HISTORIANS

Thomas F. Madden , 'Outside and Inside the Fourth Crusade', The International History Review, 17.4, (Nov, 1995), 726-727, in <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40107441> [accessed 7 February 2016].

At a session on Byzantium and the West at a recent meeting of the International Congress on Medieval Studies, the second of the three panellists read a paper on the Bulgarian 'emperor' Ioannitsa, in which she praised him for his military genius and illustrated it by his victory over an army of the Fourth Crusade. Although the crusade was not the subject of the paper, the author did remark on what she saw as Venice's cynical perversion of a holy enterprise for its own purposes.

Afterwards, when the chairman asked for comments, and I challenged this statement, the author became indignant. Repeatedly she professed that she was following the sources, although she was not able to name any. As it happened, Donald E. Queller was present. He then rose and spoke as he has written: asking scholars to overcome their prejudices by examining the events of the Fourth Crusade carefully, with detachment, and from inside.

When Queller sat down, the chairman stood up and announced that he would now speak. And, indeed he did, with great passion. For the next five minutes, he explained that the very term 'Fourth Crusade' was inaccurate, as the army fought only Christians, never killing a
single Muslim; that the doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, had secretly planned to set Christian knights against their Eastern brothers to slake a desire for personal revenge and to feed the Venetians' hunger for spoils. In response to his conclusion, half of the room broke into loud applause and Queller stood up again. (The original paper was by now forgotten.)

He remarked that he saw that he had fallen among Byzantinists, addressed the chairman's points, or tried to do so, for the chairman often interrupted him, and when he had finished, sat down to just as loud applause from the other half of the room. The lines had been drawn, the leaders had led the way into battle, and their followers joined in the fray.

I need not relate all that was said. Tempers became so heated and voices so loud that it was impossible for anyone to be clearly heard, and the chairman, who should have kept order, was among the loudest and most excited. When a student of James A. Brundage pointed out that a crusade was not a war against Islam but rather a papally sanctioned war against the enemies of the faith, the chairman protested that he was not an enemy of the faith. Although there was an unreal air about it all, as if we had all suddenly become Latin
crusaders or Greek magnates, I began to fear that a fight would break out.

Finally, when the noise had reached deafening levels, a woman sitting in the corner called out that, fascinating as the quarrel might be, she had come to hear the third paper. Silence descended with a thud. The chairman fumbled through his papers and introduced the last speaker, who now scarcely had enough time to scramble through her paper. The audience sat in stony silence.