History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6Gibbon, Edward
History
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6
Gibbon, Edward
Byzantine Empire -- History -- To 527; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
34 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 17) observes the persecution of the
legate, and the toleration of Henry, ('Erh, * as he calls him)
kludwna katestorese. Note: Or rather 'ErrhV.—M.]
35 (return) [ See the reign of Henry, in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P.
l. i. c. 35—41, l. ii. c. 1—22,) who is much indebted to the
Epistles of the Popes. Le Beau (Hist. du Bas Empire, tom. xxi. p.
120—122) has found, perhaps in Doutreman, some laws of Henry,
which determined the service of fiefs, and the prerogatives of
the emperor.]
The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica, in the defence of that
kingdom, and of an infant, the son of his friend Boniface. In the
two first emperors of Constantinople the male line of the counts
of Flanders was extinct. But their sister Yolande was the wife of
a French prince, the mother of a numerous progeny; and one of her
daughters had married Andrew king of Hungary, a brave and pious
champion of the cross. By seating him on the Byzantine throne,
the barons of Romania would have acquired the forces of a
neighboring and warlike kingdom; but the prudent Andrew revered
the laws of succession; and the princess Yolande, with her
husband Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was invited by the
Latins to assume the empire of the East. The royal birth of his
father, the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the barons
of France the first cousin of their king. His reputation was
fair, his possessions were ample, and in the bloody crusade
against the Albigeois, the soldiers and the priests had been
abundantly satisfied of his zeal and valor. Vanity might applaud
the elevation of a French emperor of Constantinople; but prudence
must pity, rather than envy, his treacherous and imaginary
greatness. To assert and adorn his title, he was reduced to sell
or mortgage the best of his patrimony. By these expedients, the
liberality of his royal kinsman Philip Augustus, and the national
spirit of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps at the head
of one hundred and forty knights, and five thousand five hundred
sergeants and archers. After some hesitation, Pope Honorius the
Third was persuaded to crown the successor of Constantine: but he
performed the ceremony in a church without the walls, lest he
should seem to imply or to bestow any right of sovereignty over
the ancient capital of the empire. The Venetians had engaged to
transport Peter and his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the
empress, with her four children, to the Byzantine palace; but
they required, as the price of their service, that he should
recover Durazzo from the despot of Epirus. Michael Angelus, or
Comnenus, the first of his dynasty, had bequeathed the succession
of his power and ambition to Theodore, his legitimate brother,
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