Event · religious

Fourth Crusade

1202–1204

Launched in the early thirteenth century, the Fourth Crusade was diverted from the Holy Land by Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo, who exploited the crusaders' debt to orchestrate attacks on the Christian city of Zara and then Constantinople itself, culminating in the sack of the Byzantine capital and the establishment of a Latin Empire on its ruins. The destruction was considered the greatest catastrophe in Byzantine history and marked an irreparable rupture between the Eastern and Western churches. So deep was the resulting bitterness that two centuries later, when Byzantine survival depended on union with Rome, many chose submission to the Ottoman Sultan over reconciliation with the papacy.

Mentioned in

What each episode says

Episode 2 (2 mentions)

“The fourth and final problem was the one of succession.”

“It was stolen from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, and incorporated into the”

Episode 14 (1 mention)

“soldiers of the Fourth Crusade.”

Episode 15 (260 mentions)

Masterminded by Enrico Dandolo, the Fourth Crusade was diverted from its intended target to attack the Christian city of Zara and then Constantinople. Dandolo exploited the crusaders' inability to pay their transport debt, welcomed the fugitive Alexius Angelus, and ultimately orchestrated the sack of Constantinople—the greatest catastrophe in Byzantine history. The crusaders never reached the Holy Land and instead set up a Latin Empire on the ruins.

Episode 16 (2 mentions)

“The only hope of salvation was now the West, but the Fourth Crusade had permanently ruptured”

Episode 17 (2 mentions)

Brownworth identifies the Venetian-led Fourth Crusade as the 'final divorce between East and West,' a blow so bitter that it endured in Byzantine memory for centuries. When survival in the fifteenth century required uniting with the Catholic Church, the Byzantines chose the Sultan's turban over the Pope's miter rather than forget this betrayal.