Enrico Dandolo - Blindness

Blindness

It is not known for certain when and how Dandolo became blind. The story passed around after the Fourth Crusade was that he had been blinded by the Byzantines during the 1171 expedition to Byzantium (see Vital II Michele). Supposedly, Emperor Manuel Comnenus "ordered his eyes to be blinded with glass; and his eyes were uninjured, but he saw nothing"

However, this explanation is certainly false, as Dandolo continued to conduct business and sign documents well after 1171. In Venice it was illegal for a blind person to sign a document, since he or she could not read. According to Thomas Madden's study, Dandolo suffered from cortical blindness as a result of a severe blow to the back of the head received sometime between 1174 and 1176. Documents show Dandolo's signature being fully legible in 1174 but sprawling across the paper in 1176, suggesting that his sight deteriorated over time. In an attempt to preserve the linkage between Dandolo's blindness and the Byzantines, Steven Runciman reported that the blow to his head occurred during "a street brawl" in Constantinople. The brawl was Runciman's own invention, but it has been uncritically repeated by many subsequent books.

Dandolo's blindness appears to have been total. Writing thirty years later, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, who had known Dandolo personally, stated, "Although his eyes appeared normal, he could not see a hand in front of his face, having lost his sight after a head wound." In the Middle Ages it was not unusual for an elderly person to become blind as a result of cataracts. However, all sources for Dandolo's blindness remark on the clarity of his eyes.