From Heresy Trials to Mass Violence

Such pledges of loyalty notwithstanding, fears that the settlers might constitute a fifth column in the empire grew during the war against the Normans - a war which, between 1155 and 1175, Manuel tried repeatedly to take to Italian soil.

Manuel's mass arrests and incarcerations were of a completely different order of magnitude from that of the earlier trials. The attack targeted the entirety of a sizeable community whose members, rather than being treated as assimilated, continued to be associated with two conflicting sets of obligations and rights, and therefore were caught between polities, unable to benefit fully from the protection extended upon citizens either by their land of origin, Venice, or by their adoptive land, Byzantium.

Byzantine apologists framed the action as a just punishment visited upon those who had sought to betray the country that had welcomed them. The settlers were accused of behaving ‘belligerently' towards their hosts - ‘insult­ing savagely' and inflicting ‘blows' on not merely the ‘general commonality' of ‘the Romans' but ‘many of the wellborn who were related to the emperor by blood'. They were also blamed for undermining order by inciting riot among other westerners, especially Italians, who were more recent arrivals in the empire.^[568] These allegations allowed the imperial government to revoke the settlers' naturalisation, cast them as representatives of the enemy, and hold them as hostages.

The Venetian fleet saw itself as having come to the defence of its people, who had been attacked in contravention of the trade agreements in place. That the doge and his council were reluctant to surrender this perspective on events, even following military defeat, is apparent from their continued lobbying for the release of the incarcerated settlers and the payment of reparations esti­mated at 108,000 coins or 1,500 lb of gold. To gain leverage in negotiations with the emperor, Venice threatened to broker a more substantial Norman- Venetian alliance against Byzantium than had hitherto existed.

By 1179, Manuel had backed down, releasing prisoners and returning the ‘possessions stored in the imperial treasury', as well as agreeing to send ‘several instalments' to make good ‘losses'.^[569] The episode, however, paved the way for large-scale attacks against ethno-religious communities, which the state incited but for which, so as not to be obliged to pay compensation, it disavowed responsibility, instead presenting the attacks as pogroms com­mitted by the unruly masses. It thus looms as an ominous precursor to the far more radical and violent massacre of westerners in 1182 in Constantinople - instigated by Manuel's cousin, the usurper Andronikos II - with all its bloodshed and indignities.