Wrote one later historian: "Historians who wax eloquent and indignant -- with considerable reason -- about the sack of Constantinople... rarely if ever mention the massacre of the Westerners in Constantinople in 1182 ... A nightmarish massacre of thousands…the slaughterers spared neither women nor children, neither old nor sick, neither priest nor monk. Cardinal John, the Pope's representative, was beheaded and his head was dragged through the streets at the tail of a dog; children were cut out of their mother's wombs; bodies of dead Westerners were exhumed and abused; some 4,000 who escaped death were sold into slavery to the Turks" (Carroll 1992, p. 131).

The policies that gave rise to such hatred were the result of Imperial policies and the imprudent regulation of duties, not simply religious prejudice: "Almost equally disastrous was the fact that the powerful Italian maritime republics were able to coerce the Emperor into granting...
[ View Full Essay]