Enrico Dandolo

At first, his strategy was similar to his brother's, and aimed to take advantage of these skirmishes between church jurisdictions in the Balkans.

In 1200, as we mentioned the last episode, he had expelled his wife, now the daughter of the Byzantine emperor, and instead married the granddaughter of the Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo, soon to be the mastermind behind the Latin seizure of Constantinople.

This brought him into the family of rulers for the Adriatic coast, where Venice held much influence, and especially with the city of Dubrovnik.

Together, Dubrovnik and the Ban of Bosnia would contest the Hungarian-Indukrian jabs, leaving power unstable.

But beneath their loud and clear voices, one hears the haunting echoes of the damaged and missing mosaics and icons, desecrated and looted during the Latin occupation in the Fourth Crusade.

Within the floor, the tomb inscription of Enrico Dandolo, the Venetian ruler who commanded the campaign, is a stark reminder of those 57 years that Hagia Sophia spent as a Roman Catholic church before returning to its Orthodox roots upon the Byzantine reconquest.

but it would not remain a church for long.

Weakened by the Crusades, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453 and would be known as Istanbul thereafter.

There are plenty of larger-than-life characters in the list of 13th century Venetian rulers.

The century began with the final years of Love Him or Hate Him, Enrico Dandolo, and in the 44 years since his death, we've had just two other doges.

We've covered Pietro Ziani in episode 65, and Giacomo Teppolo in episode 69.

Both of them had a lot going on, but Tiepolo's successor, who is the subject of our episode today, is much harder to get a handle on.

That's true, Langdon said.

But she knew we were looking for the tomb of Enrico Dandolo.

A quick web search can tell her where that is, and once she finds Dandolo's tomb, the dissolving canister can't be far away.

The poem said to follow the sounds of trickling water to the sunken palace.

Damn it! Bruda erupted and stormed off.

Dandolo preaching the crusade.

Enrico Dandolo, Langdon declared.

The doge who lived forever.

Finalmente, Ettore said.

She frowned at her phone and shook her head.

No signal.

I thought maybe I could find the location of Enrico Dandolo's tomb.

She hurried over to the light well and held the phone high overhead near the glass, trying to get a signal.

He says the diversion to Constantinople has led to endless and rather pointless historical argument.

Was it the result of a conspiracy? And if so, who was involved? Enrico Dandolo, Philip of Swabia, Boniface of Montferrat, even Innocent III have been named in this respect.

Was it a sign that the crusading movement had become, quote, corrupted by material interests and internal divisions? Or was it the culmination of centuries of growing ill feeling between Latins and Byzantines?

So he kind of answers just, yes, exactly.

And, uh, about two months have passed, and now it's my turn again to do another worst of history.

And my part of the bargain was that I had to do Enrico Dandolo, who's kind of, well, in popular imagination, the architect of the Fourth Crusade.

And I don't like him, but I think there's a way to rehabilitate him.

So, [laughs] I'm still reeling from that initial conversation.

Yeah

... like, like there, there is like...

Let's, let's first lay out the charges, right? You know, we're doing a defense of this guy, but the, the charges of Enrico Dandolo are that he was the scheming puppet master beyond the, behind the Fourth Crusade because of in- injustices the Byzantines had done to the Venetians or whatever, um, in the decades beforehand that he wanted revenge on, and he wanted a piece of that, um, Byzantine pie.

Uh, three-eighths, in fact.

The Venetians took but a moderate interest in the affairs of Italy.

In the 12th century, Dandolo had established himself at Constantinople, and in 1225 it was debated whether the capital of the republic should not be transferred to the shores of the Bosphorus.

This was not carried, but many islands of the Aegean Sea were partitioned as fiefs amongst noble families, and Crete especially was formed into an image of the mother state, with a doge of its own and a hierarchy of privileged nobles.

In 1661, when Crete was captured by the Turks, the Candian nobles were transferred to the Libro d'Oro, the Golden Book, the register of the Venetian nobility.

During that highly disorganized Fourth Crusade, heavily armed European knights found themselves wildly in debt to Venice for their transport ships.

The blind and incredibly cunning Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo saw an opportunity for a staggering logistical bait and switch.

He smoothly convinced the Crusaders to cancel their holy mission to Jerusalem and instead redirect their aggression towards sacking the magnificent Christian capital of Constantinople.

When the Byzantine Empire fractured under the assault, Venice seized the richest spoils of the conflict, aggressively claiming key islands, ports, and highly profitable trade routes across the Greek world.