But the person on whom Alexios most focused his attention was Pope Urban II. Here too the emperor could draw on a personal relation ship – and here too he would have been encouraged by the help he had previously received from the pontiff. Around the end of 1090, Alexios had sent a delegation to Urban to ask for help against both the Pechenegs and the Turks: ‘The Lord Pope was in Campania and was addressed with due reverence by all Catholics, that is to say, by the emperor of Constantinople’, wrote one contemporary historian.56 Even though Urban was in an extremely weak position himself at the time – which was why he was found in Campania, rather than Rome – he agreed to send a force to the east.57 Knowing that his message to the pope would be circulated more widely, Alexios assured Urban that he would personally do all he could to provide whatever assistance was necessary to those who came to support him, whether by land or sea.58 The precariousness of the Pope’s own position meant there was little more Urban could do to help Alexios at the time, but as the situation in Italy and Germany began to change in the mid1090s, Urban would capitalise both on the developments in the west and on the threats in the east – of which Alexios regularly informed him – in a rhetorical and political tour de force.59
And there had been an even more important precedent. In fact, in his appeal to Urban, Alexios was deliberately emulating the previous attempt by one of his predecessors to come to almost exactly the same arrangement with an earlier pope. In the summer of 1073, Emperor Michael VII had sent a small delegation to Rome with a written proposal to forge an alliance with Pope Gregory VII, following Byzantium’s collapse in southern Italy and the increased threat posed by Turks in Asia Minor. The Pope, also worried by the rise in Norman power, replied enthusiastically, thanking the emperor for his letter which was ‘filled with the pleasantness of your love and with the no small devotion that you show to the Roman church’.60 Recognising that this offered the opportunity to mend the rift with the Orthodox Church while also strengthening his own position in Italy, the Pope leapt into action.
Gregory was much taken with the idea of recruiting a military force to defend Constantinople: he could cast himself as a defender of all Christians, and in so doing galvanise support that could also be targeted against Robert Guiscard and the Normans. Over the course of the following months, the Pope sent letters to leaders all over Europe, setting out his message. In February 1074, for example, he wrote to Count William of Burgundy, asking him to send men to Constantinople ‘to bring aid to Christians who are grievously afflicted by the most frequent ravagings of the Saracens and who are avidly imploring us to extend them our helping hand’ – though first they should help defend papal territories from Norman attacks.61
The following month, the Pope sent a letter sent to ‘all who are willing to defend the Christian faith’, which contained a stark warning. ‘A race of pagans has strongly prevailed against the Christian empire’, Gregory wrote, ‘and with pitiable cruelty has already almost up to the walls of the city of Constantinople laid waste and with tyrannical violence has seized everything; it has slaughtered like cattle many thousands of Christians.’ It was not enough to grieve for those who were suffering, the Pope declared; ‘we beseech you and by the authority of blessed Peter the prince of apostles we urge you to bring reinforcements to your brothers’.62
Gregory continued to canvas support for a military expedition to reinforce Byzantium against the Turks throughout the year. Further letters sent in 1074 pointed out that ‘I have sought to stir up Christians everywhere and to incite them to this purpose: that they should seek ... to lay down their life for their brothers’ by defending Christians who were being ‘slaughtered daily like cattle’.63 The Devil himself was behind this suffering, he said; those wishing ‘to defend the Christian faith and to serve the heavenly King’ should show themselves now to be the sons of God and prepare to cross to Constantinople.64
As it happened, nothing came of Gregory’s plans – though not for lack of interest; the Pope’s powerful messages struck a nerve with some of the leading figures in the west. William, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitou, for example, indicated that he was prepared to march in the service of St Peter against the enemies of Christ.65 Others, like the Countess of Tuscany, Beatrice, and Godfrey of Bouillon were also prepared to rally to the cause.66 The problem was that at the same time as negotiating with Gregory, the Byzantines had also sounded out Robert Guiscard, reaching terms with the Norman leader in the middle of 1074.67 This not only left the Pope exposed in Italy, it also compromised the prospect of a union between the Eastern and Western churches, which had been at the basis of his appeals to the knighthood of Europe. Gregory was forced to make an embarrassing climbdown. There was no need for William of Poitou to concern himself any more with the proposed eastern expedition, he wrote, ‘for rumour has it that, in parts beyond the sea, by God’s mercy the Christians have far repelled the savagery of the pagans, and we are still awaiting the guidance of divine providence about what more we ought to do’.68 In fact, there had been no major military successes in Asia Minor in 1074, and nothing to support the Pope’s suggestion that the situation had dramatically improved. Gregory was simply trying to back down as gently and diplomatically as possible.
By 1095, when Alexios dispatched envoys to the Pope activating the same channel as his predecessor, two crucial things had changed. First, the situation in Constantinople itself had degenerated beyond recognition. Whereas the appeals to Gregory VII were exploratory and partly an attempt by Byzantium to retain a foothold in the politics of Italy, Alexios’ call to Pope Urban II was one of pure desperation. The delegation that found Urban in March 1095 in the town of Piacenza, where he was presiding over a church council, delivered a stark message: ‘An embassy of the emperor of Constantinople came to the synod and implored his lordship the Pope and all the faithful of Christ to bring assistance against the heathen for the defence of this holy church, which had now been nearly annihilated in that region by the infidels who had conquered as far as the walls of Constantinople.’69 Unlike two decades earlier, this time there was real substance to the picture painted of the Turkish advances in Asia Minor and of the impotent response of the Byzantine Empire. In fact, things were even more perilous than Alexios’ ambassadors let on; they seem to have made no mention of the emperor’s vulnerability as the result of the Diogenes conspiracy of 1094. Now Byzantium was truly teetering on the brink of disaster.
The second difference was that while Pope Gregory VII had much to gain from promoting himself as the champion of all Christians, the stakes for Urban II in the mid-1090s were much higher. Facing powerful enemies and a rival pope, Urban had far greater incentives than his predecessor to promote the unity of the churches and to position himself as the man who could bring an end to discord. And the timing was perfect. Just as Byzantium disintegrated and Alexios appealed for help, the political situation in Italy dramatically changed, following the high-profile defections of Henry IV’s wife and son to the Pope. This energised Urban and, in the process, threw an extraordinary lifeline to the emperor.