Un precedent al Cruciadei a patra. Campania antibizantină a dogelui Domenico Michiel din 1122-1126 în reprezentarea cronisticii veneţiene
A Precedent to the Fourth Crusade. The anti-Byzantine Campaign of Doge Domenico Michiel in 1122-1126 according to the Venetian Chronicles

Summary/Abstract: The paper is to be put into connection with several other investigations operated by the author dealing with the manner in which various events of the Venetian history were represented in the later Venetian chronicles. It indeed relies upon the classification into 11 categories of this ‘raw material’ advanced on another occasion. Thus, it presents the texts of 40 chronicles, among which there are only 11 to be already published, and while the great part of the others are manuscripts at the Marciana Library in Venice. This time, the episode taken into consideration is represented by the campaigns in the East of Doge Domenico Michiel. Although the Dogal enterprise had the assistance of the Crusader states in the Levant as main intention, the expedition of Domenico Michiel had a much wider area of action. It included some episodes directed clearly against the Byzantine Emperor John II Comnenus, who refused to renew the privileges offered by his father Alexius I to the Venetian merchants. Thus, the Venetian-Byzantine confrontations refer to the siege of Corphù, the Venetian raid in the Aegean archipelago and the attack against Cephalonia. Some of the details of these events are well known, while some others are nothing more than innovations of the Venetian later chronicles. Anyway, the events taken into consideration and those connected to them are known. To reconstruct them, it is enough to consult the contemporary sources (John Kynnamos and Fulk of Chartres especially). On the other hand, the present work rather deals with the manner in which those events were regarded from a distance of different centuries and from one particular viewpoint, that is the Venetian one. These events’ representation in the Venetian historiography is the purpose of this paper. Henceforth, the paper has not the evential history as purpose, but only the images hand down in time by the events.

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