Енигматичната колекция от константинополски реликви на Робер дьо Клари
Robert of Clari’s enigmatic collection of Constantinopolitan relics

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines the origin of the curious relic collection of Robert of Clari, a crusader knight from Picardy and a chronicler of the Fourth Crusade, which he brought back from Byzantium after the conquest of Constantinople in 1204. In 1213 he donated 54 Constantinopolitan relics to Saint Peter’s Church in the Benedictine Abbey in Corbie in Picardy. The eight years gap between his return from the East (before April 1205) and the date of the donation, as well as Robert of Clari’s surprising silence on the matter and the lack of information on the circumstances of the relics’ acquisition in his otherwise quite elaborate in details Chronicle, probably suggest the remorse and the unclean conscience of the crusader knight, who seems to have taken his secret to the grave in 1216. At the same time Robert of Clari’s Chronicle of the Crusade to Constantinople may also be interpreted as an attempt of justification of his concealed “furtum sacrum”.

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