Memories of the Fourth Crusade

A knight in chain-mail spears a griffin. "Alphonso" psalter, 1284 CE.

Si’l y a des griffons, n’en mangeons point;

si’l n’y en a point, nous en mangerons encore moins.*

—Voltaire, Zadig

Franks on the Fourth Crusade (thirteenth century),

Diverted from the Holy Land by the Venetians,

To sack Constantinople, the great city,

Like all rapists, sought a rude name for those they fucked,

Pejoratively calling Greeks "griffins," their

G-word. They'd come to steal an Empire,

"Chrysostom's** foreskin—sworn genuine!—and a True Cross splinter was what I got."

It was the Venetians who looted that lion and the four horses of the Hippodrome

That tourists gaze at in Saint Mark's Basilica;

(Be only right to return them, I say,

along with the Elgin Marbles—

The British Museum must surely give those back some day!)

"If there are griffins, we don't eat 'em;

if there are none, we'll eat 'em even less."*

The Crusaders' attack the City. Miniature from a manuscript of Geoffrey de Villehardouin's De la Conquête de Constantinople. Venetian MS, ca. 1330.

**John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407), Church Father, archbishop of Constantinople and Christian saint, author of Adversus Judaeos ("Against the Jews").

Sunday, August 7, 2025