Laments by Nicetas Choniates and Others for the Fall of Constantinople in 1204

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Michael Angold

Published:

2017

Publisher:

Edinburgh University Press

Nicetas Choniates’s <italic>History</italic> contains a famous lament for the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the crusaders. It is beautifully phrased, but so conventional that it tells us very little about the emotional reaction of the Byzantines to a dreadful event. More interesting are the funeral orations delivered soon afterwards by survivors for those they had lost, because they mixed tears of grief over the departed, with tears of shame for the overthrow of Byzantium. In doing so, their authors, who were drawn from the highest ranks of the church and imperial administration, reveal the self-regard of the elite, which ran Byzantium. They could not understand how beings, as superior as they were, had been bested by a rabble of foreigners. At least, they knew they were not to blame. Their message was that they and their friends and relatives had displayed their moral and spiritual worth in the face of the indignities that were heaped upon them. They could see that this was God’s way of testing them for the failings of others. It was their duty as the guardians of Orthodoxy to lead the people of Byzantium through this challenge.

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