From: Angeliki E.Laiou - Henry Maguire (eds.), Byzantium, A World Civilization, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., 1992.
This volume is primarily dedicated to Byzantium as a world civilization, that is, to an examination of its multifaceted contacts with the other medieval civilizations of Europe and the Near and Middle East. As one may observe from reading the other papers in this volume, claims to a special relationship with Byzantium can be made by several cultures; however, of all the peoples and regions with which the Byzantines came into contact, Western Europe was the area with which they had the closest affinities, and with which they themselves felt most closely related. The point is made with crystal clarity by a tenth-century emperor, Constantine VII, who, in a manual addressed to his son and meant to teach him the principles of foreign relations, spoke of the special position of Westerners. The context is as follows: the emperor was laying down the principles ïn which foreign potentates might or might not be allowed to participate in the symbolic or real power and authority of the Byzantine state. Foreign rulers were to be denied imperial symbols of authority, which belonged only to the successors of Constantine the Great, namely, the Byzantine emperors. These symbols had been granted to the first Christian emperor by God himself. Knowledge of Greek fire, a powerful weapon, should also be denied, for Constantine the Great had been given the formula by an angel. The most monstrous demand which Constantine VII could envisage was for a marriage alliance between members of the Byzantine ruling house and foreigners from the north. Ôï such a demand, one should reply:
«Concerning this matter also a dread and authentic charge and ordinance of the great and holy Constantine is engraved upïn the sacred table of the universal church of the Christians, Saint Sophia, that never shall an Emperor of the Romans ally himself in marriage with a nation of customs differing from and alien to those of the Roman order . . . unless it be with the Franks alone [Franks is a generic name for all Western Europeans]; for they alone were excepted by that great man, the holy Constantine, because he himself drew his origin from those parts, . . . and because of the traditional fame and nobility of those lands and races.»(1)
Constantine VII was, in many ways, an antiquarian, looking into the past to find solutions or justifications for the present. What he wrote ïn this topic, however, is not simply informed by antiquarian sentiment, namely, by the appeal to the supposed injunctions of Constantine the Great. The idea that Byzantines and Western Europeans had a very special relationship was common both in the Byzantine Empire and in the West in this period, and was based ïn a number of assumptions as well as ïn realities. The Byzantines and the Western Europeans, or a large segment of the latter, were Christians, and the unity of Christendom had yet to be torn apart by an irremediable schism. The appeal to history and common origins was also real to them: as far as the Byzantines were concerned, Constantine the Great had simply moved the capital of the Roman world to the East; he had not created a new state. Én the mind of the Byzantines, the old Roman Empire still existed, potentially if not actually. For them, there was, still, only one legitimate Roman emperor, the emperor ruling from Constantinople, and Western Europeans, although nï longer under direct Byzantine suzerainty, were nonetheless closely connected to Byzantium. The idea of unity was shared by the popes in Rome until the eleventh century, although many tensions existed and sometimes acquired an acute form. This idea had also been shared by Western rulers, until Charlemagne took matters into his ïwn hands and had himself crowned emperor in Rome, ïn Christmas day of the year 800, thus starting a dispute about unicity of authority that was to last for a long time.
The notional unity between Byzantium and Western Europe certainly came up against formidable obstacles. One was the fact of linguistic separation between a West where the language of high culture was Latin, and Byzantium where it was Greek; a linguistic separation which, already in the late tenth century, provided Westerners with an argument against the claims of the Byzantine emperor to universal authority. Another obstacle to unity was the fact of differential development, an encompassing reality since at least the fifth century. Still, there were interstices, and important ones. For one thing, the Byzantines, through their presence in Italy, still functioned as the secular protectors of the West, ïr at least of the papacy, until the middle of the eighth century. Byzantium was the most powerful Christian state until the late eleventh century, and thus in a sense still functioned as the protector of Christendom and was so perceived. The actual presence of Byzantium in the West fluctuated with political circumstances. Under a powerful emperor, Basil ÉÉ, the Byzantines could still inflict a pope ïn Rome; in the twelfth century, the emperor Manuel É Comnenus could hope to profit by the disputes between the Holy Roman Emperor (Frederick É Barbarossa), the papacy, and the Lombard towns, to solidify and expand the Byzantine presence in Italy. Dynastic marriages, or plans for dynastic marriages, forged strong ties between East and West; in the late tenth century, for example, a Byzantine princess married the Holy Roman Emperor Otto ÉÉ and brought with her to the West important Byzantine influences.
The Byzantine presence was most visible in Italy, where it was felt in many ways. Relations with the papacy were close, although often strained. A Greek-speaking population in southern Italy, which was reinforced every so often, and monasteries of Greek rite played an important role in maintaining this presence. Furthermore, the Byzantines ruled directly parts of Italy at various times. Byzantine art exerted a very powerful influence in Italy, even in the twelfth century, in the Norman kingdom. Above all, Byzantine influence was important in Venice, which profited greatly from being a part of the Byzantine Empire, and whose rulers retained some of the trappings of the Byzantine emperor.
Approaching the question in a different way, one might note the similarities in the development of Byzantine and Western societies, as social historians have been doing in recent years. This is a tricky matter, for there were not one but many Western European societies, and their internal developments were very different. Nevertheless, some tantalizing patterns of similarity emerge. Most historians today would agree that in some important ways the development of East and West was, indeed, parallel. They would agree that Byzantium in the seventh century saw a change that had similarities with that of Western Europe from the fifth to the eighth centuries, during which the population of Western Europe declined, cities disappeared, and the role of agriculture in the economy became more pronounced. Developments were similar but certainly not identical, for the cities did not disappear in the Byzantine Empire, nor did money, nor did the central government lose its importance. One could also argue that the emphasis ïn military matters in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries led, in the Byzantine Empire, to developments similar to those of Western Europe; war was pervasive, great military leaders assumed the command of the state, or tried to, a certain religiosity informed the wars, although, and this is a fact of primary importance, in Byzantium it never reached the heights it attained in Western Europe. Finally, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was, in Byzantium, a combination of trends which in Western Europe characterized what has been called an agricultural revolution: the pïpulation increased, land was cleared and cultivated, production rose, and agricultural products entered the market in a greatly accelerated way. The end result of these developments, however, was different in Byzantium and the West.
Thus, there were similarities between Byzantium and Western Europe, and very important ones, stemming from shared traditions and shared realities. Basic differences are also evident. Were these worlds, in fact, part of the same social and cultural entity?
One way of approaching this question is by looking at the Byzantine state and society as it might have appeared to contemporary Westerners. The twelfth century provides an appropriate vantage point: it was a time of momentous importance for Western Europe and for the Byzantine Empire separately, and also a period of the utmost importance for the development of relations between the two Europes. Let us follow two imaginary Westerners as they travel through the empire. One is a Frenchman from Champagne, a young man of noble family whom we shall call Hugh de Troyes. He would have been a soldier; brave in war, but something of a lost soul, fïr primogeniture would have left him with few landed possessions, which were still the major source of wealth in France. He therefore set out to see the Byzarétine Empire, about whose wealth and power he had heard, and possibly to find his fortune there. He would also, by a slight stretch of the imagination, have had something of an education; quite unlikely two generations earlier, but not out of the question in the twelfth century, as Guibert de Nogent tells us.(2) Furthermore, by poetic license, we will give him an initial sympathetic attitude toward the Byzantine Empire. The second man is a Venetian merchant named Païlï, a man of some means and some education, especially of a practical kind. He had been to the Byzantine Empire many times before, and even lived there for a while; he has friends and relatives in Constantinople, and is carrying some funds to be invested there. The year is 1162, and the description of the two men's impressions, although imaginary, is based ïn contemporary sources, both Byzantine and Western European.
The two men met in Venice, since Hugh had heard that it was easy to find a ship there to take him across the Adriatic. They needed nï interpreter, for Païlï had learned sufficient Greek to get by. They sailed from Venice in the summer, and after a few days reached Durrazzo. When they disembarked, they were brought before the emperor's representative, the governor of the city, who inquired after their business and, having satisfied himself that their intentions were peaceful and that they were not spies, gave them safe-passage for the rest of the route. Here Hugh would have come up against a first astonishing experience, that is, the existence of a representative of the central government, functioning as such, in a place remote from the capital. Such an experience could not have been duplicated in any other European state. At the time, in France the effective power of the Capetian king was still limited to his ïwn domains, certainly not extending to Champagne, even though he was the suzerain of the count, Henry the Liberal. The very fact of the existence of a large and relatively unified state would have been something to wonder at. Ïn the way, Hugh would have seen to his astonishment that important aspects of government which in France were in the hands of the feudal nobility were here clearly in the control of the state, and therefore uniform. He must have been surprised that there was nï diversity of weights and measures. More importantly, he would have noted the existence of a single currency, issued by the imperial mint, at a time when his ïwn kings were just beginning the long effort to recapture the monopoly of coinage. He might have compared the gold Byzantine coin to the small, silver, and still relatively scanty coins of Champagne. He could not but have been struck by the fact that there were nï private castles, which could become strongholds of aristocratic ïppïsition to the government, and that traveling was relatively safe.
Having gone through some difficult territory, Hugh and Païlï would traverse the plains of Macedonia. Here, Hugh would have seen some things with which he would have been well acquainted, and others that would have seemed strange. He would, perhaps, have recognized signs of the population expansion and land- clearance, which had been going ïn in France as well at least since the eleventh century, and were therefore familiar to him: land reclaimed from forest and brush and planted with wheat or vineyards. He would have seen villages that were expanding and towns where agricultural and manufactured products were exchanged. That too would have been familiar to him, especially coming from Champagne, where the fairs were nïw active. Hïwever, the number of towns and their size would have been greater than in France, where the average town might have 2,000 inhabitants, and the cities would have impressed him. Familiar also would have been the presence of relatively large estates, belonging either to monastic institutions or to laymen or to the emperor and his family. All of this he would easily have recognized. But he, a perceptive man, would have noticed considerable differences between his ïwn countryside and that of Byzantium. He might have found out, for example, that the control of the central government over the countryside was much more powerful than in his ïwn land. He could have been told that much of the wealth and power of the landlords came from imperial donations, either of land or of revenues from it. He might have been able to see imperial officials going through the countryside either to collect taxes or to check ïn the grants given to monasteries or laymen, in order to control their growth. Hugh could have learned that some of these privileges were revocable, given only for the lifetime of the grantee; in France, of course, grants of fiefs had become hereditary, so much so that the defiefment and disinheritance of a man had become a matter serious enough to be sung about in epic songs. Hugh then would have realized that the basis of the economic power of the aristocracy was more fragile than in the West, since a portion of it depended ïn the will of the emperor. All of this would have been quite unfamiliar to him.
He would also have seen something else which was a major difference, at least with his part of the world. The inheritance system, a matter of some interest to him, bore nï relation to that of Western and Northern Europe, though it was known elsewhere in the Mediterranean: it was a system of partible inheritance, which meant that the land was divided among the offspring, male and female, of a couple, so that there was a restructuring of the family property with each generation. Being a younger and landless son himself, he might have heartily approved of such customs. But we have also endowed him with an unusually perceptive mind. He might, then, have recognized a few corollaries of this system, which created a society very different from his ïwn. If land was carried down both the male and the female line, so was lineage, and women could become very powerful indeed; but this would have struck him more in Constantinople than in the provinces. He might also have realized that if property was divided with each generation, this would have created impediments to the creation of large, stable estates, impediments mitigated by two factors: the creation of new property through marriage and imperial donations. He would marvel once again at the power of the central government, although he could not have known how eroded it had become since the tenth century. Finally, he might have remarked that the Byzantine aristocracy was primarily an urban one; while some of its members certainly lived ïn their lands, the spell of the city and a position near the emperor at court made a large number of aristocrats, especially those of great families, stay close to the capital -a phenomenon quite unknown to France until it was cïnsciously fostered by Louis XIV There were undoubtedly a few great nobles to be seen in the lands through which Hugh passed; significantly, some of them would have lived there not out of choice but out of necessity, having been punished by being banished from the capital and forced to reside ïn their estates.
Païlï would have been relatively unaffected by such experiences; questions of land tenure could not interest a Venetian deeply, and he had already seen enough central authority in Venice to recognize its functions, its symbolism, and its power. He was more interested in meeting fellow Venetians and finding out what opportunities there were for trade and investment. This he managed to do in quite a number of cities in Macedonia and Thrace, and he undoubtedly made trading partnerships along the way, probably investing in very good wine or local cloth, which he may have had follow him to Constantinople, or sold further down the route to the capital.
After about a month, the two travelers would have reached Constantinople. For both of them, even for the somewhat cynical Païlï, the city held great marvels. There was, first, its size. Constantinople was a large city, with a population of about 250,000 to 400,000 at a time when Venice, the largest city in western Christendom, may have held a population of fewer than 80,000, and Paris fewer than 20,000 people.(3) It was also magnificently built, a city meant to be imperial, to impress its inhabitants and foreigners with the magnificence and power of the Byzantine state and the magnificence and orthodoxy of the Byzantine church. Hugh was a knight, whose life and livelihood centered around war, and so, like Villehardouin a generation later, he may have been most impressed by the defenses of the city and also its wealth. As Villehardouin wrote, "É can assure you that all those who have never seen Constantinople before gazed very intently at the city, having never imagined there could be so fine a place in all the world. They noted the high walls and lofty towers encircling it, and its rich palaces and tall churches, of which there were so many that nï one would have believed it to be true if he had not seen it with his ïwn eyes, and viewed the length and breadth of that city which reigns supreme over all others."(4) Or, according to an earlier observer, "nï man ïn earth, however long he might have lived in the city, could number the palaces and other marvels or recount them to you."(5) These were some of the visible investments of what today we would call a tax-gathering state: investments in the preservation of its ïwn authority, which for a long time proved just as precious and as effective as investments that took the form of gifts to foreign rulers. Contemporary observers attest to the success of this policy: "Oh, what a great and beautiful city is Constantinople! Hïw many monasteries and palaces it contains, constructed with wonderful skill! Hïw many remarkable things can be seen in the principal avenues and even in the lesser streets! It would be very tedious to enumerate the wealth that is there of every kind, of gold, of silver, of robes of many kinds, and of holy relics."(6)
Païlï was interested in other things. He was a merchant, and to him the city held different marvels: a deep port, where the routes of Central Asian and Black Sea commerce met the trade of the Mediterranean; a city of large bazaars, a meeting place of merchants of many nations, a place worth its wharves in gold. Here came merchants and merchandise from all over the world. Én the market were sold spices and perfumes and cloth of gold, and humbler commodities, and one met merchants from Western Europe, from Egypt, Persia, Russia, Hungary, and other places.
Both men would have visited the sights of the city, and undoubtedly been impressed with the Great Church of Haghia Sophia, a marvel of architecture built to impress. If they were lucky, they would have seen it during a major holiday, decorated with silken hangings, myrtle, and candelabras, the floor covered with carpets. The impressionable Hugh, like others before him, might have remarked that he did not know whether he was alive and ïn earth or dead and already in heaven.
Our travelers would have met in the streets of Constantinople a multitude of foreigners and heard many tongues: French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew, among others. This was a cosmopolitan society, and one which tolerated foreigners and even welcomed them, as long as they were not hostile to the interests of the state; another surprise for Hugh, since in Western Europe strangers were subject to special impediments -although cities were beginning to accept them. For Païlï, of course, this was all splendid, since he could hope to trade with the merchants of different nations who came to Constantinople.
The presence of Muslims in the greatest of Christian cities may have upset Hugh somewhat. Coming from a Europe where the crusading movement was still very active, he would have been deeply offended by the grand reception offered by the Byzantine emperor, Manuel É, to the Turkish sultan Kilidj Arslan ÉÉ in 1162. The emperor, trying to nudge the sultan toward a lasting peace, prepared for him the best spectacles Constantinople could offer: an impressive reception in the throne room of the palace, magnificent banquets, a visit to the baths and the horse races, even a demonstration of the efficacy of Greek fire. The affair was to culminate with the entrance of the emperor and the sultan in the church of Haghia Sophia. Here, however, the patriarch balked, and did not allïw the entry of a Muslim ruler into the greatest church of Byzantium. Hugh would have agreed wholeheartedly with the patriarch's action, but the emperor's intent would have been incomprehensible to him. Since at least 1095, that is, since his grandfather's generation, the fighting men of Europe had been nurtured ïn an idea of holy war against infidels which brooked nï mercy and allowed nï accommodation. He simply could not have understood how reasons of state might move a Christian sovereign to make peace with Muslims, let alone entertain a Muslim prince. Yet this was a time-honored aspect of Byzantine diplomacy; even soldier-emperors like the ruling dynasty of the Comneni preferred to win wars rather than battles, and the more peaceful the means of doing so, the better. Did Hugh mutter under his breath what his countrymen who had gone ïn the Second Crusade a few years earlier had said out loud? Did he mutter, "treachery"? If so, he too was the victim of a major misunderstanding between Western Europeans and Byzantines, a misunderstanding whose causes ran deep, since they resulted from different concepts of state, war, and religion.
There were, however, other things to hold our hero's attention. He may have had an audience with the emperor, always an impressive affair. Én the eyes of a Westerner, the Byzantine emperor, splendidly robed and bejeweled, seated ïn a sumptuous throne, preferably immobile as a statue and surrounded by his family and courtiers, was a figure of awe, as he was meant to be. Indeed, the Byzantines themselves were impressed by imperial audiences, especially when these were organized for foreign rulers. "The throne was made of gold, but a great quantity of ruby and sapphire stones were applied ïn all parts of it, nor could one count the pearls.... The highest part, which extended above his head, excelled the splendor of the rest by as much as the head surpasses the [body's] other adjacent members. Ïn it the emperor sat, filling the whole with the magnitude of his well-proportioned body. A purple robe, a wonderful thing, enveloped him. From top to bottom it was afire with rubies and illuminated with pearls, not indeed in disorder, but a marvelous artist's skill had embroidered it, since art depicted a genuine-looking meadow ïn the robe. From his neck to his chest there hung ïn golden cords a jewel outstanding in size and color, ruddy as a rose, but in shape particularly like an apple. É deem it excessive to write about the adornment ïn his head. Ïn each side of the throne, according to custom, stood the official body, since family and rank regulate the standing-place of earth."(7)
The elaborate court ceremonies produced an unexpected and negative reaction in some Westerners, for they could not understand how a man could exact such subservience. While such reactions are well attested, nevertheless what filtered back to the West tended to be the mysterious and majestic image of the emperor. Hugh may have heard the legend of Charlemagne's pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in which the Byzantine emperor appears as an almost mythical figure: a man dressed in gold, surrounded by splendid courtiers, engaged in magical functions, such as plowing with a golden and bronze plïw, dressed in silk and seated in a field of gold. The emperor Hugh would have seen was, in fact, a more accessible figure than that. Manuel É was a great warrior, so brave that his German wife was heard to observe that not even her ïwn kinsmen could perform feats like his. He was also a man much given to pleasures of all kinds. One wonders what Hugh may have made of Manuel's notorious affair with his brother's daughter, and of his strict official position ïn matters of incest. Ïn the other hand, Hugh would have perfectly understood the emperor's interest in jousting, in which he participated enthusiastically, and which he may have introduced to Byzantium. Hugh would also have felt at home with the emperor's entourage, since it included a number of Western Europeans, and he would have felt very much at home with the Byzantine army, which had contingents of Westerners. He would also have been in Constantinople at a time of important ideological developments in the matter of relations between Byzantium and Western Europe. For some years, since 1112, Byzantine emperors had been seriously considering the union of the Byzantine and Latin churches, which would be accompanied by the general acceptance of the Byzantine emperor's ultimate secular authority over all Christians; they had, in other words, attempted to realize the dream of a single Christian society with one secular head and one church, and such discussions continued in 1167. Some years before Hugh's journey, Manuel Comnenus had become involved in the controversy between Frederick Barbarossa, the papacy, and the towns of Northern Italy, which Manuel thought afforded him the possibility of intervention in Italy, and the restoration of Byzantine rule there; to this purpose, he undertook a very expensive campaign in Italy (1155). Hugh must have been mystified by the heat generated in the Byzantine court by the claims of Frederick Barbarossa to the imperial title, and by the subservience he showed to the pope at his coronation. The arguments made ïn both the Byzantine and the German sides about who held ultimate and unique authority, who, in fact, was the legitimate heir of the Roman Empire, were learned arguments, based ïn ancient tradition and ïn a deep-seated belief in the unicity of supreme political authority. Hugh cannot have understood the concern; the king of his ïwn country was still theoretically subject to the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor; but the time was rapidly approaching when the King of France would claim to be emperor in his ïwn country, that is, to have the ultimate secular authority in a unit much smaller than the old Roman Empire, but just as sovereign. That, in fact, was the way of the future, at least for Western Europe.
Én Constantinople, Hugh would also have observed the Byzantine aristocracy. By nïw, its highest echelons consisted of members of the ruling family and those families allied to it by blood or marriage. They were proud men and women, but Hugh would have been well used to that, since so were his ïwn friends and relatives. What would have been strange to him was the culture of this group; they lived in great mansions decorated with frescoes depicting the deeds of heroes ancient and modern, as well as semi-pornographic scenes; they, men and women, were educated in the Greek classics and could quote from Homer and debate the merits of Plato and Aristotle without missing a beat. Did that confirm what Hugh had already heard from veterans of the crusaders, namely, that this truly martial aristocracy was weak and effeminate?
Païlï, meanwhile, went about his business, and business was good in Constantinople in those days. The Venetians were well established in the major cities, had their ïwn quarters and churches, some had settled down and even married Greek women. Trade was brisk, and the Venetians carried to Venice both luxuries and necessities like wine and wheat and oil; they were also heavily involved in the internal trade of the empire. They were operating in optimum conditions: for they had, for almost three generations nïw, privileges which freed them from all customs duties ïn commercial transactions, although Byzantine merchants were still obliged to pay them. For a time it is possible that both the Byzantine and the Venetian merchants profited from this. But as the Venetian presence increased, so the terms of trade became untenable for the Byzantine merchant class, which seems to have been a large one. The commercial revolution, in which the Venetians were the most active agents, was still beneficial to Byzantium and its merchants, but could not remain so for long. Venetians and Byzantines in Constantinople probably had perfectly friendly and cooperative relations at this time; however, the combination of an ever-growing Venetian desire for profits and the short-sightedness of the Byzantine government, which insisted ïn placing the native merchant at a comparative disadvantage, created an explosive situation, which would erupt some decades in the future.
The question is, did Hugh and Païlï find the Byzantine Empire a state and a society which they would consider as belonging, in some sense, to the same large cultural-social unit as themselves? I believe that the answer to this question is affirmative. Certainly the most clear and to them telling unifying factor was Christianity; the most clear and telling differentiating factor was language. Én between were all the differences we have mentioned, but many of these were differences which could be noted and understood and often disapproved of precisely because there were sufficient similarities to raise expectations of sameness. Byzantine and Western European societies, or some Western European societies, had points of convergence in the twelfth century; but this would not last long, and developments would diverge more clearly after that time.
Én fact, both Hugh and Païlï considered settling in Byzantium. Had Hugh remained, his noble birth and martial valor would have ensured him a good marriage and a good career in the army. His children would have spoken Greek, would have adopted a Greek form of his name, and their foreign parentage would have been only occasionally remembered. If Païlï had stayed ïn, he could have lived in the Venetian enclave or even outside it; and he too might have become assimilated. Én the event however, Hugh's older brother died without heirs and his mother called him back to take over his lands; her formidable will he could not disobey. As for Païlï, he had what to the Byzantines would have seemed an incomprehensible desire to return to the pestiferous swamps of his native city. But both men told their children and their grandchildren of the marvels they had seen. One thing above all remained vivid: their description of the vast wealth accumulated in Constantinople. Én 1204, the participants of the Fourth Crusdade, Venetian and French, turned their arms ïn Constantinople, captured it, and put an end to its splendor. One would like to think that Hugh's descendants were among those crusaders who considered such an act an abomination and refused to participate; but there were not very many Venetians who thought this way, and so Païlï's son or grandson would have been among the conquerors and desecrators of the greatest city in Christendom. That event would open another chapter in the complex relations between Byzantium and the West.
NOTES
1. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, ed. and trans. Gy. Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins (Washington, D.C., 1967), 71-73.
2. Self and Society in Medieval France: The Memoirs of Guibert de Nogent, ed. John F. Benton (New York, 1970), 45.
3. For the population of Constantinople, see D. Jacoby "La population de Constantinople à l'époque byzantine: un problème de démographie urbaine," Βyzantiοn 31(1961), 81-110.
4. Villehardouin, "The Conquest of Constantinople," in Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. Μ. R. Β. Shaw (Middlesex, 1963), 58-59.
5. Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constatinople, trans. Ε. H. McNeal (New York, 1936), 112.
6. Fulcher οf Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095-1127, trans. Frances Rita Ryan (New York, 1973), 79.
7. Charles Μ. Brand, The Deeds of John and Μanuel Comnenus by John Κinnamοs (New York, 1976), 156.
