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VP TING Dressed in bocrowed finery, Veni wears Byzantine arches and mullioned windows along the Grand Canal ‘right). Under Constantinople’s sway from the seventh to the ninth certuries, Venice took control of her own destiny and ultimately usurped Byzantium’s trade routes. She helped finance the Fourth Crusade, which in 1204 plundered treasures of Constantinople, including the famous bronze horses now adorning the lagoon city’s Cathedrul of St. Mark. fyou must wait outan Athos storm, you “ill find no more dramatic haven than Simonopetra, high cn a spur above the Ae- gean. It opens its dovecote of cells onto tiers of rickety balconies propped by aged beams. To walk along one 800 feet over the sea ina _ storm is an act of faith. Clutching the splin- tery rail, stepping over a gap in the floor planks, I looked down mesmerized at walls of water battering walls of rock. Next day Simonopetra no longer shook. The wind had lost its howl; the sea was flat- tening its crests. No more dodging waves. 1 had been lucky. Not so that boy who looked like my son. As he leaped across the rocks, a wave swept him away before his father’s eyes. When the boats ran again, they found his body and brought it in from the sea. pproved For Rel STE YEAR 1071 wasa badone for the Byzantines, East and West. At Man- zikert, in the highlands of eastern Turkey, the multinational Byzantine Army, riven by dissensions and desertions and for once sloppy in reconnaissance, was annihilated by the invading Seljuk Turks it had marched east to destroy. Anatolia, breadbasket and prime recruiting ground for Byzantium, subsequently was stripped forever from Christendom, opening the way to later Ottornan invasions of Europe. In Bari, port city in southeastern italy, I saw blood on the pavement. Assassins had gunned down a political opponent, and grieving partisans marched around the stain in bitter memorial. Nine centuries earlier blood had flowed in the streets of Byzantine gr Release 2000/08/08 ;,GIAIDP96}00789R9NJ BODNANNG Bir. CPYRGHT Bari, sacked by the Normans after a three- year siege. Five years after the Battle of Hastings in England, the Normans had con- quered southern Italv. The year 1204 was even worse. On April 13, Fourth Crusaders en route to Jerusalem committed what historian Sir Steven Runci- > man called “the greatest crime in history” — the Christian sack of Constantinople. Burning, pillaging, raping, the crusaders looted what they didn’t destroy to enrich Venice, Paris, Turin, and other Western centers with “every choicest thing found upon the earth.” (They even brought back iwo heads of John the Baptist, se rich was Constantinople in relics.) When, after 57 years, a Byzantine emper- or once again reigned in Constantinople, the 751