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Mastermind Behind the Fourth Crusade

210, Lot: 443. Estimate $150.
Sold for $331. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ITALY, Papal Bullae. Innocent III (Lotario de’Conti di Segni). 1198-1216. PB Bulla (39mm, 54.56 g, 12h). INNO/CЄNTIVS/· P P · III · in three lines; all within beaded border; (Ω above P P) / S PA S PE, bare heads of Sts. Paul and Peter, facing slightly right and left, respectively, each within beaded halo; cruciform scepter between; all within beaded-linear border. Serafini I 1-4. Good VF, minor roughness.


From the Luparello Collection.

It was Pope Innocent III who rallied for the Fourth Crusade, in the process unintentionally devastating the relationship between the Eastern and Western Churches. This Crusade saw the Crusaders’ siege and capture of Constantinople, which Innocent vehemently opposed. The Pope firmly condemned the actions of the Crusaders: “How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. They have committed incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes of men. They have exposed both matrons and virgins, even those dedicated to God, to the sordid lusts of boys. Not satisfied with breaking open the imperial treasury and plundering the goods of princes and lesser men, they also laid their hands on the treasures of the churches and, what is more serious, on their very possessions. They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics.” (Letters 126)