In it, Baldwin confirmed the grant of lands at Biervliet by his uncle, Philip I, Marquis of Namur, to the church of St Bavo in Ghent. The charter to which it is attached was issued in May 1269 at Biervliet, a small town in the Netherlands. The golden bulla at the British Library dates from after Baldwin was deposed and fled west. Although he spent the rest of his life in exile in western Europe, Baldwin never gave up his claim to the throne of Constantinople nor stopped using the title of emperor. Luckily, Baldwin and many other inhabitants were rescued by the Venetian fleet. The Crown of Thorns, encased in a circular crystal reliquary of 1896, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris ( Source: Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 3.0)īaldwin’s reign came to an end on the night of 24 July 1261 when Greek Byzantine soldiers launched a surprise attack and recaptured Constantinople. The relic was preserved at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris until the fire of 2019, when it was rescued from the blaze and moved to the Louvre. Perhaps his most notable legacy is that he sold one of the most holy Christian relics, the Crown of Thorns, formerly kept in Constantinople, to King Louis IX of France, who built the royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle to receive it. He spent his reign struggling to hold onto power and desperately attempting to raise funds from western rulers. The final Latin Emperor of Constantinople was Baldwin II, nephew of the first emperor and issuer of our golden bulla.īaldwin II was born in Constantinople in 1217 and became Latin Emperor in 1228 at the age of eleven. His Flemish family ruled Constantinople for the next 57 years until the city was retaken by the Byzantine Greeks in 1261. The crusaders founded a new Latin Empire of Constantinople with one of their leaders, Baldwin of Flanders, as emperor. In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, a crusader army from western Europe captured the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. The golden bulla that features in the Goldexhibition is particularly fascinating because it was not issued by a Byzantine emperor, but by a man who was pretending to be one. Who was Baldwin II, Latin Emperor of Constantinople? With their restricted use and low survival rate, medieval gold bullae are extremely rare today. For example, in the 11th century the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III gave a letter from the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX to the church at Goslar, where the gold bulla was melted down to make a chalice (as recorded in the Chronicon Sanctorum Simonis et Judae Goslariense). The high material value of golden bullae meant that they were frequently melted down and reused. Gold seal of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (Germany, 1440-1493): Seal XLIII.161 The earliest surviving examples are from the Byzantine Emperor Basil I (r. The golden seal, or chrysobull in Greek, was an effective emblem of Byzantine government, used by the emperor to authorise formal documents such as diplomatic correspondence, decrees of law and grants of privileges.

The Byzantine Empire was the Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire which continued as a major power until 1453, when its capital, Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), fell to the Ottoman Empire. The use of golden bullae to seal documents is associated most closely with the Byzantine Emperors. These metal seals were known as bullae (from the Latin for ‘bubble’) and were generally reserved for the most prestigious papal and imperial documents. Usually these seals were made from wax, but occasionally they were made from metals such as lead or gold. In medieval Europe people authenticated documents by attaching a seal impressed with their unique design. Charter and golden bulla of Baldwin II, Latin Emperor of Constantinople (Biervliet, May 1269): Add Ch 14365 What is a golden bulla?

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