Massacre of the Latins

Massacre of the Latins
Map of Constantinople in the Byzantine period. The Latin quarters are captioned in purple.
Location	Constantinople, Byzantine Empire
Date	April 1182
Target	Roman Catholics ("Latins")
Attack type	Massacre
Deaths	Unknown, tens of thousands
Perpetrators	Andronikos Komnenos, Greek Eastern Christian mob

The Massacre of the Latins (Italian: Massacro dei Latini; Greek: Σφαγή των Λατίνων) was a large-scale massacre of the Roman Catholic (called "Latin") inhabitants of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, by the Eastern Orthodox population of the city in April 1182.

The Roman Catholics of Constantinople at that time dominated the city's maritime trade and financial sector. Although precise numbers are unavailable, the bulk of the Latin community, estimated at 60,000 at the time by Eustathius of Thessalonica, was wiped out or forced to flee. The Genoese and Pisan communities especially were decimated, and some 4,000 survivors were sold as slaves to the (Turkish) Sultanate of Rum.

The massacre further worsened relations and increased enmity between the Western and Eastern Christian churches, and a sequence of hostilities between the two followed.

Since the late 11th century, Western merchants, primarily from the Italian city-states of Venice, Genoa and Pisa, had started appearing in the East. The first had been the Venetians, who had secured large-scale trading concessions from Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Subsequent extensions of these privileges and Byzantium's own naval impotence at the time resulted in a virtual maritime monopoly and stranglehold over the Empire by the Venetians.