allies if they would side by him and make him the new leader. Eventually, he was taken down, and the invaders proceeded to pillage and sack the city. Accounts tell of soldiers raping nuns, monk-looters mugging other clergy for treasures relics, and the wealth of the capital siphoned away.
The splendid cathedral of Hagia Sophia, which was the most famous building in Christendom, was looted. One source tells of the invaders putting a prostitute on the patriarchal throne while they pissed on the sacred objects.
The tale of the Fourth Crusade is the story of the destruction of a legacied government by jealous insiders who made a mockery of a respectable institution, and in this way has parallels with other events in human history.
Source(s): _The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople _, by Jonathan Philips, 2005, Penguin. @astrofella.wordpress.com/2019/06/05/sack-of-constantinople-1204/ .
