The Role of Christian Spirituality in 13th Century Interpretations of the Fall of Constantinople: Relics and Icons as Interpretive Lenses (original) (raw)
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After the fall of Constantinople to the Latin Crusaders in 1204 hundreds of relics were carried into the West as diplomatic gifts, memorabilia and tokens of victory. Yet many relics were also sent privately between male crusaders and their spouses and female kin. As recipients of relics women were often called upon to initiate new relic cults and practices of commemoration in honour of the men who sent these objects and who often never returned from the East. By considering the material quality of Fourth Crusade relics, this article argues that they were objects that exercised a profound effect on the lives of those receiving them, influencing their perceptions and actions, focusing practices of commemoration and ultimately shaping the memory of the crusade. Relics formed the scaffolding that recursively evoked a venerated martyr, a kinsman dead in the East, a family’s crusading lineage, and broader ideas of religious sacrifice.
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Throughout the Middle Ages, in both Constantinople and the West, the installation of relics connected to Christ, martyrs, saints, and the Holy Land was used to augment the status and power of churches and chapels. This essay explores the transmission of relics from the Holy Land to Constantinople and Europe, emphasizing the importance of these relics in enhancing the connections to the Holy Land. The examination of medieval writings and relics reveals the wealth of Constantinople and the veneration that crusaders, pilgrims, and religious leaders held for the objects that were taken from the East. Military conquest brought most of the relics from the East to Constantinople, and a burst of church construction during the emperor Constantine’s reign in the 4th century AD provided the housing for these holy objects. In later centuries, gifting became the most common means of transfer of the objects from Byzantium to the West, further spreading the relics among Europe. The significance of these physical links to the Holy Land is also sometimes reinforced by the architecture of the structures in which the relics were housed and worshiped. The final section of the essay examines the relics installed in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, built by King Louis IX of France to house the precious objects he obtained from a financially weak Constantinople in the thirteenth century. Beyond the Sainte-Chapelle’s aesthetic brilliance, the architecture served to help connect the chapel to the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and Louis IX to King Solomon himself. The dedication of the chapel and its function as a reliquary for the holy objects of the Passion also signified the designation of Paris as the new Holy Land in the thirteenth century.