And, indeed, the thing was unpardonable. That an army, gathered together to defend the Christians against the Mohammedans, should, instead of doing so, destroy the very State that for five centuries had been the one bulwark of Christendom, is an unheard-of outrage. And when one remembers, too, the horrible cruelty and destruction of the sack of Constantinople, one is not surprised that even after many centuries the Greeks have not yet forgotten the day when a horde of Latin robbers so wantonly attacked their State, plundered their city, and massacred thousands of their forefathers.[1] And since they always make the mistake of counting everything done by Latins as the Pope's work, one can understand why, two hundred years later, they said they would prefer the Sultan's turban to the Pope's tiara.
Summary.
As far as the relations between the Eastern and Western Churches go, the Crusades did nothing but harm. The Byzantines were angry that the Crusaders set up Frankish States in Palestine, entirely ignoring the rights of the Empire. The Franks did not treat the Orthodox well in their little principalities and they were a turbulent, unmanageable crowd when they passed through Constantinople. On the other hand they had a long score of Greek treachery, lying, and cheating to remember. But the friction between these two sides came to a climax when, in 1204, the fourth Crusade, seduced by Venice, instead of fighting against the Turk, sacked Constantinople with every possible cruelty. So little was Pope Innocent III, who had preached the Crusade, responsible for this outrage, that he excommunicated the Crusaders for it. The Latin Empire set up then in Constantinople lasted fifty-seven years, till the Byzantines came back and destroyed it. The only survivals of the Crusades are certain Latin rights at the holy places, still acknowledged by the Turkish Government, and our titular Latin Patriarchates.
- ↑ In the reading-book prescribed for the primary schools of the kingdom of Greece (νεοελληνικὰ ἁναγνώσματα, Athens, 1889, vol. 2, p. 127), sliced between a gushing poem about the month of May and a description of the cholera in Athens in 1854, is a most lurid account of the horrors done in 1204 by the Franks out of hatred for the Orthodox faith.
