Zara (mod. Zadar, Croatia) was a port on the Dalmatian coast that played an important role in the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204).

Formerly under Venetian control, the city successfully rebelled, with Hungarian aid, in 1180. Venetian attempts to recapture it were unsuccessful and hamstrung by crusading vows taken by the kings of Hungary, Bela III (in 1195/1196) and his son Imre (in 1200), which conferred the protection of the church on their lands, including Zara. The doge of

The Conquest of Zara, 1202, by Andrea Michieli Vicentino (1539-1614). (Scala/Art Resource)

Venice, Enrico Dandolo, became increasingly exasperated with Imre, suspecting that he was cynically exploiting his vow. The problem was brought to the forefront when the Venetians agreed to join the Fourth Crusade in 1201; Pope Innocent III, who still hoped Imre would make good on his vow, warned Dandolo that the crusade could not be used against Hungarian lands.

By late summer 1202, it had become clear that the crusade army camped at Venice was unable to pay the contracted sum for transport. The crusaders accepted an offer made by Dandolo to loan the crusaders the money to pay their pas-sage—if they would sail first to Zara and help recapture it. When the crusade fleet arrived in November 1202, the Zarans insisted that their city was under papal protection, even hanging banners of the cross on the city walls. A letter from Innocent explicitly forbidding an attack on Zara was ignored. The city fell on 24 November 1202.

In response to their disobedience, Innocent excommunicated all of the crusaders. He later absolved the Franks, but not the Venetians, whom he believed had perverted the crusade for their own ends. Dandolo was also eager for an absolution, yet he knew the price would be the restoration of Zara to Imre, and for that reason he had the city demolished in April 1203. The diversion to Zara saved the crusade from collapse and helped stabilize Venice’s control of the Adriatic while its military forces were absent, but it also provoked the enduring enmity of the pope against Venice.

-Thomas F. Madden

Bibliography

Brunehi, Vitaliano, Storia della citta di Zara, 2nd ed. (Trieste: Lint, 1974).

Madden, Thomas F., Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).