Editing Constantinople (section)

=== 1185–1261: Constantinople during the Imperial Exile ===
[[File:Fethiye_Museum_9593.jpg|right|280px|thumb|[[Pammakaristos Church]] mosaic of Saint Anthony, the desert Father]]

[[File:Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix 012.jpg|thumb|right|''[[Entry of the Crusaders in Constantinople|The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople]]'', by [[Eugène Delacroix]], 1840]]
[[File:Byzantium1204.png|thumb|The [[Latin Empire]], [[Empire of Nicaea]], [[Empire of Trebizond]], and the [[Despotate of Epirus]]. The borders are very uncertain.]]
On 25 July 1197, Constantinople was struck by a [[Constantine Stilbes#Works|severe fire]] which burned the Latin Quarter and the area around the Gate of the Droungarios ({{langx|tr|Odun Kapısı}}) on the Golden Horn.<ref name="stilbes">{{Cite book |last1=Stilbes |first1=Constantine |title=Constantinus Stilbes Poemata |last2=Johannes M. Diethart |last3=Wolfram Hörandner |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |year=2005 |isbn=978-3-598-71235-7 |pages=16 line 184}}</ref><ref>Diethart and Hörandner (2005). p. 24, line 387</ref> Nevertheless, the destruction wrought by the 1197 fire paled in comparison with that brought by the Crusaders. In the course of a plot between [[Philip of Swabia]], [[Boniface of Montferrat]] and the [[Enrico Dandolo|Doge of Venice]], the [[Fourth Crusade]] was, despite papal excommunication, diverted in 1203 against Constantinople, ostensibly promoting the claims of [[Alexios IV Angelos]] brother-in-law of Philip, son of the deposed emperor [[Isaac II Angelos]]. The reigning emperor [[Alexios III Angelos]] had made no preparation. The Crusaders occupied [[Galata]], broke the [[boom (navigational barrier)|defensive chain]] protecting the [[Golden Horn]], and entered the harbour, where on 27 July they breached the sea walls: Alexios III fled. But the new Alexios IV Angelos found the Treasury inadequate, and was unable to make good the rewards he had promised to his western allies. Tension between the citizens and the Latin soldiers increased. In January 1204, the ''[[protovestiarius]]'' [[Alexios V Doukas|Alexios Murzuphlos]] provoked a riot, it is presumed, to intimidate Alexios IV, but whose only result was the destruction of the great statue of [[Athena Promachos]], the work of [[Phidias]], which stood in the principal forum facing west.

In February 1204, the people rose again: Alexios IV was imprisoned and executed, and Murzuphlos took the purple as [[Alexios V Doukas]]. He made some attempt to repair the walls and organise the citizenry, but there had been no opportunity to bring in troops from the provinces and the guards were demoralised by the revolution. An attack by the Crusaders on 6 April failed, but a second from the Golden Horn on 12 April succeeded, and the invaders poured in. Alexios V fled. The Senate met in [[Hagia Sophia]] and offered the crown to [[Theodore I Laskaris|Theodore Lascaris]], who had married into the [[Angelos dynasty]], but it was too late. He came out with the Patriarch to the [[Milion|Golden Milestone]] before the Great Palace and addressed the [[Varangian Guard]]. Then the two of them slipped away with many of the nobility and embarked for Asia. By the next day the Doge and the leading Franks were installed in the Great Palace, and the city was given over to pillage for three days.

[[Sir Steven Runciman]], historian of the Crusades, wrote that the sack of Constantinople is "unparalleled in history".

{{blockquote|For nine centuries, [...] the great city had been the capital of Christian civilization. It was filled with works of art that had survived from ancient Greece and with the masterpieces of its own exquisite craftsmen. The Venetians [...] seized treasures and carried them off to adorn [...] their town. But the Frenchmen and Flemings were filled with a lust for destruction. They rushed in a howling mob down the streets and through the houses, snatching up everything that glittered and destroying whatever they could not carry, pausing only to murder or to rape, or to break open the wine-cellars [...] . Neither monasteries nor churches nor libraries were spared. In Hagia Sophia itself, drunken soldiers could be seen tearing down the silken hangings and pulling the great silver [[iconostasis]] to pieces, while sacred books and icons were trampled under foot. While they drank merrily from the altar-vessels a prostitute set herself on the Patriarch's throne and began to sing a ribald French song. Nuns were ravished in their convents. Palaces and hovels alike were entered and wrecked. Wounded women and children lay dying in the streets. For three days the ghastly scenes [...] continued, till the huge and beautiful city was a shambles. [...] When [...] order was restored, [...] citizens were tortured to make them reveal the goods that they had contrived to hide.<ref>Steven Runciman, ''A History of the Crusades'', Cambridge 1966 [1954], vol 3, p. 123.</ref>}}

For the next half-century, Constantinople was the seat of the [[Latin Empire]]. Under the rulers of the Latin Empire, the city declined, both in population and the condition of its buildings. [[Alice-Mary Talbot]] cites an estimated population for Constantinople of 400,000 inhabitants; after the destruction wrought by the Crusaders on the city, about one third were homeless, and numerous courtiers, nobility, and higher clergy, followed various leading personages into exile. "As a result Constantinople became seriously depopulated," Talbot concludes.<ref name="Talbot-1993">[[Alice-Mary Talbot|Talbot, Alice-Mary]], [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1291680 "The Restoration of Constantinople under Michael VIII"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201127131710/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1291680 |date=2020-11-27 }}, ''Dumbarton Oaks Papers'', '''47''' (1993), p. 246</ref>
[[File:Fethiye_Museum_9620.jpg|thumb|left|280px|Dome of the [[Pammakaristos Church]], Istanbul]]

The Latins took over at least 20 churches and 13 monasteries, most prominently the Hagia Sophia, which became the cathedral of the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. It is to these that E.H. Swift attributed the construction of a series of flying buttresses to shore up the walls of the church, which had been weakened over the centuries by earthquake tremors.<ref>Talbot, "Restoration of Constantinople", p. 247</ref> However, this act of maintenance is an exception: for the most part, the Latin occupiers were too few to maintain all of the buildings, either secular and sacred, and many became targets for vandalism or dismantling. Bronze and lead were removed from the roofs of abandoned buildings and melted down and sold to provide money to the chronically under-funded Empire for defense and to support the court; Deno John Geanokoplos writes that "it may well be that a division is suggested here: Latin laymen stripped secular buildings, ecclesiastics, the churches."<ref>Geanakoplos, ''Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West'' (Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 124 n. 26</ref> Buildings were not the only targets of officials looking to raise funds for the impoverished Latin Empire: the monumental sculptures which adorned the Hippodrome and fora of the city were pulled down and melted for coinage. "Among the masterpieces destroyed, writes Talbot, "were a Herakles attributed to the fourth-century B.C. sculptor [[Lysippos]], and monumental figures of Hera, Paris, and Helen."<ref name="Talbot-248">Talbot, "Restoration of Constantinople", p. 248</ref>

The Nicaean emperor [[John III Vatatzes]] reportedly saved several churches from being dismantled for their valuable building materials; by sending money to the Latins "to buy them off" (''exonesamenos''), he prevented the destruction of several churches.<ref>Geanakoplos, ''Emperor Michael'', p. 124</ref> According to Talbot, these included the churches of Blachernae, [[Rouphinianai]], and St. Michael at Anaplous. He also granted funds for the restoration of the [[Church of the Holy Apostles]], which had been seriously damaged in an earthquake.<ref name="Talbot-248" />
[[File:Le siège de Constantinople (1453) by Jean Le Tavernier after 1455.jpg|right|thumb|The final [[Fall of Constantinople|siege of Constantinople]], contemporary 15th-century French miniature]]

The Byzantine nobility scattered, many going to [[Empire of Nicaea|Nicaea]], where Theodore Lascaris set up an imperial court, or to [[Despotate of Epirus|Epirus]], where Theodore Angelus did the same; others fled to [[Empire of Trebizond|Trebizond]], where one of the Comneni had already with Georgian support established an independent seat of empire.<ref>Hussey 1967, p. 70.</ref> Nicaea and Epirus both vied for the imperial title, and tried to recover Constantinople. In 1261, Constantinople was [[Reconquest of Constantinople|captured]] from its last Latin ruler, [[Baldwin II of Constantinople|Baldwin II]], by the forces of the [[Nicaean Empire|Nicaean emperor]] [[Michael VIII Palaiologos]] under the command of Caesar [[Alexios Strategopoulos]].