ABSTRACT
The crusades have a bad name today, and none of them worse than the fourth crusade, of which the eight hundredth anniversary was commemorated in 2004. Most scholars have little or nothing good to say about the expedition that was diverted or, in the opinion of many, perverted from its original goals in Egypt and the Holy Land and culminated with the capture and sack of Constantinople. ‘There was never a greater crime against humanity than the fourth crusade,’ said Steven Runciman in 1954, and subsequent writers have echoed his words, calling the crusade ‘ungodly’, ‘unholy’, ‘obviously criminal’, and ‘the ultimate perversion of the crusading idea’.1 It has caste a dark shadow not only over the participants, to whom some historians would deny the name of crusaders, but also over its promoters, including Innocent III, who has been compared to Stalin.2 Jane Sayers in her biography of Innocent called the crusade ‘an unqualified and dreadful disaster’ with an ‘ignominious and shameful outcome’.3
