“A blow sent by God”: changing Byzantine memories of the Crusades

After the fall of Acre in 1291, memories of the crusades lingered on in the Byzantine empire. While the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and efforts to hold it were sometimes alluded to, the episode that was embedded most deeply in the collective Byzantine consciousness was the diversion of the Fourth and the subsequent sack of Constantinople in 1204. These were very bitter memories and the wound was exacerbated by the schism between the Latin and Greek Churches. As the empire declined, however, and western help seemed to be the only hope of stopping the advance of the Ottoman Turks, some among the Byzantine ruling elites revised their memories, presenting the western occupation of Constantinople in a more positive light.