S
SemperFidelis
Guest
Do not blame the Church for this. The Pope was appalled and very sternly condemned this act. If we are going to start slinging mud:
“Horrible and utterly indefensible as the sack was, it should in justice be remembered that it was not totally unprovoked; more than once (as in the massacre of 1182) the Greeks of Constantinople had treated the Latins there as they were now being treated … Historians who wax eloquent and indignant - with considerable reason - about the sack of Constantinople … rarely if ever mention the massacre of the Westerners in Constantinople in 1182 … a nightmarish massacre of thousands [about 2000 Greeks were killed in Constantinople in 1204, according to secular historian Will Durant]… in which the slaughterers spared neither women nor children, neither old nor sick, neither priest nor monk. Cardinal John, the Pope’s representative, was beheaded and his head was dragged through the streets at the tail of a dog; children were cut out of their mother’s wombs; bodies of dead Westerners were exhumed and abused; some 4,000 who escaped death were sold into slavery to the Turks.”
(Carroll, ibid ., pp. 157,131)
or
“Each … must look back at the past with sorrow and repentance. Both sides must in honesty acknowledge that they could and should have done more to prevent the schism. Both sides were guilty of mistakes on the human level. Orthodox, for example, must blame themselves for the pride and contempt with which during the Byzantine period they regarded the west; they must blame themselves for incidents such as the riot of 1182, when many Latin residents at Constantinople were massacred by the Byzantine populace.”
(Ware, ibid. , p. 70)
or
“In 1171, on the orders or at least with the tacit approval of the Byzantine government, thousands of Venetians in the Eastern empire had been killed, mutilated, or arrested and held for years in prison.”
(Carroll, ibid. , p. 150)
or
"[In 1188] Frederick Barbarossa … requested permission of the Eastern Emperor, Isaac 11 Angelus, for passage of his army through Byzantine dominions on the way to the Holy Land, and for the right to purchase food for his troops within them. Isaac said he agreed . . . but in fact Isaac was resolved to oppose the passage of the crusaders, and made contact with Saladin [the Muslim commander] to concert plans “to delay and destroy the German army.” About this “Byzantine treachery” there is no doubt; even the many modern Western historians sympathetic to Byzantium and hostile to the Crusades have to admit it [e.g., Emperor Isaac, in 1187, had written Saladin to congratulate him for his great achievement of re-taking Jerusalem from the Latin crusaders] …
[Frederick’s envoys, imprisoned for a time] returned to Frederick… with infuriating (and accurate) reports of the Byzantine alliance with Saladin, plans to destroy the crusading army as it crossed the Dardanelles, and the violent anti-Western attitude of Patriarch Dositheus of Constantinople, who had offered unconditional absolution to any Greek killing a Westerner. Frederick passed on this information to his son Henry… to ask the Pope’s approval for a crusade against the Eastern Empire because of its treachery and dealings with the enemy. No Papal approval was given and Frederick soon thought better of the idea … Though a war against Christians was indubitably a perversion of the crusading ideal, Emperor Isaac’s acts against the crusaders had clearly been acts of war …
Everything that the Fourth Crusade later did to Christendom’s discredit, Frederick Barbarossa refused to do, though he was directly provoked as the leaders of the Fourth Crusade never were. The extent of Byzantine provocation of the Third Crusade is obvious from the sequence of events. It would be a long time before anyone in the West would trust them again."
(Carroll, ibid. , pp. 130,132-133)
Besides, it sets a bad example to the rest of us.