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Prof. Jonathan Harris, Londra Üniversitesi Royal Holloway'da Bizans Tarihi profesörüdür.
Title:
Akademisyen, Yazar, Tarihçi
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When the Seljuk Turks attempted to ambush the German army in the same narrow pass at Myriokephalon where they had trapped Manuel I in 1176, they were beaten off and Barbarossa went on to capture their capital of Ikonion, a feat that Manuel had never been able to achieve.
In spite of these successes the army was now short of food and as it marched through Cilicia in June Frederick was drowned while attempting to ford a river. His death was a devastating blow to morale.
By the time the story of the Massacre of Latins had reached western Europe, it had grown in the telling and further refinements had been added, bringing in the old accusations of schism and collusion with the Muslims. It was alleged that the massacre had been carried out with the help of the Saracens and that the papal legate had died a martyr when he had proclaimed his obedience to Rome to the bloodthirsty mob. The episode was a disaster for Byzantine relations with western Europe, the papacy and the crusader states, undoing the patient work of Manuel I over 30 years in a day.
In the highly charged atmosphere that prevailed after the massacre of 1182 and the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, the story of Byzantine complicity in the loss of the Holy Land was only too likely to gain credence in some quarters, and before long further rumours were circulating that the Byzantine emperor had entered into a treaty with Saladin to prevent a crusade from reversing the defeat at Hattin.
Constantinople, the modern Istanbul, strategically situated at the crossing between the empire’s European and Asiatic provinces, and founded in the year 330 by the emperor Constantine I (306–37) on the site of an earlier city named Byzantion. The Byzantines themselves took enormous pride in it: so important a place was it in their eyes that they seldom needed to refer to it by name, preferring to use epithets such as the ‘Queen of Cities’, the ‘Great City’ or just ‘the City’.
The Latin clergy present with the crusade army assured the soldiers that fighting to bring Constantinople under the authority of Rome was a just cause, and that they would therefore benefit from an indulgence, just as if they were fighting to liberate Jerusalem.
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