Excuviae sacrae Constantinoplitanae Vols 1 & 2 Aby Paul Riant, preface by Jannic Durand The Comte Paul Riant's interest in European history, and in particular the Crusades, not only led him to become an important member of the Societe nationale des Antiquaries de France, but it also led him on a path of research that was to revolutionise the 19th-century vision of the history of the Fourth Crusade. His research brought together a vast number of historical documents on the Fourth Crusade and, in particular, on the movement of religious relics from the Byzantine churches and sanctuaries of the east, to the west. Many of these items, recorded in diplomatic documents, hagiographies, liturgies, charters, official and private letters and inventories, came to the west after the pillage of Constantinople in 1204. Riant's collation, critique and analysis of these literary sources, which was published in two volumes in Geneva in 1878 and 1879, is reproduced in these two volumes in their original form, along with an introduction by Jannic Durand. French text.