The Order Of The Daughters Of The Holy Cross: Fill & Download for Free

In ancient times, Prussia was the name of an area on the southern Baltic coast, between the rivers Vistula and Neman, to the north of Poland. It's a land of dense forests, many small lakes and marshes, and cold sandy beaches.A thousand years ago, the land was inhabited by about a dozen independent tribes, who were called 'Prussians' by outsiders. (Prußen in German, Prūsai in Lithuanian, Prusowie in Polish). In Latin, the region was called Pruthenia. They were pagans: in 997 the Duke of Poland sent a missionary to convert them to Christianity, but the Prussians killed him.Over the next 200 years or so the rulers of Poland tried at various times to conquer Prussia, but without much success. In return the Prussian tribesmen raided over the border into Poland to burn and pillage.Prussian tribes circa 1200.Eventually in 1226 Konrad Mazowiecki, Duke of Masovia and the leading Polish noble, decided to ask the Germans for help. He asked the Teutonic Knights to launch a crusade into Prussia; the Holy Roman Emperor gave his approval and authorised the Teutonic Order to rule any lands they conquered as part of the Empire.The Teutonic Knights — or to give them their full name, the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem — was a crusading religious military order, similar to the Knights Templar or Hospitaller. They were founded in about 1190 in Palestine, drawing their membership from those German-speaking knights who were in the Holy Land on crusade. Though their original focus was in the Middle East, they were also willing to send their troops to fight non-Christians in Hungary, and now in Prussia too.Over the next half-century the Teutonic Order fought a brutal campaign to conquer the Prussians. Yearly campaigns subdued one tribe after another: the crusaders were outnumbered, but better-equipped and united in purpose while their enemies were divided. By around 1239 Prussia was subdued, but there were major uprisings in 1242 and 1260. It was said that the Prussians roasted captured Teutonic Knights alive in their armour as a sacrifice to their gods. In return, the crusaders slaughtered the Prussians and burned their villages.As they conquered the land, the Teutonic Knights set up heavily fortified towns such as Marienburg (now Malbork) and Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). Settlers were invited to come from central Germany, especially around the Magdeburg area. They drained swamps, cleared forests and engaged in agriculture and trade. Gradually, the whole area became German-speaking. The original Prussian inhabitants were either assimilated — converting to Christianity and learning German — or driven away or slaughtered. Small, isolated pockets of them remained for a while, but it is estimated that by 1700 the Old Prussian language was extinct.For three hundred years the Teutonic Knights ruled the region (and also much of what are now the Baltic States to the north). The country was called the State of the Teutonic Order, or in German the Deutschordensstaat. It prospered thanks to Baltic trade, and was a member of the Hanseatic League. Its head of state, the Grand Master, was elected by his fellow-Knights and served for life.The headquarters of the Teutonic Knights in MarienburgHowever, relations with Poland were always difficult. The Poles had expected the lands conquered by the crusaders to be given to them, and were angered when the Teutonic Knights set up their own independent state instead. The Order State controlled the mouth of the river Vistula and with it, Poland’s sea trade.In 1410 Poland and Lithuania went to war with the Teutonic Order, and defeated them at the first Battle of Tannenberg (the Second Battle was in 1914). Manpower losses and the huge reparations they were forced to pay after the battle crippled the Order. The Knights were forced to impose very heavy taxes on their cities in order to recoup their losses, but this in turn stirred a rebellion.In 1440 representatives of 19 cities in the Order State, including Danzig, Königsberg, Thorn and Elbing, formed an organisation called the Prussian Confederation (Preußischer Bund). At first they attempted to win concessions by negotiation, but in 1453 the Holy Roman Emperor's court, at the request of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, declared the Confederation illegal. In response they rose in armed rebellion and invited the King of Poland to take control of the region away from the Knights and become their ruler.The resulting war lasted thirteen years and ended in total defeat for the Teutonic Knights. In 1466 their lands were split in two. The western part, including most of the cities such as Danzig, Marienburg, Thorn, Chelmno and Elbing, was annexed directly by the King of Poland and named Royal Prussia (Prusy Królewskie). The eastern part and the city of Königsberg remained under the control of the Order, but they were now obliged to swear allegiance to the King of Poland as their overlord.The partition of the Order State in 1466. The pink area was annexed directly by Poland, the striped area became a Polish vassalThe Teutonic Knights struggled on, seriously weakened, for another 59 years. The Reformation put a final end to their Order State, as Protestantism undermined its power.In 1525 the last Grand Master of the Order State, Albrecht of Brandenburg-Ansbach, converted to Protestantism. With the agreement of the King of Poland (who was his uncle) he resigned from the Order, secularised his state and renamed it the Duchy of Prussia. As hereditary Duke, he was a Polish vassal.Albrecht ruled until his death in 1568, being succeeded by his son Albrecht Friedrich. The second duke had five daughters but no surviving sons, so when he died in turn in 1618 his duchy was inherited by the husband of his eldest daughter, Johann Sigismund of the House of Hohenzollern.Johann Sigismund was already the Prince-Elector of the Margravate of Brandenburg; one of the seven men with the right to vote for the Holy Roman Emperor. Brandenburg was a large but relatively poor region of north-east Germany with sandy soil and few resources. Its capital was a sleepy little town of 9,000 inhabitants called Berlin.Inheriting the duchy of Prussia through his wife was a major boost for Johann Sigismund's fortunes, doubling the amount of land he controlled — although the two halves of his realm were widely separated by the Polish territory of Royal Prussia. To acknowledge the importance of the new lands, his realm is usually referred to after 1618 as Brandenburg-Prussia.The peach-coloured area in the centre (Brandenburg) was united with the green area to the right (Prussia) in 1618, and went on to conquer all the orange and yellow areas during the next two centuries.The Thirty Years War which also began in 1618 devastated Brandenburg, killing over half the population. Nevertheless, they were on the winning side in the end, and gained territory in the Peace of Westphalia. Friedrich Wilhelm, the so-called Great Elector, took power in 1640 at the age of 20 and ruled until 1688, turning Brandenburg-Prussia into a major European power.He encouraged trade and commercial development, including the construction (in 1669) of a 24 km-long canal joining the rivers Spree and Oder. After occupying the province of eastern Pomerania and giving Brandenburg a coastline on the Baltic, he created a navy and attempted to set up colonies in Africa, though without lasting success. He encouraged immigrants from all over Europe, especially the Huguenots (French Protestants) expelled from France in 1685.Most importantly, in 1653 he created a permanent, standing army to replace the eclectic collection of mercenaries and feudal troops which made up the usual forces in central Europe in those days. Brandenburg-Prussia's soldiers were well trained and strictly disciplined, organised into permanent regiments under central control. This army was financed by royal taxation independent of parliament — initially a land tax, in 1666 converted to an excise tax. The army grew from 8,000 men in 1653 to 30,000 by the time of Friedrich Wilhelm's death; and by then its upkeep was taking 50% of the entire State budget.It was later said that "Prussia was not a country with an army, but an army with a country". Prussian strength was based on its raw military power, to a far greater extent than was normal even in that warlike era.After a series of wars and alliances playing off Sweden and Poland, Friedrich Wilhelm managed in 1657 to obtain full sovereignty over the Duchy of Prussia, which was recognised by King Jan II Kazimierz of Poland. Ducal Prussia was now independent, no longer even technically part of Poland.In 1701 Friedrich Wilhelm's son Friedrich went one step further. He decided to elevate the Duchy of Prussia into the Kingdom of Prussia. This was diplomatically controversial — there's no point in calling yourself 'king' if no other monarchs acknowledge your royal status, and not every king was willing to admit an upstart duke into their ranks. A particular problem was that Brandenburg was within the Holy Roman Empire, and the Emperor was unwilling to allow any of his vassals to call himself a king.In the end Emperor Leopold I offered a compromise. Friedrich could call himself King in Prussia (König in Preußen) but not King of Prussia (König von Preußen). The implication was that he would only be king while he was actually within the former duchy of Prussia. If he travelled outside it, and in particular if he visited his lands in Brandenburg, he would revert back to being merely the Prince-Elector and Margrave of Brandenburg.In practice, Friedrich used the title of 'King' everywhere, and almost everyone went along with it. Eventually in 1772 his successor Friedrich II (Frederick the Great) dropped the pretence and changed his title to King of Prussia.Friedrich I, first King in PrussiaFrom 1701, the new state was known internationally as Prussia. However, the region originally called "Prussia" — the land on the Baltic coast around Königsberg — was by no means the centre of the realm. In fact, it was something of a backwater. The true heartland of the Kingdom of Prussia was the former Electorate of Brandenburg; and Berlin, not Königsberg, was the capital city.Thanks to its skilled rulers, powerful army and efficient system of government, not to mention a lot of luck, Prussia grew into one of the strongest kingdoms in Europe. They gradually acquired new territories all over Germany thanks to conquest and inheritance. In addition, in the first Partition of Poland in 1772 Friedrich II seized the Polish province of Royal Prussia, thus creating a land connection between Berlin and Königsberg for the first time. Ducal Prussia and Royal Prussia were then reorganised into the provinces of East Prussia and West Prussia respectively.Prussia played a key part in the defeat of Napoleon, and was rewarded by being given extensive new territories in western Germany, made up of lots of the smaller duchies that had been part of the old Holy Roman Empire. The intention of creating this Rhineland Province was to act as a barrier to future French expansion; instead it allowed Prussia to expand instead.Prussia thrived during the 19th century, as the Ruhr district in the Rhineland became a centre of heavy industry, and new railway lines criss-crossed the country. In 1866 the Kingdom of Prussia fought a war against the Empire of Austria and its minor German allies, and marked its victory by annexing several of the remaining German states, most noticeably Hanover. By this point "Prussia" included about two-thirds of Germany.Prussia’s continued expansion: the green areas after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the cyan areas after the defeat of Austria in 1866.Finally in 1871, after defeating France as well, all the remaining German states (except Austria, Luxembourg and Switzerland) were united into the German Empire. The King of Prussia became the German Emperor (the Kaiser); but Prussia did not cease to exist. Instead it became in effect the largest federal state of the empire, with 62% of the German population.After defeat in 1918 Germany lost control of West Prussia, the so-called 'Polish Corridor' to the sea and the port of Danzig. In rough terms, this meant losing the territory that had once been Royal Prussia before being seized by Friedrich II in 1772. East Prussia was now once again a separate enclave.The old Kingdom of Prussia, minus the Polish Corridor, became the Free State of Prussia in 1918. It had a democratic government, under a 'minister-president', as a component of the federal Weimar Republic.Prussia (in blue) under the Weimar RepublicAfter Hitler took over, the German state governments were dissolved and Reich Governors appointed to impose central control. Since Prussia was the largest and most important province Hitler naturally made himself its governor; but he deputed Göring to actually do the work.After Germany's defeat in 1945 Prussia was partitioned. About 40% of its territory was annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. The remainder was divided up between the British and Soviet Occupation Zones. Partly because of this practical reason, but also because Prussia was historically associated with militarism, it was decided to formally abolish the State of Prussia in 1947. Its former provinces became federal states (Länder) in their own right, or in combination with others in the case of the smaller ones.In the present day, there is no country or province called 'Prussia' anywhere on the map, unless you count the town called that in Iowa, USA.

There are some excellent answers already by very qualified contributors. I will only seek to add some nuance by looking more at the causes behind the East-West tensions and noting the changes in policy over time.First some background: Despite its near ubiquitous use, the term “Byzantine Empire” to describe the powerful state that at controlled the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East, and North Africa is an anachronism. The term was not used until after the demise of this once great empire. During the roughly one thousand years of its existence (ca. 330 to 1453), the residents of the “Byzantine Empire” called themselves “Romans” and the “Byzantine” Emperors viewed themselves as the legitimate successors of the Roman Emperors. Emperor Constantine I (Roman Emperor 306 – 337) had moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to a city he built on the Bosporos, straddling the straits to have a foothold in both Europe and Asia. He named his new capital after himself: Constantinople.Constantine I as Founder of ConstantinopleRoughly half a century later, in 395 AD, the Emperor Theodosius divided the Roman Empire into two parts. In 476 AD, the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed, making the Emperor in Constantinople the sole successor to the traditions, glory, and heritage of the entire Roman Empire. Seen from Constantinople, the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne in 800 AD was not a legitimate “revival” of the Western Roman Empire. First, the Orthodox Church did not recognize the authority of the Pope to crown Emperors, and second Charlemagne was himself a Frank — i.e. he was a barbarian, not a Roman.Charlemagne by Albrecht DuererThe Byzantine categorization of all peoples who were not subject to Constantinople as “barbarians” was a fundamental feature of Byzantine identity that shaped and colored all their policies and interactions. To the Byzantine elite, like the Sultans of Damascus and Egypt, the Kings of France and England and the Holy Roman Emperors were uncivilized barbarians. The latter was only slightly better for being former by virtue of being Christian rather than Muslim barbarians.Thus, even in the 12th century, during a period of (rare) accord between Constantinople and the crusader states, the Byzantine Emperor could describe the Latin Christians as follows:“Barbarian peoples whose way of life is entirely incompatible with our own. Their gaze is scarcely human, while ours is full of humanity; our speech is agreeable, while theirs is harsh and garbled. They are all armed and … bloodthirsty … while we are peaceful and compassionate and refuse to carry weapons needlessly, not being in thrall to Ares.” [Manuel Comnenus, trans. Michael Angold, 291.]Added to this profound sense of cultural superiority came the religious belief that Constantinople — not Rome or Jerusalem — was the center of the Christian world and that the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire was the head of the Church. Thus, the authority of the Pope was nil in Constantinople, where the patriarchs of the Eastern Church were more beholden to the Emperor than the other way around. In the eyes of the “Romans” living in the “Roman Empire,” Constantinople was not only the new Rome, it was the new Jerusalem since it as here that the Head of the Church resided and ruled, surrounded by sacred relics displayed in the Pharos chapel in the Imperial district of the city.Agia Sophia, Constantinople/IstanbulWith Constantinople the center of the Christian world, the role of Jerusalem became increasingly secondary in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Even when Jerusalem was a component part of the Byzantine Empire, there was no strong tradition of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Although for devout Latin Christians the pilgrimage to Jerusalem was viewed as the ultimate pilgrimage long before the era or the crusades, for Eastern Orthodox Christians a “pilgrimage to Jerusalem was to a large extent the preserve of ascetics." [Angold, 291.]If the tradition of pilgrimage to Jerusalem was rare, the concept of Holy War was outright alien. As Nikolaos Chrissis explains: “…in Byzantine thought there was an emphasis on peace, while war was not seen as meritorious or glorious in itself but rather as a necessary evil, a last resort if all efforts at peace had failed.” [Chrissis, 261.] The Orthodox Church resisted recognizing soldiers who died defending Christendom as martyrs and even questioned whether soldiers shouldn’t be excluded from communion for three years “since their hands were not clean.” [Chrissis, 261.] While the attitudes of the Orthodox clergy toward soldiers defending Christians and Christendom softened over time as the threat became ever greater, still Orthodox Christianity never produced militant religious orders similar to the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights.All these attitudes combined to make misunderstandings and tensions between the Eastern Roman Empire and the crusaders inevitable.As almost every student of the crusades knows, it was the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Comnenus who ignited the crusading movement by sending an appeal for aid to Pope Urban II. The request that reached the West in 1095 was a response to increased pressure on the Eastern Roman Empire’s eastern frontiers.The Seljuk Turks had converted to Islam and with the passion of the newly converted and the skills of nomadic warriors had set about establishing their domination over Syria and then turned on Armenia, Cilicia, and the Levant, driving the Byzantines out, before striking at Anatolia. In 1071, the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes had assembled the military forces of his empire and marched to the defense of this vital heartland -- only to be decisively defeated on August 26 at the Battle of Manzikert.In the quarter century that followed, the idea that Western (barbarian) Christians might be able to assist the Empire in its struggle with the Turks had gained popularity. After all, the Byzantine Emperors were familiar with the fighting qualities of many of the Western “barbarians” because they employed Norse, Norman, English and Frankish mercenaries in the Varangian Guard, the personal body-guard of the Emperors. The Byzantines had also had the less than pleasant experience of clashing with the Normans over control of Southern Italy and Sicily. While these encounters increased their contempt for the Normans as barbarians, it also convinced them of the value of the Normans as fighters.What the Byzantine Emperor had in mind when he requested aid from the West was the recruitment of several hundred trained knights to serve as mercenaries in the Byzantine army. The Emperor planned and expected to place these trained fighting men strictly under the control and command of Byzantine authorities. What he got, as everyone knows, was tens of thousands of undisciplined, amorphous “armed pilgrims” (an oxymoron in Byzantine tradition). The Byzantine government and administration were overwhelmed, baffled and ultimately frightened of the monster they had created.Byzantine sources reveal a sense of horror at the sheer numbers of “crusaders” that suddenly descended upon them. Sources described them as “a crowd as innumerable as grains of sand and the stars” or “like rivers which, flowing from all directions…came against our [lands]” and “beyond count.” The daughter of the ruling Emperor, Anna Comnena, writing decades after the First Crusade (that she had personally witnessed) that “the whole of the West and all the barbarian races who had inhabited the land beyond the Adriatic” descended on her homeland. [Anna Commena, trans. Aphrodite Papayianni, 283-284.]Yet nearly as terrifying as their numbers was the character of these “pilgrims.” Particularly shocking was the presence of women and children among the “pilgrims.” Because the Byzantines had requested military support, they expected trained soldiers. Because they did not have a secular tradition of pilgrimage, they did not understand why women or children would want to undertake a long and perilous journey. Because they did not see Jerusalem as central to Christianity (now that it had been replaced by the New Jerusalem, Constantinople), they could not fathom the emotional appeal of Jerusalem for Latin Christians.Added to the bewilderment about the nature of the crusaders themselves was confusion -- and ultimately disgust -- at the lack of unified command. The Byzantine Empire was still a highly centralized and hierarchical state. All power derived from the Emperor, even the church was no competitor and challenger to secular authorities as in the West. Byzantine armies had traditions reaching back to the legions of ancient Rome. Although in this period the army had been newly reorganized under Alexios I, the basis of this army remained proud professional and disciplined units. The Byzantines retained from the Roman past clear command structures, ranks, and regiments — units of a specified size (e.g. 10, 50, 100, 300, 500).The crusaders, in contrast, were what leading crusades historian Prof. Thomas Madden called “a loosely organized mob of soldiers, clergy, servants, and followers heading in roughly the same direction for roughly the same purposes. Once launched, it could be controlled no more than the wind or the sea.” [Thomas Madden, The Concise History of the Crusades, 10. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.] There was no overall commander. There were no organized units. Even those bodies of men associated with one another through kinship and vassalage could be any size from a handful to scores and all remained volunteers on pilgrimage for the benefit of their individual soul, not soldiers under orders.It is hardly surprising that when confronted with this flood of undisciplined, disorganized armed pilgrims engaged in an incomprehensible undertaking that the Byzantines became unnerved. The irrational always triggers suspicion in humans, and so, unable to believe that these disorganized and undisciplined barbarian hordes could really hope to regain Jerusalem, the Byzantines concluded that the real intention of these masses descending on them was the capture of Constantinople itself!Thus, Anna Comnena wrote in her history: “to all appearances, they were on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; in reality, they planned to dethrone Alexius and seize the capital.” [Wright, 61] A Byzantine historian writing about the Second Crusade (1147-1159) likewise claimed: “…the whole western array had been set in motion on the handy excuse that they were going to cross from Europe to Asia and fight the Turks en route and … seek the holy places, but truly to gain possession of the Romans’ land by assault and trample down everything in front of them.” [Wright, 62]The fact that the crusaders failed to take Constantinople and, in fact, did continue on to the Holy Land where they captured Jerusalem, established independent states and continued to fight the Saracens for the next two hundred years was attributed (conveniently) to the brilliance of Byzantine policy. The Byzantine court patted itself on the back for deflecting the crusaders from their evil intents and successfully diverting their energies to the conquest of Muslim-held territory.Indeed, the actual conquest of Jerusalem not only failed to assuage suspicions but rather created new problems. On the one hand, the Byzantine Emperors claimed all the lands conquered by the crusaders as their own since it had once been part of the Eastern Roman Empire.Furthermore, the Byzantine Emperors as (in their eyes) the Head of the Christian Church claimed to be the protectors of the Holy Sepulcher. As the crusaders were understandably unwilling to recognize the claims of the Byzantine emperors to their conquests (won with hard fighting, blood, and casualties) and equally unwilling to recognize the primacy of the Orthodox Church over their own, the Byzantine suspicions of the western “barbarians” only increased.The tragedy was that Byzantine suspicions of the crusaders turned into a self-fulling prophesy. In the first century of crusading, Byzantine emperors so frequently hampered or harassed crusaders that sentiment in the West turned increasingly hostile to the “Greeks” (as the Latin Christians called the Byzantines). The history of tension and broken promises as seen from the crusaders’ perspective made the assault against Constantinople possible. However, before that tragedy, a period of comparative cooperation developed during the reign of Manuel I Comnenus.Manuel I Comnenus reigned from Constantinople for nearly 40 years from 1143 to 1180 and has gone down in Byzantine history as a great monarch. During his reign, the Byzantine Emperor continued to flourish economically and artistically, while also maintaining its political position despite some setbacks and defeats.At his ascension, Manuel inherited the by now traditional suspicion of the crusaders and their motives of his predecessors. His attitude was reinforced by the indiscipline and reprehensible behavior of elements of the German elements of the Second Crusade. The Byzantines responded with open hostility that escalated into armed clashes. right up to the gates of Constantinople itself. Yet eventually Conrad III and, after his arrival, Louis VII of France were able to reason with Manual. Their differences were settled, and Manuel even concluded an alliance with Conrad III aimed at the Normans of Sicily.Conrad III and Louis VII arrive at Constantinople during the Second CrusadeRelations between Constantinople and the Latin West suffered a renewed set-back, however, when Reynald de Châtillon invaded Cyprus and engaged in an orgy of savagery including the mutilation of prisoners, extortion, rape, pillage, and destruction. Although Châtillon was condemned by the Latin Church and the King of Jerusalem, his behavior only reinforced existing Byzantine prejudices against the Latin Christians as “barbarians.” Manuel responded by collecting a large army and marching on Antioch. Châtillon had no allies. The King of Jerusalem explicitly encouraged Manuel to teach Châtillon a lesson. Châtillon chose submission and met Manuel barefoot and bareheaded with a noose around his neck to symbolize his submission to the Byzantine Emperor.This event appears to have been a turning point in Manuel’s policies toward the crusader states. At the latest from this time forward, Manuel adopted “crusader rhetoric” in his communications with the West and in official statements. That is, rather than retaining a disdainful distance from the notion of crusading, Manuel embraced the cause as worthy. While this may reflect acknowledgment that the crusades had done some good by restoring most of the Holy Land to Christian control, it was probably also an attempt to regain the initiative for Constantinople.King Amalric of Jerusalem and his Byzantine Queen, Maria ComnenaManuel's new policies included a series of marriage alliances with key crusader dynasties. Two of his nieces married successive Kings of Jerusalem, Theodora married Baldwin III and Maria married Amalric I. His son was married to the daughter of King Louis VII of France. His daughter married a son of the powerful North Italian family of Montferrat. Most important, following the death of his empress, Manuel himself married Maria, the daughter of the Prince of Antioch. Manual’s marriage offensive was most likely a conscious attempt to civilize and subtly influence policy in Western courts, particularly the Kingdom of Jerusalem.Manuel's emphasis on cultural influence is further evidenced by the substantial resources he devoted to the restoration of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and contributions to the decoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Particularly in the reign of Amalric I, art historians detect increased Byzantine influence on architecture, illumination and other art forms.Mosaic Tiles at the Church of the NativityMore obvious and more direct was a willingness on the part of Manual to ransom prominent crusader lords languishing in Muslim captivity. Ransoming prominent prisoners naturally created ties of gratitude, while also serving as magnificent public relations gestures that earned respect and admiration from the public at large. Thus Manuel ransomed even his arch-enemy Reynald de Châtillon, as well as Bohemond III of Antioch and, in one of the more dramatic and significant actions, paid a king’s ransom (literally) for Baldwin d’Ibelin, the Baron of Ramla and Mirabel. (For more on the significance of this event see: The House of Ibelin: Baldwin the Proud)The most important feature of Manuel’s co-operative policies with the crusader states, however, were the series of joint military operations initiated during the later years of his reign. These included action against Nur ad-Din in 1158-59 and an invasion of Egypt in 1167-68.The reward for his change in tone and substance was the acknowledgment of Byzantine suzerainty over all the crusader states during a state visit by King Amalric (and his Byzantine Queen Maria Comnena) to Constantinople in 1171.Yet in this moment of triumph over the “barbarians” Manuel also made a fatal miscalculation. In 1171, apparently in response to growing popular discontent over Venetian privileges and increasing wealth, Manuel ordered the simultaneous arrest of all the Venetians resident in his Empire and the confiscation of their property. The move reflected Byzantine hubris: the confidence that the Venetians would never be able to take revenge for this arbitrary act. Certainly, the initial attempt by the Venetians to send a fleet to free their captives met with defeat. It would take 33 years before the Venetians would have their revenge, but when it came it would surpass the worst nightmares of the Byzantines.Meanwhile, Manuel died in 1180 and was initially succeed by his eleven-year-old son Alexios. The government fell to his widow, Maria of Antioch. However, she was not popular, and her policies that seemed to favor the other Italians, who had flooded to fill the vacuum left by the expulsion of the Venetians, earned her even more hostility.The anti-Western faction in the capital found an ally in the ambitious uncle of the late Manuel I, and in April 1182 Andronikos entered Constantinople and the mob was set loose on the Latin population. According to Charles M. Brand in his history Byzantium Confronts the West, 1180-1204, (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1968):“The populace turned on the merchants, their families, and the Catholic monks and clerics who lived in the crowded quarters along the Golden Horn…When the mobs attacked, no attempt at defense was made. The crowds raced through the streets seeking Latins. The choicest victims were the helpless: women and children, the aged and the sick, priests and monks. They were killed in streets and houses, dragged from hiding places and slaughtered. Dwellings and churches full of refugees were burned, and at the Hospital of the Knights of St. John, the sick were murdered in their beds. The clergy were the particular objects of the crowd’s hatred. The head of the pope’s emissary, Cardinal John, was cut off and dragged through the streets on the tail of a dog….The Orthodox clergy took the lead in searching out concealed Latins to deliver to the killers.”Maria of Antioch was deposed and for a brief period Andronikos ruled with Manuel’s son Alexios II. During this period, Alexios was forced by Andronikos to sign his mother’s execution order, and by Oct. 1183 he had himself been strangled on the orders of Andronikos, who assumed sole power. Just two years later, Andronikos was himself deposed and tortured to death by a mob in Constantinople in Sept. 1185.His successor, Isaac II Angelos, was in a precarious situation that precluded the pursuit of clear policy. Already in 1187, he faced a rebellion from one of his most successful generals, Alexios Branas, and only months later was taken by surprise by the devasting Christian defeat at Hattin and the subsequent fall of Jerusalem. Significantly, however, his brother was at Saladin’s court at this time and Isaac promptly started negotiations with the Sultan. Historian Michael Angold notes:This represented a clear break with Comnenian policies. There were many in the Byzantine administration…who were critical…. [However,] once it became clear that reviving Manuel Comnenus’s policy of entente with the crusader states was impractical — largely because of the loss of Cyprus — an understanding with Saladin was the most effective way of protecting Byzantine interests in Anatolia, where Saladin could bring his influence to bear on the Seljuqs of Rum. [Angold, 297.]From cooperation with Saladin to opposition to the Third Crusade was a small step. Isaac initially wanted to prevent the German crusaders under the leadership of Frederick Barbarossa from passing through his territories altogether. He appears to have reverted to the earlier pattern of assuming the “real” reason for the crusade was to overthrow him and seize Constantinople rather than restore Christian control of the Holy Land.Frederick BarbarossaWhile Isaac’s anti-crusader policy met with serious opposition within his own government and failure in the face of Barbarossa’s superior military capabilities, the combination of his treaty with Saladin and his initial attempts to prevent the passage of the German crusaders fueled Latin suspicions of the Byzantines. Increasingly the “Greeks” were seen as duplicitous, treacherous, and cowardly. Fatally, Western sentiment turned decisively against Byzantium at a time with the Empire lacked competent, popular and entrenched leadership.Ironically, while the first three crusades had never been aimed at the capture of Constantinople, persistent Byzantine suspicious that Constantinople was the “real” target of Western armies became a self-fulfilling prophecy at the start of the 13th century. From the perspective of the West, the first hundred years of crusading history had been littered with examples of Byzantine betrayal -- from the failure of the Byzantine Empire to come to the aid of the crusaders at Antioch to Isaac II’s treaty with Saladin at the moment of Jerusalem’s fall. With the notable exception of Manuel I — who contemporary Western chroniclers universally praised — the “Greeks” were seen as treacherous and cowardly. This had led to repeated calls for the seizure of Constantinople starting with Bohemond of Taranto in 1107. Throughout the 12th century, however, the voices calling for an attack on the "treacherous" and "heretical" "Greeks" had been firmly silenced by crusader leadership.The start of the 13th century, however, saw a new constellation of factors. On the one hand, Jerusalem had been lost to the Sultan and a massive crusade to recapture it had ended in only partial success. This discouraged Western interest in a new crusade on the part of the land-owning, military class that needed to provide both the resources and the manpower for such an undertaking — although the tragic “Childrens’ Crusade” soon showed that popular sentiment still favored efforts to regain control of the Holy City. Meanwhile, in the Holy Land itself, the resources of Cyprus were beginning to bolster the local nobility and feed an economic recovery that laid the foundation for a partial recovery that would last a half-century. In short, at the start of the century, retrenchment was the order of the day.Yet, Venice had neither forgotten the injuries done it by the Byzantines nor recovered from the commercial losses that resulted from their expulsion from Constantinople. When some overly optimistic noblemen failed to raise either the troops nor the funds they anticipated for a new crusade, Venice took advantage of the assembly of fighting men on its doorstep and a military operation was launched that has gone down in history as the Fourth Crusade.I have described the course of the so-called Fourth Crusade elsewhere. (See: The Hijacked Crusade) What I wish to highlight here is that the Fourth Crusade did not, in fact, either destroy Byzantium (it first fractured, with several competing successors jostling for the title of heir, they reconquered Constantinople in 1261 and survived nearly two-hundred years) — nor Byzantine ties to the West.Chris Wright in his fascinating article “On the Margins of Christendom” even highlights the extent to which the fall of Constantinople to the crusaders in 1204 forced the Byzantines to face facts and recalibrate their policies in a more realistic manner. No longer were the great monarchs of Western Europe dismissed as “barbarians.” No longer were Western culture and politics dismissed as irrelevant. The arrogance that placed Constantinople at the center of the world was shattered. While rightly feeling outraged and unjustly attacked, Byzantine elites for the first time recognized that the earlier crusades had indeed been genuine efforts to liberate the Holy Land, rather than cynical plots to destroy the Byzantine Empire.Now, defeated by the mercenaries of Venice, the spokesmen for the fragmented Byzantine empire skillfully evoked crusader rhetoric to condemn both what had happened and the Pope’s continued self-serving calls for new crusades to defend Latin control of Constantinople. With the papacy increasingly declaring “crusades” for its own political aims — against heretics in the Languedoc, against the Hohenstaufens in Italy and Sicily, against the successors of the Byzantine Empire — the concept of crusading for Jerusalem became a Byzantine rather than a Latin theme, a rod with which to beat the Latins with their own hypocrisy.It was in no small measure the disgust of the lay population with the papal misuse of crusading rhetoric and privileges that led to a decline in crusading enthusiasm until St. Louis revived it through his own passionate commitment. Certainly, the repeated papal calls for “crusades” to defend Latin conquests in the former Byzantine Empire fell largely on deaf ears. By 1261 the embarrassment was over. Constantinople was back in Orthodox hands.It was during the period of “exile” from Constantinople, however, that Byzantine intellectuals started to differentiate themselves from contemporary Rome (i.e. the Pope’s Rome) by focusing more on their Greek roots. For the first time, some of the Byzantine elites began to call themselves Greeks (Hellenes), rather than Romans -- although the majority of the population continued to identify themselves as Romans.Furthermore, far from destroying all trust and cooperation between the Byzantine Empire and the Western “barbarians,” the interlude of Western control of the Eastern Roman Empire forced the restored Byzantine Emperors to recognize their fellow monarchs in the West as equals rather than inferiors. Furthermore, as the Turkish threat grew, the Byzantines were forced again to seek Western aid and support. Yet it is one of the ironies of history that one of the most harmonious periods in West European-Byzantine relations was when cooperation between the two power centers was already too late.Sources and recommended reading:Angold, Michael, “The Fall of Jerusalem (1187) as Viewed from Constantinople,” in The Crusader World, ed. Adrian Boas (London: Routledge, 2016), 289-309.Chrissis, Nicolaos, “Byzantine Crusaders: Holy War and Crusade Rhetoric in Byzantine Contacts with the West (1095-1341),” in The Crusader World, ed. Adrian Boas (London: Routledge, 2016), 259-277.Papayianni, Aphrodite, "Memory and Ideology: The Image of the Crusades in Byzantine Historiography, Eleventh - Thirteenth Centuries," in The Crusader World,ed. Adrian Boas (London: Routledge, 2016), 278-288.Wright, Chris, "On the Margins of Christendom: The Impact of the Crusades on Byzantium," in ed. Conor Kostick (London: Routledge, 2011), 55-82.

Now that is an excellent question! There is no simple answer. Here’s a short look at the complex issue. Let me start by clarifying some key points about the “Byzantine” Empire and its attitude toward both the West and Jerusalem itself.Despite its near-ubiquitous use, the term “Byzantine Empire” to describe the powerful state that at one time controlled the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East, and North Africa is an anachronism. The term was not used until after the demise of this once great empire. During the roughly one thousand years of its existence (ca. 330 to 1453), the residents of the “Byzantine Empire” called themselves “Romans” and the “Byzantine” Emperors viewed themselves as the legitimate successors of the Roman Emperors. Emperor Constantine I (Roman Emperor 306 – 337) had moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to a city he built on the Bosporos, straddling the straits, in order to have a foothold in both Europe and Asia. He named his new capital after himself: Constantinople.Constantine I as Founder of ConstantinopleRoughly half a century later, in 395 AD, the Emperor Theodosius divided the Roman Empire into two parts. All of Western and Central Europe and the eastern parts of North Africa fell to the “Western Empire” ruled from Rome, while most of the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East, and Egypt composed the “Eastern Empire” ruled from Constantinople. However, the Western Empire was at this time very weak and in 404 the capital was moved from Rome to Ravena. In 476 AD, the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed, making the Emperor in Constantinople the sole successor to the traditions, glory, and heritage of the entire Roman Empire.Seen from Constantinople, the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne in 800 AD was not a legitimate “revival” of the Western Roman Empire. First, the Orthodox Church did not recognize the authority of the Pope to crown Emperors, and second Charlemagne was himself a Frank — i.e. he was a barbarian, not a Roman.Charlemagne by Albrecht DuererThe Byzantine categorization of all peoples who were not subject to Constantinople as “barbarians” was a fundamental feature of Byzantine identity that shaped and colored all their policies and interactions. To the Byzantine elite, the Kings of France and England and the Holy Roman Emperors were no less uncivilized barbarians than the sultans of Damascus and the Atabegs of Aleppo. The former were only slightly better for being Christian barbarians rather than Muslim barbarians.Thus, even in the 12th century, during a period of (rare) accord between Constantinople and the crusader states, the Byzantine Emperor could describe the Latin Christians as “Barbarian peoples whose way of life is entirely incompatible with our own. Their gaze is scarcely human, while ours is full of humanity; our speech is agreeable, while theirs is harsh and garbled. They are all armed and … bloodthirsty … while we are peaceful and compassionate and refuse to carry weapons needlessly, not being in thrall to Ares.” [Manuel Comnenus, trans. Michael Angold, 291.]Added to this profound sense of cultural superiority came the religious belief that Constantinople — not Rome or Jerusalem — was the center of the Christian world and that the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire was the head of the Church. Thus, the authority of the Pope was nil in Constantinople, where the patriarchs of the Eastern Church were more beholden to the Emperor than the other way around. In the eyes of the “Romans” living in the “Roman Empire,” Constantinople was not only the new Rome, it was also the new Jerusalem since it as here that the Head of the Church resided and ruled, surrounded by sacred relics displayed in the Pharos chapel in the Imperial district of the city.Agia Sophia, Constantinople/IstanbulWith Constantinople the center of the Christian world, the role of Jerusalem remained secondary in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Even when Jerusalem was a component part of the Byzantine Empire, there was no strong tradition of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Although for devout Latin Christians the pilgrimage to Jerusalem was viewed as the ultimate pilgrimage long before the era of the crusades, for Eastern Orthodox Christians a “pilgrimage to Jerusalem was to a large extent the preserve of ascetics." [Angold, 291.]If the tradition of pilgrimage to Jerusalem was rare, the concept of Holy War was outright alien. As Nikolaos Chrissis explains: “…in Byzantine thought there was an emphasis on peace, while war was not seen as meritorious or glorious in itself but rather as a necessary evil, a last resort if all efforts at peace had failed.” [Chrissis, 261.] The Orthodox Church resisted recognizing soldiers who died defending Christendom as martyrs and even questioned whether soldiers shouldn’t be excluded from communion for three years “since their hands were not clean.” [Chrissis, 261.] While the attitudes of the Orthodox clergy toward soldiers defending Christians and Christendom softened over time as the threat became ever greater, still Orthodox Christianity never produced militant religious orders similar to the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights.All these attitudes combined to make misunderstandings and tensions between the Eastern Roman Empire and the crusaders inevitable.Now, as almost every student of the crusades knows, it was the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Comnenus who ignited the crusading movement by sending an appeal for aid to Pope Urban II. The request that reached the West in 1095 was a response to increased pressure on the Eastern Roman Empire’s eastern frontiers.The Seljuk Turks had converted to Islam and with the passion of the newly converted and the skills of nomadic warriors had set about establishing their domination over Syria. This conquest complete, they turned on Armenia, Cilicia, and the Levant, driving the Byzantines out, before striking at Anatolia. In 1071, the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes had assembled the military forces of his empire and marched to the defense of this vital heartland -- only to be decisively defeated on August 26 at the Battle of Manzikert.In the quarter-century that followed, the idea that Western (barbarian) Christians might be able to assist the Empire in its struggle with the Turks had gained popularity. After all, the Byzantine Emperors were familiar with the fighting qualities of many of the Western “barbarians” because they employed Norse, Norman, English and Frankish mercenaries in theVarangian Guard, the personal body-guard of the Emperors. The Byzantines had also had the less than pleasant experience of clashing with the Normans over control of Southern Italy and Sicily. While these encounters increased Byzantine contempt for the Normans as barbarians, it also convinced them of the value of the Normans as fighters.What the Byzantine Emperor had in mind when he requested aid from the West was the recruitment of several hundred trained knights to serve as mercenaries in the Byzantine army. The Emperor planned and expected to place these trained fighting men strictly under the control and command of Byzantine authorities. What he got, as everyone knows, was tens of thousands of undisciplined, amorphous “armed pilgrims” (an oxymoron in Byzantine tradition). The Byzantine government and administration were overwhelmed, baffled and ultimately frightened of the monster they had created.Byzantine sources reveal a sense of horror at the sheer numbers of “crusaders” that suddenly descended upon them. Sources described them as “a crowd as innumerable as grains of sand and the stars” or “like rivers which, flowing from all directions…came against our [lands]” and “beyond count.” The daughter of the ruling Emperor, Anna Comnena, writing decades after the First Crusade (that she had personally witnessed) claimed that “the whole of the West and all the barbarian races who had inhabited the land beyond the Adriatic” descended on her homeland. [Anna Commena, trans. Aphrodite Papayianni, 283-284.]Yet nearly as terrifying as their numbers was the character of these “pilgrims.” Particularly shocking was the presence of women and children among the “pilgrims.” Because the Byzantines had requested military support, they expected trained soldiers. Because they did not have a secular tradition of pilgrimage, they did not understand why women or children would want to undertake a long and perilous journey. Because they did not see Jerusalem as central to Christianity (now that it had been replaced by the New Jerusalem, Constantinople), they could not fathom the emotional appeal of Jerusalem for Latin Christians.Added to the bewilderment about the nature of the crusaders themselves was confusion -- and ultimately disgust -- at the lack of unified command. The Byzantine Empire was still a highly centralized and hierarchical state. All power derived from the Emperor, even the church was no competitor and challenger to secular authorities as in the West. Byzantine armies had traditions reaching back to the legions of ancient Rome. Although in this period the army had been newly reorganized under Alexios I, the basis of this army remained proud, professional, and disciplined units. The Byzantines retained from the Roman past clear command structures, ranks, and regiments — units of a specified size (e.g. 10, 50, 100, 300, 500).The crusaders, in contrast, were what leading crusades historian Prof. Thomas Madden called “a loosely organized mob of soldiers, clergy, servants, and followers heading in roughly the same direction for roughly the same purposes. Once launched, it could be controlled no more than the wind or the sea.” [Thomas Madden, The Concise History of the Crusades, 10. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.] There was no overall commander. There were no organized units. Even those bodies of men associated with one another through kinship and vassalage could be any size from a handful to scores and all remained volunteers on pilgrimage for the benefit of their individual soul, not soldiers under orders.It is hardly surprising that when confronted with this flood of undisciplined, disorganized armed pilgrims engaged in an incomprehensible undertaking that the Byzantines became unnerved. The irrational always triggers suspicion in humans, and so, unable to believe that these disorganized and undisciplined barbarian hordes could really hope to regain Jerusalem, the Byzantines concluded that the real intention of these masses descending on them was the capture of Constantinople itself!Thus, Anna Comnena wrote in her history: “to all appearances, they were on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; in reality, they planned to dethrone Alexius and seize the capital.” [Wright, 61] A Byzantine historian writing about the Second Crusade (1147-1159) likewise claimed: “…the whole western array had been set in motion on the handy excuse that they were going to cross from Europe to Asia and fight the Turks en route and … seek the holy places, but truly to gain possession of the Romans’ land by assault and trample down everything in front of them.” [Wright, 62]The fact that the crusaders failed to take Constantinople and, in fact, did continue on to the Holy Land where they captured Jerusalem, established independent states and continued to fight the Saracens for the next two hundred years was attributed (conveniently) to the brilliance of Byzantine policy. The Byzantine court patted itself on the back for deflecting the crusaders from their evil intents and successfully diverting their energies to the conquest of Muslim-held territory.Indeed, the actual conquest of Jerusalem not only failed to assuage suspicions but rather created new problems. On the one hand, the Byzantine Emperors claimed all the lands conquered by the crusaders as their own since it had once been part of the Eastern Roman Empire. Furthermore, the Byzantine Emperors as (in their eyes) the Head of the Christian Church claimed to be the protectors of the Holy Sepulcher. As the crusaders were understandably unwilling to recognize the claims of the Byzantine emperors to their conquests (won with hard fighting, blood, and casualties) and equally unwilling to recognize the primacy of the Orthodox Church over their own, the Byzantine suspicions of the western “barbarians” only increased.The tragedy was that Byzantine suspicions of the crusaders turned into a self-fulling prophesy. In the first century of crusading, Byzantine emperors so frequently hampered or harassed crusaders that sentiment in the West turned increasingly hostile to the “Greeks” (as the Latin Christians called the Byzantines). The history of tension and broken promises as seen from the crusaders’ perspective made the assault against Constantinople possible.