Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

The empire’s misery was compounded by the worsening situation in the Christian East. The Muslim world was united under the brilliant leadership of a Kurdish sultan named Saladin, and the squabbling crusader kingdoms could put up little resistance. In 1187, Jerusalem fell, and inevitably the West launched another Crusade to retake it, again using Constantinople as a staging point. The presence of foreign armies passing through the capital was dangerous at the best of times, but Isaac would have been hard pressed to have handled the situation more poorly. When the German ambassadors arrived to discuss transport to Asia Minor, Isaac panicked and threw them into prison. The enraged German emperor Frederick Barbarossa threatened to turn the Crusade against Constantinople, and the blustering Isaac caved completely, immediately freeing the prisoners and showering them with gold and apologies.

This shameful behavior went a long way toward confirming the abysmal Byzantine reputation in the West and thoroughly disgusted the emperor’s beleaguered subjects. Whatever support Isaac had left crumbled away when he made the insane decision to officially disband the imperial navy and entrust the empire’s sea defenses to Venice. Seeing his moment to strike, Isaac’s younger brother Alexius III ambushed the emperor and his son and—after blinding the emperor—threw them both into the darkest prison he could find.

Unfortunately for the empire, the new emperor proved to be a good deal worse than his brother. Capturing the throne had taken most of his energy, and now he couldn’t be bothered to actually govern. While the Turks marched up the Byzantine coastline in Asia Minor and Bulgaria expanded in the west, Alexius III busied himself in a search for money to fund his lavish parties—even stooping in his greed to stripping the old imperial tombs of their golden ornaments.

As the emperor plundered his own city, Isaac in his black cell was dreaming of revenge. His own escape was impossible and, since he was blind, quite pointless, but if his son Alexius IV could break free, there might yet be justice. Somehow the old emperor made contact with his supporters in the city, and in 1201, two Pisan merchants were able to smuggle the young prince out. Fleeing to Hungary, Alexius IV stumbled onto an unexpected sight: a new crusading army was on the march.

The Third Crusade hadn’t been a success. After sacking the Seljuk capital of Iconium, the fearsome German emperor Frederick Barbarossa had drowned in a freak accident while crossing the Saleph River in southeastern Anatolia.^* Without him, the German army panicked and melted away, with some soldiers even committing suicide in their desperation. The English and French armies, on the other hand, arrived in much better condition, and—led by the dashing Richard the Lion-Hearted—they were ready to fight. Repairing the damage done to the crusader kingdoms was tedious work, though, and Richard had no patience. After a year spent conquering the coastline, he was terribly bored with the entire thing. Jerusalem seemed as unreachable as ever, the crusaders were squabbling mercilessly, and the French king (he rightly suspected) was plotting against him. After hastily patching up a truce with his Muslim rival—the gallant Saladin—Richard sailed off to find another adventure, announcing before he left that any future Crusade should be directed against Egypt—the “Achilles’ heel” of the East.

Richard’s reputation was so great in Europe that the German leaders of the Fourth Crusade decided to take his advice and capture Jerusalem via Egypt. This, of course, meant that the entire army would need to be transported across the Mediterranean, and there was only one place that could provide enough ships for an entire Crusade. Gathering their courts, the princes of Europe headed for Venice.

The islands in the Lagoon of Venice had a long and tangled history with the empire. Originally composed of refugees from the Lombard invasion of Italy in the sixth century, the collection of islands that made up Venice was administered by the imperial governor of Ravenna and drew heavily on the Byzantine culture around it. The church on its oldest island, Torcello, had been paid for by the emperor Heraclius, the main cathedral of Saint Mark’s was a loose replica of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, and Venetian sons and daughters were regularly sent for education—or spouses—to Byzantium. Even the title of “doge” was a corruption of the original imperial title of dux, or duke. Recent years, however, had seen more competition than cooperation between the republic and the empire, and the latest heavy-handed treatment of Venetian traders by the Comnenian emperors still grated on Italian nerves.