Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire
Date: 1970-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: History
Description: 'Constantinopla' describe los orígenes, el ascenso, el apogeo y la decadencia de ese 'imperio olvidado' que fue el Imperio Bizantino, desde la fundación de Bizancio en el año 657 a.C., hasta su caída en 1453 y el comienzo de la hegemonía turca. Asimov se nos revela como un autor bastante entretenido en el escrito histórico y nos desvela la historia de una civilización cercana y a la vez sumamente desconocida para el ciudadano occidental. Un libro muy entretenido y recomendable para los aficcionados a la historia.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co

Constantinople The Forgotten Empire

Isaac Asimov

1970

Houghton Mifflin Company BOSTON

Constantinople The Forgotten Empire

BY ISAAC ASIMOV

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON 1970

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

To L. Sprague de Camp, whose writings I enjoy more than anyone else’s

but my own.

FIRST PRINTING COPYRIGHT ©) 1970 By ISAAC ASIMOV

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS WORK MAY

BE REPRODUCED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM BY ANY

MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPYING AND RECORDING, OR BY ANY INFORMATION STORAGE OR RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 78—122907

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A,

CONTENTS

- andy atl 2 : »

1 THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT

THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE i: OPPOSITE THE CITY OF THE BLIND 3 THE LIFE LINE OF ATHENS 6 THE COMING OF MACEDON Tal THE COMING OF ROME 15 THE EMPIRE MOVES EAST 19 2 THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST CONSTANTINE § CITY 93 CONSTANTINE § RELIGION oi THE EMPIRE IN HALVES 32 THE TRIPLE WALLS 38 THE END OF THE WEST 44 3 THE EAST GOES WEST THE TWO STRATEGIES will UNCLE AND NEPHEW 08 ORGANIZING FOR PEACE AND WAR 61 BACK FROM THE ASHES 65 VICTORY IN THE WEST 70

THE LAST YEARS

78

4 THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE

NEW BARBARIANS 84 THE FIRST CATASTROPHE 90 RECOVERY 95 THE SECOND CATASTROPHE — 99

5 THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE

THE GROWING DANGER 108 THE GREAT SIEGE — ONE 114 THE LOSS OF AFRICA Thy THE GREAT SIEGE — TWO 124

6 MONKS AND EMPERORS

THE IMAGE BREAKER 1380 THE STRUGGLE OVER ICONS 137 NEW EMPIRE IN THE WEST 143 THE BULGAR-ARAB NUTCRACKER 147 PATRIARCH AND POPE 158

7 EMPERORS AND GENERALS

A NEW DYNASTY 159 THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS 164 BORN IN THE PURPLE 171

GENERALS ON THE THRONE 179

8 THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK

10

THE BULGAR KILLER THE HIGH PLATEAU THE EMPRESS HUSBANDS

THE COMING OF THE TURKS

THE WEST COMES EAST THE CONSEQUENCES OF DEFEAT THE NORMAN INVASION

THE WARRIORS OF THE CROSS THE LAST OF THE GLORY

THE DOWNHILL SLIDE

RUIN!

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE THE LATIN INTERVAL

THE DOWNHILL SLIDE AGAIN THE OTTOMAN TURKS

THE LAST STAND

EPILOGUE: GHOST OF A GHOST

TABLE OF DATES GENEALOGIES INDEX

194 198

THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT

THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

When we think of the Middle Ages, we are apt to think of the fall of the Roman Empire and the victory of the barbarians. We think of the decline of learning, of the coming of feudalism and petty warfare. Yet that is not entirely so, for the Roman Empire did not really fall. It lasted all through the Middle Ages. Europe and America as they exist now would not be here if the Roman Empire had not continued to prevail for a thou- sand years after it was supposed to have fallen.

When we say that the Roman Empire fell, all we mean is that its western provinces were invaded by German tribesmen and their civilization disrupted. The eastern half of the Roman Em-

2 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

pire, however, remained intact and for centuries occupied the southeast corner of Europe with adjacent lands in Asia.

This portion of the Roman Empire continued to be rich and powerful all through the centuries when western Europe was weak and divided. The empire remained learned and cultured, when western Europe was ignorant and barbarous. The em- pire, out of its strength, held off the swelling forces of eastern invaders for a thousand years; and western Europe, safe behind that barrier of military might, could develop in peace until its culture formed a high civilization distinctly its own.

The empire of the southeast transmitted to the West both Roman law and Greek learning. It passed on art, architecture, and manners; it gave the West great abstractions — like the no- tion of absolute monarchy — and small conveniences — like forks. What’s more, it gave all this and religion, too, to eastern Europe — and to Russia, in particular.

But at last western Europe grew strong and capable of de- fending itself, while the empire wore away with exhaustion. And what was western Europe’s return for what it had re- ceived? It gave back contempt and hatred. It hurt in every way it could the forlorn remnant of the once-great empire, and when the final death throes came, it coldly withheld any help. The ingratitude continues even after death, for the history of that empire is virtually ignored in our schools, and when bits are presented, it is done without sympathy.

So few westerners realized that in the centuries when Paris and London were ramshackle towns, with streets of mud and hovels of wood, there was a queen city in the East that was rich in gold, filled with works of art, bursting with gorgeous churches, busy with commerce — the wonder and the admira- tion-of all who saw it.

That city was the capital of the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages; it was Constantinople. And the history of that city ex- tends back a thousand years before it was Constantinople.

OPPOSITE THE CITY OF THE BLIND

In the seventh century 3.c., the Greek cities were over- crowded. Food was scarce and prices were high. Those Greeks with some spirit of adventure loaded themselves and their fami- lies, together with what possessions they could carry, into ships. and went forth in search of a new home. Here and there along the shores of the broad Mediterranean there might be places where a new city could be founded, where land might be culti- vated and food grown. Some ships wandered northeastward. In that direction, the Aegean Sea that washed the eastern shores of Greece narrowed to a winding strait called the Hellespont (now known as the Dardanelles) which separated Europe and Asia Minor. This broadened again to a small sea, then called the Propontis and now the Sea of Marmara. Then came a second and shorter strait, the Bosporus, and beyond that was Pontus, the body of water we now call the Black Sea.

The Black Sea acted like a magnet on would-be colonists, for grain grew in the lands that bordered it. The broad plains to the north (called Scythia in ancient times and the Ukraine now) were flat and fertile lands entirely different from the rocky mountainous soil of Greece. Those plains were a never- ending source of food.

Greek legends told of early attempts to establish trade routes in that direction. There was the tale of Jason and his Argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece. This was described as ram’s wool miraculously turned to gold, and Jason found it at last in Colchis, a land at the eastern edge of the Black Sea. We might well suppose that the tale is a legendary version of an early trading expedition.

4 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

The ancient city of Troy stood in Asia Minor at the entrance to the Hellespont. Merchants traveling to and from the Black Sea had to pay tolls at Troy or they could not pass, and the city grew rich from this. The famous siege of Troy was probably an effort on the part of the Greeks to destroy the middleman and to open the trade route wider. But after the fall of Troy in 1200 B.c., Greece had gone through a “dark age.” Uncivilized tribes from the north had laid it waste and it was some centuries be- fore a recovery could be made. Now in the seventh century, B.c., however, Greece was al- most itself again and the Greek ships were feeling their way across the sea, establishing colonies. As in the days of Jason six centuries before, the ships were working their way toward the grain-rich Black Sea. This time they intended more than trade, for they dotted the shores of the sea with new Greek cities. In 657 B.c., a ship was moving northeastward across the Aegean under a leader named Byzas. Their home city was Megara (meg’uh-ruh) on the isthmus that connected northern Greece with the southern peninsula called the Peloponnesus. Megara was never one of the really important Greek cities, for it was doomed to be overshadowed by the cities of Athens, fif- teen miles to its east, and Corinth, twenty-five miles to its west. In fact, the most important event in all its history was probably the sending out of this particular ship. The colonists had consulted the oracle at Delphi before leav- ing. The oracle was the most sacred holy place in Greece and the words of its priestess were considered divinely inspired glimpses into the future. “You will find a new home,” she had told them, “opposite the city of the blind.” As usual, the ora- cle’s words were unclear. There was no city of blind people.

The ship passed through the Hellespont, crossed the Propon- tis, and approached the Bosporus. The Bosporus was twenty miles long and quite narrow; it was only half a mile wide in spots. A city founded on the banks of the Bosporus could con- trol trade between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea as Troy

i

i BLACK SEA

ee MAP [ Byzantium

Athens | Chalcedon ap y SE SEA OF MARMARA

(PROPONTIS)

had once done. Such a city would have a good chance of being prosperous and wealthy.

But others had had this idea before. In fact, in 675 B.c., eighteen years before, an earlier group of colonists from Me- gara had established a city on the Asia Minor side of the Bospo- rus, just at its southern opening. The city was Chalcedon (kal’sih-don). Byzas’ ship stopped at Chalcedon and the men aboard must have felt chagrined. Chalcedon was a thriving little town; it was a pity they had been forestalled.

Then they went on their way and some two and a half miles northwest of Chalcedon, on the other side of the Bosporus, they

6 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

saw a site which was ideal. Chalcedon: had been built along a fairly straight line of shore with some moderately good harbor facilities. Here on the other side, though, a river broadened out and entered the Bosporus. That river (later called the “Golden Horn”) provided a wide, beautiful, and- large harbor. It could hold any number of ships, it could be easily defended — there could be nothing better. Between the river and the main body of the sea was a tongue of land which would be perfect for a city. It was surrounded by water on three sides. With a strong wall on the fourth side and a good navy, it could be impregnable. How, they won- dered, could-the earlier colonists have ignored this beautiful site on the European side in favor of the much inferior place where they had established Chalcedon? Surely, the people of Chalcedon must have been blind to choose the poorer site.

And there it was. Chalcedon was the city of the blind to which the oracle at Delphi had referred. Byzas therefore founded his town opposite it as the oracle had directed. He named it Byzantion after himself, but we know it better in the Latin spelling that was eventually given it by the Romans — Byzantium (bih-zan’shee-um. ) *

THE LIFE LINE OF ATHENS

For a century and a half, Byzantium prospered as a free city: a way station for countless ships and sailors and a depot for grain and other goods traveling between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. It was at a crossroads between Europe and * Of course, it is very possible that this whole story I have given you is just fiction — a legend that grew up to explain the name — and that no person such as Byzas ever lived, Another explanation

for the name is that it means “compact” because the city was pressed together on the tongue of land on which it was founded.

id LOA

5 Ae = =e PPOAA WsIDUY oy) pur wnMUeZAg =] dVW QP _.. Vas NYINV ads dan SAAOHU

= i (a

‘“ (i ytueds & ee

Vistdd Aaa *1pU1I05 YONIN VIS¥ sue

APM,

wop>ayett3

0 HP d unyruez dg NOGIOVIN

oe ) AVL

word Vas NOVId ss

CHNIVUNM) VIHLADS

8 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Asia, and it would be a tempting prize for those who would want to possess it either to control the trade themselves or to facilitate the passage of an army. Since the Trojan War, how- ever, no large army had attempted to cross from one continent to the other — until the coming of the Persian Empire.

Founded in 559 s.c., the Persian Empire controlled all of Asia west of India and north of Arabia. In 546 3.c. Asia Minor had come under Persian control, and in 521 s.c. the greatest of its rulers, Darius I (duh-ry’us), came to the throne. All the accessible regions of Asia were under his control, as was Egypt. His land-hungry eyes turned toward Europe.

In 513 B.c. Darius invaded Thrace (the region north of the Aegean Sea) and conquered it up to the Danube River. In doing so, he crossed the Bosporus and took over control of By- zantium.

Darius’ European adventure posed a terrible threat to the Greek cities lying to the south of Thrace. It was not long be- fore hostilities between Persia and the Greek cities began. War continued, on and off, for nearly two centuries.*

In this long war, Byzantium always remained a particularly important prize. If the Greek cities controlled it, that insured an uninterrupted food supply for themselves and placed a block in the path of Persia.

The crisis of the Persian war came in 480 B.c. when Xerxes J (zurk’seez), the son of Darius, sent a huge army into Greece across the narrow straits. Against him were the Greek fleet, made up very largely of ships of the city of Athens, and the Greek army, of which the most important contingents were the warlike men of the city of Sparta.

Both cities won. The Persian fleet was smashed at the Battle of Salamis (sal’uh-mis), near Athens, the very year of the inva- sion. The Persian army was smashed at the Battle of Plataea

* For details of this epic duel see my book The Greeks (Houghton Mifflin, 1965).

THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT 9

(pluh-tee’uh), twenty-five miles northwest of Athens, the year after, in 479 B.c.

The Greek cities then counterattacked. The Athenians in their ships liberated the Greek cities on the eastern shores of the Aegean Sea, The Spartan king, Pausanias (paw-say’nee- us), led his victorious army northward. In 477 s.c. he drove the Persian garrison out of Byzantium and occupied it in his turn. The Greeks again controlled the crossroads between the East and West.

Pausanias career took a sudden downswing at this point when Persia adopted new tactics. The Persians saw they could not win by force of arms, for Greek armor and military tech- nique were superior. The Persians could, however, use gold. They were rich and generous; the Greeks poor and corruptible.

Pausanias accepted Persian bribes and began to live a life of ostentatious luxury. Then, too, the Greek cities began to quar- rel. While Persia remained a deadly threat, Athens and Sparta cooperated, but once victory had been won, each began to ma- neuver for supremacy.

Using rumors of Persian bribery, Athens struck at Sparta through Pausanias. She sent a fleet northward in 476 B.c., under her admiral, Cimon (sy’mon), and drove Pausanias out of Byzantium. Since her king’s crime could not be denied, the embarrassed Sparta recalled him so that he could be tried for treason and Athens was left in control of the city.

Athens, as it happened, badly needed Byzantium. Athens oc- cupied a particularly barren portion of Greece and its overflow- ing population depended for food on imports from abroad. It was necessary for the city to maintain a strong and efficient fleet and to safeguard control of Byzantium and the straits. Those straits had become Athens’ life line and, for over a cen- tury, every move of that city was made with the safety of the route to the Black Sea in mind.

For a time, Athens dominated Greece, with Sparta as her

10 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

chief rival. In the end, of course, it came to war. That war between the two cities (called the Peloponnesian War) began in 431 B.c. and continued, on and off, for a generation. For all this period, Byzantium was firmly under Athenian control, and its occasional revolts did not succeed while Athens’ fleet held the sea.

By 405 8.c., however, Athens had worn itself down to skin, bones, and one last fleet. That Jast fleet desperately protected the Athenian life line and patrolled the straits. The Spartans, with unlimited access to Persian gold, had a capable naval commander for about the only time in their history. This com- mander, Lysander (ly-san’der), caught the Athenian ships by surprise. They were in the Hellespont, beached at the mouth of the smal] Aegospotami River (ee’’gos-pot’uh-mee) on the Euro- pean side of the strait about 125 miles southwest of Byzantium, and they were keeping an inadequate guard.

The Spartans attacked suddenly; the Athenians could not get their ships into the water in time. Of the 180 Athenian ships, only twenty managed to get away intact. With Athens last fleet gone and her life line broken, she could do nothing but surren- der. For a brief while, Sparta ruled Greece, and a Spartan gar- rison was placed in Byzantium.

Sparta was not, however, a worthy ruler. Good in war in a mechanical sort of way, Spartans did not know how to organize in peace. Wherever Spartans were in power, they fell prey to corruption and to an arrogance that antagonized those they tried to rule.

Gradually, Athens recovered from its defeat. Although it was never again the great dominating force it had been before the disasters of the Peloponnesian War, it managed to build a strong navy once more and fought to regain its life line. In 389 B.c, an Athenian general, Thrasybulus (thras”ih-byoo’lus), led forty ships northward, defeated the Spartans, and drove them out of the region of the straits. Once again, Byzantium was under Athenian domination.

THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT ll

But that, too, was temporary. It was the curse of the Greeks that they could not combine. They could not possibly continue to maintain themselves as separate cities, free and equal, in the face of surrounding kingdoms with large areas and populations who were becoming steadily more apt at the art of war. They could do so all the less if they wasted their energies in constant petty warfare among themselves. Yet they did just that. They lacked the foresight or the spirit of self-sacrifice to give up some local sovereignty in favor of the common good. Nor was any one city strong enough to impose its will on the others by force. In fact, as time went on, the forces of fragmentation gained ground and such partial combi- nations as had been formed broke up. In 356 8.c. Byzantium was one of the cities that broke away from the loose league that had formed under Athenian leadership. Athens recognized By- zantium’s independence the next year, and for the first time in over a century and a half the city on the strait was truly free.

THE COMING OF MACEDON

It didn’t last long. At the very time Byzantium was gaining its independence, the kingdom of Macedon (just to the north of Greece ) was feeling the stimulating effect of the genius of its new king, Philip IT.

Philip reorganized the kingdom, establishing and training a splendid army, which included a close-knit group of long- speared infantry called a “phalanx” and an efficient cavalry corps trained to support that phalanx. Gold mines were discoy- ered in the country and that gave him money with which to bribe the politicians of the Greek cities.

What with Philip’s artful intrigue, his skillful use of gold, and his well-organized army, Macedon made itself dominant in the

12 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

north. Opposed to him, however, was the stubborn army of the Greek city of Thebes. Thebes had surprised the Greek world by resoundingly defeating the Spartans in 371 B.c. and it had been dominant in Greece since. And there were the Athenians, too, who had never really recovered their morale after their ter- rible defeat but who still carried the prestige of past greatness. Philip played a skillful game, though, making each of his moves fall just short of provoking a strong reaction. He would inch forward, placate Athens and Thebes, then inch forward again. The puzzled Athenians found that somehow Philip con- trolled an ever larger portion of the north without themselves ever seeming to have a good opportunity to take decisive ac- tion. Only the Athenian orator Demosthenes (dee-mos’thih- neez) saw the danger in full, but he could not stir the Atheni- ans.

In 342 B.c. Philip felt strong enough to make a big move east- ward. To the east was Thrace, a land of uncivilized tribes who would make marvelous soldiers once under Philip’s firm rule, and beyond Thrace, some 350 miles east of the Macedonian capital at Pella, were Byzantium and the straits.

If Philip could take Byzantium (whether by intrigue or by war scarcely mattered) he could cut the Athenian life line, and all of Greece might fall to him with no trouble. Something more, too: with Byzantium, he could do as old Darius I had done over a century and a half before. He could clear the road between the continents and invade Asia as Darius had once in- vaded Europe. Philip, you see, had a great ambition. He wanted to invade Persia and take over as much as he could of that great, but now decaying, empire.

Philip’s eastward campaign began with great success. Thrace was conquered, the Greek cities on the north Aegean coast were taken and, in 340 B.c., his army reached the outskirts of Byzantium.

The Byzantines immediately appealed to their old lords in Athens, from whom they had broken away only fifteen years

THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT . 13

before. Athens responded at once. Athens might well have felt, grimly, that Byzantium deserved to pay the price for the eagerness with which she had disowned the Athenian confeder- ation, but the Athenians couldn't afford the luxury of acting on that feeling. Byzantium controlled the grain routes and for that Athens had to fight. She sent her fleet northward and used it to feed the city. Philip had no seapower and, lacking that, could not take Byzantium. He lost an attempt at a surprise attack by night when moonlight gave him away. He had to retreat. He kept Thrace, but lost his chance at the straits. The triumphant Byzantines were enormously exhilarated by their successful stand against the great Philip. They gave credit to their patron goddess of the moon, Hecate, whose light had so helped them. They struck commemorative coins bear- ing the symbol of night as befits worshipers of a moon god- dess — the crescent moon, and a star. The crescent and star have remained the special sign of the city right down to modern times. Philip’s defeat was by no means decisive, however. His fail- ure to gain the straits meant he had lost his chance to win Greece without a fight. Well, then, he would have to fight, but with good management he would need only one battle. That battle came in 338 8.c. at Chaeronea (kehr’oh-nee’uh). There the Macedonian phalanx, fighting on the doorstep of Thebes, destroyed the elite corps of the Theban army to a man and sent the Athenians away in wild flight. Philip then established a league of Greek cities with himself at the head and prepared for the invasion of Persia. He was assassinated just as the invasion was about to start, but his even more remarkable son, Alexander III (the Great), carried on. Alexander invaded Persia, conquered it all, and made Greek culture dominant in western Asia — a dominance that was to endure for over a thousand years.

After Alexander’s death in 323 s.c., his empire was pulled to pieces by competing generals, and Byzantium was under the

14 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

control of now one, now another. It was not as bad as it seemed, however. The battles of the generals were wasteful and useless, but under Macedonian rule ( whatever the name of the general or, later, king) the Greek cities maintained a cer- tain level of self-rule. On the whole they were more prosperous than when they had been independent. Byzantium, in particu- lar, retained its status as a free city and enjoyed a period of particular prosperity on the occasion of what was a calamity for much of the rest of the Greek world.

In 280 B.c. Celtic tribes, called Gauls, poured southward into Greece from the north. They ravaged Macedon, killing the general who had just made himself king, and inflicted a couple of years of destruction and anarchy on the land. They crossed over into Asia Minor in 278 B.c. and it was nearly fifty years before they were completely tamed.

During this terrible time, Byzantium avoided destruction by the expensive expedient of buying off the Gauls. On several occasions, she stripped herself bare so that the Gauls might agree to turn away. She then passed her losses on to those trad- ers who used the straits, for she raised her tolls sky-high, using the danger of the Gauls as her excuse.

One can appreciate Byzantium’s terrible predicament, but those traders who found commerce more difficult and those consumers who found bread rising in price could scarcely ex- pect to feel well about it. One Greek city that particularly re- sented Byzantium’s action was Rhodes. This city occupied an island in the southeastern Aegean Sea, about 850 miles south of Byzantium. Thanks to her island position and her strong fleet, she had fought off the Macedonian generals in the years after the death of Alexander the Great and had remained a truly free Greek city.

Trade was Rhodes’ livelihood, and in the interest of the free- dom of the seas she fought down pirates as well as any land power who tried to hamper trade with unfair tolls or restric- tions. Byzantium’s tolls were certainly unfair, for though the

THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT 15

Gallic menace receded, and came to a final end by 232 z.c., the Byzantine tolls remained high.

The Rhodians decided to reason with Byzantium through su- perior naval power. In 219 .c. the Rhodian fleet defeated the Byzantines. Rhodes, then, did more than insist on lowering the tolls; she demanded they be abolished altogether, and they were. This did not leave Byzantium destitute, however. There was still ample money to be made as a commercial center.

THE COMING OF ROME

But now another power was beginning to make itself felt in the Mediterranean. On the Italian peninsula, the city of Rome had been growing slowly stronger, almost unnoticed at first. By 202 B.c. it had defeated the great commercial city of Carthage (a near squeak that was, too* ) and was absolutely supreme in the western Mediterranean. The Macedonian monarchies might have blocked Rome and prevented its further expansion if they had united. Like the Greek cities before them, however, they seemed to prefer to fight among themeselves and go down piecemeal.

In 192 B.c. Rome went to war with the largest of the Macedo- nian monarchies, the Seleucid Empire, which governed much of the Asian territory that had once been Persian. Rome was victorious and in 190 8.c. a Roman army landed in Asia Minor for the first time. It was victorious again and Roman influence grew mightily.

In 183 n.c. Attalus IIT of Pergamum—a nation that ex- tended over the west-central portion of Asia Minor — died without heirs. He left his kingdom to Rome, which reorganized

* For details of this and other events in the early history of Rome, see my book The Roman Republic (Houghton Mifflin, 1966).

16 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

it as the province of Asia. The remaining kingdoms of Asia Minor, all Greek in language and culture since the time of Alex- ander the Great two centuries before, became Roman puppets to a greater or lesser degree. Only Pontus in the northeast tried to fight Rome and in the end, she failed, too. By 62 B.c. the Roman general Pompey had organized all of Asia Minor and Syria as either Roman provinces or Roman client-states under puppet kings.

By then, Byzantium, too, was under Roman domination. In- deed, it had turned to Rome quite early in the game, for it saw in Rome a protector against the Greek and Macedonian states who had been chiefly interested in keeping down its tolls.

Of course the change (as might have been predicted) did not in the end alter Byzantium’s status at all. Rome was not in- terested in high tolls levied against itself either. Byzantium re- mained a “free city” under Roman domination, but this only meant it was allowed to live under its own laws where those laws did not seriously discommode Rome — and there were Romans on the spot to make sure the laws did not. Further- more, Byzantium paid out taxes to Rome and could make no decisions of its own with regard to its relations with other parts of the Roman realm.

Byzantium received benefits in return, of course. As Roman rule spread more widely over the Mediterranean, peace grew more prevalent. The endless quarrels that kept cities and na- tions in continual wars over the question of which was to be dominant faded away, for the decision had been reached at last. It was Rome that was to be dominant.

To be sure, there was a fifty-year period of civil war in the first century B.c. that ruffled the Roman world, but that came to an end in 31 s.c. Under Octavian Caesar, a great-nephew of Julius Caesar, the old republican institutions of Rome were re- organized and what was called the Roman Empire* came to be

* For details see my book The Roman Empire (Houghton Mifflin, 1967 ).

THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT : 7

established. Octavian, who assumed the name of Augustus, was the first emperor.

For two centuries after this, the entire Mediterranean basin (including Byzantium, of course) was in deep and almost un- disturbed peace. It had never experienced so long a peace be- fore, nor was it to experience so long a peace ever again. There was fighting on the Roman frontiers, an insurrection in Judea, and, for a brief time in .p. 68 and 69,* a quarrel over the impe- rial succession, but these were almost disregarded ripples on a quiet pond. Byzantium, along with certain other areas of the Greek- speaking world, continued to possess a certain local autonomy, to have a kind of self-rule under leaders of its own choosing — at least in the first century of the empire. Such mild separa- tism tended to fade away, however. More and more, it was nec- essary to unify the economic and social practices of the empire to face the enemies that still existed beyond the Roman bor- ders. For instance, east of Asia Minor and Syria there remained the farther half of what had once been the Persian Empire. It had grown strong again with the decline of the Macedonian Em- pire. Under two dynasties of kings, the Arsacid (under whom the realm was called Parthia) and the Sassanid (when it was called Persia again), this region remained a bitter and persist- ent foe of Rome for seven centuries. T

As Rome, with its expansive drive declining, tried to equip itself to withstand Parthia, it found the presence of free cities in the east, however nominal that freedom might be, offering chinks of weakness. The Emperor Vespasian (ves-pay’zhan),

* Dates that are later than the traditional year in which Jesus was born can be written with the initials a.v., standing for “Anno Domini” or “in the year of the Lord.” In this book, however, such years will be written without initials. I will write 400 5.c., for instance, but instead of a.v. 400, I will simply write 400.

+ For details concerning the region east of the Roman Empire, see my book The Near East (Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

18 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

who ruled from 69 to 79, ended al] that. In the interest of mili- tary efficiency, he made all the islands of self-rule integral parts of the Roman state. That included the city of Byzantium. “You have forgotten how to be free,” said Vespasian, with some con- tempt, in announcing the loss of its freedom to the city.

~ He was quite right, though it was not entirely the city’s fault. For a couple of centuries it had been allowed only a nominal freedom that meant nothing and that had not served as inspira- tion at all. When Vespasian took it away, he took away nothing substantial, only a thin and broken-down veneer.

As long as the Roman peace continued, Byzantium profited, freedom or not. It was a prosperous commercial city that for- got the very name of war. Probably its schoolchildren learned of the great siege of Philip of Macedon and how it was turned away, but that was five centuries in the past and there had been little heroism since.

Then came the fateful year of 192. In that year, the Roman Emperor Commodus (kom’oh-dus) had been assassinated and Rome rocked with competing successors. Soon the choice boiled down to three generals —one in the West, one in the center, and one in the East — who were dangerously evenly matched. The westerner was Clodius Albinus (al-by’nus); the central one, Septimius Severus (se-veer’us); the easterner, Pescennius Niger (ny’jer). Severus was the most vigorous of the three and the closest to Rome besides. He entered that city in 193 and forced his own acceptance as emperor. Niger and Albinus, however, did not agree to this at all. Niger was the more dangerous. He was a popular general who was in control of the eastern third of the empire, the wealthiest third. Under his contro] was Egypt, the region from which Rome imported most of its food supply. If Niger played his cards wisely, he could probably end as master.

Niger, however, did not do well. Perhaps he was too confi- dent of the strength of the hand he held. The energetic Severus marched eastward after only thirty days in Rome and headed

THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT 19

straight for Byzantium, for it was in that city that Niger had established himself most strongly.

Severus set part of his army to laying siege to Byzantium and
took the rest into Asia Minor where he hoped to destroy Niger's army. In the course of the year 194 Severus fought three major battles in Asia Minor, winning each one. In the end, he cap- tured Niger and had him beheaded. _ That, however, did not dispose of Byzantium. Byzas had not been wrong all those centuries ago. The city on the Golden Horn had a natural strength that made its capture difficult in- deed when the citizenry really put their mind to a defense. It was a single city, now, against a whole empire, but it held out for two additional years.

It might better have surrendered early in the game, but its leaders knew better than to expect anything less than death from the grim Severus, and there was always the hope that the emperor might be drawn away by troubles elsewhere (after all, Albinus still controlled anti-Severus armies in the west) and be forced to offer Byzantium liberal terms.

Byzantium’s hopes were frustrated. Severus stuck to the siege, did not allow himself to be diverted by Albinus, and in 196, the city had to surrender. Bitterly, Severus put it to the sack: he massacred its leading citizens, destroyed its walls to the very ground, and reduced it to the rank of a village. The next year he turned on Albinus and finished him off.

THE EMPIRE MOVES EAST

From this disaster, Byzantium did not truly recover for a long time. Severus repentantly rebuilt it somewhat, but the slow return of prosperity was interrupted by the fact that the entire empire underwent a fifty-year period of anarchy after the

20 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

assassination, in 285, of Severus’ grandnephew, Alexander Severus.

The chaos within the empire made it possible for the barbar- ian tribes and civilized kingdoms outside the land to invade and ravage almost with impunity. The Balkans were subject to the raids of a group of Germanic tribes called. the Goths, Asia Minor to incursions on the part of the Persians.

Recovery came when Diocletian (dy”oh-klee’shan) became emperor in 284. He reorganized what was left of the Roman economy and concentrated his efforts on the richer and more urbanized eastern half of the empire, leaving the western half under the control of a co-emperor.

In part, this was because Diocletian was himself an east- erner. He had been born in a little village named Dioclea, from which he got his name, in what is now southern Yugoslavia. He had no feeling for the city of Rome and the one occasion on which he visited Rome as emperor, he had an unpleasant time. Therefore, he preferred to remain in the east. Then, too, it was the rich east that was in the greater danger, for the wealthy cities concentrated there were targets for the Goths and Per- sians. The poorer and more sparsely populated western prov- inces offered fewer attractions to the barbarian tribes on its borders. With this in mind, Diocletian rebuilt the walls of Byzantium to the strength they had had a century before, in the days be- fore its sack by Severus. This was done, not out of philan- thropy you can be sure, but because strong fortresses were needed against the invading Goths and, properly held, Byzan- tium was one of the strongest. Philip of Macedon and the Em- peror Septimius Severus had each discovered that.

Under Diocletian the heart of the empire moved east alto- gether, for he made his capital and held his court in Asia Minor. The city he chose as his capital was Nicomedia (nik’oh- mee’dee-uh) at the easternmost tip of the Propontis, about fifty miles east of Byzantium.

THE TOWN ON THE STRAIT 2)

For nearly half a century, Nicomedia remained one of the important centers of the empire. Though troubles continued, they were not quite as bad as they had been in the period of anarchy. After Diocletian abdicated in 305, for instance, there followed a period of hot rivalry between candidates for the crown, with one of them, Constantine I, steadily increasing in power. By 312, Constantine I was recognized as emperor over the western portion of the empire, ruling from Milan, a city in northern Italy. Over the eastern half of the empire was Licin- ius (ly-sin’ee-us ), who ruled from Nicomedia. The two emper- ors maintained a precarious truce, arranged as a result of a “summit conference” between the two in Milan, in the course of which Licinius agreed to marry Constantine’s sister. The truce broke down now and then, and there was occasional friction and even mild war between the emperors. In 324 came the final break as each side decided to make the big try for sole rule. Constantine drove eastward vigorously and the two armies met at Adrianople (ay’dree-an-ch’pul), 130 miles west of By- zantium. Licinius had the advantage of a much superior fleet and of a well-fortified position. He did not, however, make proper use of the fleet and he allowed Constantine to maneuver him out of his position. A group of 5000 archers caught Licin- ius’ army in the rear during the battle that followed, and he was defeated on July 3, 323.

Licinius retreated with that part of the army which he man- aged to save and threw himself behind the walls of Byzantium. Once again, a Roman emperor advanced to lay siege to the city as, nearly a century and a half before, Severus had done.

If Licinius had used his fleet even then, he might still have won out, but Constantine, recognizing the importance of the command of the seas, strengthened his own fleet, which his old- est son led resolutely against the enemy. Constantine’s ships broke through, opening the trade routes to the Black Sea,

22 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

which enabled Constantine to provision his own army and to deny food to Byzantium.

Licinius managed to wriggle out of the city with a few men and to escape to Asia Minor where he gathered together an- other army. Constantine kept Byzantium under siege and de- tached some of his men, using them to hunt down Licinius. At Chrysopolis (kry-sop’oh-lis), a city across the Bosporus from Byzantium and immediately north of Chalcedon, the final battle was fought on September 18, and again Constantine won. Licinius’ life was spared at that time, but he was executed the year after.

Constantine was now the sole ruler over all the Roman Em- pire, and Byzantium surrendered to him. This time, though, the city was not destroyed. Quite otherwise! Constantine had certain ideas and an unbelievable transformation was now in store for Byzantium.

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST

CONSTANTINE S CITY

Constantine had had unusual ideas before, ideas that had worked. Consider the matter of religion, for instance. Three centuries before Constantine’s time, a preacher named Joshua (or, to use the Greek form of the name, Jesus) had been active in Judea. Certain Jews hailed him as the Messiah (or, from the Greek, Christ), the king whose coming had been foretold by a variety of mystical prophecies. He was crucified by the Roman authorities but his followers, continuing to believe in his divin- ity, came to be known as Christians.

Under an early leader, Paul, they proselytized vigorously, not only among the Jews but among Gentiles, and it was among the latter that they had their greatest success. The new sect gradu- ally spread and grew prominent, despite periods of persecution by the Roman government. The last and harshest persecution

24 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

came under Diocletian but that, too, failed to make serious in- roads into their numbers and only sharpened the intensity of their belief. By 300 they made up a strong minority of the Ro- man population and were concentrated in the cities.

Constantine recognized the fact that while still a minority, the Christians were strong where it counted, and were fanatical in their beliefs. The pagans tended to be passive; they were a “silent majority,” most of whom were scattered over the coun- tryside where they were ineffective. Constantine decided to cast his lot with the Christians and make use of their support.

Thus, when he had his summit conference with Licinius in 313, he insisted on the issuing of a joint edict of toleration, lift- ing all disabilities from Christians and giving them complete freedom of worship. Licinius remained pagan in sympathy, however, and it was his anti-Christian moves thereafter that Constantine used as a pretext for the final war between them. He was the first Christian emperor — though he was not bap- tized until on his deathbed — and was called Constantine the Great by reverent Church historians in later years. He also reorganized the empire economically and success- fully stabilized the imperial currency. He put out a new gold coin which was kept at full weight and purity for many cen- turies during an age when coins nearly vanished from western Europe. Merchants all over Europe learned to have faith in the coins put out by Constantine and his successors. They ac- cepted the coins freely and this encouraged the flow of com- merce in the realm, contributing greatly to its prosperity.

But with bold strokes in religion and economy, Constantine did not stop. He wanted a new capital. After his victory over Licinius he held court in Nicomedia, the capital established by Diocletian, but that was not enough. He wanted a brand-new city to mark the rebirth of the empire.

For a while, he thought romantically of Troy, the city which had been destroyed by the Greeks fifteen centuries before and which had been enshrined in the most famous epic poem of all

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 25

time, Homer’s Iliad. To the ancients, Homer was the nearest approach to a Bible, and the Romans themselves traced their descent (according to a thoroughly fictitious legend) from a Trojan hero of that ancient war.

But practical considerations won out. Troy’s position at the Aegean Sea end of the straits was not nearly as strong as Byzan- tium’s at the Black Sea end. Constantine had just had firsthand evidence of that in his siege of Byzantium. That city was just halfway between the most threatened frontiers — by the Goths on the Danube and the Persians on the Euphrates. With strong walls, a large army, and an efficient navy at Constantine’s dis- posal, Byzantium would make an absolutely impregnable bas- tion in case all else crumbled. (And so it was to prove on more than one occasion. ) Constantine thus set about producing something new out of old Byzantium. In all its long history, Byzantium had been a prosperous trading city at best, but had never made any star- tling mark otherwise. It had never been a center of art or learning; it had never shone heroically in warfare; it had never produced any great men. Right down to Constantine’s time it remained a commercial center of little renown. But now Constantine seized it and turned it upside down. He took no half measures. He wiped out what existed and began from scratch. He marked out a much increased area to be walled off and set about to build an imitation of Rome, for he intended nothing less than a “New Rome.” He even made sure to build it on seven hills. He began the construction of important buildings based on a Roman model: a forum, a Senate house, and a palace. He built a hippodrome where games might be conducted for the amuse- ment of the populace. Chiefly, it served as a place for chariot races (the word means “horse course”). He built the hippo- drome at the site where one had been constructed by Severus when he tried to reverse his earlier destruction of the city. Constantine’s new structure was much larger, however, and

26 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

truly imperial in scope. It was 1500 feet long, 490 feet wide, and had a seating capacity of 60,000.

The artistic talent in the empire was far gone in decay, but Constantine probably wasn’t keen on new work anyway. He wanted his city to have the cachet of the old and he comman- deered statues and paintings from other places, rifling the best in the empire so that he might beautify his capital. He even took statues from Athens, formed in its golden age seven cen- turies before. Theaters, baths, churches, water reservoirs, granaries, new houses for the aristocracy — all were built by forced labor. (Pious tales told by priestly chroniclers in later ages described miracles of all sorts, such as eagles bringing rocks and measuring tape, but we can safely suppose that all the work was done by slave muscle. )

Settlers were attracted. After all, Constantine intended to transfer the imperial court there and all who craved public po- sition, all who wanted to scale the social heights, all who wanted to open lucrative businesses, flocked to the new city.

On May 11, 330, the final touch was added to the recon- structed capital. In the forum stood a column and to the top of that column a statue of Apollo, the Sun God, was hoisted. Nat- urally, Constantine could not make use of a pagan god for the purpose, so he got around that by knocking off Apollo’s head and substituting his own. Once the statue was in place — and it was to remain there for nearly eight centuries — the crowds burst into cheers and prayers and the new capital was dedi- cated. Byzantium — 987 years after its founding, just thirteen years short of a millennium — ceased to exist. In its place was a city called “New Rome which is Constantine’s city.” It re- mained officially New Rome for over a thousand years, but it was known to everyone as Constantine’s City, which was “Kon- stantinou polis’ in Greek, “Constantinopolis” in Latin, and “Constantinople” to us. Under that name, old Byzantium was

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 27

destined to become the most famous city of its time, the largest, the wealthiest, and the most cultured.

Yet the name Byzantium did not entirely disappear from the vocabulary of history, either. The new coin put out by Con- stantine came eventually to be termed a “bezant” in the West, from the old name of the new capital.

CONSTANTINE S RELIGION

Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity had an important influence on Roman law, for the emperor revised it in the light of Christian views. Crucifixion was abolished (for obvious rea- sons) as a means of execution. He also abolished the gladiato- rial games which so many associated with Christian martyr- dom. The law turned a more benevolent face on those things of which Christianity approved, such as celibacy, and a harsher one on those of which Christianity disapproved, such as di- vorce.

His attitude toward paganism also made itself felt. He pro- hibited the erection of his own statue in pagan temples and re- moved the representation of pagan gods from his later coins. As reward, he felt free to appropriate the wealth of pagan temples to state use.

Both Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity and his estab- lishment of a new capital ended by having an important effect on the structure of the religion as well. For one thing, Constan- tine I, as the protector and patron of the Christian portion of the population, had felt that it was his duty as emperor to help define what the proper Christian belief ought to be.

He felt no shyness in this, never thought that he might be un- qualified to decide on subtle points of theology. After all, Con-

28 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

stantine had not been converted by a missionary but, according to the story he told, by the vision of a cross in the sky. (The cross had, only a few years earlier, become the accepted symbol of Christianity.) This meant, in the emperor's view, that his conversion had come from God and that he therefore had di- vinely inspired insight.

Besides, from a more practical standpoint, the Roman em- peror, in pagan days, had been “Pontifex Maximus,” the head of the official State religion. Constantine took it for granted that this post would shift its significance so that he would now be head of the Christian Church.

Then, too, Diocletian had reorganized the emperor's position, strengthening it by surrounding it with oriental panoply and ritual borrowed in large part from his Persian enemies. The rule of the emperor over the state religion was part of the Per- sian system — and if that were not enough there were ample numbers of Biblical quotations that could be called to the de- fense of the theory.

The Christians themselves did not fight this view, as one might have thought they would. For centuries, they had been divided into sects of various sorts, with no one to act as umpire, yet surely there must be one true religion with all other varie- ties false to a greater or lesser extent.

The true religion was orthodox (from Greek words meaning “straight teaching”). Other varieties of Christianity were heret- ical (from a Greek word meaning “to choose” ), for if there were many varieties of Christianity each Christian could choose for himself which to follow.

With no one to act as umpire, quarrels, disputes, and po- lemics between this sect and that continued endlessly and use- lessly. Now all sects turned to the emperor. Each sect hoped to convince him of its own truth and then use the apparatus of the State to crush its heretical opponents. All sects thus yielded to the view that the emperor was head of the Church, and a prec-

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 29

edent was set that was to hold good in the East for over a thou- sand years and was to have an important influence over his- tory.*

Constantine, even when he was emperor only over the West, had successfully settled a Church dispute of relatively small proportions and now he was ready to tackle something much bigger.

At the time that he was winning his final victory over Licin- ius, a heated controversy was in progress in Alexandria, the largest city in Egypt and the center of Christian theological de- velopment. The leaders were two Alexandrian churchmen, Arius (ar’ee-us) and Athanasius (ath’uh-nay’shus). Their fol- lowers were called Arians and Athanasians respectively.

To put it most simply, the Arians believed that God was su- preme and that Jesus, while the greatest of all created beings, was inferior to God. The Athanasians believed that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were different and equal aspects of the Trinity (from a Latin word meaning “a group of three”).

To settle the matter, Constantine I decided to call all the bishops of the empire into a council to discuss the matter; he himself was to preside over it and direct the final decision. Be- cause bishops were to be called from all parts of the empire for the first time, it was an ecumenical (universal) council and, indeed, the First Ecumenical Council. The bishops gathered on July 25, 325, at Nicaea (nigh-see’uh), twenty-two miles south of Nicomedia, which was then the imperial capital.

The council decided in favor of Athanasius and the Trinity. That view therefore became, officially, the view of the entire Church; that is, of the Catholic Church (from a Greek word meaning “entire” or “universal”). From that time on it is con- venient to call those who believed in the Athanasian view,

* The doctrine of the emperor’s control of the Church has come to be called “Caesaropapism”; that is, the same man was both caesar (emperor) and pope.

30 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Catholics. The Arians, however, did-not abandon their view and for some centuries, the Catholics and Arians remained co- existent and hostile.

The First Ecumenical Council had several other results. For one thing, it established the precedent that only the emperor had the right to call an ecumenical council and this was a pow- erful weapon of the State over the Church. Then, too, this council established the inequality of bishops. Before then, all bishops had been equal, in theory at least. Now the bishops of certain large cities received special privileges. To begin with, the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Anti- och profited. These happened to be the three largest cities of the empire and, in addition, were involved in the ancient his- tory of the Church. Antioch was the first city outside Judea to contain an important Christian congregation; Alexandria had long been the center of Christian theological thought; and Rome had had as its first bishop, according to legend, Saint Peter himself.

The bishops of these cities were, to use the term which even- tually came to be associated with such cities, patriarchs (“chief fathers” or, since “father” was a common title for a priest, “chief priests”). Eventually, the bishop of Rome came to be called even more simply the father, which was “pappas” in Greek and which became “pope” in English.

This action, incidentally, set the precedent for the right of the emperor to name and depose patriarchs. This precedent was maintained through all the history of the empire and this, too, was a powerful weapon of State over Church.

Other cities naturally aspired to having their bishops named patriarchs and one which succeeded, though small and unim- portant in every respect but one, was Jerusalem.

But what about Constantinople? It had no association with Christianity and, at the time of the council of Nicaea, did not even really exist. Yet it had to be taken into consideration if only because it was the capital and the emperor’s city.

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST ol

The argument was that the capital was to be the New Rome and that it therefore must have all the privileges of the old Rome. There was no fighting the influence of the actual pres- ence of the emperor in the capital. Constantinople gained its patriarch, and since that patriarch always had the ear of the emperor and since the emperor dominated the Church, it was natural that the patriarchate of Constantinople gained prece- dence over the others.

This was resented by the older patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome. In particular, Alexandria remained the ir- reconcilable foe of Constantinople on all questions of doctrine, with Antioch usually siding with the former. As for Rome, iso- lated in the West, it went its own way, more and more.

Thus, since the Athanasian view of the Trinity was strong in Alexandria, Constantinople as soon as it was founded began to swing almost automatically in the opposite direction, toward Arianism. Despite the decision of the council of Nicaea, which he himself had chaired, Constantine I favored the Arian view more and more in the last years of his life.

Constantine I died in 337 in Nicomedia — not in his own new capital — and three of his sons ruled over the empire. Rul- ing in the East was Constantius I, who survived his two broth- ers and who, from 35], ruled alone. He was strongly pro-Arian, and for a quarter of a century, Constantinople tried to make its Arianism stick.

It couldn't. All the other patriarchates were united against it. In particular, the entire West, under the leadership of the Roman pope, was firmly Catholic. Then, in 379, a westerner, Theodosius I (thee’oh-doh’shus), became emperor. He was Catholic all the way, and under him Christianity won its final victory.

Pagans had been laboring under gathering disabilities since Constantine’s time. In 34] pagan sacrifices were forbidden and in 353 pagan temples were closed. Under Theodosius, pagans were deprived of all civil rights, so that the century that began

32 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

by relieving Christians of the weight of persecution ended by placing Christianity in its long, long role of persecutor. The Catholic religion became, under Theodosius I, the official state religion. Under the frown of this religion, backed by all the power of the State, paganism and Arianism withered and died.

THE EMPIRE IN HALVES

By that time, however, the empire had met disaster. A no- madic people, the Huns, had swarmed out of their central Asian homeland into eastern Europe. The German tribes they encountered were either conquered or put to flight.

The Visigoths, north of the empire’s boundary at the Danube River, had once been a scourge of Rome, but now they were terrified of the oncoming Huns. Humbly, they begged for per- mission to cross the Danube to safety. Roman officials allowed them to enter on condition they cross unarmed. Once on Ro- man territory, however, they were mistreated and driven to re- bellion. They found weapons, gathered together, even joined with parties of Huns who had infiltrated across the river, and suddenly a large, hostile army was encamped in Roman terri- tory. The Roman legions marched to meet them, but the Goths were making use of metal stirrups of the kind the Huns had brought with them from central Asia. Stirrups enabled a horse- man to sit firmly on his mount and thrust with his lance. They enabled that same horseman to charge thunderously against in- fantry without having to fear falling off his horse.

In 378 at Adrianople, where fifty years before Constantine had beaten Licinius, the Roman army was slaughtered by the German horsemen. It was a fatal defeat. The Roman spirit was broken and from then on, when it was necessary for Rome to

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 33

fight, they did so by means of hired Germans. German generals led the Roman armies and controlled the Roman state.

Theodosius I became emperor the next year and while he was alive he managed to hold the line. He was, in fact, the last Roman emperor to rule, all by himself, over the entire Roman realm. When he died in 395, he left his two young sons as co- heirs, one ruling the East and one in the West. In theory, the Roman Empire was still undivided and a single political struc- ture, but from the moment of Theodosius’ death, no single em- peror was ever to rule all of it again.

And as long as there were two emperors in widely separated capitals, it would be likely that policies would differ, that the two halves would be under the control of rivals intriguing one against the other. It was this disunion that helped bring on the catastrophes of the fifth century.

From the death of Theodosius I on, it is customary to speak of the West Roman Empire (or Western Empire) and the East Roman Empire (or Eastern Empire). The Western Empire was, in theory, ruled from Rome, but actually the emperor rarely if ever made his residence there. He was to be found at Milan or, later, at Ravenna, both in northern Italy. The East- ern Empire, however, was always ruled from Constantinople, and in this book I will concentrate on the Eastern Empire. The greater importance of the eastern half of the empire is indicated by the fact that Theodosius left this half to his older son, Arcadius (ahr-kay’dee-us). He was about eighteen when his father died, but he was a stupid, lethargic person with no interest in ruling. He was quite content to live in luxury within the palace walls and leave the administration of the empire to his ministers.

His chief minister, to begin with, was Rufinus (roo-fy’nus ), who had been awarded the job in Theodosius’ will. He was a German, of course, and this greatly irritated another German, Alaric (al’uh-rik), who had loyally served Theodosius as com- mander of the Visigothic contingent of the Roman army. Alaric

34 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

thought it was he who ought to have been made Arcadius’ min- ister and guardian.

In anger, Alaric marched against Constantinople and he was the first to find out what many discovered after him: that one could do nothing at Constantinople but sit outside the walls and grow weary. Alaric therefore turned aside and marched southward into Greece, ravaging the countryside and plunder- ing the cities. It was the first example of what was to become common in the decades ahead — Germanic war bands pillag- ing Roman provinces unchecked and at will. The Western Empire might have been able to help but, un- fortunately, there was a competition between the two halves of the realm as to which controlled Illyria, the region that now makes up western Yugoslavia. Each half tried to use the troubles of the other to its own advantage and while this hap- pened, a Germanic outsider such as Alaric had things all his own way.

In 396 the Eastern Empire found the proper weapon against Alaric — bribery. It was easy to offer him titles and money, in secret, and to point him toward the West. Alaric left Greece and, eventually, invaded Italy where he would take Rome itself in 410.

The Eastern Empire was to continue this course of action. It was richer than the Western Empire and it had an unassailable capital city. Any barbarian troop would find it easier to take the money and march westward than stay and batter in vain against the walls of Constantinople. It was partly because of this policy of sluicing the danger westward that the Eastern Empire remained reasonably intact while the Western Empire was torn to pieces.

It was a disgraceful display of shortsighted selfishness, for had the two halves of the empire united against the German war bands, it is quite conceivable that Rome might have weath- ered the century and produced, in the end, a civilized Roman-

Pary saesydug 4

\

VoRdv

\ VaS NVANVUYA LIGA ; ad rye)

@ Ca of? Nivas

INIGUYS SWidWNA NYVWO LSUM

\ Yorsuog <—$ AWldWa NVWOYW LSVH yey

VINNYSI SEN \ EULIALY YONI VISY ajdournspy * ULI

° e

a Se = VAT Fo \ & 1

y : re)

ee

) MI av

36 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

German fusion that would have altered the history of the world.

The architect of the plan of bribe-and-point was Eutropius (yoo-troh’pee-us), who succeeded Rufinus as the chief minis- ter. Eutropius was a eunuch and is the first of a series of such individuals to have great influence in Constantinople.

The practice of castrating boys or criminals originated in the polygamous East, where it was useful to have men guarding the harem who could not take advantage of their position. There were no harems in Constantinople, but eunuchs were useful in another way. Since, by iron-bound tradition, a eunuch could never sit on the throne, and since he could have no sons — for whom he might feel ambitious — he could never have a direct motive for organizing a coup. Furthermore, castration does not affect human intelligence. Since he does not have wives and children to distract him as a normal man would have, or even distracting sexual urges as a celibate might, a eunuch is free to concentrate his intelligence on service to the state. So heavily did emperors favor the em- ployment of eunuchs as court officials that (horrible though it may seem to us today) men of good family sometimes deliber- ately had one or more of their sons castrated in order to assure them some good governmental position in the future. There were disadvantages in the use of eunuchs, too. Most men tended to despise eunuchs, and the eunuchs who were aware of this often harbored deep resentments of their own. They tended to use their influence with the emperor and, espe- cially with his womenfolk, to intrigue against those they hated. What's more, since they were confined to the palace, they de- veloped rather narrow views. Their policies tended to be short- range and shortsighted, as Eutropius’ bribery was. (There were, of course, exceptions to this, as there are to every general- ization in history. )

Eutropius arranged a marriage between Arcadius and Eu-

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 37

doxia (yoo-dok’see-uh), the daughter of a Frankish official of the empire. The point of the marriage, which took place only three months after Arcadius succeeded to the throne, was to prevent Rufinus from gaining further power by marrying his own daughter to the emperor.

Rufinus did not live long after Arcadius’ marriage, and it looked then as though Eutropius, through Eudoxia, would be complete master of the Eastern Empire. Here, however, the eunuch found he had overplayed his hand. Eudoxia, early on, realized that she was firm willed and Arcadius weak; that she was beautiful and Arcadius fascinated. She had all the power she needed and Eutropius, who had lifted her to the heights, was no longer necessary. She maneuvered his fall from power and in 399 he was first banished, then executed. Eudoxia is best remembered for her enmity to John Chrysos- tom (kris’us-tum) — “golden mouth,” so-called after his death because of the skill of his oratory and of its effect on his audi- ence. He had been appointed Patriarch of Constantinople in 398 and at once made himself popular with the people by using the wealth of the office to establish hospitals and support chari- table causes. He insisted upon strict celibacy among priests and was quick in denouncing the wicked and hypocritical. He was, indeed, one of the few Church fathers who was a social reformer in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets. He denounced the extremes of wealth and poverty and even fa- vored the abolition of slavery (a view almost unheard of among the ancients ). John Chrysostom pleased the poor, of course, but he cer- tainly lacked popularity among the wealthy and powerful. Since the patriarch followed the model of the Old Testament prophets even to the point of denouncing the rulers for immo- rality, he displeased Eudoxia immensely. She led a gay, luxuri- ous, and profligate life and saw nothing amusing in having that denounced. She took action, therefore, by turning one Church

38 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

leader against another, since she knew that the Patriarch of Alexandria would be certain to be the enemy of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

A special synod (or meeting of bishops) was arranged in 403. Patriarch Theophilus (thee-of’ih-lus) .of Alexandria was to come to Constantinople where he would accuse John Chrysos- tom of heresy. A verdict of guilty was prearranged. John Chrysostom refused to appear before such a court and he was therefore removed from the patriarchate and sent into exile.

A storm of protest arose among the populace and Eudoxia, in panic, had to recall him after only two days. But that only de- termined the empress to lay the groundwork for a better- arranged exile.

A new synod gathered in 404 and this time a detachment of German mercenaries was brought into Constantinople. Al- though the Arian heresy had died out among the Romans, the German tribes had been converted by Arian priests and re- mained Arians in this period. The mercenaries, therefore, couldn’t care less what happened to Catholic patriarchs and were quite ready to slaughter the population on order. The people, well aware of this, could do nothing.

John Chrysostom was sent to a town in the eastern stretches of Asia Minor, some 400 miles from Constantinople, and this second exile was not reversed. That same year, though, Eu- doxia died in childbirth; Arcadius died in 408.

THE TRIPLE WALLS

Arcadius had a single son, seven years old at the time of the emperor's death. The son succeeded to the throne as Theodo- sius IJ. He did not prove very much more capable than his father but he was fortunate in having an older sister. Pulcheria

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 39

(pul-keer’ee-uh) had all that was necessary and was the real ruler of the empire for a generation.

Pulcheria arranged a rather romantic marriage for her arniable young brother. She had taken note of a beautiful young Athenian girl named Athenais (ath”ih-nay’is), who had been thoroughly educated by her father in the ancient Greek lore and who was still a pagan in an age in which few were left. Theodosius needed a wife so that there could be an heir to the throne and this girl seemed both beautiful and gentle. She could make Theodosius happy without endangering Pulcheria’s position. Athenais was persuaded to become Christian and change her name to Eudocia (yoo-doh’shee-uh). In 421 Theodosius and Eudocia were married with great joy and solemnity. The mar- riage was happy, a daughter was born, and Eudocia displayed her education by writing poetry. Unfortunately, her influence over her husband and her popularity with the people caused her to aspire to greater influence than Pulcheria was prepared to allow her. In 443, Pulcheria forced the poor queen into exile to Jerusalem and mild Theodosius II dared do nothing about ats The palace was utterly different under Pulcheria than it had been under her mother Eudoxia. Pulcheria was a moral and upright woman who carefully adhered to the teachings of the Church (and who eventually was granted sainthood). The old judgment against John Chrysostom was reversed and the coffin containing the patriarch’s dead body was brought back to Con- stantinople in 437. He was made a saint and Theodosius II went through a careful ceremony of repentance in the name of his parents.

This is not to say that Pulcheria did not have trouble of her own with a patriarch of Constantinople. The patriarch in ques- tion was Nestorius (nes-toh’ree-us), who had been appointed to the post in 428 because of his reputation for eloquence and for orthodoxy. The eloquence was there all right, but his ortho-

A CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

doxy showed flaws.. His notions of the human and divine double-nature of Jesus were not conventional and offended Pul- cheria. They quarreled, and Nestorius did not hesitate to de- nounce her over and over again.

Pulcheria, like her mother, knew where to find an ally against any patriarch of Constantinople. She turned to the Patriarch of Alexandria, who was then the strongly orthodox Cyril. An ecu- menical council was called — it was the third such gathering —at Ephesus on the Asia Minor coast in 431. It was a most disorderly council which Cyril dominated at first but then lost control of when additional bishops holding Nestorian views arrived. Nestorius himself refused to attend the council or to recognize it as legal. In the end, though, Nestorius was con- demned as a heretic. He was deposed from his post as patri- arch and was exiled to the Egyptian desert. Internally, the government of Theodosius II achieved some rather useful objectives. In 425 the University of Constanti- nople was organized as a Christian center for education since otherwise the only available school was the Academy in Athens, that dying relic of pagan knowledge which had origi- nally been founded by Plato some seven and a half centuries before. In addition, a new compilation of laws for the guidance of public officials was carefully drawn up and published in 438. This is called the Theodosian Code. Although the Eastern Empire wasn’t suffering the full weight of barbarian inroads in quite the way the Western Empire was, it nevertheless had much to fear. In fact, one of the chief proj- ects of Theodosius II’s reign was the construction of a triple wal] marching from the Golden Horn to the Aegean Sea, block- ing off the landward side of Constantinople with a barrier much stronger than any that had existed before. It was Alaric’s cap- ture of Rome in 410 that inspired the project, by emphasizing the ease with which even renowned cities might be taken.

The wall was a generation in the building, for its construc- tion continued from 413 to 447. When finished, though, it

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST ~- 4]

proved to have been done thoroughly and well. On the far side of the walls was a moat sixty feet wide and twenty-two feet deep, which the enemy would have to swim or bridge just to reach the first wall, a rather low one, behind which archers, crouching in perfect security, could pick them off.

Even if the moat were passed and the first wall breached, a second wall twenty-seven feet high existed, and behind that still a third wall, the greatest and strongest of all, with towers seventy feet high from which men could shoot their arrows and catapults launch their stones. That last wall stood against all attempts to break through by sheer force (as opposed to treach- ery) for a thousand years and even now, 500 years after it finally gave in, its ruins remain impressive. During the reign of Theodosius II, the provinces of the West- ern Empire were being torn to pieces by invading German bands and the western emperor had little power outside Italy itself. In particular, members of a German tribe named the Vandals, under an extremely capable leader, Gaiseric (gy’zuh- rik), had flooded into North Africa and were threatening Car- thage. This seemed a great danger to the Eastern Empire since an enemy in Carthage could easily threaten the rich and lightly guarded province of Egypt. (Through all the barbarian inva- sions of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, Egypt alone had remained virtually untouched. )

Therefore, when the western emperor pleaded for help from his eastern counterpart — the two emperors were first cousins — Theodosius IT responded favorably. For once, the two halves of the empire cooperated against the common enemy, and in 431 an East Roman fleet sailed westward.

The fleet was under the command of Aspar, a German gen- eral who had made a name for himself a decade before by de- feating the Persian armies. He was less fortunate against the Vandals. Gaiseric’s ships were too well handled and in 434 Aspar was forced to back off with great damage. Gaiseric went on to capture Carthage and establish a kingdom in North Af-

42 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

rica that was to last for a century. However, the battle with the East Roman fleet had given him a disinclination to stir up trouble in that direction and for a while he avoided antagoniz- ing the Eastern Empire. Aspar had accomplished that much anyway. =

The real disaster of the reign, however, was in connection with the Huns. Seventy years had passed since they had blazed into Europe and for that time they had been mostly quiescent, ruling the realm they had carved out for themselves north of the Black Sea. But then, in 433, a dynamic leader, Attila (at’ih- luh), gained control. He spent several years consolidating his power and in 441 he was ready for renewed expansion, striking powerful blows across the Danube. The Huns met the frightened Roman forces in a series of bat- tles, defeating them each time and driving them farther and farther back toward Constantinople. Aspar was badly defeated just outside the walls in 448, and now the new walls proved themselves for the first time. Though the Huns seemed invinci- ble on their fleet and shaggy ponies, they could neither jump over the walls nor shoot through them. Attila could do nothing more than devastate the Balkans, the peninsula of which Greece formed the southern tip, but the em- pire could stand only so much of this. So the government of Theodosius was forced to do to Attila what the government of his father, Arcadius, had done to Alaric. It was a case of pay- and-point. Attila was paid three tons of gold and promised an annual payment of one ton, and he was pointed west. Attila, however, took his time going, It seemed to him that the East was the richer half of the empire and, like all good blackmail- ers, he was eager for further payments.

In 450 with the European provinces of the Eastern Empire in ruins, thanks to the Huns, Theodosius II died after a long reign of forty-two years. His sister Pulcheria, the true ruler, survived him, but she could not keep hold of the government without a man to operate through. In view of the Hunnish danger, she

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 43

chose a sixty-year-old general named Marcian (mahr’shan) to be her emperor. He had been born in Thrace, which had now been devastated by the Huns, and he had no love for them. He had fought under Aspar for years, had been captured in the battle against Gaiseric, and remained a prisoner for a time.

Pulcheria might have married Aspar himself, but Aspar was Arian in his religion. An Arian might control the army and be a power behind the throne, but he could not assume the title of emperor over a Catholic populace, not without provoking a revolution.

Marcian, however, was as firm and orthodox a Catholic as Pulcheria herself, and together they determined to take up the matter of Nestorius once more. Although condemned at the council of Ephesus, Nestorius still had a large following of priests and laymen who professed “Nestorian” views. The job, Pulcheria felt, had to be finished, and Marcian agreed with her.

Another ecumenical council —the fourth—was called at Chalcedon, just across the strait from Constantinople, in 451. (And just about this time, Nestorius himself died in distant exile.) It was a much more orderly and businesslike council than the previous one had been. Pulcheria herself attended and was given a vociferous round of cheering from the bishops. Nestorianism was condemned once more and driven out of the empire (though it did not die, but was carried eastward by ex- iles into distant lands such as Persia, India, and even China). It was at this council, by the way, that the Bishop of Jerusa- lem was officially raised to the status of patriarch. Then, too, the Patriarch of Constantinople — who had been declared sec- ond only to the pope at Rome at the second ecumenical council in Constantinople, in 881 — now had his power extended over large areas. The pope, Leo I (the Great), objected strenuously to this increase in the patriarch’s power, correctly foreseeing that it would end in an attempt to make Constantinople su- preme over Christendom. This was the opening blow in the battle between the religious leaders of the two halves of the

44 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

empire, a battle that was never to be resolved in complete vic- tory for either side.

Marcian was an honest and frugal emperor who did his best to put the financial affairs of the empire in order and who, by the end of his reign, had left a well-filled treasury. Naturally, he could not have managed this had he continued to pay exor- bitant tribute to the Huns. Almost immediately upon mounting the throne in fact, Marcian flatly refused to pay any further tribute. It was a daring move and there might have been serious con- sequences, had Attila not had his eyes on the West. He judged he had milked the East for all it would bear and the walls of Constantinople were going to stand no matter what he did. Out west the pickings might be poorer, but they would be surer. So in 451 he finally let the eastern strategy of pay-and- point work out in full. He rode his horsemen westward and the Eastern Empire never saw him or his Huns again.

Pulcheria died in 453, leaving all her possessions to the poor, and Marcian survived her for four years. When he died in 457, the dynasty of Theodosius I came to an end.

THE END OF THE WEST

When Marcian died, the most powerful man in Constanti- nople was Aspar, the aging leader of the German mercenaries. He had been defeated by Gaiseric the Vandal and by Attila the Hun, so he could not really pose as a great military leader. However, he had his Germans behind him and they were para- mount within the city.

Had he not been an Arian by religion, Aspar could have made himself emperor without trouble. The Roman Empire, from

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 45

the time it had been founded nearly five centuries before, had never adopted the notion of a hereditary succession to the throne or the concept of a “royal family.” In theory, the em- peror was elected to office. This was because the Roman Em- pire had first been a Roman republic, and Augustus, the first emperor, had been intent on maintaining at least the show of continuity of republican traditions. To be sure, son often succeeded father, as Arcadius suc- ceeded Theodosius I and Theodosius II succeeded Arcadius, but this didn’t have to happen. An emperor could be succeeded by an adopted son, or by a son-in-law, or by someone entirely unrelated. When no obvious direct heir existed, no search was made through the collateral branches of the ruling house, with an agreed-upon order of precedence among the different rela- tives. Instead, someone became emperor because some element of power — often the army, sometimes the palace officials, even a rioting populace at times — declared him one.

The flexibility of choice of emperor often served to bring ca- pable men to the throne who would otherwise have been utterly excluded, but it also encouraged conspiracies and coups since any general or politician (or even peasant) could aspire to the crown.

But Arianism, like castration, was one of the few qualities absolutely incompatible with the throne and Aspar searched about for a Catholic who would be a willing puppet. He chose one of his officers, who, in 457, became Emperor Leo I.

Like Marcian, Leo was a Thracian and he was also nearly sixty when he ascended the throne. Leo was crowned by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and was the first emperor who submitted to the rite. It lent a further aura of divinity to the imperial office and, indeed, throughout the history of the East- ern Empire, the emperor, much more than the patriarch, was considered the representative of God on earth. It was as close to a divine monarchy as a Christian nation could come, and in

46 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

time the notion was to have important repercussions in the West.* The crowning of the emperor also lent stil] further au- thority to the Patriarch of Constantinople, something which was not lost on his chief competitor, the pope at Rome.

Leo I was a much more vigorous and independent person than Aspar had expected. For one thing, the new emperor had dreams of glory, he wanted to reunite the Roman Empire and destroy the Germanic hordes who now squatted on what was very nearly the corpse of the western half.

The most dangerous of the Germanic kingdoms that had arisen was still the Vandal kingdom of North Africa which the empire had vainly assailed under Theodosius II. And the Van- dal king was still Gaiseric, who, by now, was in his seventies.

In 460 the weak western emperor had sent a fleet against Gaiseric which failed so miserably that the emperor was forced to abdicate in disgrace. Leo decided to take a hand himself. In 467 he managed to set a favorite of his own on the western throne. This was Anthemius (an-thee’mee-us ) who was a son- in-law of Marcian, Leo’s predecessor. Leo felt he could count on the new western emperor for full cooperation. He then pre- pared a tremendous fleet of over 1100 ships, manned, according to a probably exaggerated account, by 100,000 men. The fleet scoured westward, taking the island of Sardinia from the Van- dals, and then disembarked the army near Carthage.

The fleet, however, was under the leadership of Basiliscus (baz”ih-lis’kus ), who was the brother of Leo’s wife. To be the brother-in-law of an emperor may be a great thing, but it doesn’t automatically give one military capacity. As it hap- pened, he was incompetent.

Basiliscus crowded the ships of the fleet into the harbor until

* The quasi-divinity of the emperor did not prevent conspiracies against him; and it did not prevent his being overthrown, blinded, or hideously tortured on occasion. Nevertheless, while he was on

the throne, the aura of godship contributed immeasurably to his authority.

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST 47

there was scarcely room for maneuver. To top that off, he placed a most inadequate guard over it. So Gaiseric waited for nightfall and sent fire ships floating into the midst of the fleet. In no time there was a holocaust upon the water. By the time some of the imperial ships managed to maneuver their way out of the deathtrap, the expedition had dissolved in ruin. The fiasco is supposed to have cost the empire about sixty- five tons of gold and to have left the treasury bankrupt for years. Basiliscus sought refuge in a church, survived, and even managed to escape punishment. He was, after all, the emper- or’s brother-in-law. After that, Leo had to abandon any hope of reuniting the empire and the West was left to its fate. There was still something, though, that he could do. He could rid himself of Aspar. There was personal resentment here. Aspar had made Leo what he was, and a maker of kings can rarely avoid rubbing it in and demanding payment of all sorts, too. The ruler doesn’t exist who can endure that for long. Besides, Aspar had strongly supported the choice of Basiliscus as admiral of the lost fleet and the odor of disgrace therefore attached itself to him. Finally, it is also possible that Leo had had plenty of time to observe what had happened in the dying West. There, the Ger- mans had first infiltrated as mercenaries in the service of the emperor and had then taken over province after province. This had not yet happened in the Eastern Empire but Aspar and his Germans might make it happen. After all, though Constanti- nople could not be taken from without, it could be easily taken —almost without a struggle — by an army band already lo- cated within the city. Leo decided he must rely no longer on barbarian mercenaries. He must find a way of defending the Eastern Empire with its own subjects, subjects who could be expected to have some loyalty to its ideals and institutions.

No doubt there had been western emperors who had thought this, too, but nowhere in the western realm had there been a

48 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

population reserve with sufficient toughness to substitute for the Germans. The East was more fortunate. In south-central Asia Minor, there was a rough, mountainous area called Isau- ria, which was inhabited by a hardy group of hill people. Gradually, Leo built up a personal bodyguard of Isaurians under the leadership of a tough warrior named Zeno (zee’noh). To stimulate that warrior’s loyalty, he quietly arranged a marriage for him with his daughter, Ariadne (ar’ee-ad’nee ). In 471 Leo was ready to make his move, with the Isaurians striking quickly and unexpectedly. Aspar was seized and exe- cuted and his German troops first disarmed, then either de- stroyed or exiled. Leo had achieved his wish. The Eastern Em- pire was to be defended by its own troops. It was to rely on mercenaries no more — at least not for six centuries. Zeno had a son, named Leo for his grandfather, who was des- ignated heir to the throne. When Leo I died in 474, the infant Leo II reigned for a few months in his place and then died. Now what? By the lax rules of imperial succession, Zeno, al- though a soldier of undistinguished family background, was son-in-law to one emperor and father of another and that was enough. He claimed the throne, but for two years had to fight off the equally tenuous claim of the egregious Basiliscus, who had been brother-in-law to one emperor and uncle to another. In 476 Zeno won out. The chief of the Isaurian bodyguard became the Eastern Emperor.

In that same year a crucial event had taken place in the West. A German warrior, Odoacer (oh’’doh-ay’ser) had taken over Italy and had deposed the western emperor. Nor did he bother to appoint anyone else in his place. There simply was no longer any western emperor.

Many writers, who think of events primarily in terms of the west, describe this as the “fall of the Roman Empire.” It was, of course, no such thing; the empire remained. It was just that in the West no emperor kept his seat. There was, however, an emperor in the East who ruled over the still-intact Eastern Em-

THE CAPITAL OF THE EAST — 49

pire and who now ruled, in theory at least, over the whole empire — east and west — as Theodosius I had done.

Indeed, the emperors in Constantinople never, never, never gave up their claim to the provinces that had been part of the empire at its height. To the end of its history, they called their realm the Roman Empire and themselves Roman emperors and the people they ruled Romans. Even at the very end, when the entire territory ruled from Constantinople consisted of very little more than the city itself, that practice was resolutely and stubbornly followed. Yet for us to call the realm controlled from Constantinople the Roman Empire would give a false impression. From the time of 476 on, Rome was rarely in the hands of the emperor at Constantinople, and never was it to be the center of imperial rule again. In fact, through most of its subsequent history, Rome was to be a center of opposition to the empire at Con- stantinople. What, then, do we call the Eastern Empire? The westerners themselves, in later centuries, called it the Greek Empire and there came a time when the empire was indeed confined largely to people of Greek language and culture. Yet that is unduly restrictive. At times it consisted of many non-Greeks and its traditions were drawn from its Roman and Christian heritage as well as its Greek one. We might look at it in another way. The Roman Empire is so called because it was ruled from Rome. The Eastern Empire was ruled from Constantinople. Ought it not, then, to be called the Constantinopolitan Empire? The trouble with that is that the phrase is clumsy. In recent centuries, the device of using Byzantium, the older name of Constantinople, was advanced. Thus, the empire, as ruled from Constantinople, came to be- known as the Byzantine Empire.

There is some dispute as to the point in time at which one should start speaking of the Byzantine Empire, and some would set it as late as the seventh century. I, however, will

50 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

start right now, with the reign of the Emperor Zeno, when for the first time there was an emperor at Constantinople with effective rule only over the eastern half of the realm and no emperor at all in the West.

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

THE EAST GOES WEST

THE TWO STRATEGIES

The magic of the Roman name was still so potent that even the German warriors who ruled over the West dared not en- tirely admit that they had actually destroyed half the empire. Odoacer never called himself king of Italy; he only declared himself ruler of the German tribes within Italy. Consequently, when Emperor Zeno made him a patrician and general of the empire (to continue the fiction that Odoacer was in Italy only as the emperor's deputy), Odoacer was delighted to accept the titles and play the game.

This use of prestige was, in fact, to be a potent weapon of the emperors at Constantinople for centuries. A barbarian tribal king with actual power in his hand would allow himself to be bought off by a resounding title, a robe of state, a staff or some other symbol of imperial office.

52 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Was it foolish for a tribal ruler to be so impressed by baubles? Perhaps not. The empty symbols added to his pres- tige and worth in his own eyes and in those of his subjects and made his rule more stable. What more could he ask?

Nevertheless, despite the confidence that Zeno pretended to have in Odoacer, he remained nervous about this closest of all the Germanic kingdoms. He cast about for some way of weak- ening him before it occurred to Odoacer to march eastward into the Balkans.

The means was at hand. New German war bands were raid- ing the Balkans. These were the Ostrogoths. They had been conquered by the Huns a century before, but the Hunnish em- pire had collapsed after Attila’s death and now they were free to range south of the Danube on their own.

They were under a competent leader named Theodoric (thee- od’oh-rik) who had risen to power in 474, and Zeno decided to try pay-and-point once again. Why not deputize Theodoric as a general of the empire and send him into Italy to fight Odoa- cer? That would get rid of the Ostrogothic menace right away, and in Italy there would always be the chance that the two groups of Germans might destroy each other. Theodoric was glad to agree to the proposition and in 488 marched out of the Balkans and into Italy. There, within a few years, he defeated and killed Odoacer and established an Os- trogothic kingdom of his own, one that was far stronger than Odoacer’s had been. In this respect, Zeno’s bright plan had backfired. On the other hand, Theodoric, having gained his kingdom, proved to be a man of ability and peace, who caused no trouble for the empire.

But barbarians were not the only problems disturbing Con- stantinople. In Zeno’s time, Nestorianism was troubling the Church. At the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon, it had finally been condemned and its contention that Jesus had two natures, human and divine, in very loose association — was declared heretical. Jesus, in the Nestorian view, was essentially

THE EAST GOES WEST 53

a man, but one who was possessed by a divine spirit so that he might accomplish an important purpose. The Catholic view was that Jesus had both a human and a divine nature and both were equal. Jesus was both man and God at once.

But Nestorianism had provoked a reaction at the other ex- treme. Some theologians maintained that Jesus had but a single nature that was wholly divine, so that Jesus was not man at all but only God. This view was called Monophysitism (moh- nof’ih-sy’tiz-um), which comes from Greek words meaning “one nature.”

Monophysitism had also been rejected at the council of Chal- cedon. However, where Nestorianism had declined and been driven out of the empire, Monophysitism persisted and grew stronger. It was particularly strong in Egypt and Syria, the non- Greek portions of the empire. By supporting Monophysitism, the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch could express their rivalry with Constantinople, while the Egyptian and Syrian people could sharpen their national self-awareness against Greek domination.

Zeno did his best to quash the Monophysites and half per- suaded, half forced the eastern bishops to sign their acceptance of a kind of compromise between the Catholic and the Mo- nophysite view. Like most compromises it satisfied neither side.

In 491 Zeno died and again there was no direct successor. There was stil] Ariadne, however, the daughter of Leo I, the mother of Leo II, and the widow of Zeno. This connection with three emperors lent her a certain weight. She married a gov- ernment administrator of finances who was known for his utter honesty and who was popular with the people. He became em- peror as Anastasius I (an’as-tay’shee-us ), and at his coronation the cry greeted him: “Reign as you have lived.”

By and large, he did. He was able to carry out a policy that is always as popular as it is rare — the reduction of taxes. Even more remarkable was the fact that he combined this with effi-

54 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

cient administration so that governmental services did not dete- riorate.

Then, too, he broke up the Isaurian guards that had been established by Leo I. They had been useful as a device to get rid of the Germans, but under their fellow countryman Zeno they had grown strong enough to play the same dangerous role. This, however, cost Anastasius a nasty civil war in Isauria that weakened the East sufficiently to allow the ever-watchful Per- sians to win some border skirmishes and take some border for- tresses. In the Balkans, new enemies were arising now that Zeno had gotten rid of the Ostrogoths by sending them into Italy. Among ‘these were the Slavs, a group of people who, in the centuries when the Roman realm was at its height had dwelt in the marshes that are now to be found on the Polish-Soviet border. In the centuries of the Roman decline, they had been dominated first by the Ostrogoths, then by the Huns, and then again by the Ostrogoths.

Even under such domination, this patient peasant people en- dured and multiplied. And when their overlords were gone, they expanded eastward into what are now the plains of Russia and the Ukraine, westward into what is now East Germany, and southward into the Balkans.

Joining them in the Balkans were non-Slavic tribes, called the Bulgars. Their original home had been along the Volga River (indeed Bulgar and Volga may come from the same word root), and they were an Asian people related to the Huns. They were pulled along westward with the Huns, and when the Hunnish empire disappeared, they remained along the Danube.

The Bulgars intermarried with the Slavs and adopted their language. Eventually, they came to be considered a completely Slavic people.

In one important respect the Slavs differed from the Ger-

THE EAST GOES WEST BD

manic war bands which had preceded them. The Germans tended to form a military caste, ruling over subjected peasants. The Slavs were peasants as well as fighters. Where they raided, they tended to settle down and remain. They tilled the soil and had children. Slowly but surely over the space of sev- eral centuries, they changed the ethnic character of the lands south of the Danube, turning them Slavic nearly to the Aegean Sea — as they remain today.

Anastasius, in addition to having to deal with the beginnings of a Slavic influx, had also inherited Zeno’s religious dilemma. He had to choose whether to adopt a southern strategy or a western strategy.

The southern provinces of the Byzantine Empire — Egypt and Syria — were united with Constantinople politically, but they were now separated religiously, for they were Monophy- site. What’s more, they stayed Monophysite; they never turned Catholic. On the other hand, the western provinces of what had once been the Roman Empire were no longer united with Constantinople politically, but they were Catholic and in reli- gious sympathy with it against the Monophysites. And they stayed Catholic, too. The problem, then, was this: ought Anastasius try to concili- ate the southern provinces by making some compromise with Monophysitism along the lines Zeno had attempted in the pre- vious reign, or perhaps even going farther? That would be the southern strategy, and by use of it Egypt and Syria might be mollified so that a strong and compact empire could be built up around the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea. If this were done, however, the western provinces might well be lost for- ever.

On the other hand, why not adopt a western strategy and attempt to regain the lost provinces — to which Constantinople never relinquished its claim? After all, no matter how dissatis- fied Syria and Egypt might be, where could they go? Imperial

56 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

forces were in firm control there, so let the Syrians and Egyptians mutter. If the rulers of Constantinople remained firmly Catholic, they would always be greeted as saviors by a western population that was also Catholic but was living under the domination of Arian aliens such as the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Visigoths in Spain, and the Vandals in North Africa.

Anastasius wavered and decided to try the southern strategy. After all the western strategy would require war and he was a man of peace. Therefore, he moved farther and farther toward the Monophysite position.

Unfortunately, that meant trouble at home. By and large, the Greeks of the Balkans and Asia Minor were as staunchly Catholic as the westerners of Italy and Spain, and as little pleased with their emperor’s appeasement of the south.

In Constantinople, this displeasure could make itself felt in the hippodrome — and dangerously. The public passion for amusement (now that gladiatorial contests were outlawed) was concentrated with enormous intensity on the chariot races in the hippodrome. In given races, the drivers were distin- guished by liveries in different colors so that the audience could easily see who was winning and who losing. Red and white were used first, then blue and green were added. Naturally, individuals picked their favorite colors and grew emotionally involved, much as modern Americans get emotion- ally involved with one baseball team or another. As time went on, though, the men of Constantinople went much farther than baseball-happy Americans do. The Blues and Greens came to overshadow the other two and their followers grew in numbers and intensity until in the end they became virtually hostile pri- vate armies,

Naturally, their hatred wasn’t entirely a matter of chariots and horses. They began to adopt opposing political and religious views. Thus, the Blues supported Catholicism and the Greens supported Monophysitism, and when Anastasius adopted his southern strategy, Blue-instigated riots broke out all over Con-

THE EAST GOES WEST sift

stantinople. Worse yet, a general in charge of the Balkan forces went into open rebellion in 513, backed by the Slavs and Bul- gars he was supposed to be fighting.

By the time Anastasius managed to quiet the situation and, in 515, to crush the rebellion, he decided the southern strategy wasn't paying off. He moved back toward Catholicism and began to make overtures to the West.

These overtures made headway. Important Italians allowed themselves to begin intrigues in favor of the empire and against the aging Ostrogothic king, Theodoric. Theodoric, angered at such intrigues at the end of a long and prosperous reign in which he had been honestly concerned for the welfare of his Italian subjects, was lured into tyranny. What had been a mag- nificent reign thus ended in a cloud of harshness. But the western strategy had only a limited success. The Ro- man pope always insisted on clear predominance over the Con- stantinopolitan patriarch, something the patriarch would never grant. (On that rock, all compromise would founder in the end.) Then, too, the western Catholics had another direction in which to turn. In what had been Gaul — and what is now France — a new group of Germans had risen to power. These were the Franks under a leader named Clovis I. The Franks were pagans to begin with but, in 496, Clovis accepted baptism as a Catholic. The Franks were the first im- portant Germanic tribe to adopt Catholic rather than Arian Christianity. It became possible, then, for the submerged Catholics of Italy, Spain, and Africa, who resented their Arian masters and yet were suspicious of Byzantine ambitions, to turn to the Franks.*

When Anastasius died in 518, neither the southern strategy nor the western strategy had been really successful, but the treasury was full and the empire was firm and stable. It could be worse.

* For the history of the Franks in some detail, see my book The Dark Ages (Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

UNCLE AND NEPHEW

There was instant intrigue over the succession, for Anastasius had left behind no clear heirs. The commander of the home guards in the capital was in charge of the one organized armed force within reach of the palace, however, and in the absence of a clear successor, he could easily make himself emperor. No one, after all, would dare oppose his soldiers, so he seized the office. He made a strange emperor. In the first place, he was about sixty-eight years old. He had been born in Illyria, the same province in which Diocletian and Constantine I had been born, and was probably of Gothic ancestry. He was born a peasant and he remained illiterate all his life, so that the cultured Greeks of the capital found themselves ruled by an old man who couldn't read. But the old man was strong, intelligent, and had a nephew who made up all his deficiencies. The new emperor was named Justin (jus’tin) and his nephew was Justinian (just-tin’ee-an). This nephew, aged thirty-five at the time of his uncle’s crown- ing, was very intelligent and highly educated. He was subtle, clever, and charming —a master at ingratiating himself with the aristocracy. Justin made use of his clever nephew to the fullest, so that Justinian might very well be said to have been the true ruler of the empire during the lifetime of his uncle. At the same time, Justin did not choose to tempt his nephew too far. Justin was old and would not live long. When he died, Justinian would be the logical successor if he behaved himself. To make sure the nephew behaved himself, Justin refused to acknowledge him openly as his successor.

THE EAST GOES WEST 59

Justin and Justinian were both ardent (even bigoted) Catho- lics and when they came to power the southern strategy was resoundingly dropped and the western strategy was all in all. The Roman pope was treated with the utmost respect; there was a brief honeymoon between Rome and Constantinople.

To be sure, Italy was still under the control of Theodoric (as old a man as Justin and as illiterate) and while he lived, the Byzantine Empire could advance only on the religious front. However, he would not live forever and he had no sons,

Justinian, in particular, could wait. Both Theodoric and Justin would be dead soon. He was right. Theodoric died in 526 and was succeeded by a young grandson with his mother as regent. Then, on April 4, 527, the Emperor Justin, feeling death tiptoeing toward him, had Justinian crowned as co- emperor. The old man judged it well indeed. He had not quite four months of life left in him and when he died on August 1, after a nine-year reign, the succession of Justinian was smooth and trouble free. Justinian shared his title and his powers, from the first, with his wife, Theodora, for she was crowned with him. Theodora is a most controversial historical character. We know her life story mainly from a contemporary Byzantine historian, Proco- pius (proh-koh’pee-us), whose official histories contain nothing but praise of the emperor and empress. In secret, though, he also wrote Anecdota (“not to be published”), which was full of the most scurrilous attacks on all the high officials he praised so fulsomely in his official history.

It is possible, of course, that the scandals in Anecdota were really true and could only be told in secret if Procopius wanted to stay alive. On the other hand, it is also possible that Proco- pius enjoyed exaggerating, or even inventing, in order to satisfy some grudge or to produce a popular book.

We shall never know how much to believe, but Procopius tells us that Theodora was the daughter of a circus employee of Constantinople. She went on the stage early in life and became

60 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

a prostitute. She was good at the profession and became fa- mous, finally attracting the attention of Justinian who was then heir to the throne. Justinian fell violently in love with the beautiful girl and managed to persuade his uncle to let him marry her. The marriage took place in. 523, when he was forty and she twenty-three.

Many people are scandalized at the thought of a prostitute reigning as empress, but remember we only have Procopius’ word for it. What we can say, despite Procopius, is that, from all the evidence we have, it was a most successful marriage. Furthermore, as empress she lived a most moral life and gave no grounds for scandal. She did, to be sure, establish homes for reformed prostitutes and that can be taken as harking back to her old profession. On the other hand, it might mean only that she was a human individual with a feeling of pity for a gener- ally despised and usually mistreated class of women. One more point: prostitute or not, she proved an able and accomplished empress, as capable of ruling as Justinian. Dur- ing her twenty years on the throne, she was an unfailing prop to him and, on one important occasion, as we shall soon see, proved herself his superior, saving his throne and possibly his life. In fact, Justinian and Theodora are probably the most re- markable man-and-wife rulers in history. The one subject on which Justinian and Theodora were at odds lay in the matter of western versus southern strategy. Theodora was a convinced proponent of the southern strategy and was herself in pronounced sympathy with Monophysitism. Occasionally, she persuaded her husband to make some half- hearted gesture of conciliation toward the southern provinces, but he never went very far or very long. He was himself a thor- oughgoing advocate of the western strategy, and dreamed of reconstituting the Roman Empire in its entirety, with a unified Catholic religion and with himself both emperor and supreme religious head — the ultimate authority in all things.

ORGANIZING FOR PEACE AND WAR

Immediately upon his accession, Justinian began, in his Catholic enthusiasm, to clear away the religious relics that were still to be found here and there. More stringent laws against Jews, Arians, and pagans were passed with the ultimate design of rooting them out altogether.

In this he was but a creature of his times. With continued prosperity, the Christian establishment grew harsher and harsher in their views on dissent. Some eighty years before Justin- ian’s accession, Pope Leo I had already decided that the crime of heresy deserved nothing less than the death sentence.

The most notable accomplishment of Justinian’s drive against those who persisted in thinking otherwise than dictated by official doctrine was the closing of the Athenian Academy in 529. The Academy had been founded by Plato in 387 s.c. and had been the center of pagan philosophy for over nine centu- ries. Since the time of Constantine, however, it had been withering steadily and it was now nothing but a collection of harmless scholars going through the automatic motions in- volved in studying a dead past. They might better have been preserved as curious fossils from an ancient epoch. Justinian, however, guided by his own rigid beliefs, shut down the school and the last pagan philosophers, sighing for a world that did not exist any longer, made their way eastward to Persia.*

There are some who date the end of ancient times at 529 be- cause of this act. There is some reason for this. As effete as the

* Persia, though under an enlightened monarch at the time, did not suit them either, and eventually most of them returned to Athens to die in silence.

62 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

pagan Academy had become, it still retained the learning of ancient Greece which the Christian scholars of the city tended to shun in embarrassment. A two-century dark age, as far as classical knowledge was concerned, followed.

Later, Justinian ended another link with the past. Ever since 509 B.c. the Roman republic (a mere city-state at first) had been ruled by two consuls. After the establishment of the em- pire in 29 s.c. the consuls no longer had any real power, but the office was retained by Augustus, the first emperor, who kept the old republican forms of government wherever he could. When Constantinople was founded by Constantine, consuls were ap- pointed in the new capital, too, and these continued right down to 541. And, then, after 1050 years, Justinian ended the prac- tice. Justinian’s end of the consulate was but an item in a general overhaul he set in motion with respect to the entire legal system of the empire. New laws are, after all, constantly being made by any busy government and old laws fall into disuse. After some generations, the legal system becomes a musty tangle of conflicting precedents and it becomes necessary to reorganize it, pruning away the dead and filling in the gaps. As soon as he became emperor, Justinian appointed a com- mission of ten men to reorganize the legal system, placing at its head a remarkably capable lawyer, Tribonian (trih-boh’nee-an). Working industriously, they probed through the decaying records of centuries of history and in 529 came up with twelve volumes of a well-organized legal system made up of 4652 laws, volumes which any judge might consult with ease. This was the “Codex Justinianus,” or Code of Justinian. It was followed by a fifty-volume collection of legal opinions from the second and third centuries (the golden age of Roman law) that would serve to guide judges in their interpretations of the code. Lastly, a general textbook of law was prepared.

The Code of Justinian was conservative, sticking to the old wherever possible. It did, however, reinforce the changed atti-

THE EAST GOES WEST 63

tude toward the emperor that had been introduced by Diocle- tian, two and a half centuries before. The emperor, according to the code, was absolute and his will was law.

This sounds repulsive to us but it was used to reinforce a more general view which we can perhaps better tolerate. The judge, as the emperor’s representative, was the final authority within the courtroom and he was guided by the law. The code therefore took the attitude that it was the law that was su- preme, so that in actual practice the emperor, while absolute in theory, usually considered himself subject to the laws. Under Christian influence some aspects of the law grew more humane than they had been in pagan times and other aspects grew harsher. Thus, under the Code of Justinian, it became easier to free slaves and sell land. The rights of widows were more sedulously protected and children were no longer consid- ered the absolute possession of their parents. On the other hand, the crime of sacrificing to pagan gods was made punish- able by death, and any convert to Christianity who backslid was to be beheaded. As for Jews, they were not allowed to hold Christian slaves or to convert Christians.

It was the code of law inspired by Justinian which was his most durable contribution to history. It remained the basic law of the land for 900 years and, in time, it reached the West.

The code, by the way, was prepared in Latin, a sign that the empire still considered itself thoroughly Roman, despite the fact that Greek was the language spoken in its core provinces and by educated men everywhere within its boundaries. Of course, Greek translations of the code appeared quickly. And to show that the wheel of time turned inexorably, the code was the last great product of Byzantine letters to be written in Latin, even though that western language was to remain the official language of the court for another century.

The empire was changing in other ways, no less distinctive for being less than earthshaking. In Justinian’s time, the ma- jestic toga which has always been unalterably associated with

64 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

the Roman aristocracy, was gone. In its place was a long, bro- caded cloak of a type which Romans of the palmy days of the empire would have considered barbarian.

Justinian was carefully preparing his image as a completely orthodox emperor, for he was planning the ultimate western strategy. He planned to make war and to present himself to the western people as a Catholic liberator. The times seemed ripe, for there were no great men in the western world. The Theod- orics, Clovises, Gaiserics, Alarics were all dead and far less competent men were in their place. To fit the times, Justinian now needed two things: a general, and peace in the East so that he could concentrate on the West. In the East were the Persians, and Justinian had, unfortu- nately, inherited a war with them. It could not have been otherwise. For almost 600 years, Rome had fought with its eastern neighbors (whether they called themselves Parthians or Persians) over a boundary line that had scarcely shifted in all that time. One can scarcely think of another case in his- tory where wars have continued so persistently at a particular border and achieved so little. Usually, the Persians won pitched battles, for they generally outnumbered the Byzantines, whose prime care was to avoid battle anyway. The Byzantine strategy was to build strong for- tifications that small resolute bands could hold against much larger forces. Against these fortifications the Persians would dash themselves in vain and, in the end, despite their victories in the field, they would have to agree to yet one more inconclu- sive peace. The pattern was broken by a young man named Belisarius (bel’ih-sar’ee-us ). He was born in Thrace in the northern Bal- kans and it is possible he may have been of Slavic birth. At least his name may be Slavic, meaning “white prince” or “white dawn.” He was in his early twenties when he began to attract attention in the Persian war, leading his men in daring raids deep into Armenia. In 530, when he was only twenty-five, he

THE EAST GOES WEST 65

won a remarkable victory at Dara, in northern Mesopotamia (700 miles southeast of Constantinople) against a Persian army used to victories in the field. The Persian army outnumbered Belisarius’ troops, too. Justinian decided he had his general. In 532, he arranged peace with the Persians and brought Belisar- ius to Contantinople.*

BACK FROM THE ASHES

Justinian found instant use for Belisarius, but not quite in the way he expected. The Blue and Green factions of the circus had continued their turbulent opposition to each other and street fighting became more common. Indeed, under the pre- tense of being Blue or Green, common lawbreakers were loot- ing and vandalizing indiscriminately and with impunity. On the whole, the Blue faction had the better of it. They upheld Catholicism and Justinian was therefore on their side. The Greens were bitter over that and each year grew more rebellious. Nor were there intriguers wanting among the im- portant men of the empire who were all too willing to use Green manpower and resentment to further their own ends. For in- stance, two nephews of the old emperor Anastasius were quietly supplying the Greens with arms and money. By modern stand- * It was at the Battle of Dara, by the way, that Belisarius first em- ployed Procopius, who was to write the history of Justinian’s reign, including the scandalous Anecdota. Procopius remained Beli- sarius’ secretary for years and since Justinian eventually treated Belisarius very shabbily, we might speculate that the historian’s rough treatment of the emperor and empress in Anecdota was in reprisal for that. However, Procopius was almost as unkind to Belisarius himself, and posterity is unanimous in praising the virtues of the general. If Procopius is wrong in connection with Belisarius, his reliability with respect to Justinian and Theodora must also be held suspect.

66 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

ards, they, of course, had a greater right to the throne than Jus- tinian had, but we must remember that the emperor’s office was, in theory, elective and not hereditary.

The storm broke in January 532, at a great festival at the hippodrome. As chariot race after chariot race thundered its way across the course, the Greens grew constantly more clam- orous, shouting and yelling their complaints at the emperor, who sat in stern silence.

Finally, by the twenty-second race, Justinian could take no more. He had a crier order the Greens to be silenced and when they weren't, he had the crier shout insults at them. For a while, there was a curious dialogue between the emperor and the Greens that destroyed imperial dignity and inflamed the Greens to a murderous frenzy.

The Greens took to the streets; a civil war erupted; there was a wild orgy of destruction and half of Constantinople went up in flames. The rioters cried, “Nika!” “Nika!” (“Victory!”); and from that cry this incident has been referred to as the “Nika Insurrection” ever since.

Justinian, now thoroughly alarmed, tried to placate the riot- ers with concessions, but by now the extremists were in control. His offers, which would have been gratefully accepted a day before, were greeted with ominous distrust.

Justinian retreated to his palace, which was at least half a fortress, and considered what to do. The days passed, the city — or what was left of it — smoldered and smoked in the hands of the rioters, and one of the nephews of Anastasius was actu- ally crowned emperor by the mob.

There seemed only one way out. The palace grounds abutted on the Bosporus. Ships were waiting. At a council meeting, where Theodora and the young Belisarius were pres- ent, Justinian frankly gave up. He proposed that they pile what treasures they could salvage into the waiting ships and retreat to some safe place far from Constantinople. It might be that some chance for turning the tables would come.

THE EAST GOES WEST 67

That might have been done, and Justinian’s career would surely have come to an end, but at this point, Theodora rose. Coolly, she announced that Justinian was perfectly free to es- cape. “There is the sea. There are your ships,” she said, with more than a trace of scorn. But for her own part, she had no intention of leaving. To be ruler was to run the risk of rebellion and death; that was part of the game and she would face it. Better to die an empress than live a refugee. She said, “For my own part, I adhere to the maxim of antiquity, that the throne is a glorious sepulcher.”

After that, Justinian could scarcely play the coward. He, too, would stay. He turned to Belisarius and asked if the general could handle the situation and Belisarius said he could. There were 3000 soldiers available and these Belisarius led quietly and secretly to the hippodrome, where the chief rioters had gathered in wild expectation of total victory.

Belisarius blocked the exits and broke in upon them with sudden fury. The rioters far outnumbered the soldiers, but they were caught by surprise in a constricted area. They were unprepared and probably, for the most part, half drunk. The soldiers began killing right and left and panic finished the job. It was a slaughter. Before it was over, some 30,000 people were slain and Constantinople lay, ruined and silent, at the feet of Justinian. The nephews of Anastasius were executed and the power of the hippodrome factions was broken forever.

The riots, which had virtually destroyed Constantinople, ended, however, by making it greater than ever. The city had to be rebuilt and Justinian went about that with great energy and enthusiasm, so that Constantinople rose more beautiful than ever out of its ashes.

Justinian employed two architects, Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles (both cities are in southwestern Asia Minor) and their work was to stand for nine centuries. There were modifications, to be sure, but for as long as the empire lasted, Constantinople the Beautiful remained essentially as

68 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Isidore and Anthemius had built it. during the reign of Justinian.

Modern city planners would have found it inadequate, un- doubtedly, for it had few real thoroughfares and most of the city was a rabbit warren of narrow streets in which large num- bers lived under horrible slum conditions. In this respect, though, it was no worse than other cities of the time, allowing for the fact that some of the misery was intensified out of sheer bigness. Constantinople in Justinian’s time had, according to some estimates, a cosmopolitan population of 600,000, and there were times in its history when the city’s population reached 1,000,000 — about the maximum any city could hold before the Industrial Revolution without mass starvation. On the other hand, behind Constantinople’s thirteen miles of walls and fifty fortified gates, were wonders no other city of the time had. Some of those were pure show: gorgeous palaces and churches, with statuary and artworks, ablaze with gold. Others had much more real worth. There were free hospitals and free care for the impoverished; there were street-lighting and fire brigades; there were both an ample supply of fresh water and a sewage system that worked well enough. No city in western Europe at that time, or for a thousand years afterward, could match Constantinople in this. It was well equipped for war, too. Behind those miles of walls, water cisterns and grain silos were kept prudently filled in case of siege. A massive chain could be stretched across the entrance to the Golden Horn, when that was necessary, to keep out enemy ships. Whether for peace or war, Constantinople became the richest and best-organized city that had ever ex- isted on earth up to its time.

Furthermore, under Justinian, the Byzantines developed their distinctive art. The most characteristic aspect of this was the mosaic, consisting of small bits of brightly colored glass, or clear glass backed by gold leaf, put together to form scenes from the Bible, portraits of Jesus or of the emperor.

THE EAST GOES WEST 69

In itself, especially to people used to ordinary painting, mo- saics might seem a crude way to make a representation of the human figure, with results that were almost cartoonish. That, however, does not take into account its treatment of light. The bright and glittering glass reflected a shimmer of color that gave the objects represented a kind of glow that seemed to come from within. Inside a church, the mosaics came alive with an almost otherworldly illumination that was intensely impressive. The churches themselves represented the other great Byzan- tine artistic contribution — architecture. About 480, the archi- tects of Asia Minor had perfected a system of placing a hemi- spherical] dome upon a square support in such a way that the bottom of the dome could be pierced by many windows with- out sacrificing its stability. Such domes could be made im- mense without danger of collapse.

This new type of building had the chance to reach close to perfection after the destruction of Constantinople. The Nika Insurrection had utterly destroyed the church of Hagia So- phia,* the most important religious edifice in Constantinople, and Justinian set about rebuilding it on a scale of the utmost magnificence.

The ruins were cleared, a larger area was marked off, and for six years 10,000 men labored to build what was intended to be the most beautiful house of God in all history. Columns were carved of beautiful stone, including a red-purple feldspar called porphyry and a mottled green marble called verd an- tique. The walls were of polished marble of different colors and there were mosaics everywhere. The gold-leaf backing of the mosaics alone covered a total area of four acres.

It was the dome, though, that was most magnificent of all. So

* Hagia Sophia means “Holy Wisdom,” which is a manifestation of God. It is to God, then, that the church is dedicated. The phrase is usually translated “Saint Sophia,” giving the impression that it is

dedicated to some canonized woman. I shall call it Hagia Sophia to avoid giving that impression,

70 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

cleverly designed was it, so skillfully pierced with windows, that all the interior of the church — 108 feet across and 180 feet high — was bathed in sunlight which glanced off the mosa- ics, filling the church with beauty. The enormous dome seemed to have no support beneath it. at all, but to be sus- pended from heaven. (When an earthquake damaged the dome twenty years later, it was rebuilt on an even larger scale. )

Never in its long history did the Byzantine Empire attempt anything larger or more splendid than Justinian’s Hagia Sophia. It was the supreme product of Byzantine art, and it still stands today, more than fourteen centuries later, for men to marvel at (though, thanks to the vicissitudes of history, it is no longer a church).

In 587 the new Hagia Sophia was complete and at its dedica- tion, Justinian, unable to control his delight, cried out, “Solo- mon, I have outdone thee.” Considering the comparative re- sources of Justinian’s empire and Solomon’s kingdom, there is no doubt that Justinian was absolutely right in his claim. To celebrate the dedication, Justinian held a banquet for the peo- ple which, according to later accounts, involved the slaughter of over 10,000 sheep, oxen, swine, poultry, and deer. Yet, it must be admitted that Justinian’s outpouring of effort into Constantinople was done at the expense of the rest of the empire. To make Constantinople as impressive and as beautiful as it was took all the energy the empire could concentrate, and little was left over for other cities. In essence, the empire in Justinian’s time showed promise of becoming a one-city realm, with nothing but mere towns besides, and this tendency was to be ever more accentuated with time.

VICTORY IN THE WEST

But even while Constantinople was being rebuilt, Justinian was readying his great offensive westward, the offensive de-

THE EAST GOES WEST fT

signed to take back from the Germans what they had con- quered, and restore the empire of Constantine I and Theodo- sius I.

The Vandal kingdom of North Africa, with its capital at Car- thage, was the first target. It was isolated from the others by the sea and could not count on help from its brother Germans.

In 533, Belisarius was therefore placed in command of a fleet of some 500 ships, carrying 15,000 soldiers and as many sailors, 5000 horses, and all the needed supplies. It was much smaller than the expeditionary force sent out by Leo I half a century before, and since the former had failed miserably, how could the latter hope to succeed? Justinian counted on several fac- tors. Then, the fleet had been under the control of that nincom- poop, Basiliscus, and he had faced the great Gaiseric. Now there were no more Gaiserics among the Vandals, and at the head of the imperial forces was Belisarius.

It worked out as Justinian had expected. Belisarius landed in North Africa, kept his men under firm discipline, allowed no looting or mistreating of civilians, defeated the startled Vandals in two sharp and decisive battles, and in almost no time was in control of North Africa. The Vandal kingdom vanished forever into the garbage heap of history.

Belisarius’ victories over the German kingdoms, then and later, were partly the result of his skill at handling his men and his manner of maneuvering them in battle. Partly also, they were the result of new advances in the technique of war.

The Byzantine army had adopted the metal stirrups invented by the Huns and this made their cavalry an effective shock force capable of charging pell-mell, with no fear of falling off. Furthermore, they adopted the cataphract from the Persians. This was a horseman who was encased in armor (his horse as well), and the very word means “wholly enclosed.” These cata- phracts, what’s more, were archers and formed the backbone of the Byzantine army. They made initial assaults from a distance, as they charged by. Because they were armored and out of

fe CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

range, they were absolutely invulnerable. By the time the enemy was sufficiently in disorder, armored horsemen with lances rode in for the close fighting and the kill.

The German armies could not stand up against such a force and, with a man like Belisarius handling the cataphracts, it is not surprising that the Germans were repeatedly beaten by smaller imperial armies. Indeed, when, later in his career, Beli- sarius paraded captured German soldiers through a conquered city and followed them with his victorious army, the watching German women were appalled and humiliated. Not only were the conquerors fewer than those they had conquered, they were individually smaller and weaker than their defeated warriors. The women shouted accusations of cowardice at their men- folk, but that just meant they failed to understand that victory in war was more than just individual heroism.

Nor could the Germans seek redress by adopting the Byzan- tine system. The cataphract was more than just a horse and a bow and some armor. It took long years of training for a man to be able to control his horse with his knees and aim his bow accurately in any direction while moving at a full gallop.

In 534, then, Belisarius returned to Constantinople, a com- plete victor, with the last Vandal king a captive in his train. Justinian rewarded him by making him a consul (the office still had seven years to go before being put to an end) and making a terrible fuss over him. Yet all was not entirely well. Justinian had counted on his being successful but not that successful. A general can all too easily make himself emperor (Justinian’s own uncle had) and a very popular general could scarcely avoid it.

The safest thing to do was to get Belisarius out of the coun- try quickly. In 535 Justinian sent him off again; this time against the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy. Belisarius’ army was twice the size that had sufficed for the Vandals, but then, the Ostrogoths were expected to be — and were — the more formi-

dable foes.

THE EAST GOES WEST ia

Once again, the Justinian version of the western strategy began to pay off. The island of Sicily fell to Belisarius at once and the Catholic population there, as in Africa, greeted his men in transports of joy. Belisarius then invaded Italy itself and marched all the way to Rome before the Ostrogoths could catch their breath and mount a counteroffensive.

But now Justinian failed to cooperate. He wanted Belisarius to win, but not too easily. He wanted some of the shine off the hero so that it would be safe to have him in Constantinople. He therefore made it his business to withhold reinforcements. Bel- _isarius had to fight with insufficient men and money, and with a depressing knowledge of the lack of support at home. And yet, though Justinian is usually blamed for this, perhaps there is something to be said on his side. There is a case to be made against sending reinforcements. The Byzantine army won its victories not by the deployment of vast armies but through relatively small, thoroughly professional ones. At no time in its history was the Byzantine army larger than 120,000 men all told, and these had many borders to defend. The individual cataphract, highly trained over many years, could not be thrown away lightly. He had to be conserved. Byzantine military strategy made the avoidance of battles of primary concern. Any way of winning a military objective — diplomacy, tact, treachery, even outright bribery — was cheaper in the long run than a wasteful battle would be. Per- haps Justinian more or less sincerely felt that Belisarius could and must make do with a limited supply of men. And, as a matter of fact, such a policy worked for centuries, though it was one that lacked romantic appeal. The wild war- riors of the West who counted on nothing more than weight and numbers to win battles, and thought little of human life, scorned the Byzantines as cowardly. Their assessment comes down to us through our West-oriented history and the empire is almost universally underestimated in consequence. Yet even the briefest look at its long history, its many victories, its tenac-

74 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

ity under defeat would suffice to tell us that whatever else the Byzantines were, they weren’t cowards.

Despite Justinian’s parsimony with men, Belisarius made progress, withstood a long siege of Rome, and then went on to lay siege to the Ostrogothic capital at Ravenna. That siege wore on uselessly for a while and Justinian felt sufficiently un- easy to send a member of the imperial household to Italy to check on how matters were progressing.

The man was Narses (nahr’seez), an Armenian who had won Justinian’s regard during the course of the Nika Insurrection. With considerable bravery, he had flitted quietly among the rioters and, by persuasion and judicious bribery, managed to detach many of the Blues from the side of the rebellion. (They were pro-Justinian in any case and had joined the riot out of an anxiety not to miss out on the looting and destruction. )

He rose to higher office and eventually became grand cham- berlain, so that no one was superior to him in influence in the palace save for Justinian and Theodora themselves. Justinian’s trust in him was absolute and unlimited, for Narses had one quality that made it impossible for him to aspire to the imperial throne: he was a eunuch.

The arrival of this old eunuch (he was sixty at the time) in Italy in 538 was anything but welcome to Belisarius. He could guess easily enough that Narses’ sole function was that of spy and the two did not get along.

Eventually, the place was made so hot for Narses that he re- turned home, but the news followed (and perhaps it was car- ried by Narses) that the Ostrogoths besieged by Belisarius at Ravenna had offered to surrender to the general but not to the emperor. It was almost as though the Ostrogoths were bidding for favorable terms by offering to support Belisarius if he at- tempted to take the throne for himself (how else could he ac- cept terms that would be refused to Justinian? ).

We can't be sure the story is true; perhaps Narses invented it

THE EAST GOES WEST ao

to get back at Belisarius. In any case, Justinian seems to have believed it, for it filled him permanently with a deep suspicion as to Belisarius’ true intentions. Hastily, he attempted to make a long-distance deal with the Ostrogoths over Belisarius’ head. He offered a division of Italy, keeping the south for himself and leaving the north to the Ostrogoths. Belisarius refused to accept such a treaty and tightened the siege even against the advice of his own officers. And he succeeded, for the starving Ostrogoths had to give in.

Justinian must have been furious. To be sure, Belisarius had won a great victory and showed no real signs of disloyalty, then or ever, but he had come out of it seeming more resolute than the emperor. Indeed, Justinian, in his panicky reaction to the siege, had emerged looking rather foolish.

In anger, he recalled Belisarius in 540, and at once it became evident that Belisarius was an army in himself. After Belisar- ius left Italy, the imperial forces began losing and, as time went on, it looked as though they would be driven out of Italy alto- gether.

Of course, Justinian had an excuse. The Persians, noting Jus- tinian’s growing preoccupation in the West, had, without warn- ing, invaded Syria in 540 and had reached the Mediterranean. They laid siege to Antioch, and offered to leave it intact in re- turn for half a ton of gold. When that blackmailing offer was refused, the Persians took the city and sacked it. Justinian had to rush an army into Syria and he put it under the recalled Belisarius. Belisarius managed to hold off the Per- sians, but here, too, Justinian was careful to support him only meagerly. Nevertheless, Belisarius made things warm enough for the Persians so that they were forced to agree to a truce in 545 in return for a full ton of gold from Justinian.

The Persian war was not the only disaster that faced Justin- ian. The Balkans were a bleeding ulcer, for the Slavic and Bul- gar raids continued. In part, those raids were a sign of despera-

76 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

tion, for the raiders were being pushed-from the rear by a new eruption of Asian nomads. These were the Avars, who in race and culture were very much like the Huns of a century before. They had begun to pour into eastern Europe, overrunning ter- ritories of the Slavs and Bulgars and pushing some of them on ahead. Add to this the fact that for several years after 542, Constantinople suffered from a severe epidemic of the bubonic plague, and one can only wonder that Justinian managed to hold up at all.

Hold up he did. With the Persians in the east and the Slavs in the north and the plague at the very heart, Justinian remained true to the western strategy. Even before the peace with Persia was finally concluded, he had sent that patient workhorse, Belisarius, back to Italy to see what could be done about stopping the resurgent Ostrogoths.

Even then, he dared not give Belisarius sufficient troops to make victory possible. Caught as ever between the need to de- feat the Goths and his reluctance to allow Belisarius the fame of a victory, Justinian made it inevitable that after four years of indecisive campaigning, Belisarius could achieve only a stale- mate.

In 548 he was recalled permanently to Constantinople. (In that year, too, the Empress Theodora died of cancer. She was not yet fifty.) Belisarius’ recall did not end the Ostrogothic problem. Justinian needed someone as good as Belisarius but someone he could trust. And where could such a man be found? The emperor’s choice eventually fell on Narses, the eunuch.

It is amazing that Justinian should feel that a eunuch could lead troops, but Narses had held office against the barbarians in the Balkans in 551 and had acquitted himself well there. In a calculated gamble, then, Justinian sent him to Italy in 552, when he was seventy-four years old. And then Narses went on to prove himself a veritable monster of energy — perhaps the most unlikely general ever to attain great ends.

THE EAST GOES WEST 17

To be sure, Narses had one thing Belisarius did not have — the confidence of the emperor. He had a more generous por- tion of the men and money he needed, and it must be admitted he used them well. In 552, he inflicted a final defeat on the Ostrogoths and destroyed their kingdom. Gradually, he wiped out all remaining centers of resistance and established Byzan- tine rule over all of Italy, making Ravenna his capital, as it had earlier been the capital of the last few western emperors, and of Odoacer and Thecdoric more recently.

Italy thus found itself part of the Roman Empire again, some eighty years after it had “fallen.” Nor was this just a temporary thing. Some parts of the peninsula were to continue to remain part of the empire for five centuries, and Byzantine culture was to leave a permanent mark there.

The Byzantines built churches in their own style, complete with mosaics, all over Italy. Some of those churches still stand. In the city of Venice, which had a long association with the empire throughout the early Middle Ages, the famous church of St. Mark retains the Byzantine flavor to this day. And in the church of San Vitale at Ravenna there are still to be found mo- saic portraits of Justinian and Theodora.

The elaborate Byzantine ceremonial, on display in Italy, closer to home than distant Costantinople, greatly impressed westerners. Much of the Vatican ceremonial is Byzantine in origin and the coronation rites of the British monarchs of today owe much of their inspiration to it as well.

Thanks to Byzantine rule, Italy remained more literate than it might have been and never sank back so far into the darkness as the Frankish-dominated territories of what are now France and Germany. The distant Byzantine light even illuminated the Franks and English by way of Irish monks who studied Greek in Italy and then carried eastern learning along with them on their missionary voyages. *

* See my book The Shaping of England (Houghton Mifflin, 1969).

THE LAST YEARS

Nor was Italy the final conquest in the great offensive. In 554, an expeditionary force was sent to Spain, where the Visi- gothic kingdom was in a state of anarchy. The southern third of that peninsula was restored to Roman rule.

But all these distant victories did not serve to guard the Bal- kans, where year after year the raiders wreaked their will. Jus- tinian used bribes to turn one tribe against another or to keep them all quiet. However, while a policy of bribery sometimes works, it also sometimes boomerangs. This was one of the cases in which it boomeranged, for the raiders, realizing the empire to be a source of easy money, found they could always get more by continuing their raids.

Justinian had built some eighty fortified points along the Danube River, but they did not stop the loot-hungry tribes. Too often, the raiders infiltrated past them. The crisis came in the winter of 558-559. An unusual cold wave froze the Danube and the raiders poured over the ice in huge numbers. Among them were Slavs and Avars.

Overwhelming those frontier guards who tried to stand in their way, they tumbled toward Constantinople and the city found itself in greater danger than at any time since its rebirth under Constantine. Far-flung, the Byzantine armies kept their stations in Spain, Italy, and Africa— and there were none at home. Even the great walls of Constantinople couldn't be en- tirely trusted, since two years before severe earthquakes had weakened them.

There was nothing Justinian could do but call on Belisarius once again. The general, now in his fifties, who had been living in neglected retirement, did not hang back. There is something

THE EAST GOES WEST 79

almost superhuman about his instant response to every call to duty regardless of the ingratitude of those whom he had saved over and over again. There was room for one last salvation and one last ingratitude.

Making use of 300 palace troops as his core, Belisarius formed the citizens of Constantinople into squadrons and com- mandeered the horses from the imperial stables, from the pri- vate equipages of the rich, and even from the circus. He dug a ditch before the city and ordered campfires arranged in such a way as to make his own numbers seem far greater than they were. He then waited for the wild, barbarian charge before the very walls of the city. He knew the enemy had no idea of strategy beyond a straightforward frontal attack. He left his crack few hundred men to take that charge firmly, while he deployed his other troops so as to strike at the raiders from both flanks simultane- ously. The enemy broke under the blow and fled in haste. The danger was over and Belisarius had won his last victory. But then, in 561, Justinian fell sick, rumors of his death spread (he was seventy-eight years old), and when those ru- mors proved false, conspiracies arose among the impatient. Justinian discovered the conspiracies and began to root them out mercilessly. Several men of Belisarius’ household were im- plicated, taken, and put to torture. They accused Belisarius himself. Belisarius appeared for judgment with the same quiet courage he brought to all his actions and we can be reasonably sure that he was innocent. But the cantankerous old emperor wanted a conviction and he got one. Belisarius was not executed, but his possessions were confiscated and he was put under house imprisonment. Here, though, even Justinian was forced to back down. The popular indignation at this final mistreatment of the great gen- eral was too much to withstand, and besides, it was clear that Belisarius had not long to live. In the summer of 564 he was

80 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

restored to his possessions and to the imperial favor — Justin- ian magnanimously making a show of forgiving him — and in March 565, Belisarius died.

The story arose in later years that as a result of his conviction as a conspirator, Belisarius was blinded and that he spent his last years as a beggar in Constantinople, asking passers-by to “Give a penny to Belisarius the general.” T his is pure fiction; a tale invented by those odd people who cannot find drama enough in the fantastic truths of history. Justinian died only a few months later on November 14, 565, aged eighty-two years. He was a most remarkable man. He had reigned in his own name for thirty-eight years and, if we count the years when he was the power behind his uncle Justin, for forty-seven years altogether. Few Roman emperors — or Byzantine emperors — reigned for so long either before or after. And few could match his accomplishments.

He had done what he had set out to do and his western strat- egy had been astonishingly successful, at least on the surface. He had totally destroyed two of the Arian German kingdoms, the Vandals and the Ostrogoths. Only a weakened Visigothic kingdom, ruling over the middle third of Spain, survived to support the Arian name.

The empire had been restored almost to its extent under Theodosius I: all of North Africa was rejoined to the empire, all of Italy, all of the Mediterranean islands, part of Spain. Only the Franks, who occupied the old Roman province of Gaul, were untouched, but then, they were Catholics and they ac- cepted the theoretical overlordship of the empire. (Behind the Franks was the old Roman island of Britain, over which Celts and Saxons were now fighting, but that was permanently be- yond the imperial horizon. )

While rebuilding the empire, Justinian had not been able to prevent serious wounds from being inflicted on the eastern provinces by the Persians and on the Balkans by barbarian

epPuexspy FLaUD (ey o LA ee susya dA SO On \§ Vv

s snaspiyqe’ e SH ARGY (© “TOSNINSd tpopuy § N¥X1va

YONI VIS¥ [a

Copa2| Ys) amy 2doussueasvocy SURVEY

Vas MOVIE

WS ag 1.

[ UeIUNsNpIopun Y9¢ UI oNduRY suNUEZAg OYT,

2 hal CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

raiders, yet he held the line and little land of consequence was lost to either group.

Internally, his reign was a series of triumphs despite the in- surrections, plagues, and earthquakes that had made Constanti- nople a scene of horrors on a number of occasions. His codifica- tion of the law was a permanent gift to. Europe and his architectural achievements made Constantinople a magic city.

Then, too, Justinian had been, personally, an incredibly hard- working man. He belonged to the minority of monarchs whose chief pleasure lay in constant attention to the minutiae of ad- ministration, He was abstemious in all the creature pleasures, including eating and drinking, and he got along with little sleep. He was called, in fact, “the emperor who never sleeps.”

Partly because he needed so much money for his wars and partly because it went with his personality, he strove (and, by and large, successfully) for honesty and efficiency in the civil service. The people were as well governed as the times per- mitted.

And yet Justinian’s reign involved serious deficiencies, too. First and foremost was the sheer, unadulterated cost of his for- eign policy. All his glorious conquests in the West came at a prohibitively high price and in the end, the Byzantine Empire, widespread as it seemed on the map, was just about bankrupt. Nor could it gain economic strength from the western con- quests, for the reconquered provinces were feeble and impov- erished from two centuries of barbarian domination.

By far the bulk of imperial trade was with the East, and from the economic standpoint it would have been much more to the benefit of the empire if it had come to some stable arrangement with Persia and had abandoned the old dream of the empire of Theodosius I.

For instance, silk and spices came from the Far East by way of a long series of stages across central Asia, with each stage involving another middleman charge until, in the end, the By- zantines had to pay for these products with their weight in

THE EAST GOES WEST 83

gold. The Persians in particular controlled the trade routes and could make the Byzantines pay through the nose and then use the payment to finance war on those same Byzantines. Justin- ian did his best to route the trade through the barbarian regions north of the Caspian Sea, or through sea routes around India and Arabia. He failed.

He did manage one victory, though. Spices could only be grown in the Far East, but the secret of silk manufacture was discovered. It came from the cocoon of silkworms — the cater- pillars of certain moths — which had to be fed on mulberry leaves. Justinian bribed two Persian monks who had lived in China to return there and then come back with silkworm eggs secreted in hollow bamboo canes. About 550 Constantinople began silk production itself, and from these worms were de- scended all the silk-producing caterpillars that did their work in Europe down to modern times. Then, too, the fact that Justinian’s western strategy had suc- ceeded in dramatic fashion must not be allowed to obscure the fact that he had accepted the penalties of not having a southern strategy. While Theodora lived, her Monophysite sympathies had eased matters and given the southern provinces some hope. Occasional heretics who might have suffered the extreme pen- alty were saved by Theodora’s quiet interference. With her death, that mollifying influence was gone. Egypt and Syria had to watch the victory of Orthodox Catholicism and they were forever alienated from Constantinople. From then on, no enemy in the world existed for them but Constantinople.

Of course, they could do nothing, They could not possibly rebel successfully and Justinian might well feel that he could easily afford to accept their helpless anger in exchange for con- crete victories in the West. But the time was to come when Constantinople was to pay bitterly for her neglect of southern feelings.

A RIES)

ic

rd

an" as”

ps aS

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE

NEW BARBARIANS

Justinian had no sons who might have seemed natural candi- dates for the throne. Nor had he, like his uncle Justin, chosen an heir and made him co-emperor in order to smooth the suc- cession. That meant the succession, following the “elective” principle, was thrown open to anyone who could get the neces- sary backing from some forceful element of the population: the army, the bureaucracy, or the mob.

To begin with, Justinian had seven nephews and of these, one happened to be on the spot. He acted as soon as news of the great emperor's death arrived. He made efficient arrangements for public demonstrations and had himself crowned by the pal-

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 85

ace guards. He rushed out to the hippodrome for public accla- mation, and it was all done. He reigned as Justin II.

Justin II began with the best of intentions. He had the good sense to recognize that his uncle Justinian had taken the empire as far along the course of conquest as it was safe to go; perhaps farther. He therefore adopted a policy of nonaggression and quiet defense. This allowed him to concentrate on bolstering the empire’s economy. He paid off some of the debts that Jus- tinian had been ignoring, reduced taxes, and even eased some of Justinian’s stiff policies toward Monophysitism. Successful economization could be carried through only by an end to the payment of tribute to the barbarian tribes on the north. As Marcian had once refused payment to the Huns a century before, so now Justin II refused payment to the Avars. It might have been pay-and-point all over again, but the West was no longer as attractive as it had once been. The Franks who controlled the lands north of the Pyrenees and the Alps were by no means easy marks, and even if conquered, there was very little left to loot there.

The Avars preferred to remain in the East and fight for the tribute. The Byzantines fought back, and by 571 the Avars had had enough for a while. They agreed to a peace and moved westward, if not against the Franks, then to the Frankish border anyway.

But that, too, was disastrous for the empire, which had been so overextended by Justinian that to plug a leak in one place was to increase pressures that sprang a leak in another. The new trouble came in Italy, which had so recently been con- quered for the empire by Narses. In fact, when Justin II came to the throne, Narses was still governing Italy from Ravenna. The iron eunuch was nearly ninety years old but was as firm and capable as ever.

Justin might well have felt it was entirely time for the an- cient general to retire. He might also have had the desire (not uncommon with new rulers) to get rid of the hangovers of a

86 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

previous reign and fill the realm with appointees of his own.

Narses lived out six more years in patriarchal retirement, dying in 573 at the age of perhaps ninety-five. There is only one other nonagenarian in history like him, and he appeared six centuries later as — alas for the empire — an embittered foe of the Byzantines. |

Later legend makers embellished the retirement of Narses with a tale that sounds too impossibly and uselessly cruel to be true. A villainess is made, for the purpose, of the new empress, Sophia, who had as much influence on Justin as Theodora had once had on his uncle and predecessor.

Sophia is supposed to have sent a courier with skeins of wool to Narses. The courier carried the message that, as a eunuch, Narses should leave warfare to men and himself join the palace maidens in spinning. Narses, choking down his wrath, is re- ported to have answered, “I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily unravel.” Then, before leaving, he invited a new group of Germanic tribesmen to invade Italy. If the tale was invented to account for the appearance of the new tribesmen, it was not needed. The facts are plain enough without it. The Avars were recoiling from the Balkans in the face of Justin’s firm defense, and also in the face of the coming of still another group of Asian nomads flooding out of the end- less reservoir of central Asia. These new nomads were the Kha- Zaxs. The Avars moved westward, therefore, established a base in what is now Hungary, a base they were to retain for over two centuries. This Avar move into Hungary put enormous pres- sure on the Germanic tribes already in the area. It was either fight the Avars or get out. Among the tribes was one called the Lombards and they chose to get out. Moving over the Alps, in 568 they descended into the north Italian plain.

Perhaps someone like Belisarius or Narses might have fended them off, but no Byzantine leader of that caliber was to be found in Italy. The imperial armed forces were pitifully under-

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 87

manned and were forced to retreat. North Italy was overrun and was converted into a Lombard kingdom. Sections in the south were also gathered up by Lombard war bands.

The Byzantines did not give up easily, however. (Through all their long history, they never did — something the generally contemptuous estimates of western writers tend to overlook. ) They clung to Italy’s toe and heel, and to a broad central stretch from Rome to Ravenna, together with certain cities such as Venice and Naples.

Justin IT’s policy of careful retrenchment was put to the test by the Lombard invasion. He might easily have been lured into throwing the resources of the empire westward and greater dis- aster might have followed, for on the East was still Persia. Persia was then in the last years of the reign of its greatest king, Chosroes I (koz’roh-ezz). Chosroes had fought Justinian twice and now he attacked Justin, estimating, perhaps, that the emperor might indeed send his army into Italy.

In its first lunge, Persia penetrated deep into Asia Minor in 572, but Justin had estimated rightly. He let Italy go and con- centrated on the greater menace. Persia was driven back and peace was restored on the usual basis in 576.

The strain was too much for Justin, however. He was subject to fits of mental unbalance and the Persian war seems to have tumbled him over the edge altogether. He suffered from paral- ysis of the legs (probably hysterical in origin) and clearly effective governmental authority would have to reside else- where.

The fatality that had seen to it that no reigning emperor had had a surviving son for a century was still in operation. Justin’s one son was dead and he was on bad terms with his less imme- diate relatives. There was, however, the captain of the guard. He was tall and handsome and had, apparently, caught the ap- preciative eye of Empress Sophia. She persuaded Justin to adopt him as his son and to turn over the duties of government to him. After a thirteen-year reign, four of them passed in

88 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

grateful obscurity, the sick emperor died in 578 and his adopted son sat on the throne as Tiberius I1* ‘( ty-bee’ree-us ).

Tiberius tried to continue the program of peace abroad and economy at home, but the two policies were almost mutually exclusive. To try to keep the Balkans quiet, he renewed tribute to the Avars. While that fended off the bloody raids, it was a drain on the treasury and it did not stop the steady peaceful infiltration of Slavic peasants and the “Slavization” of the northern Balkans. There was also the kind of steady border warfare with Persia that passed for peace between the more formal wars. But Tiberius II reigned for only four years and the approach of death was slow enough to give him time to select a successor. Again there was no son to inherit, but there was a capable gen- eral — the best the Byzantines had seen since Narses. He was Maurikios, which in Latin spelling is Mauricius, and which has come down to us, via the French language as Maurice. Maurice was born in Asia Minor and proudly traced his an- cestry back to a Roman family of Italy. His military career had raised him to the position of commander in chief in the East and he had won some important victories against the Persians. In 582, when Tiberius II felt death was imminent, he had Maurice marry his daughter Constantina; on the emperor's death, Maurice succeeded without trouble and was crowned with both his parents present to witness the honor. It is not surprising that Maurice, with his experience in the East, should make his first care the achieving of some sort of settlement with Persia. As it happened, affairs were breaking right for the empire at the moment. Chosroes I had died in 579 and Persia found itself in trouble. There were barbarian incur- sions in the East and civil disturbances at home.

Chosroes II, the young grandson of Chosroes I, succeeded to the throne in 589 but the civil war forced him off the throne

* The first Tiberius had reigned as successor to Augustus, five and a half centuries before.

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 89

almost at once. He fled to the Byzantine Empire and Emperor Maurice took him under his protection. Maurice was sincere about this. He took the calculated risk of going to war on be- half of a Persian claimant to the throne in the hope that the claimant would be grateful to his savior afterward. (Ingrati- tude is so common in politics that one would almost doubt Mau- rice’s sanity at this point — yet the strategy worked] ) An imperial army was sent into Persia. It cooperated with native forces loyal to Chosroes II, won out, and replaced the prince on his throne. What followed then was that Chosroes IT was grateful. He agreed to a peace in 591 that was most advan- tageous to the empire, returning fortresses that had been taken and allowing Maurice to take over most of Armenia. In addition, Chosroes II swore to keep the peace with Maurice and did. (Yet even this, which seems so idyllic, was to lead to ter- rible times for the empire. Sometimes, it would appear, all roads lead to catastrophe. ) Maurice was not as successful in the West. He tried hard, to be sure. He organized the imperial holdings in central] Italy as the “Exarchate of Ravenna.” The word “exarchate” means “outside realm”; and it indicates a province outside the core of the empire — one that was distant and isolated from the rest. Since it was particularly exposed to enemy attack, it was placed under military rule, with civilian authority subordi- nated. The system worked to an extent, for the Lombards were halted by the stubborn imperial forces and central Italy re- mained Byzantine for nearly two centuries more.

Yet if the imperial forces held their own, so did the Lom- bards. The best the empire could achieve was a stalemate. Elsewhere in the West the Byzantine holdings in Spain were shrinking under the advance of the resurgent Visigoths, and the emperor now controlled only some cities and fortresses along the southern coast.

The situation in the Balkans was deteriorating also. The Avars poured across the Danube in their worst raids yet, fight-

90 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

ing under the leadership of their greatest monarch, Bayan. In 591, in the very year when Maurice was making himself domi- nant in the East, Avar bands appeared under the walls of Con- stantinople.

Maurice had to hurry back from Persia. For a time, he actu- ally led the Byzantine armies against the Avars himself — the first emperor to take the field in two centuries. He soon retired, though, and left the conduct of the campaign to his general Priscus, who in 601 finally defeated the Avars in a great battle on the Danube not far downstream from modern Belgrade.

THE FIRST CATASTROPHE

Unfortunately, Maurice was growing more unpopular yearly. His prudent policy of retrenchment and economy offended many who might otherwise profit at the government's expense. The Constantinopolitans found the emperor's penny-pinching a bore and were ready to turn against him. The real crisis came on the Danube frontier, however, where Maurice followed the equally necessary, and equally unpopular, policy of enforcing strict discipline in the face of the continuing Avar menace. There were increasing mutters of discontent from the soldiers. Then, in 602, the Avars offered to ransom 12,000 prisoners for 6000 pieces of gold. Maurice hesitated, unwilling to yield to the blackmail and turn over the money, and the Avars massa- cred the men. A roar of displeasure went up from the army. Any one of them might be a prisoner next and they did not want to die to save their emperor half a piece of gold. The rebelling soldiers found a leader in a minor officer named Phocas (foh’kas). Abandoning their posts, large sections of the army marched under him to Constantinople.

Had Constantinople itself been faithful, the mutineers would

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 91

have been stopped at the walls. Unfortunately for Maurice, riots against him broke out all over the city, and it was almost the Nika Insurrection of seventy years before all over again. Maurice had no Theodora at his side, no Belisarius to place in charge of the palace guard, no Narses to send among the riot- ers. He therefore had to do what Justinian had barely managed not to do: He abdicated, fled the city, and crossed the Bosporus to the Asian shore. There he sent an appeal to Chosroes II of Persia, asking for help in return for the help the Persian king had received a decade before. With Maurice gone, the populace might have elevated his oldest son (he had five) to the throne. There was some talk of that, but then the rebelling army marched into Constantinople through gates opened by the mutineers within. Phocas was at its head in a chariot drawn by four white horses. He had al- ready been acclaimed as emperor by his soldiers and now the populace of Constantinople cheered him on. One of his first acts was to send soldiers across the Bosporus to seize Maurice and his five sons. All were executed on the spot. This set a melancholy precedent. There had been a pe- riod during the Roman anarchy of the third century when em- peror after emperor had been assassinated, but since Diocletian had reorganized the government, very few emperors had died otherwise than in bed or in battle. Since Constantine had founded Constantinople, eighteen em- perors had ruled there and of these, Maurice, the eighteenth, was the first to die by civil violence (though Justinian had come close). He was not to be the last. Of the dozens of em- perors who followed him in Constantinople, more than half were to be forced into abdication or variously blinded, tor- tured, or killed. If the throne were a glorious sepulcher as Theodora had said, some four dozen emperors were to have the opportunity of testing the theory under conditions varying from tragic to horrible.

But the news of Maurice’s abdication and execution finally

92 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

reached Chosroes II and that Persian monarch was horrified. He remained true to his pact with Maurice — a friendship that strangely flowered despite the centuries-long enmity of their nations — and declared war on the Byzantine Empire to avenge his ally, swearing not to cease-until his friend’s mur- derer had been brought to justice. Thus was launched the last, the most furious, and the most successful of all the Persian westward marches.

Chosroes’ early successes frightened Phocas thoroughly. He was merely a stupid soldier — the first emperor to rule in Con- stantinople neither through inheritance nor through merit — and he didn’t know what to do. In panic, he made peace with the Avars at the cost of an exorbitant tribute and that won him the contempt of the army.

Worse yet, he tried to win over the West by harsh measures against the Monophysites and by admitting the Roman pope to have precedence over the Patriarch of Constantinople. This won him a eulogy from Pope Gregory I — which the dullard on the imperial throne most certainly did not deserve — but noth- ing else.

At home that move of his brought forth a united gasp of hor- ror from the priesthood. Justinian’s victories in the West had, after all, brought Rome under the political control of Constan- tinople and that seemed to add the last brick to the edifice of the patriarch’s supremacy, at least in eastern eyes. From Jus- tinian’s time on, the head of the Church in Constantinople called himself ecumenical patriarch, claiming universal prece- dence — over the pope in particular. To be sure, no pope ever admitted this precedence on the part of the patriarch or for one moment gave up his own claim to leadership over the entire Church, but there was nothing Rome could do about it. Even after the Lombard invasion had cost the empire most of Italy, Rome was still part of the terri- tory of the exarchate of Ravenna and the pope was still at the mercy of the imperial whim. To have Phocas give up the claim

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 93

of patriarchal precedence was insupportable, therefore, and the scandalized eastern priesthood moved into intransigent opposi- tion.

As for this persecution of the Monophysites, that was the most stupid move of all. The Syrians, who were Monophysite, failed to see why they should give their lives for a despot who persecuted them. As a result, they did not resist the Persian advance, but prepared to welcome the invaders as liberators.

One by one, the Byzantine fortresses in the East fell. Chos- roes II knifed into Syria and Asia Minor, and by 608 reached Antioch and placed it under siege. The people of Constanti- nople were in a state of panic, and very understandably so. Pho- cas was clearly an incompetent fool and they heartily repented having made him emperor. Still, he was emperor and had the palace troops under his control. Using them, he placed the city under a reign of terror. The empire seemed to have no place to turn, and to the res- cue came the one untouched and thoroughly loyal province: that of North Africa with its capital at Carthage. It was only sixty years before that Belisarius had captured that province for the empire, and one can only wonder what would have hap- pened to Constantinople at this point if that province had not existed. North Africa was an imperial stronghold under a capable general, Heraclius (her’uh-kly’us), who had been appointed to the post by Maurice and who remained loyal to him. Patiently, he waited his chance to avenge his old chief and by 610 he was ready. He knew his troops were loyal, for Carthage, a western territory, was strongly Catholic, and what’s more, Priscus, the other capable general of the realm, joined him.

Priscus led the army eastward into Egypt, while a fleet sailed from Carthage toward Constantinople, under the leadership of Heraclius’ son, also named Heraclius. The sight of the ships from Carthage was all the city mob needed. With assurance of military support, they rose in delirious revolt and with utter

94 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

disregard of the palace guards (now maintaining a prudent quiet) seized Phocas, who had reigned eight disastrous years, and tortured him to death in an orgy of cruelty. The younger Heraclius was then acclaimed emperor and was greeted with all the fervor of a savior sent from heaven.

No divine aura, however, seemed to encompass Heraclius. The empire was a shambles and its decline continued un- abated. Heraclius’ accession to the throne acted as no magic wand to reverse matters.

Chosroes II, who had invaded the empire ostensibly only to avenge Maurice, ought now to have made peace. After all, Maurice was avenged and Phocas, his murderer, had been murdered far more cruelly. However, few people are con- sistent and Chosroes IT had gone too far to stop. He was gain- ing the name Khosrau Parvez (“Chosroes the Victorious” ) among his courtiers and he liked that name too much to aban- don it. Furthermore, victory has a momentum of its own and with his armies rolling westward so beautifully, how could he ask them to stop?

So even through the first years of Heraclius’ reign, Chosroes’ victories continued in a steady stream. In 613 his armies took Damascus and in 614 they took Jerusalem itself. To add insult to injury, the True Cross was seized.

This was the cross on which, supposedly, Jesus had been cru- cified. It had, according to legend, been unearthed in 326 by diggers working under the direction of Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine I, and had been identified by the mir- acles that could be worked with it. Now, Persian soldiers, han- dling it with impunity as though it were an ordinary wooden object, carried it off to Ctesiphon, the Persian capital.

By 615 the conquest of Asia Minor was complete and Persian forces stood at Chalcedon on the Bosporus and gazed across at the spires of Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire had been driven out of Asia altogether, and ancient Christian provinces were in the hands of the fire-worshiping unbelievers of Persia.

RECOVERY

During those first years of continuing defeat, Heraclius had been working desperately to reorganize and reinforce internal affairs. He tried to reform finances, tighten administrative pro- cedures, and strengthen the army. One measure he took was rather dishonorable. Priscus, the general who had helped Her- aclius to the throne and who was on the front lines with his army, was persuaded to come to Constantinople and there

‘forced to become a monk. One might argue that in the emer- gency only one head of the army could be allowed and that to leave Priscus at large would have been to encourage civil war. Yet it was still not a very palatable act.

Heraclius’ most far-reaching innovation was to begin the re- structuring of the empire into large militarily oriented subdivi- sions that were based on the precedent set by the exarchate of Ravenna. It was meant to put the empire on an efficient mili- tary footing.

The subdivisions were called themes (from a Greek term ap- plied to a division of troops) so that the name itself breathed militarism. Each theme was under the control of a military governor with subordinate civilian officials. Farms were granted to soldiers and those grants were hereditary. The land was guaranteed to a family as long as each generation was brought up to serve in the army. The intent was to devise a population of hardy peasant-soldiers, and to an extent it worked. Asia Minor, in particular, served as a reservoir of mili- tary excellence for four centuries.

Heraclius was aided in all his efforts by one of the most re- markable men ever to hold the title of Patriarch of Constanti- nople. He was Sergius (sur’jee-us), who became patriarch in 610, the same year in which Heraclius had become emperor.

96 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

The two worked together as closely as Justinian and Theodora had and, indeed, Sergius’ help was essential. Sergius placed the wealth of the Church at Heraclius’ disposal and the emperor could scarcely have carried through his program of reorgani- zation without the money to finance it.

Sergius was the empire's salvation at one crucial moment in a less concrete fashion. By 618 after eight years of heroic and backbreaking efforts on the emperor's part, there seemed little to show for it. The Persians were still on the Bosporus, within sight of the spires of Constantinople, and were beginning to enter Egypt against only the feeblest resistance on the part of its Monophysite population. From the west came the news that the last imperial strongholds in Spain had fallen to the Visi- goths, and from the north was the word that the Avars were again flooding into the Balkans. In a moment of despair, Heraclius did as Justinian had once done. He proposed the abandonment of Constantinople and a retreat to Carthage. There perhaps they might succeed in sal- vaging one province from the universal wreck. It was then that Sergius held quietly firm and played the role of Theodora. With serene confidence in ultimate victory, he put backbone into Heraclius and returned him to his labors. But several more years of heartbreak had to pass. In 619 Persian forces had taken all of Egypt and seemed to be glancing toward Carthage, too. At Egypt, however, the Persians paused. The Catholics of Carthage would not give in as passively as had the Monophy- sites of Syria and Egypt, and to move as far as Carthage, Chos- roes realized, would overstretch the lines of communication, (As a matter of fact, they were spread far too thin already. ) As for attacking the European provinces of the empire, that required a fleet, which Chosroes did not have.

So, though he had conquered the better part of the Byzantine Empire, Chosroes was momentarily stalemated. He had to sit fast and wait for Heraclius to ask for or accept a losing peace.

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 97

Heraclius, however, was ready at last for the counterattack. He bought off the Avars, for he needed time at any price, and in 622 lunged headlong into Asia.

This is one of the many cases in which history demonstrates the usefulness of a fleet. Without ships, Heraclius could have done no more than Chosroes II was doing. He could only have sat at the Bosporus and stared at the enemy on the other side. With a fleet, however, his army was carried around the flank of the enemy and far to the rear. Imperial ships ferried the army to Issus at the northeast end of the Mediterranean in the sharp angle where Asia Minor and Syria meet. Hastily, Persian forces on the spot had to be gath- ered to face Heraclius, but the emperor’s carefully trained forces fought and maneuvered well. Heraclius managed to strike the enemy front and rear, and won a stunning victory in January 623. Unfortunately, the details of what followed are dim to us. There was no historian to memorialize Heraclius’ deeds, as Procopius had done for Belisarius. Apparently, the victory at Issus was followed by a march northward into Armenia. The Persians, fearing their army in Asia Minor would be cut off al- together, had to evacuate the peninsula. In the next three years, Heraclius conducted three campaigns in Armenia, restor- ing imperial prestige and pushing Persia close to defeat. The Persians kept Heraclius from pushing south from Armenia into the Persian heartland, however, and to that extent, it was a stalemate.

By 626 Chosroes the No-longer Victorious was fairly desper- ate. He tried in his turn to strike behind the enemy lines. He could not do so effectively with his army, for he lacked a fleet. He had another way of accomplishing it, however. He could call on the Avars, and they were glad (for their own purposes) to cooperate.

In July 626, some 80,000 Avars and Slavs advanced to the walls of Constantinople and began an assault on the city. At

98 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

the same time the Persian armies, avoiding Heraclius, marched westward again and waited at Chalcedon for the imperial city to fall, for Heraclius to rush to the city’s rescue, abandoning his uncomfortable position along the supply lines — or both.

Unfortunately for the Persians, it was neither. Heraclius re- mained at the eastern end of the Black Sea, intent on carrying out his own strategic plans and quite content to leave Constan- tinople to its fate. He was sure of its walls and of Sergius. And well he might be. Within the city, Patriarch Sergius organized the defense with calm resolution. The walls were impregnable; the ships brought what supplies were needed. The Avars, aware at last they were getting nowhere and would continue to get nowhere, moved off in a slow and sullen retreat.

It was the Persians whose nerve broke. The troops at Chal- cedon, hearing the jubilation in the city across the strait at the retreat of the Avars, and knowing that Heraclius was still in the rear simply gave up. They surrendered.

Everywhere the Persian forces lost hope and asked only for a chance to return home. Imperial forces retook Egypt and Syria on the heels of the melting Persian armies, but Heraclius was not content merely to take back what was lost. The Persians must be taught a hard lesson once and for all. Heraclius ob- tained the alliance and help of the nomadic Khazars, who now occupied the plains north of the Black Sea, knowing that in this way he could count on their pinning down the troublesome Avars north of the Danube. With the Danubian flank free, Her- aclius could move even farther into Persia. He descended into Mesopotamia and penetrated the very heart of the Persian Empire, reaching areas that no imperial army had seen for three centuries. Near the ruins of a city called Nineveh, that had once been the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire twelve centuries before, the final battle was fought. In December 627, soldiers speaking Greek met with soldiers speaking Persian to fight one last battle in a series that

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 99

had begun with the Battle of Marathon, eleven centuries be- fore.

It was a desperate struggle that continued throughout the daylight hours. It ended in a smashing victory for Heraclius, who followed it up by a skillful and relentless pursuit nearly to the Persian capital. (No imperial army was ever to be seen so far from home again. )

For sixteen years now, Chosroes II had fought the Byzantine Empire. In the first eight years he gained nearly everything, and in the last eight years he lost quite everything. It was an amazing demonstration of giddy rise followed by catastrophic fall that has been repeated a number of times since — most re- cently by Adolf Hitler of Germany.

Chosroes had even yet not quite given up, but his subjects had altogether. The only way they could find peace now was over Chosroes’ dead body, and that suited them. The Persian lords killed Chosroes II and most of his sons in 628, a sorry ending for the Victorious One, and, under the banner of a re- maining son, made peace with the empire.

In the peace, all lost territory was restored to the Byzantines. The True Cross was restored as well. In 629, in a moving and solemn pageant, Heraclius in person bore the True Cross in a procession through Jerusalem. It was restored to its place after fifteen years in the detiling hands of the infidels.

THE SECOND CATASTROPHE

In 630 then, exactly three centuries after the founding of Constantinople, the empire stood firm. One hundred and fifty years had passed since the fall of the Roman Empire, yet what had been the eastern half of that empire was still intact under a rule unbroken since the days of Augustus.

100 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

All the provinces of what had once been the East Roman Empire remained in as firm control of Constantinople under Heraclius in 630 as under Constantine I in 330. To be sure the Balkans were still infested with Avars and Slavs, but though these might be nuisances their political power was small.

What’s more, there were sections of what had once been the West Roman Empire that were still ruled by Constantinople. Much of the conquests under Justinian still remained. North Africa was firmly imperial. All the islands of the Mediterra- nean were Byzantine. A good part of Italy itself remained under Constantinople. The empire that had “falien” a century and a half before was still in powerful being, was still almost as Mediterranean-wide as it had ever been, and was incomparably the strongest military unit in Europe. The future looked brighter than it had appeared for centu- ries. The Germanic warriors of the West, the Visigoths, the Franks, and the Lombards, had primitive and inefficient war machines that could only nibble at the far-distant fringes of the empire. The Visigoths could pick up a few isolated coastal cities in Spain; the Lombards could harry the exarchate of Ra- venna. And as for the Franks, they could do nothing at all, it seemed, but fight among themselves. That left Persia as the one civilized power that had fought the empire on equal terms — and it was ruined. Its defeat had been truly catastrophic. Following the death of Chosroes II, the increasingly feeble Persian throne was fought over by aspir- ant after aspirant and the land, sinking into chaos, seemed ut- terly incapable of representing a threat for many years. To be sure, the long Persian war had weakened the empire, too. Both militarily and financially, it was exhausted — far more than the glory of its victory and the pageantry of the re- turn of the True Cross made it seem. If a new enemy, as pow- erful as the Persians, were suddenly to arise and were to threaten the empire, the worn-out Byzantines would scarcely be able to find either the will or the strength to resist. Yet who

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 101i

would have been concerned over this possibility in 630, since at that time nowhere in the world did there seem to be a power capable of matching even the enfeebled empire?

Oddly enough, though, such a power was arising and from an utterly disregarded quarter. In the gigantic and dry peninsula of Arabia, which through all the millennia of civilized history had till that time only a marginal influence, a prophet ap- peared. He was Mohammed who, out of scraps of Jewish and Christian theology (together with his own imaginative addi- tions), put together the religion of Islam (“surrender’; that is, to God). His own teachings, collected in the Koran, served as a holy book. Even while Heraclius was defeating Persia in his tremendous campaigns in the East, Mohammed was combining the Arabian tribes and building a daring army of light cavalry animated by a fanatical belief in the rightness of their cause and an eager- ness to convert the world to what seemed to them to be the only true faith. Both Heraclius and Chosroes received messages from the Arabian prophet, inviting them to join Islam — or be destroyed. The only possible reply would have seemed a shrug, a laugh, and an order to toss the letter away. Chosroes did not live to learn better. Heraclius did. In 682 Mohammed died, but he left behind him a united Ara- bia ready to explode. That explosion began within a year and Arab raiding armies began to probe the borders of both giants to the north — the empire and Persia. They were giants in size and reputation, that is, but both were badly wounded and dreadfully war-weary. And both completely underestimated the Arabs. Heraclius left the handling of the Arabs to local forces at first and that did not do. The fruits of the western strategy dating back to Anastasius made itself felt again. The Monophysites of Syria, who had failed to resist the Persians, failed also to resist the Arabs when those hardy horsemen came swirling out of the desert. The imperial forts were easily surrounded, and since

102 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

the soldiers manning them were part of the general war-weari- ness of the empire, many gave in.

Thus, the city of Bosrah, seventy miles east of the Jordan River, was taken in early 634, its commander surrendering the citadel in a move that was considered treachery in Constantino- ple. In the summer of 635, the much more important city of Damascus, eighty miles north of Bosrah, was taken after a long siege.

Only now did Heraclius bestir himself. Apparently, the Arabs were not mere desert raiders who could be taken care of on the spot, but a major threat that required a major answer. An imperial army was hastily gathered and was sent down to eastern Syria, under the leadership of Heraclius’ brother, Theo- dore. Damascus was retaken and for a while it looked as though all would be well. But the Arabs raised a larger army themselves and returned to the task. In 636 at the headwaters of the Yarmuk River, a small stream that flows westward into the Jordan River just south of the Sea of Galilee, a site about thirty miles west of Bosra, the armies met in a major battle. It was a case of impe- rial heavy cavalry against Arab light cavalry, weight against mobility.

Had Theodore been an imaginative general, had the Arabs been a conventional enemy, no doubt the imperial forces, su- perbly trained as always, would have won. Theodore, however, fought by the book. The heavy cavalry was supposed to charge and break the enemy line. So they did — three times.

But it was silly to do that; it was like punching holes in water. The Arabs scattered lightly before the charge, veered and came back. The imperial army wore itself out in the desert heat for nothing. And when the imperial horses were visibly quivering with weariness and their riders parched with thirst, the Arabs came galloping down from all sides, screaming their calls upon God (whom they called Allah).

What followed was slaughter. The better part of the Byzan-

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE © 103

tine army was wiped out and the Arabs found themselves with an incredibly decisive victory in the Battle of Yarmuk. The By- zantines, stunned and broken, evacuated Syria. Heraclius, in his palace at Constantinople, seemed paralyzed. He raised no further army against the Arabs. He had five years left to reign, yet in those five years he made not one military move.

Historians sometimes wonder why it was that Heraclius, the indomitable hero who slowly reorganized the empire and fought back the Persians from the lip of the pit of total disaster and won the most spectacular western victories since Alexander the Great, should now sit and do nothing.

Those who wonder this are being unfair. Heraclius, after all, was not an impersonal force but a human being. He had had a reign of incredible hardship. For years he had fought, appar- ently hopelessly, against catastrophe. For years more he had campaigned endlessly through Asia Minor and Mesopotamia and now, when he was over sixty, the whole round seemed to be starting again. He did what he could, militarily. He sent an army and it was wiped out. What could he do now? Was it merely a matter of blind military force? Was he to spring perpetually from his throne, the armed hero, and lead gallant bands to victory? Or could he sit on his throne and consider that people who did not want to be saved could not be saved. If the people of Syria yielded at once to every would-be conqueror it was a hopeless task to try to save them. One might better ask why Syria gave in so easily; its people had been stubborn warriors enough in the past.

Heraclius recognized the fault lay in the western strategy of his predecessors, in the manner in which they had consistently neglected the south and willfully antagonized it. Never mind armies and battles, then. Appease the southern provinces and they would defend themselves. And here Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, showed himself at his very best. He had been
farsighted enough to place the Church’s treasures at the dis-

104 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

posal of the emperor, courageous enough to prevent Heraclius from fleeing in a moment of despair, resolute enough to hold Constantinople during its climactic siege by the Avars, and now he was tolerant enough to attempt to i a Constantino- ple’s orthodox views.

Slowly, he worked out a view that found itself somewhere between Catholicism and monophysitism. In this compromise, Jesus was viewed as possessing two natures, the divine and the human, as the Catholics insisted. The two natures were ani- mated, however, by a single will, so that he acted as though he had a single nature, as claimed by the Monophysites. This compromise was called Monothelitism (moh-noth’ih-lih-tiz-
m), from Greek words meaning “one will.”

The compromise reached its final form in 638 and was then promulgated. As is too often the result of a well-meaning com- promise, the situation was only made worse. The men of the southern provinces were too bitter to listen to Constantinople; they had been disappointed too often before; and they refused categorically to accept the compromise. For that matter, so did the resolutely Catholic western populations in Italy and North Africa. Heraclius ended by offending the west bitterly, without reconciling the south, and so had the worst of both worlds. The empire continued to suffer defeats, to lose territory with scarcely any resistance. In 637 the Arabs had gone on to take Jerusalem, only nine years after it had been rescued from the Persians. This time the True Cross, restored with such pomp and panoply in 630, vanished forever. In 641 Heraclius died, even as the Arabs were busily engaged in taking over Egypt. That conquest was completed in 642 with the surrender of Al- exandria.

Heraclius had ruled for thirty-one years in a reign that was almost as full of contrasts as that of his contemporary and great antagonist, Chosroes I. Heraclius had lost so much, then won so much, then lost so much again. He had reversed the first catastrophe in a superhuman effort that left him no power to

ouduwy unuezdg yi jo sy

~~ —_ ‘N i See N VORWAY HLUON Saw e 6 “yee ne LS eae! Pos Lo Vr : =a . — f ae oP a yas NYANVYUaLIGaN oseyue) ~ \/

Sy eee oad i i CF Cay

Woyesnzof # f ie 9 Nivas /

# wIsog VIIAS Ei f £ é snostarg @ aan vs. NN iA ah 4 sauvanoy f ¢ NN 1? Woy 8 <j} s T SS Xx ? ag younvy + TUUDATY JO es at 1 YONIA, VISV } \ > sae yore, , iP F al ay \ x 7, é ~~ ce ~ euusaryy? \ STUVAKOT VINVLOdOSAIN De fe >[doupurasuo-) a ‘ oS iin t/ Pa a + ‘ 4 Sa 4; ADUTHT & a Pee eS om i ee

be t seVvay 1 ween Os pas BOVTE - Vinay = ™ ne iw ia ( 4 ma savaTag 1S o A

Z

Savay mf

SWOCONTY HSINNV ut

snupotioy Jopun 079 UT ond wry oumurzAg UT AdVW

106 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

reverse the second. Nor did anyone ever reverse the second ca- tastrophe of his reign. Syria and Egypt were lost forever this second time around. 3

Of course, there is scarcely anything which is an unqualified disaster and a determined optimist can find a redeeming feature in the most dismal situation. One might argue, for instance, that for a century at least the Monophysite provinces of Syria and Egypt had been a drain on the empire. They gave sullen acquiescence at best, were a perennial source of controversy, and submitted to any invading army that camped on their door- step. Perhaps they were better done with. What was left of the empire was now entirely Catholic and almost entirely Greek in culture. Indeed, by the end of Hera- clius’ reign, the empire was well on its way to being the Greek Empire which western Europe came to call it in the later Mid- dle Ages. In fact, under Heraclius Latin finally ceased being the official language of the court and the law. Government offices were given Greek titles and the laws were promulgated in Greek. Well, then, if the empire was smaller on the map, it could be stronger just the same, insofar as it was unified in religion, lan- guage, and thought and consisted of a population finally at one in background and belief. And yet this redeeming feature was not redeeming all the way, either. Until the time of Heraclius, the western and eastern branches of the Catholic Church might be at loggerheads concerning the perennial question of whether pope or patriarch took precedence, but they spoke the same language and felt akin. Now the subtle bonds started breaking. With western priests speaking Latin and knowing no Greek, and eastern priests speaking Greek and knowing no Latin, the two branches became foreigners to each other.

Furthermore, in Heraclius’ time, beards came back in fashion in the Greek world. The custom of being shaven is dated back by some to Alexander the Great, who had a scanty beard in any case and set the fashion. Shaving entered the Roman world

THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE 107

in the West a century later with the Greek-loving general Scipio. Now the eastern world which had introduced the cus- tom abandoned it; the western world which had adopted it from the East, kept it.

As small a thing as that added enormously to the hostility. In the eastern world there remained males without beards, males that could not grow beards —eunuchs. In the western world there remained males with beards — peasants and barbarians.

To the bearded easterner, the westerner came to look like a eunuch. To the smooth-shaven westerner, the easterner came to look like a barbarian. Between the pink-faced Italian priest and the bearded Greek priest, this was one more element mak- ing for mutual dislike and suspicion.

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

LOTS fe om eA S EFA MSS = ew TY My See] i fA ss = wes Soaedl i= 4

ate

yr

1 ee Viemesy

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE

THE GROWING DANGER

For the first time since the death of Theodosius II, nearly two centuries before, the Byzantine Empire, upon the death of Her- aclius, witnessed the establishment of a dynasty in the usual sense — that is, of an emperor succeeded by his sons and grandsons.

The dynasty got off to a most shaky start, however. Hera- clius left the throne to his two sons, Constantine III and Her- acleonas (hee-rak’lee-oh’nas), and the court divided into in- triguing factions at once. One of the troubles was that the sons were only half brothers. Heraclius’ second wife (the mother of Heracleonas ) had been his niece, Martina, and his marriage to her had been a great scandal to the more pious, who considered the connection an incestuous one. Heraclius, however, had the

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE 109

prestige to carry it through despite the denunciations of certain churchmen.

Martina survived her husband and was a leader in the party against her stepson Constantine. Civil war might have fol- lowed but Constantine III died of tuberculosis before he had been on the throne three months. (Inevitably, rumor said he was poisoned by Martina.) Heracleonas ruled alone thereafter but proved quite unsatisfactory and was quickly driven into exile.

Before the end of the year of Heraclius’ death, then, both his sons were out of the picture and yet the dynasty did not come to an end. The eleven-year-old son of Constantine III was ele- vated to the throne and reigned as Constans I.

During Constans’ minority, the Arabs completed the conquest of Egypt. Undoubtedly, there were elements among the orthodox priesthood who viewed the disaster with grim equanimity. It was possible, after all, to argue that the Syrians and Egyptians were heretics who had earned God’s displeasure, and that their subjection first to the Persians, then to the Arabs, was their deserved punishment. It would do them good to suffer, according to this view, and when they returned to the true faith, with contrition in their hearts, the Arab yoke would be thrown off.

There were others in Constantinople, however, who must have viewed the situation in a more secular way and who felt that if the Monophysites must repent, that repentance should be made as easy as possible. Under Constans II, therefore, the Monothelite compromise continued to be pushed.

Alas, it did not help. The Monophysites in Egypt and Syria would not budge from their beliefs even though they were now in the grip of a conqueror. Despite the persistent myth that quarreling brothers will unite to face a common enemy, it seems that the parties in a civil war will often endure a stranger rather than give in to a brother.

110 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Not only did the push for Monothelitism do no good in the conquered provinces, it did active harm in the West. Imperial forces still controlled Rome, but even so Pope Martin I dared denounce Monothelitism. For this, he was deposed in 653 at the emperor’s order and was exiled to a remote province east of the Black Sea. (It was not to be for much longer that the em- peror at Constantinople could thus manhandle a pope in Rome. ) But it was the external situation that was really threatening. By the time Constans II had reached his majority, the Arabs had not only snuffed out one last revolt in Alexandria (in 645) but had completed the conquest of all of Persia. From his capi- tal at Mecca, the caliph* Othman ruled over Arabia, Persia, Syria, and Egypt. Except for Asia Minor (and with the addition of Arabia) he held all that Chosroes IT had held at the peak of his power a generation before. Othman’s obvious next step was to reach out for Asia Minor, and for Constantinople itself. For the purpose, Othman intended to develop something the Arabs had not hitherto had and the Persians had never had — a navy.

Constans was desperately trying to prepare for the blow. He further developed the theme system as it had been initiated by Heraclius and he particularly strengthened the position in Asia Minor.

By use of a fleet, though, the Arabs did not have to wait for Asia Minor to be subdued before striking at the capital. Their ships would take them there directly. The Arabs tested their fleet first against Cyprus, the island that lies in the angle of the Mediterranean between Asia Minor and Syria. In 649 they took the island temporarily. In 654 they raided the island of Rhodes off the southwestern shore of Asia Minor.

The Arabs were, of course, novices at sea, but they made use of crewman who were not, and after the adventure at Rhodes

* “Caliph” is from an Arabic word meaning “successor.” The ca- liphs were successors to Mohammed.

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE Vl

they decided they had had enough practice and got ready to make for Constantinople. Constans wanted to nip that project at an early stage. He sent out his fleet with the intention of destroying the Arabs as far from Constantinople as possible.

The two fleets met east of Rhodes in 655, with Constans him- self leading the imperial galleys. But, in truth, it seemed that whatever they did the Arabs were invincible. The imperial fleet was smashed. Constans escaped the general wreckage only with difficulty and fled back to Constantinople.

For a time the capital seemed open to the enemy, but the Arabs could not take immediate advantage of the situation. Their fleet had not gotten off scot free and it had to retire to repair and rebuild. Before that task could be completed, the one enemy the Arabs could not possible defeat — they them- selves — had struck. Othman, their caliph, was assassinated in 656 and was succeeded by Mohammed's son-in-law, Ali, whose short reign was filled, and was followed by, continuing civil war. The naval expedition against Constantinople had to be put off and the capital gained a much-welcomed two-decade respite. The self-absorption of the Arabs gave Constans II a chance to see to his other frontiers. By now the Avars had declined into harmlessness and Constans defeated the Slavs. He then looked further still. Perhaps out of compensation for the losses in the East, he dreamed of conquests in the West and even of making Rome once more the capital of the empire. In 661 Constans and much of his court moved through Greece, spending the winter in once-glorious Athens. The next year he was in southern Italy, and in 663 he was in Rome, where no emperor had been seen in two centuries. It was a disillusioning experience for Constans. Rome was in decay and was a poor sight indeed for anyone used to the glories of Con- stantinople.

Besides there was no way in which he could inspire his forces in Italy to make headway against the Lombards and he could

112 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

scarcely make his capital in a far corner of the empire exposed to an active enemy that could not be handled. His attempts to activate the soldiers, moreover, did not sit well with them. While Constans was in Syracuse, Sicily, in 668, the soldiers mutinied and he was assassinated. ;

Constans’ eldest son assumed the throne at once as Constan- tine IV.* He had been left behind in Constantinople during Constans’ absence in the West and he had his hands quite full.

The Arabs, unfortunately for the empire, were proving them- selves dangerously different from the Persians in a most cru- cial way. The Persians had been fire-worshiping Zoroastrians whose religion had little appeal for Christians. Nor was Zoro- astrianism a particularly proselytizing religion; no great efforts were made to convert Christians. The result was that the Per- sian invaders found themselves isolated among the conquered provinces and spread thin. Their conquests had to stop when their lines of communication reached the snapping point.

Islam was, however, a proselytizing religion, rivaling Christi- anity itself in this respect. The Arabs made every effort to con- vert the nonbeliever. What’s more, the new religion appealed to the Christian, for it was based on Judaism and Christianity and paid careful reverence to Jesus and Mary (though never for one moment admitting the divinity of the former).

The Christians of Syria and Egypt (and, for that matter, the Zoroastrians of Persia) found it easy to adopt Islam. The Mo- nophysite Christians, in their hatred for Constantinopolitan or- thodoxy, found Islam the less offensive alternative. What's more, Christians, though left free to worship in their own fash- ion, had to pay a special tax when under Islamic domination and were barred from government service. To escape the tax and gain office many a Christian paid lip service to Islam —

* He was known as Pogonatus, that is, “the bearded.” The new custom of not shaving had reached the throne but it was still un- usual enough for an emperor to be bearded as to give grounds for a nickname.

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE 113

and then found his children growing up sincerely involved in the new religion. In this way, Syria and Egypt gradually be- came predominantly Islamic and even their native languages gave way to Arabic, the holy language of the Koran. *

This meant the Arabs were not as subject to strains on their lines of communication as the Persians had been. Each con- quered province became one more cog in the Islamic war ma- chine and supplied an army with which to conquer the next province — or seamen to man the fleets against Constantinople. So it happened that where the Persians, after taking Egypt, could move no farther westward, the Arabs were quite another case. Arab armies, with Egypt quiet in the rear and turning enthusiastically Islamic, could move steadily westward until, at the time of the accession of Constantine IV, they were actually threatening Carthage itself. Nor could Constantine IV tackle this threat immediately. Before he could do anything else, he had to hasten to Syracuse, put down the army revolt, and avenge his father. And then he had to scurry back to Constantinople. The delay involved in this purely internal matter only aggravated the external prob- lem. In 669 the Arabs raided Sicily for the first time, and with great success, and in 670 they founded the city of Kairouan seventy-five miles south of Carthage. It formed a base from which continuing attacks could be made against the steadily shrinking territory around Byzantine Carthage.

Here was another example of the Islamic system of success- fully stretching its conquests. The native Berber population of North Africa was adopting Islam and joining the Arab armies, so that not only the empire, but Christianity, too, was rapidly losing ground. (Islam was also expanding eastward from Per- sia into central] Asia and, though this seemed of no immediate

* In both countries Christianity continues among remnants of faith- ful believers down to this day. These Christians remain Monoph- ysites, however, even now.

114 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

importance to the Byzantine Empire, it did mean that the Arabs had an ever-increasing reservoir from which to draw their armies. )

THE GREAT SIEGE—ONE

In 673 the Arabs could finally make their climactic move. Their civil war had come to an end. An Arabian general, Muawiya (moo-ah’wee-yah), had made himself caliph and had established his capital at Damascus, in what had once been By- zantine Syria. With him began the Omayyad (oh-my’ad) dy- nasty. The new stability meant the long-threatened offensive against Constantinople could now be undertaken.

A large Islamic army forced its way clear across Asia Minor to Chalcedon. A half-century before it had been Persian troops gazing across the Bosporus; now it was Islamic troops. But the Arabs had a fleet, too, and for the first time in its history, Con- stantinople was blockaded by sea as well as by land.

From April to September 673, the Arabs assaulted the city and, to a serious extent, the fate of Christianity hung in the balance. If Constantinople had fallen, it seems doubtful that any part of the empire could have held out Jong. And the impe- rial provinces once taken, the population of those provinces might quite likely have turned Islamic in time.* Allowing a few decades for consolidation, Islamic armies could then have moved on into western Europe. Behind them would have been the wealth of Constantinople and with them, forming part of their army, would have been the men of Asia Minor and the

* Centuries later, when the Balkans were occupied by Islamic armies, conversion from Christianity was relatively minor. By then, though, some of the dynamism of Islam had faded. What would

have happened in southeastern Europe in the seventh century could have been a different thing altogether.

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE eS

Balkans, now ardent devotees of Islam, bringing with them the inherited military science of the empire.

It is difficult to be sure concerning the “ifs” of history, but it seems reasonable to suppose that there existed nothing in west- ern Europe in the seventh century, and even the eighth (before the coming of Charlemagne), that could possibly have stopped Islam. All Europe might well have gone down and Christianity would have been wiped out as a world religion. Undoubtedly some Christian communities would have remained, as in the Arabian lands today, but they would have been few and scat- tered, in no better case than the Jews have been. As Constantinople stood at bay, then, in 673 it was defending not only itself but all of Europe and all of Christianity. All hinged on that one city. And it held. For months it held out grimly, First credit must be given to the wonderful walls which had saved (and were yet to save) it many times. But even the walls could not make food and, choked by sea as well as by land, Constantinople might have had to give in even with walls unbreached, unless some means were found to break the grip of the enemy ships. How this was done is one of the most dramatic tales in his- tory, for it involved a truly secret weapon, a weapon whose exact nature is unknown to this day. The tale is obscured by legend but the weapon seems to have been the invention of Cal- linicus (kal’ih-ny’kus ), an alchemist from Egypt or Syria (it is not even certain which) who managed to escape from his homeland to Constantinople. He represented a small salvage from the enormous loss of those provinces and yet he alone seems to have saved the rest of the empire. Callinicus put together a chemical mixture that burned with a hot flame and which had the apparently miraculous power of igniting and burning with particular vivacity in contact with water. The mixture could be thrown out in pots or spurted out of tubes. As soon as it touched water, it caught fire. If it floated toward enemy ships, those ships caught fire.

116 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Over and over again Arabic ships were disabled or destroyed by this “Greek fire.” Worse than the actual fire must have been the superstitious terror that struck the sailors at the sight of a flame that defied water. In the end, then, it was Greek fire, more than any other single factor, that broke the Arab will to victory — though we must not belittle the strength of Constan- tinople’s walls or the desperate resolution of its citizens. The empire jealously guarded the secret of the composition of Greek fire and used it on other occasions afterward. The se- cret was so well kept that we can only speculate on the nature of that composition. Its base was some petroleum derivative and it may have included quicklime, too. Quicklime combines with water to form considerable heat, which may have served to set the petroleum derivative on fire.

By 677 it seemed time to the Arabs to beat a retreat, but the retreat (as often happens) was more difficult than the advance. The demoralized Arabian fleet, through the combined action of a storm and of Byzantine harassment, was destroyed south of Asia Minor and the Arabian army that trudged eastward over- land was bitten to remnants.

The siege of Constantinople was a colossal and expensive failure and it was the very first major defeat the Arabs had had in nearly half a century of all but continuous victories. Byzan- tine prestige rose correspondingly. The loss of outlying prov- inces seemed minor once the center held under such dramatic and near-miraculous conditions. From then on, for four long centuries, Constantinople and its military base in Asia Minor was Christian Europe’s shield against the Islamic menace. But this was not to say that the empire was victorious every- where. Just as the Persian menace a half-century before had been the signal for an Avar advance in the Balkans, so the Ara- bic menace was now the signal for the Slavs. Even while Con- stantinople was under siege, Slavic raiders rampaged beneath the walls of Thessalonica, which was second only to the capital itself in the European provinces. The Bulgars, in particular,

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE 117

took advantage of Byzantine disarray to establish the First Bul- garian Empire, which extended not only over what is now Rumania, north of the Danube, but over much of what is now Bulgaria, south of the Danube.

Nor did the victory at Constantinople delude the Byzantine government it had won more than a defensive struggle. The chance of a real counteroffensive that would win back the southern provinces was clearly nil. There seemed, therefore, no point in maintaining the Monothelite compromise merely to win over a people who were forever lost and who were, in in- creasing numbers, turning away from Christianity altogether. In 680, therefore, a huge ecumenical Church council] (the sixth) met in Constantinople and washed its hands of every trace of compromise with Monophysitism. Orthodox Catholi- cism had won its victory.

With that council, the Patriarch of Constantinople reached the summit of his power. The competing patriarchs of Alexan- dria, Antioch, and Jerusalem had been submerged by the mounting tide of Islam. They still existed, but they ruled over a powerless and shrinking congregation, and wielded what power they had only under the watchful eye of a hostile competing faith.

What's more, the pope at Rome, the only remaining ecclesi- astic who could challenge the patriarch even in theory, was himself under the domination of the Exarch of Ravenna, acting on behalf of the emperor. The deposition and exile of Martin I had shown that the pope could not hope to exert power against the will of the emperor — at least not at this time.

THE LOSS OF AFRICA

Constantine IV died in 685 after a reign of seventeen years and his son succeeded him as Justinian I]. He was the great-

118 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

great-grandson of Heraclius and the dynasty went into its fifth generation, with inheritance going from father to natural (not adopted) son. Nothing quite like this had yet been seen in the seven centuries of imperial history. Undoubtedly, the fact that it did happen began to make the Byzantine people accustomed to hereditary succession. The notion of legitimacy, of a royal family, began to seem more natural. Justinian II was an able man who carried on a vigorous for- eign policy. He made an advantageous peace treaty with the Arabs, who were much less bellicose after their humiliating de- feat at Constantinople, and then turned his attention to the Slavs. In 690 he defeated them but then went on to show some creative imagination. Instead of merely slaughtering those he could reach and creating more bitterness that would be trans- lated into reprisals someday, he transferred a couple of hundred thousand of them into Asia Minor, where they gradually melted into the surrounding population and served as a fresh source of military manpower. As a matter of fact, the line of Heraclius, under the pressure of first the Persians and then the Arabs, had generally had to take a liberal attitude toward the secondary menace of the Slavs and Asian nomads to the north. There were many meth- ods of fighting those “barbarians” besides warfare. There was money, of course, and the bribery implicit in the grant of fancy titles. Those techniques were as old as Constantinople. In ad- dition, though, the Byzantines learned to make use of espionage and their missions among the northern barbarians kept their eyes open at all times. During periods of peace, the empire welcomed members of the ruling classes among the Slavs and others and gladly saw to it that they had an education in Constantinople. When civil disorders among one northern tribe or another sent a ruler flee- ing, Constantinople was always his ready refuge and there he was carefully treated as his status required. After all, he might someday be replaced on his throne and he would then have a

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE 119

chance to display gratitude as, early in his reign, Chosroes II had.

In general, a Byzantine education would help produce a pro- imperial policy among those receiving it. Heraclius himself went even farther, for he did not carry imperial pride to the point of refusing matrimonial alliances where these could help Byzantine foreign policy. In the course of the Persian cam- paign Heraclius had formed an alliance with the Khazar no- mads north of the Black Sea. In this way he enlisted their help against the Avars and was also able to make use of Khazar con- tingents in his main army marching against Persia, contingents whose actions were decisive in the battles that followed. To cement this alliance, Heraclius had given his daughter to the Khazar ruler in marriage. The Khazar alliance had continued since and Justinian II was himself married to a sister of the Khazar ruler. Conse- quently, the proud Constantinopolitans had to witness a Kha- zar princess ruling over them as empress. The cosmopolitan capital was, however, free of racism in the modern sense. They would have been rebellious enough if the empress’s religion had been unsuitable, but as long as Justinian’s queen adhered to orthodox ritual, she was acceptable. To be sure, this sympathy toward barbarians had its risks. The Arabian peace did not last (it never did), and in 692 the Byzantines lost a battle in southeastern Asia Minor which re- sulted in a harsher settlement than had been allowed by the previous treaty. The defeat was blamed on some of the Slavic contingents that had been impressed into the army, and it may well have been that the Slavs had not yet been assimilated to the point where they were glad to fight for their former foe. (Then, too, they might simply have been a handy scapegoat for some officer's military ineptitude. )

The defeat damaged Justinian’s prestige at home, but worse still he was overcome with a building mania that meant higher taxes, ruthlessly exacted. The squeezed population howled

120 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

under the pressure. Rebellion was brewing and it needed but a head. That head was supplied in the form of a general — Le- ontius (lee-on’shee-us ).

Leontius had fought well in Armenia early in the reign of Justinian II, but this had not saved him from the emperor's disfavor. (Indeed, a general is often all the less in favor be- cause of his success, as was shown in the reign of the first Jus- tinian.) Leontius spent some time in prison, but was liberated in 695 and made military governor of Greece. He may have felt this was merely a device to keep him out of the capital, so he quickly made his move before leaving. He put himself at the head of the rebellious Constantinopolitans and, in a quick thrust, seized the person of the emperor. He might have had Justianian II killed, but he had been a loyal servant of the emperor’s father, Constantine IV, and, remem- bering that, took an action which was considered a merciful one at the time. Leontius had Justinian’s nose cut off, feeling that with such a grotesque disfigurement he could surely never aspire to the imperial throne again. He then sent him into exile in Cherson, at the southern tip of the Crimean peninsula. Jus- tinian II had reigned for ten years up to his deposition. Leontius’ reign was marred by continued disaster in the West. For half a century, Islamic forces had been probing west from Egypt. Little by little they had gained ground, both geo- graphically and in the heart and mind of the North African na- tives. Indeed, by the end of the seventh century, one could no longer speak of Arabian forces, since the heart of the African army was composed of North African natives, people who, in later centuries, would be called Berbers by the western Euro- peans.

As long as the city of Carthage remained firmly in imperial hands, however, Islamic control of North Africa remained inse- cure. Though Arabs and Berbers raided all the way to the At- lantic, they could not advance in force until Carthage was

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE DA}

taken. In 697 a large Islamic army slammed against Carthage; though the Byzantines sent a fleet to defend it, they only de- layed the inevitable. In 698 Carthage fell.

The city had had a rich and glamorous history. Founded, according to legend, in 814 B.c., it had been the center of a powerful commercial sea empire, ruled by men who traced their descent to the Phoenicians. They had battled Rome to a standstill in the third century B.c. but had lost in the end and the city was destroyed in 146 B.c. by the vengeful Romans. It was refounded in 44 3B.c. under the direction of Julius Caesar and became a prosperous and important city once again, though now entirely Roman in culture. For nearly a century, from 439 to 585, it had been in Vandal hands, but in the latter year Belisarius had taken it. Now after over a century and a half of Byzantine rule, during which time it had served as the agent of salvation against the Persian menace, it was gone. It was gone not only to Roman culture and the Christian reli- gion, but it declined and died as a city, after a total lifetime of fifteen centuries. The nearby village of Tunis grew as Carthage declined. Tunis became a great Islamic center and is the capi- tal of the region that was once Carthaginian home territory. The region is, in fact, now the nation of Tunisia. Once Car- thage was gone, all of northern Africa, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, was made Islamic, and it is Islamic to the present day.*

The loss of Carthage crippled the Byzantine presence in the western Mediterranean. The Byzantines did not dare bottle up men and ships in such distant islands as the Balearics, Corsica, and Sardinia. They had possessed all these from Belisarius’ day, nearly two centuries before, but they all had to be aban-

* North Africa had been Roman at the height of the empire but Roman power was exerted, for the most part, only over the coastal areas north of the Sahara Desert. Islam extended its influence far

southward over the desert communities and all of Africa north of the jungle areas is now Islamic.

122 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

doned now. Of all the great conquests of the reign of Justinian I, in fact, all that was left was Sicily, southern Italy, and the Exarchate of Ravenna. |

The disgruntled imperial fleet, beaten and humiliated at Car- thage, stopped off at Crete on the way back and there mutinied. A general named Apsimar was proclaimed emperor, under the name of Tiberius IH, and he led his troops to Constantinople. Leontius was seized in 698, after he had been emperor for only three years. He was treated exactly as he had treated his pred- ecessor, for his nose was cut off, too. And he was also confined — if not in a far distant town, at least in a monastery. Tiberius III proceeded to govern reasonably well and his brother, Hera- clius, won victories over the Arabs.

But what of Justinian II? In Cherson, this energetic man, maddened by the disgrace of his treatment, was planning re- venge. The Khazar tribesmen were not too far away and he was related to their ruler by marriage. He finally managed to enlist tribal help in getting himself westward to the Bulgar realm about the lower Danube.

With a Bulgarian army escorting him, Justinian arrived at Constantinople in 705, when Tiberius III had been emperor for seven years. Somehow, he managed to get into the capital dur- ing the night, three days after his arrival there (undoubtedly he had a party of sympathizers within the city), and quickly he was accepted as emperor again, missing nose and all. (He is known as Justinian Rhinotmetus —“Nose cut off” —to later chroniclers as a result. ) His missing nose and his ten-year exile had driven Justinian quite mad and he proceeded to take a dramatic public revenge. The now-deposed Tiberius III was dragged into the Hippo- drome and so was Leontius, who was yanked out of the monas- tery for the purpose. Justinian II sat on an elevated seat, in the sight of the cheering Constantinopolitan crowd, while a mag- nificent series of chariot races celebrated his restoration.

As for the two men who had dared sit on the throne and call

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE 123

themselves emperors in the course of Justinian’s exile, they were pinioned and stretched out on the ground before the throne, while Justinian kept a foot heavily on each neck. While he did so the crowds were led in a mass shouting of the 18th verse of the 91st Psalm, which in the King James version is “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder.” In the Greek the word for lion is “leon” and for adder “aspis.” The verse un- doubtedly seemed, to the exultant Justinian, to celebrate his own reinstatement, for was not “leon” clearly Leontius and was not “aspis” Tiberius (whose proper name was Apsimar ) and was he not treading upon them?

What with this assurance of divine favor and his own mad craving for revenge, Justinian launched a reign of terror in the city. Having executed the two ex-emperors after the display in the hippodrome, he went on to order mass executions of all who had worked against him or were suspected of having worked against him.

Though the Arabs were making headway again in Asia Minor, Justinian disregarded that. It was the blood of his enemies within the empire for which he thirsted. The city of Ravenna in Italy had rejoiced at his downfall, and so had the city of Cherson in which he had been exiled for a time. Very well then, decided mad Justinian, both cities would be destroyed from top to bottom. Every building was to be pulled down; every inhabitant killed. Cherson, however, on receiving news of the fate being planned for it, prepared to resist and called on the Khazars for help. The Khazars found it to their interest to answer the call, and the imperial army being led toward the Crimea knew there would be trouble. They were sullen enough at the cruel task set them, and the thought of having to fight a major battle to accomplish it drove them into rebellion.

The troops proclaimed their general, Philippicus (fih-lip’ih- kus), emperor and then they doubled back to Constantinople. They seized it in 711. Justinian was in Asia Minor at the time,

124 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

and soldiers were sent out to seize him before he could have time to react. He was taken into custody only six years after his triumphant restoration and this time he was given no chance for a comeback. He was killed.

His young son was killed at the same time in Constantinople and the line of the great Heraclius thus came to an end. There had been six emperors of the dynasty and together they had occupied the throne for just 101 years (if the ten years of Jus- tinian’s exile are ignored).

THE GREAT SIEGE—TWO

However glad Constantinople might feel to be rid of the in- cubus of a madly vengeful emperor, what followed was not par- ticularly good. The armed forces which had placed Philippicus on the throne were soon disenchanted with him. In 718 a band of army conspirators kidnapped him while he was rather the worse for drink after a gay banquet, blinded him, and left him helpless in the empty hippodrome. They selected a court off- cial in his place and hailed him as Emperor Anastasius IT. The new emperor tried to take his duties seriously and to initiate army reforms. By now, though, the armed forces were growing accustomed to profiting by anarchy. A contingent of troops from northeastern Asia Minor laid siege to Constantino- ple for six months during 715. Anastasius fled and retired to a monastery. The troops next raised another palace official, an utter nonentity, and hailed him as Emperor Theodosius III. He proved completely helpless to do anything.

The six years of anarchy and army-led chaos saw Islam mak- ing wide gains. Systematically, they were absorbing Asia Minor. They took Amasia (am”uh-sy’uh ), an important city 375 miles east of Constantinople in 712, and by 716 some raiding

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE 125

parties had reached the Aegean Sea. By then all of Asia Minor was either occupied by Islamic hordes or directly threatened. More than ever, the armies of Islam seemed unstoppable. In the Far East, they penetrated India and reached the borders of China. In the far west, a raiding party of Islamic Berbers crossed into Spain in 711 and quickly occupied nearly the en- tire country. In 715 Sulayman (soo-ly-mahn’) ascended the throne of the caliphs in Damascus, and truly the empire he ruled, which had grown in less than a century from nothing at all, was enough to dazzle any mind. From extreme east to extreme west, Sulay- man’s rule stretched for 4500 miles and under the banner of the caliphate was the largest and mightiest realm the world had yet seen. Yet still centered in that huge expanse of territory was the city of Constantinople — still Christian, still hostile, still un- taken. It was an unaccountable blister on the fair expanse of the world as seen from Damascus and its fall was decided upon. A huge expedition was readied to lay siege to the city by land and sea, and in 717 it set forth under the leadership of the ca- liph’s brother, Forty years ago, Constantinople had withstood such a siege; this time, the caliph was grimly determined it would not.

And, indeed, the situation seemed worse for Constantinople now than it had been on the earlier occasion. Then, Constan- tine IV, an efficient ruler and an able soldier, had been on the throne. Now there was only Theodosius III, as useless an in- competent as could be imagined, ruling over a city utterly demoralized by years of anarchy and political coups.

It was, however, the extraordinary fortune of the Byzantine Empire that, through a long and checkered history on several occasions when all seemed lost, the proper man for the task ap- peared from nowhere. Nearly a century before, Heraclius had appeared to pull the empire out of the enemy’s throat; now it was a general named Leo.

126 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

It has commonly been believed that Leo was born in Isauria in south-central Asia Minor; as a result he is commonly called Leo the Isaurian and is made into a countryman of Zeno, the first of the Byzantine emperors. It seems more likely on the basis of recent research that he came of a north-Syrian family and should more accurately be called Leo the Syrian. A faulty miscopying by some scribe may have given rise to the blunder. Nevertheless, it is not likely, blunder or not, that the name Leo the Isaurian will ever be wiped out.

Leo was born in 680 and was still a boy when Justinian I was following his policy of displacing families, of moving Greek families out of threatened portions of Asia Minor and stiffening what remained with Slavic immigrants. Leo's family, together with himself, therefore found themselves in Thrace.

Leo joined the army and did well. He was promoted by Jus- tinian and through all the political vicissitudes that followed, he kept firmly to his military task and continued to rise. He was military governor of one of the themes of Asia Minor under Anastasius II and did what he could to slow down the Arab penetration of the peninsula and to make it expensive for the invaders. There is a tale that while he was still a peasant boy, a for- tuneteller had predicted he would one day be emperor. Per- haps this is true. There were ample precedents of lowborn peasants rising by way of the army to the throne. There was Justin I, for instance. And fortunetellers, anxious to please and be well tipped, were probably free in their prediction of impe- rial greatness to every peasant boy they met. Still, prophecies, even when false, may influence history and when the time came, Leo may well have remembered the fortuneteller and acted accordingly.

In 717 with the great Arabian effort against Constantinople imminent, surely one more military coup was absolutely neces- sary if there were to be an emperor capable of facing the emer- gency. Leo decided he himself was the man, and he marched

et ey, eee oe ne,

Se

a —~ o WV1Si —_”

EDDY ¢

VIEVUY

SOIUVAIVE ©) ¢

a sey

SA¥ALI Sadun Or. ‘ (en sooewsars QI) iD tgs ; \} vias

~~ \ Vet : Ye rOdTUD PN Dy BF SRS i wt / yonpy « SS Au Secor, Gm ve ’ ma, WZ ff fy’ ‘ a UUPDAEY

YON VIS¥ roymopessoy yy nopseyD 4 a LD) "| saevexoy sormaale

af

suvoung

It] OPT pun oz/ ut sudurg sunuezsg oy. [TA dVW

128 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

on Constantinople. Theodosius II, with considerable relief no doubt, resigned the throne at once and entered a monastery.

On March 25, 717, Leo was crowned Emperor Leo HI. It was none too soon. The Arabs were on their way. They reached the Bosporus, ferried contingents into Europe, and by August 717, Constantinople was under as close a siege by land and sea as it had been in 678.

But alas for the Arabs, they were six months too late. Had they managed to arrive in 716, it is conceivable that the demor- alized city would have fallen, with incalculable consequences to world history. Now in 717, however, Leo IIT was in control and under his vigorous command there was no thought of de- featism.

Greek fire was brought into play again and the Arab fleet suffered much damage and had to withdraw far enough to leave Constantinople room to breathe. Leo led strong forays out from the city, while Byzantine forces in Asia Minor attacked the lines of communication of the Arab army. The caliph, Su- layman, died unexpectedly early in the siege and, in the confu- sion that invariably follows a change in ruler in an absolute monarchy, the Arabic forces in the field were deprived of firm home support. Then, the winter of 717-718 entered into a pe- riod of extraordinary cold and snow fell to unprecedented depths. Horses and camels died in herds and the Arab soldiers went through a “Valley Forge” of misery. Finally, when the warm weather returned, Leo had ob- tained the help of the Bulgarian ruler, while the Arabian army, so great and resplendent less than a year before, was gaunt with famine. Leo continued to win victories, slashing at them vigor- ously with unfailing success; on August 15, 718, the remnants of the Arab force raised the siege and departed. Only five ships out of an original fleet of 800 managed to reach home.

Never again were the Arabs to return to Constantinople. Never again would the world situation be quite so favorable to them. Leo III had saved Europe this second time and it was

THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE 129

not to require saving again. To be sure, Islam would yet make stunning advances, but not under Arabian leadership. And the day would come when Constantinople would fall at last, but not to Arabs, and not until the infant Western European civili- zation had grown strong enough to save itself.

It was not long after the failure at Constantinople that Islam made a foray far in the West. From their new base in Spain, the Islamic forces (Berbers or Moors rather than Arabs) raided what is now southwestern France. They were finally met and defeated by Frankish forces at a battlefield near the city of Tours in 732.

This Battle of Tours has been traditionally viewed by west- ern writers as a turning point — as the place and time where the tide of Islam was stopped and turned back forever. This is probably an overstatement. In France the Islam world was op- erating at the end of a line of communication thousands of miles from the core of its realm. Even allowing for Islamic pol- icies of conversion, that line of communication was stretched to the breaking point. The Moorish army in France was little more than a reconnaissance in force. The Battle of Tours was a sign that the Moors would need a major offensive to advance, and their situation in Spain was not such as to support a major offensive so they retired and went on the defensive —a defensive they were to maintain stubbornly for seven and a half centuries. Had Constantinople fallen, however, the main Is- lamic forces would have advanced on western Europe from the southeast by a much more direct route and the situation would surely have been considerably different. Nevertheless, in the mind of the West, it was the Battle of Tours that was the turning point and the salvation of Europe, and the double siege of Constantinople was either forgotten or ignored. When the West finally made contact with Constanti- nople, there was no reverence, no gratitude for past favors (al- though, to be sure, Constantinople fought for itself rather than for Europe ) — there was only contempt on both sides.

exe, agvrsiAcrourelon AGW onoweheloonc pA S | a TA I\ eae -_ TOY.

MONKS AND EMPERORS

THE IMAGE BREAKER

While he was destroying the Arabian besiegers, Leo was also planning another reorganization of the empire. It was neces- sary to extend still further the theme system initiated by Hera- clius and, indeed, to place the entire empire on a strict military footing. The problem was, though, that generals too easily gained a dangerous quantity of power in this way. Leo himself had leaped from the post of governor of a theme to emperor on the throne, and he did not think the process should be repeated. His solution was to make the themes smaller, decreasing the power, military and economic, that any one general could wield.

MONKS AND EMPERORS 131

An attempt to increase efficiency in another direction was much more difficult to accomplish and nearly split the realm into civil war. Though Leo III saved Constantinople and Christendom, his attempt at religious reform was to make him anathema to the Church. The trouble lay with the icon, which is the Greek name for the images used in connection with reli- gious ritual.

The stern tenets of Judaism had forbidden the construction of images of living things, because once such images existed there was invariably a strong tendency to worship them as idols. Not many people were satisfied to worship an abstract, imageless God, and even the Jews themselves fell prey now and then to the colorful rites centering about some traditional idol.

The early Christians retained this opposition to religious art, but as Christianity grew less Jewish and more Greek the situa- tion changed. The Greeks were overwhelmingly devoted to art and they could not resist making reproductions, in two or three dimensions, of Jesus, of the Virgin Mary, and of the saints. These, after all, were not beastly idols of imaginary gods or monstrous figures with animal heads; they were the likenesses of saintly and divine figures who had walked the earth as human beings. They served as symbols to focus the attention of worshipers upon the individuals who were being thought of with devotion, and they served as illustrated Biblical stories for those who could not read. They made the churches more beau- tiful and the hearts of Christians happier. What, then, was _ wrong with them? Arguments such as these won out and icons became an indispensable part of the Christian Church, both West and East. Not surprisingly, they were especially numer- ous in Greece.

Yet the icons did not please all Christians. There remained those who maintained the icons to be a violation of the com- mandment against the making of idols. They pointed out that, while in theory these icons were merely symbols, the common folk worshiped them as divine in themselves. The commons

132 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

were unsophisticated and could not be expected to understand the subtleties of symbolism. To have icons was to tempt them to mortal sin. 7

An important point to those Christians who opposed icons was the fact that Christianity was held up to ridicule by the stricter religions (in this respect, at least) of Judaism and Islam. The Jews might be ignored; they were few and weak. Islam, however, was powerful; the scorn of its followers was embarrassing to many. Indeed, some Christians must have felt that Christianity was being punished for its idolatry and that it was God’s will that expanding imageless Islam be the punishing force. Opposition to icons was particularly strong in Asia Minor, where for decades Christianity had been desperately fighting off the Islamic armies. Leo III, a pious man, came of a family from Asia Minor and he had been brought up in an icon- disapproving tradition. As the years passed and he labored to rebuild the empire from the blows it had suffered during the two decades of near anarchy since the first deposition of Justin- ian II, he became more and more convinced of the evil of icons. In this belief he was opposed by many, and by none more than the monks. Monks were numerous in the empire. There were nearly a hundred monasteries in Constantinople alone, and the monks were chief among those who favored a strongly ritualized Church. The monks supported icons and miracles and all the sensual trappings that made a kind of show business out of religion and impressed and attracted the people. This attitude had built up gradually, since the time of Constantine I himself, After Helena, the mother of Constantine I, had discovered the True Cross, she also discovered (at least so it was believed ) other relics of the crucifixion, such as the nails that had pierced Jesus’ hands and feet, the crown of thorns Jesus had worn, the sponge that had raised vinegar to Jesus’ lips, and the spear that had transfixed Jesus’ side. These were brought back to Con-

MONKS AND EMPERORS 133

stantinople and that set the fashion for relic collecting. Every church had its supply of bones and other paraphernalia associ- ated with one saint or another and all were mystically powerful at working wonders.

Then, again, a robe considered to be that of the Virgin Mary was brought to Constantinople about 470 and uncounted quan- tities of Marian relics filled churches and monasteries there- after. Gradually, the Virgin came to be considered the chief protectress of the city. The people believed this with the same sort of emotional fulfillment that the pagan Athenians experi- enced in accepting the protective influence of Athena, and the pagan Romans that of Juno.

The monks, as the possessors and guardians of the wonder- working materials, had enormous influence over the less edu- cated, particularly the women, and had no desire or intention of giving it up. Monasteries grew rich and powerful through the trappings of religion rather than its ethical content.

Leo III determined to break, or at least diminish, the power of the monks for a number of reasons, For one thing, we cannot discount sincere piety. Leo must have honestly felt that the icons were idolatrous and wicked, and that the monks in en- couraging idolatry were doing the work of the devil.

Secondly, he must have recognized that monkish theories weakened the State. By encouraging the people of Constanti- nople and the empire to depend on the supernatural power of the Virgin Mary or by the influence of this relic or that, they weakened the will of the people to take strong action them- selves. Not only that, but the monks and the tenants on the lands they controlled (which were broad in acreage) were not liable to military service. This narrowed the manpower base for the army.

Finally, the monks resisted with all their power any attempt to tax their enormous wealth. Nor did patriotism or concern for

national danger ever tempt them to make free-will offerings to the State.

134 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Leo, therefore, struck at the monks by simplifying the Church ritual. One easy way of doing that was to abolish icons. In 726 the first decree against their use was issued and officers of the emperor began to travel through the realm, entering churches and breaking or smashing their icons. They even broke crucifixes which were considered a kind of image. These officials were Iconoclasts (“icon breakers”) and this began the Iconoclast Controversy. Iconoclasm certainly drew opposition from those who fa- vored images — the Iconodules; that is, “image venerators,” veneration being less strong than worship —for if worship were admitted, those who favored images would indeed be idolators. Chief among the Iconodules were the monks, and they labored to convince the people that to destroy an image of Jesus or Mary was the height of blasphemy and meant irrevo- cable damnation. The caliph at Damascus had decreed in 723 (only three years earlier), out of his own Islamic conscience, that all icons in Christian churches within his dominions were to be destroyed. What Leo was doing, therefore, seemed to be Islamic heresy.

The Iconodules were strongest in Greece, which rose in re- bellion against the emperor in 727. A man named Cosmas was proclaimed emperor and he sailed for Constantinople with a fleet. The fleet was no match for the imperial navy and its Greek fire, and the rebellion was suppressed without trouble.

Though opposition continued (and, indeed, never ceased), Leo persisted. He had the strong support of the army which was overwhelmingly Iconoclast, since its own support was de- pendent on the unlocking of monastery-bound wealth and the freeing of monastery-bound recruits.

Though Leo could enforce his edicts, more or less, in Greece and Asia Minor, the situation was different in Italy, where the grip of the emperor had grown weak. Thousands of refugee Iconodules, with their icons, fled to southern Italy, which was still imperial territory but which ignored the Iconoclast edicts.

MONKS AND EMPERORS 135

As for the Exarchate of Ravenna, which included Rome, that might almost be written off altogether. The pope would not yield an inch to Iconoclasm. Not only was it heretical in the papal view, but the pope could not possibly accept any important change in ritual that originated through imperial edict. It was the pope and only the pope who governed the Church in matters of ritual, and this was something that would never be compromised an inch. Besides, Leo III, in his attempt to reorganize the shattered finances of the empire, had reestablished a tight system of taxa- tion over the Italian provinces. This came as a most unpleasant shock to the Italian landowners on whom the taxes fell most heavily, for in the past years of anarchy, taxes had gone uncollected in the West. And, as it happened, Pope Gregory II was the largest landowner in Italy. The popes would long before have made an attempt to break away from imperial domination were it not for the perennial threat of the Lombards. Against the Lombards, the imperial forces in the exarchate had been a strong shield not to be aban- doned lightly. Now, however, between Iconoclasm and taxes, the papacy decided, in desperation, that the Lombards were the lesser menace and called them in. The Lombards, terribly pleased at the invitation, swarmed through the exarchate and almost took Ravenna. The imperial forces managed to beat them back in 731, but the handwriting was on the wall. The emperor's day in Rome was done. The Latin-speaking Christians in the West knew little of the subtle ins and outs of the Iconoclast Controversy and didn’t care. What they did know was that there was an emperor in Constantinople who was destroying images of Jesus and of Mary and of all the saints. The horror of the common folk was unimaginably intense and the pope received total support in the West.

Despite all that Leo could do, he could neither force Pope Gregory IT to change his mind or to leave his post. (The day

136 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

was forever gone when an emperor could depose a pope and carry him off for trial in Constantinople.) Leo lost face in the West as a result, and all reverence for the name of emperor was gone. Another tie binding East and West thus broke.

Gregory II was succeeded by Gregory ITI, whose attitude to- ward Iconoclasm was even more intransigent.than that of his predecessor. He had no sooner taken his seat on the papal throne than he excommunicated all Iconoclasts, including the emperor. This was outright treason from the imperial stand- point, but the Italian cities supported the pope and he re- mained untouchable. Gregory III looked beyond the Lom- bards toward the still more powerful Franks, who were even then in the process of winning the Battle of Tours against the Moors from Spain and thereby gaining immeasurable prestige. There was little the frustrated emperor could do to punish the pope except withdraw from papal jurisdiction (in 733) cer- tain areas which remained under firm Byzantine control — Sicily, southern Italy, and the Illyrian coast — and place them under the direct control of the (Iconoclast) Patriarch of Con- stantinople. The pope never recognized the shift. The emperor still managed to maintain a shadowy presence in the exarchate, largely because the Lombards were never entirely trusted by the popes. Despite the setbacks and difficulties involved in the Icono- clast movement, Leo’s reign was a success. He did manage to reorganize the financial affairs of the empire and place it on the road to prosperity once more. His reorganization of the theme system made the empire strong enough to preclude any further Arabian penetrations to Constantinople. Indeed, when the Arabs did launch another invasion of Asia Minor in 739, Leo beat them thoroughly before they had come within 200 miles of Constantinople. Leo also mended fences in the north by an alliance with the Khazar ruler. To strengthen the alliance the daughter of that ruler was married to Leo’s son and heir.

Leo also reorganized the law code of Justinian, bringing it up

MONKS AND EMPERORS 137

to date in Greek. On the whole, he modified it in the direction of humanity and mildness. Difference in punishment according to rank in society was abolished. All men, except slaves, were to suffer equally for equal crimes and, as for slaves, it was made easier to free them.

To be sure, Christian puritanism showed in some of the changes. Concubinage, which had still been allowed by Justin- ian, was now abolished and marriage of even distant relatives was frowned upon. Divorce was made still harder; penalties on illegitimate children were increased. Leo saw to it, too, that the small farmer received ample protection and that capital punishment was applied to fewer crimes. Substituted for exe- cution was mutilation such as blinding, or the cutting off of hands, nose, or tongue.* If Iconoclasm had won out in the end, there is no question but that Leo III — savior of Christianity, smasher of the Arabs, reorganizer of the empire, mild-hearted reformer of the law — would have gone down into history as one of its greatest and most enlightened heroes. But because Iconoclasm did not, in the end, succeed, he remained at the mercy of chroniclers who were, for the most part, monks and who considered him a devil- ish heretic. As a result, his great name is unfairly obscured in history.

THE STRUGGLE OVER ICONS

Leo III died on June 18, 741, having reached an age of some- thing over sixty and having reigned for twenty-four years. He inaugurated a new dynasty, usually called the Isaurian, for his oldest son succeeded him as Constantine V.

* Mutilation as a punishment seems sadistic and barbaric to us, but it was intended as a merciful substitution for execution. We use imprisonment as a substitute, but ancient and medieval cultures never worked out an effective and practical penal system.

138 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Constantine was a violent and autocratic ruler but he was a capable soldier and an extremely energetic one. His father had saved the empire and brought it back to viability; now the son went on the offensive in two directions.

In the early part of his reign he pushed eastward against Islam. He did not drive the Arabs very far backward, but he campaigned in Syria and Armenia and destroyed an Islamic fleet in the process of driving the Arabs off Cyprus. In the latter part of his reign, he carried on campaign after campaign against the Bulgarians. Again, he did not drive them beyond the Danube, but he pounded them quiet.

Constantine V reigned for thirty-four years and by the time he was done, the Bulgar-Arab nutcracker which was forever threatening to close in on Constantinople from north and south had been pried apart. The Byzantine Empire was once again the strongest power in Europe and none could touch it with impunity.

Constantine was an even more convinced Iconoclast than his father was and under him the movement reached its height. This is not surprising. He was only seven years old when the Iconoclast movement began and he was brought up to consider Iconoclasm right and pious. Nor were his experiences with the Iconodules such as to recommend them to him. When Leo III died, one of Constantine’s brothers-in-law, an Iconodule, dis- puted the throne and retained Constantinople for two years.

The Roman pope continued his intransigent opposition to Iconoclasm, too. The Lombards under a capable king were ex- tending their hold over the exarchate and in 751 they took Ra- venna itself at last. The pope, fearing the Lombards would be as bad politically as the Byzantines were religiously, renewed the appeal to the Franks beyond the Alps.

Now the pope had something to offer. Leading the Franks was Pepin, who was not king but merely a type of prime minis- ter. He would have liked to be king but dared not overturn the legitimate monarch (a powerless puppet) without papal ap-

MONKS AND EMPERORS 139

proval. The pope offered such approval. Pepin became King of the Franks in 752 and in two separate campaigns defeated the Lombards. Having done that, he handed the former territory of the Exarchate of Ravenna to the pope in 756 despite the fact that a Byzantine representative on the spot firmly maintained the territory belonged to the emperor. Constantine, however, far away in Constantinople, was too busy with Bulgars and Arabs to mount a campaign in Italy. In this way, the empire was driven permanently from Rome® and central Italy 216 years after Belisarius had reconquered it for Justinian. The Exarchate of Ravenna had endured about 180 years.

Though the empire that still called itself Roman was never again to set foot in Rome and though the pope was now forever free from the 400-year domination by Constantinople, the Italian toe and heel, together with the island of Sicily, was still Byzantine. That was all that remained now of Belisarius’ con- quests,

With the imminent loss of the exarchate, Constantine V felt he had nothing more to lose in the West and he was the more tempted to strike sternly at the Iconodules. In 753, therefore, he called a meeting of a Church council to make Iconoclasm fully official. The council] met at Hieria, a palace just across the Bosporus from Constantinople, and was purely Byzantine in nature. Churchmen attended only from those territories under imperial control. The pope pointedly refused to send a repre- sentative.

The decisions of the council (with Constantine grimly in the background) was completely Iconoclastic. Icons were held to be against scripture, worship was further simplified, and over all the empire there seemed to settle down a religion similar in some ways to that of the Protestantism that was to sweep northwestern Europe eight centuries later.

* According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 3.c. By an odd coincidence it was almost in the same year, but a.p., that it passed forever from the hands of the empire it had established.

140 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

The monks fought this desperately, but the fierce and unre- lenting emperor took the sternest measures. He closed monas- teries and confiscated their properties. He forced monks and nuns to assume ordinary dress, imprisoned some, exiled others, made some marry, arranged to subject others to the jeers and execration of onlookers, and even executed a few of the most troublesome.

He got away with it in his lifetime, ruling for a generation and dying in his bed. The monks, however, never forgot or for- gave. The monkish chroniclers in future years ignored his mili- tary accomplishments and spared no words in describing his cruelty and perfidy. He was described as both a Jew and an atheist, as suffering from loathsome diseases, and as everything that was vile.

Even his name was forever corrupted. The story was put out that he had soiled himself while being baptized, and that was memorialized eternally in the name by which he is known in the chronicles — Constantine Copronymus (kop-ron’ih-mus ) or “Dung name.”

Constantine had died of natura] causes on September 14, 775, while on one of his numerous campaigns against the Bul- gars. By his first wife, the Khazar princess, he had had a son named Leo, who now succeeded as Leo IV. Because of his mother, he is frequently called Leo the Khazar.

Although Constantine, for State reasons, had married a bar- barian princess at a time when the empire desperately needed the Khazar alliance, his own victories made it possible for his son to marry for love. Leo married a beautiful Athenian girl named Irene, who, as far as we know, had nothing more practi- cal than her face and figure to offer the heir to the throne. Ap- parently, he thought it enough and like his predecessors Theo- dosius II and Justinian, who also married for love, he had a happy marriage.

Leo IV tried in all things to emulate his father. He continued the latter’s vigorous policy against the Arabs and Bulgars, and

MONKS AND EMPERORS 141

he also continued the policy of Iconoclasm. In the latter case, however, he receded somewhat from Constantine’s extreme po- sition, and adopted an attitude of limited tolerance. This was probably owing to the fact that his wife, Irene, was a strong, though secret, Iconodule and intrigued successfully on behalf of her views. (As a result she was made a saint by the later churchmen of the East and is still regarded as one, although in all matters other than her Iconodulism, she was far removed from a saint. ) On September 8, 780, Leo died, after a short reign of just under five years and aged just under thirty. His ten-year-old son succeeded as Constantine VI and Irene served as regent. Almost at once, Irene began to maneuver for the restoration of the use of icons. It wasn’t as easy as one might think. In the half-century of Iconoclastic domination, the administration of the Church had been turned over almost entirely to Icono- clasts. These high churchmen, even including the patriarch, had to be forced to resign and then replaced by Iconodules. Then, too, the army, proud of the victories of the Iconoclastic emperors, was more Iconoclastic than ever. To be sure, Irene seems to have deliberately weakened the army by cutting mili- tary appropriations. (Since this was translated into lower taxes it had the added advantage of making her more popular with civilians.) Still, when Irene attempted to arrange an ecumen- ical Church council in 786 to reverse Iconoclasm, irate soldiers broke it up. Irene had to try again. In September 787 she succeeded in arranging the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea. As might be expected, this new council completely reversed the judgments of the one under Constantine V. Icon worship was restored, but with one small reservation — there were to be no statues, only bas-reliefs at most. (This finally killed the art of sculpture in the empire and, in later centuries, in Russia, too, for that land inherited its culture from Constantinople. )

Iconoclasm did not disappear at once, of course. It held on

142 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

for some decades and even made an occasional mild comeback. Eventually, though, all the books written in defense of the Iconoclast position were destroyed, so that we know nothing about it except for the evidence of its bitter enemies.

The victory of the Iconodules was strangely limited in some ways. Though the monks had won over the emperors, that did not mean the Church had overthrown caesaropapism. When the emperor was Iconodule he was as dominant over the Church as ever.

Furthermore, the Iconodule victory did not heal over the breach with the West that sixty years of Iconoclasm had wid- ened. Indeed, the Seventh Ecumenical Council was also the last. Never again would there be a council to which represent- atives of the clergy from both East and West would be sent to talk over the wide range of Church problems.

The Iconodule victory also had a serious and deleterious effect on the empire’s intellectua] development. Ever since Jus- tinian’s closing of the Academy in Athens, the world of scholar- ship in the empire had been constricting. The disasters under Heraclius, and the two sieges of Constantinople, had made life hard in the empire and left no room for intellectual develop- ment. About 750 John of Damascus wrote learnedly in theology and was credited with being the first Christian writer to deal with Aristotelian philosophy in an attempt to coordinate it with Christian theology (five centuries before similar attempts were made in western Europe). John’s work, however, was not done in the empire but in the caliphate, for it was Islam that in the early Middle Ages offered a stimulating environment for schol- arship — not Christendom.

Now, after the Iconoclast Controversy, the eastern Church advanced deeply and finally into the blind alley and living death of changelessness. The long fight against Iconoclasm had so frightened it as to drive it into a permanent reaction. No change was ever again to be allowed. The result was that any

MONKS AND EMPERORS 143

chance of intellectual growth was stopped. The Byzantine Em- pire was yet to have periods of cultural flowering but it was always a rich preservation of the past, never a brilliant evolu- tion of the new. The result is that after Justinian’s time the Byzantine Empire never produced a book that has been widely read throughout the civilized world, never produced a new movement in philosophy, never produced a scientist. And when the time came for the Middle Ages to flower into a new culture that would advance far beyond the works of the an- cients, it was in the West that the flowering took place and not in the East.

NEW EMPIRE IN THE WEST

By the time of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the Emperor Constantine VI was in his late teens and he wanted to end the regency. Irene was not of a mind to allow this. She squashed Constantine’s attempt firmly and demanded that the army swear allegiance to her alone.

The army, however, was not yet reconciled to the Iconodule view and was still strongly hostile to Irene. They rebelled and forced the recognition of Constantine VI as emperor in his own right. Irene was sent into banishment.

But Constantine lacked judgment. Somehow, he managed to get the idea that he would like to have his mother near him, and in 792 he recalled Irene from exile. Perhaps he loved his mother, but his mother certainly didn’t love him. Indeed, she was one of the most monstrous travesties of motherhood to be found in history. She began at once to intrigue against him.

Constantine, having placed himself within Irene’s reach, pro- ceeded to place a weapon in her hand. He had a wife named Maria and a mistress, Theodote. No one seemed to mind, but

144 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Constantine, in a fit of love, divorced his wife in 796 and mar- ried his mistress. By being honest about the situation, he offended all the pious of the empire.

Irene’s party was immediately strengthened and by 797 she was powerful enough to have her son seized and blinded. He lived on in obscurity and it is not even known exactly when he died. His blinding, however, which ended his emperorship, marks the end also of the Isaurian dynasty, which had included four emperors and occupied the throne for just eighty years.

After Constantine’s blinding (which the loving mother had ordered carried out with unusual brutality) Irene declared herself emperor, assuming the male title, for she scorned to find a man through whom she might rule. This anomalous situation continued for five years, from 797 to 802, and it had important repercussions in western history.

Almost all of western Christendom was at the time under Frankish kings and the Franks did not recognize women as rul- ers. A woman emperor seemed a contradiction in terms to them and, to their way of thinking, the imperial throne was empty. By a peculiar coincidence of history, just when the East was under the control of a woman, the West was under the greatest Frankish monarch of them all— Charles the Great, usually known by the French version of the name, Charlemagne. The pope at the time was Leo III, and he had a number of reasons for taking an action which seemed reasonable if the im- perial throne were considered vacant. For one thing, Rome was the original seat of the empire, with Constantinople a late- comer in comparison. There ought to be an emperor in Rome in any case — and all the more so if there was none in Constan- tinople. Furthermore, now that the pope was freed of domina- tion by an emperor at Constantinople, why should he not have an emperor of his own?

On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III therefore crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. Once again, and for the first time in over three centuries, there was a Roman emperor in the

Pid

SOUL.

pepseg » yas YS Cf TITIINT ©

VIANVLOdOssH

VINANUY

a

sayivay

- l¢ ¢ ¢ , ~ é 1D

Sarsidayv

aa

AFT Ry

‘ t e é

>\dourueisuoy * ’

’ / YONDN VISV rs +

SAVOIIE

suas] Jopun og ut ondurg sunurzkg oq], TIA dVW

SUVALVISO,

f} audigy ystyursy ays jo sawry

andurg aunurzdg ay) Jo sartury

146 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

West as well as in the East. There was -only one difference and that was a vital one. The pope had no right by theory or tradi- tion — at least in the eyes of the Byzantines — to crown an em- peror. To Irene, it was pure usurpation of a title and was, in and of itself, cause for war. -

Charlemagne knew this quite well and was rather regretful that he had been crowned, especially since he did not like the appearance of having to owe the title to the pope. He always claimed that the crowning had been put through without his foreknowledge.

We are so used to reading West-oriented books which treat Charlemagne as extremely powerful (largely by comparing him with other western monarchs before and after) that it seems strange, perhaps, that Charlemagne didn't particularly want to fight the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines had the best army in Europe and were far stronger economically and militarily than was Charlemagne’s ramshackle Frankish Em- pire. (Indeed, Charlemagne was strongly conscious of the intellectual and cultural backwardness of his realm and was im- pressed with the distant splendor of Constantinople. Charle- magne ruled over much of Italy and the Byzantine architecture he found there can be seen, in imitation, in the cathedral he had built in his own capital of Aachen, far to the north. ) There was some suggestion that Charlemagne ought to marry Irene and unite the two halves of Christendom that way, but of what use would it be for a sixty-year-old man to marry a fifty-year-old woman? They could not have children, and, fail- ing that, who was to succeed them? So it was war, a rather desultory one, for there were few places where the two empires could meet and fight.

But Irene was never popular with the army and now that Arabs, Bulgars, and Franks in addition, surrounded the empire with hostility, she was less popular with them than ever. No matter how much she might call herself emperor and keep up the fiction of masculinity, she could not lead an army. In 802,

MONKS AND EMPERORS 147

therefore, a well-organized conspiracy of generals quietly took her into custody and crowned as Nicephorus I (ny-sef’oh-rus) her treasurer in her place. Irene was placed in a nunnery on the island of Lesbos and there her life came to a quiet end the next year.

THE BULGAR-ARAB NUTCRACKER

There’s one thing about making an emperor out of an honest treasurer. He is used to handling money and he knows the mis- ery of not having enough. It was Nicephorus’ first concern, therefore, to introduce reforms in a governmental system which had fallen into decay while Irene was engaged with religious matters and with her intrigues against her son.

This meant cutting down waste and collecting taxes more rigorously, and that made Nicephorus I unpopular, of course. In particular, he taxed religious property and in consequence the monks exploded with hatred for him. The monasteries were always large landowners and their concern for their pocketbook was always paramount. Whatever the national emergency, the monkish treasury must remain intact.

Nicephorus also took care to stop what he thought was an unnecessary war with Charlemagne. There was no possibility of forcing the Frankish monarch to abandon the title of em- peror, so why not just come to some compromise agreement? In 803 Nicephorus and Charlemagne agreed on a peace that formally left southern Italy and the Illyrian coast to the Byzan- tine Empire. They were, in any case, too far away for the Franks to reach conveniently. A more likely source of trouble was Venice, which was surrounded by Frankish territory, yet that, too, was left to the Byzantines. It was a reasonable ac- complishment for Nicephorus, who squeezed that much out of

148 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

the Frank while still refusing to recognize the latter’s imperial title,

Nicephorus was less lucky with Islam. The Omayyad dy- nasty had faded out and Islam came under the line of Abbasid monarchs about 750. These moved their capital from Damas- cus to Bagdad, further east. They ruled over all the vast Is- lamic Empire, save for Spain in the far west,* and under them the Arabs gained a renewal of strength. This was never sufli- cient to carry them all the way to Constantinople, but their raids into Asia Minor grew stronger and more dangerous. In 786 the most famous of the Abbasid line, Harun al-Rashid (well known for his role in the tales of the Arabian Nights) came to the throne.

Irene had arranged to pay heavy tribute to the Abbasids to keep them from raiding the empire. To Nicephorus’ economi- cal soul, so large a tribute was impossible. He therefore sent a letter to Harun al-Rashid announcing he would no longer pay the tribute.

Harun’s answer is unusual in the annals of diplomacy. Here it is, in full: “In the name of the all-merciful God, Harun al- Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, dog of a Ro- man. I have received your letter, son of an infidel, and you shall not hear my reply, you shall see it.” Harun promptly or- ganized an invasion of Asia Minor, drove the Byzantine armies back, and forced a humiliating peace on the emperor. The trib- ute had to continue. But if Arab pressure was increasing, so was Bulgar. The Bul- gar-Arab nutcracker was back in full operation. In 808 a vigor- ous leader, named Krum, appeared at the head of the Bulgars. His first victories were over the last remnant of the Avars who had been so serious a threat to the empire two centuries before. Under Krum’s blows, the Avars disappeared from history for- ever.

* Spain remained under an Omayyad, the only survivor of the ear-

lier dynasty.

MONKS AND EMPERORS 149

As far as the Byzantines were concerned, however, the Bul- gars were no improvement over the Avars. Krum carried on a vigorous war against the empire, and Nicephorus had to spend the last years of his reign campaigning in the Balkans. Twice Nicephorus managed to occupy the Bulgarian capital, but the capital of a tribal society is by no means a Constantinople. The Bulgarian capital represented no strategic center, and as their armies continued fighting, the Byzantines simply had to retreat both times.

Finally, in 811, in a great battle in the mountains, the Byzan- tines suffered a serious defeat. For the first time since the foun- dation of Constantinople, an emperor died in battle — and the monks of the empire celebrated this national catastrophe with wild jubilation.

For a few years there was confusion among the Byzantines. Stauracius (stoh-ray’shee-us), Nicephorus’ son, succeeded, but he had been badly wounded in the same battle that had killed his father and the new emperor was dead after only a few months. Succeeding him was Michael I, a son-in-law of Ni- cephorus. Michael meant well, but he was a weak monarch and was under monkish domination. The monkish party had for some time been under the leader- ship of Theodorus Studita. (He bore that name because he was the head of the monastery of the Studion located in Constanti- nople.) He had striven mightily to reform the monasteries and to introduce greater piety and asceticisms. His rigid morality had caused him to object vociferously to the marriage of Con- stantine VI with his mistress and that was the cause of his going twice into exile. Theodorus Studita was a convinced Iconodule, of course, and drove hard to wipe out any remaining traces of Iconoclasm. This suited the Emperor Michael who kept Stu- dita as his chief adviser.

The advice wasn’t sufficient to enable Michael to handle that powerful Bulgarian, Krum. In 812 Michael recognized the va- lidity of Charlemagne’s title of emperor. This was a terrific

150 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

concession to make, but one can see the hope that the Franks on the other side of the Bulgar territory would attack and re- lieve Bulgarian pressure on the Byzantine Empire. If that was what Michael wanted, he was fated to be disappointed. Charlemagne was nearly at the end of his long reign (he died in 814) and after that, under a much weaker successor, the Frankish Empire would absorb itself entirely in civil war and would gradually fall apart.

So the Bulgars continued to advance, with Krum victorious everywhere. In 812 and again in 818 he won battles in Thrace and moved on to Constantinople itself. Once again the capital city faced a foreign enemy. There had been Huns, Persians, Avars, Arabs, and now Bulgarians.

It was fortunate for the empire that at this moment the Ab- basid end of the Bulgar-Arab nutcracker had not budged. Harun al-Rashid had died in 809 and there had been several years of civil war convulsing Islam so that the Arabs left Asia Minor in peace for a while. What’s more, the Byzantines man- aged to find the man for the job of saving the city. It was al- most a repeat of what had taken place a century before when the Arabs were besieging Constantinople for the second time. Again a general saw that the empire could only be saved if a strong hand (his own) seized the power and this time, too, the general’s name was Leo.

With the Bulgarians swarming toward the city walls, Leo's troops declared him emperor and raced the enemy to Constan- tinople. Michael, perhaps glad to be rid of the burden, did not resist, even though he had the monkish party firmly behind him. He retired from the throne and lived out the remaining thirty years of his life in quiet.

The new emperor, crowned in July 818, was Leo V the Arme- nian (from his place of birth) and the course of his reign re- sembled that of Leo I, just as his coming to power did. He strengthened the city defenses against the Bulgarian army,

MONKS AND EMPERORS 15h

which had circled the land approaches to the city within a week of his coronation.

The besiegers found the walls too much to overcome, of course. Leo then led Byzantine forays out of Constantinople and these drove the Bulgars back with considerable slaughter. Leo even tried to arrange a meeting with Krum during which the Bulgarian leader was to be treacherously assassinated, but that failed.

Krum was at last forced to retreat and the next year he died. That took the heart out of the Bulgarian drive. Leo defeated Krum’s son and successor in a violent battle in 817 and peace was signed. The Bulgarians thereafter concentrated on bring- ing the north and west (modern Rumania and Hungary) under their control. They established a sizable realm that filled the space between the Frankish and Byzantine empires. Internally, Leo V was again another Leo III. The new Leo was also of Asia Minor extraction and he also favored Icono- clasm. Times had changed, though, and Leo V could not go very far. He called a Church council at Hagia Sophia and re- established a modified and less rigid kind of Iconoclasm which, however, roused the vituperative anger of Theodorus Studita, who was promptly exiled for the third time.

Leo had an old comrade-in-arms, Michael the Amorian (be- cause he was born in the city of Amorium in central Asia Minor). As emperor, though, Leo found it less easy to have friends and he grew suspicious of Michael. Perhaps he had a right to be suspicious, for the monks were spinning conspiracies on every side.

Leo decided that his old friend Michael was guilty of treason and ordered him arrested and executed. That served as the sig- nal for action, since Michael might well reveal other names and the conspirators dared not wait for that. On Christmas Day 820, while Leo V was leading the singing at services in the pal- ace chapel, they closed in on him. The emperor lifted a heavy

152 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

cross with which to defend himself but he was vastly outnum- bered and he was cut down. Michael was dragged from his prison cell and, with his chains still on him, he was acclaimed emperor as Michael IJ. Because of a speech defect, he is known as Michael the Stammerer. ;

Again the empire suffered under a weak reign and the Bulgar- Arab nutcracker came into action again. Bulgarian raids wors- ened in the north; against Islam the Byzantines experienced a disastrous defeat at sea. The empire was affected, to begin with, by an insurrection in Spain which would certainly have seemed far enough away to be of no concern to the rulers in Constantinople. This, however, is the way it worked. Riots against new taxes upset Cordova, the capital of Moorish Spain, and strong measures of reprisal resulted in hundreds of deaths and many thousands of exiles. A party of 15,000 Spanish Moors sailed eastward across the Mediterranean and settled in Alexandria, Egypt. There they remained, an unruly and indigestible group, for years, until the Egyptian governor bought them off with a large sum of money and the suggestion that they would be much happier in a land of their own which they might tear from the Byzantine Empire. (It was the old Byzantine system of pay-and-point numed against them. )

In 826, then, the Moors swarmed ashore on Crete, seizing the island against weak resistance and making it an independent Islamic nation. They built a new capital they called Chandax and from that the island eventually gained its Italian name of Candia.

Under Islamic rule, Crete became a nest of wild sea pirates that disrupted Mediterranean commerce and established a tra- dition of Islamic piracy in that sea that was not to end for a thousand years. The event meant much more than the loss of an island to the empire. For a period of time, she lost control of the sea and her coasts were exposed to depredation and sack.

Another serious loss took place farther west, in Italy. In 827

MONKS AND EMPERORS 153

the Byzantine naval commander, Euphemius ( yoo-fee’mee-us ), rebelled against the emperor. It seemed to him it would be a brilliant notion to call in an outside force to fight on his behalf. This same brilliant notion has occurred to participants in civil wars uncounted times in history and it has ended in catastrophe just about every time, since those called in invariably take over for themselves. Of all history’s lessons, this seems to be the plainest, and the most frequently ignored. In Euphemius’ case, the outside force were the Aghlabids, a tribal group who were in control of what is now Tunis and Libya and who were in the process of making themselves virtu- ally independent of the Abbasid caliphate. The Aghlabids sent a force into Sicily in 827 and at once began to fight on their own account. They killed Euphemius in 828 and took Palermo in 831. They now had a strong foothold in the large island and one which they slowly enlarged. The Byzantines fought back strenuously, maintaining themselves resolutely in shrinking coastal areas. The western tendency to look upon the Byzan- tine Empire as decadent makes it too easy to ignore this stub- born defense of Sicily. The “decadent” empire held out for a century and a quarter before being pushed entirely off the is- land.

Nevertheless, the invasion of Sicily did not have to wait until it was completely successful in order to prove a disaster for western Europe as well as for the Byzantines. From Sicily as a base, Islamic raiders established temporary bases in Italy and placed Rome itself under tribute.

PATRIARCH AND POPE

Michael the Stammerer tried to strengthen his position by a symbolic act. After his wife died, he brought out of a monas-

154 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

tery a woman named Euphrosyne, the daughter of Constantine VI, the emperor who had been blinded by his mother, Irene, some thirty years before. Michael married her and thus allied himself to the Isaurian dynasty.

It had little real meaning, for they had no children. When Michael died in 829, his son Theophilus, by the first wife, could nevertheless consider himself of the Isaurian dynasty by adop- tion. This may have had some influence on the fading Icono- clast portion of the population but it did him no good with the monks.

But then he expected nothing from the monks. Theophilus was the most pronounced Iconoclastic emperor since the death of Leo IV a half-century before. In 832 Theophilus passed an edict making icon worship illegal, and for one last time, over a century after Leo III had initiated the practice, an attempt was made to make Byzantine worship simple and austere.

Theophilus also reorganized the theme system and extended it even to Cherson, the distant imperial outpost on the northern shores of the Black Sea where Justinian II had once been ex- iled. Until then, Cherson had been a fossil monument of a long- dead time, for, in a way, it was the last of the Greek city-states. Even when made part of a theme it retained a shadow of self- rule — leaving it the dimmest of dim shadows of an ancient Greece of twelve centuries before. Theophilus’ reign was occupied with a long war against the Abbasid caliphate in the course of which he achieved some suc- cesses but which, in the long run, gave him the name of The- ophilus the Unfortunate in the chronicles. In 836 a Byzantine offensive ended brilliantly with the sack and destruction of the birthplace of the caliph. The caliph reacted furiously to this loss of face by mounting a large raid into Asia Minor in 838, which had as its sole purpose the capture and destruction of Amorium, the home city of the new Byzantine dynasty. The city was indeed taken and totally destroyed. Not one building was left standing and 30,000 of its people were killed. Theophi-

MONKS AND EMPERORS Bley:

lus never recovered from that blow. He died in 842, leaving as his successor a four-year-old son, who reigned as Michael III. Acting as regent was the dead emperor's wife and the new em- peror’s mother, Theodora.

Once again the widowed empress of an Iconoclast emperor took up the task of restoring icons. Theodora was no Irene, however. As her dead husband had been moderate in his Icon- oclasm, so now the widow was moderate in her reaction. She tried to win over the Iconoclasts rather than force them over and, by and large, she succeeded. Once and for all, the Icono- dules won in 848 and Iconoclasm vanished from the scene after a century and a quarter of existence. On the whole, Theodora ruled well and fought off the Abba- sids in the continuing war in Asia Minor. By 856, however, her son was twenty years old and anxious to rule in his own name. Theodora did not want to give up the rule any more than Irene had wanted to, but her brother Bardas (bahr’das) organized a coup that seized control of the government and put Theodora out of power. She acquiesced, retired into a convent, and, un- like Irene, made no attempt to return to power. She spent the final decade of her life in peace, while Bardas became Michael's chief adviser. Despite Byzantine defeats in Asia Minor and in Sicily (where, by 859, the Moslems had completed the conquest of the interior ), the reign of Michael III saw the empire undergo a cultural renaissance. Pomp and luxury increased and Michael established the official scheme of Byzantine church decoration in the splendid house of worship he built in the palace. The University of Constantinople was reorganized, too, so that the period of darkness which had been deep since after the time of Heraclius now began to lighten and Byzantine culture began to spread outward.

Indeed, its outward spread brought it into serious conflict once again with the pope. While the Iconoclasts had been in power and the patriarch himself had been an image breaker,

156 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

the Iconodules had kept quiet on the issue of papal domination and accepted the help of the pope without making much of a fuss about the old argument of which was the more important, Rome or Constantinople. Once the Iconodules were back in power, however, the argument raged again. The quarrel even affected the matter of the conversion of the heathen.

Christianity had always been a proselytizing religion, partly out of an eager desire to have all men acknowledge what Chris- tians considered to be the truth, partly because conversion to Christianity made political control more nearly possible. Con- version became the tool of imperialism, therefore.

This was true even in the first century of Christian Rome, when the empire and Persia were fighting endlessly over the contro] of Armenia. Much of Armenia was already Christian and to encourage that fact and extend it, the Church prepared an Armenian translation of the Bible.

But now Christianity had split into what were virtually two rival religions, headed one by the pope at Rome and the other by the Patriarch of Constantinople. Each was eager to convert pagans in competition with the other, for each would increase its power if a particular group of tribes worshiped in Latin, rather than in Greek (or vice versa), and acknowledged the supremacy of the pope (or the patriarch). As for the barbarians, they had to consider which branch of the Church was less dangerous to their own safety. Thus, the Slavic Moravians, who inhabited the land we now call Czecho- slovakia, saw in the Germans their chief enemies, and in the Byzantine Empire a possible ally against those Germans. They therefore asked the emperor to send them missionaries who would welcome them into the eastern Church.

In 862 two Greeks, Cyril and Methodius (meh-thoh’dee-us), were sent to the Moravians. They went about their work vigor- iously, inventing an alphabet (based on the Greek) for use in the Slavic languages. This is the Cyrillic alphabet still used today in certain Slavic nations.

MONKS AND EMPERORS bare

The western Church strongly opposed this activity of Greek missionaries far over the line usually taken as separating East from West. The pope tried, successfully, to nullify the move by sponsoring the missionaries himself. Cyril and Methodius were called to Rome a couple of times and the pope agreed to have the Slavs use their native language, rather than Latin, in the liturgy. In this way the groundwork was laid for the eventual absorp- tion of the western Slavs, not only in what is now Czechoslova- kia but also in what is now Croatia (northwestern Yugoslavia ) into the western Church. Indeed, the pope went farther. The Bulgarians viewed the Byzantines as their enemy and so they in turn called for western missionaries and the Roman Church complied. Western missionaries were sent to the Bulgars and it was now the turn of the Byzantine priesthood to fight back and win, for, eventually, the Bulgars followed the rites of the east- ern Church. Meanwhile, the patriarchate was rent by a schism. On the patriarchal seat was Ignatius (ig-nay’shee-us), a son of old Mi- chael I who had ruled briefly thirty years before. He had been appointed by Theodora, the old queen mother, and there was some suspicion that he would like to see her replaced in power. He was therefore deposed and in his place, Photius (foh’ shee-us ), a learned layman, was raised to the patriarchate. This change was not accepted peacefully by the eastern Church and a long controversy arose between the supporters of the two men. In 858 Nicholas I became pope. He was one of the strongest popes of the early Middle Ages and was a firm upholder of the doctrine of papal supremacy. How better could he demon- strate that supremacy than by intervening in the dispute over the patriarchate and establishing his right to make decisions in that connection? He chose to intervene on the side of Ignatius and excommunicated Photius.

Actually, that helped Photius who could now play upon By-

158 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

zantine nationalism, pointing out the pope’s efforts to establish religious supremacy over the empire’s old enemies, the Bulgars. To further his antipapal stand, he initiated a new controversy between the two branches of the Church.

So far the East and the West had been quarreling nearly con- stantly for five centuries over what boiled down to a matter of precedence. There had been little argument over actual theol- ogy. Now, however, Photius brought up a point that would surely seem almost vanishingly trivial to anyone not a theolo- gian (and most certainly to anyone not a Christian). Neverthe- less, it threw up an insurmountable obstruction between the two branches. The eastern Church held that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father, judging from what seems to be the weight of Scriptural evidence. The western Church, anxious to increase the symmetry and beauty of the Trinitarian concept, main- tained that it proceeded from the Father and the Son both. In Latin, the additional word signifying that it proceeded from the Son also was “filioque.” The matter now initiated by Pho- tius was the denunciation of this added word and it is called the Filioque Controversy.

Neither side would ever compromise this issue and it was one more item separating East and West. Indeed, the Filioque Controversy has never been settled; it remains a point at issue right down to this very day.

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

ae ie rie lee iba reattls an a eneetee ie bias ay uoulta

Sei

EMPERORS AND GENERALS

A NEW DYNASTY

The various ups and downs of Byzantine affairs did not greatly bother the emperor himself, however. Michael III was an unstable young man who was sufficiently pleasure-loving to earn the title of Michael! the Drunkard in the later chronicles. The accomplishments of his reign were due more to his cap- able uncle Bardas than to himself. The trouble was that Bardas was far too stern and duty-ridden a man to please a frivolous

emperor for long.

160 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Michael was attracted to a young man who worked in the stables* in Constantinople.

The young man was named Basil. His family may have been Armenian in origin, but he himself was born in Macedonia (where Philip and Alexander the Great had once ruled eleven centuries before). He is known to history, therefore, as Basil the Macedonian. He was strong, athletic, good-looking, and illiterate (rather like Justinian’s uncle, Justin, three and a half centuries before.) He appealed to Michael a good deal, so the emperor made him a boon companion. He was even ordered to marry the Emperor's mistress.

This was convenient for Michael since it gave his mistress the status of a married woman, yet under circumstances which did not deprive him of her company. Eventually, the mistress had a child and there is some argument whether it was Michael's or Basil’s. Perhaps even the mistress didn’t know, but historians seem to have decided it was Basil’s.

When Michael wearied of Bardas, Basil encouraged his im- perial patron to take strong measures. In 865, with Michael’s permission, Basil assassinated Bardas. Michael foolishly made Basil co-emperor in 866 and soon received the reward for his actions, for in 867 Basil had Michael assassinated while drunk. (A great many scandalous tales are told of Michael, but these were put out in the next reign to blacken his name and recon- cile the Byzantine population to the fact that the new emperor — for Basil took over the throne as Basil I — was the assassin of the old. )

With the assassination of Michael III, the Amorian dynasty came to an end. It had included only three emperors and had lasted not quite half a century. It might have been thought

* This is not as menial a job as it seems. To be able to handle horses was important in connection with the races in the hippodrome and, even more so, in connection with the army cavalry. In western nations, the high titles of marshal and constable developed out of words that originally meant “stableboy,” and in both cases the word came to be applied to high military officials.

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 161

that with such beginnings, the new emperor would be a thor- ough failure, but he was not. Byzantine recovery continued under him and he showed himself a prudent emperor. He was, indeed, the first of the empire’s greatest dynasty — the Mace- donian.

Basil I was frugal and he sought out honest administrators. Under his sponsorship, the Code of Justinian was once again overhauled, a gigantic project that was not completed until long after his death. (Preliminary summaries of the code were translated into Slavic languages and had its long-term effect on Slavic law — including Russian law. )

Basil had the opportunity of strengthening the outposts of the empire, for on either side the great enemy empires were fragmenting. The Abbasid caliphate was slowly breaking up as distant provinces made themselves independent and as the ca- liphs retired more and more into the secluded life of their harems. The Frankish Empire had also broken up and Basil was able to expand the Byzantine hold on southern Italy at its expense. He fought the pirate menace that was turning the Mediterra- nean Sea into a no man’s land, thanks to the Cretan base the outlaws held, and he even had hopes of reconquering Sicily. For a while, matters looked well in the western island. Troops were landed in Sicily and made some advances, but then the tide turned and in 878, the Islamic forces took the great city of Syracuse. After that there seemed little possibility of recon- quest but the Byzantines continued to hold on desperately to a few coastal points.

Basil, with his eyes on western expansion, did his best to heal the breach with Rome. He deposed Photius as patriarch and reinstated Ignatius. Once Ignatius was dead, he put Photius back in again but did not allow him to take up extreme posi- tions against Rome.

The Roman popes in Basil’s time were much weaker person- alities than Nicholas I had been, and were in terror, moreover,

162 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

at the successful Islamic raids against their city. In 879, there- fore, Pope John VIII, noting his own inability to handle Islamic forces in central Italy and comparing that with the efficient way in which the Byzantines had driven them out of the south, agreed to recognize Photius as patriarch. The split between the churches was plastered over in this way, but not healed, for there was no settlement of that key word “filioque.”

It was in Basil’s time, too, that the western attempt to con- vert the Bulgarians to western Christianity failed. The Bulgar- ians accepted the eastern version and have clung to it right down to the present.

Basil I died in 886 as the result of a hunting accident. A furious stag caught his antlers in Basil’s belt and before the em- peror could be cut loose, he had been carried sixteen miles (says the undoubtedly exaggerated story) and had received fatal injuries.

His son succeeded with surprising ease as Leo VI, because the Byzantine people were getting used to dynasties. It was clear that prosperity was greatest and the empire strongest when the throne passed peacefully from father to son (especially when both were capable, as with Leo III and Constantine V). It was also clear that between dynasties, when the empire passed from one grasping hand to the next, there was anarchy at home and weakness at the frontiers. By the time Basil I came to the throne, the notion of legiti- macy had made itself felt. This was the notion that the throne ought only to pass from father to son or, failing the son, to the closest relative according to some accepted system, A system of legitimacy removed the choice of monarch from the people or even from the small band of important nobles who might otherwise decide the succession. Instead the choice was God’s, for it was God who ordained who was to be one’s son or closest relative.

The notion of legitimacy was therefore almost inevitably fol- lowed — sooner or later — by the notion of the divine right of

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 163

kings. This argued that a monarch owed responsibility only to God, who had selected him for his role, and not to any of his subjects, who did not, and could not, have any say in his choice (at least in theory).

Basil’s son Leo VI had been educated rather more _ thor- oughly than most princes are, and by none other than the patri- arch Photius himself. The new emperor rather fancied himself as a scholar. He wrote a number of items ranging from military treatises to poetry, and some sermons in addition. There is al- ways the temptation to suppose that a monarch might have his material ghostwritten and some historians suspect that Leo may not have been as scholarly as his reputation made him ap- pear to be. Yet, on the other hand, it is entirely possible for an occasional ruler to have literary talent. In any case, the new emperor is known to history as Leo the Wise or Leo the Philos- opher. Leo showed no particular fondness for Photius, but then a stern taskmaster is not likely to make himself popular to his pupil. One of Leo’s first acts, therefore, was to remove Photius from the patriarchate once again and to replace him with those who favored maintaining the union with Rome (though since the Filioque Controversy was not settled, nothing much was, or could be, accomplished). This time, Photius’ removal was per- manent and the old man spent his last few years in a monastery, dying in 891. Photius’ greatest mark in history outside the East-West re- ligious dispute lay in his classical learning. He compiled a voluminous collection of extracts from Greek literature, accom- panied by his own synopses. Ordinarily something like this, derivative and secondhand, would be dismissed by serious students as a mere popularization and unworthy of note as compared to the original books from which the extracts were taken. At least, so it is if the originals survive. In this case many didn’t; Photius’ popularized potpourri is all we have of many works. It is consequently enormously valuable.

164 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Under Leo the revision of the law code, begun under Basil I, was completed. It proved to be a work of incredible detail, being published in sixty volumes. With it the last vestige of authority on the part of the Senate vanished, as might be ex- pected where monarchical succession was dictated by prin- ciples of legitimacy. The emperor’s power was now, in theory, absolute, unlimited by the existence of an advisory body. To be sure, the absolute power of any monarch usually holds good only as far as his army and navy can reach and under Leo the empire had to undergo a particularly sharp humiliation. Basil's attempt to quell sea piracy had failed and now, almost as though in response, the pirates grew bolder. Islamic corsairs sailed the Aegean Sea—the very heart of Byzantine dominion — with impunity. A particularly daring buccaneer, Leo of Tripoli, sailed northward the length of the Aegean in 904 and fell like a thunderbolt on the unsuspecting city of Thessalonica. He managed to round up 20,000 prisoners whom he carried off for the slave markets of Islam.

Leo VI strengthened his own fleet as a result of this costly lesson and managed to beat the pirates out of the Aegean. He attempted more, but like Basil, he failed. In 911 the Byzantine fleet was defeated by Leo of Tripoli in the open Mediterranean.

THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS

An even more serious danger was threatening by land. The Bulgarians, after nearly a century of peace following the death of Krum, were stirring again. The Byzantines might well have felt chagrin at this, for the Bulgarians were no longer pagan barbarians. They had become Christians, and of the eastern variety. The Bulgarian king, Boris I, had had a natural pen- chant for the religious life and had accepted Christianity in 865,

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 165

None other than Emperor Michael II had served as godfather. What’s more, Boris saw to it that when he accepted Christian- ity, the whole country accepted it along with him. Whether they liked it or not (and many of the Bulgarian nobles most certainly didn't like it) everyone was baptized.

There next arose the question as to how Christianity was to affect Bulgaria’s national existence. Boris wanted to accept the religion of the great enemy to the south without accepting its political domination, and so he asked for an independent church with a patriarch of its own. This Constantinople would not allow and Boris therefore coolly applied to Rome.

Pope Nicholas I promised him a patriarch all his own but, what with one thing and another, never got around to appoint- ing one. Boris, offended, turned back to Constantinople and in 870 made his final choice. Bulgaria would follow the Byzantine ritual and risk the political consequences. That choice proved permanent indeed, for to this day, eleven centuries later, the Bulgarians still adhere to the eastern rites.

By 889 Boris felt he had accomplished his task. Bulgaria had settled down to Christianity and to the set ritual as defined by Boris. The aging monarch decided to retire, and gratefully went off to a monastery while his oldest son, Vladimir, became king in his place.

Vladimir, however, was a dissolute fellow who had bitterly resented his father. He gladly turned to the anti-Boris and anti- Christian segments of the nobility for support. Quickly he began to undo the achievements of the previous reign. In doing this, Vladimir made one mistake. He forgot to allow for the fact that his father was merely retired, not dead.

By 893 the retired king could no longer endure the policies of his son. He burst out of the monastery and resumed his powers. While the nation rallied to him, he put down the nobles who opposed him, including his son, whom he ordered blinded and deposed. Once again, he organized the Church and its liturgy and established his capital in a new city where there might be

166 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

less of the older traditions to contend with. He then placed another son, Symeon, on the throne, and retired once more to his monastery. Boris lived out yet another decade, dying in 903. There was no danger that Symeon would try to turn the religious clock back. Indeed, he had received a Christian edu- cation in Constantinople itself.

One could scarcely blame the Byzantines, watching develop- ments from afar, for feeling keen satisfaction at these develop- ments. Their old enemies the Bulgars were no longer pagans, but Christians, and of the eastern rites. What’s more, their new king was Byzantine-educated and presumably, therefore, By- zantine-sympathetic. And yet a Christian might aspire to take and rule Constantinople as easily as a pagan might. Symeon had carried with him an all-too-accurate picture of the glories and wealth of Constantinople and he wanted to be its emperor. Actual hostilities grew out of a trade dispute in 894, but it was not the sort of thing that would have led to war had not Symeon been guided by an unbounded ambition.

Almost at once, the Byzantine army was defeated, and just as quickly, they began to think of fighting fire with fire. They did not hesitate to call in other barbarians (still pagan) to attack the Christian Bulgarians from the rear. The necessary tribes- men were easy to find in the regions north of the Black Sea.

The Khazars, who had played a role in Byzantine history be- fore this and whose alliance had been useful during earlier crises against Persians and Arabs, were still maintaining their rule in those regions but their strength was fading. About 740 many of them had been converted to Judaism, a unique event, for the usual conversion among nomadic tribesmen was either to Christianity or Islam. By making themselves different in this fashion, they may have contributed to their own demise by cut- ting themselves off from the Byzantines.

Tributary to the Khazars were a group of tribes who called themselves the On-Ogurs (meaning the “Ten Arrows”). This became Ugrians to the surrounding peoples, or by further dis-

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 167

tortion, Hungarians. Some Ugrian tribes called themselves Magyars in their own language and they are best known by this name, at least in their early history.

Then, too, about the time the Khazars were turning Jewish, a new group of nomads was rolling in from central Asia, a Turk- ish tribe or tribes called the Pechenegs or Patzinaks. Pecheneg pressure drove the Magyars westward and the Khazars south- ward. The Magyars came up hard against the Bulgarian boundaries and right behind them were the Pechenegs.

That was the situation when Symeon began his pressure against the Byzantines, and Leo VI followed the obvious policy of making an alliance with the power to the rear of the enemy. He called in the Magyars and at once Symeon found himself being clawed from behind. Symeon therefore followed the By- zantine example by making an alliance with the Pechenegs, so that the Magyars were attacked from the rear in their turn. It was a free-for-all in which the immediate losers were the Magyars. They were driven westward again. In their flight from the Pechenegs, however, they overran regions north of the Danube which had been under the vague suzerainty of the Bul- garians. The Bulgarians never recovered those lands and to this day they remain a south-of-the-Danube nation. That was a harsh blow to the Bulgarians and Symeon reluctantly agreed to a peace with the empire in 897, though he charged the emperor a sizable annual tribute in exchange.

The Magyars, after their flight, found themselves in the mid- Danube plains which suited them perfectly and which, four centuries before, had been the center of the Hunnish Empire. (It was this coincidence that helped convert Ugrian to Hun- garian; the first syllable was inevitable. )

For half a century afterward, the Ugrian tribes raided Ger- many unmercifully and reduced the Germans to such a state of terrified panic that the very word “ogre” for a man-eating mon- ster is supposed to have arisen from the name of these raiders. Finally, though, the Magyars were defeated and settled down

168 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

to become the nation we now call Hungary, but which the Hungarians themselves still call Magyar-orszag or “land of the Magyars.” .

Meanwhile, still another people grew important in the area north of the Black Sea. These were Slavs who inhabited the vast plains of eastern Europe but who ordinarily were blocked from access to the Black Sea by the various nomadic tribesmen — Khazars, Magyars, and Pechenegs — who inhabited the northern shores of that sea. The Slavs filtered southward as traders, moving down the great rivers of the Eastern European plains. In 865 Slavic ships sailed down the Dnieper River into the Black Sea, then across to Constantinople. The Byzantine army was campaigning in Asia Minor, the fleet was off Sicily, and Constantinople was caught by surprise.

The wild Slavs ravaged the countryside, roared through the suburbs to the walls of Constantinople, and camped there. The Constantinopolitans, chilled by their numbers and _barbarity, were ready to panic.

In this emergency the Byzantine leaders made use of the leg- endary robe of the Virgin Mary, the city’s protectress. It was carried around the wall and displayed to the defenders on every section. The stratagem worked, too. The defenders of the city were heartened and their morale was raised. As for the rude Slavic warriors, all they could tell was that the impres- sively arrayed priests were engaged in spinning some powerful magic on the walls. When the first units of the Byzantine army and navy began flooding back toward Constantinople, the frightened Slavs got away as fast as they could. Many were captured and made to serve in the Byzantine armed forces. Even as this was happening, though, a vast change was com- ing over this eastern section of Slavdom. Far to the north, Swedish tribesmen under a Jeader named Rurik had taken over the rule of the northern city of Novgorod in 862. Those tribes- men were called Varangians (possibly meaning “sworn men,” that is, a band sworn to mutual loyalty). They also called

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 169

themselves Rus and the name was applied to the eastern plains eventually. It is the land we now call Russia, and the Slavs who besieged Constantinople in 865 are among those whose de- scendants we now call Russians. (That siege represents the first notable appearance of the Russian people on the stage of history. )

Rurik was the founder of the first Russian royal family; an energetic house under whom the eastern Slavs experienced their first period of power. A younger member of Rurik’s fam- ily was Oleg. After Rurik’s death about 879, he led a raiding party down the Danube, taking over the city of Smolensk and finally establishing his capital in Kiev. For over three cen- turies, Kiev was to remain the chief city of the Russian lands, and the prime capital of the Varangians. Oleg defeated the Khazars and forced his way to the Black Sea. There, in 907, he led a second Russian naval expedition against Constantinople, one that was better organized than the first, forty years before. There was no chance of his being able to take the city, but the Byzantines, harassed as they had been by the Bulgarians, were in no condition to take on a new enemy. The emperor agreed to a trade treaty whereby Rus- sians were to be legally protected in the capital. Leo VI thus had enemies enough and to spare. The peoples to the north seemed to be involved in an intricate dance of turmoil, even while Moslem ships were raiding the Aegean. To top it off, Leo VI had an internal problem that involved love and marriage. Byzantine customs were rather free and easy as far as marriages were concerned. Considering the all- too-easy chance of death in childbirth, one man often married many women, one after the other. The Church, having as its ideal a single lifelong marriage, continually did what it could to forbid repeated marriages, even when these did not involve either polygamy or divorce.

Toward the beginning of his reign, Leo had gone along with this. Fourth marriages were absolutely forbidden and third

170 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

marriages, while not actually outlawed, were frowned upon. Then Leo found himself sorry. His first wife had been forced on him by his father, Basil. Then had come a second and a third. In every case he failed to get the son he desperately wanted. And to make matters worse, Leo’s young and beautiful mistress, Zoe (zoh’ee), gave birth to a son.

In order to make that son legitimate and insure his inheri- tance of the imperial throne, Leo wanted to marry Zoe, but the scandalized Church absolutely forbade a fourth marriage. Leo asked the patriarch, Nicholas Mysticus, to baptize the child at least and make him legitimate without the marriage. This the patriarch agreed to do on condition that the emperor renounce his mistress altogether. Leo accepted the condition. The baby was baptized and named Constantine — and three days later Leo calmly married Zoe. Patriarch Nicholas was furious, of course, and punished the priest who had allowed himself to be browbeaten into performing the marriage ceremony. But then Leo simply had the patriarch banished. The emperor, after all, was boss. The birth of this particular young prince to the reigning em- peror is memorialized in his name, and that story begins with a dye. In ancient times, there were few dyes known which were proof against sun and water and which were brightly colored. One was a red-purple dye obtained from a certain Mediterra- nean shellfish. For centuries, the city of Tyre had a monopoly of its manufacture and the dyed cloth they produced sold at fabulous prices. The prosperity of the city was founded upon this secret process. Indeed, the very word “Phoenician” applied to the people of Tyre and its sister cities by the Greeks comes from a Greek word meaning “blood red” and may apply to this dye.

The popularity of the dye continued into Byzantine times, when edicts confined its use to the imperial household, as one way of drawing an obvious social distinction between the em- peror and his subjects. One would speak of “the purple” when

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 72

one wanted to talk of the ruling house, so closely were the dye and the emperorship associated.

The Byzantine palace had a special room decorated with draperies dyed in the royal purple, a room designed especially for the use of the empress when she was pregnant. It might happen that she actually gave birth to her child in that room and, if so, the child was “porphyrogenitos” or “born in the purple.” Leo’s mistress, Zoe, gave birth to his son in this room and that son is known to history as Constantine Porphyrogeni- tos.

BORN IN THE PURPLE

When Leo VI died in 912, his son was only six years old. The principle of legitimacy was strong enough now to assure the smooth succession of a child but, legitimacy or not, a six-year- old cannot rule. Someone else must serve as the child’s regent and one logical choice is the previous emperor’s younger brother, if he has one.

Leo did, in fact, have a younger brother who assumed the regency for his nephew. Under another system of government he might have been tempted to do away with the child and assume the emperorship himself. Here, it was not necessary. The Roman tradition allowed the existence of co-emperors, so the regent simply arrogated imperial prerogatives to himself and he is usually included in the list of Byzantine emperors as Alexander IT.

Alexander began by reversing the policies of the previous reign. He exiled the young emperor’s mother, Zoe, and recalled her enemy, the Patriarch Nicholas. He also ordered a stop to the tribute which had been paid annually to Symeon of Bul- garia for some fifteen years.

172 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

This proved to be a piece of poor judgment, for Alexander was not prepared to counter the military attack from the north that was bound to follow. Despite the loss of the northern provinces to the Magyars, Symeon had managed to strengthen and consolidate what was left of his kingdom in the last dozen years and was more powerful than he had ever been. His capi- tal, Preslav (150 miles northwest of Constantinople), had bur- geoned into a sizable and rather impressive town, and the king was even viewing himself as Symeon the Great, a name by which he is known to history. Symeon moved southeastward at once and reached the walls of Constantinople. Alexander did not live to see the price of his folly, for he died in mid-918, only a little over a year after his brother had died. Only young Constantine Born-in-the-Purple ruled now and Patriarch Nicholas, in charge of the defense, could only offer Symeon humble words and lavish presents to induce him to leave. Symeon wanted something more. He extracted a promise that the boy-emperor would, when the time came, marry a daughter of Symeon’s. (The Bulgarian monarch may have felt that as father-in-law of the Byzantine emperor he might well become regent and co-emperor himself.) Patriarch Nicholas would have granted even that, but now the emperor’s mother, Zoe, moved onto the scene again. Alexander had left behind a regency consisting of six men, whose chief interests seemed to be in intriguing against each other for supreme power. Zoe, returning from exile, took ad- vantage of the regents’ rivalries to have herself admitted to the inner circle. With the prestige of her position as queen mother and with the aid of a hard-driving personality, she managed to nerve the city to face the enemy with resolution. She was also able to cow Nicholas into silence, though she didn’t try to re- move him from his patriarchal position. She didn’t have to; his pusillanimity in the face of the Bulgarians had destroyed his prestige in the city.

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 73

The Byzantine army did poorly, to be sure; it was defeated in the field by Symeon in 917, but Zoe had golden arrows, too. Her agents stirred up the Pechenegs who, since their defeat of the Magyars, had become the northern neighbors of the Bul- garians. Byzantine agents also unsettled the Serbs, Slavic tribes who occupied territory west of Bulgaria proper but who were under Bulgarian domination.

Symeon’s drive against Constantinople was blunted by the continuing necessity of fighting off the Pechenegs and suppress- ing the Serbian rebellion. All told, he reached Constantinople four times in the decade following 913, but considering the city’s walls, his own lack of a fleet, and the endless turmoil in his rear, he never even came close to taking the city.

Byzantine tenacity, the most remarkable characteristic of the long imperial history, displayed itself well here. Even while desperately engaged with Symeon year after year, the empire managed to hold on in southern Italy against great difficulties. Islamic forces, based in Sicily, had been raiding and pillaging Italy for eighty years. Rome itself had felt the touch of Islamic steel and had had to pay tribute. The papacy was at a low ebb in this century and most of the popes were little more than pup- pets of a dissolute Roman aristocracy. One of them, however, John X, gathered various Roman nobles to his side and took action. For the first time in history, a pope led an army into battle. Again an outside enemy forced East and West to stand together. Byzantine troops from the south joined the pope and a united Christian army met the Islamic forces in 916 at the banks of the Garigliano River about a hundred miles southeast of Rome. The Christians were completely victorious and the Islamic hold on Italy was lifted forever. To be sure, Sicily re- mained Islamic for another century and a quarter, but the By- zantine provinces in Italy could breathe more freely for a while — and so could the popes.

Victory in Italy, however, was by no means sufficient to

174 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

counteract the poor situation at home., It was more than ever apparent that government under Zoe and a board of regents was insufficient to do more than hold the Bulgarians and that just barely. Too much time was spent in internal wrangling when quick decisions were needed. The Byzantine people were ready to welcome any strong man who could offer the govern- ment unified direction and even-handed control. The man of the hour was Romanus Lecapenus (roh-may’nus lek”uh-pee’nus), who was born of an Armenian peasant family. He had joined the Byzantine navy as a common sailor and had worked his way up to admiral of the fleet. In 919 he judged the popular mood to be just ripe enough to allow a coup. He sailed his ships from the mouth of the Danube (where they were sta- tioned against the Bulgarians) down to Constantinople. The city opened itself to him with gay relief and the regents stepped down. Romanus was in charge, and the first thing he did was to place queen mother Zoe in a convent. He then took care of his own position. He had young Con- stantine VII (still only twelve) marry Helena, Romanus’ daughter. That made the admiral] father-in-law of the emperor. He waited a year to get the Byzantine people used to his rule as the power behind the emperor and then declared himself co- emperor. (This inaugurated a period of over half a century in which the legitimate emperors were puppets remaining in the background, while soldier-co-emperors did the actual govern- ing. Fortunately the soldiers were capable men. )

As for Constantine VII, there is no indication that he ever minded remaining in the background. He was a bookish indi- vidual who all through a long reign of nearly half a century had the chance of indulging in all the ceremony of emperorship (which he loved) with none of the responsibilities.

He continued his father’s interest in literature and art. He patronized learning and wrote books himself, including a geog- raphy and history of the empire, a biography of his grandfa- ther, Basil J, and a little book on foreign policy for his son. He

a=se=ee

ie asduny aunuezdg ayy fo syywry

oy

=

<— SALVHAITV9 DINV ISI SQOLUVA a IN

hz “—

a. wayestusl » ( (4 Pees SHIA Oe 8 ane WEE als ae (Os \ iY » Aga _ ‘ae AS S ; rs o Voy * WOuIy , YONTIN VIS sopdqy >pounuersuey ae ABSIT on ee

SHV AOV}

(ae 0 4 ea Lip ae 4

SOAIN AHI

SNVissay

[ snuvwoy Jopun ¢76 ur aidurg supurzdg ony «IITA aVW

176 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

also wrote, with particular care, a monograph on the customs and ceremonials of the Church and the court. It was this con- cern with ritual that was obviously the great interest of his life.

Meanwhile, Romanus Lecapenus (or Romanus I, to use the imperial title), despite the fact that he was fifty when he took over the government, attacked the problems of State with vigor. In 924 one great problem was taken care of when the Byzantine fleet finally managed to defeat Leo of Tripoli. Pirati- cal incursions, though not stopped altogether, were greatly di- minished. Much more unusual was Romanus’ action with respect to the Bulgarians. He arranged what we would today call a summit conference, and met with Symeon himself to talk peace. Symeon had been ruling the Bulgarians now for thirty-one years. He was an old man and a tired one. All his wars against the Byzantines had been successful in that he almost always defeated their armies and marched at will through their territo- ries; but somehow he could never really win, since Constanti- nople always remained impregnable. He listened to Romanus and decided it was enough. In 924 Bulgaria made peace. The next year, though, Symeon made it plain that if he couldn’t make himself Byzantine emperor, he would make him- self some sort of emperor anyway. He adopted the imperial title of caesar which, in the Slavic language, became tsar (or, in an alternate spelling, czar.)* As a matter of form, Romanus I protested this assumption of an imperial title, but we can sus- pect that he had agreed to it the year before as the price of peace. The pope, on the other hand, accepted the Bulgarian title at once, undoubtedly to annoy the Byzantines.

In 927 Symeon died and his son Peter assumed rule over Bul- garia. He was both milder and weaker than his father had been, and Romanus found it easy to handle him. Romanus recog-

* Symeon I of Bulgaria was the first of all the Slavic tsars. The last, as it happens, was by a curious coincidence Symeon II of Bul- garia, whose reign came to an end in 1946,

EMPERORS AND GENERALS ‘Ward

nized him as tsar and agreed to leave the Bulgarian church under its own patriarch. In addition, he arranged to have one of his granddaughters marry Peter. The result was that through Peter’s long reign of forty-two years, there was peace with the Byzantines; it was a peace all the easier to maintain since the Bulgarians had, in any case, to face constant raids from the Magyars and Pechenegs in the north. Indeed, through the middle decades of the tenth century, the existence of Bul- garia was a positive good to the Byzantines, for they acted as a shield against the barbarians. The Russians, to be sure, made some trouble. After the trade agreements with Oleg, Russians played an increasing role in Constantinople, both as traders and as mercenary soldiers. There were always pressures to make the trading arrangements more favorable, of course, and then, at last, an attempt to make them much more favorable by force. The driving power behind this was Igor, the grand prince of Kiev, who had succeeded Oleg. He plays an important part in the ancient Russian chron- icles, since he was always ready to go to war — this apparently being considered much more important than the fact that he was uniformly unsuccessful in the wars he provoked.

In 941 a large Russian fleet crossed the Black Sea for the third time to attack Constantinople. It was the largest fleet yet (some chronicles number the Russian ships at 10,000) and it suffered the greatest defeat. Making use of Greek fire, the By- zantines destroyed those ships entirely.

Romanus I, who made peace with Bulgaria and who won vic- tories at sea and in Asia Minor, labored to achieve internal quiet as well. He managed to smooth over the long unhappi- ness of the Church over the fourth marriage of Leo VI. A Church conference was called and it was agreed that third and fourth marriages would henceforth be forbidden but that the case of Leo VI be accepted as exceptional.

Romanus also labored to diminish the intensity of the quarrel with Rome and once again there was a period of relative peace

178 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

between the two chief centers of Christendom. Finally, he had laws passed to protect the small farmers from being taken over by the large landed magnates in the aftermath of a series of bad harvests that brought the empire to a condition of virtual fam- ine in 927. -

By 944, though, whatever the successes of Romanus I, he was a man in his middle seventies and his sons had long grown tired of waiting for the old man to die, so that they might be emper- ors in their turn. (They did not consider the legitimate em- peror, Constantine, as anything more than a nonentity.) Con- sequently, the sons carried through a palace coup one night, invading the bedroom of their old father with some armed men. They carried him off by force to an island not far from Con- stantinople which was inhabited by a religious community. There Romanus I became, rather involuntarily, a monk, after having been an emperor for twenty-four years. The sons got little good of it, however. Their angry sister Helena, wife of Constantine VII, accused her brothers of plan- ning to assassinate the legitimate emperor as well. Whether the accusation was true or not, it served its purpose. The horri- fied court seized the sons and hustled them out to the same island to which their father had been taken. There Romanus greeted them with grim pleasure. The old man did not regain the throne, however. He remained on the island and died, still a monk, in 948. Constantine VII was now sole emperor, and mature enough, for he was thirty-nine. He still remained in the shadows, however; it was his wife, Helena, and her favorites, who really ruled.

In what remained of Constantine’s reign there took place an interesting portent of the future. Prince Igor of Kievan Russia had died and was succeeded by his young son, Sviatoslav. Igor’s widow, Olga, now queen mother and regent, visited Constantinople in state in 955.

Here she was profoundly impressed by the splendid ritual which had been so lovingly elaborated by Constantine VII. It

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 179

was State policy in any case to use magnificence as a tool with which to dazzle and overawe unsophisticated barbarians and it certainly worked in this case. Olga asked to be baptized and, according to legend, the baptism was carried out by the pa- triarch himself. (This may be a later elaboration. There is some evidence that she was converted in Kiev, where there was al- ready a colony of Christians, and that her visit to Constantinople may have then been undertaken as a kind of Christian pilgrim- age.) Although Olga was a strong and savage ruler (neither the first of the sort, nor the last, which the Russians were to have), the legend of her conversion cast a glow over her and she was eventually canonized, becoming the first saint of the Russian branch of the eastern Church. Her conversion had no immedi- ate results, however, for her son, the king, remained pagan and so did the nation.

GENERALS ON THE THRONE

Constantine VII died in 959 and was succeeded by his hand- some twenty-one-year-old son, who, having been named for his grandfather, reigned as Romanus II. Reigning with him was his second wife, Theophano (thee-of’uh-noh), who was of low birth but very beautiful, and concerning whom all sorts of scan- dalous stories were told.

It is always difficult to know how far to trust such tales. A lowborn monarch is usually unpopular with the aristocracy and where an empress is a tax collector’s daughter, there are bound to be spiteful stories told about her, some of which may be true, of course. Among the stories that enliven the historical memo- ries of Theophano are that she egged her husband on to poison his father, and that when Romanus II died in his turn, four

180 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

years later in 963, this event, also, was the result of poison- ing arranged by her.

In his four years as emperor, Romanus II did not distinguish himself, but he was fortunate in two respects. He managed to father two sons who were fated to rule over the empire at the height of its prosperity and, during his reign, a most able gen- eral made his appearance.

The general was Nicephorus Phocas (ny-sef’oh-rus foh’kas), who came of a distinguished military family and who, under Constantine VII, had served on the eastern frontier. Under Ro- manus II, Nicephorus Phocas led the imperial forces in a new offensive.

The Byzantine fleet, having won out over Islamic freebooters and over the large but inept fleet of Russian Prince Igor, was in a mood to go further and the obvious target was the island of Crete. It had been the home base of the pirates and a kind of festering sore that kept all the coasts of the empire in a fever.

In 960, Nicephorus Phocas headed an expedition to Crete and after a hard-fought campaign that lasted a year, he man- aged to drive the Islamic forces from the island and to force those who remained to accept Christianity. It was to be seven centuries before Islam could once again establish itself on that island and never to the extent of basically altering the religion of its inhabitants. Crete is Christian to this day (and is part of the modern kingdom of Greece). By this military feat, Nicephorus raised his reputation sky- high with the Byzantine populace, who had not enjoyed so great a victory over Islam in centuries — and an offensive vic- tory at that. Nicephorus showed it was no accident by leading an army through Asia Minor into Syria and winning victories there, too, even taking (temporarily) the important city of Aleppo in 963.

In that year, Romanus II died (whether poisoned or not), leaving behind two sons: Basil, aged five, and Constantine, aged three. They had already been crowned and the principle of le-

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 181

gitimacy made their rights indisputable, so that they reigned as Basil II and Constantine VIII —co-emperors. They clearly could not manage by themselves, however, and Nicephorus hastened to do as Romanus Lecapenus had done nearly half a century before.

Nicephorus had the support of the patriarch, who was im- pressed by the general's victories over the armies of Islam and by his evident and, apparently, genuine piety. Nicephorus began by having himself declared guardian of the child- emperors. He then married Theophano, the young widow of Romanus II, in order to connect himself to the royal house. Be- fore long, he took over the attributes of the imperial position and became Nicephorus I, while leaving the legitimacy of the young sons of Romanus II untouched, thus again following the precedent of Romanus I. As emperor, Nicephorus II continued his policy of a strong offensive against Islam. He ravaged northern Syria and retook Antioch, a city which had been lost to the empire three cen- turies before. One of the trophies he brought back from that conquest was a piece of tattered cloth that was presumed to be the remains of the cloak of John the Baptist. A Byzantine fleet landed an army in Cyprus which for many years had been fight- ing off, with varying success, Mohammedan raiders. The island was now Cleansed of those invaders, and the empire was once more in control of the entire eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea. Nicephorus next turned his attention to the largest of the Mediterranean islands, Sicily. It was now nearly a century and a half since Islamic armies had first been invited into Sicily, and some eighty years since Basil I had organized the ill-fated at- tempt to turn the tide. Now Byzantine possessions on the is- land had been reduced to a single mountain fortress.

In 964, therefore, Nicephorus sent a fleet to make one last effort to retrieve what was al] but lost. An army was landed in Sicily as, for years earlier, one had been landed in Crete. This

182 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

time, though, the odds were too great. The imperial forces were defeated and in January 965 the last fortress was taken. The Byzantine Empire was driven forever from the island which Belisarius had conquered four and a half centuries be- fore. ;

The condition of the Byzantines in southern Italy was pre- carious, too. Otto I of Germany was the strongest western king since Charlemagne and he made that fact quite evident by re- viving the imperial title which Charlemagne’s descendants had allowed to wither away.

Otto I made himself supreme through the northern two thirds of the peninsula. He took a stab at occupying southern Italy as well, and spent a month laying siege to the Byzantine fortress of Bari. The city stalwartly held out, however. Otto retreated and the empire retained its hold on its Italian prov- inces.

All of Nicephorus’ victories did not succeed in securing the empire's northern borders. The Bulgars were always on the watch for any weakening in their traditional enemy. Peter of Bulgaria, still warding off Magyar raids with great difficulty, decided, in 966, that it was a good time to move southward. For one thing, by inviting the Magyars to join him in the inva- sion, he redirected the destructive Magyar energy into channels that were helpful to him. Nicephorus adopted the usual Byzantine strategy of pitting one set of barbarians against another and called in the Rus- sians. Kievan Russia had been expanding and was firmly wedged on the Black Sea between Magyar and Pecheneg terri- tory. Sviatoslav, the pagan son of the converted Princess Olga, was now ruling in his own right, and eager for battle, he at once accepted Nicephorus’ invitation.

Sviatoslav’s raids into Bulgaria were only too bloodily suc- cessful and the Bulgarians raised the stakes by inviting the Pechenegs to march on Kiev. The Pechenegs were agreeable. It was the usual melee all over again. The Russians had to race

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 183

back to face the Pechenegs and when those were taken care of, a furious Sviatoslav sought revenge against the Bulgarians. So mighty were his strokes and so rapidly did Bulgaria wilt under them, that the Byzantines quickly decided the Russians were a greater danger than the Bulgarians. Nicephorus found himself forced into a war with the very armies he had originally invited into the Balkans. This cost him a considerable loss of prestige. Worse yet, wars are expensive even when victorious, and Nicephorus had to have money. He was himself a dour, abste- mious man and it seemed natural to him that one should sacri- fice for a good cause. He had no difficulty in making such sacri- fices himself and so he laid heavy taxes on the people. Unfortunately for him, heavy taxes are never popular and there are no victories so great that people joyfully pay for them. As it happens, Nicephorus II had a nephew, John Tsimisces (tsih-mis’eez), who served on the eastern borders, as Nicepho- rus had done before he became emperor. Now it was John’s turn to decide the time was ripe to reach for the throne. On De- cember 10, 969, John, at the head of a conspiratorial group of officers, invaded the emperor’s bedroom. Nicephorus, who had followed the path of Romanus I in achieving the throne, also left it through a conspiracy against him led by his relatives. Where Romanus I had merely been exiled, Nicephorus IT was murdered. John Tsimisces was the new emperor, reigning as John I. Whispered gossip maintained that he had affected the coup with the help of Queen Theophano, who thus was supposed to have contributed to the death of a third emperor. If so, John decided not to give her a chance at a fourth; he sent her into exile. Her sons, however, Basil II and Constantine VIII, con- tinued to be the legitimate but do-nothing emperors and John connected himself with the family by marrying their aunt, The- odora.

John I, as capable a general as Nicephorus I had been, had to begin his reign by facing the Russian menace. In 970 Sviato-

184 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

slav Kiev, having cut Bulgaria to bits, was approaching Byz- antine territory. John sent his fleet to the Danube to block a Russian retreat and then sent his troops northward very early in the season before the Russians dreamed he would move.

The Russians fought the battle that followed with desperate bravery regardless of losses (rather characteristic of them all through their history), but they only had infantry and the Byz- antines had a strong contingent of heavy-armed cavalry, the dreaded cataphracts. Though the Russians had the greater numbers, they were gradually worn down by horsemen they could not counter and in the end Sviatoslav had to surrender, get what terms of peace he could, and retire to his own land.

Nor did the victorious John return to Bulgaria the territory she had lost to the Russians. The Bulgarians still held the west- ern part of their earlier realm, but the eastern portion along the lower course of the Danube, which the Russians had taken, was now incorporated into the Byzantine Empire.

The West was continuing to grow in importance even though the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne had broken up into several portions. Over the largest of these was reigning the Em- peror Otto II, son and successor of Otto I, and with him the proud Byzantine emperor condescended to make a marital alli- ance. Though John wouldn't dream of following Michael: I’s precedent and accepting the western claim to the imperial title, he allowed his niece Theophano to marry Otto IT. This marriage helped cast a little light into the western dark- ness. Theophano introduced silk to the crude German court and, in addition, set the noble lords and ladies on their ears by her habit of taking frequent baths. One can assume that silk was the more quickly adopted of the two innovations. (About this time, a cousin of Theophano is supposed to have lived at Venice and to have introduced the use of forks to the western world. )

John continued the victorious advance of the empire in Syria. He went beyond the mark of Nicephorus, striking southward

EMPERORS AND GENERALS 185

nearly to Jerusalem itself. Here, however, the results were meager, for the population was Islamic by now and though the Byzantines might take the cities, they could not spare the per- manent garrisons that would be required to hold them against a hostile population.

John I caught typhoid fever in this campaign (at least this is the disease most commonly identified with the symptoms he is described as having) and was forced to return to Constan- tinople in January 976 to die. Naturally popular rumor had him poisoned.

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

——— — a Pt nnowy 75 Vanes ZS 8 G/ aby 2; bars 1 Wa coat ry 3 o- THe sate Rig ‘ Tae ee

Pepe yi £ A 4 i “e hoki cas OC aT ARE ede eR ts Wee as eh ae Sn

To He

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK

THE BULGAR KILLER

By now Basil II was nearly twenty, quite old enough to rule independently. To be sure, he had until now been a gay, pleas- ure-loving prince, but slowly, after the death of John I, he changed — and we don’t know why. He became grim, cruel, and austere, almost fanatic in his devotion to duty. Finding his only joy in warfare and in the hard life of a soldier, he forswore meat, wine, and women, and remained unmarried throughout his life.

He did not forswear emperorship, however, gripping the scepter more and more tightly and pushing his younger brother Constantine VIII completely to the side. Constantine, who re- mained a playboy to the end, could have asked nothing better.

Unfortunately for Basil, he was not to gather power to him- self without a struggle, Too long an interval had elapsed since

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 187

the titular emperor was the real emperor. Two generals, Ni- cephorus II and John I, had ruled the land and won great glory; it was only natural to suppose that other generals would long to duplicate the feat.

In fact, the half-century of military domination that suc- ceeded the rise of Romanus Lecapenus had left the empire in an almost feudal state. The military state of mind had encour- aged the growth of estates that would in turn support contin- gents of armed men, and the great landowners, particularly of Asia Minor, had become almost independent viceroys. These were eager to bend the policies of the throne in favor of their own interests. Opposed to them were the civilian court func- tionaries, the bureaucrats, who bore the burden of administra- tion from one emperor to the next and who did their best to encourage a centralized government. Yn 971, while John I was still alive, the feudal party had re- belled under Bardas Phocas. Bardas Phocas was the nephew of Nicephorus Phocas, whom John (another nephew ) had assassi- nated. It was virtually a family quarrel over the throne but the landowners felt that Bardas Phocas in return for their help would govern in their interests. All of Asia Minor took fire and the rebellion was put down only with difficulty by John’s gen- eral, Bardas Skleros. Phocas was sent into exile on the Aegean island of Chios.

In 976, though, after John’s death, Bardas Skleros felt he might well be the next general to be supreme in the land. He was exceedingly popular with his troops, he had a fleet, and, after three years of victories, he had all of Asia Minor.

Young Basil II, however, had no intention of giving up. In combating the northern barbarians, the empire had routinely pitted one tribe against the other in order that all might lose. Basil, who intended to fight the feudal lords, would do the same. He recalled Bardas Phocas, the former rebel. Skleros had defeated Phocas once; now let Phocas return the compli- ment.

188 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Phocas had every intention of doing so. On March 24, 979, the two Bardases met in combat in Asia Minor. According to the account, they had a single combat almost Homeric in style. Phocas felled Skleros who was carried off the field half-dead, but revived and managed to escape to Baghdad in Islamic terri- tory. §

With the feudal lords temporarily quieted, Basil II set about breaking their power. He decreed a series of land-reform laws designed to break up the great estates. The landowners roared defiance and in 987 Skleros returned from exile to lead them. Basil called on Phocas again, but this time Phocas joined his old enemy and was proclaimed emperor by the troops. Again, for the third time, all Asia Minor rose against the emperor, and Constantinople was blockaded by sea and land by the two Bar- dases. Basil II still had no intention of giving in. He sought allies and found them in the north. Sviatoslav of Kiev had died in 980 and his son Vladimir now ruled the Russians. Basil made a deal with him. He promised to let him marry the emperor's sis- ter Anna (a great condescension on Basil’s part and a measure of his desperation) in return for mercenaries. Vladimir agreed and 6000 sturdy Russians were spirited into Constantinople. These Russians formed the nucleus of what came to be known as the Varangian guard, after the old name for the Swedish ruling house from which the Russian aristocracy stemmed. The guard did not stay Varangian or Russian. Vi- king adventurers from Scandinavia and Saxons from England joined up for the fun of living in the most civilized and richest city in the world. It kept its name, however, and, whatever its social make-up, the Varangian guard existed for over four cen- turies.

Basil II organized the defenses of Constantinople with un- flagging vigor and in 988 led his Varangians across the straits. He overwhelmed the rebel contingents there and executed the prisoners with deliberate cruelty. It was his aim to break the

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 189

spirits of his opponents as well as their armies.

The next year, he met the main forces of the two generals in combat at Abydc; on the western edge of Asia Minor. Once again, the tale goes, Bardas Phocas demanded single combat, this time with the emperor himself. Basil II saw no reason to humor the swashbuckling general in this respect and, when Phocas charged in his direction, he ordered his archers to cut him down. Phocas reined in his horse in the course of his charge, dismounted, and died, either from an arrow or from a heart attack. Skleros continued the rebellion for a while, but he was getting old and fat. He was troubled by arthritis and his sight was failing. Eventually, he gave it up, accepted a pardon from Basil and a fancy title.

At last Basil II, now thirty-four years old and having had the title of emperor for twenty-six years, was emperor in full truth. Nowhere was there anyone who could compete with him within the realm, and he had every intention of being his own general from now on.

He set grimly to work on his land reform and this time man- aged to break up the huge estates of the great landowners, and distribute them among the peasants. This had the double effect of weakening the aristocrats by depriving them of the revenues with which to raise armies and creating a class of small landowners who would be loyal to the crown that had supported them. To be sure, there was Vladimir of Kiev beyond the bounda- ries. He still wanted the royal Princess Anna who had been promised him years before. Basil was reluctant to condemn his sister to a pagan barbarian court, but Vladimir helped him see this in a new light by cutting off the water supply of the city of Cherson, the Byzantine outpost on the distant Crimean penin- sula, and then temporarily taking it.

Basil therefore sent the promised bride on condition that Vladimir turn Christian. This Vladimir did and in 989 he be- came Russia's first Christian prince, following the footsteps of

190 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

his grandmother, Olga. As a result he is St. Vladimir to Russia's churchly chroniclers and Vladimir the Great to her secular his- torians.*

It was then time, and more than time, to turn once more to the north and the long duel with the Bulgars. In the reign of John I, when all of eastern Bulgaria had been annexed, it had looked for a while as though the remains of the kingdom would wither away and that the empire need be concerned with it no more. In 976, however, Samuel declared himself ruler of the land. He was the son of a Bulgarian governor of one of the western provinces that had not been penetrated by the Byzan- tine armies. He was a strong and capable man yet might have had little chance to preside over a revival of Bulgarian power were it not for the fact that Basil II was engaged in his civil war against the generals. Because Basil If was preoccupied, Sam- uel managed to retake all of eastern Bulgaria and penetrate into northern Greece. In 981 Basil tried to stop him, but was de- feated, partly because the feudal landowners, estranged by his land policies, refused to fight wholeheartedly for him. Humili- ated, Basil withdrew, determined to get his revenge someday. By the early 990s, Bulgaria was as large and as powerful as it had been before the time of John Tsimisces. Its armies raided Greece regularly and Samuel established a nearly impregnable capital at Ohrid in the harsh western mountains near what is now the border between Yugoslavia and Albania. By then, however, Basil IJ had conquered the generals at last, was estab- lishing a new land policy, and was reorganizing the army for * This represented the greatest of all Constantinople’s religious victories, for though the empire itself was eventually destroyed, the eastern Church expanded far beyond the horizon when Russian traders, farmers, and armies carried it 6000 miles to the east, to the Pacific Ocean, and even for a while into the North American con- tinent. The fact that Russia’s conversion was to the eastern rites and not the western meant that in all her future history she was, to

a certain extent, cut off from the flow of western history generally, with effects that have endured down to the present day.

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 191

the great task of his life — the ending, for a long time, of the Bulgarian menace.

In 996 he was strong enough to inflict an important defeat upon the Bulgarians when they tried once more to raid Greece. The Bulgarians withdrew, badly hurt, and Basil went on the offensive. By 1000 Greece was rendered entirely secure and the order was given to march northward through the mountain passes into Bulgaria itself. Driven onward by their indefatiga- ble emperor, who led his armies in person, the Byzantines took one Bulgarian stronghold after another, winning sometimes by force and sometimes by bribery. Back, back, back the Bulgarians were driven. When Samuel tried to turn the tables by launching a rapid drive southward to strike in the rear and force an imperial retreat, it was his own line of communications that was broken and he himself who again suffered defeat. In 1005 Basil had reached the Adriatic at Dyrrhachium (now the city of Durres on the coast of Alba- nia). By and large the Bulgarians had tried to avoid direct battle with the disciplined Byzantines under their terrible emperor, but temptations arose every once in a while and in 1014 one came that could not be resisted. In the Struma River valley about a hundred miles north of Thessalonica, the Bulgarians decided the advantage was with them and proceeded to fight the Byzantines. For a while, it seemed even, but a Byzantine corps circled the flank of the enemy and dashed at its rear. The Bulgarian army collapsed into wild disarray and Samuel himself barely got away. Basil took 15,000 prisoners. What follows then is one of the horrible atrocities of warfare. Basil II decided once and for all to end a war that had lasted nearly forty years by breaking the spirit of the Bulgarians. To do this he blinded all but 150 of those thousands of prisoners! The lucky 150 were blinded in one eye only. Every 100 blind- men were left with a one-eyed leader to guide them back to the

capital.

192 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Samuel, back in Ohrid, received word that his army was re- turning to him. He was puzzled. Had they escaped capture? Had they been captured and released for some reason? He hastened out of his capital to meet his men; he found himself staring at thousands of helpless blindmen. The blow was fatal. He had a stroke on the spot and died two days later.

Some Bulgarians managed to maintain an air of defiance but Basil’s coldly cruel policy had succeeded. Bulgarian spirit had been broken. Now it was only enough to learn that the terrible emperor was approaching for them to break and flee. In 1016 Ohrid was taken, and by 1018, imperial forces occupied all of Bulgaria.

Basil, who had been so harsh in his conduct of the war, was mild in his making of the peace. Provided the Bulgarians ac- cepted the control of the emperor, they could otherwise live in peace with their own church and with considerable self-rule. The more important Bulgarians moved to Constantinople, lived there on the basis of equality with the local population, and intermarried with them. With that done, Basil returned in triumph through Greece, visiting ancient Athens, and entering Constantinople hailed as Basi] Bulgaroktonos (bul’guh-rok’toh- nus ), “the Bulgar Killer.” The Bulgarian campaign was the most remarkable Byzantine offensive victory since Belisarius had reconquered the Italian provinces four and a half centuries before; and it resulted in more than the mere annexation of land. With the Balkans oc- cupied and colonized, and with Bulgarians integrated into the nation and the army, Basil was less dependent on the men of Asia Minor, that stronghold of feudalism. Basil II was, indeed, victorious everywhere. His generals won ground in eastern Asia Minor, expanding far into Ar- menia, as well as in southern Italy. In 1025 Basil II was plan- ning a naval expedition to Sicily, intending to retake the island and then to expand his continental Italian dominions far north- ward. The inexorable hand of time was not to be withstood,

= SHLVHAITVD DINVISI — audug aeieeta ayi jo Suwa

TUSSI

YONDN VISY

VINOOVTIHd Yd UOyIZULA & r + VINENUV wee / YAS MOVIE

puoziqezy, ANYINUID

viss7a

I seq yopun ozo] ur ondurg sunurzkg oy, XT dVW

194 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

however. On December 15, 1025, the old emperor, now seventy, died. He had borne the name of emperor for sixty-two years, and had ruled in his own name for forty-nine years. In that half- century he had never once ceased fighting and he had rarely been defeated. :

He left no heirs, and his brother Constantine VIII, who had been co-emperor all this time, reigned alone till 1028, then died in his turn. He had worn the imperial robes and sat on the imperial throne for sixty-five years, and in all that time had no more been a ruler than the throne itself had been.

THE HIGH PLATEAU

When Basil II died, he left the empire larger than it had been at any time in nearly 300 years, and it was to remain so for half a century. It now embraced all the Balkans up to the Danube and all of Asia Minor east almost to the Caspian Sea. It included southern Italy and the islands of Crete and Cyprus so that it was supreme in the eastern Mediterranean. To be sure, in land area it was still not to be compared to what it had been in the sixth and seventh centuries from Justin- ian to Heraclius, but land area in itself isn’t everything. When Justinian had completed his great conquests, he was left with an empty treasury and a worn-out nation, of which large parts were thoroughly estranged. This was even more true of Hera- clius after his defeat of the Persians. For all its enormous size the empire of those days had been structurally unsound and had collapsed at the touch of the Arabs. Not so in Basil IT's time. When he died, he left a full treasury and an empire that was homogeneous and united behind him.

In the time of Justinian and Heraclius, there had existed the

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 195

Persian Empire, which fought Constantinople on even terms. Even Haraclius, after his great victories, had managed only to beat back Persia to the line it had occupied before the war had begun. In that sense, the war was only a draw — and that at the price of self-ruin.

Basil IT, on the other hand, had not only defeated the chief enemy, Bulgaria, but virtually destroyed it as a nation and ab- sorbed it into the empire. All around him not one enemy was to be found which could conceivably challenge it. The various tribes to the north — Magyars, Russians, Pechenegs, and so on — could annoy the empire but not threaten it. The powerful world of Islam (powerful, at least, when it was united) was broken into competing kingdoms which were at this time a much greater problem and threat to each other than to any Christian land. As for the kingdoms of Europe — France, Germany, and England — which bulk so large in our western histories, they were beyond the Byzantine horizon. They were distant and weak, with their barons engaged in interminable internecine warfare, and al] of them as barbaric (in Byzantine eyes) as the Magyars and Russians. In 1025, then, when Basil II died, the Byzantine Empire stood without a peer in the world. It was at the very height of its power.

Artistically, too, it had reached a high point. The tenth cen- tury was the beginning of a two-century golden age. Churches reached a peak of magnificence of subtle architecture and glori- ous mosaic in this period. Both Italy and Russia, two oppo- site poles of the spectrum, copied Byzantine styles enthusiasti- cally, and even the Islamic world felt its influence.

Intellectually the empire experienced a renaissance when the dark age that had followed the seventh century disasters at the hands of Persians and Arabs finally lifted. The University of Constantinople revived and entered a flourishing period. Leo Diaconus (dy-ak’oh-nus), or “Leo the Deacon,” was the most

196 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

important historian of the period. He was present during most of the campaigns from the recapture of Crete to the great Bul- garian war, and he wrote a history in ten books that covered the period from 959 to 975 — that is, the reigns of Romanus II, Nicephorus I, and John I.

The reign of Basil II also saw Hie % one notable fictional ac- complishment of the Byzantine Empire. Sometime in the mid- tenth century, an unknown writer or writers composed the epic poem Digenis Akritas. The name is that of the hero and means, literally, “Double-descent, the Border Fighter.” The hero was indeed a fusion of two races, since he was described as the son of an Arabic nobleman (who had been converted to Christian- ity) and a Greek woman. The epic deals with the hero’s life on the eastern frontier, the women he loved and the enemies he fought. It is remarkably similar to the knightly tales that were soon to appear in the West, and it breathes the same atmos- phere of chivalry, romance, and cruelty, the virtues and vices that go with feudalism and the military caste.

Combine all this with the fact that Constantinople was never busier, never more the center of commerce and trade, never more prosperous. Through rental of shops, the sale of monopo- lies, and customs duties, rivers of gold flowed into the govern- ment coffers. |

Yet there were flaws in the magnificent picture. Basil IT had, in his lifetime, beaten down the feudal landowners and man- aged to keep them in check. They were not, however, dead. In the decades after Basil’s death, their power revived. For over half a century, indeed, the empire was to be the battleground between the feudal lords and the bureaucrats, between the rus- tic landowners of Asia Minor and the smooth functionaries of the great cities. This quarrel contained the seeds of destruc- tion.

The monks, who had defeated the Iconoclastic emperors two centuries before, also continued to be a destructive force, both

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 197

economically and spiritually. Their power had increased under the pious Nicephorus II, who patronized the monk Athanasius of Trebizond. In 963 Athanasius established the first real monastery on the sharp peak of Mount Athos in northeastern Greece. John I continued the support of Athanasius, and the monastery continues to this day as the best known and most important in the world of eastern Christianity. It is remarkable for the odd circumstance that, although it is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, not one woman has been allowed on the mountain in over nine centuries. Basil II was surely aware of the weakening effect of monasti- cism on the empire, with its freezing of wealth and of man- power, but even he could do nothing. When Bardas Phocas and Bardas Skleros were at the walls, Basil had to win the sup- port of the monks by promising to protect their privileges. The emperor was fighting the feudal landowners and he simply could not take on the monks as well. That was the last chance. No later emperor had the power to do anything against the monks, and monasticism continued to exert a choking effect upon the empire right down to its last breath. In one other respect, the reign of Basil II, so triumphant in appearance, laid the groundwork for future trouble. This in- volved the empire’s relationship with the Italian city of Venice. Venice had had a long connection with the empire and had remained a quasi-dependency of Constantinople long after all the rest of northern Italy had broken away. It was completely independent now but there was still a traditional tie. The Venetians, living on their mud flats along the coast, were creatures of commerce and were, indeed, the most skillful trad- ers in the Mediterranean. They were anxious to be placed in charge of some of Constantinople’s trade and were willing to pay a large sum for the privilege. Basil II saw advantages to this. Venetian payments were welcome. Venetian expertise could not help but improve the trading situation still further,

198 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

and the Venetian fleet would be at imperial disposal when nec- essary. In 992, therefore, the Venetians, for the first time, as- sumed a semiofficial place in Constantinople’s life.

But though there were advantages to the arrangement, there were disadvantages, too. The Venetians were strange in lan- guage, culture, and religion. They viewed the Byzantine citizens with contempt and were in business, after all, for their own profit. Though Constantinople profited as well, it was clear that quantities of money flowed out of the city and into Vene- tian coffers. Consequently, the Venetians were naturally re- warded with the hatred of the Constantinopolitan populace. For their own protection, the Venetians insisted on, and re- ceived, extra-territorial privileges; that is, they were allowed to live under their own laws and were exempt from Byzantine in- terference or taxation. This made them virtually a state within a state. In fact, looking at the situation with the hindsight of a later age, we can see that what Basil had inadvertently begun was a process whereby the Byzantine Empire, large and mag- nificent though it was, became a kind of colony of the small commercial city to its west.

THE EMPRESS HUSBANDS

Constantine VIII had no sons. He had three daughters, how- ever, whom he carefully had kept unmarried, for he feared the ambitions of sons-in-law. By the time of his death all had passed the age of childbearing. The eldest daughter was badly disfigured by smallpox and remained in retirement. The second daughter, Theodora, was intent on a monastic life and that left the youngest daughter, Zoe, as the last hope of the dynasty.

It might have been better at this point to start a new dynasty by placing some young, intelligent, and vigorous official on the

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 199

throne. The principles of legitimacy had, however, become too firmly established by this time. The only true ruler, in the eyes of the people, could be a descendant of Basil I.

The dying Constantine recognized this and realized that the only way to get a male emperor on the throne was to have someone marry Zoe. The choice fell on Romanus Argyrus (ahr’jih-rus), who at the time was the mayor of Constanti- nople. Romanus was unwilling, for he was already happily mar- ried and was not anxious to assume the splendid misery of the crown. He was told that of course he did not have to marry Zoe since he could always be killed instead. The logic of the situa- tion did not escape him. He divorced his wife and married Zoe. Three days later, Constantine VIII died and Romanus II was the new emperor. Romanus did his best but it was not good enough. He tried to curry favor with both the feudal lords and with the monks and both attempts rebounded disastrously. The landowners es- caped from the firm contro] that had been placed over them by Basil and began two generations of intrigues against the throne, as long as it was in the hands of the civilian bureaucrats. As for the monks, they took advantage of imperial subservi- ence to engage in their favorite game of hounding heretics. The eastern regions of Asia Minor, which had been reunited to the empire under Basil II, contained numerous Monophysites whose ancestors had, in past centuries, been driven out of By- zantine lands and had found toleration under the Islamic rulers. Back in the empire, they now found themselves harried. Many were driven out across the borders again; but others stayed, maintaining a seething dissatisfaction and readying themselves to join any Islamic offensive.

Matters might have been worse but at least one capable gen- eral was to be found among the imperial forces. This was George Maniakes, who kept up the offensive in the east and managed to continue the successful Byzantine expansion into Syria. It was also a period of naval success, for under the lead-

200 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

ership of Harold Hardrada, a seven-foat Viking who led the Va- rangian guard, Byzantine ships repeatedly defeated the Islamic fleets. *

Zoe tired of her husband, however. She was a good-looking woman who made it the object of her life to keep her looks. She devoted all her care to her body and retained a kind of girlish flirtatiousness into old age. Romanus III, on the other hand, was an old man of sixty when they married and, having failed to impregnate his fiftyish wife, lost interest in her altogether. He conscientiously tried to control her extravagance, for dur- ing the lax government of Constantine VIJJ, the money so fru- gally kept in the treasury by Basil IT had drained away. Zoe, conscious of the fact that she was true empress and that Ro- manus merely held the imperial office by virtue of his marriage to her, began to look around. This did not escape the notice of a capable official of the palace, John Orphanotrophus. He him- self was a eunuch and was therefore ineligible to become em- peror, but he had a handsome younger brother Michael whom he brought to court. The empress was fascinated, and soon Michael the Paphlago- nian (so-called because he was a native of Paphlagonia in Asia Minor) became her favorite. In 1034 Romanus III was found drowned in his bath after a six-year reign. It might have been an accident, but there were few about the court who believed that. The general feeling was that Zoe and Michael between them had arranged the death of an inconvenient husband.

Zoe took Michael as her second husband at once and he reigned as Michael IV. Despite the fact that Michael IV was subject to epileptic fits, he proved a strong emperor. His brother John, who was the power behind the throne, main- tained a firm grip over civil affairs, and other capable brothers were promoted and did their bit, too.

Michael put down a revolt of the Bulgarians and placed their

* Harold’s adventurous life ended in England, of all places; see my book The Shaping of England (Houghton Mifflin, 1969).

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 201

church, which had been left free by Basil II, under the direct control of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In the west, George Maniakes and Harold Hardrada, working in cooperation by land and sea, actually initiated the invasion of Sicily that Basil II had been planning. They won victories and, in 1040, they even seized Syracuse. A jealous home government recalled Maniakes (almost as though it were the time of Justinian and Belisarius once more) and the Sicilian conquests were soon lost. Then in 1041 Michael IV died, apparently of natural causes. The eunuch John was of no mind to let go of the power his family had now exercised for seven years. He hastily brought his young nephew, another Michael, to Constantinople. Zoe, who was now over sixty, followed John’s advice and adopted the young man as her son. He reigned as Michael V. The new young emperor embarked at once on a suicidal pol- icy. Thinking he could really keep power in his own hands, he sent his uncle John into exile — thus effectively blowing out the brains of the court. He then turned on Zoe, placing her in a monastery, so that he could rule without interference. In this, however, he went too far, and had John been at court, he would no doubt have prevented it. The Constantinopolitan people did not mind the fall of John, for imperial favorites are usually un- popular. Zoe was another matter: she was the legitimate em- press, the daughter of Constantine VIII and the niece of the great Bulgar Killer himself. The people rioted, demanding their queen. Michael V, frightened, hastily retrieved her and presented her to the popu- lace in her convent dress. It was too late; the people would not be quieted. On April 19, 1042, they invaded the palace and seized the emperor and another of his uncles. He was taken to the hippodrome where he was mocked, tortured, and finally blinded, then placed in a monastery. What happened to him afterward is unknown, He lived on, for a longer or shorter time, in total obscurity.

In this same disturbance, Zoe’s older sister, Theodora, who

202 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

all this time was peacefully ensconced in a monastery, was brought out and forced to join her sister on the throne. But a man was still needed and since Theodora refused to marry, Zoe took a third husband, Constantine Monomachus (“One Eye”), who reigned as Constantine IX.

The new emperor was also in his sixties. He was interested in art and learning, neglected the army, and spent large sums on luxuries. This extravagance had one noteworthy effect. Through seven centuries, the imperial gold bezant had re- mained at true full value through all the difficulties and catas- trophes the empire had experienced. Now what defeat had not enforced, wastefulness did. For the first time, the gold content of the bezant was decreased and world confidence in the em- pire was bound to be shaken as a result. The economic founda- tion of the empire’s prosperity was trembling. The army was naturally exasperated at the emperor's neglect, particularly since its tasks were multiplying. There were al- ways the Islamic forces in the east and the tribesmen on the north, but in the west something new and threatening had ap- peared. Vikings or Northmen had settled in northern France. The region in which they settled came to be known as Nor- mandy, and they themselves as Normans, but they still rest- lessly probed the shores of Europe as their Viking ancestors had done before them.

Returning from pilgrimages to the Holy Land, certain Nor- mans stopped off in Italy and found the region ripe for brigand- age. They carved out estates for themselves and, after the arrival of a particularly capable Norman, Robert Guiscard ( gees- kahr’), began to gather for themselves power that was perfectly capable of making trouble for the Byzantines.

For a while, it was only the presence of George Maniakes that kept the Normans in check. While, back in Constantino- ple, Constantine IX was completely engaged in poring over the architects plans for the elaborate buildings he intended to con-

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 203

struct, Maniakes managed to beat the Normans smashingly in 1042.

Again, however, his victories merely aroused the suspicions and hatred of the court clique. An imperial emissary went to Italy to recall Maniakes and he did so, before the army, in terms of insult and degradation. Maniakes was no Belisarius to endure this. At his signal, his soldiers slew the emissary and the banner of revolt was raised. He sailed to Greece and landed in Dyrrhachium. Troops flocked to him and the people rallied with enthusiasm. He began the march to Constantinople. It would seem that Maniakes was sure to succeed, that he would be the first of a new vigorous dynasty and that the em- pire would continue in strength. As luck would have it, how- ever, not long after he began his march, an arrow accidentally found its mark and killed him. It was an expensive death for the empire. Without him, the chance of reorganization was lost and the empire remained in the feeble grip of ineffective old men. With Maniakes gone, the Norman fortunes rose again in Italy, and the Byzantine forces had to try to enlist the papacy in a common alliance against the newcomers. To be sure, the popes were also endangered by the rough Normans, but those Normans were at least of the western Church and acknowl- edged papal supremacy. The sections of Italy which were under Byzantine rule acknowledged the religious leadership of the Patriarch of Constantinople, but when these areas came under Norman control, allegiance shifted to the pope —a shift which the popes naturally accepted and encouraged.

The patriarch at Constantinople was, also naturally, infuri- ated. The patriarch at this time was Michael Cerularius (ser’yoo-lar’ee-us ), an ambitious and hot-tempered person of unbounded ambition. Once before, in 1040, while still a lay- man, he had plotted against Michael IV and had been forced to become a monk in consequence. For a while he was exiled but

204 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

his ambition and drive did not diminish. He rose to promi- nence in the Church, continued to dabble in politics, and was made patriarch by the preoccupied and uncaring Constantine IX. ;

Cerularius found the two branches of the Christian Church at enmity, as they had been on and off for seven centuries and over the same basic problem: which was to be supreme, pope or patriarch, So far, the two branches of the Church, whatever their quarrel, had avoided a complete break and had main- tained a theoretical unity.

Cerularius, however, meant to take stern action over the mat- ter of jurisdiction in southern Italy. In the negotiations over the matter he gruffly refused to yield an inch. In fact, in 1052 he showed his unwillingness to conciliate by abruptly closing all churches within the empire that celebrated the mass according to western rites.

The result of that was to force the open break at last. West- ern priests, arriving in Constantinople in 1054, excommuni- cated the patriarch at the order of Pope Leo IX. Cerularius refused to accept such impertinence, of course, and that was it. Rome and Constantinople turned their backs on each other. The break was final and never again, down to the present day, were the western and eastern branches of Christianity to be re- united. This was no loss to the patriarch, however. His harsh ex- tremism was approved of by the bigoted and unthinking popu- lace who hated western Christianity (all the more so because of their experiences with the Venetians ) just as much as they hated the religion of Mohammed. The final schism between East and West made Michael Cerularius the most powerful man in the empire.

But the Macedonian dynasty was sputtering to an end. Zoe had died in 1050. Her last husband, Constantine IX, continued on the throne till 1054 when he died. For a while Theodora, Zoe’s sister, ruled. She was the last of the line of Macedonians

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 205

and she died in 1055 at the age of seventy-seven. Fifteen monarchs, both male and female, were part of the dynasty, by blood (eight were descendants of Basil I) or marriage, and all told the dynasty had lasted 188 years.

Even during the half-century sputter of the last successors of Basil II, the brilliance of Byzantine civilization continued. The period was that of Michael Constantine Psellus (sel’us), the greatest of all Byzantine scholars. Psellus was born of middle- class parents in 1018; that is, in the last portion of the reign of Basil II. He was a self-made man who managed to garner a thorough education. Under Constantine IX he began a career in the civil service and became prominent at court. He is often considered to have been an obsequious and shifty politician, but it took a certain amount of twisting and turning to maintain one’s position in the court of the period. What is undeniable is that his scholarly talents were formi- dable. He was the head of the department of philosophy at the newly flourishing University of Constantinople and under him the study of pagan philosophy, particularly that of Plato, was revived. He wrote voluminously in many areas, turning out a valuable history of his own times, together with writings on theology and magic, to say nothing of orations and letters and poems. He was the Byzantine version of the “Renaissance man” and, indeed, he began the rediscovery of ancient scholarship which, percolating westward, gave rise to that period of Italian culture which we call the Renaissance.

THE COMING OF THE TURKS

Ever since the death of Basil II, the empire had been ruled by civil officials rather than by members of the military-feudal party. With Theodora dying, the civilian party tried to extend

206 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

its power by having the old empress nominate one of their own as her successor. The thought was that the principle of legiti- macy would be strong enough to make her pointing finger suffi- cient. /

And so it seemed. At the suggestion of Patriarch Michael Cerularius, Theodora chose one Michael Stratioticus (strat’ee- ot’‘ih-kus ), who was aged and infirm, and who would therefore serve (Cerularius was sure) as a pliable instrument in the pa- triarchal grasp. Stratioticus ruled as Michael VI and the wretched man was indeed a puppet to the formidable patri- arch. Michael Cerularius, whose priestly robes did nothing to limit his secular ambitions, felt very much the power behind the throne. He took to wearing purple boots, one of the sym- bols of emperorship and once, when Michael VI tried to speak up for himself, the patriarch snapped out at him: “T raised you up, you imbecile, and I can break you, too.” But it was not the patriarch who broke poor Michael VI. The army was seething and the death of Maniakes merely meant a delay until another general could be found with the drive and ability to defy the civilian government. One of the generals serving in the east was Isaac Comnenus. His father had been an official of Basil II and Isaac was brought up under Basil’s own care. Throughout the troubled period following Basil's death, Isaac had led his armies capably and won their regard. When the generals in Asia Minor determined to take over the government, Isaac was the popular choice to lead the movement. There was one short battle with the Varangian guard and then Michael VI gave in. He was deposed and made a monk, and in 1057 Isaac Comnenus accepted the throne as Isaac I. At once he launched into a program of vigorous military reform and financial reorganization. As frequently happens at mo- ments of great strain, it was natural to turn to the wealth of the Church. The Church, however, rarely yields its treasures with-

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 907

out a struggle, and Isaac found himself face to face with Mi- chael Cerularius.

Isaac didn't flinch. He knew that there was no room for both the emperor and such a patriarch in the city and he forced Cerularius into exile. He would have had him tried for treason and possibly blinded, but the fierce old patriarch died before the trial could be arranged. In the process, though, Isaac gained the deadly hostility of the monks and of that faction of the populace that followed them. Add to this the continuing hostility of the civilian party and the fact that Isaac was well into his fifties and in poor health, and it is not surprising that in two years he gave up. After an arduous campaign in the north against Pechenegs, in which he was successful, and then a sickness which seemed, for a while, as though it might kill him, Isaac determined to abdicate. He passed on the crown to Constantine Dukas (dyoo’kas), a treasury official, in 1059. The new emperor, Constantine X, was of the civilian party and, being a humane and peace-loving man, who suspected (with some justice) the intentions of the military, he cut military expenditures to the bone. This can sometimes be a good thing but it was a mistake then, when on all sides the empire was trembling under the blows of enemies.

The Byzantine dominions of southern Italy were vanishing under the continuing offensive of Robert Guiscard and his Nor- mans. In the north, a new tribe of Asian nomads, the Cumans, were pouring across the south Russian steppes. Like those who had preceded them, these tribes raided the European provinces of the empire and had to be fought off.

It was in the east, though, that the most terrible new enemy arose. Various Turkish tribes (related to those tribes who, from the Huns to the Cumans, had been the scourges of the West) had invaded Islamic areas and had been converted to Islam. While the Byzantine Empire was decaying under the rule of the aged nieces of Basil II, a new Turkish tribe was coming into

208 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

prominence. Because one of their early leaders was named Sel- juk, they are called the Seljuk Turks. They established their rule over Persia in 1037, and in 1055, just as the last dim glow of the Macedonian dynasty flickered out, they captured Bagh- dad and took their place as the strongest power in the Islamic world.

In 1063 Alp Arslan became ruler of the Seljuk Turks. Almost at once he advanced into Armenia and took over those areas which, under Basil II, had been conquered for the empire. The flaccid Constantine X could do nothing.

When Constantine X died in 1067, his widow, Eudocia, was made regent for their three young sons who, by the principle of legitimacy, ought to succeed. Eudocia, however, felt the times required a military man. Against the opposition of the civilian party, her choice fell on Romanus Diogenes (dy-ojih-neez ) who had distinguished himself in battle against the Pechenegs and Cumans on the northern frontier. On January 1, 1068, they were married. Romanus, who now ruled as Romanus IV, took over the hard task of retrieving the military situation. He had to reorganize the dilapidated army, recruit, train, and arm new men. It was clear he would have to concentrate on the overwhelming Turk- ish danger in the east. For Italy, separated from the Byzantine heartland by sea and all but lost anyway, he could do nothing. He abandoned it, and the Normans took the city of Bari in 1071. It was the one remaining imperial holding west of the Adriatic. With that loss, the last faint echo of Justinian and Belisarius was gone. The Roman government which traced its beginnings back to a small town founded in central Italy eight- een centuries before was now forever expelled from that penin- sula, (Yet even so there remain a few isolated villages in extreme southern Italy where Greek is spoken to this day.)

Disregarding Italy, Romanus prepared to take on Alp Arslan. The Turkish leader, though he had infringed on imperial terri- tory, was really more interested in conquering Syria, which was

THE EMPIRE AT THE PEAK 209

then controlled by Egypt. He patched up a truce with the em- pire and marched southward.

Romanus did not intend to keep the truce, however. He wanted to regain the lost territory in the east and to inflict a chastening defeat on the Turks. He moved eastward with 60,- 000 men under his command. They were untried soldiers for the most part and some of their commanders were of doubtful loyalty, but they were 60,000 well-armed heavy cavalry.

In August 1071, Romanus’ army took the city of Manzikert, which the Turks had occupied a couple of years earlier. It was clear he meant to force battle and Alp Arslan had to abandon his Syrian campaign and hasten back.

The Turkish force was the more numerous and consisted of lightly armed cavalry which could not have withstood a face-to- face shock against the imperial heavy cavalry, but were much faster and more maneuverable. Romanus, eager to win, sent his heavy cavalry forward at a full gallop. In doing so, he violated Byzantine principles of warfare which insisted that heavy cav- alry never engage in pursuit of light cavalry, unless the latter can be pinned against a river or other impassable barrier. The reasons are clear: heavy cavalry can’t catch light cavalry in a straight race and the pursuing horses are merely worn out for nothing, becoming vulnerable to counterattack. Romanus’ ea- gerness led him to ignore good tactics.

Without panic the Turks moved back, refusing to get into close quarters and keeping up a galling arrow fire from afar. It was a sweltering day and the Byzantine cavalry, weighed down with armor and inexperienced, was growing tired and thirsty; when evening was falling, Romanus, in frustration, could do nothing but order retreat into night quarters.

At this point Andronicus Ducas, a relative of the previous emperor, a member of the civilian party, and a strong (if se- cret) opponent of Romanus, decided that the battle would lead to no victory and he was better off out of it. He led his contin- gent out of the battle line.

210 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

The weakened Byzantine army found itself in a sack. The retreating Turkish center had led them forward between the Turkish flanks which Alp Arslan, handling his men with superb skill, saw to it were filled with fresh men, vigorous and unwear- ied, who now entered the fight for the first time. The Byzan- tines, trying to establish camp for the night, found themselves assailed on every side. Disheartened, betrayed, and over- whelmed, the imperials were lost. The army was virtually wiped out and Romanus himself was taken prisoner. No such catastrophe, no such utter loss of a large army, had befallen Byzantine arms in all the seven and a half centuries since Constantine. The Persians and Arabs had driven the By- zantine soldiers back and had taken provinces, but they had never destroyed the main army of the empire. Now it had hap- pened and this one battle at Manzikert completely destroyed the prosperity which the empire had retained during the years of the Macedonian dynasty.

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

SSORIN PACE OEPasTy ALEN DAS ¥

<< aeenes FO ep arn 38S \ = a

CY

THE WEST COMES EAST

THE CONSEQUENCES OF DEFEAT

To the Byzantines themselves the Battle of Manzikert must have seemed at first as nothing worse than one more lost battle from which the empire would recover, as it had recovered so often before from Huns, Persians, Avars, Arabs, and Bulgars.

Michael Psellus, who was still alive, still turning out material on every branch of knowledge, still charming emperors and ar- tisans with his beautiful voice and eloquent lectures, wrote of the battle. He saw nothing final in it and was more perturbed by the problem of internal corruption.

Of course, it is hard to see clearly anything that is too close to the eyes. Thus, Psellus, in his history, never mentions the final schism between eastern and western Christianity in 1054. Per- haps Psellus considered it only another tiresome spat in a smol- dering quarrel that had continued for centuries — but he had

212 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

no way of knowing it was the last spat., Similarly, Psellus could see Manzikert was a defeat like mariy others in centuries past, but he had no way of seeing that, largely because of the inter- nal corruption which he deplored, it was to be a very special defeat. .

The trouble was that for fifty years, the empire’s underpin- nings had been weakened. The ulcerous quarrel between the feudal landowners and the civilian officials was one in which both sides competed to see who could do the State a greater disservice. The monks, wrapped up in their quarrel with the western Church, wasted imperial energies in useless theology. Then, too, the rapidly rising commercial vigor of the Italian cities was sapping Byzantine control of trade, on which the health of her economy greatly depended.

The gathering decay of the empire had destroyed its resili- ence. The Battle of Manzikert proved, therefore, a turning point of history, for it was at this time that the empire showed it could no longer bend and rebound; it could only snap like a dry twig. It was the Battle of Manzikert that broke the spirit of the empire.

The Byzantine army, which for four centuries had single- handedly held off Islamic hordes with one hand and the north- ern barbarian tribes with the other, was now destroyed. It was never to be restored to what it had been, and for a while the empire remained at the mercy of the Turkish enemy.

Perhaps even Alp Arslan did not properly appreciate the magnitude of the victory he had won. Perhaps he took it for granted that the great empire could not really be defeated. At any rate he did not subject the captive emperor to any cruel indignities. He kept Romanus in honorable imprisonment and set him free in return for a treaty which called for the Byzan- tines to pay a large ransom, an annual tribute, and to set free all Islamic prisoners.

Observance of this treaty, humiliating though it was, might have limited Byzantine losses and given them time to recover.

THE WEST COMES EAST 213

Even at this crisis, however, the men back at Constantinople thought of partisan matters first. Romanus’ defeat was the great chance of the civilian functionaries to regain the emperor- ship. When Romanus returned to Constantinople he found his wife (through whom he had ruled) locked in a nunnery. He himself was seized, cruelly blinded, and sent into an exile where he soon died. In his place his stepson, the son of Constantine X, was pro- claimed emperor. He had been a minor when his father had died, but he was old enough in years now to reign and he became Michael VII. Psellus fulfilled his role as smoothly pliant court functionary and scholar-in-residence by writing an extravagant eulogy of the new emperor, who actually was quite incompetent. Michael was a scholar rather than a soldier and the times, alas, needed a soldier. The Turks, who had made a treaty with an emperor and then found that emperor deposed by his own people, considered the treaty a dead letter. They raided into Asia Minor which, bare of troops and helpless, could make no resistance. The penin- sula was overrun and placed under Turkish domination, never to be entirely retaken. The Turkish dominions on the peninsula were called Rum (the Turkish version of Rome, for the mon- arch they had defeated still called himself Roman Emperor and still considered his dominions to be the Roman Empire. ) The Byzantine Empire thus lost the sources of its best fight- ing men and its most capable generals. The fact that the Asia Minor coastline was lost or was, in places, but narrowly and precariously held, destroyed the ability of the empire to main- tain itself as a sea power. Indeed, Christianity itself was slowly wiped out in the peninsula, and cities renowned in Christian history became Islamic in religion and remained so forever after.” To this day, Asia Minor makes up the heart of the mod- ern nation of Turkey.

* This was the last great religious defeat of Christianity by a com- peting religion.

214 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

To be sure, the Byzantine Empire was not completely wiped off the map. Its European provinces remained intact and Con- stantinople remained large and rich. The emperor remained magnificent in his prestige and his ritual for generations more. But the empire was never again a great power. Never again would it fight its enemies on its own. Forever after it would have to ask, hat in hand, for help from those whom it had al- ways (and in its heart, still) considered barbarians, and its ar- mies from this moment on would always consist of mercenaries.

Under Michael VII conditions in Constantinople rapidly de- teriorated. The gold bezant had to be debased again. Food grew short; prices rose. Nothing could be calculated to make the government more unpopular.

In 1078 the inevitable rebellions broke out. There were two of these, one in the Balkans and one in what was left of Asia Minor. Each was led by a separate general, in each case one named Nicephorus. Michael VII, who had no liking for the post in any case, quickly abdicated and was allowed to enter a monastery. There he was much happier and openly stated that his only regret would be the fact that he would be forced to live on a vegetarian diet. (With the passing of Michael VII, Psel- lus, now sixty years old, vanishes, too. Nothing further is heard from him and his history was never completed. Whether he was executed, died a natural death, or retired is not known. ) The two rebelling generals fought it out and the Nicephorus of Asia Minor (supported by the Seljuk Turks) won. He be- came emperor as Nicephorus III. He did not reign long, either, and the only reason he remained on the throne as long as he did was that he was fortunate in possessing an able general, the best the empire had possessed since the death of Basil II.

The general was Alexius Comnenus, nephew of the Isaac Comnenus who had reigned briefly as Isaac I twenty years ear- lier. Alexius had spent his life in the army, fighting with honor under Romanus IV and Michael VII. Now he was the mainstay of Nicephorus III, defeating for him all competing generals.

THE WEST COMES EAST 215

It began to seem to Alexius, however, that Nicephorus lacked the ability to conduct the government in such a way as to gain the allegiance of the army and the people. In 1081, Alexius de- cided that he himself would have to undertake the task.

He made sure of the support of other members of his own family and married Irene, the daughter of the ex-emperor, Mi- chael VI, in order to gain the support of the powerful Dukas family (and to make his own claim to the throne that much more legitimate). He then seized Constantinople in a quick coup and Nicephorus III abdicated, retiring, as his predecessor had, to a monastery. The Comnenus family was one of the great feudal landowners and Alexius’ accession represented the final victory of that party over the civilians. For all the rest of its history the empire was to be feudal in character, dominated by its quarreling landowning families.

THE NORMAN INVASION

For the first time since the death of Basil II sixty years be- fore, the Byzantine Empire had a really strong and capable ruler, but it was too late. The realm itself was shattered, and Alexius I had to face a situation that was all but irreversible.

Asia Minor was just about gone. Imperial troops held a few positions immediately across the straits from Constantinople and a few fortresses here and there along the coast. The empire consisted entirely of the Balkan peninsula south of the Danube River, plus the two large islands of Crete and Cyprus. Even that was in peril. Along the northern rim were the Pechenegs, Serbs, Magyars, and Cumans.

Worst of all, in the West across the narrow strait separating the empire from Italy were the Normans. The Byzantine Em- pire was used to facing north against barbarians, east against

216 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Persians and Turks, south against Arabs. Now they had to face west, too. For the first time since the days of Julius Caesar, a thousand years before, armies from Italy were poised to invade the Balkans. The West was coming east.

Even before the Battle of Manzikert, the Normans had made themselves masters of southern Italy. Then, Robert Guiscard had sent his youngest brother Roger into Sicily. The Islamic occupiers who had fought off all Byzantine counterattacks for two centuries were now falling before the Normans.

Even with the Sicilian conquest not yet complete, Guiscard lusted for new worlds to conquer. In June 1081, only two months after Alexius had become emperor, Guiscard was ready. He had 30,000 men placed on a fleet of 150 ships and sailed eastward with the distant gleam of Constantinople in his mind. He took the island of Corfu without much trouble and, landing his army on the imperial mainland, marched north and laid siege to the city of Dyrrachium. Alexius could face this new threat only by disposing of an old one. His agile mind considered the eastern situation. Alp Ar- slan had died shortly after the Battle of Manzikert and his son, the even more able Malik Shah, was busy far to the south. The Turkish viceroys in Asia Minor enjoyed their separate power and would gladly be independent of their monarch. They would welcome peace with the Byzantines in order that they might strengthen themselves against Malik Shah, and a little money wouldn’t harm either. Alexius paid off the viceroys (which meant higher taxes and a freshly debased bezant at home) and even hired a few Turkish mercenaries. With that done, he turned to fight off Guiscard. It would be difficult if not impossible to defeat Guiscard on land, but the sea was another matter. The city of Venice had a vested interest in the empire, whose trade she had been manag- ing for nearly a century, and Alexius was willing to offer them still further trading concessions. (All such concessions, squeezed out of the empire by adversity, simply tightened the

THE WEST COMES EAST 217

colonial grip of the Italian traders, hurt the Byzantines econom- ically, and accelerated the decline which produced more adver- sity, More concessions, and so on, in a vicious circle. )

Down came the Venetian navy, therefore, and the Norman ships, under Guiscard’s illegitimate son Bohemund (boh’uh- mund), were easily defeated. Alexius expected the Normans to concentrate now on means of returning to Italy, forgetting their invasion plans. Guiscard did not cooperate. He meant to have the empire and he marched inland, determined to live off the land. Alexius had to fall back to the Aegean Sea. Desperately he tried to raise another army. He had no funds and he was forced to seize Church property and then scrape through the diminishing barre] of imperial manpower.

Fortunately for Alexius, political affairs in Italy grew difficult for Guiscard and he was forced to return to his kingdom to take care of matters. He left his army in the Balkans, however, under Bohemund. Bohemund was a large, hard-fighting dare- devil of a man, but he was no Guiscard. Alexius had a slightly better chance against him.

In the spring of 1083, Alexius sent his army against Bohe- mund with a new type of defense. It was necessary to neutral- ize, somehow, the thunderous Norman charge. Those big men on their big horses were then the best heavy cavalry in the world. They were undisciplined and could be evaded, but they could not possibly be met head-on. Alexius therefore placed heavy armor on some of his infantry and stationed them in chariots from which barbed poles stuck out forward. These were like primitive pillboxes and were intended to stop the Norman charge. Bohemund countered them simply enough. He merely directed his cavalry to gallop around the line of chariots and strike the Byzantine army on the flank. Alexius had to retreat again.

By 1084 Bohemund was in Thessaly. One more victory and only Constantinople would be left to Alexius. But Alexius had not given up. He had managed to put together another army

218 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

and had hired 7000 Turkish cavalrymen from Asia Minor. At Larissa the two armies met again. This time Alexius avoided a direct confrontation. By a clever feint he lured Bohemund into attacking in the wrong direction, then sent his main army against the Norman camp and destroyed their supplies.

This broke the Norman spirit. They had been winning, but they had also been fighting in the Balkans for three years now and attrition had taken its toll. Some of the original fighting force were dead and the rest were tired. The Greek population, hating the westerners as heretics no better than so many Turks, beset them constantly with guerrilla tactics.

It is not surprising that the Norman army began to mutter and that dissension grew rapidly. The formidable Guiscard might have held them together but Bohemund couldn't. He pulled back to the Adriatic coast and, leaving garrisons in the ports, hastened back to Italy to get his father.

Guiscard, having taken care of the Italian complications, was quite ready to return to the Balkan wars. He collected another fleet, sailed to Corfu again, battled the combined ships of Ven- ice and the empire to a standstill, and then, in July 1085, finally died. He was about seventy, indomitable and unbeatable to the last.

Without him the Normans could not be held together any longer, especially since there was a quarrel over the succession. Bohemund, as the illegitimate son, did not inherit, was given a small title, and retired to sulk. The whole expedition broke up and the Norman danger to the Byzantine Empire ended.

This by no means meant that Alexius was free and clear. While fighting off the Normans, he had also been trying to re- form the government and win the support of the Church as a makeweight against the large landowners. The necessity of continual fighting kept him off-balance, however, and even with the Normans gone, plenty of enemies remained.

There was even one within the boundaries. About a century before Alexius came to the throne, there had arisen a new

THE WEST COMES EAST 9219

Christian sect in the Bulgarian provinces which preached that the world and its material content was a creation of the Devil. In order to be assured of salvation, then, it was necessary to refrain as far as possible from any connection with the world. The new sect disbelieved in marriage, in sex, or in eating and drinking beyond the bare essentials. They also rejected all the ritual of the Church. The founder of the sect was a priest, The- ophilus. The name means “love of God” and in the Slavic lan- guage that becomes Bogomil. The sect is therefore known as the Bogomils. Undoubtedly, the new sect gained influence in the Bulgar- ian provinces because it was a method of striking back at the domination of the Greeks and of the Patriarch of Constanti- nople. Toward the end of the eleventh century, however, it began an alarming spread in the rest of the empire. In the times of decline and disaster following the Battle of Manzikert there would be comfort in thinking that the visible creation was evil and devil-made — and therefore might just as well be de- stroyed. The destroyers might even be doing God’s work. This very fact made the sect dangerous since individuals fa- talistically adjusted to defeat and destruction, and even to wel- coming it, were so much dead weight. Enough of them and what was left of the empire would collapse of its own accord. Alexius was forced, therefore, to take severe measures against the Bogomils. In 1086 they rose in revolt, supported by the Pechenegs and Cumans north of the Danube. *

Again the imperial provinces were ravaged — even worse than by the Normans who had been operating farther south. In the late 1080s the barbarians reached the very walls of Con-

* At the moment these were the only northern tribes of conse- quence. Some eighty years before, the Russians had destroyed the Khazar kingdom. Later they had themselves been driven from the Black Sea by the oncoming Cumans (whom the Russians called Polovtzi). The Magyars were settling down and with the admix- ture of the western fringe of the Cumans became the Kingdom of

Hungary.

220 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

stantinople. With a weary sigh, Alexius used his best weapon. He offered the Cuman leaders gold, and took them into impe- rial service. As Byzantine auxiliaries, they now turned on their erstwhile allies, the Pechenegs, and in 1091 inflicted upon them a disastrous defeat. With that, the Pechenegs, badly wounded, began a rapid decline. The Bogomil menace faded, too, though the sect continued to gain converts among the Balkan Slavs and remained a force to be considered for two more centuries. Thus, in the first decade of his reign, Alexius I had performed wonders merely by holding on. Somehow his reign was typified by the fact that at its midpoint the statue of Apollo (with Con- stantine’s head) that had stood in the marketplace for seven and a half centuries was struck by lightning during a storm and finally toppled. It might have been the symbol of the final fall of the empire. But it was taken, instead, as divine displeasure with this secular memorial and its pagan origin. In its place a golden cross was placed on the pillar and indeed most of Alex- ius’ troubles were deeply concerned with warriors who wore the cross as their badge.

THE WARRIORS OF THE CROSS _g4*up i

In 1092 the Turkish sultan Malik Shah died and with him died the real Seljuk strength. The whole Seljuk realm fell apart into independent and quarreling provinces. Alexius saw his chance. By playing one Seljuk leader against another, it might prove possible to reconquer Asia Minor and undo the colossal damage of Manzikert.

What he needed, though, were soldiers. The Normans were gone, the Pechenegs destroyed, the Cumans in his service, the Bogomils quiet — but the empire (what was left of it) was in no condition to fight. His army at its peak never numbered

THE WEST COMES EAST OOF

more than 50,000 men, most of them mercenaries who could only be counted on so far. He had to conserve them desper- ately and he could never risk heavy losses even for the sake of victory. It was frustrating in the extreme to see a golden oppor- tunity for recovering the loss go wasting for lack of soldiers.

Alexius thought he had the solution. He had used enemies against enemies, Cumans against Pechenegs, for instance. Spe- cifically, he had used Turkish mercenaries against Normans and he saw nothing wrong in now using Norman mercenaries against Turks.

His opportunity came in 1095, when the western Church, under Pope Urban II, was holding a council in Italy to discuss internal matters. Alexius sent an ambassador to the council, asking for volunteers to come to Constantinople and join in the fight against the Turks. The emissary hinted that in return Alexius might consent to heal the schism between the eastern and western branches of the Church. To the pope it sounded as though the East might finally be willing to accept papal supremacy. Urban couldn't possibly re- sist the bait of winning final victory after seven centuries of ecclesiastical warfare. He therefore called another Church council to meet at Clermont in France in November 1095, to deal specifically with the problem of defeating the Seljuk Turks. Not only clergymen, but the nobility too, attended, and Urban made a very moving speech urging the western lords to stop fighting each other and unite against the infidel. The trouble was that Urban far overshot the mark and both he and Alexius got much more than they bargained for. What Alexius wanted was a contingent of western knights — with horses and armor — coming to Constantinople as mercenaries, swearing allegiance to himself, and then letting themselves be used in battle to recover Asia Minor for the empire. Urban, however, in his effort to raise such a force succeeded in arous- ing hysterical enthusiasm that got out of hand instantly.

A vast fever swept France. The westerners cared nothing

222 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

about Constantinople and Alexius at all. In the popular view, the Byzantines were heretics who were no better than the Turks. No, indeed, what the westerners wanted was to over- throw the Turk under the leadership of God and the pope (not under the heretic Alexius) and to win the Holy Land (not Asia Minor ) for themselves (not for the Byzantines ). Even before the western knights could organize themselves, the peasantry of western Europe surged eastward. They did not know where they were going or what they would do when they got there; there was only the magic word “Jerusalem” ring- ing in their ears. They had no provisions, no way of eating but to ravage the countryside through which they passed, and no amusement but to kill Jews and anyone else who seemed suspi- ciously different. They were like a murdering plague of locusts and were fought off desperately by those in their path. Thou- sands died in the passage through Hungary but finally some 12,000 survived to descend on Constantinople. Alexius was appalled. Certainly this rabble was not what he wanted. He could neither control nor use them, so he took the only possible way out. He shipped them across the straits into Asia Minor, pointed and said: “That way is Jerusalem,” and left them to the Turks. They were taken care of, all right; the Turks killed most and enslaved the rest. ;

Meanwhile, though, the knights of western Europe had or- ganized and were ready to move eastward. Crosses were sewn on their clothes to indicate they were battling for Christianity. For that reason, their expedition was a Crusade (from a Span- ish word for “cross” ) and this expedition was the First Crusade.

The leaders of the First Crusade, these warriors of the cross, were for the most part French and Norman noblemen of the second rank. Between July 1096 and May 1097 their contin- gents gradually arrived at Constantinople. Almost at once, Alexius was sorry he had begun the whole thing. The rabble had been bad enough, but they had been easily gotten rid of. What of these arrogant western knights, though, who were

THE WEST COMES EAST 205

convinced the eastern “heretics” were contemptible and that they themselves were God’s soldiers and not Alexius’P They knew nothing of Byzantine ritual and offended the court by what seemed gross manners and ignorant ways.

What’s more, they did not realize that Alexius was consid- ered by himself and his people to be the Roman Emperor. They (and later Crusaders) persisted in considering him King of the Greeks — a most offensive title to the history-conscious Byzantines. Worst of all, joining this First Crusade and taking part as one of its chief leaders was Bohemund himself, the same Bohemund who had fought Alexius a decade before and had almost defeated him.

Alexius must have regarded them all, and Bohemund particu- larly, with considerable apprehension. He dared not object to their overbearing behavior and the disorder they brought to the capital, their quarreling and pilfering. After all, if they wanted to attack the palace and take over Constantinople, they might very well be able to do so.

He had only two cards to play. First, the wealth and mag- nificence of the great city may have roused the Crusaders’ cu- pidity, but it also impressed them with the emperor's power (an impression far greater than the reality) and that cowed them. Secondly, the western knights hated each other at least as cordially as they all hated the Byzantines, and while each maneuvered to make sure none of the others would grab too much, Alexius had his chance to win over all. His main task was to see to it that it was perfectly clear to the knights that they were fighting under imperial orders and for imperial purposes. Alexius insisted therefore that all swear al- legiance to himself and that they agree to restore all recon- quered territory in Asia Minor to the empire. With more or less reluctance all the knights swore, but none really meant it. They saw no reason why an oath to a heretic was to be consid- ered binding.

Nor did Alexius have any misplaced confidence in the

224 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

knights, oath or no. He did not trust them and he tended to do what he could to keep them from growing too powerful. If they reconquered Asia Minor for him, they might just as well die in the process — in fact, he would rather they did.

The result was that whatever happened, each side would sus- pect the other of faithlessness, and that proved exactly so. In June 1097, Alexius shipped the Crusaders into Asia Minor and they began by laying siege to the city of Nicaea not far across the smal] sea from Constantinople.

If they took it, they were honorbound to turn it over to the emperor, but they saw no reason why they shouldn't sack it first. The defenders knew that this was what they intended and they preferred to have the civilized Byzantines take over. They therefore surrendered to the emperor, who hastened troo,7s into the city before the Crusaders could begin their sack. Naturally, the Crusaders felt cheated and angry. The Crusaders then marched southwar |, defeating the Turks at Doryleum in cen- tral Asia Minor and pushing onward toward the Holy Land, the reconquest of which was their aim.

Alexius sent only a small contingent with them as a token force. He and the main imperial army remained behind to re- duce and take over the Turkish strongholds in Asia Minor, the reconquest of which was his aim. The Crusaders felt deserted by an emperor whose concern for his own troops they consid- ered to be merely Greek cowardice.

Still, both won out to an extent. The Crusaders, suffering fearful losses both from the environment and from the Turks, nevertheless bulled through by sheer weight and doggedness and actually recaptured the entire easternmost shore of the Mediterranean. On July 15, 1099, they retook Jerusalem, the inhabitants of which, in the name of their gentle Jesus, they subjected to fiendish massacre.

Meanwhile, Alexius had retaken the western third of Asia Minor and, eventually, the entire coast of the peninsula. The Seljuk grip held firm in the eastern interior, however, so that

THE WEST COMES EAST 295

the results of Manzikert were not entirely reversed. The Cru- saders held the Holy Land for themselves and with this Alexius could not really quarrel. To be sure, the region had been held by the empire back in the days of Heraclius, but Alexius lacked the strength to hold it now.

There was, however, one region of contention at the point where the strip of Crusader territory met Asia Minor. There lay the ancient city of Antioch. Alexius wanted this badly and when the Crusaders were laying siege to it, he marched his own till-now victorious army forward to join that siege and take the city. He was met by fearful Crusaders fleeing westward with the news that the crusading army had been destroyed. Disap- pointed, Alexius retreated. But the crusading army had not been destroyed and it eventually took Antioch. Once that was done without Byzantine help, the Crusaders refused to surren- der it to the emperor. What’s more, the one particular Cru- sader who claimed it as lord was none other than Bohemund. Bohemund had to fight not only Alexius, but also the Turks and a fellow-crusader, Raymond of Toulouse. Bohemund was forced out of Antioch, returned to Italy, and tried to raise a force, not against the Turks but against the empire. Once again he invaded the empire from the west as his father had done twenty years before. This time he was quickly defeated and, in 1108, he had to sign a treaty accepting imperial control of Antioch. He spent the remaining three years of his life in Italy in frustration and defeat, but Alexius — even with the signed paper he held — was unable to enter Antioch, which was now held by other Crusaders.

THE LAST OF THE GLORY

When Alexius I died in 1118 at the age of seventy, after a backbreaking reign of thirty-seven years, he had the satisfac-

226 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

tion of knowing that, in the end, he had defeated all his enemies and that the empire, which had seemed on the verge of dissolu- tion when he ascended the throne, was strong and stable at his death. If no longer a great power (it continued to need west- ern help), it at least maintained the illusion of being one.

Indeed, if its political and military influence had declined, its intellectual influence was higher than ever. The westerners who poured through Constantinople on their way to the Holy Land were infected with the eastern culture and carried it back with them when they returned home.

The Code of Justinian, with its emendations up through the time of Leo VI, was brought back to Italy and formed the basis for the teachings of law in the Italian universities. From there it gradually spread over western Europe, preaching the Byzan- tine concept of the divine right of kings and encouraging the rise of absolute monarchy. (It did not reach England, which developed along a different political route — a matter of great significance to history. ) Byzantine culture flourished under the Comnenus dynasty so that there was much for the West to be infected with. John Italus (so-called because he was driven by the Norman inva- sion from southern Italy to Constantinople) was the successor to Psellus at the University of Constantinople. He taught the doctrines of the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, and main- tained that it was possible to indulge in philosophical investiga- tions independent of theology. This the traditionbound Church at Constantinople could not endure and Italus was tried for heresy, condemned, and forced to recant in public at the Hagia Sophia in 1082. Nevertheless, his Aristotelian teachings influ- enced later figures and evenutally found its way westward.

Suidas (syoo’ih-das) compiled a huge encyclopedia about 1100 that contained biographies of Greek and Byzantine writ- ers, many quotations from ancient works of literature, and im- mense quantities of other material (of uneven value). Theo- dore Prodomus wrote widely both in prose and poetry.

THE WEST COMES EAST 997

The most unusual literary figure of the period, however, was Anna Comnena (kom-nee’nuh), eldest daughter of Alexius I. She worshiped her father and aspired to be empress. In order to bring this about she hoped that her father would exclude her brother John (five years younger than she) from the throne and would instead grant it to Anna’s husband, Nicephorus Bryen- nius (bry-en’ee-us ), a capable soldier and an honorable man. Alexius resisted all pressures, however, and arranged to have his son succeed as John II. After John’s accession, Anna con- tinued to intrigue against him, but Bryennius refused to join her in this. His wife accused him of cowardice, but his motive was, apparently, that strangely rare virtue called honor. Bryen- nius remained loyal to John, accompanied him on his cam- paigns, and wrote a history of the Comnenus family. Anna Comnena retired to a convent in chagrin and devoted her time to writing the Alexiad in Attic Greek, the classic language of the ancients. It was a continuation of her hus- band’s book and a biography of her father. It is very well done and presents a picture of the Crusaders from an eastern view- point which is a healthy counterweight to the usual western prejudices. Indeed, this imperial princess was one of the most important women historians that civilization has yet produced. Under the Comnenus dynasty Constantinople reached the height of its fame, partly because so many westerners saw it and wrote about it. More than ever, it was the imperial city of the world, a standard against which all other cities paled into insignificance. Nor was it sheer magnificence alone. The hu- mane John II endowed a hospital with fifty beds divided into five wards. There were separate sections for women and for surgery. The hospital employed ten male doctors, a female doctor, and various assistants. There was nothing like it in the West. Less astonishingly, John’s wife, the pious Irene of Hun- gary, endowed a great monastery and was eventually sainted.

John was as capable as his father and continued his father’s policies faithfully. He went to great lengths to maintain peace

228 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

and friendship, as far as possible, with the West. He recog- nized the too great power of the Venetians in the capital but realized it would be impolitic to try to get rid of them. Instead, he merely refused to strengthen them further and brought in traders from the competing Italian cities of Genoa and Pisa to act as a kind of makeweight. The Genoans and Pisans could be relied on to be anti-Venetian and the emperor could remain free of the quarrels.

The result of John’s caution was that his quarter-century reign was one of comparative peace for the empire, an interval that was badly needed. The peace was not total, of course. John extended his father’s conquests in Asia Minor and in 1122 paused long enough to defeat the Pechenegs one last time — after which they disappeared entirely from history.

The great objective of his life was the retaking of Antioch, which the Crusaders still held. In repeated campaigns in southern Asia Minor, he made himself stronger and stronger, until finally in 1142, he brought his army to Antioch itself and it seemed that the Crusaders within the city would have no choice but to surrender. But here accident intervened. While the siege continued, John went hunting. He killed a boar but in the process accidentally wounded himself on one of his own arrows. The wound was not a serious one, but it grew infected and he died of that infection on April 8, 1148. John’s young son Manuel I, aged twenty, succeeded. He was the third able emperor of the Comnenion line in a row. In some ways, indeed, he represented the empire at the peak of its repu- tation, if not its power. He marked another step in the progres- sion of attitude. His grandfather, Alexius, had sought the help of the West but had distrusted the westerners entirely. His father, John, had wanted friendship with the West. Manuel himself admired the westerners exceedingly — to the point of wanting to be one of them.

He fancied himself a knight on the western style, fought in tournaments, and was, indeed, praised and admired by the

THE WEST COMES EAST 299

westerners for this. Both his wives were western princesses and he saw nothing wrong in granting western traders ever greater privileges in the empire and appointing westerners to impor- tant political positions. He even toyed with the idea of rejoin- ing the two halves of the Church on more or less western terms.

The result was that he was quite unpopular with his own subjects who had to pay heavy taxes for their emperor's mag- nificence. What’s more, they did not at all share their ruler’s fascination with things western, resented the power and arro- gance of the westerners, and hated and feared the western priests.

To be sure, Manuel’s relationship with the West was not en- tirely a matter of joy. There was still the problem of the Cru- saders. In the Holy Land, the Turks were counterattacking and winning victories and it seemed that new reinforcements from the West were advisable. The Second Crusade was preached and this time the western contingents came in 1147 under the leaderships of kings: Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, who called himself Roman Emperor.

For all his love of the West, Manuel did not welcome these contingents. He did not recognize the imperial title of Conrad III, whom he addressed only as “King of the Germans,” and neither Conrad nor Louis could enter Manuel’s presence with- out humiliating ceremonies. Naturally, this did not increase western love for the “King of the Greeks.”

Manuel exerted all his efforts to keep the Crusaders from clashing with his own subjects and hastened their passage into Asia Minor. Under the inept leadership of the western kings the new Crusade came to nothing but grief. Manuel made no move to help them and they were forced to leave with nothing accomplished.

Perhaps this sorry display of western ineptitude encouraged Manuel to attempt a western offensive of his own. The Nor- mans in Italy still carried on their century-old feud with the empire and Manuel planned to attack them with the help of the

230 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Venetian fleet. In 1151 he actually landed a Byzantine army on the Italian coast, but by 1154 this attempt to move westward came to final defeat. In the process, though, Manuel had en- couraged the Italians to rebel against Conrad's successor, Fred- erick I, a young and vigorous monarch who was called Barba- rossa (“Red Beard”). 7

Manuel's policies both at home and abroad were carried on under the illusion that the Byzantine Empire was a great power. Indeed, if one looks at the map of the empire in Man- uel’s reign, one might almost get the notion that the Battle of Manzikert had been just an episode, that the empire of Basil IT was all but intact and that Constantinople was still on its high plateau. All that had been lost since Basil IZ was southern Italy, Armenia, and parts of the interior of Asia Minor. Indeed the empire ruled over bits of territory in the northwest and southeast that Basil had not possessed. And what had been lost, Manuel was trying to recover. Alas, appearances are illusory. The spread of territory might be almost what it was, but many changes had taken place within. The empire’s economic strength under Basil II had withered away almost entirely. The capital city was filled with 10,000 Venetians, plus smaller numbers of Genoese and Pisans, who drained off the profits of commerce and humiliated the na- tive population. The Crusader kingdoms in Syria and the Holy Land, while weak militarily, formed an alternate avenue for trade between East and West by way of Italian shipping, by- passing Constantinople. And Manuel's attempt to play the role of big power on a shrinking economic basis only weakened the empire further.

Finally, there was the West which, with each decade, grew more powerful and confident as the Byzantine Empire, despite its brave show of magnificence, grew weaker. Already the West was stronger than the East; it was just that, blinded by show, the westerners weren’t aware of the fact. The truth could not be hidden for long, however.

7/7 ie adwg sururzkg ayy JO Ste]

\ ( y

SMUNL MOLtas ~, G _~,, oS
f Sa. o@ y i

|
j

urpjesnie, »¢ YY *.

We,

f

XWOLWNG], ewaavsnxy

SE eS { yi ae / PG as se = AEA ~ Ge eS {= ed

. = ee foe” tae ano. Se ‘fg ( — @ tours) JOM @ \ \ we XS ae, FONVUT SSN

Pay Beet Cae

AYVONOH

aoe 1

FudINT NVA

[ [enuryy Jopun o/{] ur ondury sunuezdg oy, xX aVW

232 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Himself seduced by appearances, Manuel was not concerned about the dangers that pressed about him. He was sure he could handle them all. In 1176 he decided to march eastward against the Turks. The Turks offered peace, the senior generals of the Byzantine army counseled peace, but Manuel wanted war.

He led his army to the frontier and sent it through a narrow valley near a fortified place called Myriocephalom. He was un- aware of the fact that the heights all along either side of the valley were occupied by the waiting Turks. The Turks con- tinued to wait till the Byzantine army was strung out helplessly into ten miles of constricted valley, then attacked. In a day of fighting, the imperial forces were massacred. Manuel escaped, but it is said he never smiled again. The defeat confirmed the decision of the Battle of Manzikert almost exactly a century earlier. The offensive against the Turks, which only the First Crusade had made possible, now came to a final halt. The initiative that had been gained by Alexius was lost. Even with western help, the Turks could not be defeated and it was obvious they were to be in Asia Minor permanently.

Manuel died in 1180, having reigned, like his grandfather, for thirty-seven years. The three emperors of the Comnenian line, Alexius, John, and Manuel, had, among them, ruled just ninety-nine years. It was the last period when the empire showed vigor — the last of the glory.

THE DOWNHILL SLIDE

Manuel had as his heir an eleven-year-old boy, who reigned as Alexius II. He was the child of the second of Manuel’s west- ern wives, Mary of Antioch. The boy was too young to rule and

THE WEST COMES EAST 233

his mother served as regent. Thus the empire fell further under western domination. Where Manuel had merely been an ad- mirer of things western, the new emperor was half-western himself and was under the contro] of a mother who was entirely western.

Unwisely, the mother allowed herself to depend entirely on the western elements in Constantinople and by 1182 the Greek population was on the point of explosion. Waiting in the wings was another member of the royal house, Andronicus Comnenus (an’droh-ny’kus). He was the cousin of Manuel I and the son of a younger brother of John II. He was handsome, strong, in- telligent, charming, and utterly unscrupulous. He had spent his life sometimes winning reckless victories and sometimes suffering defeat through carelessness. He chased women with conspicuous success and conspired against Manuel with no suc- cess at all. He spent considerable time in prison and much time in exile, wandering all over the East from the Caucasus down to the Holy Land. In Manuel's last years, he returned home. He seemed weary of his hectic life, was ready to settle down, and humiliated himself in contrition before the emperor. He was given the gov- ernorship of Pontus, the region along the coastal area of north- eastern Asia Minor, which was about as far from Constanti- nople as Manuel could conveniently place him. When Manuel died, Andronicus was about seventy years old — but he wasn't too old to watch developments keenly. When he judged that the Constantinopolitan populace had been pushed as far as they could go and were ready to explode, he collected an army and began to march westward.

Men gathered about his standard with enthusiasm, delighted with a Comnenian prince who was entirely Greek, and the news of his progress was all Constantinople needed. The people went wild in an orgy of destruction, slaughtering every westerner they could find, destroying their homes, churches, storehouses, and everything else they could lay their hands on.

234 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Andronicus was welcomed into the capital and declared co- emperor in 1183. The young Alexius was forced to sign the death warrant of his mother, and soon he was himself done away with. Andronicus ruled alone as Andronicus I, and moved to strengthen the legitimacy of his reign by marrying the young wife of Alexius. |

As emperor, Andronicus tried to reverse the pro-West ori- entation that had increasingly marked the governmental policy for decades. He also attempted to improve the efficiency of the government by applying rigid standards of honesty and, most of all, by limiting the power of the feudal nobility. He felt (and with some justification) that time was running out for the empire and that reform, if it came, had to come quickly. He had no time for soft measures and therefore tried to push every- thing through by main force. Naturally, the nobility turned against him and hatred against Andronicus grew extreme among them. Andronicus might have remained safe if he had cultivated the love of the common people as a makeweight but, in his fierce attempt to rejuvenate the State, he shut down the horse races in the hippodrome as a luxury unsuited to the times. In this he was undoubtedly cor- rect, but by adopting this measure he totally alienated the com- mon people of the capital. Even so he might have been safe if there were no external complications — but there were. There were those old ene- mies, the Normans, once again at the doorstep. The Norman kingdom of southern Italy and Sicily was now ruled by William II and it had reached a peak of efficiency and prosperity. Southern Italy had not been so well off since the height of the Roman power and was never to be so well off again. William I] was quite aware of the campaigns of his ancestors against the empire, and the news of the massacre of westerners in Constan- tinople seemed to give him all the righteous cause he needed to renew the old war.

For a while it seemed almost as though the days of Guiscard

THE WEST COMES EAST 935

had returned. The Normans landed on the Albanian coast in 1185, took Dyrrhachium, marched inland to Thessalonica on the Aegean Sea, took that, too, and, in reprisal for the earlier massacre, slaughtered 7000 of its Greek inhabitants.

Panic was now added to hatred, and the population of Con- stantinople rose against Andronicus. The old man, who was seventy-five years old, was seized by the populace which then, lingeringly and brutally, tortured him to death. The mob needed another emperor and a candidate was at hand. He was Isaac Angelus (an’‘juh-lus), the grandson of a daughter of Alex- ius I. He was proclaimed Emperor Isaac II. Gratefully, the Byzantine population saw reform abandoned. The feudal families were confirmed in their privileges; the people had their horse races back; the emperor abandoned the austerity of the previous reign and returned to luxury and wastefulness. It almost seemed as though it paid to be foolish, for the Norman menace faded at once when a Byzantine gen- eral, Alexius Branas, defeated the invaders in two battles and drove them out of the Balkans. This offensive, however, had been prepared in Andronicus’ time and what Isaac IT saw in his own reign was the beginning of disintegration. The Normans held on to some of the islands off the western coast. The governor of Cyprus (another Isaac) treated that island as his independent kingdom and when Isaac II tried to enforce his own rule, his ships were destroyed. Cyprus remained independent and the empire lost control of the sea even in its own Aegean. Furthermore, in what had once been Bulgaria two brothers, John and Peter Asen (uh-sayn’), led a popular rebellion against the rapacious Byzantine tax collectors. When Isaac IT won ini- tial victories against them, the Bulgarians called in the Cumans and then the Balkans were ravaged indeed. The Greek popula- tion in the northern Balkans was massacred and almost entirely eradicated. Nor did they ever return. The area has remained entirely Bulgarian to this day.

236 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

By 1188 Isaac had to own himself defeated. He recognized what amounted to a Second Bulgarian Empire, replacing the one that had been wiped out over a century and a half before by Basil II. Isaac’s acceptance of the new situation in Bulgaria was forced upon him not only by military defeat but by the coming of a new threat from the West. The Crusaders were once again on the march. In 1187 an Islamic leader, Saladin, had retaken Jerusalem after its less-than-a-century stay in Christian hands, and a thrill of anger swept over western Europe. Once more legions of knights were marching eastward in a Third Crusade. This one was being led by the three most powerful monarchs of the West: Richard I of England, Philip IT of France, and Frederick I of Germany. Richard and Philip were going by sea and would not embar- rass Byzantine dominions by their presence. Even so, Richard stopped off at Cyprus, quarreled with its ruler, conquered the island in 1191, passed it on to other Crusaders, and left to go on to the Holy Land. Cyprus remained in western hands for nearly four centuries thereafter, though its population re- mained Greek. |

Frederick I (Barbarossa) of Germany, however, was coming overland. He would be passing through Constantinople itself and he had no cause to love the empire. In the early years of his reign Manuel I had subsidized the Italian cities rebelling against him and had tried to wrest all Italy from him.

Isaac II desperately feared the approach of the now-grizzled Red Beard and between the rough German ruler and the ur- bane and civilized Saladin, the latter seemed preferable. Isaac II offered Saladin an alliance, but the Islamic leader refused it. He was strong enough to need no alliances, especially with a power as impotent now as the Byzantine Empire was.

When Frederick passed through Bulgaria, the Asen brothers tried to lure him into an alliance and a common offensive against Constantinople. Frederick was tempted but he was

THE WEST COMES EAST 937

pushing seventy and he was in a hurry. He wanted the glory of conquering Jerusalem before he died and, provided Isaac did nothing to infuriate him, he would leave Constantinople alone.

Isaac still wouldn't accord the mighty Frederick recognition of his imperial title, but in everything else he bent to the ground. He promised him supplies and support of all sorts and shipped him across the straits into Asia Minor just as quickly as possible. There Frederick’s dream of conquest came to an abrupt end. He drowned while bathing in the Calycadnus River in south-central Asia Minor and without him, his army quickly broke up. Those who survived made their way home, and once again the Byzantine Empire had weathered a foreign threat. Whatever Constantinople’s good fortune in countering threats from outside, it was against internal intrigue that it re- mained helpless. Isaac had a younger brother who coveted the throne. He raised a conspiracy and had himself proclaimed emperor as Alexius III. He captured Isaac II in 1195, had him blinded and imprisoned. Under the new emperor, the empire continued to decay. Downhill, downhill slid the empire.

years old at the time his father was overthrown. He was al- lowed to live by his uncle, the usurper, a gesture of mercy which proved a mistake. In 1201 the young Alexius, now eight- een, managed to get out of the empire to the West, where he began to seek for help.

By now the Third Crusade had shriveled away. Richard of England had performed prodigies of valor, but Saladin re- mained the victor and the Turks kept Jerusalem. A Fourth Crusade was therefore gathering. The Crusaders tried to hire

238 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Venetian ships to carry them to Egypt, where they planned to take Alexandria, then advance to°the Holy Land from the south. Venice, as usual, placed a high price on its services. This time it was not money. There was, it seemed, a city named Zara on the eastern Adriatic coast, about 170 miles southeast of Venice. It was a good seaport, one which Venice could well use and which she coveted. It was nominally under the control of the Christian King of Hungary at the time but that didn’t bother the Venetians. They reasoned that the Cru- saders would have to pass it on their way to Alexandria. Why not stop off there, take the city, turn it over to Venice as pay- ment for services rendered, then proceed?

Pope Innocent III, under whose leadership the Crusaders were ostensibly fighting, was horrified at this plan to pervert the crusading spirit into an attack upon a Christian city. He protested, but the Venetians were unmoved. They had set their price and the Crusaders had to meet it. In 1202 they took Zara for Venice and moved on to Corfu.

But now the Byzantine princeling, Alexius, came to Corfu to plead for help. If the Crusaders could take Zara for Venice, why could they not take Constantinople as well and help re- store his father to his rightful throne? There would be lots of money in it for every Crusader.

The leader of the Venetians was Enrico Dandolo, a most re- markable man. There is a story that in 1173 he was either an ambassador or a hostage at the court of Manuel I and that he had been blinded for some reason by the order of the emperor. To make the story more dramatic, one version is that he was blinded by use of a concave mirror that concentrated the sun’s rays.

This story is used to explain Dandolo’s inveterate hatred of the Byzantines and his eagerness for revenge at any cost. Actu- ally, the tale may be a fabrication, an atrocity story designed to give the Crusaders an excuse for self-righteous revenge. In re- ality, no such tale of blinding was needed to supply a motive.

THE WEST COMES EAST 239

The Venetians were eager enough for an economic grip over the empire and could well remember the massacre of Venetians twenty years before. As for Dandolo, if he were blind, it could well have been the deterioration of age and nothing more, for at the time of the Fourth Crusade he is supposed to have been at least ninety years old.

Despite his age, Dandolo was keen and indomitable, some- thing like the aged Narses six and a half centuries before. It was he more than anyone else who had forced the Crusaders to take Zara against their own inclinations and against the thun- ders of the pope, and it was he who now took up the cause of young Alexius. He insisted the Crusaders make a detour to Constantinople. This, eventually, they did and the Venetian ships carried the crusading knights and the Byzantine pre- tender to the great city. No enemy had ever captured Constantinople in all the nearly nine centuries since it had been founded by Constantine, but it had been taken a number of times by this or that rival for the throne. The Crusaders now came in the guise of supporting troops of an imperial pretender and there were enough of his partisans within the city to allow only a halfhearted resistance.

The Venetians put all their skill into a naval siege and in Au- gust 1203 the Crusaders entered Constantinople. Alexius III fled. Blind Isaac II was taken from the prison where he had been kept for eight years and was declared emperor once more. Reigning with him was his son, who was now Alexius IV.

Theoretically, the Crusaders had completed their task and might proceed on to Egypt, but Alexius IV had promised them a great deal of money and now he tried to explain that the im- perial treasury was empty. Naturally, the Crusaders wouldn't believe this, for they had heard all the stories about the fabu- lous wealth of Constantinople. They refused to leave without payment and the Byzantine people grew frightened at the enemy thus ensconced in the very heart of their land.

Alexius HI, whom the Crusaders had deposed and who was

240 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

now wandering about in the north, had a daughter whose hus- band placed himself at the head of the anti-Crusader faction. In January 1204, he declared himself emperor as Alexius V, seized the palace, and had Alexius IV strangled. The boy had reigned half a year. At this, blind Isaac II died, it was said, of shock. |

It wasn’t enough to seize the palace, however. It was neces- sary for Alexius V to evict the Crusaders. For three months he tried to drive the Crusaders into the sea, but the western knights were too firmly fixed to be dislodged. On April 12, 1204, Alexius V gave up and fled. (He was captured later that year and executed. )

The Crusaders were now masters of the city. The situation had changed. They were no longer there merely as supporters of a rightful king; they were there in their own right. For over a century now, the westerners had been fed a constant diet of tales concerning the perfidy and treachery of the Byzantines and their emperor. Now the Crusaders felt they had been vic- tims of just such perfidy; having come to Constantinople to serve a true prince, they had first been denied their just pay and had then been attacked.

They felt a kind of righteous fury. They would seize what- ever they liked — it was rightfully theirs — and they would kill whomever they liked, since all the Byzantines (who were vile heretics, anyhow) had forfeited their lives by their teachery.

Beginning on April 12, 1204, then, the Crusaders subjected the great city of Constantinople to a merciless sack. The inhab- itants were robbed, raped, slaughtered by the thousands; priests especially were subjected to fiendish torture; churches and mansions were ransacked. Even the Hagia Sophia, the most beautiful church in the world, was ruthlessly profaned. The altars were turned into dicing tables on which the soldiers gambled for loot. A prostitute was placed on the patriarch’s throne to preside over drunken revels.

Much of the city’s wealth was plundered, pilfered, carried

THE WEST COMES EAST 941

away. Artwork from Constantinople eventually found its way all over Europe, as did hundreds of relics of all sorts. The sculptured horses which adorned the hippodrome were eventu- ally carried off to Venice and still stand to this day on St. Mark’s Cathedral, while the hippodrome itself was used for western-style tournaments.

What could not be carried off was burned, smashed, melted down, destroyed — including original paintings and statues that dated back to the golden age of the ancient Greeks. The tragedy, quite apart from its cost in human lives and suffering, was beyond measure, for the irreplaceable was lost.

The ancient Greek culture had been the highest peak of hu- man endeavor up to then, but in the days before printing, the record of that culture depended on the existence of a relatively few handwritten manuscripts. Toward the latter centuries of the Roman Empire, that record had been on a moderately firm basis, for there were copies of individual works distributed in various libraries, both public and private. Little by little, those libraries had been laid waste. The Ger- man barbarians had darkened the entire western half of the em- pire. The invading Arabs had destroyed such portions of the Great Library of Alexandria as misguided Christian en- thusiasts had not already destroyed. By 1204, then, the only place where the great records of Greek culture still existed, in- tact and entire, was in Constantinople. And it was those rec- ords which the angry Crusaders destroyed. Themselves illiter- ate, they saw no value in old rolls of parchment and all but a handful of the great plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes (just as an example) vanished. Much remained, for so rich in records was the city that not all the fury of the Crusaders could destroy everything or ferret out all that the panic-stricken inhabitants managed to hide. But it was enough, and across the universal ruin a curtain came down between the ancients and us — a dark and impene- trable curtain that can never now be lifted.

1Q

LATA ATTANASIO, nx, NCACHURSSH CONE TOCUNRaRaARO ARO 72% ems ao QAR CALTA ABCA

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE

THE LATIN INTERVAL

But though Constantinople was half destroyed and the Cru- saders were loaded with loot, time did not come to a halt. The problem now was: What was to be done with the empire? There was no question of going on to Egypt and the Holy Land; the Crusaders wanted to stay where they were and rule the empire. One of their number, Baldwin of Flanders, was proclaimed emperor as Baldwin I, and with him begins a period called the Latin Empire, for the language of the court which had been Greek now became, officially, Latin.

Though called emperor, Baldwin by no means had the power that even the last few Byzantine emperors had had. For one thing, his rule was more nominal than rea]. Other portions of the empire were parceled out to other Crusaders. One Cru-

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE 943

sader became King of Thessalonica and ruled all of northern Greece. Another became Prince of Achaia and ruled southern Greece. In between was the Duke of Athens. For its part, Ven- ice took the islands, including Crete, and held three fifths of the city of Constantinople. A Venetian was made Patriarch of Con- stantinople and the two halves of the Church were (in theory only) united. None of the subsidiary Crusader regions owed much allegiance to Baldwin, who ruled directly only over Con- stantinople and for about a hundred miles or so in every direc- tion.

Nor were there lacking externa] enemies, for these did not vanish simply because Crusaders had replaced the natives as rulers. Bulgaria had expanded to the point where it had just about its present-day borders and came within a few miles of the Aegean Sea.

Even the Greeks themselves had not entirely disappeared from the scene. The northwestern portion of the empire came under the rule of Michael Angelus Comnenus, a member of the royal family, and it was known as the Despotat of Epirus.

A number of the Greek leaders had escaped into Asia Minor. Theodore Lascaris (las’kuh-ris) who, like the ill-fated Alexius V, was a son-in-law of Alexius III, established his capital at Nicaea and began the line of Lascarids which ruled over the Nicaean Empire. Two other members of the royal family, David and Alexius Comnenus, organized sections of the north- ern shore of Asia Minor into what came to be called the Empire of Trebizond, with its capital at the coastal city of that name near the eastern end of the Black Sea. The island of Rhodes had a separate Byzantine government.

Thus, the shrunken Byzantine Empire of Isaac IT was now broken up into congeries of still smaller states, some Latin, some Greek, each helpless against any determined enemy and all contributing to their own misery by fighting among them- selves. The next half-century is nothing but a deplorable series

244 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

of intricate fighting of each against the other. The enlarged kingdom of Bulgaria was now under Kaloyan, a younger brother of Peter and John Asen. He invaded the Latin Empire and when Baldwin of Flanders tried to stop him in 1205, the “emperor” was defeated and captured. He had worn the du- bious glory of imperial might for one year.

Baldwin was succeeded by his brother Henry I, who was the most successful of the Latin emperors. He consolidated such power as he had in Greece, forcing the feudal landowners to recognize him as emperor, for what that was worth. Fortu- nately for him, Kaloyan died in 1207 and the Bulgarian menace receded for the while.

Henry recognized the Empire of Nicaea as his chief danger, for the Nicaean emperor, Theodore I, had been slowly expand- ing his territory, actually defeating the Turks (who were di- vided and fighting among themselves) to do so. Henry there- fore invaded Asia Minor in 1212 and took those sections of the peninsula nearest Constantinople. That moment represented the Latin Empire at its peak. When Henry I died in 1216, the Latins badly needed some- one to protect their holdings. Henry’s brother-in-law, Peter of Courtenay, was chosen Latin emperor. He was in France at the time and, hastening to his throne, was captured by the troops of Theodore of Epirus. Peter died in captivity and never ruled. His second son, Robert of Courtenay, became Latin emperor in 1219. At the same time, Theodore of Nicaea died and was suc- ceeded by his son-in-law, John III, who drove the Latins cut of Asia Minor and took some of the Aegean islands.* In 1228 Robert died and his young brother, only eleven years old, suc- ceeded as Baldwin II. There was nothing the boy could do ex-

* It was the line of Nicaean emperors that eventually retook Con- stantinople, so they are numbered in accordance with the Byzantine record, Thus John III was the first of that name to rule over the Empire of Nicaea but he is given the Roman numeral III, fol- lowing John II who had ruled the Byzantine Empire a century before.

NOZIGSYL le.

ee NG * te Af ’

,

SNVWOO

FOZT JO Yous aup soe audurgq ounuezdg ayy, Ix dVW

~ andug uneg ——— |

ee idwy supuezdgy

Te

FONV EL

ANVINWED

246 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

cept hold on desperately to this one great city and wait for the end.

Meanwhile, things were working well for Nicaea. It was at this time that there was an explosive movement of the Mongols westward — the largest and most dreadful of all the nomadic waves that had been pouring out of central Asia for thousands of years. China, Persia, and eastern Europe received the brunt of the hammer strokes but, in 1244, a Mongol contingent de- feated the Turks in eastern Asia Minor and advanced as far westward as Ancyra. For the moment the Turks were pros- trate. John TI of Nicaea made an alliance with the Mongols and expanded eastward at Turkish expense. He was now strong enough to invade the European provinces, taking Thessalonica. John’s successor, Theodore II, even defeated the Bulgarians in 1255, and it was clear that it was Nicaea that was the true heir of the Byzantine Empire. In 1258, however, Theodore died and his eight-year-old son succeeded to the throne of Ni- caea as John IV. What Nicaea had gained might now have been lost but for the fact that Theodore had a second cousin, Michael Paleologus ( pay” leeol’oh-gus). Michael was an intelligent, forceful, and thoroughly unscru- pulous man. Once, when his loyalty was under question, it was decided to subject him to an ordeal. He was to carry a red-hot iron ball three times from the altar of a church to the rails of its sanctuary and if he were innocent his hand would not be burned. Michael agreed to do it but only if the patriarch (who, in his innocence, would surely have nothing to fear) handed him the red-hot ball. The patriarch decided the ordeal was not necessary and that Michael was innocent.

With a boy-emperor on the throne, Michael struck. The ap- pointed regent was assassinated and Michael succeeded to the post. On January 1, 1259, he became co-emperor as Michael VIII. Now the great ambition of Michael's life was to retake Constantinople. The Latins who ruled it were virtually help- less and all that stood between the city and Michael were Vene-

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE IAT

tian ships. For the purpose of countering those, Michael hired Genoese ships, promising Genoa all the privileges that Venice had had in times past.

As it happened, the concessions to Genoa weren't necessary. The Venetian fleet foolishly went off on some wild-goose chase into the Black Sea and in their absence, on July 25, 1261, Mi- chael’s army struck. Constantinople fell without a fight. Bald- win II fled. The Latin Empire was at an end and, after an interval of fifty-seven years, a Byzantine emperor sat in Con- stantinople again.

THE DOWNHILL SLIDE AGAIN

On the map, it almost looked as though the Byzantine Em- pire was really restored. A large part of western Asia Minor and of the Balkans was under the rule of Michael VIII. Looks, however, were deceiving. Venice retained its grip on Crete and many of the Aegean islands. Latin barons held parts of central Greece. Epirus and Trebizond remained under the control of competing rulers of Byzantine lineage. All were harsh enemies of Michael. In addition, such parts of the empire as he did govern were in ruins. Constantinople was a shambles. Half of it was demol- ished and within its faded confines, a shrunken population could only dream of past glories. The imperial palace was taken apart and Michael lacked the funds for repairs. It was only the ghost of empire that Michael VIII had revived.

He did his best, of course. Somehow, he had to beat down his enemies and survive, and for the purpose he did not hesitate to be unprincipled. He had his young co-emperor, John IV, blinded and exiled so that he himself could rule alone. He took the Peloponnesus and there the city of Mistra became the

248 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

stronghold of late-Byzantine culture. He drove back the rulers of Epirus and confined them to a mere strip of coast. He even defeated the Bulgarians.

The greatest danger, however, was from the West. Baldwin II, the last Latin emperor, was in exile but still alive. He mar- ried his son Peter to the daughter of Charles of Anjou, a French nobleman. Charles had taken over the rule of Sicily after the Norman line of rulers had died out, and he had inherited the vaulting Norman ambition. Charles felt himself heir to the Latin Empire and longed to take over Constantinople. As Rob- ert Guiscard had done two centuries earlier, Charles moved his army across the strait to the Balkans and by 1272 had estab- lished himself firmly on the mainland. Michael VIII had to take drastic action. He sent emissaries to a Church council being held in Lyons, France, in 1274 and there agreed to the reunion of the eastern and western branches of the Church, and on Roman terms. Since Michael VIII hum- bly accepted papal supremacy, the gratified Pope Gregory X forbade Charles of Anjou from continuing any further in his plans to overthrow the now-faithful child of the Church. The trouble was that while Michael VIII might declare the reunion, the Byzantine population would have none of it. Though Michael used terror in his effort to force the eastern priesthood and people into line, they stubbornly went their own way and the pope was increasingly disillusioned. In 1280 Martin IV became pope. He was a Frenchman who was in complete sympathy with Charles of Anjou and utterly distrust- ful of Michael VIII. The new pope excommunicated Michael and gave Charles of Anjou the sign to go ahead. Michael VIII was equal to the emergency. He defeated Charles in the field and formed an alliance with Pedro III of Aragon, a kingdom in eastern Spain. Pedro disputed possession of Sicily with Charles of Anjou, so he was willing to help Mi- chael. In 1282 Michael’s intrigues managed to bring about a rising of Sicilians against their French rulers. One day at the

een | Baym

sxuny woafisg oe.

Lact ic G

‘ pale

be: susyry

SP x29

ajdoura urasu07),~

-

@

-

ViIuvolng

Say

o) © NOOSVUV

ff VINOTVLVO

SN ATV : ~\ 4

90733 AUVONOH

ANVWUSS

sudug ouyuezsg ay) jo snury een

f—

FON VHA

TILA [28 4shWw Jopuy 8Lci UT ondung supuezkg ayy,

1X dVW

250 _ CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

time of evening prayers (vespers), the Sicilians suddenly seized every Frenchman they could find onthe island and slaughtered them. With this Sicilian Vespers the threat of Charles of Anjou vanished. |

Michael VIII died in 1282, apparently the victor over all his enemies, after a quarter-century reign. He was the first of the Paleologus dynasty, and the ablest, too. His oldest son suc- ceeded as Andronicus II.

Andronicus II was just the opposite of his father; he was pious, gentle, and learned. His first action was to reverse his father’s submission to the papacy and to reassert the primacy of the patriarch. This was popular with the Byzantine people but made it that much more difficult to get the western help that the empire was increasingly to need. As it was, Andronicus found that Michael's overambitious foreign policy had emptied the treasury. There was no way of either raising or supporting a Byzantine army and the emperor had to depend almost en- tirely on the Genoese. The Genoese established themselves in the suburb Galata, surrounded it by a wall of its own, and thus created a state within a state. Their perennial war with Venice was kept up all over the Aegean Sea, where Venice had strong bases. Venice was able to force the empire to grant it privileges within Con- stantinople, too. On occasions, the two groups of Italians fought their battles within Constantinople itself while the shrinking natives could only watch helplessly (and sometimes received the blows that innocent bystanders often do). Worst of all, new enemies arose. The Serbs had till then been a Slavic tribe in the northwestern Balkans who had generally been dominated by either the Byzantines or the Bulgarians. In 1281 they came under the leadership of Milyutin (mih- lyoo’tin ), a capable ruler who took full advantage of the weak- ness of the Byzantines. Gradually he spread southeastward, encroaching on imperial territory and confining the weakening Bulgarians to the lower reaches of the Danube River. Androni-

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE pagk

cus II, who had no way of countering the Serbian push, was forced to undergo imperial humiliation by giving his daughter in marriage to the Slav monarch.

And in Asia Minor, the Turks were active again. About 1290 a Turkish chieftain named Osman established a small realm in northwestern Asia Minor, and this grew rapidly stronger and more dangerous. His tribe was referred to as the Osmanli Turks, though in the West the distorted name Ottoman Turks was more common.

To combat the newly active Turks, Andronicus II decided to rely on mercenaries. The Byzantine Empire had often used mercenaries and generally with good success. Why not try it again? Andronicus hired 6000 Catalan soldiers (from Catalo- nia, a region in Aragon), since Aragon had been friendly with the empire in the preceding reign. The Catalan Grand Com- pany, as it was called, was unruly from the start. It attacked the Italians in Constantinople, creating havoc. When it was sent into Asia Minor, it did indeed fight the Turks, and effec- tively, too, but the company was interested only in loot and would as soon fight their employers as any of the enemy. They turned on Constantinople, demanding ever larger pay- ments, which the emperor could not make. When they found they could not break their way through Constantinople’s walls, they turned upon the countryside. After their leader was shot down in 1305, they went on a rampage, laying everything waste in northern Greece. Eventually, they moved southward, took Athens from the Latin barons still ruling it, and established themselves there under a dynasty of their own for some three quarters of a century. Andronicus II did not need more trouble, but it came in the shape of civil war. His son, who had reigned with him as co- emperor, was Michael IX. Michael IX had a son Andronicus, whose mistress had another lover. Young Andronicus hired as- sassins to dispose of the rival and by some accident Andronicus’ younger brother fell under the dagger blows instead. Michael

252, CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

IX, who was in poor health, died soon afterward, and the shocked Emperor Andronicus II decided to exclude his grand- son from the succession because of the unintentional fratricide. Young Andronicus, offended at this, rose in revolt. It was a foolish civil war over an increasingly meaningless throne, but in the last period of the empire, the civil wars multiplied as the prize to be won by them grew more microscopic. These final civil wars were supported by outside forces to the confusion and destruction of the Byzantines. Indeed, without outside help, the civil wars could not have been fought. In this case, the Serbs supported old Andronicus and the Bulgarians the young one. In 1328 the latter won out. Old Andronicus IT was deposed after a disastrous reign of forty-six years and died four years later. The grandson took the throne as Andronicus III.

THE OTTOMAN TURKS

Andronicus II made motions as though he were going to ex- pand the empire. He took an island from the Genoese, for in- stance. He also beat Epirus, absorbing the last of its territory and ending the century and a quarter of its existence as an in- dependent Byzantine power. The real growth, however, was taking place among the enemies of the empire. In 1330 Stephen Dechanski, the illegitimate son of Milyutin, led the Serbs to a resounding victory over the Bulgarians. The next year Dechanski’s son, Stephen Dushan (doo’shahn), seized the throne and brought Serbia to the height of its power. The Bulgarians acknowledged his sovereignty and Stephen Du- shan ruled over almost all the Balkans, right down nearly to the Gulf of Corinth.

In Asia Minor, the Ottoman Turks also continued to grow stronger. In 1826, just before Andronicus III had become em-

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE 2504

peror, they had taken the city of Brusa and in 1837 they took Nicomedia. All the Byzantine possessions in Asia Minor, which had kept the empire alive during the interval of the Latin em- perors, were rapidly melting away.

By the time Andronicus III reached the end of his reign, all that remained to the empire were Constantinople, Thessalo- nica, Mistra, and the areas immediately about each. It was a melancholy time. In 1330 one might have celebrated the thou- sandth anniversary of the establishment of Constantinople by Constantine I, but the occasions that would make the celebra- tion worthwhile were sadly missing. When Andronicus III died in 1841, his nine-year-old son suc- ceeded as John V. The most important official in the empire, however, was John Cantacuzene (kan’tuh-kyoo’zeen’). Can- tacuzene had supported Andronicus III in his civil war against his grandfather and had led the Byzantine forces in their small victory over Epirus. He now felt that the throne could not be left to a boy and declared himself emperor. (He is usually identified as John VI.) Cantacuzene was supported by the feudal landowners and by a new sect of mystics among the eastern churchmen. The people supported the legitimate John V. The dreary civil war was again conducted largely through foreign support, with Serbs and Turks giving aid in order to keep the fight going and profit from it. Constantinople, in those years, was spared noth- ing. In 1346 an earthquake damaged Hagia Sophia and in 1347 the Black Death, which killed wholesale over all the world, struck the city and carried off two thirds of the population. In the year of the Black Death, Cantacuzene managed to seize the stricken city and attempted to bring the civil war to an end. He married a great-granddaughter of Michael VIII to es- tablish his own legitimacy and gave his own daughter in mar- riage to John V. Marriages didn’t help. John V recovered his breath and then renewed the battle. Cantacuzene received money from the far-off Russians so that he might repair the

254 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

revered Hagia Sophia; he used it instead to hire Turkish mer- cenaries. That didn’t help either. In 1354 John V was the final victor (for whatever that was worth) and Cantacuzene retired to Mistra, where he lived to the great age of ninety and where he wrote a history in four books of the years in which he domi- nated the empire.

If anything were needed to make it absolutely certain that the empire could not long survive, it was this civil war. The enemies of the empire seemed to be preparing for the death stroke. The Serbs under Stephen Dushan grew so strong that even Constantinople itself seemed not beyond their capacity. Stephen Dushan assumed the title of emperor and in 1855 marched on Constantinople. He might not have managed to get past the walls but it was never put to the test. He died suddenly even while on the march, and with his death, the Ser- bian Empire began to weaken. Still worse than the Serbian threat was that of the Turks. In his last desperate days in 1853, Cantacuzene had invited the Turks into the Balkans to fight the Serbs who were then sup- porting John V. The Turks came, not as bands of mercenaries sworn to Cantacuzene’s service, but in their own right. In 1354 they established a base for themselves at Gallipoli on the Euro- pean side of the straits, 110 miles southwest of Constantinople. The Turks had entered Europe for the first time; they were never to leave. After Cantacuzene lost the civil war, the Turks remained and John V could not evict them. Nor could the now-fading Serbs. The Turks spread out systematically and by 1365 had taken all of Thrace, the region to the north of the Aegean Sea. They established their capital at Adrianople, 110 miles west of Con- stantinople. The Ottoman realm now encircled Constantinople on all sides both in Asia and in Europe; never before in the long Byzantine history had the same enemy been on both continents.

John V tried to find help somewhere. The Bulgars and Serbs

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE pias

were in chaos. Hungary, the nearest strong power, was of the western Church and therefore hard to move. In 1869 he des- perately tried what Michael VIII had tried a century before — the reunion with the western Church. But the empire had tumbled dizzily in that century and the emperor had to be that much more humble. Michael VIII had sent emissaries; John V went himself. He came to Avignon in southern France and appeared before Pope Urban V. He acknowledged papal su- premacy and asked for western help. It was useless, however. No danger, no threat from any source, could make the population of the East acknowledge the pope. The emperor’s submission was empty and the help did not arrive. In 1371 John saw no recourse and believed he could keep his throne only by acknowledging the Turks as his mas- ters. At this, his son, Andronicus, rebelled and there was civil war again. In 1876 Andronicus, with Genoese help, seized the throne and reigned as Andronicus IV, but in 1879 John V, with Turkish help, seized it back.

The triumphant Turks sealed their ascendancy in the Bal- kans by defeating the Serbs in a great battle at Kossovo in 1389. This ended the Serbian Empire and gave the Turks dominion over the Balkan Slavs, a dominion that was not to be broken for four and a half centuries.

In 1391 John V died after a rule of fifty years that had seen civil war, defeat, epidemic, disaster — everything that was hor- rible. His last days were typical of all, for the news arrived that Philadelphia, the last Byzantine holdout in the interior of Asia Minor, had fallen to the Turks. John’s second son, Manuel, was a hostage of the Turks. At the news of his father’s death, he managed to slip away from the Turkish court, race to Constan- tinople, and there he was crowned as Manuel II.

The Turkish ruler at the time was Bayazid I (by-ah-zeed’), the first to take the title of sultan (an Arabic term meaning “dominion”). Bayazid was sufficiently annoyed at this feat to

256 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

lay siege to Constantinople till Manuel II bought him off with tribute. Nevertheless, Bayazid had a noose about the city and anytime he chose he could pull it tight.

Manuel II knew that and he knew, too, that the only possible salvation lay in the West. For a while, it looked as though that help might come. The expanding Turkish might was beginning to alarm the western nations on their own account. Pope Boni- face IX preached a crusade against the Turks and King Sigis- mund of Hungary undertook to take care of matters. He led a large army into Bulgaria but in 1896 at Nicopolis on the Dan- ube River it was utterly smashed by the Turks.

Suspecting that there might be more such attempts as long as Constantinople continued sending out shrill appeals, Bayazid determined to take the city and be done with it. Manuel II toured western Europe with sad, hopeless dignity, visiting Charles VI of France and, in 1400, even Henry IV of England. Everyone promised but no one gave anything but promises.

It looked as though Constantinople would have to fall, but then something unexpected happened —in the East of all places — and Bayazid’s attention was distracted. The Mon- gols, who had so terrorized the western world a century and a half before, had long been in decline, but now a new conqueror arose from among them. This was Timur (known as Tamer- lane, in the West). He was carving out a huge realm for him- self in the Middle East and the Turks had to forget Constanti- nople for a while and face east. In 1402 Tamerlane led his army into Asia Minor and com- pletely destroyed the Turkish forces at Ancyra, capturing Bayazid. Tamerlane died soon after (he was an old man by then) but the Turks had been hammered into motionlessness and it took them twenty years to recover. In those twenty years of sudden quiet, Manuel tried to reorganize his tiny empire and kept busy with his own scholarly and literary endeavors.

In 1422 when the Turks recovered breath, however, they re- newed their offensive against Constantinople. Manuel was

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE yisye

forced to sell isolated portions of his realm for money. He sold Thessalonica to the Venetians in that year.

In 1425 Manuel II died, and his son succeeded as John VIII. Just about all John had was Constantinople itself and part (not all) of the Peloponnesus. Thessalonica, which had been sold to the Venetians, was taken by the Turks in 1430. To be sure, the Byzantines managed to expand their holdings in the Pelopon- nesus but this was at the expense of ragged Latin barons who had been holding scraps of territory since 1204. Like his father, John traveled westward, hat in hand, begging for help. He attended a Church council at Florence, Italy, in 1439 and acknowledged the supremacy of Pope Eugenius IV. Once again the same comedy was played over. The emperor submitted; his people would not. In fact, each time a Byzan- tine emperor submitted to the pope, the Byzantine people were so enraged at the West that they feared the Turks that much the less — which made things a little easier for the Turks. To be sure, the westerners tried once again. A Hungarian general, John Hunyadi (hoon’yuh-dee), had won some victo- ries over the Turks and now he led a host eastward to fight their main forces. He got farther than Sigismund had a half-century before. He reached the Black Sea coast and there, at Varna, there was a battle and the Turks were again overwhelmingly victorious.

THE LAST STAND

In 1448 John died and his younger brother succeeded to the throne as Constantine XI. It was Constantine who had organ- ized the expansion of Byzantine power (if that word might be used ) in the Peloponnesus, and now it was his task to do some- thing about Constantinople.

258 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

Facing him, soon, was a new Ottoman sultan, Mohammed II, who succeeded to the throne in 1451 and who had as his aim the capture of Constantinople. Mohammed made peace with everyone at any cost so that he could concentrate all his force on the city. ;

Constantine XI, out of sheer desperation, once again in 1452 attempted to acknowledge papal supremacy, but even at the brink of the abyss the people would not follow him. One high Byzantine official put it into a famous phrase: “Better the turban of the Turk than the tiara of the pope.” This was not sheer madness. Under the Turks the Byzantines would be free to practice their own form of Christianity; under the pope they would not. And so on April 8, 1453, the siege of Constantinople began. The ruined city no longer contained a million people. Hud- dled within its decaying walls was a population of 30,000, no more; and of them, only 5000 could be counted on for defense. There were 8000 western allies in addition, of whom the most effective were Genoese under Giovanni Giustiniani (joos’tee- nyah’nee). Oddly enough, the name is the Italian version of Justinian, so that there was a sad harking back to the great emperor who had ruled over the empire at its height nine cen- turies before. Against the defenders, the Turks brought up a force of 80,000 to 100,000 men.

Even with this disparity in manpower, the Constantinopoli- tans might still rely on their marvelous walls which had resisted all attempts to break through by main force (as opposed to treachery and connivance by fifth columns within the city) for over eleven centuries. Something new had arisen in the world, however, and the days of impregnable walls were over.

Two hundred years before the secret of making gunpowder had reached the West from China, brought there perhaps by the Mongols. Now a technique had been perfected whereby the explosion of gunpowder could be used to force huge mis- siles out of large meta] tubes at great velocities. Mohammed

( SOWdAD

auldWd NYWOLLO

eredpperryg & oN) ° rodrye Oa0ssO'"y « 9 * ojdoutupy es

> [doururisuo-

oman 7’ -kWVONOH

REF 7

FONV Ud

PuoRgouy § EP. em 2 yoy ——n CY han ANY YI9

STOONOW

AAQISOIN

* MOIsOPy

[X euNULIsUOD Jopun ¢¢py UT ondury sunULZAg OTT,

Se

260 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

had with him the best cannon of this sort that Europe had yet seen. With these, he started bombarding the walls, using stone cannonballs weighing up to 1200 pounds. Before these even the strongest walls would chip, flake away, and crumble.

The defenders fought desperately, with a valor worthy of the empire’s better days. They fought by day and patched by night. On April 18, they beat off a direct Turkish assault. Then, on April 22, the determined Mohammed had ships dragged across the narrow tongue of land between the sea and the Golden Horn and when the Constantinopolitans awoke they found themselves bombarded by both sides and cut off from any possible rescue or supply by sea. They still wouldn't give up — hoping for the miracle that would save their city now as it had been saved, over and over, in the past. The bombardment continued and on May 29, Giustiniani was wounded on the hand. In panic, he retired from the fight and his Genoese with him, despite Constantine’s fevered pleas. On May 29, 1453, Mohammed ordered one last assault. The walls were breached, the Turks poured in. Constantine XI threw away his imperial insignia, seized weapons, and threw himself into the nearest fighting mass. He was hewn down and his body was never recovered. Thus died the last Roman emperor in an unbroken line that had stretched from Augustus, the first, for nearly fifteen cen- turies, and from the founding of the city of Rome over twenty- two centuries. Thus fell Constantinople, under its eleventh Constantine, over eleven centuries after it had been founded by its first. And if the city had gone through more than two cen- turies of degradation, it had found the courage and spirit to die as became the once-glorious imperial capital it had been.

The sack of the city was nowhere nearly as bad as it had been in 1204 at the hands of its Christian captors (there was less to destroy for one thing) but the nobleman who had preferred the turban to the tiara was killed at the order of the turban. The glorious mosaics and ornaments of Hagia Sophia were white-

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE 261

washed over so that the pious eyes of Turks need not look at idolatrous objects. Minarets were added and Hagia Sophia be- came a mosque. (In the twentieth century, the Turkish repub- lic, no longer fanatically Islamic, removed the whitewash for the benefit of the world.) The very name of the city was changed. It became Istanbul (which it remains to this day), either as a distorted form of Constantinople or because it was a form of the Greek phrase meaning “to the city.” There were a few bits to clean up. In 1460 Mohammed II took the Peloponnesus and the various scraps of still-Latin- ruled territories, including Athens. Then, in 1461, he took the Empire of Trebizond and with it the last piece of Byzantine dominion anywhere was gone. Some portions of the empire of Basil I] remained Christian; but these —like the islands of Crete and Cyprus — were ruled by westerners, and all were taken by the Turks eventually. The Ottoman Empire, with Istanbul as its capital, now be- came the scourge of the West. It expanded through the Bal- kans over Hungary, and by 1529 was at the very gates of Vienna. For two and a half centuries after the fall of Constanti- nople it remained at high tide and only after 1683 did it begin to shrink and dwindle. It was the West's just payment for hav- ing contributed to the destruction of the barrier that had so long stood between them and Islam. Yet though the Byzantine Empire had died, its cultural influ- ence lived on. Through all the disasters of the last century of its life, it had experienced a kind of renaissance of art, litera- ture, and philosophy. The fading civilization flared up in one last pale blaze to illumine the West. There were such emperor- scholars as Cantacuzene and Manuel IJ, and there was also Theodore Metochites, who was chancellor under Andronicus II and who wrote on natural history, astronomy, and philosophy. The outstanding scholar of the final century was George Ge- mistus Plethon (jee-mis’tus plee’thoh). He was born and edu- cated in Constantinople but did his work in Mistra, the Pelo-

262 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

ponnesian city which was the cultural center of the empire of the Paleologus dynasty.

Gemistus Plethon was passionately devoted to the ideals of ancient Greece and, indeed, in the last century, the Roman hypnosis seemed to wear away in Constantinople. The long dream grew thin and the last of the Byzantines saw themselves as Greeks once more. A veritable cult of the ancient Greek he- roes arose. Gemistus even tried to establish a new kind of reli- gion based on the teachings of Plato, one which he hoped would supersede both Christianity and Islam. His writings penetrated to the West; particularly his geo- graphical views. These helped modernize the thinking of Euro- peans in this respect and contributed to the change in atmos- phere that led in fact to the great voyage across the Atlantic by Christopher Columbus, within forty years after the final fall of the ancient world. Gemistus Plethon died in 1452 just too soon to see the end.

One of his pupils was John Bessarion, who had been born at Trebizond and was educated in Constantinople. He became a monk in 1423 and was made Archbishop of Nicaea by John VIII. He encouraged the emperor to seek religious reunion with the West. So did another remarkable scholar of those last days, George Scholarios. Both went west on this mission.

Though the empire would not accept the reunion and though Scholarios recanted on his return to Constantinople, Bessarion remained in the West as a member of the western Church. He was appointed a cardinal by Pope Eugenius IV. Bessarion had brought with him a collection of 500 manuscripts, more than half of pagan authors. This served as the nucleus for St. Mark’s Library in Venice and was a powerful stimulant to the rising tide of humanism in the West. Scholarios became a monk in 1449 and took the name of Gennadius (jeh-nay’dee-us). He was elected Patriarch of Constantinople in 1454, the first to hold the position under the Turks, and he kept the post for five years.

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE 263

In 1463 Bessarion was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople by the pope, but of course this was a purely titular appointment. Bessarion would not have been accepted by the people of Constantinople even if he could have gone there, for through all the night of Turkish occupation, the eastern Christians never wavered in their permanent hostility to the western Church.

EPILOGUE: GHOST OF A GHOST

The legacies of imperial Rome did not come to an end with the fall of Constantinople. With the “fall of Rome” in 476 there was still left an emperor in full power in the East, and now with the “fall of New Rome” in 1453, a thousand years later, there was still an emperor in full power in the West. The emperor in the West in 1453 was Frederick III of the house of Habsburg. His realm is usually referred to as the Holy Roman Empire because it was Christian, but the adjective is unimportant. It was the same Roman Empire (in theory) as that of Augustus and Constantine I. Under Charles V, who reigned from 1520 to 1556 (when the Ottoman Empire was at its height), the Holy Roman Empire was also at its height. Charles ruled over Ger- many, Italy, Spain, and vast areas across the sea, including parts of what now makes up the United States of America.

The Holy Roman Empire dwindled thereafter, growing al- most moribund (and confined entirely to Germany and Aus- tria) by 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis IT, gave up the title at the order of Napoleon Bonaparte.

But this western ghost of the Roman Empire had always ex- isted, from its very beginning under Charlemagne, independ- ently of the Empire of Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire itself, which had been reduced to a ghost in its last centuries,

264 CONSTANTINOPLE, THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE

actually left a shadow of itself behind — the ghost of a ghost. It came about in this way. «is

Constantine XI, the last of the Byzantine emperors had a younger brother Thomas, who had a daughter Zoe. In 1472 she married the Grand Duke Ivan III of Muscovy, who was the lord of a large tract of forested land in Europe’s dim east, sur- rounding the wooden city of Moscow.

Muscovy was just emerging from the grim grip of the Mon- gols, and it was the one section of eastern Christianity which was independent. Ivan IJI assumed the title of tsar (caesar) and considered himself the heir of the traditions of Rome and of Constantinople. Indeed his son, Basil IJ, could consider himself, through his mother, of the royal line of Paleologus and so could his son, the renowned Ivan IV (the Terrible). The last tsar who could trace his ancestry back to the emper- ors on the Golden Horn was Theodore II, who reigned briefly in 1605. Though they lacked the ancestry, succeeding rulers of the Russian Empire (into which Muscovy had developed) nevertheless maintained the fiction of being the heirs of Con- stantinople. There arose a saying among the Russians that the First Rome had fallen, and so had the Second Rome (Constan- tinople), but that the Third Rome (Moscow) would never fall.

Throughout the time of the Russian tsars, there remained a kind of yearning for Constantinople, though it was not until the reign of Peter I (the Great) of Russia, that there was the strength to tackle the Turks. In 1696, when the Ottoman tide was beginning to recede, the Russians took Azov on the northernmost reaches of the Black Sea.

After that there were a series of wars between Russia and Turkey all through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and with each one, Russia advanced a bit farther southward while the Turks fell back. By 1912 all the Balkans were freed of Ottoman rule and in the hands of small native kingdoms, in some of which Russian influence was strong. Left to the Turks

THE GHOST OF EMPIRE 965

in Europe was only the tract of Jand from Istanbul (Constanti- nople) to Edirne ( Adrianople ).

When World War I broke out in 1914, Russia and the Otto- man Empire were on opposite sides again. Russia was fighting in alliance with Great Britain and France; Turkey in alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Now at last the Russians were sure of Constantinople; the British and the French gov- ernments had promised it to them in case of victory. And, to be sure, the British and French were indeed the victors in 1918. But when the victory came there was no one to accept Con- stantinople. A year before, in 1917, a revolution had swept out the last of the Russian tsars, Nicholas I, and the ghost of the ghost of empire had vanished. Constantinople — no, Istanbul — remained Turkish. What is more, Turkey underwent a startling rebirth. Rising from the defeat of World War I, under the leadership of a dy- namic general, Mustapha Kemal, she beat the invading Greeks in 1922. Kemal then deposed the last sultan, Abdul Mejid, in 1923 and proclaimed a republic with himself at its head. Over the next fifteen years (Kemal died in 1938) he modernized Turkey by force, taking it from medievalism into the twentieth century.

Turkey remained neutral in World War II and has main- tained its independence staunchly since. Istanbul, more popu- lous than ever (nearly two million) if not as beautiful as it once was, is no longer the capital of Turkey since it is not cen- trally located, but it is still the great city on the strait.

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

B..

657 513 480 477 476 405

389

306

340

219

62

An,

74

A TABLE OF DATES

Wie

S ye:

aie tf: ) dig. '

ey. 25/9 is CUAL, ¥

Byzantium founded Darius I of Persia crosses the Hellespont; controls Byzantium

Xerxes I of Persia crosses the Hellespont

Pausanias of Sparta takes Byzantium from Persians Cimon of Athens takes Byzantium from Sparta Battle of Aegospotami. Sparta defeats Athens Thrasybulus of Athens takes Byzantium from Sparta

Byzantium becomes inde- pendent city-state Byzantium withstands siege by Philip of Mace- don

Byzantium defeated by Rhodes

Byzantium under Roman domination

Byzantium becomes inte- gral part of Roman Em- pire

Cie ag arte ANSE

379

395

404

408

410

413

425

Byzantium taken and sacked by Roman Em- peror Septimius Severus Byzantium taken by Ro- man Emperor Constan- tine I

First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea

Byzantium rebuilt as Con- stantinople and becomes capital of the Roman Em- pire

Theodosius I becomes emperor : Roman Empire perma- nently divided; Arcadius becomes emperor at Con- stantinople

Patriarch John Chrysos- tom exiled

Theodosius II becomes emperor at Constantino- ple

Alaric the Visigoth takes Rome

Construction of triple walls of Constantinople begun

University of Constanti- nople founded

A TABLE OF DATES

A. Di

431

438 44] 450 451 457 468 471

474

476

478 480 49] 499 518 O27

529

530

932

Third Ecumenical Coun- cil at Ephesus; Theodo- sius II sends expedition against Gaiseric the Van- dal (fails)

Theodosian Code pub- lished

Attila the Hun threatens Constantinople

Marcian becomes em- peror at Constantinople Fourth Ecumenical Coun- cil at Chalcedon

Leo I becomes emperor at Constantinople

Leo I sends expedition against Gaiseric (fails) Leo I replaces German guard with Isaurians Leo IJ, then Zeno, be- comes emperor at Con- stantinople

End of Roman Empire in West; only emperor at Constantinople hereafter Ostrogoths under Theo- doric invade Balkans Monophysite heresy be- comes important Anastasius I becomes em- peror

Bulgars invade Balkans for first time

Justin I becomes emperor Justinian and Theodora become emperor and em- press

Code of Justinian pub- lished; Athenian Academy closed

Belisarius wins victory over Persians at Dara Nika Insurrection

A.D.

534 535 537 548 550

552

504

558

565

568

578 582

591

602

603

608 610

614

615

267

Belisarius takes Carthage; destroys Vandal kingdom Belisarius invades Sicily and Italy; takes Rome

Dedication of Hagia Sophia

Final recall of Belisarius from Italy

Silk culture begun by By- zantines

Narses replaces Belisanus in Italy; destroys Ostro- gothic kingdom

Byzantine forces take por- tions of Spain

Bulgarians defeated at walls of Constantinople by Belisarius

Justin II becomes em- peror; recalls Narses Lombards invade Italy; take over its northern por- tion

Tiberius II becomes em- peror Maurice peror Maurice aids Chosroes II of Persia to regain his throne

Maurice assassinated; Phocas becomes emperor Chosroes II invades By- zantine Empire to avenge Maurice

Chosroes II takes Antioch Mob at Constantinople kills Phocas; Heraclius be- comes emperor

Chosroes II takes Jeru- salem and the True Cross Chosroes II just across the strait from Constantinople

becomes em-

268

Aw.

618

619 622 626 627

628

629 632 634

635 636

637

638

639 641

642 655

663 668

673

Last Byzantine holdings in Spain taken by Visi- goths

Chosroes IJ takes Egypt

Heraclius begins counter- attack; invades eastern Asia Minor by sea

Avars at walls of Constan- tinople; driven off Heraclius defeats Persians at Nineveh

Chosroes II assassinated; Byzantine Empire com- pletely victorious

True Cross restored in Jerusalem

Death of Mohammed Arabs take Bosrah

Arabs take Damascus Battle of Yarmuk; Arabs

defeat Byzantines, take Syria Arabs take Jerusalem;

True Cross vanishes for- ever

Patriarch Sergius formu- lates Monothelite com- promise

Arabs invade Egypt Death of Heraclius; first Constantine II and Hera- cleonas, then Constans II become emperor

Arabs take Alexandria Arabs defeat Byzantines at sea off Rhodes Constans IJ visits Rome Constans II assassinated in Sicily; Constantine IV becomes emperor

First Arab siege of Con- stantinople; Greek fire used against them

ALD.

677 6380

685

695

698

705 (au

713 715

716 Felli

718 726

732

7A

T51

753

756

A TABLE OF DATES

Arabs lift siege

Sixth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople Justinian IJ becomes em- peror Justinian I] Cherson; Leontius comes emperor Leontius overthrown; Ti- berius III becomes em- peror; Arabs take Car- thage, which declines and disappears from history Justinian II retakes throne Justinian II overthrown and killed; Philippicus be- comes emperor; Arabs in- vade Spain Anastasius emperor Theodosius III becomes emperor

Arabs invade Asia Minor Leo II becomes emperor; begins Isaurian dynasty; second Arab siege of Con- stantinople

Arabs lift siege

Leo III issues first Icono- clastic decree Battle of Tours; defeat Arabs Death of Leo III; his son Constantine V becomes emperor

Lombards take Ravenna; Byzantines driven from central Italy

Church council at Hieria; Iconoclasm at its peak Pepin, the Frankish ruler, gives territory of exar-

exiled to

be-

IL becomes

Franks

A TABLE OF DATES

7x

775

780

787

797

800

802

803

806

808

811

§12

§13

chate of Ravenna to the pope

Leo IV, the son of Con- stantine V, becomes em- peror

Leo IV dies; young son Constantine VI becomes emperor under the re- gency of his mother, Irene Seventh (and last) Ecu- menical Council at Ni-

caea; Iconoclasm con- demned Constantine VI blinded and imprisoned; Irene rules alone Charlemagne declared

Emperor in the West; in- itiates thousand-year line of western emperors not recognized at Constanti- nople

Irene overthrown; Ni- cephorus I becomes em- peror

Nicephorus I makes peace with Charlemagne Harun al-Rashid, Abbasid caliph, defeats Niceph- orus

Krum rules Bulgaria; in- vades Balkans Nicephorus I dies in bat- tle against Bulgarians; first Stauracius, then Mi- chael I become emperor Michael I recognizes Charlemagne as emperor (recognition not extended to his successors )

Leo V becomes emperor; Bulgarians lay siege to

Aa:

820

826

§27

§29

§30

§38

842

858

862

865

867

870

269

Constantinople, then re- treat Leo V assassinated; Mi-

chael II becomes em- peror

Islamic forces capture Crete

Islamic forces invade Sic- ily

Theophilus becomes em- peror; Iconoclasm revives Islamic forces take Pa- lermo in Sicily

Islamic forces destroy Amorium in Asia Minor

Death of Theophilus; young son Michael III becomes emperor under the regency of his mother, Theodora; Icono- clasm finally ends

Photius becomes _ patri- arch. Filioque Contro- versy with western Church

Cyril and Methodius start their missionary mission to the Moravians; invent Cyrillic alphabet; Rurik the Varangian establishes the first Russian royal house

First Russian attack on Constantinople (re- pulsed); Boris I of Bul- garia accepts Christianity Michael III assassinated; end of Amorian dynasty; Basil I becomes emperor; beginning of Macedonian dynasty

Bulgarians accept eastern rites of Christianity

270

Al?

878 879

886

887

893

904

906 907

911

912 913 916 919

924

925

927

Islamic forces take Syra- cuse in Sicily

Russians establish capital at Kiev

Basil I dies in hunting ac- cident; his son Leo VI be- comes emperor

Revision of law code pub- lished

Symeon becomes ruler of Bulgarians and Bulgarian power at peak

Leo of Tripoli, an Islamic pirate, sacks Thessalonica Leo VI marries for fourth time; sets off religious

controversy Second Russian attack on Constantinople under

Oleg (repulsed)

Leo of Tripoli defeats By- zantines at sea Constantine VII becomes emperor under regency of his uncle, Alexander IT Alexander II dies; Sym- eon of Bulgaria at walls of Constantinople Byzantine and papal army defeats Islamic force at Garigliano River in Italy Romanus I (Lecapenus) becomes co-emperor with Constantine VII

Leo of Tripoli defeated by Byzantines and his power is ended; peace with Symeon

Symeon becomes first Slav ruler to adopt title of tsar ( caesar )

Great famine in the em- pire

fl)

94]

944 955 959

961

963

965

966

969

i |

A TABLE OF DATES

Third Russian attack on Constantinople under Prince — Igor; utterly smashed by Greek fire Romanus I deposed Olga, Russian princess, converted to Christianity Romanus II, son of Con- stantine VII, becomes em- peror Nicephorus takes Crete Romanus IT dies; young children Basil II and Con- stantine VIII succeed; their mother’s second hus-

Phocas re-

band, Nicephorus II (Phocas), becomes co- emperor; Athanasius of

Trebizond founds monas- tery at Mt. Athos Byzantine Empire driven out of last holding in Sicily

Nicephorus II in alliance with Sviatoslav of Russia, then forced to fight him when he grows too pow- erful

Nicephorus JI assassi- nated; his son John I (Tsimisces) becomes em- peror

John I incorporates east- ern Bulgaria into empire; feudal rebellion of Bardas Phocas defeated by Bar- das Skleros

John I’s niece Theophano marries Otto IJ, western emperor

Death of John I; personal rule of Basil II, son of

A TABLE OF DATES

A.D,

979

980

981

987

989

992

996

1014

1018

1020

1025

1028

Romanus II; rebellion of Bardas Skleros

Bardas Skleros defeated by Bardas Phocas Establishment of Varan- gian guard; Digenis Ak- ritas written

Basil II defeated by Sam- uel of Bulgaria near Sofia Combined rebellion of Bardas Phocas and Bar- das Skleros

Death of Bardas Phocas, submission of Bardas Skleros; Basil II’s sister Anna married to Vladimir of Russia; Russia con- verted to eastern Christi- anity

Venice gets trade conces- sions in Constantinople for the first time

Basil II institutes land re- forms to combat feudal- ism

Battle of Balathista. Basil crushes Bulgarians, takes and blinds 15,000 prison- ers; death of Samuel

All resistance ends in Bul- garia which is annexed to the empire; Byzantine Empire defeats Normans in Italy

Basil II annexes Armenia; Byzantine Empire at peak of its power

Basil II begins expedi- tion against Sicily; dies Contantine VIII dies; his daughter Zoe marries Romanus Argyrus who reigns as Romanus II]

1050 1054

1055

1056

1057

1059

271

George Maniakes wins victories in eastern Asia Minor

Romanus III dies; Zoe’s second husband reigns as Michael IV; Harold Har- drada defeats Islamic pirates

Seljuk Turks rule over Persia

Maniakes and Hardrade win victories in Sicily but are recalled

Michael IV dies; suc- ceeded by Zoe’s adopted son, Michael V

Maniakes defeats Nor- mans in southern Italy; Michael V_ overthrown and Zoe’s third husband becomes emperor as Con- stantine IX; Maniakes re- called insultingly, leads army to Balkans but dies in battle

Death of Zoe

Final schism between eastern and western branches of Church;

death of Constantine [X Death of Theodora, Zoe’s sister and last of the Macedonian dynasty; Sel- juk Turks take Baghdad

Michael VI (Stratioticus ) becomes emperor but is puppet of Patriarch Mi- chael Cerularius

Michael VI overthrown; Isaac I (Comnenus) be- comes emperor

Isaac I abdicates; Con-

272

AnD.

1064 1065

1067

1071

1078

1081

1082

1084

1086

1091

stantine X (Dukas) be- comes emperor

Seljuk Turks take Ar- menia

Cumans cross the Danube and raid the Balkans Death of Constantine X; his widow’s second hus- band becomes Emperor Romanus IV (Diogenes ); Michael Psellus at peak of career

Normans take Bari, mark- ing end of Byzantine rule anywhere in Italy; Battle of Manzikert in which Byzantine army is de- stroyed by Seljuk Turks; Romanus I'V deposed and Michael VII, son of Con- stantine X, becomes em- peror

Michael VII abdicates; Nicephorus III becomes emperor

Nicephorus III over- thrown; Alexius I (Com- nenus), nephew of Isaac I, becomes emperor; Nor- mans under Robert Guis- card invade Balkans John Italus recants pub- licly in Hagia Sophia Battle of Larissa; Byzan- tines defeat Normans un- der Bohemund; Norman invasion ends

Revolt of Bogomils, sup- ported by Pechenegs and Cumans

Cumans bought off by Alexius and then defeat Pechenegs

Ack,

1095

1096

1099

1108

1118

1173 1176 1180

1183

A TABLE OF DATES

Alexius asks Pope Urban II for volunteers against Turks; beginning of First Crusade

First Crusaders at Con-

stantinople Crusaders take Jerusalem while Alexius recovers

western part of Asia Mi- nor; Alexius I at war with Bohemund over An- tioch

Alexius J defeats Bohe- mund

Death of Alexius I; John II becomes emperor; Anna Comnena retires to write her history, Alexiad John I defeats Pechenegs who are never again a danger

John I leads campaigns for Antioch

Death of John II; his son Manuel I becomes em- peror

Second Crusade; Louis VII of France and west- ern Emperor Conrad III in Constantinople

Enrico Dandolo — sup- posedly blinded at Con- stantinople

Battle of Myriocephalum; disastrous Byzantine de- feat by Seljuk Turks Death of Manuel I; his son Alexius II becomes emperor

Mob kills westerners in Constantinople; Androni- cus I (Comnenus) usurps

A TABLE OF DATES

ye NDP

1185

1187

1188

1189

1195

1202

1203

1204

throne and becomes em-

peror William II of Norman Italy invades Balkans,

takes and sacks Thessa- lonica; mob kills Andron- icus I; Isaac II ( Angelus) becomes emperor William II driven out of Balkans; Turks, under Saladin, retake Jerusalem John and Peter Asen es- tablish independence of Bulgaria

Third Crusade; Richard I of England takes Cyprus; western Emperor Fred- erick I (Barbarossa) in Constantinople

Isaac II deposed and blinded; his brother Alex- ius III becomes emperor Fourth Crusade; Cru- saders under Enrico Dan- dolo of Venice take Zara Crusaders restore Isaac II to throne along with his son Alexius IV

Alexius V seizes power for a while; Great sack of Constantinople; Latin Em- pire established; Venice takes Crete and Aegean is- lands; Nicaean Empire established in Asia Minor, also Empire of Trebizond; Despotat of Epirus estab- lished in northwestern Greece; Baldwin I em- peror at Constantinople; Michael Angelus Com- nenus rules Epirus; Theo-

A.D,

1205

1214

1216

1221

1222

1228

1230

1244

1254 1255 1258

1259

273

dore I (Lascaris) rules Nicaea

Baldwin I killed in battle with Bulgarians; Henry I succeeds as emperor at Constantinople

Theodore Ducas Angelus succeeds Michael of Epi- rus in the Despotat of Epirus

Peter of Courtenay suc- ceeds to emperorship in Constantinople, but is captured by Theodore of Epirus on way to Con- stantinople from France Robert of Courtenay be- comes emperor at Con- stantinople

Theodore of Epirus con- quers northern Greece; John III becomes em- peror at Nicaea Baldwin II becomes em- peror at Constantinople; almost powerless Theodore of Epirus dies in battle against Bul- garians

Mongols defeat Turks in Asia Minor; as a result, the empire at Nicaea has chance to expand its hold- ings in Asia Minor and to invade Balkans

Theodore II becomes em- peror at Nicaea

Theodore II defeats Bul- garians

John IV becomes em- peror at Nicaea

Michael Paleologus makes

274

A.D,

1261

1267

1271

1274

1281

1282

1290

1295

1296

1302

1305

himself co-emperor at Ni- caea as Michael VIII Michael VIII retakes Con- stantinople, deposes John IV, and rules alone; end of Latin Empire; Michael VIII takes portion of Pelo- ponnesus where Mistra becomes center of late- Byzantine culture

Charles of Anjou lays claim to Constantinople; Michael VIII permits Genoese to — establish themselves in Galata Charles of Anjou in Bal- kans

Michael VIII accepts pa- pal supremacy, but peo- ple don't

Michael VIII defeats Charles of Anjou in bat- tle; Serbs under Milyutin begin rise to power Sicilian Vespers ends menace of Charles of Anjou; Andronicus IT be- comes emperor; he de- nounces papal supremacy Ottoman Turks begin ca- reer in northwestern Asia Minor

Son of Andronicus IT be- comes co-emperor as Mi- chael IX

Serbs expand over west- ern Balkans

Andronicus II hires Cata- lan Grand Company Leader of Catalan Grand Company shot; it ravages Greece

A TABLE OF DATES

Catalan Grand Company takes over Athens

Death of Michael IX Ottoman Turks take Brusa Andronicus II deposed; Andronicus III becomes emperor

Stephen Dechanski of Serbia defeats Bulgarians who are no further dan- ger; Ottoman Turks take Nicaea

Stephen Dushan becomes Serbian ruler

Ottoman Turks take Nico- media

John V becomes emperor; civil war begins with John VI (Cantacuzene )

Black Death in Constan- tinople

John V final victor in civil war; Ottoman Turks es- tablish base at Gallipoli Stephen Dushan marches on Constantinople but dies on way; Serbs at pea of power Ottoman Turks conquer Thrace and establish capi- tal at Adrianople

John V agrees to papal supremacy at Avignon; people don't

John V accepts Ottoman Turks as his masters

John V’s son temporarily seizes throne and reigns as Andronicus IV

Venetians take Corfu Battle of Kossovo; Otto- man Turks defeat Serbs and end their kingdom

A TABLE OF DATES

AD,

1390

1396

1400

1402

1422 1425 1430 1439

First John VII, then Man- uel II, become emperor Battle of Nicopolis. Otto- man Turks defeat Hun- garians

Manuel II journeys west for aid; visits Henry IV of England

Battle of Ancyra. Tamer- lane, leader of Mongols, defeats Ottoman Turks Manuel II sells Thessa- lonica to Venetians

John VII becomes em- peror

Ottoman Turks take Thes- salonica

John VIYI accepts papal supremacy; people don't

IG DS

1444

1448

1451 1453 1456 1460

1461

1472

275

Battle of Varna. Ottoman Turks defeat Hungarians Constantine XI becomes emperor

Mohammed II becomes Ottoman Turkish sultan Fall of Constantinople; end of Byzantine Empire Mohammed II takes Ath- ens

Mohammed II takes Pelo- ponnesus

Mohammed II takes Em- pire of Trebizond, last piece of Byzantine domin- ion gone

Zoe, niece of Constantine XI, marries Ivan III of Muscovy

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat

Line of Theodosius I (379-457)

THEODOSIUS I

(379-395 ) Eudoxia = Arcapius (East) Honors (West) (395-408 ) ManrciAn = Pulcheria THEODOSIUS II (450-457 ) (408-450)

Line of Leo I (457-518)

LeEotr (457-474)

LEo u Zeno! = Ariadne = ANASTAstus 1” (474) (474-491) (491-518)

Line of Justin I (518-602)

JUSTIN I (518-527) (nephew)

5 JUSTINIAN I = Theodora (nephew) | (527-565) (527-548) Justin 1 = Sophia

(565-578)

(adopted son) 1

eer i (578-582 )

Constantina = MAauRICE (582-602 )

No dynasty: PHocas (602-610)

Line of Heraclius I (610-711)

HERACLIUS I (610-641) CONSTANTINE Ill HeERACLEONAS (641) (641) CONSTANS 1 (641-668 )

COoNSTANTINE IV

( 668-685 )

JusTINIAN 1 (685-695 ) (705-711)

No dynasty: Lerontius (695-698) Tipertius ut (698-705) Puiuippicus (711-713) Anastasius m (713-715) TueEoposius m1 (715-717)

Line of Leo III (717-802) (Isaurian Dynasty )

Leo m (717-741)

CONSTANTINE V

(741-775) LEo Iv = Irene (775-780 ) (797-802 )

CONSTANTINE VI (780-797 )

Line of Nicephorus I (802-813)

NICEPHORUS I

(802-811) STAURACIUS Procopia = MICHAEL I (811) (811-813)

No dynasty: Leo v (813-820)

Line of Michael IT (820-867 } (Amorian or Phrygian Dynasty )

MICHAEL I (820-829 )

THEOPHILUS = Theodora (829-842 )

MICHAEL UI ( 842-867 )

Line of Basil I (867-1056 ) ( Macedonian Dynasty )

Basit 1 = Eudocia

( 867-886 ) Zoe = LEO vi ‘ ALEXANDER II (886-912 ) (912-913) ROMANUS I (919-944) | CONSTANTINE vil = Helena (912-959) NICEPHORUS [12 = Theophano = Romanus m1 Theodora = Joun1 (963~969 ) (959-963 )} ; (969-976) BASIL It CONSTANTINE VII Anna = VLADIMIR OF Kiev (963-1025 ) (963-1028 ) Eudocia Theodora Zoe = Romanus m1 (1054-1055) (1028-1050) (1028-1034)

== MICHAEL Iv?

(1034-1041) .

== CONSTANTINE Ix3 (adopted (1042-1054)

son)

MICHAEL V (1041-1042)

No dynasty: MucHagx vr (1055-1057) NicEepHorus m1 (1078-1081)

Line of Alexius I (1057-1204) (Comnenian Dynasty )

MANUEL CoMNENUS CoNSTANTINE X = Eudoxia = ROMANUS Iv | (1059-1067). (1068-1071) ISAAC I Joun MICHAEL VII

(1057-1059) | (1071-1078)

ALEXIuS I = Irene (1081-1118)

NicepHorus = Anna JouN 1 Isaac BRYENNIUS Comnena (1118-1143)

| Theodora = CoNSTANTINE

ANGELUS Maria of == MANUEL I aa Antioch (1143-1180) | Joun ANDRONICUS

ALExius 11 = Agnes-Anne = ANDRONICUS I?

(1180-1183) of France (1183-1185)

MiIcHAEL* M i IsAAC iI ALEXTUS II | (1185-1195) (1195-1203) ALextus} (1203-1204)

|

ALEXIUS IV (1203-1204)

ALexius = Irene Anna = THEODORE I} Eudocia = ALEXIUS V PALEOLOGUS (1204)

ANpDRONICUS = Theodor PaLEOLOGUS

Micwaen vur§ * Founder of line of rulers over Despotat of Epirus +Founder of line of rulers over Empire of Trebizond {Founder of line of rulers over Empire of Nicaea §Founder of line of rulers over restored empire at Constantinople

Line of Theodore I (1206-1261 )

(Lascarid Dynasty ) THEODORE I (1206-1222)

Trene = Jounin

(1222-1254)

THEODORE II (1254-1258 )

JOHN Iv (1258-1261)

Line of Michael VIII (1259-1453) (Paleologian Dynasty )

MicuHaexu vir == Theodora (1259-1282 )

ay

Ivan ASEN = Irene ANDRONICUS 11 = Anna of Hungary (1282-1328)

ANDRONICUS MicHAEL 1x = Maria of Armenia (1295-1320)

Trene = JOHN vi (Cantacuzene) ANDRONICUS II = Anna of Savoy

| (1347-1354 ) (1328-1341)

Helena = JouN Vv | (1341-1391 ) Maria = ANDRONICUS IV MANUEL IL (1376-1379) (1391-1425) JOHN vi JOHN vmrI CONSTANTINE XI THOMAS (1390) ( 1425-1448) (1448-1453)

IVAN Il = Zoe oF Muscovy

GENEALOGICAL NOTE

Notice that every Byzantine ruler who sat on the throne at either Constantinople or Nicaea after 1118 was a descendant of Alexius I. The line of rulers continues for a century and a half after the fall of Constantinople to Theodore I, Tsar of Russia, who died in 1598 without children.

This Theodore I was a son of Ivan (the Terrible) who was in his turn a grandson of Ivan III and Zoe of Constantinople. Zoe was a granddaughter of Manuel II who was a great-great-great-grand- son of Michael VIII, restorer of the empire at Constantinople.

Michael VIII was a great-grandson of Alexius III, whose usurpa- tion of the throne precipitated the events that led to the sack of Constantinople in 1204, and Alexius TII was a great-grandson of Alexius I.

Through Alexius I’s queen, Irene Dukas, Alexius’ descendants can trace their ancestry back to Constantine X, who began his reign in 1059. So it follows that Tsar Theodore I of Russia was the great- great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-grandson of Constantine X, and the line of rulers can be traced across eighteen generations from 1059 to 1598, or 539 years.

DVLCIS STE

MELIBIVZ

Virkovs are

Aachen, 146

Abbasid caliphate, 148

Abdul Mejid, 265

Academy, Athenian, 40, 61 Achaia, Principality of, 243 Adrianople, first battle of, 21 Adrianople, second battle of, 32 Aegospotami, battle of, 10 Aghlabids, 153

Alaric, 33-34

Alexander II, 171-72 Sopa III the Great (Macedon),

Alexander Severus, 20

Alexandria, 29 bishop of, 30 Constantinople and, 31 Patriarch of, 38, 40 Arabian conquest of, 104, 110 Spanish Moors in, 152

Alexiad, 227

Alexius I Comnenus, 214 Normans and, 216—18 appeals to West, 221 Crusaders and, 222—23 death of, 225

Alexius II Comnenus, 232-33

Alexius III, 237, 239-40

Alexius IV, 239 youthful exile of, 237 death of, 240

Alexius V, 2.40

Ali, 111

Alp Arslan, 208, 209, 210

Amasia, 124

Amorium, 154

Anastasius I, 53 Monophysitism and, 55

Anastasius IT, 124

Andronicus I Comnenus, 233 death of, 235

Andronicus 1, 250

Andronicus Tit, 251, 252, 253

Andronicus IV, 255

Anecdota, 59, 65n

Anna (sister of Basil II), 188 Anthemius, 46 Anthemius of Tralles, 67 Antioch, 30 Persians and, 75 Byzantine campaigns toward, 181, 228

Crusaders in, 225 Apsimar (Tiberius III), 122-23 Arabia, 101 Arabs, conquests of, 101-3, 113, 114, 115, 116, 121, 124-25 Aragon, 248 Arcadius, 33 Ariadne, 48, 53 Arians, 29, 31, 43, 45 Germans as, 38, 57 Arius, 29 Armenia, 97 conversion to Christianity, 156 Byzantine conquest of, 192 Asen, John, 235 Asen, Peter, 235 Asia Minor, 3 Rome in, 16 Persian conquest of, 94 Arabian invasions of, 124, 154 Iconoclasm and, 132 Turkish occupation of, 213 conversion to Islam, 213 Byzantine resurgence in, 224, 232 Nicaean Empire and, 243 Ottoman Turkish conquest of, 253 Aspar, 41, 44, 47-48 Athenais, 39 Athanasius of Alexandria, 29 Athanasius of Tebizond, 197 Athens, 4 Persia and, 8 Sparta and, 9 Macedon and, 12 Byzantium and, 12-13 Constans IT in, 111 Basil IT in, 192 Turkish conquest of, 261

286

Athens, Duchy of, 243 Athos, Mount, 197 Attalus IIT (Pergamum), 15 Attila, 42 Augustus, 17, 45 Avars, 76, 85, 96 end of, 148 Azov, 264

Bagdad, 148 Baldwin I (Latin Empire), 242 death of, 244 Baldwin II (Latin Empire), 244, 248 Balearic Islands, 121 Bardas, 155 assassination of, 160 Bari, 182, 208 Basil I, 160-62 Basil II, 181 as ruler in fact, 186 generals and, 187-88 Bulgars and, 190-92 death of, 194 Basil HI (Russia), 264 Basiliscus, 46, 48 Bayan, 90 Bayazid I (Ottoman Empire), 255, 956 Beards, 106—7 Belisarius, 64, 65 Nika Insurrection and, 67 in Africa, 71 Justinian and, 72, 74-76 in Sicily, 73 in Italy, 73, 76 Narses and, 74 Avars and, 78-79 trial and death of, 79-80 Berbers, 113 Bessarion, John, 262 Bezant, 27 debasement of, 214 Bishops, 30 Black Death, 253 Black Sea, 3 Blues, 56, 65 Bogomils, 219 Bohemund, 217 defeat of, 218 First Crusade and, 223 death of, 225 Boniface IX (Pope), 256 Boris I (Bulgaria), 164-65 Bosporus, 3, 4~6 Bosrah, 102, Branas, Alexius, 235 Brusa, 253 Bryennius, Nicephorus, 227 Bulgars, 54, 75-76 Empire of, 116-17 under Krum, 148-51.

INDEX

conversion to Christianity of, 162, 164-65

Magyars and, 167

John I and, 184

Basil IT and, 190-92
defeat of, 191
independence of, 235

Latin Empire and, 244 Byzantine Empire, 49
architecture of, 69
art of, 68-69, 141
barbarians and, 118-19
beards in, 106-7
civil wars in, 252-53
costume in, 63-64

Crusader rule of, 242-43
culture of, 77, 142-43, 195, 205,

226, 248, 261
feudalization of, 187, 215
height of, 194-95
language of, 63
military strategy of, 71

Norman invasion of, 216
restoration of, 247

Slavs and, 156-57
themes of, 95 Byzantium, 5-6

Sparta and, 9

Athens and, 9, 12-13

Philip IT and, 11
sieges of, 13, 19, 22

Gauls and, 14

Rhodes and, 14

Rome and, 16
sack of, 19

Diocletian and, 20

Constantine and, 25 Byzas, 4

Caesaropapism, 29n Caliph, 110n Callinicus, 115. See also Greek fire Cannon, 258, 260 Cantacuzene, John. See John VI Can- tawzene Carthage, 15, 96 Vandals and, 41 Belisarius and, 71 Arabs and, 113, 120-21 end of, 121 Catalan Grand Company, 251 Catalonia, 251 Cataphract, 71-72 Catholic Church, 29 Cerularius, Michael, 203 as emperor-maker, 206 death of, 207 Chaeronea, Battle of, 13 Chalcedon, 5, 43, 94, 114 Charlemagne, 144

INDEX

empire of, as compared to Byzan- tine Empire, 146 Nicephorus I and, 147 title recognized, 149 Charles V (Holy Roman Empire), 263 Charles VI (France), 256 Charles of Anjou, 248 Cherson, 120, 123, 154, 189 China, 125 Chosroes I (Persia), 87 Chosroes II ( Persia ), 88-89 wars against Byzantine Empire, 92, 93, 94, 96-99 conquests of, 94 death of, 99 Christianity, 23 Islam and, 112 proselytization by, 156 final East-West break, 204 loss of Asia Minor by, 23 attempted reunification of, 248, 255, o7, 258, 262 Chrysopolis, Battle of, 22 Chrysostom, John, 37, 38 Cimon, 9 Clodius Albinus, 18 Clovis, 57 Code of Justinian, 62-63 reform of, 161 western influence of, 226 Colchis, 3 Colonization, Greek, 3 Columbus, Christopher, 262, Commodus, 18 Comnena, Anna, a7 Comnenus, Alexius (Trebizond), 243 Comnenus, David (Trebizond), 243 Comnenus, Michael Angelus (Epirus ), 24

Dies (Holy Roman Empire),

Constans II, 109 assassination of, 112 Constantius IT, 31 Constantine I the Great, 21 Christianity and, 24, 27-29 Byzantium and, 25-27 laws of, 27 death of, 31 Constantine III, 108 Constantine IV, 112 death of, 117 Constantine V, 137 Iconoclasm and, 139 monks and, 139-40 death of, 140 Constantine VI, 141 deposition of, 144 Constantine VII, 171 death of, 179

287

Constantine VIII, 181, 186 death of, 194 See also Theodora, Zoe Constantine IX, 202 death of, 204 Constantine X, 207 Constantine XI, 257, 264 death of, 260 Constantinople, 26 Alexandria and, 31 Arabian sieges ‘of, 114-16, 125, 128 Avar sieges of, 78, 97-98 beauties of, 68 Bulgarian sieges of, 150, 172 consuls of, 62 Crusader rule over, 242-43 epidemics in, 76, 253 fall of, 260 Genoans in, 228, 250 height of, 226 massacres of westermers in, 233 Patriarch of, 30-31, 37, 39, 43, 45,

o. 95, 157, L700, 205.9 25; 262-63 Pisans in, 228

population of, 68 rebuilding of, 67 recapture of, 247 Russian sieges of, 168, 169, 177 sack of, 240~41 statue of Apollo in, 220 thousandth anniversary of, 253 Turkish siege of, 258 University of, AO, 155, 205 Venetians in, 197-98 Virgin Mary and, 133 walls of, 40-41, 260

Cordova, 152,

Corfu, 216

Corinth, 4

Corsica, eal

Cosmas, 134

Crete, 122 Islamic conquest of, 152 recapture of, 180

Croatia, 157

Crusade, First, 221-25

Crusade, Second, 229

Crusade, Third, 236

Crusade, Fourth, 237—41

Ctesiphon, 94

Cumans, 207

Cyprus, Arabs on, 110, 138, 181 independence of, 235 Crusader conquest of, 236

Cyril (missionary ), 156

Cyril (patriarch), 40

Cyrillic alphabet, 156

Czar. See Tzar

Czechoslovakia, 156, 157

288

Damascus, 94, 114 Dandolo, Enrico, 238, 239 Danube River, 78 Dara, Battle of, 65 Dardanelles, 3 Darius I (Persia), 8 Dechanski, Stephen, 252 Delphi, oracle of, 4 Demosthenes, 12 Digenis Akritas, 196 Dioclea, 20 Diocletian, 20, 24, 28 Doryleum, Battle of, 224 Ducas, Andronicus, 209 Dushan, Stephen, 252 Serbs under, 254 Dyrrhachium, 203, 216, 235 Dye, imperial, 170 Eastern Empire, 33, 49 East Roman Empire. See Eastern Em- pire Ecumenical Council, First, 29 Ecumenical Council, Second, 43 Ecumenical Council, Third, 40 Ecumenical Council, Fourth, 43, 52 Ecumenical Council, Sixth, 117 Ecumenical Council, Seventh, 141 Egypt, 53 Persian conquest of, 96 Arabian conquest of, 104 conversion to Islam, 112 Emperor, Byzantine, 63 divinity of, 45 legitimacy of, 162 Epirus, Despotat of, 243 Eudocia (wife of Theodosius II), 39 Eudocia (wife of Constantine X), 208 Eudoxia, 36-37 Eugenius IV (pope), 257, 262 Eunuchs, 36 Euphemius, 153 Euphrosyne, 154 Eutropius, 36, 37

Filioque Controversy, 158 Forks, 184 France, 129 Francis II (Holy Roman Empire), 263 Franks, 57, 136 in Italy, 139 Byzantine Empire and, 144 Frederick I Barbarossa (Holy Roman Empire ), 230 and Third Crusade, 236 death of, 237 eee Ili (Holy Roman Empire), zZ

Gaiseric, 41, 46-47 Galata, 250

INDEX

Gallipoli, 254 Garigliano River, Battle of, 173 Gauls, 14 Gemisthus Plethon, George, 261 Gennadius, 262 Genoa, 228, 250
and Byzantine Empire, 247 Giustiniani, Giovanni, 258, 260 Golden Fleece, 3 Golden Hom, 6 Goths, 20 Greece, 3

Persia and, 8
icons and, 134 Greek fire, 115-16, 128, 177 Greens, 56, 65-66 Gregory I (pope), 92 Gregory II (pope), 135 Gregory III (pope), 136 Gregory X (pope), 248 Guiscard, Robert, 202
death of, 218 Gunpowder, 258

Hagia Sophia, 253 building of, 69-70 Crusaders and, 240 under Turks, 260-61 Harold Hardrada, 200 Harun al-Rashid, 148 Hecate, 13 Helena (mother of Constantine I), 94 Helena (wife of Constantine VII), 174, 178 Hellespont, 3, 10 Henry I (Latin Empire), 244 Henry IV (England), 256 Heracleonas, 108, 109 Heraclius I, 93 reforms of, 95 in Asia, 97-99 Arabs and, 102-4 empire under, 106 Heraclius (father of Heraclius 1), 93 Heraclius, dynasty of, 108, 109 Heresy, 28 Hippodrome, 25 racing colors in, 56 riots in, 66-67 Hitler, Adolf, 99 Holy Roman Empire, 263 Hungarians, 167 Hungary, 167, 255 Huns, 32, 42 Hunyadi, John, 257

Iconoclasm, 134 decline of, 141 revival of, 151 end of, 155

Iconodules, 134

INDEX

Icons, 131

Ignatius, 157 death of, 161

Igor, 177, 178

Illyria, 34

India, 125

Ynnocent IIT (pope), 238

Irene (wife of Leo IV), 140 intrigues of, 143-44 death of, 147

Irene ( wife of Alexius I), 215

Trene of Hungary, 227

Isaac I, 206

Isaac II, 235 Crusaders and, 236 blinding of, 237 restoration of, 239 death of, 240

Isaurians, 48, 54

Isidore of Miletus, 67

Islam, 101 proselytization by, 112 idols and, 13]

Issus, Battle of, 97

Istanbul, 261, 265

Italus, John, 226

Italy, 77 Iconoclasm and, 134~35 Islamic invasion of, 173 Normans in, 202 Byzantine loss of, 208 Byzantine counterattack in, 229-30

Ivan III ( Russia), 264

Ivan IV the Terrible (Russia), 264

Jason, 3

Jerusalem, 30 Patriarch of, 43 Persian conquest of, 94 Arabian conquest of, 104 Crusader conquest of, 224 Saladin’s conquest of, 236

Jesus Christ, 23

Jews, 131

John I Tsimisces, 183, 184 death of, 185

John II Comnenus, 227, 228

John III, 244

John IV. 246

John V, 253

John VI Cantacuzene, 253-54, 261

John VIUI, 257

John VIII (pope), 162

John X (pope), 173

John the Baptist, 181

John Chrysostom. See Chrysostom

John

John of Damascus, 142

Judea, 17

Julius Caesar, 16

Justin I, 58, 59

>

289

Justin II, 85, 87, 88 Justinian I, 58 accession of, 59 marriage of, 59 laws of, 62-63 Persia and, 64 Nika Insurrection and, 66~67 rebuilding of Constantinople under, 67-70 western campaigns under, 71. See also Belisarius Belisarius and, 72, 74-76 death of, 80 silk trade and, 82-83 Monophysitism and, 83 see also Code of Justinian Justinian II, 117 deposition of, 120 restoration of, 122-23 death of, 124 Leo III and, 126

Kairouan, 113 Kaloyan, 244 Kemal, Mustapha, 265 Khazars, 98 Byzantine policy toward, 119 Judaism among, 166 end of, 2197 Kiev, 169 Kings, divine right of, 162-63 Koran, 10] Kossovo, Battle of, 255 Krum. See Bulgars

Latin Empire, 242 end of, 247 Legitimacy, 162 Leo I, 45 Leo I (pope), 43, 61 Leo II, 48 Leo III, 128 youth of, 126 reforms of, 130, 131, 134, 135 Italy and, 135 laws of, 136-37 death of, 137 Leo III (pope), 144 Leo IV, 140 Leo V, 150, 151 Leo VI, 162 marriages of, 169-70 death of, 171] Leo IX (pope), 204 Leo Diaconus, 195 Leo of Tripoli, 164, 176 Leontius, 120, 123 Licinius, 21 Lombards, 86-87 Exarchate of Ravenna and, 135

290

Louis VII (France), 229 Lysander, 10

Macedon, 11 see also Philip II (aeon Macedonian dynasty, 161 end of, 205 Magyars, 167 Malik Shah, 216 death of, 220 Maniakes, George, 199 in Sicily, 201 in Italy, 202 death of, 203 Manuel I Comnenus, 228 Crusaders and, 229 in Italy, 230 Manuel II, 255-56 Manzikert, Battle of, 209-10 consequences of, 212 Marcian, 43 Maria, 143 Marmara, Sea of, 3 Martin I (pope), L1€ Martin IV (pope), 248 Martina, 108, 109 Mary, Virgin. See Virgin Mary Mary of Antioch, 232, 233 Maurice, 88, 89 unpopularity of, 90 death of, 91 Mecca, 110 Megara, 4 Methodius, 156 Metochites, Theodore, 261 Michael I, 149 Michael II the Stammerer, 154 Michael ITI, 155, 159 assassination of, 160 Michael IV, 200-201 Michael V, 201 Michael VI, 206 Michael VIL. 213, 214 Michael VIII, 246. 247, 248, 250 Michael IX, 251-52 Milan, 21, 33 Milyutin, 250 Mistra, 247-48 _~ Mohammed (prophet), 101 Mohammed II 258 Mongols, 246 Monks, 132-33 persecution of, 139-40 Nicephorus I and, 147 Basil II and, 196-97 Monophysitism, 109, 113n, 199 Monothelitism, 104, Bl end of, 117 -

151-52,

(Ottoman Empire),

53. 55, 92-93, 104,

‘INDEX

Moravians, 156 Mosaics,-68—69

Muawiya, 114

Muscovy, 264

Mutilation, 137 Myriocephalom, Battle of, 232

Napoleon I Bonaparte, 263 Narses, 74
in Italy, 76-77
retirement of, 85-86 Nestorianism, 52-53 Nestorius, 39-40, 43 New Rome, 25 Nicaea, 29

Crusaders at, 224 Nicaea, Empire of, 243, 244, 246 Nicephorus I, 147
death of, 149 Nicephorus IT Phocas, 180, 181, 197
assassination of, 183 Nicephorus III, 214, 215 Nicholas I (pope), 157, 165 Nicholas IJ (Russia), 265 Nicholas Mysticus, 170, 172 Nicomedia, 20, 24 Nicopolis, Battle of, 256 Nika Insurrection, 66-67
see also Blues, Greens Nineveh, Battle of, 98-99 Normans, 202
in Italy, 208
in Byzantine Empire, 216, 234-35 North Africa, 113, 121 Novgorod, 168

Octavian Caesar, 16, 17 Odoacer, 48, 51 Ohrid, 190 Oleg 169 Ore 178, 190 Ommayad caliphate, 114, 148 On-Ogurs, 166 Orphanotrophus, John, 200 Osman, 25] Ostrogoths, 52 Belisarius and, 73 end of, 77 Othman, 110 Otto I (Holy Roman Empire), 182 Otto II (Holy Roman Empire), 184 Ottoman Empire, 261, 265

Paganism, end of, 31-32

Palermo, 153

Parthia, 17

Patriarch, 30

Paul, Saint, 23

Pausanias, 9

Pechenegs, 167, 182-83 Bulgaria and, 173

INDEX

decline of, 220 end of, 228 Pedro II] { Aragon), 248 Pella, 12 Peloponnesian War, 10 Peloponnesus, 4 Turkish conquest of, 261 Pepin, 139 Pergamum, 15 Persia, 8 in Roman times, 17 Byzantine Empire and, 64, 75, 87 defeat of, 98 decline of, 100 Pescennius Niger, 18. 19 Peter ( Bulgaria), 176, 182 Peter I (Russia), 264 Peter (son of Baldwin IT), 248 Peter of Courtenay, 244 Peter, Saint, 30 Philip IJ (France), 236 Philip IT (Macedon), 11, 12, 13 Philippicus, 123, 124 Phocas, 90 Monophysitism and, 92—93 death of, 94 Phocas, Bardas, 187, 188 death of, 189 Phocas, Nicephorus. II Phocas Photius, 157-58, 161 death of, 163 Pirates, Islamic, 152, 161, 164, 176 Pisa, 228 Plataea, Battle of, 8 Plato, 262 Pleton, George Gemistus. tus Pleton, George Polovtzi, 219n Pompey, 16 Pontifex Maximus, 28 Pontus (kingdom), 16 Pontus (sea), 3 Pope, 30 controversies involving, 43, 92 Iconoclasm and, 138 Normans and, 203 Preslav, 172 Priscus, 90 Procopius, 59, 65n Propontis, 3 peel Miche Constantine, 205, 211,

See Nicephorus

See Gemis-

Pulcheria, 38 Nestaurius and, 39-40, 43 marriage of, 42-43

Ravenna, 34, 74, 123 Byzantine culture in, 77 Lombard conquest of, 138

Ravenna, Exarchate of, 89

291

Lombards ane: 135 end of, 139 Raymond of Toulouse, 225 Relics, 132-33 Rhodes, 14, 243 Rhodes, Battle of, 110-11 Richard I (England), 236, 237 Robert of Courtenay, 244 Roger I (Sicily), 216 Roman Empire, 16, 17, 19 civil wars in, 18 division of, 3 fall of, 1, 48 imperial succession in, 45 see also Diocletian, Rome Romanus I Lecapenus, 174, 176, 177 deposition of, 178 Romanus IJ, 179 Romanus lL, 199 Romanus IV "Diogenes, 208 death of, 213 Rome, 15 in the East, 16 Diocletian in, 20 bishop of, 30 consuls of, 62 Belisarius in, 73 Constans II in, 141 final Byzantine loss of, 139 Rufinus, 33 Rum, Sultanate of, 213 Rurik, 168, 1 Rus, 169 Russia, 169 art in, 141 Constantinople and, 177, 264-65 conversion to Christianity of, 179, 189-90, 190n see also Muscovy Saladin, 236, 237 Salamis, Battle of, 8 Samuel, 190 death of, 192 Sardinia, 121 Scholarios, George, 262 Scythia, 3 Seleucid Empire, 15 Seljuk, 208 see also Turks, Ottoman, Seljuk Septimius Severus, 18-19 Serbs, 250 heicht of power of, 252 Turkish conquest of, 255 Sergius, 95, 96 Monophysitism and, 103-4 Sicilian Vespers, 249~50 Sicily, 73 Arabian raids on, 113 Islamic conquest of, 153 Byzantine counterattacks in,

161, 181-82, 192, 201

292

Sicily (cont'd) Norman conquest of, 216 under French, 248

Sigismund, 256

Silk, 82-83, 184

Skleros, Bardas, 187, 188 retirement of, 189

Slaves, 137

Slavs, 54, 75-76, 88 Byzantine policy toward, 118-19 conversion to Christianity of, 156-57 eastern, 168 laws of, 161

Smolensk, 169

Sophia, 86

Spain, 78, 96 Arabian conquest of, 125 under Ommayads, 148 riots in, 152

Sparta, 8 Athens and, 9

Stauracius, 149

Suidas, 226

Sulayman, 125 death of, 128

Sviatoslav, 178 Bulgaria and, 182-83 Byzantine Empire and, 183-84 death of, 188

Symeon I (Bulgaria), 166, 171, 173,

176, 176n

Symeon IT (Bulgaria), 176n Syracuse, 112, 201 Syria, 184 Arabian conquest of, 101-3, 112 Monophysitism and, 53

Tamerlane, 256 Thebes, 12 Theme system, 95, 130, 154 Theodora (wife of Justinian I), 50 Monophysitism and, 60 Nika Insurrection and, 67 death of, 76 Theodora (wife of Theophilus), 155 Theodora (aunt of Basil IT), 183 Theodora (daughter of Constantine VII), as empress, 201-2 death of, 204-5 Theodore I Lascaris, 243, 244 Theodore II, 246 Theodore IT (Russia), 264 ae (brother of Heraclius 1),

Theodore of Epirus, 244 Theodoric, 52, 57, 59 Theodorus Studita, 149, 151 Theodosian Code, 40 Theodosius I, 31, 33

INDEX

Theodosius IT, 38 laws of, 40 western offensive of, 41 death of , 42 Theodosius III, 124 Theodote, 143 Theophano (wife of Romanus IJ), 179, 181 exile of, 183 Theophano (niece of John I), 184 Theophilus, 154, 155 Theophilus (Patriarch of Alexandria),

38 Thessalonica, 116 sacks of, 164, 235 Nicaean Empire and, 246 sale of, 257 Thessalonica, Kingdom of, 243 Thomas, 264 Thrace, 12 Thrasybulus, 10 Tiberius II, 88 Tiberius III (Apsimar), 122-23 Timur, 256 Tours, Battle of, 129 Trebizond, Empire of, 243 end of, 261 Tribonian, 62 Trinity, 29, 158 Troy, 4, 24 True Cross, 94 restoration of, 99 loss of, 104 Tsar: 196, 176n Tunis, 121 Turkey, modern, 265 Turks, Ottoman, 251 in Asia Minor, 253 in Europe, 254 take Constantinople, 258~59 Turks, Seljuk, 207-8 Tyre, 170

Ugrians, 166 Ukraine, 3

Urban II (pope), 221 Urban V (pope), 255

Vandals, 41, 71 Varangian guard, 188, 206 Varangians, 168-69 Varna, Battle of, 257 Venice, 77 Byzantine Empire and, 197, 216-17 Constantinople and, 228, 238-39 Fourth Crusade and, 238 Vespasian, 17-18 Vienna, 261 Visigoths, 32, 96, 100 Virgin Mary, 133 robe of, 168

INDEX 293

Vladimir (Bulgaria), 165 Yarmuk, Battle of, 102-3 Vladimir (Russia), 188, 189-90 Zara, 238 Western Empire, 33 Zeno, 48 German war bands and, 41 Zoe ( wife of Leo VI), 170, 171 West a Empire. See Western return from exile of, 172 Em Zoe ‘ pte of Constantine VII), William af SE Sienan Italy), 234 World War I, 265 deceit of, 200 World War Il, 265 death of, 204 Zoe (niece of Constantine XI), 264 Xerxes I ( Persia), 8 Zoroastrianism, 112

PDF created by Rajesh Arya - Gujarat