The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context

The fall of Constantinople to the Venetians and the soldiers of the fourth crusade in April 1204 was its climax. It ensured that Byzantium¿s days as a great power were over. It equally ensured that westerners would dominate the Levant ¿ the lands of the old Byzantine Empire ¿until the end of the middle ages. This book asks just how important was the Fourth as a turning point in the Middle East.. The broad setting is the encounter of Byzantium with the West within the framework of the crusades. Differences of outlook and interest meant that this encounter was soon overburdened with mutual distrust. 1204 was some kind of a solution and created situations scarcely conceivable even two years before when the fourth crusade set sail from Venice.

The Times Literary Supplement

'....probably the most important contribution to our understanding of the road to, and significance of 1204...'

Christopher Tyerman, The International History Review

'In all, if Angold's book is not the only work readers may want for the story of the Fourth Crusade, its insights and provocations can be ignored by no historian of medieval Christendom in the twelfth-fourteenth centuries.'

John W. Barker, Ecclesiastical History, Volume 57/1 - January 2006

1. Introduction: Sources and Perspectives

2. The View from Byzantium

3. The Western Assessment of Byzantium

4. The Events of the Fourth Crusade

PART 2: THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FOURTH CRUSADE

5. Introduction: Reactions to 1204

6. The Latin Empire of Constantinople

7. The Venetian Dominio

8. The Latin Church of Constantinople

9. The Orthodox Revival

10. The Myth of Byzantium: Destruction and Reconstruction