This chapter explains why Justinian’s equestrian monument survived the devastating pillaging of Constantinople in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. While numerous other statues perished or were shipped off as spolia from Latin-occupied Constantinople (1204–61), this imperial monument remained virtually unmolested and its stature and prominence further increased. Why was it that this great monument was singled out by the Latins for preservation? The short answer is simple – it became useful to Crusading ideology. Crusaders transformed the rider’s identity and remade him into the emperor Heraclius, who had become the great hero of the Crusading movement. By beholding in the bronze horseman their hallowed forefather, the occupiers were able to invest in the statue’s preservation. The process of reattribution unfolded between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Three texts highlight key moments in the monument’s reorientation: an eleventh-century Latin narrative dedicated to the mirabilia of Constantinople by the Anonymous of Tarragona, the twelfth-century romance Eracleof Gautier d’Arras, and the narrative of the Fourth Crusade penned by Robert de Clari.

Consecrated as the new capital of the Roman world in the year 330 ce, Constantinople was the ancient city of Byzantion, in origin a colony of Megara in Attica, and renamed the ‘city of Constantine’ by the first Christian emperor of the Roman world. He made it his capital in an effort to establish a new strategic focus for the vast Roman state, as well as to distance himself from the politics of the previous centuries. By the middle of the fifth century, the western parts of the Roman Empire were already in the process of transformation which was to produce the barbarian successor kingdoms, such as those of the Franks, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, and the Burgundians, while the eastern parts remained largely unaffected by these changes. When exactly ‘Byzantine’ begins and ‘late Roman’ ends is a moot point. Some prefer to use Byzantine for the eastern part of the Roman Empire from the time of Constantine I – that is to say, from the 320s and 330s; others apply it to the Eastern Empire from the later fifth or sixth century, especially from the reign of Justinian (527–65). In either case, the term ‘Byzantine’ legitimately covers the period from the late Roman era on, and is used to describe the history of the politics, society, and culture of the medieval East Roman Empire until its demise at the hands of the Ottomans in the fifteenth century.

The Fourth Crusade (1199–1204), culminating in the sack of Constantinople and the conquest of most of the Byzantine empire, is a textbook example of a noble plan gone awry. The original intent was to attack the Ayyubids in Egypt, but along the way financial and other considerations diverted the French and Venetian crusaders to Constantinople where they restored the deposed emperor Isaac II Angelos (r.1185–95, 1203–4) to power. According to an earlier agreement, Isaac was to provide the crusaders with military and financial aid, but fiscal problems within the empire made this impossible. As time passed, anti-Latin sentiment within the city led to a palace coup which overthrew Isaac. The crusaders then seized the city and the empire itself. The Fourth Crusade and the subsequent Latin conquest intensified the anarchy that already existed within the provinces, providing the grace blow to an empire which had become increasingly fragmented to the point of disintegration.