Constantinople: The Story of the Old Capital of the EmpireHutton, William Holden
History
Constantinople: The Story of the Old Capital of the Empire
Hutton, William Holden
Istanbul (Turkey)
But this was not all. It is possible that in time the citizens, weary
of their decadent rulers, might have come to accept without active
discontent the rule of a gallant and chivalrous Christian knight such
as Baldwin. But the Crusaders, and most of all the Pope, would not be
content with this. If they were justified at all in the havoc they had
made it was only because the Easterns were heretics and idolaters and
schismatics. The Church of Constantinople was "rebellious and odious"
to that of Rome. It must be brought to submission. So a century later
the case is summed up, "God delivered the city into the hands of the
Latins because the Greeks declared that the Holy Ghost proceeded only
from the Father, and celebrated the mass with leavened bread." Such
was the feeling,--though the expression of it is somewhat of an
anachronism,--that animated now the leaders of the hosts, which, sated
with their debauchery, began to feel something of an inevitable
remorse.
But Innocent III. was of too pure a soul to countenance the iniquity
that had been committed. Among all the shameless hypocrisies of the
time his words of denunciation ring out true. Even the union of the
Churches on which he had set his heart seemed to him now to be
impossible. "Disappointment, shame, and anxiety weaken us when we ask
whether the Greek Church can enter into union with the Apostolic see
when that Church had seen among the Latins only the works of
darkness."
Meanwhile the Venetians set canons in the Church of S. Sophia, and
elected Morosini to be patriarch. It was an empty honour. In
fifty-seven years a Greek again was seated on the throne of Justinian,
and the Liturgy of S. Chrysostom was again sung in S. Sophia; but long
before that revolts had made the Latin hold on the East more and more
precarious, and the city more and more able to reassert its ancient
independence.
4. FROM THE LATIN CONQUEST TO THE CONQUEST BY THE TURKS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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