| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The Empresses of Constantinople
Author: McCabe, Joseph
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Empresses of Constantinople" ***
generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/empressesofconst00mcca
THE EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
[Illustration: ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE, SHOWING THE HIPPODROME, THE
IMPERIAL PALACE, AND THE MOSQUE OF S. SOPHIA
FROM THE RECONSTRUCTION BY DJELAL ESSAD AFTER THE PLAN BY LABARTE]
THE EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
by
JOSEPH McCABE
Author of “The Empresses of Rome,” etc.
With Eight Illustrations
[Illustration: ARTI _et_ VERITATI]
Richard G. Badger
The Gorham Press
Boston
PREFACE
In concluding an earlier volume on the mistresses of the western Roman
Empire I observed that, as the gallery of fair and frail ladies closed,
we stood at the door of “the long, quaint gallery of the Byzantine
Empresses.” It seemed natural and desirable to pass on to this more
interesting and less familiar series of the mistresses of the eastern
Roman Empire, and the present volume will therefore tell the story of
the Empresses, or Queens, as they preferred to be called, who occupied
the throne set up by Constantine in New Rome, or ancient Byzantium,
until the victorious Turk thrust it disdainfully aside to make way for
his more spacious harem.
The eastern or Byzantine Empire has long been regarded in Europe as
a world of far less interest than that which centred on the banks of
the Tiber: a world of monotonous piety and little adventure or spirit,
almost Chinese in its placid and unchanging adherence to traditional
and very conventional forms. One is tempted to attribute this error,
not merely to the longer concealment of Byzantine antiquities from our
fathers and the superior attractiveness of Italy, but, in some measure,
to the disproportion of Gibbon’s work. By the time the great historian
has advanced only one or two centuries in the life of the East he
finds that the superb generosity of his plan has committed him to an
unachievable task, and he begins to compress whole chapters of the
most vivid and adventurous history into a few disdainful pages; and as
Finlay, the proper historian of the Greek civilization, not only lacks
the charm which draws each generation with fresh wonder to the volumes
of Gibbon, but shares and expresses the same disdain for his subject,
his work has not tended to redeem the Byzantine Empire from neglect.
Of late years there has been some quickening of interest in the
eastern Empire. Professor Bury in this country,[1] M. Diehl in France,
Schlumberger in Germany, and other historians, have done much to draw
attention to the extraordinary interest and the very lively character
of Byzantine life.
When we confine our attention, as we do in this volume, to the Court
life and the personality of the imperial women, the interest rises to
the pitch of romance, and is often sustained at that height for many
chapters. Few Courts in the world have, in their thousand years of
history, witnessed so much adventure, intrigue, comedy and tragedy,
as that of the Byzantine Empresses. From all quarters of the Empire,
in the most varied ways, all sorts of women, from princesses to
village girls, tavern girls or circus girls, make their way to the
bronze-roofed palace and wear for a season the prodigious jewels and
the glittering robes of an Empress of Constantinople; and, as there
is no law or method of succession to the throne, the rise and fall
of Emperors and Empresses gives a dramatic movement to the story.
The notion that the eastern Empresses are enwrapped in a rigid piety
and formalism, as they are in their stiff tunics of gold-cloth, is a
ludicrous mistake. Their piety is usually external and superficial,
and often they make not the least pretence of it; while, even when
it is obviously sincere, it is associated with a skill in casuistry
which allows a free play of their ambitions, their passions, and even
their criminal impulses. Indeed, it is only fair to say at the outset
that if a reader passes from the gallery of the “pagan” Empresses into
that of the Empresses of Constantinople in the hope of encountering
more restful, more virtuous and more domestic types of womanhood, he
will be grievously disappointed. We may not find a Messalina among
them, but irregularity of life is more evenly distributed than among
the Roman Empresses, ambition and intrigue are far more cultivated,
and there is a strain of barbaric cruelty running through the greater
part of the story which it would have been more pleasant, had it been
consistent with truthfulness, to omit. But the biographer should not be
a moralist. My simple purpose is to depict, as far as it is possible,
the very varied types of womanhood which come into “the fierce light
that beats about a throne” in that strange world where Greek and Roman
and Syrian blood blend to produce a new character.
The difficulties of the task have been considerable, and may be urged
in extenuation of some of the apparent defects of the story. Apart
from sketches of the lives of five or six of the Byzantine Empresses,
especially those in M. Diehl’s fine “Figures Byzantines,” the study
is entirely new, and the material has had to be laboriously collected
from the endless pages of the Greek chroniclers. These chroniclers are
largely monks, and in nearly all cases they are little disposed to
speak of the imperial women until they either misbehave themselves or
come to wield a mastery over men. Their references to the Empresses
are usually brief and scattered sentences which have to be gleaned
with care, and in hardly any single case do even contemporary
writers condescend to give us a portrait of an Empress. Seeing that,
in addition, we have not (as in the case of Rome) any statues or
portrait-busts of the Empresses, and the few representations of them
which have survived (in miniatures, ivories, etc.) are lifeless and
conventionalized pictures, it is not possible to bring them before
the eye in as satisfactory a way as one could wish. In this, as in
the preceding volume, I have utterly refused to follow the genial
example of Roergas de Serviez, and allow imagination to come to the
aid of fact. But I have carefully gathered and included all that is
known about the eastern Empresses, and, lest it be thought that the
less-known Empresses might alter the balance of vice or virtue, I have
inserted even the scanty references to these.
It remains only to explain the starting-point of the volume. In my
“Empresses of Rome,” which includes all Empresses down to the fall of
Rome, I necessarily included the early Empresses of the eastern series,
when east and west were branches of one dominion. It is therefore not
necessary to repeat the story of the beautiful and languid Eudoxia,
the daughter of a Frankish chief whom a palace intrigue raised to the
purple, and who is one of the butts of St Chrysostom’s fiery sermons;
nor of Eudocia, the Athenian girl who set out to find her father’s
money and obtained a kingdom, who wrote poems in her native tongue
and at last passed from the Court under a cloud of suspicion; nor of
Pulcheria, the virgin-sister of Theodosius and rival of Eudocia, who
ruled the Empire for her brother and, after his death, took to herself
a nominal husband and, with Marcian, was governing the Eastern world at
the time of the fall of Rome. I have adequately described her in the
preceding volume, and the present story opens at her death in the year
453.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. VERINA AND HER DAUGHTERS 1
II. THE EARLY LIFE OF THEODORA 21
III. THE EMPRESS THEODORA 36
IV. SOPHIA 52
V. MARTINA 67
VI. THE MOST PIOUS IRENE 81
VII. SAINT THEODORA 101
VIII. THE WIVES OF LEO THE PHILOSOPHER 120
IX. THE TAVERN-KEEPER’S DAUGHTER 136
X. TWO IMPERIAL SISTERS 158
XI. EUDOCIA 181
XII. IRENE AND ANNA COMNENA 197
XIII. A BREATH OF CHIVALRY 218
XIV. EUPHROSYNE DUCÆENA 238
XV. THE NEW CONSTANTINOPLE 257
XVI. IRENE OF MONTFERRAT 276
XVII. MARIA OF ARMENIA 287
XVIII. ANNA OF SAVOY 298
XIX. THE LAST BYZANTINE EMPRESSES 317
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE, SHOWING THE HIPPODROME, THE IMPERIAL
PALACE, AND THE MOSQUE OF ST SOPHIA _Frontispiece_
From the reconstruction by Djelal Essad after the Plan by
Labarte
From “Les Imperatrices Byzantines de Constantinople.” By
permission of H. Laurens, Paris
FACING PAGE
THE EMPRESS THEODORA AND HER ATTENDANTS 40
Mosaic of the sixth century in St Vitale, Ravenna
From a photograph by Alinari
THE EMPRESS IRENE 88
From an Ivory Plaque in the National Museum, Florence
From a photograph by Alinari
EUDOCIA INGERINA, WIFE OF BASIL I 116
From Du Cange’s “Historia Byzantina”
THE EMPRESS HELENA 138
From Du Cange’s “Historia Byzantina”
THE EMPRESS ZOE 166
From “Constantinople,” by E. A. Grosvenor
By permission of Little, Brown & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
EUDOCIA AND ROMANUS IV 186
From an Ivory in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
From a photograph by A. Giraudon, Paris
THEODORA, WIFE OF MICHAEL VIII 268
From Du Cange’s “Historia Byzantina”
THE EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
CHAPTER I
VERINA AND HER DAUGHTERS
The Empress’s apartments in the sacred palace remained empty for
four years after the virtuous Pulcheria had been laid in her marble
sarcophagus. The Emperor Marcian was aged and feeble, and, as Pulcheria
had guarded even in marriage the sanctity of her vow of chastity,
there was none who might plausibly be regarded as heir to the throne.
It was such a situation as Constantinople loved; and the thousands of
soldiers, eunuchs, nobles and ladies who dwelt in the vast palace, and
the tens of thousands of idlers who lounged under the arcades of the
great square or chattered on the benches of the Hippodrome, had a large
field for speculation.
Their fate, they knew, was in the hands of one man, the commander of
the imperial guards, Asper. He was an Arian (or Unitarian), and could
not hope to occupy the throne which would soon be at his disposal. The
citizens of Constantinople were at least as wanton and passionate as
those of Rome had been, but they were fiercely devoted to the sound
doctrine of the Trinity, and they would have flung themselves against
the bronze gates and marble walls of the palace if an Arian had
ventured to don the purple. So Senators and Senators’ wives indulged
their conflicting hopes and paid their servile reverence to the dying
monarch and the vigorous barbarian commander.
Marcian died in the year 457, not without a superfluous rumour of
poison, and expectation rose to the height of fever when the worn
frame was entombed with all the rich ceremony of the Eastern Court.
Then there came the first of the long series of surprises and dramatic
successions which were to enliven Byzantine history for many a century.
Asper announced that his steward Leo, a tribune, or subordinate
officer, of the troops, was to receive the imperial crown. A barbaric
soldier and his wife were to occupy the golden throne, and all the
nobility of Constantinople hastened to kiss their purple slippers.
Leo the Isaurian is one of those quite unromantic figures which the
restless waves of Roman life often washed into the world of romance:
one of the many raw highlanders who had set out from Asia Minor to make
their fortune in the glittering metropolis of the East. A few years of
useful military service had won for him the rank of tribune and the
confidence of the commander, and Asper thought that he could rely on
the docility and gratitude of the big simple-featured soldier. Wholly
illiterate, with no larger experience than the control of Asper’s
servants, a man of rough, hairy face, powerful frame and blunt ways,
he suddenly found himself transferred to a throne that gleamed, as few
thrones did, with “the sands of Indus and the adamant of Golconda.”
His wife, the Empress Verina, shares alike the earlier obscurity and
the sudden elevation to the extraordinary splendour of the Byzantine
Court. We know nothing of her nationality or extraction; and, as the
only relatives who gather about her when her hand dispenses the gold
and the favours of a great empire are just as obscure as herself, we
may be sure that her origin was humble enough. A soldier like Leo would
select his mate in a lowly world, and we shall see later that Verina
permitted no scruple to restrain either her passion or her ambition.
But there was personality in the new Empress: an able and vigorous
intelligence, a masterful ambition, a virile tenacity of purpose, and
an equally virile disdain of scruples and of priests in the pursuit of
her ambition. She must have been much younger than her husband, who
was nearly sixty years old. She not only survived him for more than a
decade, but she filled that decade with the most spirited adventures,
and she admitted, or attracted, a lover after the death of her husband
in his seventy-fourth year.
It is one of the most singular features of Verina’s story that she
remains almost as obscure and insignificant during the seventeen years
in which she reigned with her husband as she had been before her
elevation, yet in her later years reveals a character of remarkable
vigour and great interest. We have, therefore, little concern with
the reign of Leo, and will rather make ourselves acquainted with the
imperial world in which the Byzantine Empresses will move.
New Rome, or Constantinople, had been founded by Constantine on the
site of the more ancient city of Byzantium, and is so faithfully
replaced by the modern city that its situation needs little
description. It spread over the triangular point of Europe which runs
to a tongue between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmora, and was
protected by a double wall from invasion on the land side; in fact, it
was in time enclosed entirely within thirteen miles of stout wall.
The lower portion of this triangular area, a vast domain of more than
half-a-million square yards, sloping gradually to the silver shores
of the Sea of Marmora, was reserved for the imperial palaces and
gardens. Running parallel with the imperial palace, to the north, was
the Hippodrome, into which the story of the Empresses will repeatedly
take us. Like the Great Circus at Rome, on the model of which it was
built, it was the most commanding and venerated institution of the
frivolous people. Its spacious long-drawn arena was flanked by tiers
of seats which could accommodate tens of thousands of people--some
authorities say a hundred thousand people. A lofty imperial gallery,
the _kathisma_, surveyed the races and the spectators from the
north-eastern end, and a great purple awning gave protection from the
burning sun. Beyond the Hippodrome and the palace was the chief square
of the city, the Augusteum, which corresponded to the old Forum at Rome
or the Agora at Athens. Under the shelter of the double colonnade which
surrounded it the idlers of Constantinople held their endless fiery
discussions of the last chariot race, the last heresy, or the last
revolution: the studious bargained for books: the amorous made traffic
in love. It was the heart of the city. On the south side of it was the
great gate of the palace: on the north side the church, or cathedral,
of St Sophia: the Senate House faced it on the east: and from its
western side ran the main street of Constantinople, the Mese (or Middle
Street), lined with colonnades, which passed more or less continuously
along the central ridge of the triangular area which the city occupied.
A city was, in those days, and for many a century afterwards, a palace
and a cathedral: we can only say of the million citizens that they were
packed into the spaces not occupied by Church or State, especially
in the region between the Mese and the Golden Horn, where fire and
pestilence periodically fed on their crowded tenements.
With the palace we need a closer acquaintance. Verina would be familiar
with the massive iron gate on the south side of the square through
which, as the Emperor rode in, one might catch a glimpse of the great
bronze door of the palace. Through this gate the obscure woman of the
people was now borne on her litter, to be crowned mistress of the
world. The front part of the palace was burned by the people in 532,
but we may assume that it had the general plan of the later structure
which experts have reconstructed for us.[2] The door led into a
spacious hall--known as the Chalke on account of its bronze roof--which
was richly adorned with statues, marbles and mosaics. Constantine had
despoiled the world to enrich his palace and city, and this entrance
hall had a great store of treasures. Crossing the hall one entered the
apartments of the troops who guarded the palace and whose spacious
quarters formed an immense and formidable approach to the imperial
palace. More than three thousand selected troops, divided into three
classes, formed this imperial bodyguard, and we shall more than once
find their halls swimming with blood as some frantic mob or adventurous
usurper seeks to penetrate to the palace. The palace grounds were, of
course, surrounded by lofty and unscaleable walls.
Verina would pass first through the lines of the Scholarians, whose
golden shields and lances, and gold helmets surmounted with red
aigrettes, would form a glittering corridor. Ascending the marble steps
at the far end of their hall, the purple curtains being drawn aside,
she would pass between the Excubitors, a regiment of powerful warriors
with two-edged axes, and the Candidates, or white-robed troops,
gleaming with gold; the second and third lines of defence. At the end
of these palatial barracks three ivory-plated doors, hung with curtains
of purple silk, opened into the Consistorium, a large hall lined with
marble and mosaic, in the floor of which were set porphyry slabs to
indicate the successive spots where even kings must thrice prostrate
themselves before approaching to kiss the feet of--Leo the Isaurian. A
throne, covered with purple and heavily laden with gold and jewels, was
raised under a golden dome at the upper end of the room.
Three pairs of steps and three bronze doors--for this wondrously
elevated peasant and his obscure wife must not pass through the same
door as ordinary mortals--then led to an unroofed terrace, lined with
columns and precious statues, on one side of which was the chapel of
the Saviour, and on the other the ancient gold-roofed banquet-room.
Then at length Verina would find herself, probably for the first time,
before the door of the palace proper, or the main palace, Daphne.
Passing between the crowds of stewards, secretaries, domestic officers
and great ladies, with masses of subordinate servants behind, all
bent in profound reverence, she would enter by the bronze doors into
the Augusteus, or vestibule of the palace: a hall crowded with choice
bronze and marble statues and mosaics. Fresh legions of servants--the
population of the palace must have been more than five thousand even at
this early date--and groups of pale eunuchs now crowded to do homage,
and the fortunate woman surrendered herself to her tire-women, to don
the gold-cloth tunic, the purple mantle and the heavy jewellery of an
empress.
The coronation would probably take place in the church of St Stephen,
within the palace, and it seems that Verina and Leo then crossed the
gardens and terraces to receive the homage of the Senators and nobles
in the outlying palace of Magnaura. We know it at a later date as a
vast hall lined with coloured marbles from the most famous quarries
of the world, its floors strewn thick with roses, its wonders lit by
fourteen massive silver lamps which hung from heavy chains of silvered
bronze between its marble columns. But the wonderful golden sparrows
which piped their mechanical notes on golden trees, and the golden
lions which lashed their tails and roared before the throne, and the
organs of silver and gold, belong to a later date in Byzantine history.
From Magnaura the royal procession returned to Daphne, and mounted the
spiral stair which led to the royal lodge, with a small palace in its
rear, overlooking the Hippodrome. There the men of Constantinople rang
out their Greek cry of “Many years!” to the rustic tribune and his
wife who had so suddenly been lifted to this giddy height, and were,
no doubt, rewarded with chariot races. The coronation day would end,
as was usual, with a banquet in the Triclinon, a dining-hall in the
space between the apartments of the guards and the palace proper. Its
lofty roof was of gold, and on its nineteen purple-draped tables only
golden vessels were set; some of them--at least, at a later date--were
so heavy that they had to be lifted from their purple chariots to the
table by machinery. And after such a banquet as only the palace could
command, amidst some two hundred of the highest nobles of the greatest
empire in the world, Verina would retire to her ivory or silver couch
to brood over this prodigious turn of the wheel of her fortune. We
shall find numbers of equally romantic elevations, and just as many
tragic falls from splendour to obscurity, in the long story of the
Byzantine Empresses.
Unfortunately, the coronation does not yet bring Verina plainly before
us, and we must pass the seventeen years of her husband’s reign almost
in silence. To explain this obscurity it is not enough to say that it
was the custom of the Byzantine Court to keep its women in seclusion.
As long as the stream of imperial life flowed evenly they were,
generally, content to idle the sunny hours behind the thick hedge of
eunuchs and maids, in some sequestered palace or other in the vast
gardens, where many fountains and the soft breath of the sea and leafy
groves cooled the air. They did not even feel the exclusion of women
from the tense sensations of the Hippodrome, for one could witness the
thrilling races from the windows in the upper gallery of the church
of St Stephen. But we shall see speedily enough that this ceremonious
seclusion no more intimidated the imperial women, when they _were_
imperial, from playing their part in public life than the pomp and
display of the palace intimidated the people of Constantinople from
talking to their monarch, when occasion arose, as if he were a village
chief. Verina remained quiet and obscure because life flowed evenly
and she had no cause to interfere with its course. The promptness with
which she sought, or accepted, consolation after the death of her
husband does not suggest that she was very deeply devoted to Leo. He
was, however, a shrewd and strong man, though rough and uncultivated,
and he seems to have left little room for his wife’s interference.
The Empress’s quarters in the palace, or assemblage of palaces, are
very imperfectly known to us. Daphne itself, the original palace, to
which later Emperors would raise stupendous rivals, cannot have had
very numerous apartments. It would assuredly not be possible to hide
a bishop there for years, as the Empress Theodora afterwards hid a
bishop in her apartments; to say nothing of the subterraneous dungeons
which Theodora is said to have filled with her prisoners. But there
were several detached palaces in the grounds, and no doubt the Empress
had the use of one of these, standing in its own gardens and groves,
and protected by its army of eunuchs. Verina had had one daughter,
Ariadne, before her elevation to the throne. A few years afterwards she
again gave promise of motherhood, and adjourned for delivery, as custom
demanded, to the Porphyra Palace by the sea, a small square mansion
whose walls were lined with red, white-spotted porphyry. But it was
another girl, Leontia, that she brought into the world, and who lay
beside her under the sheets of gold-cloth to receive the homage of the
notabilities.[3]
Many years of this placid existence pass before we catch another
glimpse of Verina. The legendary life of St Daniel Stylites, the
emulator or successor of the famous Simeon of the Pillar, says that
the prayers of the holy dweller on a column procured for the Empress
a boy in 462, but the effectiveness of his prayers seems to have been
limited, as no such child has found its way into serious history. Leo
was now ageing, and the question of the succession must have been
keenly discussed. It is at this point that Verina, who seemed doomed to
pass again into obscurity, begins to reveal her personality. Asper and
his son still seemed to dominate Constantinople, but their power was
being silently undermined. Leo was filling the palace and the army with
his own compatriots, and a conflict impended between the Isaurians and
Goths, between Leo and Asper.
Amongst these Isaurians a young man named Trascallisseus--or
something approaching it, for the Greeks make sad work of the Asiatic
names--won the favour of Leo, and approached nearer to the throne.
The orthodox chroniclers are severe on Trascallisseus, and depict him
as “a veritable Pan”--dark, ugly, hairy, ungainly, heavy-footed and
ignorant. The Isaurians were not a handsome race, nor had they the
least ambition to adopt the culture of the Greeks, yet the portrait is
probably overdrawn. Trascallisseus seems to have been a robust, sullen,
illiterate, intriguing young man, with no apparent grace of body or
character, but Leo was minded to marry him to Ariadne, and thus mark
him for the throne.
Verina apparently desired the succession of her brother Basiliscus,
and, as a vast fleet of more than a thousand vessels was about to be
sent to wrest Roman Africa from the Vandals, she obtained the command
of it for him. Verina could watch from the palace gardens the sailing
of the great armada which was to win the purple for her brother. And
in a few weeks a fugitive vessel returned with the terrible news that
the expedition had failed, the navy had been burned, and the great army
of a hundred thousand men sunk or scattered by Genseric. Basiliscus
had fled shamefully at the first shock, and had retired to hide his
disgrace in private life at Heraclea in Thrace.
It was the turn of Trascallisseus. His name was changed to Zeno, and
he was married to Ariadne and promoted to the highest honours.[4]
Verina had now to resign herself to a hope that she would share the
power with Zeno and her daughter, but the struggle of Isaurians and
Goths had first to be settled, and the settlement interests us. In less
than two years the struggle ended with a victory of the Isaurians--a
victory that has inscribed the name of the Emperor in the chronicles
as “Leo the Butcher.” We do not know the course of the quarrel, but
one day in the year 471 the marble and bronze palace rang with the
clash of swords. Asper and his elder son were cut to pieces by the
eunuchs within the palace. No doubt Verina and her family had their
boats moored at the foot of the garden, as we shall find others doing,
but the terrible axes of the Excubitors and the long swords of the
Candidates held back the tide of Goths and covered the marble floors
with their corpses. The Isaurians were masters of the Roman Empire.
Leo died three years afterwards. It is said that he wished to crown
Zeno before he died, but that the people were bitterly opposed to it.
He had, therefore, in order to secure the succession, associated his
infant (or boyish) grandson Leo with his imperial power, and had died
shortly afterwards. The mother and grandmother now came to an agreement
with Zeno, and, when the father came to do humble homage to his
imperial child, the boy, prompted by Ariadne and Verina, put the crown
on the father’s head, and the Court applauded the succession of the
Emperor Zeno. The sickly child died nine months afterwards (November
474), leaving Zeno in sole possession of the throne.
Here begin the adventures of Verina, and at length her virile character
is revealed to us. Her second daughter Leontia was married to a son of
the Western Emperor Anthemius--it was the period of ephemeral Emperors
that preceded the extinction of the Western Empire--and a niece of
hers was wedded to the Western Emperor Julius Nepos; though the
latter connexion soon proved its tragic futility, the Emperor fleeing
from Ravenna and falling by the hand of a bishop a few months after
coronation. While promoting this apparent scheme for the reunion of the
Roman Empire, Verina began to assert her personality more vigorously
at Constantinople. She still lived in the palace, and seems gradually
to have won its officers: as venal and corrupt a body as ever adorned
a court. The works of contemporary Greek historians survive only in
tantalizing fragments, or summaries, or they would undoubtedly furnish
a remarkable picture of Byzantine life in the next ten years, when
three Empresses occupied the stage. We can but piece together with
caution the fragments we find in the chronicles, and endeavour to
deduce the character of the Empresses from their actions.
Verina now had a notorious lover named Patricius, and was eager to set
him on the throne instead of Zeno. Her daughter Ariadne, a commonplace,
docile woman, clung to her husband, and the palace divided into two
hostile parties and awaited the result. It is piquant to remember
that Constantinople was at the time an intensely religious city. Its
patriarch overshadowed those of Alexandria and Rome; its populace
divided its interest almost equally between chariot-racing, vice and
the suppression of heresy; and to its great church of St Sophia, or to
the numerous chapels within the area of the palace, were conducted with
splendour the important relics which were constantly being “found” in
Palestine. But the frivolous citizens ignored the practical enjoinments
of their religion until the periodical fire, or plague, or earthquake
threw them into a spasm of repentance, and the population of the palace
seemed to hold themselves entirely dispensed from such common laws.
Verina, at least, knew neither weakness nor scruple in the pursuit of
her ambition.
In November 475 Zeno fled across the water to Chalcedon. Ships were
kept for such emergencies at the foot of the gardens, so that an
imperial family might be well on the way to the Asiatic shore before an
enemy could break through the hedge of guards. Zeno, protesting that
his life was threatened by Verina’s servants, fled precipitately, since
he left Ariadne under the power of her mother. It seems that Verina
virtually imprisoned her daughter, but Ariadne escaped and joined
her husband. From the coast they travelled, in a common cart, to the
wild fastnesses of Isauria, from which another turn of the wheel will
presently recall them to the glittering palace.
Zeno had been morose and unpopular, and it had not been difficult for
Verina to detach the Senators and troops from him. They had, however,
no mind to accept the virtual rule of Verina herself by putting her
paramour on the throne, and, to her great mortification, they summoned
her discredited brother Basiliscus from his exile in Thrace, and
clothed him with the purple. The change brings on the scene a third
Empress, Zenonis, who was made “Augusta” by her husband as soon as he
was crowned.
We have hardly time to make much acquaintance with Zenonis during the
brief splendour of her husband’s reign, but her momentary appearance
is not without romance. Passionately devoted to the more philosophical
religious sect, which maintained that there was but one nature in
Christ, she pressed her husband to espouse its cause and restore its
persecuted members. Constantinople was soon aflame with religious
controversy. Zenonis secured the return from exile, and appointment
as patriarch of Alexandria, of Timotheus Ælurus. Timotheus gathered
“all the scum of Alexandria”--the orthodox historian says--that could
be found in Constantinople, and conducted them in procession to the
church of St Sophia. But how Timotheus fell off his ass, to the delight
of Constantinople, and how Peter the Fuller was summoned to fill the
see of Antioch, and how Basiliscus wrung money out of the wealthy
orthodox churches, must be read in the pages of ecclesiastical history.
Zenonis was impelling her husband to his doom.
A much less serious defect in Zenonis, from the Constantinopolitan
point of view, was that she united with her zeal for the Monophysite
faith a genial disregard of its moral implications. A nephew of her
husband named Harmatius rapidly became one of the most luxurious fops
of the city. His lavishly spent wealth, his lovely hair and pink cheeks
and handsome person, and his reputation for gallantry, made him the
idol of the frequenters of the Hippodrome. Basiliscus made him prefect
of the city, and he delighted its lower populace by moving amongst them
in the shining armour of Achilles. Duty frequently called him to Court,
and his charms conquered the susceptible Empress. For some time they
sighed and crossed fiery glances as they met in the open chambers or
corridors, but at length the eunuch Daniel and the midwife Maria were
bribed to facilitate their desire. Such, at least, was the belief of
Constantinople, and the power of Basiliscus was further shaken.
His next fatal mishap was to quarrel with Verina. He had her lover
Patricius assassinated, and the enraged Empress began at once to pay
further gold to buy back the allegiance of Senators and officers
to Zeno. The zeal of Basiliscus for his heresy had now completely
alienated the people and embittered the clergy. He had ventured to send
officers into the churches to proscribe the great Council of Chalcedon,
which had condemned the heresy, and the city was profoundly agitated.
Vast crowds of men, women and children shouted their orthodox hymns
in the streets and filled the black-draped churches. When Basiliscus
angrily left the city for a distant palace, the saintly Daniel
descended from his pillar, followed him, and spoke to him in very
plain language.
In these circumstances Verina was encouraged to further her plan, and
the news soon reached Constantinople that Zeno had left the mountains
of Isauria and was in command of an army. Two generals, Illus and
Trocundus, were sent against him, and were bought by him. The very
meagre chronicles now indicate a desperate struggle between Basiliscus
and his sister. The Emperor began to trace the plot and execute the
plotters, and Verina fled for her life to the sanctuary of St Sophia.
We shall see often enough how frail a protection the law of sanctuary
afforded against the anger of an Emperor, but Harmatius, who seems
to have despised his lover’s husband, helped her to escape, and she
seems either to have crossed to Asia or concealed herself. Harmatius
himself was now sent against the rebels. Swearing the most solemn oath
of fidelity to Basiliscus that the clergy could devise, he straightway
sold his services to Zeno for the promise of a cæsarship for his son
and the perpetual command of the armies for himself.
The career of the romantic Zenonis then came to a rapid and tragic
close. As the troops of Zeno marched into the city Basiliscus and
his Empress fled to the church of St Sophia, and endeavoured, by
promises of undoing their heretical work, to induce the clergy to make
Zeno respect the sanctuary. After a time an imperial officer came to
the trembling wretches by the altar, and stripped them of all their
imperial ensigns, to be taken to Zeno and Ariadne. Zeno scrupled to
drag them from the altar, and they were at last induced to come forth
on the solemn assurance that their lives would be spared. It was now
their turn to sail for Asia. They were sent to an obscure village in
Cappadocia, and imprisoned in a tower. One tradition reports that they
were killed on the journey, but the more persistent and convincing
report is that the door of the tower was sealed with masonry, and the
brother of Verina and his Empress were doomed to a slow and horrible
death by starvation. It was the second revolution in three years, and
Verina had been an active element in both.
Exile had not improved the temper of Zeno, and the restoration of his
rule was at once stained with murder. He reflected gloomily on the
prestige of the handsome Harmatius, and easily persuaded himself that
he who had been faithless to one master might be faithless to another.
Soon afterwards the luxurious officer was cut to pieces as he ascended
the spiral stair from the palace to the Hippodrome; his son was
stripped of the robes and ensigns of Cæsar and was sent to take a minor
order of the Church at Blachernæ. But for the intervention of the more
humane Ariadne the youth would, like his father, have exchanged his
high dignity for death.
Constantinople seems to have regarded the murder with indifference,
but an avenger arose in the provinces and the two Empresses had soon
grave cause for anxiety. For a time Constantinople trembled under the
menace of the formidable barbarians, but they at length returned to
Italy without having penetrated into the city. A more serious danger
fell upon the palace in the following year, however, when the younger
daughter of Verina joined for a moment in the conflict of ambitions.
Leontia, it will be remembered, had married Marcian, son of the
Western Emperor Anthemius. On the ground that she had been “born in
the Porphyry,” while her elder sister Ariadne had been born before
the crowning of Leo, her husband demanded that the Empire should be
assigned to him, and marched on Constantinople at the head of an army.
He broke through the defences of the city, and some of the chroniclers
actually assure us that he surprised the guard of the palace in their
midday siesta. It is at least certain that Zeno and the Empresses
fled in alarm, and a vigorous action would have put Verina’s younger
daughter on the throne. Marcian seems, however, to have postponed the
occupation of the palace until the following day, and the commander
Illus, secretly transporting fresh troops from Asia, restored the
balance in favour of Zeno and Verina. Marcian was visited with the more
refined punishment of the Byzantine world--he was forced to enter the
priesthood--and Leontia retired into obscurity.
But the romance of Verina and her daughters had already entered upon
a fresh chapter. Verina had welcomed her returning son-in-law at the
palace, and her earlier expulsion of him and Ariadne was overlooked in
view of the important share she had had in securing their return. We
can, however, well understand that Zeno regarded her with suspicion
and distrust, and would welcome the first opportunity to remove her
from the palace. The argument which he had applied so remorselessly to
Harmatius plainly extended to his imperial mother-in-law. The writers
of the time represent him as not taking a prominent part in the events
that followed, but it is difficult to doubt that his secret commands
directed the whole intrigue.
In the year 478 a soldier attempted to assassinate the commander Illus,
and he confessed--under torture or bribery--that he had been instructed
by Verina’s steward Epinicius. The steward was given into the custody
of Illus by the Emperor, and was sent under guard to a castle in
Isauria. Illus followed, and easily induced the steward to impeach his
mistress. Illus then returned to the city, and arranged with Zeno a
plot for the capture of Verina. It is clear that the Empress-Mother
had great power in Constantinople, and that they dare not openly touch
her. Illus was to go to Isauria, and pretend that he feared danger from
Zeno. The Emperor was then to ask Verina to take to Illus with her own
hand a letter of indemnity, and, when she reached Isauria, she was to
be imprisoned there. We should find it difficult to believe that so
naïve a plot could entrap the virile and experienced Empress were we
not expressly assured of it by the highest authorities. In a few weeks
Verina was enraged to find herself imprisoned in a Papirian fortress,
one of the strongly fortified castles of remote Isauria. One authority
observes that they first compelled her to take the vows of a nun, but
we may decline to believe that they troubled to place so frail and so
superfluous a chain on such a woman.
From the lonely hills of Isauria Verina at length found a means of
communicating with Ariadne and securing her interest. Zeno, to whom
Ariadne appealed, referred her to Illus, and, when that general was
summoned to the Empress’s apartments, and implored with tears to
release her mother, he bluntly asked: “Do you want to be rid of your
husband and wed another?” Ariadne returned stormily to her husband,
and declared that either Illus or she must leave the palace. “If you
can do anything, I’m with you,” said the distracted Emperor, who
was overshadowed by the vigorous commander. Presently, as Illus was
mounting the spiral stair to the Hippodrome, a soldier in the pay
of Ariadne’s chamberlain fell upon him. Illus was saved, except for
the loss of an ear, by his guards, but he prudently decided that
Constantinople was injurious to his health and requested the Emperor
for a change of air. He was appointed commander of the eastern troops,
took with him the patrician Leontius and a distinguished company, and
reached Antioch only to declare himself in rebellion and Leontius
Emperor.
In the extraordinary confusion of events which the meagre chronicles
transmit to us Verina had obtained her wish in an unexpected manner.
A messenger came to her in her solitary prison to say that she was
to crown Leontius at the city of Tarsus and join forces with him and
Illus against Zeno. Verina was not the woman to hesitate. She crowned
Leontius, a cultivated Syrian noble and excellent soldier, at Tarsus,
and issued a characteristic letter to the officials and commanders of
the Empire:
“Verina Augusta, greeting to our prefects and Christian
peoples. You know that the Empire is ours, and that after the
death of our husband Leo we, trusting to improve the condition
of the commonwealth, raised to the throne Trascallisseus, who
was afterwards called Zeno; now, however, since we perceive
that he is deteriorating, and on account of his insatiable
avarice, we have thought it needful to give you a Christian
Emperor, adorned with piety and justice, that he may save the
commonwealth and administer war with moderation and prudence.
We have therefore bestowed the imperial crown on Leontius, most
pious of Romans, who will guard us all with care and prudence.”
The throne of Leontius was set up at Antioch, and the aged Empress
turned with her confederates to face Zeno’s troops. It was to be
the last act of the stirring drama of her life. Zeno acted with
unaccustomed vigour, and in a few days Verina and her companions were
flying to Isauria. They shut themselves in the Papirian fortress and
prepared to sustain a long siege. In the middle of the siege Verina
died, and was spared the humiliation of the final defeat. Four years
afterwards the heads of Illus and Leontius were exhibited on poles at
Constantinople, but the body of Verina was decently interred there by
her daughter.
The loss of contemporary historians prevents us from obtaining the
closer acquaintance with Verina which her romantic story leads us to
desire. Of her personal appearance and nationality we know nothing. One
is tempted to conceive her as a Syrian woman of the type of Zenobia
or Julia Domna: a virile and masterful personality, ambitious and
unscrupulous, subtle and astute rather than cultivated, paying no more
than a merely external and superficial regard to the teaching of the
new religion of the Roman world. It remains to say a few words about
the Empress Ariadne before we consider the next great Empress of the
Byzantine world.
In the few peaceful years which followed the death of Verina life at
the palace became sombre and painful. Zeno was morose, suspicious and
unpopular, and increased the gloom by the usual device of executing,
or murdering, suspects. Their only son came to a lamentable end.
The officials in charge of his education felt that it would be more
profitable to themselves to teach him vice and luxury rather than
the manly arts which his parents required, and he was profoundly
corrupted. His ostentatious vanity invited ridicule, and his indulgence
in unnatural vice and intemperance ruined his constitution. He fell
an early victim to dysentery, and his father plunged into deeper
bitterness amid the splendours and pleasures of his palace. Ariadne
must have awaited the end with impatience, and it is not improbable
that she already chose a partner to share her throne. Popular rumour
afterwards said that she buried Zeno alive. It was said that he used to
fall into a kind of trance after his gluttonous meals, and that Ariadne
in disgust bade the servants seal him in a tomb; the legend even
represents him as recovering and crying in vain to be relieved, and
one version pretends that, when the tomb was eventually opened, he was
found to have eaten his boots and belt. The truth seems to be that he
was subject to epileptic fits, one of which ended his life in April 491.
Ariadne at once nominated for the Empire a peasant of northern Greece
who had a very subordinate position in the military service of the
palace. A tall, handsome man--though one of his eyes was grey and
the other almost black--of strong, quiet character, he seems to have
been chosen by Ariadne as her future husband before Zeno died. He was
unmarried, though past middle age. One of Ariadne’s eunuchs secured
the consent of the Senators to the strange nomination, and Anastasius
obtained the applause of the people by remitting their debts to the
treasury. The only opposition came from the patriarch, or archbishop,
who had in earlier years been compelled to prevent Anastasius from
setting up an unofficial pulpit in the streets of the city and
teaching his favourite heresy. Anastasius genially forswore his heresy
for so high a price, was at once crowned Emperor, and married Ariadne
on the fortieth day after the burial of Zeno. Docile and clinging as
Ariadne had been in her earlier years, she fully reveals herself as
the daughter of Verina in her middle life. But the twenty-five years
of life which remained for her are years of obscurity, as far as the
Empress is concerned, and we will not linger over them. Storm after
storm broke over the palace, where she lived, but she seems to have
taken no part in public events. The Isaurians marched on the city to
demand the throne for the brother of Zeno, and a long struggle ended in
the complete destruction of the power of the Isaurians. Then Anastasius
returned to his Monophysite heresy, and the streets of the city and
towns of the Empire rang with defiance and anathema. On one occasion,
in 512, the mob burned the monasteries which Anastasius favoured, and
so angrily assailed the palace that the ships were made ready at the
quays to conduct Ariadne and her husband to Asia. Anastasius had been
guilty of the additional indiscretion of attempting to reform the
morals of Constantinople and forbidding contests with wild beasts in
the arena.[5] Ariadne lived until the year 515 or 516, when she must
have been about seventy years old. So completely was she overshadowed
by her second husband that the only reference we find to her in the
chronicles is that on one occasion she begged Anastasius to make a
certain appointment, and he refused.
CHAPTER II
THE EARLY LIFE OF THEODORA
The next Empress to occupy the superb apartments in the palace, with
their couches of ivory and silver and their regiments of fawning
eunuchs and silk-clad ladies, was assuredly one of the most remarkable
figures that ever sat on a throne. The Empress Euphemia hardly ever
issues into the pages of history from the becoming seclusion of the
women’s quarters in the palace, but the few details which we have
concerning her suggest the most incongruous figure that imagination
could place in such a world, and a brief account of her romantic
elevation is a necessary introduction to the equally remarkable
and better-known story of the famous Empress Theodora. The Roman
Empire seemed to be deterred by some faint recollection of its early
democratic spirit from admitting the hereditary principle; but the
absence of this arrangement for securing the succession, together with
the complete lack of any really democratic arrangement, often threw
it into a chaotic confusion when a ruler died, and made its internal
history a thrilling succession of romances and tragedies, with an
occasional page of comedy. In this case it is comedy.
Anastasius, after playing his successive parts as peasant, lay
preacher, soldier and ruler of the world, had passed away, amid the
derision and rejoicing of his people, in the year 518. His nephews had
feeble pretensions to succeed him, but the most powerful man in the
city, the Prefect Amantius, decided that the purple should pass to his
friend Theocritus. He therefore sought the commander, or Count, of the
Excubitors--the more formidable guards of the palace--and placed in his
hands a large sum of money for distribution among the troops. Justin,
the said commander, was an Illyrian peasant who had won promotion in
the wars. He was in his later sixties, though still a powerful man,
with handsome rosy face and curly white hair; but under this disarming
exterior he concealed an ambition and astuteness which the prefect
failed to suspect. He distributed the money in his own interest, and
passed unopposed from the modest quarters of the guard to the more
luxurious chambers of the palace.
Euphemia was the wife of Justin, and it may safely be said that no
woman ever experienced a more romantic elevation. In his military days
Justin had bought a barbaric slave named Lupicina, and raised her
to the rank of his concubine; though no doubt he married her in the
course of time. She retained the uncouth and illiterate manners of her
class, and Constantinople must have smiled to see her in the richly
embroidered robes of purple silk, with cascades of diamonds and pearls
falling from her gorgeous diadem. The acclamation of the crowd changed
her name to Euphemia, and she retired to the congenial privacy of her
palace. Justin brought his equally illiterate mother Bigleniza to the
palace from her rustic home, and the two women no doubt contracted a
fitting friendship in their wonderful new home. Of public action on
their part there is no question, and the events of the next few years
do not concern us. I will say only that, after securing his throne by
cutting off the head of Amantius and crushing Theocritus under heavy
stones in his dungeon, for venturing to resent the trick he had played
them, Justin ruled with moderation, if not prudence, for nine years.
Euphemia died three or four years before him, living just long enough
to see, and emphatically resent, her successor, the notorious Theodora.
In approaching the story of Theodora it is necessary to premise a
few words on the authority which has provided most of the sensational
statements about her, and to pay respectful attention to the efforts
of some recent historical writers to discredit those statements. The
general outline of her story has been made familiar by Gibbon, who
has genially dilated on the elevation of one of the lewdest actresses
and most notorious prostitutes of Constantinople to the position, not
merely of mistress of the greatest empire of the time, but also of
patroness of an important branch of the Church and the daily companion
of saintly monks and bishops. Since Theodora is very commonly described
by the chroniclers as at least equal in power to her husband, the great
Justinian, and since the next most powerful woman in the Byzantine
Empire at the time is assigned a similar origin to that of Theodora,
the world has long reflected with amazement on this spectacle of the
Roman Empire at the feet of two imperfectly converted prostitutes.
Such a situation could not pass unchallenged before the more critical
tribunal of modern history, and there are scholars who have rejected
entirely the romantic story of the youth of Theodora.[6] The majority
of historians, including the two chief living authorities, Professor
Bury and M. Diehl, regard the story as true in substance though
unreliable in detail.
The more romantic statements concerning Theodora are taken from a
work that purports to have been written by the greatest contemporary
historical writer, Procopius, but there are writers (such as Ranke and
Bury) who regard the work as, at the most, a later compilation of notes
left by Procopius, and in any case it is so envenomed in temper, and
occasionally so reckless in statement, that it should be regarded with
suspicion. The problem cannot be discussed at length here, but it is
necessary to justify the large use I am about to make of the work (the
“Anecdotes”) which bears the name of Procopius.
If it were true, as is sometimes said, that we had no authority for
the impeachment of the character of Theodora beyond the “Anecdotes,”
we should have to hesitate very seriously, but this is by no means
true. Procopius (“On the Persian War”) represents her as playing a
most unscrupulous part in the ruin of John of Cappadocia. Liberatus
(a contemporary cleric) and Anastasius exhibit the Empress to us
corrupting the papacy itself and deposing a venerable pontiff by the
most cruel and flagrantly dishonest charges. Zonaras and other writers
accuse her, not merely of avarice, as Mr Mallett says, but of the most
heartless and unblushing corruption in feeding her avarice. There is
every reason to regard Theodora, after her elevation to the throne, as
a woman devoid of moral scruple. But we now have ample confirmation
also of the story of her origin. The statement of an eleventh-century
writer, Aimoinus, that Justinian took his wife from a brothel, shows,
in spite of its wild inaccuracies, that some such tradition was found
in European literature quite apart from the “Anecdotes.” But the
publication in the nineteenth century of the writings of John, Bishop
of Ephesus, has furnished a decisive proof. This Monophysite bishop and
cultivated writer, who lived for years beside the palace of Theodora,
and whose sect received the most imperial and incalculable benefits
from her, speaks of her as “Theodora of the brothel”; and he uses the
phrase in such a way as to intimate plainly that this was the name
by which she was known in Constantinople before her elevation to the
throne.[7] Indeed, the fact that the author of the “Anecdotes” does
not assail the chastity of Theodora after her marriage increases our
confidence in his account of her earlier life; as he did not intend
to publish his work--it was not published until 1623--it would have
been just as easy to invent or collect legends about her after as
before her marriage. On the other hand, the temper of the writer is
so bitter and malignant that we must reserve our judgment in regard
to the details of his strange narrative. He has gathered together
every defaming rumour about Theodora and Justinian that circulated
in Constantinople, even admitting nonsense obviously unworthy of a
serious writer, and we cannot sift the true from the legendary. The
source of his animosity cannot be determined. From the tone of his
remarks on religion I gather that he was one of the many surviving
pagans who were forced into outward conformity with the new religion,
and, after giving formal praise in his historical works to Justinian
and Theodora for the splendour of their reign, he relieved his soul,
in this secret collection of notes, of the deep disgust he felt at the
contrast between their characters and their professions and between
the glamour and the misery of their empire. It must be remembered that
the thoroughly Christian and very weighty authority, Evagrius, is just
as severe on Justinian; there was in Justinian, he says, “something
surpassing the cruelty of beasts,” and any prostitute could despoil
a wealthy man by a false charge (say, of unnatural vice--a trick of
Theodora’s) “provided she let Justinian share her vile gain.” It is the
common teaching of the authorities that the Empress was worse than the
Emperor.
In point of fact, there is nothing implausible or improbable in
the details of Procopius’s story of Theodora’s early life, and the
judicious reader will merely make allowance for the rhetorical strength
of its superlatives. Her father Acacius had been a keeper of the bears
which were baited in the Hippodrome in the reign of Anastasius. The
Hippodrome at Constantinople united the functions which at Rome had
been divided between the circus, the theatre and the amphitheatre.
Its chief attraction was the chariot-racing which provided the central
and most thrilling sensation of Roman life.[8] Between the races,
however, there were contests with wild beasts in the arena, and there
were the numerous nondescript performances which occupied the theatre
at Rome--mimes (actors by gesture), clowns, acrobats, conjurers, etc.
Acacius was bear-keeper to the “greens,” and, when he died, his widow
promptly secured another partner and claimed the office for him. But
the superintendent Asterius had sold the office to another man, and the
shrewd widow appealed to the sympathy of the crowd by parading in the
Hippodrome, the heads and hands of her three daughters crowned with
the emblems of virginity. The “greens” jeered--possibly at the sight
of the eldest daughter, Comitona, a loose girl of seventeen, dressed
as a Vestal Virgin--but the “blues” received them with sympathy; a
distinction which the pale and slender little Theodora would never
forget.
The mother, who is said to have come from Cyprus, either before
or after the birth of Theodora, then pressed the fortunes of her
daughters in the theatrical world. Comitona was already a mime (or
actress without words) and, as was usual, a prostitute. The young
Theodora presently began to attend her elder sister, and is said to
have begun her career of infamy as she waited among the slaves and
lackeys on the fringe of the Hippodrome. When she in turn became an
actress, her pretty pale face, lithe figure and unrestrained gaiety and
dissoluteness made her a great favourite. She stripped to the narrowest
limit of decency which the very liberal law permitted, performed the
most nearly obscene ribaldries which the Roman theatre allowed, and
was pre-eminent for the abandonment of her gestures and movements; and
in the hours of the night, when the wealthier patrons of the Hippodrome
entertained themselves in perfumed chambers with the actresses and
courtesans, Theodora was in the greatest favour.
It is absurd to say that this is to impute to Theodora “a moral
turpitude unparalleled in any age.” It was the common turpitude of
that age, of our age, and of every intervening age. The theatre,
indeed, no longer admits the very broad licence which was admitted at
Constantinople, but the performances which are ascribed by Procopius
to Theodora are innocent in comparison with certain performances which
may be witnessed, in semi-publicity, in very many cities of Europe
to-day. Of Theodora’s private behaviour--that she practised both forms
of unnatural, as well as natural, vice--one need only say that it is,
and always has been, common to her class. An actress at that time meant
a woman of loose conduct. The imperial decrees and the Church fully
recognised this, and it is significant that one of the theatres--if not
the one theatre--of Constantinople was called “The Harlots,” and is so
named in an imperial document. Procopius is merely imputing to Theodora
the common practices of loose women of her time and our own. And when,
in later pages, we come to realise the fiery and unrestrained temper of
the beautiful Greek, we can well believe that she was at that time one
of the worst of her class.
Not less plausible is the next chapter in the life of Theodora. A
wealthy official, Hecebolus, induced her to accompany him to the
African province which he was to administer, and her very brief
career at Constantinople came to a close. M. Diehl conjectures that
this occurred in 517, in her eighteenth year, and that she remained
a few years with Hecebolus. However that may be, she was, about
the year 521, ejected from the governor’s house, and she passed to
Alexandria, and thence to Antioch and the other cities of Syria and
Asia Minor. It is most probable that this was the time when, either at
Alexandria or Antioch, she became a convert to the Monophysite faith.
The question of the true character of Christ had racked and rent the
Eastern world, amidst all its ribaldry and vice, for two hundred years,
and the burning issue at this time was whether the nature of Christ
should be described as single or twofold; the Monophysites held that
there was but one nature in Christ, and were bitterly opposed to the
“Synodists,” or supporters of the orthodox Council of Chalcedon. It may
seem incongruous to drag in so solemn an issue on so defiled a page
of biography, but it is essential for the understanding of Theodora’s
career.
According to Procopius, Theodora still practised her evil profession
in the cities of Asia. For the next few years, however, there is much
obscurity about her movements, and the biographer cannot proceed with
great confidence. One eleventh-century writer represents that Justinian
and the commander Belisarius chose their wives in a loose house in
Constantinople; another equally remote and unreliable chronicler says
that Justinian found Theodora living a modest life, supporting herself
by spinning wool, in a small house under the portico--a very strange
residence for a virtuous woman. I prefer still to follow the very
plausible story (in substance) of the “Anecdotes.” At Antioch Theodora
went in great distress to visit Macedonia, an actress who had influence
with Justinian. It is hardly strained to conjecture that this was the
real occasion of her introduction to Justinian; that she went on to
Constantinople with a recommendation to him and was at once taken into
his house. Beyond question she was his mistress for some years before
he married her.
Justin had brought from Upper Macedonia, and educated in the schools
of Constantinople, the favourite nephew who was to become the Emperor
Justinian. At the time when Theodora came back to Constantinople,
about the year 522, he approached his fortieth year: a handsome,
wealthy and free-living bachelor, of fresh and florid complexion and
the curly hair of a Greek. His reputation was somewhat sinister: his
influence unbounded. In entertaining the populace on his elevation to
the consulship in the previous year he had spent about £160,000, and
had turned twenty lions and thirty leopards together into the arena. He
was plainly marked for the throne. The pretty pale face and bright eyes
and graceful figure of Theodora captivated him, and her experienced art
enabled her to profit by the infatuation. Justinian lived in the palace
of Hormisdas on the shore of the Sea of Marmora, and Constantinople
would take little scandal at his connexion with Theodora. Four or five
years’ absence would have enfeebled the memory of her earlier career,
and the zeal for the true religion--the Monophysite heresy, which she
paraded from the moment of her connexion with Justinian--would ensure
the genial indulgence of the frivolous population. Justinian had her
made a “patrician” (or noble), lodged her in his beautiful palace, and
showered his favours upon her. It is at this point that Bishop John
begins to describe his co-religionists appealing to the protection of
“Theodora of the brothel” from all parts of the Empire.
There were two obstacles to marriage. Justin was feeble and senile,
and little able or disposed to resist his nephew’s whims, but Euphemia
strongly opposed the marriage until her death in 523 or 524. The more
serious impediment was the standing law of the Roman Empire, that a
noble could not wed a woman of ill-fame (an actress, tavern-girl or
courtesan). Justinian afterwards removed this restriction, but it
must have been in some way overruled by Justin, and many authorities
believe that the first law in the Justinian Code on the point was
really promulgated by Justin. A daughter seems to have been born before
the marriage, possibly before the connexion with Justinian, as John
of Ephesus confirms the statement of Procopius that Theodora had a
marriageable grandson before she died (in 548).
The next step for the enterprising young Greek was the attainment of
the throne. Justin was pressed, as he aged, to associate his nephew
in the government, and, although he nervously refused for some time,
he at length (April 527) conferred the supreme dignity of Augustus on
his nephew and of Augusta on Theodora. She now entered upon the full
splendour of imperial life, and no parvenue ever bore it with more
exaggerated dignity than the ex-actress, as we shall see. There must
have been many who smiled when Theodora first witnessed the old sights
of the Hippodrome from the imperial chapel of St Stephen, or sat for
the homage of the Senators in the long gold-embroidered mantle, with
the screen of heavy jewels falling in chains from her diadem upon
her neck and breast, as we find her depicted in a mosaic at Ravenna;
but her formidable power and her unscrupulous use of it would soon
extinguish the last echo of her opprobrious nickname.
The early years of Theodora’s power were spent in enlarging the
prestige of her position and in recompensing her friends. The existent
palaces could not meet the requirements of the woman who, a few years
before, had begged money of an Antioch courtesan. Justin had to annex
his palace of Hormisdas to the imperial domain and build fresh palaces.
The favourite residence of Theodora was the cool and superb palace of
Hieria across the water, and in spite of the lack of accommodation
for her enormous suite and the terrors of a whale, popularly named
Porphirio, which infested the waters of Constantinople at the time, she
frequently crossed to it.
At home, in the sacred palace, she led a life strangely opposed to that
of the temperate, accessible and hard-working Justinian. Rising at an
early hour she devoted a considerable time to the bath and toilet, by
which she trusted to sustain her charm, in spite of delicate health.
After breaking her fast, she again retired to rest before she would
consent to receive courtiers and suitors. In view of her paramount
influence with the Emperor many sought her patronage, or dreaded to
incur her terrible resentment, by seeming indifferent to it. Numbers
of nobles waited, sometimes for days, in the hot ante-room to her
apartments, standing on tiptoe to catch the eye of the pampered eunuchs
who passed to and fro. After a long delay they might be admitted to
kiss the golden sandals of Theodora, and listen to her august wishes.
No man was permitted to speak except in reply to a question. In the
course of time, as we shall see, the highest nobles eagerly submitted
to this humiliating treatment, in order to preserve their wealth
from the extortioner. Dinner and supper, at which, though Theodora
ate little, the most opulent banquets had to be served, occupied the
further hours of the day, together with Theodora’s abundant devotions
and converse with holy men.
Her friends were generously admitted to share her advantages. The
“Anecdotes” tell a story of an illegitimate son of hers who discovered
his birth, came to the Empress for recognition or money, and was
at once despatched to another world. That seems to be one of the
calumnious fables which the writer too eagerly admitted into his
indictment. The “Anecdotes” themselves rather show that Theodora did
not make every effort to conceal the past, however strongly she might
resent discussion of it. Her sister Comitona was certainly married
in the first year of her reign to a wealthy and powerful noble.
It is not so certain, but probable enough, that she cherished her
earlier theatrical friends, Chrysomallo and Indara, and found wealthy
husbands for their daughters. The woman whose name we shall find most
closely connected with hers, Antonina, the wife of the great general
Belisarius, is said to have been her tirewoman before she married
Belisarius. This would account for Theodora’s coolness until Antonina
won her by securing her revenge on John of Cappadocia, when Theodora
is said not merely to have overlooked, but promoted, the vices of her
friend. There is, at least, no room for doubt about the character of
Antonina.
But while Theodora admitted these mute reminders of her earlier life,
she turned with extraordinary severity upon her earlier colleagues
as a body and undertook the purification of the city. The decrees of
Justinian for regulating the morals of Constantinople--decrees which
go so far as to define the penalties for people who made assignations
in churches, and on the strength of which bishops were castrated and
exhibited in public for unnatural vice--are generally ascribed to her
influence. She had the imperial net dragged through the loose houses
of Constantinople, and five hundred of the occupants were imprisoned
in an ancient palace on the Asiatic shore: a form of enforced piety
which, the carping Procopius says, drove many of them to suicide. Many
writers think this zeal for purity inconsistent with the story of her
earlier life. It has rather the appearance of a feverish affectation
of repentance, and must be balanced by the many proofs we have of
Theodora’s really corrupt and unscrupulous character. One may recall
that Domitian drastically punished the vices of others. Procopius would
have us believe that Theodora compelled unmarried women to marry,
and that when two delicate widows fled to the Church to escape her
pressure, she had them dragged from the altar and married to men of
infamous life. Yet, he says, vice was rampant in Constantinople, and
protected by the Empress, when money was paid into her greedy coffers.
Such details we cannot control, and must reproduce with reserve; we
know only from other sources that she extorted money by corrupt means.
And the most singular and piquant feature of Theodora’s life at this
period was her zealous patronage of the Monophysites. Long before her
coronation, from the time when she became the mistress of Justinian,
the joyous news of her elevation flew throughout the Empire among
the persecuted heretics. They had had their hours of triumph under
Basiliscus and Anastasius, but with the accession of Justin the
orthodox had returned to power, and the twofold nature of the gentle
Christ had been urged with bloody arguments. From the monasteries and
towns of the provinces pilgrims now began to arrive at the Hormisdas
palace in great numbers, and through Justinian she obtained relief and
money for them. When she entered the imperial palace the procession
increased, and, while the nobles of Constantinople were detained
for hours before being permitted to kiss her feet, ragged monks and
unlettered deacons strode into the imperial apartments without a
moment’s delay.
So zealous, indeed, was Theodora for their edifying conversation that
she kept them as long as possible about her. St Simeon of Persia came
to plead the cause of his persecuted brethren, and was induced to
live for a year in the luxurious palace. Arsenius of Palestine, one
of the chief firebrands of his province, was cherished by her; though
Procopius affirms that he at length lost her favour and was crucified.
Orthodox monks were even permitted with impunity to rebuke the terrible
Empress. A holy hermit came one day to chide Theodora for her heresy.
Ragged and dirty, with garment so patched that hardly three inches
of cloth of one colour appeared in it, he admonished her in fiery
language. Theodora was so charmed with his piety that she sought to add
him to her domestic collection of sanctities. When persuasion failed,
she resorted to corruption; we read the story, not in the “Anecdotes,”
but in John. She had a large sum of gold concealed in linen and imposed
on him, but the fiery monk hurled it across the palace, crying: “Thy
money perish with thee.” St Sabas, also, the unlettered and unadorned
abbot of an orthodox monastery at Jerusalem, came to ask her patronage.
His piety excused his heresy in her eyes, and she kept him for days
at the palace, and humbly asked his prayers that she might have a son.
The grim monk refused, and, when companions asked how he could scorn
the request of so generous a patroness, he replied: “We do not want any
fruit from that womb, lest it be suckled on the heretical doctrines of
Severus.”
So great at length became the number of pious pilgrims from the
provinces, and so eager was Theodora to retain them near her person,
that the Hormisdas palace, which Justinian had richly decorated for
her and enclosed within the area of the imperial palace, was converted
into a monastery. Then were witnessed the quaintest scenes that ever
enlivened the passion-throbbing palace of the Eastern Emperors. Five
hundred monks, of all ages and nationalities, of every degree of
sanctity and raggedness, were crowded in or about its marbled walls.
Every form that monastic fervour had assumed in the fiery provinces of
Syria or Egypt was exemplified in it. The orderly community sang its
endless psalms and macerated its flesh in the rooms where Justinian had
dallied with his mistress: little huts were scattered about the grounds
for those who were called to the life of the hermit: and even columns
were set up here and there for those who would imitate the more novel
and arduous piety of St Simeon Stylites, and pass, at the open summit
of the column, a kind of existence which the polite pen must refrain
from describing. All the beggars of Constantinople gathered for the
crumbs of this remarkable colony, and crowds of citizens pressed to
witness this singular oasis of virtue in the most corrupt city of the
world. Theodora rarely let a day pass without crossing the gardens to
receive the blessing and enjoy the pious conversation of such of the
saints as would deign to converse with a woman.
How she went on to put a courtly heretic upon the archiepiscopal
throne of Constantinople, and, by an extraordinary piece of intrigue
and corruption, depose a pope and replace him by one who pretended to
favour her designs, we shall see presently. We must now set forth the
imperial career of Theodora in chronological order, and learn what
kind of character this remarkable woman maintained amid the chants and
prayers of her deeply venerated monks.
CHAPTER III
THE EMPRESS THEODORA
We have seen how Theodora rewarded the friends, and must now see
how she punished the enemies, of her earlier career. It will be
remembered that her father had been a servant of the “greens” of the
Hippodrome, but that this party had greeted her mother with derision
when she appealed for sympathy with her three children, while the
“blues” received them compassionately. Twenty years afterwards the
young circus-girl had become the most powerful woman in the world,
and the blues began to tyrannize with impunity over their rivals. In
the earliest years of the reign of Theodora and Justinian we find
them swollen with conceit and encouraged in the perpetration of every
kind of disorder. The livelier “sparks” of that faction advertised
their formidable character by adopting the trousers and sandals of the
fierce Huns and trimming their hair after the fashion of those terrible
invaders; they wore long moustaches and beards, shaved the front part
of the head, and cultivated long hair at the back.
A few outrages soon taught them that the laws would not be enforced
against them, and before long the city of Constantinople became,
during the night, a land of terror. The citizen who dared to pass
along the streets with a gold clasp to his belt or his cloak or money
in his purse was robbed, and women could not move after nightfall.
The continued silence of the authorities encouraged the blues, and
drew all the dissolute elements of the city into their ranks. They now
began to force the doors of the houses, plunder the coffers, rape the
wives and daughters, and carry off the more handsome slaves and boys.
At the least resistance their deadly poniards were drawn, and murder
became frequent. When the authorities intervened, none but the greens
were punished. The evil rapidly spread from night to day, and from the
metropolis to other cities. It would be futile in this case to quarrel
with the details given in the “Anecdotes.” The great riot into which
the greens were stung by this reign of terror is an historical fact;
and nothing but the vindictive memory of Theodora can explain how
Justinian, the great legislator, permitted so appalling a disorder.
Theodora meantime enjoyed the conversation of her monks and hermits,
and even Justinian seems to have been unconscious that he was slipping
the leash of beasts whom he might be powerless to control. At length,
on 14th January 532, the greens stirred. The Emperor appeared in
his _kathisma_ at the Hippodrome, and an appeal was made to him for
justice. His officer replied disdainfully, and a long and curious
conversation took place.[9] The Emperor still refused to grant the
impartial administration of justice or to punish the murderers, and
the greens left the Hippodrome. They gathered in strength in the
streets, and, although Justinian prudently sent to learn and partly
to remove their grievances, they remained in arms. Belisarius was now
sent against them with a troop of Goths, and the rioting and burning
began. Unfortunately for the Court an accident then happened which had
the singular effect of uniting the two factions against the troops.
Seven criminals were to be executed, and Procopius cannot conceal
the fact--in spite of his insistence that the blues were never
punished--that some of the seven were blues and some greens. After
five of the seven had been despatched, the rope broke, and the crowd
demanded the acquittal of the remaining two. The authorities refused,
and, as one criminal was a blue and the other a green, the factions
turned in common anger upon the prefect and the troops.
The terrible riot that followed during four days must be read in
history. The first part of the palace, the great church of St Sophia,
and many other churches, mansions and public buildings were destroyed.
Priests who rushed into the fray holding aloft the disarming emblems
of their faith were cut down. On the fourth day, a Sunday, Justinian
entered the Hippodrome with a Bible in his hand, and took a solemn oath
to spare the offenders if they would disarm. “Ass, thou art perjuring
thyself,” was the infuriated answer; and he retired to contemplate with
Theodora the impending ruin of their reign. On the following day the
crowd forced Hypatius, nephew of the Emperor Anastasius, to accept such
purple robes as they could obtain, marched with him in triumph to the
Hippodrome, and exulted in the downfall of Justinian and Theodora, who
were believed to have fled to Asia.
The “great” Justinian makes a lamentable appearance throughout the
whole riot, which he had guiltily occasioned, but Theodora and the
abler ministers were not minded to yield. As they gathered in the hall
of the palace, to which the cries in the Hippodrome must almost have
penetrated, the chief eunuch Narses came to report that by a judicious
distribution of money he had distracted the factions and weakened the
cause of Hypatius. It is probably this news that turned the scale
in the wavering counsels of Justinian and his ministers, but it was
Theodora who pressed it home. The speech which Procopius assigns to
her is worth reproducing, though we cannot regard it as more than a
rhetorical paraphrase of the words she used:
“In my opinion this is no time to admit the maxim that a woman
must not act as a man among men; nor, if she fires the courage
of the halting, are we to consider whether she does right or
no. When matters come to a crisis, we must agree as to the
best course to take. My opinion is that, although we may save
ourselves by flight, it is not to our interest. Every man that
sees the light must die, but the man who has once been raised
to the height of empire cannot suffer himself to go into exile
and survive his dignity. God forbid that I should ever be seen
stripped of this purple, or live a single day on which I am not
to be saluted as Mistress. If thou desirest to go, Emperor,
nothing prevents thee. There is the sea; there are the steps to
the boats. But have a care that when thou leavest here, thou
dost not exchange this sweet light for an ignoble death. For my
part I like the old saying: empire is a fine winding-sheet.”
Some such sentiments, we may believe, were urged by Theodora, and
affected the decision. The populace was penned in the Hippodrome, and
Justinian’s officers and troops stealthily surrounded it. Rushing in at
the various entrances, they fell with such fury upon the people that
the sun went down on the corpses of between thirty and forty thousand
citizens heaped in its arena or on the terraced seats.
The health of Theodora suffered from the strain of this terrible week,
and she went to take the waters at the Pythian baths in Bithynia: a
crowd of nobles and four thousand soldiers and eunuchs forming her
retinue. Meantime Justinian set about the congenial task of re-erecting
the Chalke (or front part of the palace), the church of St Sophia and
the other ruined buildings, on a more splendid scale than before.
We shall see later by what means he and his Empress obtained the
prodigious sums of money they needed for their enormous expenditure.
We will also postpone for a moment the early relations of Theodora to
the general Belisarius and his romantic spouse, and consider the next
important episode in which her character is seen.
In spite of the orthodoxy and religious zeal of Justinian, his wife
had such influence over him and apart from him that in the year 535
she secured the see of Constantinople for the Monophysite Anthimus, to
the unbounded delight of her sect and amidst the furious maledictions
of the orthodox throughout the Empire. Rome was at that time regarded
only as a sister Church of great authority and antiquity, but its
venerable Bishop Agapetus was summoned to the Eastern metropolis and
he succeeded in ousting Theodora’s favourite. Agapetus, however, died
soon afterwards at Constantinople, and Theodora now conceived the bold
design of putting a Monophysite pope upon the throne at Rome itself.
For the remarkable events which follow I am not using the “Anecdotes”
at all. The story is told in substance by a contemporary ecclesiastical
writer, Liberatus the Deacon, of Carthage, and the chronicler Victor,
and is repeated, with large and legendary additions, by Anastasius, the
Roman librarian, of the ninth century.
In the suite of Agapetus at Constantinople was an ambitious and courtly
deacon named Vigilius, who contrived to let his accommodating temper
become known to the Empress. He was taken to her apartments, and he
promised, if the Roman see and a large sum of money were bestowed on
him, to reinstate Anthimus and the other Monophysite bishops. In the
meantime the Gothic ruler of Italy had appointed a certain Silverius to
the Roman see. Theodora tested him with a request that he would restore
Anthimus, but he refused; murmuring, it is said, as he wrote the
letter: “This will cost me my life,” as it did. The Byzantine general
Belisarius had meantime taken and occupied Rome, and a few words must
be said to introduce him, and his wife Antonina, into the story of
Theodora.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS THEODORA AND HER ATTENDANTS
MOSAIC OF THE 6TH CENTURY IN S. VITALE, RAVENNA]
I have previously mentioned an eleventh-century legend concerning
Belisarius and Justinian and their wives. It was said that the two men
had one day entered a house of ill-fame, found there two captive and
fascinating Amazons named Antonia [Theodora] and Antonina, and married
them. The myth seems to have crystallized about a belief that Antonina
had risen from the same depths as Theodora, as the “Anecdotes” say,
and the fact that Antonina was a woman of abandoned character and a
leading lady in the service of the Empress seems to confirm this. In
any case, she is openly assailed by Procopius (her husband’s secretary)
in his historical works as “capable of anything,” and is described in
the Lexicon of Suidas as “an infamous adulteress.” She had married
Belisarius, and accompanied him in 533 on his brilliant campaign for
the recovery of Africa from the Vandals. With them went a handsome
and foppish Thracian youth named Theodosius. He was fresh from the
baptismal font, in which the patriarch had washed away his Monophysite
heresy, and it was believed that the presence of so sacred a youth
would bring luck to the fleet. Before they reached Carthage Antonina
enjoyed the secret love of the youth, but a servant betrayed them, and
Theodosius fled to Ephesus, where we must leave him for a time. It is
said that Antonina had the servant’s tongue cut out.
Belisarius passed from the subjugation of North Africa to a victorious
war in Italy, and he and Antonina were staying at a palace on the
Pincian Hill at Rome when the deacon Vigilius--now, no doubt, a
priest--came with the commands of Theodora. “Trump up a charge against
Silverius, and send him to Constantinople,” the order ran, according to
the Roman librarian, and as the more authoritative Liberatus affirms
that the charge was false, and was supported by mendacious witnesses
and forged letters, there is no possibility of freeing Theodora from
this grave imputation. The Pope was summoned to the palace, where
Antonina lay on a couch with Belisarius at her feet. Antonina at once
charged him with treasonable correspondence with the Goths. We may
or may not believe the picturesque version of Anastasius: that the
servants at once stripped the Pope of his robes, dressed him as a monk,
and interred him in a distant monastery. It is certain, at least, that
Silverius was, at Theodora’s command, deposed on a false charge and
thrust out of sight. Vigilius became Pope, and the fate of Silverius is
unknown to history.
I cannot entirely omit a later sequel to this sacrilegious and
unscrupulous deed, though it rests only on the feebler authority of
Anastasius. For a few years Theodora demanded in vain that Vigilius
should fulfil his promise. He had, he said, come to see the heinousness
of such a promise, and could not discharge it. In 544, therefore,
Theodora sent an officer to Rome with a command which Anastasius gives
in these words: “If you find him in the church of St Peter spare
him, but if in the Lateran or the palace, or in any other church,
put him on ship at once, and bring him to us. If you fail, I will,
by Him that liveth for ever, have your skin torn from your body.” It
is known, at least, that Vigilius was shipped away from Rome at the
end of 544; but that he was at once taken to Constantinople, and that
Theodora had him dragged through the streets like a bear, is untrue. He
reached Constantinople after her death. We cannot therefore follow the
deposition of Vigilius as confidently as we follow the sordid story of
his elevation, but we can have little doubt that Theodora punished him.
Another authentic episode of the time reveals the same unscrupulous
disdain of principles in the patroness of the Monophysite sect. The
story is told by Procopius, not in the “Anecdotes,” but in his open and
authoritative work “On the Persian War,” in spite of his usual extreme
care to suppress offensive details. The Prefect of Constantinople,
John of Cappadocia, had incurred the bitter hostility of the Empress.
The very unattractive portrait which Procopius supplies, and Gibbon
reproduces, of John prevents us from thinking that in this case an
innocent man was persecuted. While he freely promoted all the schemes
of Justinian and his notorious steward to wring money out of the
citizens--“by fair means and foul,” as Zonaras says--he levied his
private tithe on all their gains, and was popularly believed to indulge
in secret the most sensual tastes and the even worse abominations of
some pagan cult. He seems to have been the one man to regard Theodora
with open disdain, and she retorted with venomous hate. Although
guards surrounded his bedroom, he started every hour from his feverish
slumbers to look for the expected assassin.
His value to Justinian enabled him to keep his position until the
year 540, when Belisarius and Antonina returned from Italy to
Constantinople.[10] Antonina remained in the city while her husband
went against the Persians. She feverishly summoned her Thracian lover
from the monastery in which he hypocritically lingered at Ephesus, but
the wrath of Belisarius held him aloof. Whether or no Antonina then
deliberately sought the intervention of the Empress, we cannot say, but
she proceeded to merit it. She learned of Theodora’s hatred of John,
and conceived a plot for his destruction.
John had an ingenuous and amiable daughter who seems to have been not
unacquainted with the political situation. Twice had the brilliant
Belisarius been withdrawn to the city in a fit of jealousy, and there
were rumours that the strong man was wearying of serving an Emperor
who could do nothing but employ others and reap their glory. Antonina
won her way to the heart and confidence of the girl, and betrayed to
her that her husband was secretly disaffected. The artless Euphemia
hastened to tell her father that there was a prospect of overthrowing
Theodora, whom they both hated. Even John was deceived by the astute
adventuress. It was arranged that Antonina should go to her suburban
palace and meet John there during the night. We do not know that
Theodora had a share in framing this diabolical plot, but it was now
communicated to her by Antonina, and she at once pressed it and used
her resources for carrying it out with safety. In the dead of the
following night John entered the palace of the unscrupulous adventuress
and listened to her whispers of treachery. Procopius says that Theodora
had initiated the Emperor to the plot, and he had consented, but at the
last moment sent a messenger to John not to see Antonina. This seems
to be a piece of polite fiction in the interest of the Emperor; it is
incredible that an astute and experienced minister would risk his neck
after such a message. John went, and, in the apparently lonely palace,
spoke his secret sympathy with the supposed design of Belisarius. No
sooner had he uttered the words than a troop of imperial guards entered
the room to arrest or assassinate him, but John also had brought
soldiers and they enabled him to escape.
Had John gone straight to the palace of Justinian, he might still have
saved his position. Instead, he fled nervously to the sanctuary, and
Theodora hardened the mind of her husband. The wealthy and powerful
noble was stripped of his estates and forced to enter the ranks of the
clergy--one of the quaintest penalties of the time--in the suburb of
Cyzicus. There the people whom he had oppressed might behold their once
powerful enemy, the secret pagan and Sybarite, shaven and humiliated.
It appears that Theodora was not yet satisfied, though she is not
directly implicated by Procopius in the last act of the tragedy. The
Bishop of Cyzicus was murdered, and as John was one of his many bitter
enemies, he was arrested, scourged, and driven into exile and poverty.
The fate of the unhappy Euphemia is unknown; she was probably compelled
to enter a nunnery and weep there over the memory of the imperial
tigress and her friend.
This story of perfidy, corruption and vindictiveness, which Procopius
tells openly in his historical work, disposes us to believe the sequel,
as it is narrated in the “Anecdotes,” even if we must regard certain
details of the narrative with reserve. There was with Belisarius in
Persia a son of Antonina by a former husband (or lover) of the name of
Photius. Bitterly ashamed of his mother’s conduct, he accepted from
Belisarius the charge of watching her lover Theodosius. At Ephesus he
learned that Theodosius was in Constantinople, and soon caused him to
fly back to Ephesus and cling to the altars which had sheltered so
much vice and crime since the law of sanctuary had been established.
The prelate, however, delivered Theodosius to the youth, and he was
imprisoned in Cilicia.
Theodora was now eager to reward her friend and she had Photius
arrested and scourged. He refused to reveal the prison in which he had
placed Theodosius, but an officer was bribed to betray the secret,
and the Thracian was brought to Theodora’s apartments. Theodora then
sent for Antonina and said: “Dear patrician, yesterday there fell
into my hands a gem finer than any that mortal eye has ever seen; if
you would like to see it, I will show it to you.” Procopius concludes
this astounding story by saying that Photius was kept for four years
in the Empress’s underground dungeons. Twice he escaped to the church
of St Sophia, and twice he was dragged back; at length he got away
from Constantinople and hid from the vindictiveness of Theodora in
the robes of a monk. There are writers who flatly refuse to believe
this statement, though the authentic actions of Theodora which we have
described lend it some plausibility. Once more, however, the recently
published works of the contemporary Bishop of Ephesus supply some
confirmation. We read in them that Photius, son of Antonina, “became
a monk for some cause or other”; but the pathos of Gibbon’s picture of
his fate is somewhat lessened when we read that he still enlivened the
monastic life with his genial soldierly vices and led the troops to the
plunder of the southern provinces.
I have mentioned the underground prisons of Theodora. Since it is from
the “Anecdotes” alone that we learn of these dungeons, we should regard
the statements with some reserve, and in this case there is additional
reason for reserve. As Gibbon says: “Darkness is propitious to cruelty,
but it is likewise favourable to calumny and fiction.” Procopius seems
to know too much of what passed in these carefully guarded places.
Theodora doubtless had spies everywhere, and it would be easy enough
for her to have her enemies conveyed into the palace during the night,
or to some prison in remote provinces. Somewhere about this time (541),
we learn from John of Ephesus, her episcopal friend Anthimus incurred
the anger of the Emperor and disappeared. John assures us that Anthimus
was hidden in the Empress’s apartments _for seven years_. The two
chamberlains who waited on him alone knew the secret, besides Theodora,
until the day of her death. A woman with such resources could easily
maintain private dungeons if she willed, and we can hardly say that it
would be inconsistent with her character. But when Procopius minutely
describes the fetid condition of these prisons, and tells how fiercely
the prisoners were scourged, or how cords were tightened round their
heads until the eyes started from their sockets, we are disposed to
think that he has hastily admitted popular rumours which the judicious
historian must set aside as unauthoritative.
On the other hand, a set of grave charges which Procopius combines
with these statements are not without very serious confirmation.
His most persistent charge against Justinian and Theodora is that
they extorted money by cruel and flagrantly dishonest means. The
superb buildings--the new palace, the new St Sophia, etc.--with which
Justinian adorned the city absorbed stupendous sums of money; and the
personal luxury and religious munificence of Theodora were such that
a vast fortune would be needed to sustain them. It is equally certain
that the money was largely raised by corrupt means. I have quoted the
monastic writer Zonaras saying that Justinian raised money “by fair
means and foul” and by “dishonest practices”; and the weighty testimony
of Evagrius that the Emperor was of such “insatiable avarice” that
he would share the “vile gain” of loose women impeaching wealthy men
on false charges. The most that we can say for Justinian is that the
money was not spent in personal luxury, and that it was extorted by
subordinate officers. Agathias, another good authority, tells us how
the steward Anatolius used to forge or suppress wills, and practise
other dishonest arts, so that he might affix to houses and estates the
strip of purple which betokened that they had become the property of
the Emperor.
It is indisputable that the metropolis and the provinces suffered a
most unjust and corrupt spoliation in order to sustain the splendour
of the reign of Justinian and Theodora. Now Zonaras declares that the
Empress was “worse than Justinian in extorting money, both by unlawful
and lawful means,” and that she was “especially ingenious in finding
ways” to enrich herself. Wealthy men had charges of secret heresy or
unnatural vice brought against them, and their fortunes passed into
the coffers of Theodora. This must mean that her servants, as the
informers, claimed for her the legal share of the confiscated property
which went to an informer.
Here again, therefore, the charges in the “Anecdotes” are substantially
confirmed. Not content with securing testaments in her favour, she
had them forged or altered. She suborned witnesses to support charges
of vice or heresy. The only difference from Zonaras is in the added
allegation of physical cruelty, and on this point Procopius is at times
explicit. A member of the blue party, Bassus, a refined and delicate
youth, issued some squib upon the Empress, possibly referring to her
early career. He was dragged from the church in which he had taken
refuge, charged with and convicted of vice, and subjected, before an
indignant crowd, to the barbaric mutilation with which such vice was
then punished. His property went to Theodora--in part, I assume, for
laying information. Usually it was the greens who suffered. So angry
were the people that they accused Theodora of a secret (but “impotent”)
love of the sinister Syrian financier, Peter Barsymes, who had
succeeded John of Cappadocia in the duty of governing and exploiting
Constantinople. The restraint with which Procopius represents her love
as “impotent” lends credit to his other charges. An accusation of an
actual liaison would have been more credible than some of the stories
he reproduces.
A few episodes remain in the career of Theodora from which we may
confirm our impression of her remarkable personality. Unfortunately,
they rest entirely on the authority of the “Anecdotes,” and cannot
be pressed; we know only from another, and a sound, authority that
Belisarius was maliciously attacked and disgraced after his many
brilliant campaigns on behalf of the Empire.
To the evils of oppression, spoliation, corruption of justice, and
persecution which afflicted the Eastern Empire under Justinian and
Theodora there was added in the year 542 the deadly scourge of the
plague, and for several years in succession it scattered the seeds
of death over the broad provinces. Justinian at length contracted
it, and became dangerously ill. As he had no son, the question of
the succession to the throne was very naturally discussed, and
the generals Belisarius and Buza in the Persian camp incautiously
expressed themselves on the rumour that Justinian was dying, or were
represented to the Empress by her spies as having done so. She at
once ordered them to Constantinople. Buza is said to have been lodged
in her underground prisons, and Belisarius was stripped of his rank,
his guard and his immense wealth. A eunuch was sent by Theodora to
secure the large sums he had deposited in the east, and the chosen
soldiers who formed his personal guard, and were maintained at his
expense, were distributed among the army. The greatest soldier that
the Eastern Empire ever possessed, the most brilliant contributor to
the success of Justinian’s reign, a man who had preserved his loyalty
in a decade of supreme military power, he was received at the palace
with cold haughtiness, and retired in deep distress to his mansion.
When at length he observed the approach of a servant of the Empress,
he prepared for death. Instead of death, however, Theodora’s officer
brought this extraordinary message: “You know what you have done to me,
Belisarius, but I forgive your crimes on account of what your wife has
done for me. Hope for the future through her, but know that we shall
hear how you bear yourself to Antonina.” And the episode closes with
the great soldier kissing the feet of his perfidious wife, vowing that
he will be her slave, and accepting the office of master of the stables
in the imperial service which he had so gloriously illumined. Theodora
had secured an enormous sum of money and intimidated an enemy.
Up to the last year of Theodora’s life (548) the implacable writer of
the “Anecdotes” pursues his record of her misdeeds. Ever attentive
to the men who might some day dislodge her and her relatives from
the palace, Theodora watched with especial jealousy the grave
and distinguished nephew of the Emperor, Germanus, and his three
children. His eldest daughter Justina was in her nineteenth year, yet
none had dared, out of fear of Theodora, to offer marriage to her.
Theodora then decided to unite the fortunes of the two houses, and
secure the succession, by commanding Justina to wed her grandson
Anastasius--obviously the son of an illegitimate daughter of the
Empress, since it was little over twenty years since her marriage
to Justinian. Justina refused, and was vindictively married by the
Empress to a common officer. She then commanded the daughter of
Belisarius, Joannina, to wed Anastasius. Procopius, forgetting that he
has stripped Belisarius of almost all his wealth (an exaggeration),
says that Theodora wanted in this way to secure the general’s fortune,
but we may assume that Theodora was mainly endeavouring to secure the
succession to the throne for her grandson. Her own health was delicate,
and Justinian was well over sixty. Belisarius shrank from the union,
and even Antonina seems to have refused to further it. All knew that
a struggle impended between the families of Justinian and Theodora,
and it must have been the general feeling that the former would win.
Theodora is said to have angrily united Joannina to her grandson in the
loose popular form of marriage; indeed later rumour said that she had
the young woman violated first.
Another matrimonial interference of the Empress in her later years
exhibits the better features of her character. An ambitious general,
Artabanes, sought and obtained the hand of Justinian’s niece, whom he
had delivered from peril in Africa. Soon afterwards, however, a woman
appeared who claimed that she was the legitimate wife of Artabanes. She
appealed to the Empress, and Theodora forced Artabanes to take back
his humbler wife. Procopius tells this story in one of the historical
works in which he was careful not to offend the ruling powers, and
he courteously adds that “it was the nature of Theodora to befriend
afflicted women.” It is the only instance of her doing so that has
reached us, and, ungracious as it may seem to cast a doubt upon the
pure humanity of that one recorded good deed, one is compelled to
suggest that it was not to her interest to see a niece of Justinian
married to a successful commander.
On the 29th of June 548, after a reign of twenty-one years, Theodora
died of cancer. Her body was embalmed and exposed for public veneration
in the golden-roofed Triclinon of the palace. There, still dressed in
the imperial purple, still bearing the magnificent diadem for a few
days, she lay on a golden bed for friends and enemies to gaze upon the
last state of one of the most remarkable personalities of the time.
The character of Theodora must be interpreted in so purely oriental
a sense that it is difficult for the modern European to understand
it. Whether Greek or Syrian in origin, she was an incarnation of the
spirit of the great metropolis in whose life Syria and Greece were
so singularly blended. It is useless any longer to cast doubt upon
her earlier career. She was reared in that old theatrical world in
which moral restraint was wholly unknown; and her beauty, vivacity and
nervous strength make it probable enough that she was distinguished
in it for dissoluteness. That in her later life she spent vast sums
of money on the Church and philanthropy is unquestionable; nor would
I doubt for a moment that she was perfectly sincere in her endless
conversations with holy men. But her passionate nature, difficult
position and supple intelligence gave her a genius for casuistry, and
she fell into vices far worse than the vices of her youth. Quite apart
from the attacks of her bitter, anonymous enemy, we have ample evidence
that she was vindictive, cruel, unscrupulous, dishonest and callous.
To send a bejewelled cross to the holy church at Jerusalem, or build
a monastery, she would ruin and despoil an innocent man or wreck the
happiness of a woman: to secure the preaching of the true faith in
Christ she would depose an upright Pope on forged evidence and put a
scoundrel in the most sacred chair in Christendom. It was the temper of
Constantinople--to rise from vice and folly to defend the doctrines of
the Church and enforce them with the dagger or the torch. The further
things that are said of her in the famous “Anecdotes” must, for the
serious historian, remain unproved but not improbable.
CHAPTER IV
SOPHIA
The Emperor Justinian continued for seventeen years after the death of
Theodora to occupy the golden throne and keep the throne of his consort
vacant. As he approached the term of his life the palace throbbed with
the impassioned struggle which always disturbed the last year of a
childless Emperor, and the courtiers took sides with the relatives of
Theodora or of Justinian, according to their forecast of the future.
On the one side was Sophia, the niece and heiress of Theodora: on the
other the Emperor’s nephew, Justin. Sophia, however, was diplomatic in
the pursuit of her ambition. She discarded the heresy which it had been
expedient to cherish while her aunt lived, accepted the hand of Justin,
and settled with him in his palace by the shore, near Theodora’s
palace-monastery, to await impatiently the retirement of the aged
Emperor.
Justinian, says the contemporary lawyer Evagrius, passed in the year
565 to “those tortures which are provided in the nether world” for
rulers who despoil their subjects. The “greatness” of Justinian seems
to have been discovered by his mediæval admirers; contemporary writers
usually, and justly, attribute to his great general Belisarius the
military triumphs which partially restored the outline of the Empire
during his reign, and to the (probably) pagan lawyer Tribonian the
compilation of the famous Justinian Code, leaving to the Emperor
himself the odium of those unprincipled and unjustifiable extortions
which weakened and distressed his subjects. However that may be,
the Emperor’s last years were framed in a decaying world, and the
citizens of Constantinople regarded with hesitating admiration the
superb edifices which he had raised. His nephew Justin was “lord of
the palace” (_Curopalates_), and had ample opportunity to ensure the
succession.
A profoundly courtly and accommodating poet of the time, Corippus, has
left us a touching account of the accession of Justin and Sophia. The
noble Callinicus comes one night to rouse them in their suburban palace
with the distressing news that Justinian is no more. The spouses arise,
and sit discussing the situation in a room looking over the moonlit Sea
of Marmora, when a group of Senators enter, and urge Justin to accept
the purple. He shrinks from the terrible dignity until their tears and
prayers override his modesty, and, as the first faint flush of dawn
outlines the houses, they walk sadly through the streets to the sacred
palace. The guards and Candidates and servants line the long avenue
from the iron gate to the bronze door of Daphne, and many tears are
shed over the body of the late Emperor, which lies on a lofty golden
catafalque. Sophia produces a piece of embroidery on which all the
illustrious victories of the great Emperor are depicted. By this time
the report has spread in the town, and the citizens fly to the palace.
The blues and greens in festive dress, with their respective standards,
line the path to St Sophia, whither they go to ask grace, and they
return to the palace to put on the robes of state. Then four strong
soldiers raise Justin aloft, standing on a shield, and the patriarch
crowns him and Sophia, and the Emperor passes to the Hippodrome to
receive the loyal greeting of his people.
When we turn from this moving description to the prosy pages of the
lawyer Evagrius we find--without surprise--that Corippus has very
generously drawn upon the poet’s licence. Evagrius bluntly observes
that Justin “took” the purple the moment his uncle was dead, and
suggests that the officers of the palace were already in his service.
The death of Justinian was kept secret until Justin and Sophia had
been crowned and were suddenly presented to the populace in their sheen
of gold and jewels. Another contemporary writer from whom we learn
much, Bishop John of Ephesus, adds a very credible and instructive
detail. Sophia had been a Monophysite, like her aunt Theodora, until,
in the year 562, an astute bishop had pointed out to her that Justinian
was reluctant to set on the throne another woman who believed that
there was only one nature in Christ. By this powerful argument Sophia
was happily convinced that there were two natures in Christ, and
accepted the orthodox baptism. It is our first glimpse of the character
of the new Empress, and is quite in harmony with all that we know of
her. She was the niece of Theodora.
The new reign opened auspiciously. As the Emperor stood in the royal
gallery, or _kathisma_, overlooking the Hippodrome, to receive the
plaudits of his people, the cry was raised, and soon ran through the
crowded benches, that he should undo at once the dishonesty of his
predecessor. If we may believe the poet, the citizens had, with great
forethought, brought with them the bills of the treasury’s debts to
them, and waved their tablets before the _kathisma_. One is tempted to
believe that it was part of Justin’s plan to outstrip his cousins and
other rivals. The gold also was produced with theatrical promptness,
and from the glittering pile heaped at his feet the Emperor discharged
all the debts in full. Sophia sustained her husband’s policy. We read
that a few years after her accession she gathered the moneylenders of
the city at her palace, paid all the debts due to them by the people,
and ensured a large measure of popularity.
In virtue of the genial feeling engendered by this generous conduct
the new Emperor and Empress were enabled to strengthen their throne at
the expense of their rivals. The chief rival to the hopes of Justin
had been another nephew of the late Emperor, Germanus, and his sons:
a noble and gifted figure in comparison with the mean and petty
intrigues of Justin. We saw how instinctively Theodora had hated
this family. Germanus had ended his brilliant and stainless career
in war, but his son Justin seems to have inherited his character and
popularity, and certainly inherited his misfortunes. Obscure references
to revolt in the chronicles of the time close with the curt statement
that Justin and other nobles were put to death. Justin had been
banished to Alexandria, and _may_ have expressed resentment. Sophia
joined with her husband in what we are tempted to regard as murder.
“Justin and Sophia,” says the sardonic Evagrius, “did not abate their
fury against the son of Germanus” until his severed and grisly head
was exhibited to them. The metaphors of the time are so true to life
that the historian is often puzzled as to the exact details of such
episodes. The truth is, as we shall soon realize, that the Byzantine
Empire, in spite of its opulence, its art and its religious ardour, was
sinking toward barbarism.
For a few years Justin and Sophia ruled with moderation and success in
their decaying dominion. The administration of justice was reformed
and the decoration of churches and public buildings proceeded. Another
palace--the Sophian palace--was added to the growing cluster of
mansions which made up the imperial town. Justin cleared a vast site
in the quarter where he and Sophia had lived, built for her a palace
and hippodrome, and raised two large brass statues of himself and the
Empress. In this marble-lined palace, in the imperial quarters, or
in the Hieria palace across the water, or the new suburban palace at
Blachernæ in the north, Sophia passed the first nine years of her reign
without taking any apparent part in public affairs. Then her husband
lost his mind, and she began to reveal her true character.
From his early tolerance Justin had passed to the temper of the
persecutor, and the groans of the Monophysites were heard throughout
the Empire. Whether this new phase of activity contributed to, or
resulted from, his growing insanity, and how far Sophia was implicated
in it, we do not know; but by the year 574 Justin had become a
dangerous maniac. Bars had to be placed at his windows, and his
servants had carefully to avoid the imperial teeth; while, in his less
dangerous hours, he would shriek with delight, or bark like a dog, as
the servants pulled him along the corridors in a small cart fitted with
a throne. The commander of the Excubitors who guarded or amused him
was a tall and very handsome Thracian officer named Tiberius, whose
fine bluish eyes, light hair and beard, fresh florid complexion and
manly form, pleased the eye of the Empress, and she induced Justin, in
a lucid hour toward the end of the year 574, to raise him to the rank
of Cæsar. Writers of the time describe with great feeling this last
sane act of Justin II. The Empress, the patriarch and his clergy, and
the nobles and Senators, were summoned to the palace, and Justin held
to them a long and deeply penitent discourse, lamenting his sins and
cruelty, and recommending his wife and his Empire to the fortunate
Tiberius. The scepticism of the historian is apparently silenced by the
weighty assurance of Bishop John that this remarkable speech of the
insane ruler was taken down in shorthand,[11] but the publication of
such a statement would be by no means inconsistent with the character
of Sophia, and we must interpret the narrative with some liberality.
In most of the historians we read that, when Justin died and Tiberius
ascended the throne, a romantic scene was witnessed in the Hippodrome
and the astute Sophia was outwitted by her handsome favourite. Sophia,
it is said, proposed to marry him, but when the crowd in the Hippodrome
cried, “Let us see a Roman Empress,” he replied, through the herald,
that an Empress already existed, and that her name was similar to
that of a church in the city, the position of which he indicated.
The citizens at once solved the conundrum, acclaimed his secret wife
Anastasia, and laughed at the discomfiture of Sophia, who retired to
her palace in anger and mortification.
The entire inaccuracy of this legend, which has found its way into
Gibbon and all the earlier historians, must confirm our feeling of
reserve in reading the Byzantine chroniclers. It is true that Sophia
designed to marry Tiberius, and we may confidently assume that his
marriage was a secret at the time when she raised him to the cæsarship.
But we now know from John of Ephesus that Sophia learned of the
marriage of Tiberius long before the death of her husband, and the
citizens of Constantinople cannot have been unaware of it. Bishop John
observes that she looked with dry eyes on the burly figure of her
husband as he shrieked and laughed in his toy chariot; he was, she
said, deservedly punished for his sins, and the Empire would now fall
into her more capable hands. She induced the Senate to consent to the
elevation of the imposing officer, put an edifying discourse into the
mouth of Justin--unless one prefers the singular story of his hour
of lucidity and eloquence--and bade the patriarch clothe him in the
glittering insignia of a Cæsar. We can imagine her mortification when
she discovered that he was already married.
The entry of Ino, wife of Tiberius, into the roll of the Byzantine
Empresses is romantic enough without this discredited story of the
concealment of her existence until her husband was on the throne.
Tiberius was a simple provincial soldier who had won his way to
the captainship of the guards and to the purple by his fascinating
appearance. Gibbon represents beauty as one of his many virtues; it
was certainly much more conspicuous than any other virtue he may
have possessed. He came from Daphnudium, which commentators place in
the province of Thrace, and it seems to have been while he was on
military service in that town that he met Ino. She was then married
to a soldier, and must have been older than Tiberius, since we read
that he was betrothed to her daughter. The daughter died, however,
and, as the husband also presently died, Tiberius gave his hand to the
widow, a rustic and undistinguished matron of a frontier province. When
Tiberius was promoted to the captainship of the imperial guards, Ino
came to Constantinople, and lived there in obscurity with her surviving
daughters, Charito and Constantina. Here the simple provincial family
learned that Tiberius had been raised to the dazzling height of the
cæsarship.
But it soon became apparent that Ino had, by her elevation, incurred
the resentment of the all-powerful Empress. It is said that Justin,
in one of his lucid hours, urged that Tiberius should take up his
residence in the sacred palace, and that, since the flesh of young
men was weak, Ino should reside with him. Sophia bluntly refused her
consent. “Fool,” Bishop John represents her as saying, “do you who have
invested yourself with the insignia of royalty wish to make me as great
a simpleton as yourself? As long as I live I will never give my kingdom
and crown to another, nor shall another enter here.” Tiberius, knowing
that she might still arrest his progress toward the throne, submitted,
and Ino and her daughters were installed in the splendid Hormisdas
palace--now purified of Theodora’s monks and hermits--which Justinian
had decorated for his mistress. Such quarters as Tiberius was permitted
to have in the main palace were poor and inadequate; he preferred to
retire each night to the mansion by the shore.
During the four years that followed Sophia ruled with the power and
rigour of an autocrat. When Tiberius, seeing the vast sums of money
which she and Justin had amassed, and affecting to regard it as
unjustly extorted, began to squander it on the people, she deprived
him of the key of the treasury. It is not unlikely that he was trying
to win popularity independently of her. When nobles, mindful of her
attitude, asked if they might visit the wife of the Cæsar, she angrily
told them to “be quiet,” as it was “no business of theirs.” It was, in
fact, rumoured in the city that, as two contemporary writers assure us,
she urged Tiberius to divorce his wife and prepare to marry her. We
shall see later that, in spite of the rigorous teaching of the Church,
a Byzantine Emperor, with the tacit connivance of the archbishop, more
than once divorced his wife. As Justin lingered, and no one dared
visit the trembling ladies in the Hormisdas palace, the courage of the
provincial matron failed and she fled back to her native town.
In September 578, however, Justin passed the imperial crown to
Tiberius, and died nine days afterwards. Sophia had more than the
strength, but less than the penetration, of her aunt Theodora, and she
very quickly discovered that she had misjudged the submissive Cæsar. I
have already rejected the fable that he now revealed to the citizens
for the first time the existence of his wife. It is more plausible
to assume that his servants were at work among the citizens ensuring
that, the moment he appeared in the _kathisma_ in his stiff gold tunic,
the cry should ring out: “Let us see the Roman Empress.” He submitted
with alacrity to the voice of the people. Officers of distinction were
at once despatched to Thrace, to bring Ino to the palace, and Sophia
retired in great chagrin to her quarters.
Ino, like so many of the Roman Empresses, remains a mere name to which
are attached a number of singular and romantic adventures, but a
little consideration of her behaviour in these adventures affords an
occasional glimpse of her personality. A simple and, no doubt, quite
uncultivated provincial matron, she had gladly exchanged the troubled
splendours of a palace for the tranquil plainness of her former home
in Daphnudium. The faithful Tiberius had occasionally visited her in
her retirement, and it was doubtless understood that when the death of
Justin made him free to defy Sophia she should return to the Court. The
day had arrived, and her humble home in the provinces was now besieged
by nobles and officers who were eager to escort her across the sea
to the bronze-roofed palace. “Come in the morning, and we will start
immediately,” Ino told them. In the morning, however, they found that
Ino and her daughters, disliking the pomp of an escort and the scenes
which their passage would cause, had quietly departed during the night,
and they followed in very evil temper to Constantinople.
Tiberius and the Senators and nobles met Ino at the city quay, and
she was presently clothed in the gold tunic and purple mantle of the
Empress. In a covered litter, accompanied by a crowd of eunuchs and
chamberlains, she proceeded from the palace to the great church of St
Sophia between the living hedges of the populace. It was here that her
name was changed to Anastasia. Since the introduction of Empresses with
provincial or pagan names a custom had arisen of changing the name at
coronation, and the right to do so had been genially accorded to the
people. On this occasion the ceremony was more animated than usual.
The greens, standing under their banner at their appointed station,
raised the cry of “Helena”; from the next station the blues raised the
counter-cry of “Anastasia,” and “so fiercely did they contend,” says
the bishop, “with rival shouts for the honour of naming her that a
great and terrible riot ensued and all the people were in confusion.”
The blues seem to have been in the majority, and from her baptism of
blood Ino emerged with the royal name of Anastasia; from the cathedral
she presently returned to the sacred palace as Empress or “Queen”
Antastasia.
From that moment we lose sight of the new Empress, and must imagine her
peacefully vegetating in the marble-lined halls and the superb gardens
of her palaces. The interest passes once more to Sophia. As soon as she
realized that Tiberius had shaken off her control she removed large
sums of money and much treasure from the main palace, and went to live
in her Sophian palace by the Julian Port. Tiberius, knowing her temper
and the vicissitudes of imperial life at Constantinople, regarded this
action with distrust, and tried to disarm her. “Dwell here, and be
content, as my mother,” he urged, pressing her to remain in Daphne.
She refused to do so, and he was content to assign her an imperial
Court and make it known by decree that she was to be honoured as his
“mother.” He then married Charito, the daughter of Anastasia, to a
distinguished officer, raised him to the rank of Cæsar, and prepared to
meet the intrigues of his adopted mother.
The strong and ambitious woman chafed in the small world to which she
found herself reduced and soon began to quarrel with the Emperor.
Justin had begun the building of a lighthouse at the Julian Port,
near the great brass statues of himself and Sophia, and Tiberius
pressed Sophia to complete it. She pointed out that it was a work
of public usefulness, and therefore the Emperor must undertake it.
Tiberius refused, and the relations between them were strained. Here,
unfortunately, our informant becomes less generous with the interesting
historical matter which he mingles with his narrative of Church
affairs. He tells us only that the “proud and malignant” old Empress
“set on foot plots without number against Tiberius,” and was at length
deprived of her imperial status and retinue. Sophia was probably still
in the prime of life--Byzantine women usually married about the age of
fifteen--and this drastic step would merely dispose her to more violent
action, but it soon became apparent that a greater power than that of
kings and queens was about to intervene. Tiberius was consumptive.
In the summer of 582, after less than four years’ enjoyment of his
easily won honours, he felt that the end was approaching and sought a
successor.
A contemporary ecclesiastical writer seems to suggest Sophia when he
tells us that Tiberius died of poison, administered to him in a dish
of mulberries, but we may accept the kindlier view that he was delicate
and consumptive, and brought about a crisis by some indiscretion at
table. A popular officer from the Persian wars named Maurice was in the
city at the time, and Tiberius--passing over, for some unknown reason,
the elder daughter of Anastasia and her husband--offered him the hand
of the younger daughter, Constantina, and the crown. Maurice, an
undistinguished provincial like Tiberius--he came from Cappadocia--was
crowned on 5th August, and married Constantina a few days afterwards.
It is expressly recorded that the marriage was celebrated with great
magnificence. Maurice was a robust, clean-shaven, ruddy-featured young
man: a man whose goodwill was as obvious as his incapacity to restore
a stricken Empire. The personal features of the Empresses are never
described by the Byzantine writers, but we are told that Constantina
made a brave show in her bridal tunic of cloth of gold, edged with
purple and sprinkled with diamonds, amongst the crowd of richly
dressed nobles. The citizens honoured the new dynasty with banquets
and illuminations, little dreaming of the horrible tragedy which would
extinguish it in blood.
Tiberius died a week later, and Anastasia seems to have survived her
husband only a few years. Sophia returned to the palace after the death
of Tiberius, and spent her last years in tranquillity. But the twenty
years’ reign of Maurice is barren of interest for the biographer of the
Empresses, and we must pass quickly over its mediocre annals to its
tragic termination. Twelve months after the coronation Constantinople
was again seething with joyous excitement. Constantina had a son, and
it was the first time in two hundred years that a boy had been “born
in the Porphyra”: an appalling comment on Byzantine court life. Very
costly gifts were brought to the little Theodosius, as he lay with his
mother, a week or two later, under sheets of cloth of gold to receive
the ladies of the city. Four years later the boy was made Cæsar, and
brothers and sisters followed him into the world with great regularity,
until Maurice saw a family of nine children about him, giving promise
of an endless dynasty. Anastasia died a few years afterwards. Sophia is
mentioned only once more in the chronicles. Fourteen or fifteen years
after the coronation of Maurice we read that Sophia and Constantina
presented the Emperor with a magnificent crown, and that he offended
them by piously suspending it over the altar in one of the churches.
We do not know in what year she died, but it is clear that she did not
live to witness the horrible fate of Maurice and Constantina. No grave
blunder was committed by Maurice as long as she remained in the palace,
but it must have been soon after her death that he began to incur the
disdain of the people and the army, and to prepare the tragedy which
closed his life and that of his Empress.
The causes of that tragedy belong to history; it is enough to note
here that Maurice converted the disdain of the troops into fierce
anger by refusing to redeem a number of them who had fallen into the
merciless hands of the barbarians. From that moment even the rabble of
Constantinople could insult him with impunity. One day when he and his
eldest son Theodosius were walking barefoot at the head of a religious
procession, they were stoned and compelled to run for their lives. On
another day the crowd found a man with some resemblance to Maurice,
clothed him in black, crowned him with garlic, and drove him on an
ass through the city amidst a chorus of jeering and execration. Then
some troops which he had ordered to winter in the hard lands beyond
the Danube revolted and marched upon Constantinople under their leader
Phocas. Maurice nervously ordered games in the Hippodrome, and bade the
people not be alarmed. They were not alarmed, as they had little idea
of loyalty to the despised Emperor, and there was as yet no question of
raising to the purple the brutal officer in command of the insurgent
troops.
Phocas and his troops had now reached the outskirts of the city. One
day Theodosius and his father-in-law, Germanus, were hunting in that
region when a messenger of Phocas accosted them and proposed that
Theodosius should replace his father on the throne, or else Germanus
should take the crown. Although they refused, Maurice heard of the
invitation, and accused them of conspiracy. Germanus fled to the altar,
and Maurice, scourging his son for warning Germanus, sent guards to
drag him from the church. This provoked a rising of the people, and
Maurice fled across the water with his family. Maurice, now an old man
of sixty-three, was nearly wrecked in crossing during the night, and
was racked with gout. He had some years before befriended the King of
Persia, and he now sent Theodosius to ask help from that monarch. The
young man was, however, presently recalled by a messenger who said that
his father intended to meet his fate with religious resignation. He
returned to find that his father and five brothers had been butchered,
and his mother and three sisters confined in a private house, at the
command of the Emperor Phocas.
Phocas, a little, deformed, red-haired man of repulsive appearance and
character, had at the last moment taken the purple, and won the people
by showering gold among them as he drove in the imperial litter, drawn
by four white horses, from the church to the palace. On the following
day his wife Leontia was crowned. As she went from the palace to
St Sophia another riot occurred between the blues and greens, and,
when Phocas sent an officer to quell the disturbance, some of them
threateningly retorted: “Maurice is still alive.”[12] Soldiers were
at once sent to the village on the Bay of Nicomedia which Maurice had
reached with his family. The five young boys were beheaded before
their father’s eyes, and he was then despatched. When Theodosius
returned a few days later, he fled to the church, but he in turn was
dragged out by the soldiers and put to death.
Constantina and her daughters were confined “in the house of Leo,” the
chronicler says, and we may assume that this was a private house in
the district. Unfortunately for the unhappy Empress, the new reign at
once gave rise to intense disgust, and she became involved in plots
to overthrow Phocas. The new Emperor was a vulgar and brutal soldier,
plunging at once into an orgy of blood and licence. The Empress
Leontia--probably a Syrian, as Phocas had a Syrian treasurer named
Leontius--is said to have been “as bad as Phocas,” but we have no
detailed information about her. She was probably one of the strangest
in the strange gallery of the Byzantine Empresses. Within a couple
of years a plot was formed to drive this incongruous pair from the
throne they had usurped, and the patrician Germanus, who was the chief
conspirator, sent a eunuch to deliver Constantina and her daughters and
bring them in secrecy to the cathedral. It was felt that Constantina,
feeble and passive as she seems to have been throughout her stirring
experiences, would be the best figure to attract the sympathies of the
people. It is one of the many proofs of the appalling degradation to
which the Roman Empire had sunk that the plot failed. The issue turned,
not on honour and manliness, but on greed. Phocas had been liberal with
money and sports, and the greens, rejecting the smaller offers of the
agents of Germanus, assembled in the Hippodrome to acclaim the tyrant
and revile the helpless widow of their Emperor.
Phocas turned ferociously upon the conspirators. Several nobles were
put to death; Germanus and Philippicus, the brother-in-law of Maurice,
were condemned to shave their heads and enlist in the ranks of the
clergy. The more terrible fate seemed to be in store for Constantina
and her daughters when a troop of soldiers burst into the cathedral
and threatened to drag them from the altars, but the archbishop
Cyriacus manfully protested, and Phocas had to swear to spare their
lives before the patriarch would suffer them to leave the sanctuary.
They were confined in a nunnery, apparently in or near the city.
In this confinement Constantina presently heard that the bloody reign
of Phocas was becoming intolerable, and she was encouraged to enter
into communication once more with Germanus. Whether or no the plot
was inspired by Phocas himself, the female servant who carried the
secret messages from the priestly home of Germanus to the nunnery of
Constantina betrayed them to the tyrant, and he hastened to rid the
Empire of the last reminders of Maurice. Constantina was tortured and
compelled to name one of the patricians. By the same fearful means a
number of the nobility were accused, and the city was once more driven
into mourning. The hands and feet of the accused were cut off, and
their mangled bodies were then burned alive in the public places. Even
the daughter of Germanus, the young widow of Theodosius, was put to
death. For Constantina and her daughters the brutal tyrant devised an
exquisite punishment. They were taken across the water to the spot, on
the Bay of Nicomedia, where Maurice and his sons had been put to death,
and there the heads were struck from the bodies of Constantina and her
three innocent daughters. The Empire of Rome had touched a deeper depth
than it had ever done in its pagan days.
CHAPTER V
MARTINA
Over the eight years’ reign of Phocas and his consort we have little
disposition, and not much occasion, to linger. The Empress Leontia
is characterized for us only by the one contemptuous phrase that she
was “as bad as Phocas.” We may trust that she equalled him neither
in brutality nor licentiousness, but the slender indications suggest
that she was some such low type of Syrian woman as a coarse and
vicious soldier would be likely to choose for his companion. A few
words must suffice to explain her exit from the imperial stage and the
introduction of a fairer woman to the throne.
As the discontent increased in Constantinople, Phocas, his brutality
fostered by indulgence and vice, turned upon his subjects with
increasing savagery. Plots were discovered or suspected, and hands and
feet and heads fell under the axes of the guards. At length Priscus
heard that an upright and distinguished commander, who governed the
African province, had cast off his allegiance to Phocas, and he invited
Heraclius to come and seize the throne. Heraclius was too old to embark
on so adventurous an enterprise, but in the spring of 609 he sent a
fleet under the command of his son Heraclius and at the same time
entrusted his nephew Nicetas with an army which was to range the coast
of Africa and occupy Egypt. The curious statement, repeated in most
historians, that whichever of the young men reached Constantinople
first was to have the crown, is shown by a recently translated
manuscript to be inaccurate, as we might suspect.[13] Heraclius
dallied in the Mediterranean until his cousin had made progress, and
it was not until 3rd October 610 that the liberating fleet, exhibiting
at the prow of its commander’s vessel a picture of the Virgin which
angels had brought from heaven, came in sight of Constantinople. At
once Phocas found a tide of desertions, and, after a feeble naval
engagement on the following day, a Sunday, he fled in despair to the
palace. So far was he abandoned that a citizen, whose wife he had
violated, penetrated the palace during the night, dragged him to the
quay, and took him on a boat to the fleet early on the Monday morning.
Nicephorus, a later patriarch of Constantinople, gives us an appalling
picture of his fate--and of Constantinople. He was at once cut to
pieces, the member by which he had notoriously sinned was carried on
a pole through the city, and his bleeding trunk was dragged through
the streets and burned. Of the Empress Leontia and her fate we have no
information.
The young Heraclius--he was in his thirty-sixth year, a robust,
broad-chested man with fine grey eyes and light curly hair--must not
be held responsible for the excesses of the Byzantine mob, though we
shall not find him a man of delicate feeling. He proceeded at once,
not only to assume the purple, but to provide Constantinople with
an Empress. Fabia, daughter of an African noble named Rogatus, was
in Constantinople with the wife of the elder Heraclius when it was
announced that the African fleet lay in the Grecian waters. Phocas
heard that the mother and the betrothed of his opponent were in the
city, and they must have had a narrow escape from death. He was
content, however, to confine them in a nunnery or penitentiary, and
from this hazardous position Fabia was released to find her lover
master of Constantinople. She was a beautiful and delicate girl, and
the biographer must feel some impatience that the few Empresses
of this more attractive character are so slenderly noticed by the
chroniclers, while they dilate, as far as their prejudice against
mere women will allow them, on the sins or audacities of the bolder
Empresses.
Heraclius does not seem to have been eager to assume the purple, and,
knowing as we do the accidents of imperial life and the degradation of
the Empire, we can believe that he was sincere in offering the crown
to Priscus, the son-in-law of Phocas. Priscus refused, and the long
ceremonies of coronation at once proceeded. After the coronation in
St Sophia he was married to Fabia, and, under the name of the Empress
Eudocia, she entered the sacred palace which Leontia had vacated. But
the story of Eudocia is brief and uninteresting, and we hardly make her
acquaintance before a premature death removes her from the scene.
Indeed, the only details recorded of Eudocia are that she bore her
husband two children in the first two years of her marriage and died
of the strain. With the birth of her first child, Epiphania Eudocia,
is connected one of those lively incidents which so well illustrate
the character of the later Roman Empire, even under its better rulers.
The patrician Priscus had refused the purple, but it came to the ears
of Heraclius that he was secretly disaffected and abusive, and the
Emperor chose a dramatic moment for disarming him. He invited Priscus
to be godfather to the little Epiphania, and, in the midst of the
ceremony, in view of the crowd of nobles and priests, charged him with
his treachery. Striking Priscus on the face with a book which lay at
hand--probably a Prayer Book--he directed that his head be shaven on
the spot, and the great noble passed from the life of camp and Court
to one of those monasteries of the Empire which harboured many such
strange inmates.
In the following May (612) Eudocia bore a son, Heraclius Constantinas,
and her frail constitution never recovered from the strain. She had
gone during the summer to the healthier palace at Blachernæ, to the
north of Constantinople, and there an attack of epilepsy carried her
off in the month of August. It is painful to read that the funeral
of this fine and delicate Empress was disgraced by one of the most
repulsive exhibitions of Byzantine coarseness. The body was conveyed by
water to the city, and borne solemnly through the streets to the great
church between the mourning citizens. Just as the body was passing
a certain window, a maid-servant, who was watching the procession,
carelessly spat and the wind carried the spittle to the robes of
the dead queen. The girl was burned alive on Eudocia’s tomb for the
involuntary insult, and even her mistress escaped only by concealing
herself.
Two years afterwards Heraclius married again. The new Byzantine
Empress, whose name stands at the head of this chapter, was one of
those strong and ambitious women who generally contrive, either by
their vices or their crimes, to break through the anti-feminist reserve
of the later Greek writers, but in this case the prejudice is increased
and we follow Martina with difficulty through her long and adventurous
career. She was the niece of Heraclius, and, in spite of the support
she gave to her husband in his brilliant defence of eastern Christendom
against the Persians, she remains under the shadow of the sin of incest.
Historians have devised many reasons for the audacity of Heraclius in
marrying his niece, but we need hardly assume more than that she had a
beauty and charm which the ecclesiastical writers disdain to confess.
Her father was dead, and she lived in Constantinople with her mother
Maria, sister of Heraclius, who had married a second time. Young,
spirited and ambitious, she welcomed the passion of the Emperor, and
was prepared with him to override every ecclesiastical scruple. The
archbishop Sergius, a friendly and very able counsellor of the Emperor,
tried in vain to dissuade them. Heraclius coolly observed that his
objections were quite natural from his episcopal point of view, but it
was useless to urge them, and the patriarch discreetly stood aside and
allowed another priest to marry them. According to a reliable historian
the patriarch himself afterwards crowned her in the great hall of the
palace, and no doubt his bold and politic action silenced the angry
murmurs which arose in the Hippodrome. It was only when, in the course
of time, defective children were born of the marriage--the first
son was wry-necked, the second deaf--when Heraclius himself ended a
brilliant career in pain and humiliation, and when Martina passed from
public life under a suspicion of murder, that Constantinople discovered
the action of a divine curse and darkened the memory of Martina.
So prejudiced are later historians against Martina that even Gibbon has
contracted something of their feeling, and suggested that a surrender
to the charms, if not the arts, of Martina explains that remarkable
indolence which Heraclius betrayed during the next few years, when the
advancing Persians were rending his Empire and threatening to sweep
Christianity out of Asia. We need not discuss here the problem of
the Emperor’s alleged supineness during those years of disaster. The
most recent biographer of Heraclius, Signor Pernice (“L’Imperatore
Eraclio”), emphatically denies that Heraclius was indolent, and more
authoritative historians, like Professor Bury, observe that the lack of
funds and troops, and other internal difficulties, placed a formidable
restraint on the very capable Emperor. When the war-drums beat at
length, we shall find Martina, in spite of pregnancy, accompanying the
Emperor in his long and arduous campaigns, and this gives us a right
to assume that she supported him in the long years of preparation and
organization.
At one time, three or four years after their marriage, it seemed that
they would desert the sinking vessel of the Byzantine Empire and return
to the tranquillity of Africa. Two devastating waves--the Persians
to the south and the Avars to the north--were advancing across the
impotent provinces, and it looked as though the little that was left
of the Eastern Empire must soon be swallowed up in the mighty clash
of their conflict. Egypt, Syria and Palestine were in the hands of
the Persians, who looted and desecrated the most sacred shrines of
Christendom. Famine resulted from the loss of the grain-bearing
provinces, and plague followed closely upon famine. Heraclius and
Martina put their treasures on a fleet of ships and resolved to
transfer the throne to Africa. Then, when news came that the fleet had
been destroyed in a storm, and the patriarch Sergius made the Emperor
swear not to desert the city, Heraclius turned again to face his
mountainous difficulties.
Raising the cry that the holy cross was in the hands of the pagans,
and that the very existence of Christianity was in jeopardy, Heraclius
succeeded in concentrating on a great national issue all the religious
passion which had so long been expended on distracting controversies. A
bargain was struck with the Church; its sacred vessels and incalculable
treasures were to be put at the disposal of the Empire, and the value
returned at the close of the war. By the beginning of the year 622
the preparations were completed, the young Heraclius Constantine was
appointed nominal regent of the Empire, and the real administration
was entrusted to the capable hands of the archbishop and one of the
patricians. On Easter Day the last stirring services were held; and on
the following day the gilded imperial galley, bearing the miraculous
picture of the Virgin, the brightly painted war-galleys and the
hundreds of ships which bore the last part of an army of more than a
hundred thousand men, sailed bravely toward the coast of Asia.
The Persian campaigns, which have put the name of Heraclius high in the
list of imperial commanders, interest us because Martina set sail with
her husband and accompanied him throughout the war. Unfortunately, the
literary deacon of St Sophia, George of Pisidia, who tells the story
of the war, shares the ecclesiastical prejudice against Martina, and
never mentions her name. Congenial as the task would be, therefore,
to follow the Emperor through his brilliant campaigns and imagine the
spirited Martina sharing his perils and his triumphs, it is hardly a
fitting task for a biographer. George of Pisidia, addressing Heraclius
in the name of the clergy at St Sophia, had trusted that he would
redden his black military boots in the blood of the heathen. He and
Martina returned to Constantinople six months later, leaving the army
in safe winter quarters, with a great victory and a brilliant march
across Asia Minor to report. Martina sailed with her husband, in the
following year, on his second and more dangerous campaign, and it
was in the course of this campaign that she gave birth to the son
Heraclius--usually called Heraclonas, to distinguish him from the
father, apparently--whom we shall find tragically associated with her
in her later years. She seems, indeed, to have accompanied Heraclius on
all his journeys; but to what extent she kept pace with the advance of
the troops--whether she reached the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris,
and beheld the oriental luxury of the fallen camps and towns of the
Persians--the prejudice of the deacon of St Sophia prevents us from
ascertaining. She had at least the glory of accompanying her husband
on one of the most brilliant, the most daring and the most profitable
campaigns that ever illumined the Eastern Empire. Nor must her
biographer forget to add that she bore several children during her six
years’ wandering over the mountains and deserts of Asia Minor, Syria,
Persia and Mesopotamia. Nine children, four of whom died young, were
the issue of the marriage.
Martina shared, too, the splendid triumph which crowned the victories
of Heraclius. In the spring of 628 the Emperor and Empress rejoined
their family at the Hieria palace, on the Asiatic coast opposite
Constantinople, whither, with torches by night and olive-branches by
day, the citizens sailed to greet them. Heraclius would not return to
his capital until the cross was restored to his hands, and the summer
was spent by the united family in the Hieria palace. Early in September
the cross arrived, and they went to Constantinople for the triumph.
Preceded by the cross, Heraclius rode in a chariot drawn by four
elephants through the Golden Gate and along the main street of the city
(the Mese) to St Sophia, amidst scenes of such rejoicing as the Empire
had not witnessed since the days of Belisarius. A superb entertainment
in the Hippodrome followed, and then Heraclius joined his wife in the
palace.
And here ends the glory of the Emperor Heraclius; the flame that
had burst forth so splendidly in a time of dejection fell just as
swiftly, and Heraclius exhibited a lamentable spectacle in face of an
even greater peril than the Persians. The problem of the character
of Heraclius might concern us if we had any satisfactory information
about the behaviour of Martina during the next few years, but as
the chroniclers almost refuse to notice her until they come to what
they regard as her misdeeds, we have no occasion to linger over it.
Her character induces us to believe that she attempted to awaken her
husband from his lethargy until she saw that this was impossible, and
that she then devoted her thoughts to securing the succession for her
son and the virtual rule of the Empire for herself. This, in point of
fact, is suggested by the meagre indications in the chronicles.
In the spring of 629 Heraclius took the cross back to its original
shrine at Jerusalem, and from that time spent nine years in the
provinces of Palestine, Syria and Asia Minor. During those years the
Mohammedan power became a formidable menace to the Roman Empire, and
the inaction of Heraclius is a scandal to historians. His nervous
system was strained to the verge of insanity, and he retreated like one
paralysed with terror before the advance of the Mohammedans. Martina
foresaw the end, and began to prepare for the succession. There can
be no doubt that in these later years Heraclius, whose religious
fervour was now greatly increased, was troubled by the cry that his
“incestuous” marriage had brought these troubles on the Empire. When
his nephew Theodore retreated before the invincible Arabs, and came to
reproach Heraclius for his “sin,” the Emperor sent him under guard to
Constantinople and ordered that he should be disgraced. Some writers
see in this the action of Martina, but it may quite well have been due
to the broody nervousness of Heraclius himself.
It was plain that Heraclius would not stem the Mohammedan tide, and
everywhere men talked of the succession. By the year 638 he and
Martina were back in the Hieria palace, and the struggle deepened.
Heraclius had now two children by his first wife Eudocia, and five
(living) children by Martina. His eldest child, Epiphania Eudocia, had
narrowly missed a romantic career. During the Persian war Heraclius
had struck an alliance with the King of the Khazars, a wild people
akin to the Huns, and, after gorgeously entertaining and rewarding
him, had shown him a miniature of his beautiful daughter, then fifteen
years old, and offered him her hand. It was only the death of the
King in the next year that saved the delicate young girl from being
added to the rude harem of the Hunnic prince. She was still unmarried.
Her brother, Heraclius Constantinus, now twenty-six years old, was
already associated in the Empire, and was the obvious heir to supreme
power. But both Heraclius and Martina knew that the Emperor’s death
would at once set her religious enemies to work to eject her and her
children from the palace, and they were anxious to secure her position
by associating her eldest son, Heraclonas, in the Empire. There were,
besides, a natural son of Heraclius by an early concubine, named
Athalaric, and the sons of his cousin Nicetas, who had helped him to
win the Empire.
Two of these possible candidates for the purple were summarily
dismissed. Athalaric and the nephew Theodore were charged with
conspiracy at Constantinople, their hands and feet were struck off, and
they were sent into exile. It is conjectured by some writers on Martina
that she dictated this heavy punishment, and that her hand is seen in
the events which follow. Of this there is no proof; but there can be no
doubt that she was eager to secure the succession of Heraclonas, and
that Heraclius was now an almost feeble-minded patient under her care.
He persistently refused to cross the strip of water from Hieria to
the city, and they were compelled at length to make a bridge of boats
across the narrower part of the strait, and place artificial hedges of
trees along its sides, so that he could ride to Constantinople without
catching sight of the sea. The young Constantine, his eldest son, had
inherited the delicacy of his mother, and it was necessary to provide
for the event of his death. Should his sons inherit the purple, or
should it pass to “the children of incest”? The city seethed with
discussion.
In the final decision we may confidently recognize the voice of
Martina. On 4th July 638 Heraclonas, then a boy of fifteen years,[14]
was crowned in the palace by the patriarch Sergius; a younger son,
David, was raised to the same dignity shortly afterwards, and the young
daughters of Martina, Augustina and Martina, were entitled Augustæ.
On the 1st of January 639 three Emperors rode in the procession:
Heraclius, Constantine and Heraclonas. Martina had, apparently,
triumphed; but more prudent citizens must have shaken their heads in
reflecting on the struggle which would inevitably follow the death of
Heraclius.
The Emperor lingered for more than two years in his impotent condition,
and Martina meantime found a fresh and most powerful ally. The
patriarch Sergius had died soon after crowning Heraclonas, leaving
his metropolitan see to a monk, Pyrrhus, whom he had raised to the
higher rank of the clergy. Pyrrhus became an ally of the Empress,
who may possibly have assisted in his elevation, and the alliance
was the stronger because Pyrrhus secretly favoured the sect of the
Monophysites. From Constantine he would receive little encouragement,
whereas Martina, as events proved, was ready to allow him to impose
his metaphysical distinction on the Church in return for his political
support. It is even said that Martina urged her husband to send the
weakly Constantine against the Mohammedans, in the hope that he would
not return. Such things are easily said, and easily believed, but
incapable of proof.
In February 641 Heraclius died. He suffered in his last years from
dropsy, and those who are curious to know by what appalling means
the medical men of the time relieved such an affliction, and how the
theologians of the time placidly traced the operation of a divine curse
for marrying one’s niece, may read the details of his sufferings in
the patriarch Nicephorus. To the last Heraclius was faithful to his
beloved wife. He divided the government of the Empire equally between
Constantine and Heraclonas, and he entrusted to the patriarch Pyrrhus a
large sum of money to be given to Martina in the event of her enemies
succeeding in driving her from power. The struggle began at once.
Martina convoked a meeting of the citizens--presumably in the
Hippodrome--and had the will of Heraclius read to them. When the herald
had concluded, the sullen silence was broken by a cry for the Emperors.
Martina, who was evidently minded to keep the youths in the background
and govern in their name, summoned the Emperors, but continued to act
as mistress of the Empire. But Constantinople--a compound of inferior
Greek and Roman with Syrian blood--always disliked feminine rule,
and in face of the advancing Mohammedans regarded it with additional
concern. “Honour to you as mother of the Emperors,” the citizens cried,
“but to them as Emperors and lords. You, mistress, would not be able
to resist and reply to barbarians and foreigners coming against the
city. God forbid that the Roman commonwealth should fall so low.”
We may take it that the chronicler has gathered into a speech the
various murmurs which arose from the crowded benches of the Hippodrome.
Plausible as the cry was, it was a grave blunder. The ailing, probably
consumptive, Constantine had not the manliness of a ruler, and the
palace became the theatre of the struggles of rival courtiers.
On the side of Constantine was the imperial treasurer Philagrius, and
this man embittered the situation by informing the young Emperor of the
money which Heraclius had left in charge of the archbishop and forcing
him to pay it into the treasury. In order further to strengthen his
position Philagrius represented to Constantine that his children would
be in danger from Martina if he died. It is important to notice that
the death of Constantine was plainly expected by all parties. Nothing
is clearer than that he had inherited the delicacy of his mother,
and was either epileptic or consumptive--more probably consumptive.
The patriarch Nicephorus tells us that he was “chronically ill” and
lived in a palace he had built at Chalcedon for the sake of his
health. His Empress, Gregoria Anastasia, was a daughter of Nicetas,
the young cousin who had set out from Africa with Heraclius, but we
have no further information about her. For her sake and that of the
children Constantine was persuaded by his intriguing courtiers to send
an officer, Valentine, to the troops when he felt that his end was
near. Valentine had not only a letter urging the troops to protect
Constantine’s children from Martina, but a large sum of money to
distribute amongst them. It is strange that historians have overlooked
this very obvious intrigue and so easily accepted the clerical
prejudice against Martina. If Martina were unable to meet “barbarians
and foreigners”--a point which might be disputed--assuredly infants
could not be trusted to do so.
Constantine died about three months after the death of his father.
There is no serious ground whatever for the charge that he was poisoned
by agents of Martina and Pyrrhus. The patriarch Nicephorus, the best
authority, knows nothing of the rumour, and the very chroniclers, of a
later date, who attach importance to it admit that Constantine suffered
from a chronic malady. Indeed, when we find a contemporary (and
recently published) ecclesiastical writer, the Bishop of Nikin, saying
that Constantine after three months’ illness “vomited blood, and when
he had lost all his blood he died,” we may confidently acquit Martina,
and conclude that the young Emperor died of consumption. The statement
of Constantine’s son, a boy of eleven, when he came to the throne, that
Pyrrhus and Martina had been justly punished, is a mere echo of the
pretext of those who deposed her. The poisoning of a consumptive youth
would be a new and superfluous crime, and we have no reason to think
that Martina was even normally criminal.
Martina at once assumed the government in the name of her son and
expelled the hostile faction from the Court. Philagrius was visited
with the most humane punishment of the time--he was forced to become a
priest--and his friends were dispersed. But his emissary Valentine was
in a strong position and he determined to put it to account. The large
sum of money entrusted to him enabled him to purchase the devotion of
an army, and he settled at Chalcedon with the ostentatious design of
seeing that no evil was done to the young son of the late Emperor.
Martina cleverly foiled his first move. She directed Heraclonas to
become godfather to the boy, who was carefully kept in the palace at
Constantinople, and to swear, with his hand on the cross, that no harm
should be done to the child. Valentine then brought his troops nearer
and began to ravage the suburbs and neighbourhood of the city, while
his friends in Constantinople lit the flame of religious antagonism
to Pyrrhus, who was unfortunately pressing his Monophysite tenets on
the Church. Exasperated at the inconveniences of the siege and the
heresy of the patriarch, the citizens now became restive. A mob invaded
and pillaged the great church of St Sophia, and Pyrrhus was forced to
abdicate. The power of Martina was now dangerously enfeebled, and she
came to terms with Valentine. The ambitious officer was to be appointed
“Count of the Excubitors,” or commander of the heavier guards, and to
be excused from rendering an account of the money entrusted to him.
The further course of the intrigue is scantily known to us, as there is
here a mysterious gap of thirty years in the narrative of Nicephorus.
From later chronicles we learn that, before the end of 642, the Senate
deposed Martina and Heraclonas. In spite of the notorious malady of
Constantine, they were found guilty of having poisoned him, with the
connivance of the archbishop, and were barbarously punished. The
tongue of Martina and the nose of Heraclonas were slit--the text
does not imply that they were cut off--and they were expelled from
Constantinople. Valentine also is said to have been expelled, so
that he must have changed sides. The further course of the spirited
and unfortunate Empress and her son is told in the bare phrase that
they “lived a private life and were buried together in the monastery
of the Lord.” We do not know the place of exile, or the year of
Martina’s death. That her punishment was unjust and barbaric seems
now to be beyond question, and there is no excuse, beyond the amiable
indiscretion of her marriage, for the evil repute which chroniclers
have attached to the name of the Empress Martina. She seems to have
been one of the best of the Byzantine Empresses.
CHAPTER VI
THE MOST PIOUS IRENE
The revolution which drove Martina from the palace set upon the throne
a boy of eleven, Constans II. The wife whom he afterwards brought to
share his splendour, and by whom he had three children, is not known
to us even by name. We know only that when his crimes, or violent
indiscretions, had rendered him so unpopular that he passed to Sicily,
he sent for his wife and children. The Senators, however, had no mind
to see the Court transferred to Italy. They detained the Empress and
her children, and, as the life of Constans was shortly afterwards ended
by his bath-attendant felling him with a soap-dish, the unknown Empress
sank into complete obscurity.
His son and successor, Constantine IV., had so clear a title to the
charge of brutality that no historian has ventured to dispute it, and
we will trust that the Empress Anastasia, whose features and character
are unknown to us, did not greatly lament the loss of a consort who
could slit the noses of his royal brothers and castrate a noble youth
for deploring the execution of his father. Nor can we think that she
was happier under the reign of his son, Justinian II., since the only
reference to her in the chronicle of his reign is that his favourite
minister, a Persian eunuch, had her flogged in the sacred palace on
one occasion. Her third and last appearance in history is even more
tragic; but a new and quaint type of Empress meantime enters the scene,
and in order to explain her arrival we must glance for a moment at the
adventures of Justinian II.
Attaining the purple at the age of sixteen, Justinian seems at first
to have sinned chiefly by the very natural blunder, in a young man,
of admitting corrupt and extortionate ministers. A usurper then took
advantage of his unpopularity to dislodge him from the throne, and sent
him, with diminished nose, into exile at Cherson, on the Black Sea.
Within a year Justinian had the satisfaction of hearing that his enemy
had been forced by a new usurper to retire, also with diminished nose,
into the tranquil shade of a monastery, and he proposed to regain his
throne. The authorities of Cherson, however, decided to conciliate the
new Emperor, Tiberius III., by sending Justinian to him in chains,
and he fled to the land of the Khazars, who dwelt on the other side
of the Black Sea. The Khazars were a wild Asiatic people, akin to the
Huns, whose manners had been somewhat softened by contact with the
Byzantine civilization, and their king, or _chagan_, not only received
the fugitive with cordiality, but bestowed on him the hand of his royal
daughter.
Theodora--a name conferred on her, no doubt, by Justinian in memory
of the consort of his great predecessor Justinian I.--can hardly
have boasted much beauty, being a Khazar, but she was not without
spirit and character. She presently learned that her father had been
bribed by Tiberius to surrender Justinian, and she warned him of his
danger. Sending, in succession, for the two high officials who had
been charged to arrest him, Justinian strangled them with his own
hands and fled to Bulgaria, leaving his wife and infant daughter in
the care of her father, who very amiably sheltered them. Within a year
the faithful Theodora learned that she was mistress of the mighty city
of the Greeks. Justinian had offered the hand of his daughter, then
one year old, and some more solid advantages to the King of Bulgaria
in exchange for an army, had laid siege to Constantinople, and had,
with a few soldiers, crept through the water-conduit into the town
and taken it. The appalling vengeance he wrought on his enemies and
on the inhabitants, even to the babies, of Cherson may be read in
history. It is, comparatively, an amiable trait in his character that
he did not forget the yellow-skinned princess who had lightened the
dark hours of his exile. She was brought with great pomp to the city,
bringing two children to their truculent father, was crowned Empress,
and enjoyed for a few years the undreamt-of splendour of the imperial
palaces. Happily, she did not live to see the end of her husband’s
savage vengeance. When a storm had threatened the life of Justinian on
the Black Sea, his companions had urged him to disarm the divine wrath
by forgiving his enemies. “If I spare them, may God drown me here,” he
had replied, with more vigour than elegance. His orgy was closed by the
inevitable assassination.
We catch a third and last glimpse of the Empress Anastasia at this
point. The brood of Justinian was to be exterminated, and soldiers went
to the palace of Blachernæ in search of Theodora’s boy. When they burst
into the chapel they found the aged grandmother sitting, on guard,
before the sanctuary. The six-year-old boy clung to the altar with one
hand, and held a fragment of the “true cross” in the other, while his
neck was loaded with the most sacred relics. But Byzantine piety was of
a peculiar nature. The soldiers brushed aside the old lady, stripped
the boy of his relics, took him out to the gate, and “cut his throat
like a sheep.”
Three Emperors followed in six years, and came to violent ends. Then
Leo the Isaurian (717–740) came upon the throne, and inaugurated the
famous crusade of the Iconoclasts, or breakers of images. His wife
Maria is known to us only as having received the title of Empress in
718, as a reward for bringing Constantine Copronymus into the world,
and having scattered gold from her litter among the people as she
was borne to St Sophia for the baptism of that ill-regulated infant.
Another Asiatic princess then comes faintly into view, when, in his
fourteenth or fifteenth year, Constantine marries a Khazar king’s
daughter. The religious chroniclers would have us believe that she
was endowed with much learning and piety, but the only ground of this
remarkable claim is that she did not agree with her husband, as few
women did, about the propriety of breaking the Virgin’s statues. After
eighteen years of patient expectation she ushered a feeble infant,
Leo IV., into the distracted Empire, and quitted it herself shortly
afterwards. The Empress Maria succeeded to her place in the arms of
Constantine in 750, and in 757 she left that very doubtful felicity
to the Empress Eudocia. Eudocia was pious and fertile: it is all that
we know of her. Nearing her first delivery she summoned the holy nun,
Anthusa--whom her husband had had publicly stripped and whipped a short
time before--and, in virtue of her prayers, presented Constantine with
a son and daughter, simultaneously, shortly afterwards. Four other
boys followed, and Eudocia, having behaved as a good Empress ought and
furnished no material to the biographer, followed her two predecessors.
Meantime the famous Irene had entered the story of Byzantine life,
and once more we are in a position to make a satisfactory study of
Byzantine feminism. In the year 768, seven years before the death of
Constantine V., Constantinople was delighted with a succession of
festivities. On 1st April Eudocia was, after ten years of industrious
maternal activity, crowned Empress, or Augusta, in the “banquet-room
of nineteen tables,” with its golden roof and golden vessels, in the
palace. On the following day, which was Easter Sunday, her eldest
sons, Christopher and Nicephorus, were made Cæsars, and her third son,
Nicetas, received the heavy title of _nobilissimus_ (“most noble”),
which gave the six-year-old boy a gold-embroidered mantle and a slender
jewelled crown; so that the procession to church was headed by two
Emperors, Constantine and young Leo, two Cæsars, and a “most noble,”
all flinging gold and silver among the enchanted mob. But Leo was now
approaching his twentieth year and must marry. The idea was mooted
first of asking the hand of the daughter of Pepin the Frank, but it is
said that the Western Christians frowned on the Kensitite heresy of
the Eastern Court. So Constantine then resolved to seek a beautiful
and eligible lady within his own dominions, and it was announced in
the late summer that the prize had been awarded to Irene, the pride of
Athens.
Irene was then a beautiful, talented and spirited girl of seventeen
summers. As she had, apparently, no ancestors, and as Athens had become
at that time a drowsy and almost obscure provincial town, we must
suppose that--as she herself afterwards acted--imperial commissioners
had been sent far and wide to examine candidates for the vacancy.
Irene’s radiant Greek beauty, robust health, and lively intelligence
pleased the officials; an imperial galley brought her to the palace
of Hieria, on the Asiatic side; her qualifications were found to be
adequate. There was one difficulty, and Irene gave early proof of her
skill in casuistry in surmounting it. Not only was Irene a woman--and
all women were on the side of the Virgin--but Athens was conservative
in religion. Constantine demanded an oath, and Irene, with a large
“mental reservation,” to use the elegant phrase of the experts in such
matters, swore on the holy cross that she would not favour the worship
of images.
Her story will turn largely on the question of Iconoclasm, and a
few words on the subject may be useful. The real origin of Leo the
Isaurian’s zeal against statues is obscure. Historians suggest the
influence of the purer religion of Mohammed, but there was no cultural
contact of Mohammedanism and Christianity, and an Isaurian soldier
would hardly be the man to experience it if there were. When we find
that the Iconoclasts went on to reject relics and monasticism and treat
the Virgin in very cavalier fashion, I suggest that it was a Protestant
or Rationalist movement, a spontaneous protest against the excessive
superstition, clerical wealth and monastic parasitism of the time. It
took strong root in the army; and we may assume that the permission
to rifle wealthy churches, rather than any leaning to metaphysics,
explains this zeal for advanced theology among the troops. Constantine,
like his father, pressed the reform ferociously; and as monks and
women were the chief recalcitrants, he fell upon the monks with grim
determination. Their beards were oiled and fired: they were gathered in
masses with nuns, and told to marry each other--as many did: they were
forced to walk round the Hippodrome, to the delight of the mob, arm in
arm with prostitutes. Even the reluctant patriarch of Constantinople
was indelicately mutilated, driven on an ass round the Hippodrome,
under a fire of spittle, and replaced by an obedient eunuch.
This was the Iconoclastic world into which the Athenian girl entered,
armed with a mental reservation. From the palace of Hieria she went, at
the beginning of September, to Constantinople, and her betrothal to Leo
was celebrated in “the church of the Lighthouse.”
Three months later her probation was complete; on 13th December she
received the wonderful crown of the Empresses, with its cascades of
pearls and diamonds, in the gold-roofed banquet-room, and was married
in the chapel of St Stephen within the palace.
Constantine remained on the throne for seven years, and Irene behaved,
and avoided images, with the most exemplary propriety, until, in 775,
the old Emperor joined his father in the eternal home to which the
religious chroniclers luridly consign him. Still for some years Irene
gave no sign of strong personality, unless we may see, as is probable,
her influence in the events of the following year. She had borne a
son in 770, and in 776 Leo was urged to admit this boy to a share of
the Empire. The Emperor was delicate, possibly consumptive, and it
will be remembered that he had five half-brothers, who offered rich
material for intriguing eunuchs and discontented nobles. Irene was
now a young woman of twenty-five, of strong and subtle intellect, and
well acquainted with Byzantine history. Her obvious interest was to
secure the succession for her son and exclude the children of Eudocia.
Leo at first demurred to the crowning of the boy. He submitted that,
if he died, the ways of Byzantium made it not unlikely that the child
would be murdered. He was answered with an assurance that the whole
Court and city were prepared to swear the most solemn allegiance to
his son, and in the spring of 776 he prepared to associate the younger
Constantine in his imperial power. It was becoming difficult in pious
Constantinople to devise an oath sufficiently sacred to be taken
seriously, and Leo exacted that all orders of the citizens should swear
by the cross on its most solemn festival and then place a written
record of their oath on the altar of the great church. On Good Friday,
therefore, the officers, Senators, courtiers and various corporations
of workers and idlers in the city, swore their mighty oath by the cross
to know no sovereign but Constantine VI., and on the following day,
when the last son of Eudocia, Eudocimus, was made a “most noble,” the
written oaths were laid on the altar, to be carefully guarded by the
patriarch--for a few years. On Easter Sunday Constantine was crowned in
the Hippodrome in the early morning, and the glittering procession of
Emperors, Cæsars, and “most nobles,” moved to the church, followed at a
modest distance by Irene and her eunuchs and women.
Twelve months later the imperial family and the higher orders met in
the gorgeous hall of the Magnaura palace for a different ceremony. It
had been “discovered” that the Cæsar Nicephorus had conspired with the
eunuchs and officers, and, when Leo announced the details--there was no
trial--to the audience, it was at once decided that he be degraded to
the rank of the clergy and banished to Cherson. One rival was put out
of the way, and Leo continued to play with his caskets of jewels--his
favourite occupation--and Irene to cultivate her policy of waiting.
In her service was the eunuch Stauracius, a genius of intrigue and
counter-intrigue, whose watchful servants could at any time detect or
manufacture a conspiracy. On one occasion only, towards the end of her
husband’s short reign, does Irene seem to have been indiscreet, though
the indications are rather obscure.
Historians put it to the account of Leo that under him the fierce
persecution of image-worshippers relaxed, but the question might be
raised whether there was much occasion for persecuting. It is said that
Irene secretly venerated images in her apartments and had about her a
group of confidential devotees, waiting for the death of Leo; and the
story runs that Leo, hearing of the conspiracy, forced his way into
Irene’s apartments, and discovered two sacred statues hidden under
a cushion. Whether or no it is true that Irene calmly lied--or made
another mental reservation--and disowned the figures of Christ and His
mother, it is certain that in the last year of his life Leo had a fit
of Iconoclastic wrath, and numbers of palace officials and nobles were
shaved into priests, dragged ignominiously round the Hippodrome, and
forced to exchange the gilded service of the Empress for the austere
service of the altar.
In view of this it is not surprising that, when Leo died a few months
later, there was a faint rumour that Irene had poisoned him; though the
more religious chroniclers tell us that, in his infatuation for jewels,
he had taken from the church the rich crown which Maurice had suspended
over the altars, put it on his sacrilegious head, which at once broke
into fiery carbuncles, and perished miserably. We may take it that the
delicate constitution of Leo IV. came to an end after a reign of four
and a half years (in 780) and the Empress Irene entered upon her long,
prosperous and blood-stained reign.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS IRENE
FROM AN IVORY PLAQUE IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, FLORENCE]
Constantine VI. was ten years old at the death of his father, and the
administration naturally fell to Irene and her able, if unscrupulous,
ministers. When all allowance has been made for the ability of her
ministers, especially the eunuch-patrician Stauracius, it must be
admitted that the Empress showed conspicuous talent and vigour, and
brought about a wonderful restoration of the stricken Empire. Her
abjuration of the Iconoclastic tenets not only brought comparative
religious peace, in the course of time, but enabled her to strengthen
her rule by friendly relations with the Papacy and with Charlemagne,
whose star was rising in the West. The long and exhausting war in the
East was brought to a close by diplomacy, and the military victories of
Stauracius restored the rule of Constantinople in Greece and Thessaly.
Prosperity brightened the Empire, and it almost returned to the happy
position it had enjoyed under Justinian I. But from this brighter
aspect of the reign of Irene, in which it is difficult to disentangle
her action from that of her ministers, we must turn to events in which
her character is more clearly, if less favourably, seen.
Six weeks had not elapsed since the death of Leo when it was announced
that a dangerous conspiracy had been discovered, the object of which
was to put the royal half-brothers of Leo on the throne. We can well
believe that there was some discontent at the rule of a woman and a
child, and that the feeble sons of Eudocia were ever disposed to listen
to ambitious courtiers, but the discovery was opportune. It removed at
one sweep all who seemed to be in a position to dispute Irene’s rule.
The three Cæsars and the two “most nobles,” and a crowd of nobles and
officers who were suspected of favouring them, were scourged, tonsured
or exiled. Indeed, lest there should be any later error as to the
clerical status of the children of Eudocia, Irene forced them publicly
to administer the sacraments to the people in the great church. It was
Christmas Day, and a vast crowd assembled to see the royal uncles
dispensing the consecrated bread under the eyes of the vigorous Empress
and her son.
The cruel spectacle was resented by many, and Elpidius, whom Irene had
made Governor of Sicily, rebelled. Irene ordered the local officers
to send him in chains to Constantinople, and, when they refused, she
sent a fleet which quickly dislodged him and punished the rebels.
Unfortunately, we read that the “most pious” Empress, as the admiring
chroniclers call her, so far lost her temper as to flog the wife and
children of Elpidius, and drive the innocent woman, with shorn hair,
into a nunnery. A more amiable way of strengthening her throne was
about the same time discovered by some courtier. A marvellous ancient
tombstone was brought to Constantinople, and citizens gazed with awe
on the inscription: “Christ will be born of the Virgin Mary, and I
believe in him. Sun, thou shalt see me again one day under the reign of
Constantine and Irene.” As this stone was certified to have been taken
by a Thracian peasant from the tomb of some prehistoric “giant,” it did
much to discredit the more rationalistic Iconoclasts, who scouted the
virginity of Mary, and the opposition to the divine mission of Irene.
The time was not yet ripe, however, for an open disavowal of the
Iconoclasts; the heresy was too deeply rooted in the army and the
more cultivated circles of the city. Irene thought for a moment of an
alliance with Charlemagne, and begged the hand of his daughter Rotrud
for her son. The offer was cordially received, and Byzantine eunuchs
were sent to initiate the Frankish maiden into the mysteries of the
Greek tongue and Greek etiquette. The fame of Charlemagne now filled
the world, and the young Constantine eagerly looked for the alliance
with his daughter. It would be interesting to speculate what influence
such an alliance would have had on the fortunes of Europe, and there
can be no doubt that Irene committed a criminal blunder in withdrawing
the proposal on what we must regard as selfish grounds. The only
plausible reason that can be suggested is that she feared that her son
might become a monarch in reality as well as name under the influence
of Charlemagne, and she was determined to be at least co-ruler. The
victories which Stauracius had meantime won in Greece and Thessaly
must have given her greater confidence in her own resources. In 783
she proceeded herself with a large army--not forgetting the organs and
other musical instruments of the Court, the chronicler says--to pacify
and restore the province of Thrace.
She now felt strong enough to restore the worship of images. At the
end of the year 783 the Iconoclastic archbishop Paul mysteriously
retired from his see. Irene called a meeting of the notables in the
Magnaura palace, and from the marvellous golden throne she announced
that Paul had been stricken with deep penitence for his opposition
to images and had retired to expiate his sin. She suggested that her
secretary Tarasius should be made archbishop, and the nobles and clergy
faithfully echoed the name of Tarasius. The secretary then protested
that he too had misgivings on the image question, and would take office
only on condition that a Church council was called to decide upon it.
Within a month or two Irene had brought to Constantinople a crowd of
bishops and heads of monasteries, and a fiery discussion proceeded
in the church of the Apostles. The Iconoclasts were, of course, in
a minority. Suddenly the doors were forced, and a troop of soldiers
entered, with drawn swords, and threatened to make an end to Tarasius
and his monks. “We have won; thank God, those fools and brutes have
done no harm,” was the exultant cry of the Iconoclastic bishops--I
translate literally from Theophanes[15]--and the meeting hurriedly
dispersed.
Irene once more resorted to the kind of diplomacy of which she was a
mistress. The rumour was spread that the Saracens were advancing, and
the guards were shipped to the Asiatic side and marched toward the
south. When they had reached some distance from the city, a message
came from Constantinople that the war had been averted, and they
might send their arms or equipment to the capital before returning
themselves. They were then scattered over the provinces and the
metropolitan guards were recruited from the orthodox ranks. The bishops
and monks were convoked again, in the Council of Chalcedon, and in the
last sitting of the Council, which was held in the Magnaura palace, the
cult of images was formally restored.
In the meantime Irene had resumed the work of finding a wife for her
son. If we are right in assuming that she rejected the daughter of
Charlemagne in order that Constantine should not have any strength
independently of her, we can understand her next procedure. One of
those innumerable “lives of the saints” which have transmitted to us
a few precarious fragments of genuine and interesting information
gives us a very romantic version of the rise of the next Empress. In a
remote Cappadocian village dwelt a very pious man who had won a local
reputation for sanctity, and impoverished his family, by his generous
almsgiving. He had three daughters, whose lives and prospects must
have been prosy enough in their rude village until romance entered it
one day in the person of an imperial commissioner. He was one of many
sent all over the Empire by Irene in search of a mate for her son,
and it seemed to him that the daughters of Philaretus corresponded
to the standard given to him--a standard which specified the height
and the size of the feet of the candidates as well as more material
features.[16] They were taken to Constantinople, with numbers of other
candidates for the glass slipper, and Maria, a beautiful maiden of
eighteen, was chosen for the lofty honour. It sounds like a modified
version of the story of Cinderella, but it was not the first time that
obscure maidens had been chosen for imperial dignity on their looks,
and the most reliable authority, Theophanes, tells us that Irene sent
one of her officers into distant Armenia--Maria is variously described
as Cappadocian, Paphlagonian and Armenian--for the obscure girl. She
was married to the Emperor in November 788, but we cannot end, as
story-tellers do, by saying that she was happy ever afterwards.
Constantine was now a youth of eighteen, and had courtiers of his own.
With their aid he perceived that, although rescripts went out in the
names of “Constantine and Irene,” the government was entirely in the
hands of Irene and her ministers. He had keenly desired the daughter of
Charlemagne, and he resented the forcing upon him of a village maiden.
The year following his marriage was one of bitter discontent and secret
whispering. Stauracius, however, or Irene, watched the conspirators
closely, and in January 790 the net was drawn round them. They had
intended to banish Irene to Sicily, and they now found themselves on
the way to Sicily, their backs sore from the scourge and their heads
marked with the odious sign of clerical office. Constantine himself
was flogged, and confined for some time to the palace; it was decreed
that henceforth the name of Irene should precede that of her son; and
a formidable oath was imposed on the troops that they would not suffer
Constantine to rule while she lived.
But the counsels of eunuchs and women, however vigorous they be in
their class, are apt either to fall short of, or pass beyond, the
golden mean in the game of politics. Regiment after regiment took the
oath, until at last the troops in Armenia refused to submit to feminine
rule. Irene sent the eunuch Alexius to persuade or coerce them. They
made him their commander, spread the rebellion among other troops, and
at length an army besieged the palace and dictated terms. Stauracius
was scourged, tonsured and deported to Armenia; Irene was deposed
and had to retire to a new palace--the Eleutherian palace--which she
had built and stored with treasure for emergencies. The lament of
Theophanes at this turn of the wheel, in which he sees the personal
action of the devil, is equal to his naïve praise of all the tricks of
Irene to secure and hold power in the cause of true religion.
In spite of that zeal for true religion, the modern reader will not
have followed the career of Irene up to this point with unalloyed
admiration. She was essentially a casuist, the very embodiment of the
Byzantine religious spirit. Chaste she undoubtedly was, though we shall
presently find her acting in that regard in drastic contradiction to
the teaching of the Church; she was generous, even extravagant, with
money, and she showed a sincere concern for the welfare of her subjects
within the limits of her own ambition; but she betrays from the start
that lack of moral scrupulousness which too often accompanies fervent
piety in Byzantine women, and the bitter disappointment which closes
the first part of her reign will now make her more unscrupulous than
ever.
It was in October 790 that Irene was deposed. Fourteen months
afterwards we find her returning to imperial power and making a fearful
use of it. Constantine had yielded to her pressure and that of the
nobles devoted to her, and again proclaimed that she was Empress and
co-ruler of the Empire. The Armenian troops at once protested against
the change, and, as their commander, Alexius, was in Constantinople
at the time, he was scourged and converted into an _abbé malgré lui_.
An expedition against the Bulgarians failed shortly afterwards, and,
whether the failure did really lead to a conspiracy, or the plot was
invented to serve the purpose of Irene and Constantine, a terrible
clearance was made of their possible opponents. Alexius and Nicephorus
(the uncle of the Emperor who had been made a cleric) had their eyes
cut out; and three other sons of Eudocia were brought from their
clerical homes and had their tongues cut. We must not too readily
implicate Irene in these barbarities. She had not returned to her
former influence and activity, and it was Constantine himself who led
an army against the insurgents in Armenia and made a terrible end of
their rebellion. In view, however, of Irene’s later behaviour, it is
probable that she agreed to, if she did not inspire, these proceedings,
and the authorities assure us that she now began to make selfish profit
of the unpopularity of her son and encourage him in licence.
We have as yet said nothing of the imperial life of the young woman who
had passed from her village home to the palace. The reason is that she
seems to have been one of those admirable Empresses who impress the
chroniclers only when they bear children or suffer misfortune. Maria
had borne two daughters to Constantine, and the year of her misfortune
was at hand. Constantine had never loved his wife and had freely sought
consolation elsewhere; and in the year 794 his eye fell on a charming
lady of his mother’s suite. Whether this lady was too chaste or too
ambitious to admit his passion irregularly, we cannot say, but we have
the emphatic assurance of the authorities that Irene encouraged the
passion, and supported her son in his proposal to divorce Maria, in
order still further to weaken his position. If such an act seem beyond
the range of a mother’s ambition, I can only say that far worse is to
follow.
On 3rd January 795, the unfortunate Maria was deposed from her dignity,
exchanged her imperial robes for the rough black dress of a nun, and,
with shorn hair, passed to a convent; and before the end of the same
year the more fortunate Theodote was transferred from the service
of Irene’s chamber (_cubicularia_) to the imperial dignity. It need
hardly be said that this procedure was violently opposed to the solemn
teaching of the Church, which now regarded marriage as absolutely
indissoluble. The courtly patriarch Tarasius, who had been converted
from a very secular secretary into an archbishop, proved accommodating
enough; he declined to perform the marriage, but he permitted some
enterprising priest named Joseph to do so, and he sanctioned the
transfer of Maria to a nunnery. But the monks of the Empire raised
once more their formidable chant of execration, and showered epithets
on the Emperor and the archbishop. The great monastery of Saccudion,
in Bithynia, was the centre of the agitation, under its vigorous abbot
Plato.[17]
The next move of Irene was to espouse the cause of the monks who
fulminated against her adulterous son and his “Jezebel,” and were
punished for doing so. If we feel a scruple about admitting so
malignant a course in a Christian mother, we must remember that these
things are ascribed to her by chroniclers who are full of admiration
for her piety, and that the tragic end of the story is quite beyond
doubt. Constantine lost ground, and Irene watched her opportunity. It
came in the month of September 796, when mother and son went, with
a large and distinguished company, to take the hot baths at Prusia.
Theodote had remained behind, so as to be near the Porphyra palace, and
she presently sent a message that a son was born. Constantine galloped
in delight to the city, and Irene set to work. By amiable conversation
and secret gifts she won a number of the officers, and the conspiracy
quietly proceeded when they returned to Constantinople. The following
summer Constantine set out against the Saracens, and Irene, fearing
that he might return with glory and renewed popularity, for he was a
skilful and vigorous soldier, determined to strike.
Constantine was recalled to the city by some false intelligence, and as
he went one day (17th June) from the Hippodrome to join his wife (whose
baby had recently died) in the palace of Blachernæ, he was attacked.
He escaped, and fled by boat to the Asiatic side, where Theodote
joined him. The position was now critical, as a number of nobles and
officers were with Constantine, and Irene heard that others were daily
crossing the water. For a moment she trembled and thought of sending
bishops to ask her son to allow her to retire into private life, but
there remained one device. Among the courtiers with Constantine were
some whom she had already compromised, and she sent a secret message
to these men to the effect that she would reveal their perfidy to the
Emperor if they remained with him. The stratagem succeeded. In the
early morning of 15th August the Emperor was brought, bound, to his
palace and lodged in the Porphyra; and there, in the very palace in
which he had been born, his eyes were brutally cut out by the knives
of the soldiers at the ninth hour of the day. Some of the chroniclers
observe that the work was done in such a way that the men really
intended to kill Constantine. That is misleading, since it would have
been perfectly easy to kill him, whereas we know that he lingered in
confinement in the Therapia palace for some years. The truth probably
is that Irene’s casuistry permitted the horrible mutilation, but
forbade the murder, of her son; but her agents probably concluded that
if they accidentally and unintentionally killed Constantine there would
be few tears shed.
It would be difficult to find a parallel to this horrible deed in the
long story of the pagan Empresses, and we press on to the conclusion
of Irene’s reign. For several years she continued to rule the Empire
in peace and prosperity. One or two feeble revolts were made, and more
eyes were cut from their sockets, but the year 799 opened with little
sign of trouble. Decrees went forth in the name of “Irene, the great
king and autocrat of the Romans.” She built convents and established
charitable foundations. She gladdened the hearts of the poor by
remitting taxes and import duties, and scattering money amongst them
as she rode to church in a golden chariot drawn by four white horses,
the reins of each held by one of the highest dignitaries of the Empire.
The Pope blessed her--he had put out the eyes of his predecessor--and
the great Charlemagne sent legates to ask her hand in marriage. And the
blind Emperor lingered in his palace-prison with his faithful Theodote,
waiting for the thunder of Jupiter.
In the year 800 the shadow of the avenger seemed to come over the
palace. Irene had two powerful ministers, Stauracius (who had, of
course, returned from the service of the altar) and Aetius, and their
quarrels filled the palace and the heart of Irene with bitterness. In
799 she had been dangerously ill, and their intrigues had doubled. She
recovered, and Stauracius determined to make a bold attempt to secure
the purple. His conspiracy was discovered, and Irene, holding a council
in the gold-roofed dining-hall, decreed that no military officer was to
approach Stauracius. The sentence seems mild, but the truth was that,
in spite of doctors and priests who lied to him even as he spat blood,
Stauracius was dying. He passed away in June, and Aetius commanded the
palace.
The end came in 802. Aetius had frustrated the proposal of a marriage
of Charlemagne and Irene, who seems to have favoured it (she was still
only in her fiftieth year), because he designed to secure the purple
for his brother and thus maintain his position. But the legates of
Charlemagne lingered in Constantinople, and witnessed the fall of
the great Empress. On the evening of 31st October 802, when Irene
lay ill in her Eleutherian palace, a group of nobles and officers
knocked at the door of the Chalke and summoned the guard. They had,
they said, been sent by Irene to put Nicephorus, the “chancellor of
the exchequer,” on the throne; she wished to forestall Aetius. In the
darkness and confusion they were admitted, and they took possession of
the palace and set guards round the Eleutherian palace. Almost before
dawn the next morning they conveyed Nicephorus to the great church to
be crowned, and, although Irene’s liberality had won the people and
they gathered in the square to damn Nicephorus and the archbishop and
raise cheers for Irene, they were powerless. The nobles and officers
were resolved to tolerate the insolence of Aetius no longer.
Irene, sick and dispirited, was incapable of making one of those
spurts of energy or astute stratagems which had so often saved her.
When the hypocritical Nicephorus came to visit her in her apartments,
she quietly begged that she might be permitted to end her days in her
Eleutherian palace. He had often been a guest at her table and grossly
deceived her; even the nobles were yet to learn what a brute they had
put on the throne. He promised that if she would swear on the cross
to give up the whole of the imperial treasure, she should retire to
her palace. It was believed that treasure was hidden in various places
in that labyrinth of palaces; even the blind Constantine was brought
forth to say in which wall a certain treasure was hidden. Irene swore
her last oath, gave a list of the hiding-places--and was promptly
imprisoned in a monastery she had built on the Princes’ Islands, a
group of small islands, in view of the palace, on the Sea of Marmora.
Constantinople seems to have been deeply moved, and a month later she
was removed to a dismal prison on the island of Lesbos. There, under
a strong guard, rigorously isolated from her friends, she spent nine
miserable months reflecting on the strange career she had run since she
had left Athens in the pride of her youth and beauty. She died on 9th
August 803, and was buried in her monastery on the Princes’ Islands.
CHAPTER VII
SAINT THEODORA
From the most pious Irene we proceed, after a passing glance at the
half-dozen Empresses of less fame who come between them, to a notable
Empress whose memory has actually been enshrined in the list of the
canonized. Byzantine piety has at times assumed such peculiar features
in the course of our story that we will not leap to the conclusion that
at length we reach a woman in whom modern taste will find a realization
of its standards. The restoration of the images of the Virgin and the
founding of monasteries were in those days arguments powerful enough
to silence the importunities of the devil’s advocate. Theodora will be
found to have ways that the modern woman may or may not admire, but
will assuredly not be encouraged to imitate. Yet it will be something
to meet a powerful Byzantine Empress whose hands are not stained with
blood, and, from her romantic elevation to her tragic fall, the story
of Saint Theodora will prove of no little interest.
We have left Irene dying of a broken heart in her island prison while
the perfidious Nicephorus wantons on her wealth in the sacred palace.
Since no wife is associated with him in the chronicles, it is not ours
to determine whether he really was “the sink of all the vices,” as the
ecclesiastical writers say, or whether his anti-clerical spirit and his
refusal to persecute heretics have not loaded the scales against him.
The example of Charlemagne, who maintained an imperial harem in the
heart of Christendom, seems to have affected him. When he had commanded
(for his son Stauracius) one of those “beauty shows” by which the
Byzantine Court often selected a royal bride, and three blushing and
beautiful maidens were presented for his final decision, he is said to
have appropriated two of them and imposed the third on his son. The
new Empress, Theophano, was an Athenian girl, a relative of Irene,
but, though she was not devoid of ambition, Fate did not afford her
the opportunity enjoyed by Irene. Nicephorus fell in war after a reign
of nine years, and his skull, tastefully mounted in silver, became a
favourite drinking-cup of the King of Bulgaria. But his son Stauracius
was gravely wounded in the same battle, and was borne back to the city
in a litter in a dangerous condition.
Theophano, who was childless, saw the crown slipping from her hands
as soon as she had obtained it. The Emperor’s sister Procopia was
married to the chief governor of the palace, a very handsome, amiable,
black-haired youth, not wanting in popularity, and the soldiers and
Senators whispered too loudly that he was fit to wear the purple.
Stauracius, from his sickbed, petulantly ordered that the bright eyes
of Michael should be cut out, and that the imperial power should pass
to Theophano. Within a few weeks the army turned upon its helpless
sovereign, and lodged him in a monastery. Theophano passed from the
palace to a nunnery and lost the beautiful hair which had so recently
helped to win her a throne; but it should be added, for the credit of
Michael, that he enabled her to soften the disappointment with all the
comfort that a large fortune could afford a woman with sacred vows.
Even more romance is packed into the brief story of the Empress
Procopia. Rising with her father, Nicephorus, from the level of
court officials to the imperial rank, she had married the handsome
superintendent of the palace and had, after a fortunate escape from the
vindictiveness of her brother (or of Theophano), been crowned mistress
of the Roman world, in the gold-roofed _triclinon_ on 2nd October
811. To her the Fates seemed to open a long and glorious career. Her
husband had neither grit nor judgment, and she virtually undertook the
administration of the Empire. Unhappily, she illustrated in a fatal
degree the proverbial subservience of women to priests and monks. The
policy of Nicephorus was reversed; the Church smiled under a shower
of gold, while the heretics were lashed into sullen defiance in the
provinces. Officers and nobles looked with disdain and irritation
on this revival of clericalism, and even concerted a plot to bring
the eyeless sons of Constantine VI. to the throne from their distant
priestly homes. When, in the year 812, Procopia drove out at the head
of the troops, who were marching against the Bulgarians, the soldiers
murmured and the “simple-minded” Michael, as a contemporary calls him,
was insulted. And when, in the following spring, Michael, relying on
his spiritual advisers for carnal warfare, was ignominiously beaten by
the Bulgarians, the soldiers offered the crown to a vigorous Armenian
officer and marched on the city.
Thus in less than two years Procopia forfeited the power which, she
believed, she had used so admirably. Her mild and timid husband
returned to the capital to tell her that he proposed to resign and
avoid a civil war. She raged in vain at his pusillanimity; the
chroniclers tell us, in particular, that she dwelt with strong
invective on the notion of this unlettered officer’s wife appearing
in the purple. While they discussed, the army reached Constantinople,
and they fled, with their children, to a chapel in the palace grounds
near the sea. The end was ruthless and inevitable. Michael, who was
little feared, was clothed with the monastic habit which befitted him,
and placed on one of the Princes’ Islands, in the Sea of Marmora, from
which so many kings and princes were to gaze upon the palace they had
lost. His elder son was castrated. Procopia was shorn and clothed with
the hated black dress of a nun, and, deprived of all her property, she
lived for a few miserable years with her daughters in a convent on the
fringe of the city.
The Empress Theodosia, wife of Leo the Armenian, who now ascended
the throne, hardly merited all the disdain with which Procopia had
depicted her in the imperial robes. She was the daughter of Arsaberes,
an officer and patrician of such rank and culture that there had been
an attempt to put him on the throne in the reign of Nicephorus. One
of the chroniclers, however, speaks incidentally of Leo’s “incestuous
marriage,” and we may assume that there was something wrong in the
connexion. It matters little, as Theodosia remains in complete
obscurity during her husband’s seven years’ reign. Only in the last
week does she make her first, and last, appearance in history.
In spite of a sincere desire to reform the Empire, and the most
energetic measures to purify and strengthen it, Leo became unpopular.
Reformers were rarely popular at Constantinople, and Leo had the
additional disadvantage of favouring the Iconoclasts. When fiery monks
denounced his maxim of universal toleration, he resorted to violence,
and hands and feet began to fall under the axes of his soldiers. At
last he discovered that the Count of his guards, Michael, was at the
head of a conspiracy, and he is said--many historians refuse to believe
the statement--to have ordered that Michael be cast forthwith into the
furnace which heated the baths of the palace. It was Christmas Eve, and
the Empress was horrified to learn that the feast was to be desecrated
in this way. As the soldiers conducted Michael through the palace,
she rushed from her bed, with flying locks and disordered dress, and
fell upon Leo “like a bacchante.” He sullenly postponed the execution,
muttering: “You and the children will see what comes of keeping me from
sin.” Michael was fettered and confined, and Leo retired with the key
of the fetters in his breast.
The unknown story of Theodosia, daughter of Arsaberes, ends in a
thrilling page of romance. Leo slept little, the fear that he had
blundered tormenting him, and at last he went in the dead of night to
the chamber in which Michael was confined. To his surprise he found
Michael sleeping on the jailer’s bed, instead of being chained to the
wall. He retired to consider the matter, but it seems that he took
no steps, and, in the early morning, he went to the chapel to chant
matins with the clergy. Now a page, who had been lying in a corner
of Michael’s cell, had noticed the purple slippers of the man who
had entered; he at once wakened Michael and his friendly jailer, and
a message was hastily sent to friends in the city, threatening to
betray them to Leo if they did not deliver Michael at once. It was,
as I said, the depth of winter--it was now Christmas morning--and a
group of singers were to enter the palace in the early hours to join
with Leo in singing the service. Leo had a resonant voice, of which
he was very proud. With these singers, hooded and cloaked with fur,
the conspirators mingled, and made their way to the chapel, concealing
their swords. They stood perplexed in the dim and cold chapel, as Leo
had drawn his fur hood over his head and was unrecognizable, until at
last his sonorous voice rang out, and their swords gleamed in the light
of the lamp. Leo, a very powerful man, seized the cross, and defended
himself for a time, but soon fell dead to the ground. Theodosia was
turned adrift in the desolate Empire, her four boys were castrated--one
dying under the brutal mutilation--and Michael the Stammerer, instead
of passing to the furnace, sat on the golden throne, even before the
fetters could be struck from his feet.
The reign of Michael introduces us at length to the woman whose name
stands at the head of this chapter. Michael was the son of a Phrygian
peasant, knowing more about pigs and mules than about Greek letters,
says the indignant chronicler, and had risen from the lowest rank of
the army. He had in early years married the daughter of an officer;
though we may smile at the legend that Thecla was bestowed upon him
because some soothsayer had foretold his fortune. Thecla had enjoyed a
year or two of splendour and passed away, leaving a son and daughter.
Second marriages were not favoured by the clergy and monks, and it is
said that Michael secretly arranged with the Senators that they should
press him to marry again; but when we find that he married a nun,
we can hardly suppose that he was disposed to fear the clergy. His
second Empress, Euphrosyne, has made no mark in history, yet she is
interesting. It will be remembered that twenty years earlier the son of
Irene had divorced his wife Maria, and sent her and her young daughters
into a convent. It was one of these daughters who, after spending
twenty years’ placid existence in a religious house during all the
storms that had swept through the palace, was recalled to the world,
relieved of her vows by the patriarch, and married to the boorish
Michael. After four or five years’ further enjoyment of the palace,
Michael was carried off by dysentery, and left the Empire to Euphrosyne
and her stepson Theophilus. Here begins the story of the sainted
Theodora, and ends the brief visit of Euphrosyne to the brighter world.
When Theophilus ascended the throne in 829 he is said to have been a
widower, though still young. The chroniclers persistently state that
the youngest of his five daughters married one of his officers a few
years after his accession, and the only solution of this singular
puzzle is said to be that an earlier wife had died and left him with
several girls. He was not, at all events, married when he was crowned
in 829, and, with the aid of Euphrosyne, he sought a consort. Once more
matrimonial commissioners searched the city and the provinces, and
every father of a beautiful girl hastened to display her charms to the
imperial examiners. Some writers would confine the scrutiny to the city
of Constantinople, but the fact that Theodora came from the distant
province of Paphlagonia confirms the statement of George the Monk that
the imperial commissioners travelled through “all regions” (of the
Empire) in search of a perfect bride. The utmost that panegyric has
been able to say of Theodora’s parents, Marinus and Theoclista, is that
they were “not ignoble.” We may assume that, like the Empress Maria,
the mother of Euphrosyne, she was discovered in some obscure village of
Asia Minor and conducted, with fluttering heart, to the Court of the
great king.
Euphrosyne added a picturesque feature to the “competition.” She
arranged the _élite_ of the candidates in a line in the hall of one
of the palaces, gave Theophilus a golden apple, and bade him give the
apple to the lady of his choice. He first approached a maiden named
Casia, or Cassia, who was not only the most beautiful of them all, but
had some repute for poetical talent. “How much evil has come through
woman,” said the imperial prig, improvising a Greek verse. “Yet how
many better things have come from woman,” the young poetess modestly
retorted, in verse. To her great mortification he passed on, apparently
displeased with her ready tongue, and gave the apple to Theodora. Casia
retired to a nunnery and to the composition of hymns, and Theodora was,
on Whitsunday 830, married and crowned by the patriarch Antony in the
historic chapel of St Stephen.
Euphrosyne returned to her convent immediately after the coronation.
Some authorities say that she was dismissed by Theophilus, others that
she retired voluntarily. It is not improbable that twenty years of
religious life had made her a real nun at heart, and she retired the
moment she was relieved of those reasons of State which had interrupted
her solitude.
During the thirteen years of the reign of Theophilus the Empress bore
her children and confined herself to the gynæceum, as a good Empress
should. Two sons and five daughters are assigned to her, but, as I
said, some, if not all, of these daughters of Theophilus seem to have
had an earlier mother. Maria is described as the youngest, yet about
the year 832, two or three years after the marriage of Theodora, she
married the commander Alexis. She died shortly afterwards.
Theodora had been piously educated in the orthodox faith, and it is
piquant to read the approving language of the religious writers when
they describe her duping her husband and breaking her oath to him.
Cardinal Baronius, who is endorsed by the Bollandists, calls her
“the glory and ornament of holy womanhood ... the unique example of
exalted holiness in the east.” We shall follow these distinguished
authorities on sanctity with some hesitation when we afterwards find
Theodora encouraging her son in vice, in order that he may leave the
administration to her and the clergy, and permitting him to hold
drunken suppers with his mistress in her palace; but the worldly minded
biographer must be less enthusiastic than they even about her earlier
actions.
The first anecdote told of her is that the Emperor one day noticed a
heavily laden ship making for the port of Constantinople and learned
that it belonged to Theodora. He went down in great anger to the quay,
and ordered the ship and its cargo to be burned. “God made me an
Emperor,” he cried, “and my wife and Augusta has made me a shipowner.”
The Bollandists merely enlarge at this point on the naughtiness of
princes who wish to monopolize trade for their own profit, but I think
that a better defence of Theodora can be imagined. The young Empress
was probably blameless. It was a custom of courtiers to evade the
duties on imports by trading in the name of the Empress, and Theodora
would hardly understand the matter sufficiently to refuse her name at
once.
The genial critic will also regard with some indulgence her petty
mendacities in regard to the beloved images which she cherished in
secret. One day her jester, or half-witted page, came suddenly into her
room and found her embracing the forbidden statues. She told him that
they were dolls, and Denderis went at once to tell Theophilus of the
pretty dolls with which his wife played in secret. Theophilus angrily
started from the table and went to her room. The fool was mistaken,
she cried; she and her maids had been looking in a mirror, and the boy
had taken their images in the mirror to be dolls.[18] Theophilus was
not convinced. Little more could be learned from the page, who had
been flogged by Theodora and told to hold his tongue about dolls, so
that whenever Theophilus asked him, he said: “Hush, Emperor; nothing
about dolls.” But his young daughters also now began to speak of dolls,
especially when they returned from visits to Theodora’s mother, who had
a palace at Gastria across the water. He learned from them that the
old lady kept a chest full of pretty dolls, which they were encouraged
to kiss and embrace when they visited her. The visits were immediately
stopped, and Theodora was compelled to take the most sacred oaths that
she would never favour the worship of images. Like Irene, she did so
with mental reservation.
The long and vigorous reign of Theophilus ended sadly. Unsuccessful
in war, indiscreet at home, and at war with the clergy, he wasted his
talent in adding to the luxury of the Court. He found a wonderful
mechanic and engaged him to fill the palace with expensive toys that
seemed to enhance the imperial dignity. Before “Solomon’s Throne” in
the Magnaura palace were set lions of gilded bronze which would rise
and roar at the approach of foreign ambassadors. Golden trees, with
golden singing birds, invisible organs, and all kinds of mechanical
barbarities were added to the rare furniture of the palace. New palaces
also were built in the grounds: a semicircular hall with roof of gold
and doors of bronze and silver, fountains which gave aromatic wine
from their silver pipes on feast-days, summer palaces and chapels
completely lined with the choicest marbles and mosaics. A superb palace
was raised on the Asiatic shore in imitation of the Caliph’s palace
at Bagdad, and the palace at Blachernæ, in the cool northern suburb,
now spread over a vast domain. But with all this facile splendour
Theophilus was conscious that he failed to hold the ever-pressing
enemies of the Empire, and he became morose and diseased. Theodora
seems to have kept his affection to the end. In an earlier year she had
detected him in criminal intimacy with one of her maids, and he had
asked her forgiveness with great humility. His last act was a brutal
murder in her interest. The noble Theophobos, who was married to the
Emperor’s sister Helena, was in jail on some suspicion. Theophilus
feared that he might aspire to the throne, and ordered the head of the
unfortunate noble to be brought to him. He died in January 842, leaving
the Empire to Theodora and her infant son Michael.[19]
Theodora now had supreme power, and her first care was to restore the
worship of images, in spite of her heavy oaths to Theophilus. In this
she needed diplomacy, as well as casuistry, since the learned patriarch
John, as well as the majority of the Senators, were opposed to images.
There was, moreover, a Council of Regency, consisting of three of the
abler officials of the Court. The first of them, Theoclistos, the
eunuch “keeper of the purple ink,” was an official of some ability,
and so devoted to Theodora that, in spite of his condition, the gossip
of the city associated the saint and the eunuch in a most unedifying
manner. The second member was Manuel, an uncle of Theodora and an
Iconoclast; the third her brother Bardas, a man of equal ability and
unscrupulousness, who could be relied upon either to worship or to
break an image according to his interest. It was to this man, in spite
of notoriously immoral life, that Theodora entrusted the tutorship of
the young prince; and there cannot be the slightest doubt that Michael
was deliberately educated in vice and sensuality, in order to divert
his attention from political power. St Theodora was to be the mother of
the Nero of the Eastern Empire.
The first step was taken in the restoration of images shortly after the
beginning of the Regency. Michael fell dangerously ill and at one time
he was believed to be dead. The monks came from the great monastery
of Studion, the most fiery centre of orthodoxy, to pray over the
remains of the Iconoclast--a singular procedure--and it was presently
announced that he had miraculously recovered his life and was converted
to the worship of images. In this new zeal he pressed the Empress to
remove the impious restriction on piety, and for a time she resisted,
pleading the sanctity of her oath. Knowing Constantinople as we do, we
have little difficulty in regarding the whole procedure as a comedy.
At length a council was summoned in the house of Theoclistus, and the
reform was sanctioned. The patriarch John was now ordered to convoke a
synod; he refused, and the way in which that obstacle was removed so
well illustrates the character of Constantinople, if not of Theodora,
that it is worth describing.
John was one of the most learned men of his time, a genius in physical
science and mechanical art. His rationalistic opposition to the
popular cult of relics and statues, however, gave a dark aspect to his
learning, and he was commonly regarded as a magician and a secret
libertine. Men told each other of the subterraneous chamber which he
had in his brother’s house for entertaining nuns and other pretty
women. In reality, he seems to have been a learned and conscientious
man, and, even when Bardas cruelly flogged him, he refused to submit
to the Empress’s wish and relieve her from her oath. The report was
given out from the palace that he had inflicted the marks of the
scourge on himself, and had even attempted to commit suicide. He was
at once deposed and confined in a monastery; and, when it was reported
to Theodora, no doubt falsely, that he had there pricked the eyes out
of a picture of Christ, she angrily sentenced him to lose his own eyes
and to receive two hundred strokes of the loaded scourge. He had been
one of the chief pillars of her husband’s reign. His friends, I may
add, retorted by accusing the new patriarch Methodius of rape, but
decency prevents me from describing how the archbishop happily escaped
the charge by proving, in open court, that St Peter had miraculously
relieved him from temptations of the flesh many years before.
The new patriarch convoked a synod, and crowds of monks flocked to
Constantinople from all parts to encourage the good work, and marched
through the streets of Constantinople under their sacred ensigns.
Theodora surprised the bishops and abbots, as they sat in conclave,
by demanding that they should issue a guarantee that her husband
was absolved from his sins. It was a dangerous precedent, and they
protested that they had no power to give such an assurance. Theodora
then explained that she had presented a sacred image to Theophilus in
his last hour, and that he had embraced it fervently. Modern historians
are ungallant enough to disbelieve her story, and no doubt there were
many at the time who distrusted Theodora’s casuistic ability, but
when she proceeded to hint that image-worship would not be restored
unless they satisfied her, they decreed that the sins of Theophilus had
been undone by repentance. At the conclusion of the synod Theodora
entertained the holy men in her Carian palace, or palace built entirely
of the famous Carian marble, at Blachernæ. Near the end of the banquet,
when the cakes and sweets were being served, her eye fell on the grim,
disfigured face of the religious poet Theophanes. He had come from
Palestine to Constantinople, during her husband’s reign, to fight for
the images, and Theophilus had sent him into exile with no less than
twelve lines of bad verse tattooed on his face, announcing that he was
a “wretched vessel of superstition.” Theophanes marked the tearful gaze
of the Empress, and impetuously cried that he would not forget to ask
the judgment of God on Theophilus for the outrage. “Is this the way you
keep your promise?” she exclaimed excitedly; and the bishops had to
intervene and appease her and the martyr.
This restoration of image-worship seems to be the one virtue which
ensured for Theodora a place in the Greek canon of the saints (on 11th
February). That she led a chaste life we need not doubt for a moment.
The rumour of amorous relations with Theoclistus is foolish gossip,
and a man named Gebo, who afterwards claimed to be her natural son,
was either an impostor or a lunatic. But the shallowness of her piety
and weakness of her moral character are too plainly revealed in the
debauching of her son by her own brother, into whose care she gave
the young Emperor. The historian Finlay observes that “in the series
of Byzantine Emperors from Leo III. to Michael III., only two proved
utterly unfit for the duties of their station, and both appear to have
been corrupted by the education they received from their mothers.”
When we reflect on the strange types of men whom the disordered life
of the Empire brought to the throne, this is a terrible impeachment
of Irene and Theodora; and it is a just impeachment. No man was less
fit than her brother Bardas to train a youth, and the only conceivable
palliation of Theodora’s guilt is that she wished to retain power in
the interest of the Church. How even that hope was mocked, and the
rule of her son ended in debauchery and murder in her own house, we
have next to consider.
For some ten years the Empire enjoyed comparative peace and prosperity.
The Bulgarians, learning that a woman and a child ruled the Empire,
made inflated demands, but Theodora met them with admirable firmness,
and averted war. Her only grave blunder was the ruthless persecution
of heresy. She sent officers to convert the masses of Paulicians in
the eastern provinces, and, whether with her consent or no, they
perpetrated horrible butcheries in the name of religion and engendered
a civil war. Then, as Michael approached his sixteenth year, a series
of terrible internal troubles and disorders set in.
Gladly following the example of his tutor Bardas, the young Emperor
fell in love with the beautiful daughter of a high official of the
Court named Inger. Eudocia Ingerina is described by one of the writers
of the Court of Constantine VII.--her grandson--as “one of the most
beautiful and most modest women of her time.” The course of this
narrative will show that she was, as most of the chroniclers say, one
of the most dissolute women of the time, second only to Theodora’s
daughter Thecla. Whether she betrayed her laxity even at this early
age, or whether Theodora merely dreaded an alliance of her son with
a distinguished officer, we cannot confidently say. The chroniclers
suggest that she was already the lover of Michael, and that Theodora
and Theoclistus interfered. They compelled Michael to marry another
Eudocia, daughter of the patrician Decapolita. We do not know the fate
of this lady and may trust that she did not live to see the more sordid
phases of her husband’s life. It seems that very shortly after the
marriage he resumed his relations with the daughter of Inger.
Bardas now began to force his ambition more openly and get rid
of the members of the Council of Regency. He first, by means of
Theoclistus, drove his uncle Manuel into private life, and then
turned upon Theoclistus, who ventured to remonstrate with him about
his notorious liaison with his own daughter-in-law. Fearing for his
life Theoclistus built a house close to the palace, communicating
with it by an iron door, which was carefully guarded, and continued
to administer the Empire in conjunction with Theodora. There is some
indication that Theodora’s three sisters--Sophia, Maria and Irene--also
had some share in the administration. Bardas pointed out to his pupil
that he was improperly excluded by them, and suggested that Theodora
intended to marry Theoclistus and have Michael’s eyes put out. When,
therefore, Theoclistus next went to read his report to Theodora, he
was intercepted by a group of the servants of Bardas, who, in the
name of the Emperor, demanded his papers. A scuffle took place, and
Theoclistus was imprisoned, and presently murdered in his cell. One of
the chroniclers would have us believe that one of Theodora’s daughters
actually witnessed the murder on behalf of her brother.
Theodora was beside herself when the news reached her that her
favourite minister had been murdered. She is described as roaming about
the palace with dishevelled hair, weeping and upbraiding her son and
brother. The natural result was that they decided to remove her, and
she saw that her rule had come to an end. She summoned the Senators and
laid before them a financial statement of the affairs of the Empire.
She had so well husbanded the funds left by Theophilus that a store
of gold and silver amounting to many million pounds of our coinage,
besides chests of jewels and other treasure, were at the disposal of
the State. “I tell you this,” she shrewdly added, “in order that you
may not readily believe my son the Emperor if, when I have quitted the
palace, he tells you that I left it empty.” She saluted the Senators,
laid down her power, and quitted the imperial palace. But Michael and
Bardas were not content. As Theodora and her daughters went to the
palace at Blachernæ they were arrested by her elder brother Petronas,
shorn of their hair, and confined, in the dress of nuns, in the
Carian palace at Blachernæ. They continued, however, to regard the
proceedings at Court with close interest, and were transferred to the
palace-monastery of Gastria across the water.
[Illustration:
ΕΥΔΟΚΙΑ ΑΥΓΟΥΣΤΑ
ΛΕΩΝ ΔΕΣΠΟΤΗΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ
EUDOCIA INGERINA, WIFE OF BASIL I
FROM DU CANGE’S ‘HISTORIA BYZANTINA’]
From her near exile Theodora watched the next dramatic phase of the
quarrel. It was in the year 856, apparently, that Theoclistus was
murdered and she forced to resign, and the next ten years witnessed a
repellent development of Michael’s vices. He has passed into history
under the name of Michael the Drunkard, but drunkenness was not
the worst of his vices. He lived in open association with Eudocia
Ingerina and filled the palace with scenes that had been banished from
Roman life with the death of Nero. The only point that can be urged
in favour of Byzantine morals is that the drastic legislation and
action of earlier Emperors had checked the spread of unnatural vice.
Apart from this, Michael the Drunkard ranks with Nero and Caligula,
and, in respect of some kinds of grossness, surpasses them. Only the
more repellent pages of Zola’s “La Terre” offer an analogy to the
coarse practices which Michael rewarded in the abominable circle he
gathered about him. It is enough to say that the filthiest of his
friends dressed in the vestments of the archbishop, and had eleven
followers dressed as metropolitan bishops; that they used the sacred
vessels, with a mixture of mustard and vinegar, for their parody of
the Mass; and that they paraded the streets on asses in this guise,
and hailed the patriarch himself with obscene cries and gestures. The
treasures left by Theodora were soon dissipated on these ruffians and
on Michael’s favourite charioteers, and the golden curiosities made by
Theophilus were melted down to eke out the failing exchequer. And when
Michael was told that the enemies of the Empire were once more pressing
on its narrowed frontiers, he callously ordered that the line of
signal fires, which were wont to announce the inroad of the enemy from
the distant provinces, should be abandoned, so that his chariot races
might not be interrupted.
Such was the spectacle which Theodora had to contemplate for ten weary
years, nor can she have been unconscious how deeply she was responsible
for it. At length, in 866, the infamous career of her brother came to
a close, and she was free to return to the Court. A new favourite had
arisen and displaced Bardas. A handsome groom in the imperial service,
Basil the Macedonian, had caught the fancy of Michael. When Bardas one
day denounced a noble for not saluting him in the street, as he passed
in the gorgeous robe of a Cæsar--a dignity to which Michael raised him
in 865--the noble was deposed from office and Basil put in his place.
Basil was married, but the besotted Emperor forced him to divorce his
wife and marry Eudocia Ingerina; and, as Michael retained Eudocia
as his own mistress, he brought his willing sister Thecla from her
nunnery and made her the mistress of Basil. Bardas was now alarmed and
perceived that either he or Basil must die. I need not enter into the
sordid details. Enough to say that Basil and Michael decoyed the Cæsar
from the city, after a solemn oath on the cross and the sacrament,
which were held before them by the patriarch, that they had no design
on his life, and murdered him. This occurred on Whit-Monday 866; on the
following Saturday Basil was crowned and anointed co-Emperor of the
Romans.
To this blood-stained and sordid Court Theodora did not hesitate to
return as soon as Bardas was slain. One of the chroniclers tells an
anecdote which would, if one dare reproduce it in full, give some
idea of the atmosphere which she breathed. Michael one day summoned
her to come and receive the blessing of the patriarch, who was with
him. She entered and bent in inobservant reverence before the vested
figure beside her son, and she was, to the loud delight of Michael,
startled by an outrage that the rudest peasant would hardly suffer to
be offered to his mother. It was the infamous mock-patriarch Gryllus,
perpetrating his coarsest joke.
This, however, seems to have occurred before her abdication, and
she seems, after the murder of Bardas, to have lived chiefly in the
Anthemian palace across the water. Unfortunately, the last scene in the
squalid reign of her son shows that she still tolerated his excesses.
Basil, in turn, had seen a new favourite arise and threaten his hope
of inheriting the Empire. In a drunken fit Michael had put his purple
slippers on a vulgar servant--a man who had formerly rowed in the
galleys--for praising his chariot-driving, and brutally observed to
the tearful Eudocia, who sat beside him, that the man was more fit for
the purple than her husband. Basil, if not Eudocia, concluded that the
Emperor must be assassinated, and before long Theodora provided them
with an opportunity. I am not for a moment suggesting that Theodora was
aware of their intention, but this last appearance of hers on the stage
of history is a painful close of her career.
She invited Michael to sup and stay at her palace after he had spent a
day hunting on the Asiatic side of the water. Such an invitation might
be innocent, even virtuous, if there were a design to separate the
young Emperor from his associates and, perhaps, endeavour to counsel
him. But we find that his usual Court accompanied him, and the evening
was spent in drunken debauch. The new favourite, Basilicius, and
Michael were put to bed in a drunken condition. Basil, with whom was
Eudocia, had slipped from the room and tampered with the fastenings of
their doors, and in the middle of the night Theodora awoke to hear the
clash of swords and cries of hurrying men; Michael and Basilicius had
been murdered, and Basil and Eudocia were hastening to Constantinople
to secure the palace.
The last glimpse we have of St Theodora is when she and her daughters
convey the remains of the wretched Emperor to the city for interment
in the great marble tombs of the kings. It was the autumn of 866, and,
as the Greek Church celebrates her festival on 11th February, we may
assume that she lived a few months afterwards in sad, if not penitent,
obscurity. Few in modern times, even of those who share her creed,
would venture to describe her as “the glory and ornament of her sex.”
No woman of high character could have been betrayed into the criminal
blunders which Theodora committed, however exalted she may have
considered her ultimate aim to be. Yet we may grant that she was rather
tainted by the pitiful casuistry of her time than evil in disposition,
and the historical memorial of her life-work is a sufficiently terrible
punishment of her errors.
It remains briefly to dismiss the Empresses Eudocia and Thecla. On the
morning after the murder Eudocia Ingerina sat proudly by the side of
her husband, in the glorious robes and jewels of a reigning Empress,
as he went to the great church to consecrate his Empire to Christ. She
enjoyed her dignity for about fifteen years, but the only incident
recorded of her is that she was detected by her husband in a liaison
with a steward of the table. Thecla was discarded at the death of
her brother and passed to less exalted lovers. Some years after his
accession she sent a servant with a petition to Basil. “Who lives with
your mistress at present?” the Emperor cynically asked. “Neatocomites,”
the man promptly replied. Neatocomites was flogged and put in a
monastery, and Thecla was flogged and robbed of the greater part of her
fortune. It is the last glimpse we have of the family of St Theodora.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WIVES OF LEO THE PHILOSOPHER
Basil the Macedonian, or Basil the groom, son of a Macedonian peasant
of Armenian extraction, enjoyed his imperial wealth, and made excellent
use of his imperial power, during nearly twenty years. His story is not
one to encourage the venerable adage that honesty is the best policy.
But we have dismissed his Empress, Eudocia Ingerina, whose only known
features are great beauty and equally great licence in love, and we
pass on to review the remarkable series of Empresses whom his son
successively married. I say his son, but no historian doubts that Leo
VI. was really the son of Michael the Drunkard. The temper of Eudocia
Ingerina had been so accommodating that royal genealogists have to
indulge largely in arithmetical calculation in order to determine
the paternity of her children, or the maternity of Basil’s children.
Briefly, Basil’s eldest son, Constantine, was probably a child of the
poor Maria who had been sent back to Macedonia with her pockets full
of gold, but he died before his father and will not interest us; the
second son, Leo, was almost certainly the son of Michael and Eudocia,
who had been transferred in a state of pregnancy from the embraces of
the Emperor to the embraces of his groom; the third and fourth sons,
Alexander and Stephen, were presumably born of Basil and Eudocia; and
the four daughters must, in despair, be distributed over the group of
parents.
When Leo had reached the age of fifteen or sixteen, his elder brother
having died two years before, Basil and Eudocia sought him a wife, and
we are at last so fortunate as to meet a really blameless Empress,
and one whose title to her place in the calendar of the saints will
not be disputed by the most irreverent historians of modern times. St
Theophano has, moreover, been revealed to us more fully in recent years
by the publication of ancient Greek manuscripts that were unknown in
the days of Gibbon.[20] That they enlarge her virtues and attenuate the
vices of her husband is only what we should expect in Byzantine writers
of the time, but they enable us to give a satisfactory portrait of an
imperial saint and to set it in pleasant contrast to the figures of her
contemporaries and successors. Theophano is a stray lily in a garden of
roses.
The first wife of Leo was the very pretty and pious daughter of a
distinguished noble of the city, Constantinus Martinacius. Her mother
had died in her early years, but her education had proceeded on lines
of the most orthodox piety, and she had a genius for assimilating
its ascetic prescriptions. The piety of her father, however, did not
prevent him from putting forward his fifteen-year-old daughter when,
in the winter of 881–882, Basil and Eudocia sought a mate for Leo. The
city and provinces were, as usual, scoured by the special matrimonial
commissioners, and Theophano was one of the dozen maids introduced
into the great palace for inspection. Eudocia, a good judge, reviewed
them in the Magnaura palace, and selected Theophano and two others.
Eudocia’s high birth probably gave her some advantage over the obscure
Athenian girl and another rival who ran her close in the competition.
She was exhibited to Basil, and he at once placed a ring on her young
finger and ordered Leo to marry her. Much subsequent evil might have
been avoided if the youth had been consulted. Either the excessive
piety of Theophano was distasteful to him, or he had already set his
mind on another lady. But Basil was never indulgent to Leo, whom he
must have regarded as Michael’s son, and the children were married with
all the splendid ceremony which the Emperor Constantine describes for
us, and entered upon their duty of sustaining the dynasty.
The pious Theophano soon found that life in a court was not a mere
monotonous round of ceremonies. The chief friend and adviser of Basil
was a compatriot--that is to say, a Macedonian of Armenian origin
(Armenian colonies having been transferred, on account of the Saracens,
to Macedonia)--named Stylianus Zautzes, and Zautzes had a pretty and
lively daughter named Zoe. It is probable that Leo had contracted a
boyish love of Zoe before he was forced to marry the young saint,
and he was not of a nature to sacrifice the rose to the lily. Not
very long after the marriage Theophano complained to Basil, we learn
from the life of Euthymius, that her husband was making love to Zoe.
Leo naturally protests to the patriarch, and no doubt protested to
Basil, that his admiration was Platonic, but we shall see that he did
not usually confine himself to that academic emotion. Basil believed
the charge, caught Leo by the hair and flung him to the ground, and
compelled Zoe to marry, out of hand, a man to whom she was more than
indifferent. He was sowing a crop of tragedies.
Eudocia died about this time, and the young Theophano took her place in
the rich ceremonial of the Court, walking in the endless processions
and being borne in the golden litter, drawn by white horses, to the
great church and the lesser shrines and palaces. Her new dignity cannot
have lasted many months when a fresh and more furious storm broke upon
her virtue, and she bore herself admirably. The second most intimate
friend and counsellor of Basil was the abbot Theodore, of Santabaris
in Phrygia, a very enterprising and peculiar monk. He was a master
of magic and was regarded with the greatest awe by the Emperor. Leo
ventured to urge on Basil that the man was an impostor and humbug, and
the chroniclers say that the abbot turned vindictively on Leo. No one
was allowed to have weapons in the company of the Emperor, but Theodore
persuaded Leo that, if he kept a knife concealed in his boot when he
was hunting with Basil, he might be able in an emergency to render a
service and disarm Basil’s anger. Leo hid a knife in his boot, and
the monk promptly advised Basil to search the prince, as he feared
conspiracy.
So from the palace Leo passed to prison, or confinement in the Pearl
palace, and Theophano went with her little daughter Eudocia to keep him
company and impress on him the duty of resignation to the divine will.
The chroniclers differ as to the length of the imprisonment; some make
it three months and others three years. As Zautzes and the Senators
intervened and begged Basil to reconsider his verdict, I prefer to
accept the shorter term. One of the chroniclers tells us that the most
effective pleader for Leo was a parrot, kept in the palace, which
someone taught to cry: “Poor Leo, poor Leo.” At all events, Zautzes,
and the patriarch Photius, and numbers of the Senators, insisted that
Leo was innocent; and he was set at liberty. He was now the obvious
heir to the throne. Basil could not put him aside in favour of a
younger son without admitting his irregular parentage, and it is not
unlikely that the old Emperor had a regard for Theophano. For a few
years, therefore, the young Empress continued to rule the great palace,
to which Basil had made superb additions, and to practise the high
virtues which her husband so little appreciated. Then (in March 886)
Basil left his purple robes to Leo, and Leo and his wife and child to
the care of Zautzes.
The first concern of Leo the Philosopher--who was no philosopher at
all, though he was well read in the letters of the time--was to seek
Abbot Theodore of Santabaris. The monk had prudently retired to a
bishopric in remote Pontus before Leo came to the throne, but he was
brought to Constantinople, deposed, scourged, and exiled to Athens,
where his eyes were afterwards cut out. It was the punishment he had
recommended Basil to inflict on Leo. As the patriarch Photius was
believed to have been in league with the monk-magician, he also was
deposed, and Leo’s younger brother, Stephen, was made archbishop. Leo’s
four sisters had already been turned into nuns by the prudent Basil,
and there remained only the second brother Alexander, who was content
to await the hour for his own imperial debauch.
Leo’s next care was to renew his pleasant relations with the
fascinating Zoe, “the most beautiful woman of her age.” A few added
years would have merely ripened her charms, and her father regarded
with complacency her promotion to the place of imperial concubine, and
continued to discharge his functions as commander of the foreign guards
(_hetæriarch_). To Theophano only was it a grave affliction to find the
palace enlivened by the fiery and beautiful oriental. She endured the
outrage for some years, patiently working at her embroidery for the
altars and spending long hours in prayer, until her one child died,
in the winter of 892–893, and she begged Leo to allow her to retire
to a convent, leaving him free to marry. Leo was not unwilling, but
the patriarch Euthymius foolishly refused to consecrate her, and she
languished for a few months longer in her uncongenial world.
The situation is illuminated by a passage in the chronicles which leads
up to the first plot on Leo’s life. Some time in 891, apparently, Leo
and Zoe and Zautzes, with other members of their family, went to stay
at the Damian palace in the suburbs, probably for a hunt. Theophano,
the chronicler says, was not with them; she was “busy praying” in the
Blachernæ palace, to which she seems to have generally retired from
the dissolute Court. For some entirely obscure reason Zoe’s brother
and his friends concerted a plot against the life of Leo; we can
hardly suppose that it was a case of outraged brothers wiping out the
dishonour of their sister, seeing that Zautzes himself was a member of
the house-party. Whatever the cause was, Zoe, who was sleeping with
Leo, heard whispering in the garden without, and, creeping to the
window, learned that her brother Tzantzes and others were about to
murder Leo. These are the sober details given in the chronicles, but
Byzantine history is so full of melodrama that we need not hesitate to
accept them. She roused her lover, and they stole from the house and
reached Constantinople. Leo suspected that Zautzes himself had been
privy to the plot and was estranged from him for some months.
This seems to have been the position during the early years of Leo’s
reign: his wife “busy praying,” or mortifying her frail body, in the
quieter palace at Blachernæ, while Leo floated over the Sea of Marmora
with Zoe in the great pleasure-galleys he had constructed, or wantoned
in his various palaces. Theophano died in the seventh year of his
reign--on 10th November 893 according to de Boor’s calculations, though
her festival is celebrated by the Greek Church on 16th December. The
modern mind would be little impressed by an account of the miracles
which her remains are said to have wrought after death, nor can one
read without a certain amusement that, in the words of a later Emperor
and most of the chroniclers, she deserved the aureole of sanctity by
“her freedom from jealousy and her patient endurance of the contempt of
Zoe.” The nobles of Constantinople would not be unwilling to see such
virtues consecrated by the Church. There is, however, no doubt that the
daughter of Constantinus Martinacius merited her place in the calendar
of the Church, and she is one of the few blameless women to gratify the
biographer of the Empresses.
From the saint we pass to the sinner; from “the lilies and languors of
virtue” to the “roses and raptures of vice.” In the following year
Leo violated all decency by taking Zoe into the sacred palace. Her
husband, the patrician Theodore Guniazitza, died so opportunely that
it was inevitably believed that he had been poisoned; and, although
the statement is no more than a rumour, and one may hesitate to-day to
admit that “an adulteress may easily become a poisoner,” it cannot be
said to be improbable. Leo now approached the patriarch Euthymius on
the question of marrying Zoe, and the prelate again blundered, in too
narrow a zeal for his ideals, and sternly resisted. He was removed to
a monastery, and before the end of 894 Zoe was the legitimate Empress
of the Roman world. It was, however, only to enjoy a few more hours
of pleasure in the gilded palace. Her father died in the spring of
896, and Zoe followed him in the autumn or winter of the same year,
having worn the crown for one year and eight months. For her the
ecclesiastical chroniclers have no praise; they affirm that, when men
came to lay her remains in her marble sarcophagus, the words “Miserable
daughter of Babylon” were found to have been mysteriously carved on the
stone. Beautiful, careless and sensual as she was, one may doubt if a
single stone could be flung at her if Leo had been allowed to consult
his own heart at the time of his first marriage.
Leo was now, in his thirtieth year, a widower for the second time,
and he was little reconciled to that condition. Not only was his
dissipated brother Alexander greedily waiting to occupy his throne,
but an astrologer had assured Leo that he would yet have a son, and
the message of the stars must be fulfilled. Third marriages, on the
other hand, were subjected to grave ecclesiastical censure, and for
several years the Emperor did not venture to take the forbidden step.
Indeed, when he did begin to speak of marriage, Zoe’s relatives and
other disappointed courtiers took alarm and plotted against his life.
Her nephew Basil had his hair oiled and fired, and all the survivors
of the Zautzes family were driven from the city. The clearance made
room for fresh courtiers, one of whom, a Saracen named Samonas, became
the master of intrigue which we almost invariably find in the palace
in each generation. One instance of his wit will suffice to make him
known and to illustrate life at the Court. The commander Andronicus had
taken alarm and fled to the Saracens. Leo had no wish to injure him,
and he entrusted a message to that effect to a captive Saracen and bade
him deliver it to Andronicus. In order to outwit Samonas, who did not
wish the able officer to return and dispute his power, the message was
ingeniously enclosed in a wax candle. Before he left Constantinople,
however, Samonas told the Saracen that the candle contained a plot
against his country, and it was never delivered to Andronicus.
At the beginning of 899 Leo braved the censures of the clergy
and, apparently, sent out his commissioners in search of a bride.
As a result he married, probably at Easter, a beautiful maiden
from the Opsikian district--the region of Asia Minor nearest to
Constantinople--named Eudocia. To his great mortification, Eudocia
gave birth to a boy, but both mother and child died immediately.
The majority of Christian Emperors would have resigned themselves
to this third disappointment, but it seems to have increased Leo’s
determination. Most historians admit that it was not so much
sensuality, which such a man as Leo could easily gratify, as the
determination to have a son, which inspired Leo’s defiance of the
Church; not impossibly he also had regard to the complaisance of the
Western clergy in face of the conduct of the great Frankish monarchs.
It is conjectured by de Boor that Eudocia died about Easter of the year
900, and before the end of that, or in the following, year Leo began
to look for another spouse. In place of the patriarch Euthymius, who
had resisted his marriage to Zoe, he had appointed a certain Nicholas,
an intimate friend of his in earlier years, and he expected the new
prelate to be accommodating. Nicholas, however, violently opposed
the idea of a fourth marriage, and a long and stormy struggle with
the Church party followed. On one occasion a man attempted the life
of the Emperor in a church, and Alexander and Nicholas were strongly
suspected of treachery, but no torture could wring a confession from
the assailant.
Leo took a first defiant step by again admitting a lady to the palace.
Zoe Carbonopsina, as she was named, seems to have had a humble origin,
since her son, the imperial historian, Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
cannot devise any genealogy for her. Diligent research, however, finds
that she was related to the famous abbot St Epiphanius, the admiral
Himerius, and the patrician Nicholas, so that we must not imagine her
as a flower transplanted by imperial commissioners from some rural
garden. Her later career will confirm the impression she makes on her
first entry into the pages of history as mistress of the Emperor. She
was a woman of great vigour and faint scruples: a less pleasant type of
sinner than the Zoe who had preceded her in the halls of Daphne.
We do not know how long Zoe lived in the palace as Leo’s mistress, nor
is it material to seek to determine. It is enough that in the course
of the year 905 she promised to become a mother, and Leo renewed his
effort to provide a _legitimate_ heir to his throne. The confused and
poorly written records of the time merely tantalize us with fragmentary
or conflicting statements, and one must present a connected version of
the accession to the throne of Zoe Carbonopsina with some hesitation.
Apparently (“Life of Euthymius”) the patriarch Nicholas was at first
not unfriendly. He blessed the womb which gave promise of an heir,
ordered prayers in the churches, and met Zoe without a blush in the
palace. These candid details need a short explanation. A bitter feud
had set in between the followers of the deposed patriarch Euthymius
and the followers of Nicholas, so that an admirer of the former may be
trusted to say even more than the truth in regard to Nicholas. Leo
seems to have promised the clergy that he would put away Zoe as soon
as she gave him an heir to the throne. But the biographer of Euthymius
professes to throw another light on the situation. A rising took place
in the provinces, and Leo secured a letter which proved that Nicholas
was involved in it. It was in order to avoid the consequences of this
treachery that he submitted to Leo.
A boy, the future Emperor and writer Constantine Porphyrogenitus, saw
the light in the course of the year 905--a comet appearing in the
heavens, in ominous conjunction, at the time--and in the beginning
of 906 he was solemnly baptized by the patriarch, and had his uncle
Alexander and some of the highest Senators as godfathers. The modern
reader is amazed at the spirit which will permit the heads of Church
and State to gather thus in their grandest robes about the cradle of an
illegitimate child, yet resist, even to death, a fourth marriage which
might supply a legitimate heir to the imperial house; but Byzantine
life will exhibit singular features to the end of its history. The
child was baptized, and the clergy trusted to hear no more of marriage.
To their great anger Leo recalled Zoe to the palace, from which she had
been temporarily removed, and found a priest to marry them. At the same
time Zoe was made Augusta and Basilissa (Queen) of the Empire.
The clergy now assailed Leo with every invective, and the patriarch
forbade him to enter the church. One almost despairs of following the
Constantinopolitans through their tangle of scruples and licences,
but we find that Leo met the prelate by entering the church at a side
door and sitting in a part, apparently, where the singers used to
take refreshments. He also sent a request that the Roman bishop and
the three patriarchs of the East would pronounce upon the validity of
his marriage. When they declared in his favour, and Nicholas still
resisted, Samonas consulted his large faculty for intrigue; indeed,
we may confidently trace the counsel of that wily courtier, a great
friend of Zoe, in the whole procedure. Nicholas was invited to dine at
the Bucoleon palace, on the shore of the Sea of Marmora. In the middle
of the banquet he was again pressed to withdraw, and again refused; and
the chamberlain’s servants dragged him down the stairs which led to
the palace quay and shipped him to Asia. Euthymius now returned to the
see, and, after a decent show of reluctance, recognized the marriage
of Zoe. Some of his admirers recount that he was directed in a vision
to overrule the law of the Church; others tell us that Leo compelled
him by threatening to enact a law that every citizen might have, if
he pleased, three or four simultaneous wives. If we change the word
“simultaneous” into “successive” we shall not be far from the truth.
The adventurous career of Zoe Carbonopsina now ran quietly for a few
years. Her boy flourished, and was, about four years later, associated
in the purple with his father. The only event to ruffle the even flow
of her pleasant life in the palace was one of those deadly feuds of
rival courtiers which were of constant occurrence in the great palace.
Samonas had introduced into her service a handsome Paphlagonian named
Constantine, and, about the year 911, was alarmed to perceive that this
man was supplanting him in the royal favour. He denounced Constantine
to Leo for improper conduct with the Empress. In another passage the
chronicler has already described Constantine as a eunuch, and it is
not the only occasion on which we find this strange charge against an
Empress in the chronicles; it may be added that another writer marries
Constantine to a cousin of Zoe. Leo, at all events, was convinced, and
ordered that Constantine be shaved and put in a monastery. He repented,
however, and brought the eunuch back to the palace. In revenge Samonas
drew up a libellous writing on the Emperor, and secretly put it in
the church. There was great agitation in the palace, especially as
an eclipse of the moon occurred at the height of the quarrel. Leo
the Philosopher trembled and sent for a bishop who was better versed
than he in astrology. On this occasion the reader of the stars proved
correct. When Samonas intercepted him, and asked whether the darkening
of the moon portended evil for him or for Leo, the bishop answered:
“You.” In a few days he was betrayed, and he exchanged his hope of the
throne for the obscurity of a monastery.
Leo died in the next year, commending his wife and child to the
Senators, who swore tearful oaths to protect her and the boy from any
misconduct on the part of his successor and younger brother Alexander.
But Alexander met no opposition when, as soon as he had ascended the
throne, he bade Zoe leave her child and quit the palace. Even the boy
had a narrow escape, as Alexander ordered that he should be castrated,
but his guardians happily lied to the Emperor and represented that
Constantine was too delicate to live. All knew that the reign of
Constantine would be short. Although only in his twenty-first year, he
had ruined his constitution by vicious indulgence, and the life he led
after mounting the throne was killing him. He perished miserably from
intemperance within a year, leaving his young colleague to a Council of
Regents, from which he had carefully excluded Zoe.
The imperial career of Zoe was, however, by no means closed. A regency
was the opportunity of a Byzantine Empress, and Zoe had, no doubt,
faithful servants about her boy in the palace. He was now seven years
old, and he insisted that his mother must return to the palace. She at
once took the lead in the administration, and, having the support of a
group of experienced statesmen and several able commanders, she must
have looked forward to a long and prosperous rule. At one moment it was
gravely threatened with premature extinction. One of the commanders in
Asia Minor was invited by some of the disaffected nobles to seize the
throne, and it seemed to the vigorous Constantine Ducas that the hour
long ago promised to him by astrologers had come. He crossed the sea in
the night, and had seized the anterior part of the palace before the
guards were thoroughly roused. Then one of the regents flung himself
upon the intruders with a troop of armed servants and sailors--there
seems to have been treason among the guards--and Zoe presently learned
that Ducas and, it is said, three thousand of the combatants lay in a
lake of blood on the marble floor of the palace. A terrible vengeance
purified Constantinople of those who were opposed to the rule of Zoe
and her son. Women were shorn, boys castrated, and men hung on gallows
along the Asiatic shore for all Constantinople to see.
During several years Zoe seems to have governed with vigour and
judgment, but since it is impossible to disentangle her share from that
of her servants and counsellors, it would be inexpedient to enter into
the prosy details of the administration. A personal note is sounded
when we find, in a later page of one of the chronicles, that she was
intimate with the admiral, and later Emperor, Romanus. Neither of the
two can be regarded as very scrupulous, but it is probable that Bishop
Luidprand, who accuses her, is in this hastily retailing the gossip he
picked up in Constantinople. A disappointed ambassador is apt to be a
libeller.
The behaviour of Romanus in the crisis which, in the year 919, put
an end to her reign does not encourage the idea of a liaison. By
dexterous diplomacy Zoe had obtained peace with the Saracens and then
withdrawn all her forces from Asia, to make a concentrated attack
upon the Bulgarians. It was admirable, if not very subtle, policy,
since at that time the Saracens and Bulgarians were the upper and
nether stones that threatened to grind the Eastern capital between
them. Unhappily the jealousy of her two chief commanders betrayed and
ruined her. A vast army was assembled at Constantinople, new arms and
equipment were supplied, and advance pay was liberally given to the
soldiers. The cross was borne at their head by the clergy, and, with
a last entreaty that all would be faithful to their country, Zoe sent
forth the great army which was to begin the restoration of the Empire.
And in a few weeks the fleet returned with the news of complete and
irreparable disaster. The admiral Romanus had, out of jealousy of the
land commander, failed to transfer their northern allies across the
Danube; the general of the troops, Leo Phocas, too eager for glory, had
attacked without his allies and been utterly routed.
Zoe at once summoned a council and proposed that her alleged lover
should lose his eyes for his failure to co-operate. Romanus had,
however, a firm hold on the affection of the sailors, and it was
judged inexpedient to attempt to displace him. But the position of
Zoe was, through no fault of hers, terribly weakened, and a change of
government was openly expected. Zoe’s chief hope lay in the fact that
the two commanders, Leo Phocas and Romanus, could not share the power,
yet neither was likely to suffer the other to occupy it, and for some
time matters remained in suspense. Then the experienced intriguers
of the palace began to act, and the quarrel hastened to its climax.
Constantine, the favourite chamberlain, urged Zoe to build on Leo
Phocas (who had married his sister) and take him into the Regency. A
rival courtier, the young Emperor’s tutor, Theodore, then espoused
the cause of Romanus, and secretly urged him to declare himself the
protector of the boy. Zoe ordered Romanus to sail with the fleet to
the Black Sea, and, when Romanus pleaded that the pay was in arrears
and the sailors disaffected, the chamberlain himself rowed out to the
commander’s vessel with the money. He did not return, and Zoe was soon
alarmed to hear that the admiral had imprisoned him on the fleet.
The patriarch and Senators were summoned to the palace, and it was
decided that their leaders should row out to the fleet and demand
an explanation of Romanus. By this time the citizens were keenly
interested in the quarrel. The fleet lay in sight of all on the Sea of
Marmora, and the detention of the chief eunuch of the palace became
known and seems to have pleased the people. When the patriarch and the
heads of the Senate went down to the quay, they were stoned and forced
to retire. Early the next morning Zoe went to the Bucoleon palace,
where Constantine and his tutor lived, and demanded an explanation.
Strong in the support of the admiral, whom he now induced to draw up
the fleet in battle array opposite the Bucoleon palace, the tutor
replied insolently that the time had come for Constantine to take the
reins; the eunuch Constantine, he said, had ruined the palace and Leo
Phocas had wasted the army. Zoe saw that she had lost the battle. She
submitted very quietly, except that when the aggressive tutor ordered
her to quit the palace she appealed to her son, and was allowed to
remain.
Little remains to be told of the fourth wife of Leo the Philosopher.
She was for a time an idle spectator, in the palace, of the course of
events. The patriarch Nicholas sternly challenged the admiral, and,
when he disavowed the charge of treason, invited him ashore to clear
himself. In the historic church by the lighthouse a number of the
higher officials gathered to hear Romanus swear the “direst oaths”
on the true cross that he would be loyal to the young Emperor, and
the reconciliation was sealed by Constantine wedding the admiral’s
daughter Helena in April (919), a month later. Leo Phocas had meantime
retired to the provinces and raised an army. By the characteristically
Byzantine device of sending a prostitute with a secret message among
his troops, his force was weakened and his rebellion soon trodden out.
Zoe now played her last and most desperate card, and attempted the
life of Romanus. Some of the chroniclers give the charge as a rumour,
but when her son observes that she was “detected” in an attempt to
poison the food of Romanus, by means of one of his servants, we cannot
hesitate to believe it. She was at once removed from the palace, forced
to take the vows of religion, and ended her romantic life, at some
unknown date, in the monastery of St Euphemia at Petrion.
CHAPTER IX
THE TAVERN-KEEPER’S DAUGHTER
It may not be inexpedient to pause for a moment to consider the
general character of the period through which the romantic story
of the Empresses is hurrying us. The reader may learn with some
astonishment that we are now, in the tenth century, in the golden
age of Byzantine history; or that, at least, the Roman Empire in the
East has nearly returned to the altitude it had reached in the days
of Justinian and Theodora. It is not a part of a biographer’s duty to
enlarge on historical themes, and the somewhat slender thread which he
pursues through the web of history may lead to erroneous conclusions.
Precisely on that account, however, it seems advisable to say a word in
correction of the prejudice which the restricted study of one set of
characters may create. It shall be brief.
The truth in regard to the Byzantine Empire seems to lie between the
disdain of older historians like Gibbon and Finlay and the exaggerated
claims made for it by some recent writers. I speak of character only,
not of art or industry or military success. In some respects--in
regard to unnatural vice, for instance--it is superior to the older
Empire of the West; in ordinary licentiousness it has no superiority
whatever, and the ascetic code it so pompously boasts only makes its
guilt the greater; while there are persistent strains of coarseness
in its character which tempt one to characterize it as barbaric.
Castration and the excision of eyes continue for many centuries, under
almost every Emperor and Empress, ordinary punishments of political
offence; and the constant violation of the most terrible oaths that the
clergy can devise, the abominable device of filling the priesthood
and the monastic world with reputed criminals, the unceasing intrigues
of eunuchs and officers, the sanguinary coercion of heretics, the
persistent financial and administrative corruption, and the lamentable
casuistry of priests and religious women, betray a new and general
type of character which no amount of appreciation of Byzantine art can
restore to honour. The four hundred years of Byzantine history that we
have traversed, compared with the four hundred years which preceded
them in Roman history, show no elevation of the type of womanhood, nor
will the four centuries that remain compel us to alter this conclusion.
The young Empress Helena, daughter of Romanus, whom we introduced at
the close of the last chapter is imperfectly, but not favourably, known
to us. Beautiful and intelligent, she found no occasion to assert
herself as long as her father lived. That unscrupulous commander had
very quickly found a way to gratify his personal ambition without
violating the letter of his solemn oaths. He had in March sworn on
the wood of the true cross to be loyal to Constantine; in September
of the same year he received, or obtained, the dignity of Cæsar, and
three months later he was co-Emperor. In the following January he made
his wife Theodora Empress, and in May he conferred imperial rank on
his son Christopher and his wife Sophia. Later he gave the purple to
his two remaining sons, and destined his fourth son, Theophylactus,
for the patriarchate. Further, “in order to prevent plots,” which
were frequent, he put his own name before that of Constantine, and
arrogated the whole work of administration. He lived in the largest,
latest and most superb palace of the imperial town--the golden-roofed
Chrysotriclinon--and, plebeian as he was by birth, carried the
pageantry and ceremonial of the Court to its highest point. His wife
Theodora did not long survive her elevation, and Helena seems to have
taken the chief place as Empress in the glittering crowd, but she
escapes our scrutiny altogether until the close of the twenty-five
years’ reign of her father.
Romanus seems in his later years to have shown symptoms of remorse and
made edifying preparations for death. His philanthropy and religious
fervour alarmed his sons, who concluded, apparently, that if his
repentance were carried too far they might lose their purple robes. The
eldest son, Christopher, had died, and the youngest, Theophylactus, was
quite happy in possession of the patriarchate; he had, it seemed to
the pious, turned the cathedral into a theatre and the bishop’s house
into a place of debauch, and his religious duties were so far postponed
to the cares of his stable of two thousand horses that he would cut
a ceremony short when a groom came to the altar to whisper that a
favourite mare had foaled. There remained Stephen and Constantine,
whose royal position seemed to be threatened. Stephen, with the consent
of his brother, deposed his father at the end of 944, and sent him into
a monastery on the Princes’ Islands.
Helena was the chief inspirer of the next intrigue. Constantine
Porphyrogenitus had sought consolation in art and letters for the
imperial power of which he had been defrauded. He was now a tall,
straight, well-made man of thirty-nine, with mild blue eyes and
fresh, ruddy countenance, but he had little faculty or disposition
for politics, and was more interested in the pleasures of the table
and the library. His attainments in art and science would have been
respectable in any other than a king. Helena, however, supplied the
resolution he lacked, and watched the procedure of her brothers. She
concluded that they intended to displace or ignore her husband, and
she stimulated him to action, or, more probably, acted herself with
the aid of her head chamberlain Basil, an illegitimate son of Romanus.
On the evening of 27th January the royal brothers were invited to
sup with their mild-mannered and long-suffering colleague, and they
found themselves dragged from their purple couches by his servants,
bound, and put aboard a waiting vessel at the palace quay. Some of
the authorities improbably state that they asked permission to visit
their father, Romanus, in his monastery, so that Gibbon’s genial
picture of the father cynically greeting his sons at the shore is not
without foundation. The story is unlikely, however, and they were soon
despatched to remote parts.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS HELENA
FROM DU CANGE’S ‘HISTORIA BYZANTINA’]
During the fifteen years’ reign of her husband Helena is known to us
only for the unscrupulousness with which, in collusion with the head
chamberlain Basil, she sold offices of state to the highest bidders.
The interest passes to the new and singular types of Empresses who now
enter the chronicles. The first is the most pathetic and remarkable
figure in the whole strange gallery of the Byzantine Empresses. Helena
and Constantine had a son named Romanus, and the elder Romanus, who was
most assiduous at making royal matches for his descendants, had decided
to marry the boy in good time. It seems not unlikely that, in his
last year of life, he realized the unscrupulousness of his sons, and
entertained a tardy concern about his oath. At that time the kingdom
of Italy was ruled by Hugh, a violent and half-barbaric monarch, whose
conjugal arrangements were calculated to furnish a rich supply of royal
alliances. Romanus sent an envoy to ask the hand of one of his natural
daughters, and the little Bertha, a beautiful child of tender years,
was conducted to Constantinople by the Bishop of Parma and married
to the boy Emperor. Romanus was five years old, and it is not likely
that Bertha, or Eudocia, as she was now named, was older than he. What
type of woman the little princess, offspring of a wild Teuton and his
concubine, would have made, we shall never know, for she died five
years afterwards. The chroniclers are careful to add that she died a
virgin.
The young prince was allowed to grow, and develop his vices, for a few
years, before contracting a second marriage. It seems to have been
in his eighteenth year that he took a second wife, and his choice
illustrates at once the supineness of his father, the selfishness
of his mother, and the unrestrained passion of the son. He married
Anastaso, the daughter of a tavern-keeper named Crateros. We have seen
so many types of Empresses ascend the throne that it might cause us
little surprise to find a woman passing from the counter of a wine-shop
to the palace, but there is grave suspicion that Theophano--the name
substituted for Anastaso--was base in more than the genealogical sense
of the word. She is accused of poisoning her father-in-law and her
first husband, and she certainly led the assassins to the chamber
of her second husband. Whatever allowance we make for the prejudice
against her humble birth, authentic facts in her story show that she
was licentious and criminal.
We do not know how the son of a highly cultivated Emperor made the
acquaintance of a tavern-girl. It is clear that she was a young woman
of singular beauty--“a kind of miracle of nature,” Zonaras says--and
most graceful figure, and I would conjecture that some courtier among
the disreputable followers of the young prince brought her to his
notice. There may have been a “beauty show,” and the publican may have
boldly pressed the merits of his daughter, but some attention was
generally paid to birth in these matrimonial contests. A tavern-woman
was still held to be equivalent to a prostitute or an actress. It is
useless to speculate. Constantine idly acquiesced, and the beautiful
Theophano passed from the sordid scenes of a little wine-shop to
the wonderful splendours of the palace. Courtly writers afterwards
discovered that there was royal blood in her veins. The only serious
clue we have to her origin is that she came from Laconia, and we may
regard her as a common type of Greek.
It is calculated that the marriage took place about the end of the
year 956. For three years no events occur that enable us to penetrate
the secluded life of the palace, though the subsequent events suggest
that Helena and her daughters were disdainful of the vulgar beauty and
were met with a virulent hatred. At the end of three years (August
or September 959) Constantine died, and the ampler chronicles tell
a circumstantial story of his being poisoned by his son Romanus and
Theophano. A poison was, it is said, put in his physic. Either by
accident or from suspicion he spilled most of the contents of the cup
and escaped death. But his health was gravely impaired; he went to
visit the monasteries of Mount Olympus, fell dangerously ill there--the
chronicler says that _perhaps_ more poison was administered--and was
brought back to the palace to die.
We must regard this charge of poisoning as probably a construction
put on his illness by the officials or people of Constantinople. It
may or may not be true. We have no right to conclude at once that it
is an historical fact, but it seems to me that some recent historians
have just as little right to reject it as “improbable.” Romanus was a
licentious and unscrupulous man, carrying his father’s amiable weakness
for wine to the pitch of debauch and ruining his constitution by vice.
Theophano, we shall see, was capable of murder, and her ambition would
most certainly lead her to wish the older imperial family out of the
way. On the other hand, there would be a prejudice against her in
Constantinople, and in the mind of later writers, and we must leave
this first charge against her what it is in the chronicles--a suspicion.
Her next step was to get rid of the sisters of Romanus. Helena and her
five daughters still lived in the palace, or in one out of the great
cluster of palaces. There were now at least eight palaces, connected
by superb colonnades or separated by choice gardens and terraces, in
the vast imperial domain between the Hippodrome and the Sea of Marmora;
there were, in addition, several palaces on the Asiatic coast; and the
palace at Blachernæ, in the cool, hilly district to the north, had
in turn become a vast cluster of palaces, chapels, colonnades and
terraced gardens. The mother and sisters of Romanus could therefore
find ample hospitality without being compelled to witness the daily
dissipation of the Emperor, his drunken banquets and his troops of
lascivious actors and women, but they frowned on the kind of Court over
which Theophano presided, and she persuaded her husband to remove them.
He bade his five sisters adopt the monastic life. Theophano now had two
sons and a daughter, and would feel safer if their royal aunts were
prevented from making aristocratic marriages. The young women were,
however, not at all disposed to embrace a religious life and there
were furious scenes in the palace. They were removed to the monastery
into which the palace of Theodora’s minister, Theoclistus, had been
converted, near the Hippodrome, but they seem still to have intrigued,
and were separated and transferred to other monasteries.[21]
Romanus was not cruel or malignant. His temper was to live and let
live, provided that no check was placed on his imperial pleasures. He
merely smiled, therefore, when he heard that, in their convents, his
sisters refused to exchange their silks for the hated black robe, or
abstain from the delicate meats to which they had been accustomed. We
shall later find one of them coming out, in spite of her vows, to marry
an Emperor, to the intense mortification of Theophano, who had murdered
her husband to marry him herself. Helena was the chief sufferer. She
sank into melancholy and illness after the departure of her daughters,
and died in September 961.
The Emperor continued for two years to enjoy his pleasures and hasten
his death, leaving the care of the Empire to his very capable
ministers and officers. Amongst these officers was a very singular
commander named Nicephorus Phocas, whose romantic career still puzzles
historians. Whether he was a profound hypocrite, or a deeply religious
man fascinated and seduced by Theophano, it is difficult to determine.
“God only knows,” says Leo the Deacon, a chronicler of the time to
whom we owe most of our knowledge. Nicephorus was a very able general
of about fifty years: a dark, robust little man, with black hair and
small dark eyes under thick eyebrows, a very stern look, and the chest
and arms of a Hercules. He was not at all handsome, but he was one of
the greatest soldiers of his time. The singular feature about his life
was that, in consequence of a tragic accident of earlier years, he had
adopted a very religious and ascetic life. He wore a hair shirt under
his armour and linen, abstained from flesh and women as rigidly as a
monk, and was understood to have vowed chastity.
It appears that, as her husband sickened, Theophano set out to seduce
this remarkable soldier-monk and succeeded. The other great power in
the State was Joseph Bringas, the leading civilian and statesman;
but Joseph was a eunuch, and of no use to Theophano. She would marry
Nicephorus. Leo the Deacon says that she admitted, or drew, the ascetic
to her arms before the death of her husband, and it is not impossible,
as the chief biographer of Nicephorus admits.[22] However that may be,
Romanus died in 963, after a giddy reign of four years, at the age of
twenty-four. Once more Theophano is charged with poisoning, and once
more we must refrain from pressing the charge. The nearest authority,
Leo the Deacon, leaves it an open question whether Romanus died of
poison or had closed his own life prematurely by debauch; and we may
do the same. Historians are too apt to conclude that because Romanus
_did_ wear himself out by his excesses, we may dismiss the charge
against Theophano. Disease, on the contrary, would furnish a cloak to
an artful poisoner, and Theophano certainly wished to get rid of the
despotic eunuch Bringas, whom Nicephorus would quickly displace. The
chief reason why we must hesitate is because Theophano was prostrate at
the time and unable to master the new situation. She had given birth to
a second daughter two days before the death of Romanus, and there is
reason to think that Bringas and others were anxious to remove her from
power. The circumstance is not decisive, as her servants might carry
out a plan made at an earlier date.
As soon as Theophano recovered she entered upon the struggle with
Bringas. It seems, from the movements of Nicephorus, that the Empress
was in communication with him before the death of Romanus, and that at
least she sent him a secret and flattering message when Romanus died.
Nicephorus had disbanded the army with which he had conducted two
brilliant campaigns against the Saracens, and was little equipped to
contest the power of Bringas, but he went at once to the city in order
to be near Theophano. Bringas had made desperate efforts to keep him
away, even going so far as to propose in the council that the general’s
eyes should be put out for his treasonable ambition. His great
victory over the Saracens and his repute for sanctity had, however,
won a large body of admirers for Nicephorus, and when he entered the
city in triumph, driving before his car groups of Saracen prisoners,
and exhibiting the holy relics he had rescued from the hands of the
heathen, citizens and soldiers and priests united in acclaiming him.
A private conversation with the new patriarch Polyeuctes, a fanatical
monk and eunuch, secured the favour of that prelate and his clergy, and
it is even said that he ventured into the house of Bringas and revealed
to that cautious statesman the hair shirt which he wore below his fine
robes and the monastic heart that beat beneath it. But for his intense
devotion to the young princes, he said, he would at once retire into a
monastery.
If we can believe this last statement, the situation was not without
humour, because Bringas presently discovered that his pious rival was
being surreptitiously admitted to the Empress’s apartments. Whether it
is true or no that Nicephorus had previously been intimate with her, it
is certain that he now became infatuated with Theophano, and received
an assurance that she would marry him, if not more intimate pledges of
her love. We may be confident that Theophano did not love him; he was
not physically attractive to her sensual taste, and his incongruous
mixture of piety and passion and deceit must have excited her disdain.
He was merely the best instrument at hand for the achievement of her
ambition. Then, as I said, Bringas discovered the secret meetings and
renewed his attack. He invited Nicephorus to the palace. The gallant,
but prudent, soldier preferred to fly to the altar of St Sophia and
secure the protection of the patriarch. The Senate was convoked, the
prelate warmly espoused the cause of Nicephorus, and he departed in
honour to take supreme command of the army in Asia and await the orders
of Theophano.
The next move of Bringas was a blunder and the beginning of his
downfall. One of Nicephorus’s chief officers was his nephew, John
Zimiskes, the later Emperor. When we find Zimiskes murdering his uncle
with the aid of Theophano, and then callously repudiating her, we
shall not suppose him to be a man of tender conscience, and Bringas,
no doubt, regarded him as venal. He sent a secret messenger to offer
Zimiskes the supreme command if he would send his uncle in bonds to
Constantinople. Zimiskes calculated that he would have the command,
in any case, if his uncle became Emperor, and he showed the letter to
Nicephorus, and urged him to assume the purple. They were in Cæsarea at
the time, and from that city Bringas soon learned that Nicephorus had
accepted the title of Emperor and would march on Constantinople.
The spirited events which followed must here be told briefly. On Sunday
morning, 9th August, the advance-guard of Nicephorus’s army appeared on
the Asiatic shore in sight of the city, at the point where Scutari now
is, and the people began to make their choice in the usual sanguinary
way. The services in the great church were desecrated with riot, the
battle against the guards who were faithful to Bringas was conducted
in the streets, and by midnight the houses of his supporters were in
flames. Theophano remained with her children behind the barrier of
palace guards, listening, not unwillingly, to the increasing cries
for Nicephorus. We may very well assume that she had had her share in
the riot. One of the most formidable leaders of those who called for
Nicephorus was the bold and ambitious Basil, the natural son of the
elder Romanus. Castrated by his father, that he might never aspire
to the purple, yet promoted to wealth and high office, he seems to
have come to an agreement with Theophano. As soon as the battle began
he led three thousand of his servants and followers, armed, into the
Augusteum, and they continued all Sunday and throughout the night to
hunt the soldiers of Bringas and loot the mansions of his friends.
Nicephorus had meantime reached the Hieria palace on the Asiatic side,
and on the following Sunday he made his triumphant entry by the Golden
Gate, and along the Mese, to St Sophia, the citizens draping their
houses with the scarlet of rejoicing and adorning the way with laurel
and myrtle. The patriarch Polyeuctes met him at the cathedral, and
Theophano would be present on her golden throne, in her violet mourning
robes, when the crown was put on his head.
His next step must have caused a sensation in the city and entirely
deceived the clergy. He sent a monk to conduct Theophano from the
palace to the fortress, or higher prison, of Petrion on the Golden
Horn, and maintained for a few weeks his austere aversion from wine
and women. We hardly need the assurance of the chroniclers that
this was done by arrangement between the two, and we may regard it
as a device of Theophano. Nicephorus was now aflame like a youth.
In the middle of September he “threw off the mask,” in the words of
the ecclesiastical chronicler, and announced that he was to marry
Theophano on 20th September. His monastic advisers, he explained, had
concluded that his new position demanded that he should marry. The
marriage service was performed by the patriarch himself in a chapel
in the grounds of the palace, and, while the Emperor went to kiss the
altars at St Sophia, Theophano retired to her familiar apartments, to
congratulate herself on the fortunate issue of her difficult manœuvres.
And presently the Emperor returned in terrible rage to tell her that a
formidable obstacle had revealed itself. When he had reached the door
of the sanctuary, the patriarch Polyeuctes had barred his way and said
that he would be excluded from the church for a year for contracting
a second marriage. His angry protest had availed nothing; before a
vast crowd of his subjects he had had to submit to the austere priest,
and he was to remain in the ignominious position of a penitent for
a year. Concealing their anger, they concluded the day, as usual,
with a banquet to the leading officers and nobles in the gold-roofed
_triclinon_, now restored and magnificently decorated by Constantine,
and retired to discuss Polyeuctes.
The patriarch was undoubtedly a stern and conscientious priest,
insisting upon a plain law of his Church. We may, however, assume that
another feeling mingled with his sense of discipline. Nicephorus had,
in the literal meaning, tasted blood at his matrimonial banquet, and
he passionately refused to forgo the embraces of Theophano. His pious
practices were wholly discarded in a day, and the clergy must have been
bitterly disappointed to see him passing from their allegiance to that
of the beautiful adventuress. So Polyeuctes had made a bold bid for
power; and he had made a serious mistake. From that moment Nicephorus
conceived, not merely a personal hatred of the patriarch, but an
anti-clerical spirit, and began to restrict the wealth and power of the
priests and monks. He clung to his enchanting young bride and sternly
faced the clergy. In the discussion that at once filled the palace and
the city some careless noble, named Stylianus, had recalled the fact
that Nicephorus was godfather to one of the Empress’s children, and
the patriarch learned this. He at once pronounced that the marriage
was invalid, as the Church regarded this spiritual relationship as
an insuperable impediment to marriage, and bade the Emperor dismiss
Theophano.
The feelings of Theophano during these days of disappointment and
anxiety are left to our imagination. It is enough that her charms held
Nicephorus to her in spite of the terrible threats of the patriarch,
and it may be that it was she who approached the unfortunate Stylianus
and persuaded him to commit perjury. Nicephorus gathered a council
of pliant bishops and Senators, and they decided that, as the law
invoked by the patriarch had been passed by the heretic Constantine
Copronymus, it was not binding. Polyeuctes scorned their decision.
Then Stylianus came forward to swear that Nicephorus had _not_ been
godfather to any child of Theophano, and the Emperor’s father, Bardas,
came forward to swear that _he_ was the godfather. The patriarch
knew that they were lying, but his clergy were anxious to escape a
formidable struggle and he was forced to yield. To Theophano it was,
no doubt, immaterial whether or no she was married to Nicephorus; she
had a strong and devoted soldier to protect her and her children. How
the pious Nicephorus reconciled himself to the situation is one of the
things that “God only knows.” All that we know is that the possession
of Theophano dissipated his asceticism as the summer sun disperses the
mists, and he eagerly embraced a woman to whom, under the creed of his
Church, he was not married.
During the six years’ reign of Nicephorus the Empress had little
occasion to assert her wayward personality, but it is significant that
the one statement made of her is an accusation of crime. One of the
sons of the older Romanus still languished in captivity, and it seemed
possible, in view of the growing discontent at Constantinople, that an
intrigue would be formed to put him on the throne. “Theophano,” we are
curtly informed, “made an end of him.” There is no reason to doubt that
messengers were sent to his distant prison with an order that he should
be put to death, and it is more probable that the order came from
Theophano than from Nicephorus. For the first year or two, however,
Nicephorus prudently removed his fiery young bride from the seditious
and immoral atmosphere of Constantinople, and she passed her days in
unwonted innocence amid the lonely mountains of Cilicia.
The Emperor had spent a few months in an effort, by lavish
entertainment, to dispel the suspicion of parsimony and meanness under
which he had ascended the throne. The Hippodrome rang daily with the
applause and contests of the citizens, and the winter was enlivened
with great gaiety. Meantime Nicephorus was gathering an immense army
for the more substantial work of driving back the Saracens, and when,
in the early spring, the cosmopolitan regiments were assembled along
the Asiatic shore, he announced that the Empress would accompany him
to the field. He knew Theophano too well to leave her in that world
of intriguing eunuchs and ambitious courtiers. A little pot-bellied
man, with dark skin and little dark eyes, with short greyish beard
betraying his age, and with disproportionately long arms and short legs
to his stumpy figure, he felt that he was not likely to grow fonder
to the heart of the fascinating Theophano during two or three years’
absence. On the other hand, one must not imagine the sensual young
Empress as being inconvenienced by the rough ways of a camp. The
rulers of Constantinople carried their luxury even into the camp, on
the occasions on which they condescended to take the field in person.
Eighty horses were needed for the transport of the kitchen equipment
and table silver alone, and thirty were required to convey the imperial
wardrobe from town to town; while the whole countryside was laid under
contribution to supply delicacies for the table. No doubt these normal
glories of an imperial march would be at least doubled in view of the
presence of Theophano.
They sailed from the Bucoleon port in the great gold and purple galley
of the imperial family, and joined the army at Cæsarea. From that city
Theophano accompanied her husband across the hills and plains of Asia
Minor until they came to the beginning of the Taurus range. Here the
Emperor left Theophano and her sons, in safe charge, while he led his
troops into the more dangerous country beyond. At the entrance of the
narrow defile which the ancients knew as the “Cilician Gates” was the
massive fortress of Drizibion, a solitary and rugged castle in a wild
mountainous district. It was in this quiet and cool home, removed from
communication with the metropolis, that Theophano and her children
spent the summer of the year 964. She would, of course, have an ample
retinue of eunuchs and women, and every provision would be made for
her comfort, but, whether it was the jealousy or the amorousness of
Nicephorus that detained her in this healthy solitude, she would be
sure to resent it. At the beginning of the winter he returned to her,
with modest laurels, and may have conducted her to Cæsarea, or some
other city of the plains, for the enjoyment of the winter. But the
early spring called him once more to the field, and it seems that
Theophano had to spend another summer in the wilds of Cilicia. It
was only in the autumn of 965 that she re-entered Constantinople, to
witness the splendid triumph of her husband.
In the following year Nicephorus made another campaign, and from the
time of his return in the autumn of 966 the shadow of tragedy began
to creep over his life. His vast armies and laborious victories had
laid a heavy burden of taxation on the Empire, and, passionately as
Constantinople loved to see a herd of captives driven before the royal
chariot in the hour of triumph, it was little disposed to pay for
remote victories. The clergy also were embittered. Nicephorus, soured
by the action of the patriarch, and thus made sensible of the revolting
spread of luxurious idleness under the name of monasticism, curtailed
the revenues of the clergy, forbade the further conversion of mansions
and palaces into monasteries, and claimed the right to appoint bishops.
The people became sullen and hostile. When, on Easter Sunday, 967,
Nicephorus crossed the Augusteum to go to church, they pelted him with
mud and stones so violently that a group of the more sober citizens had
to rescue him. It was expected that he would inflict some punishment,
and when, a few weeks later, he ordered his guards to descend to the
arena in the Hippodrome and begin their military evolutions, either to
impress or to entertain the spectators, there was a frantic rush for
the gates and many were trodden underfoot.
By the summer of 969 life in the sacred palace had become very
sombre and unpleasant, and Theophano began to seek a new companion.
The ardour of her husband’s passion had been chilled by the terrors
which now surrounded him, and, in preparation for the death which was
foretold to him, he returned zealously to his monastic habits. Even the
soldiers were now hostile to him, except his immediate corps of foreign
mercenaries. Nicephorus relied on their formidable axes, converted
the old and decaying Bucoleon palace into a massive fortress, girt
the whole enclosure with a lofty castellated wall, and retired within
this heavily guarded circle to spend his days and nights in prayer and
penitence.
It is one of the most curious features of the story that, while he
moodily punished his bravest officers for their very victories, the
lithe and insidious Theophano retained his confidence. She had no
longer the comparative solace of his sensual fire, and she must have
looked on with deep disdain when he refused to share the imperial bed
at night and, after long hours of prayer and psalm-reading, flung
himself for a brief and feverish sleep on a panther-skin spread
upon the ground in the corner of his chamber. But Theophano was not
excluded from the Bucoleon palace, and she laid her plans to defeat his
desperate entrenchments. The new partner whom she chose to encourage
was the general Zimiskes, the Emperor’s nephew, whom we have seen on an
earlier page revealing the perfidy of Bringas to his uncle. He had been
dismissed from office by Nicephorus “on account of certain suspicions”;
and we have little trouble in inferring that he was suspected of
liaison with Theophano and eagerness for the throne. He was, like
his uncle, a very little and robust man, but much more handsome than
Nicephorus; his broad chest and great brawny arms were redeemed by a
fair countenance, a pair of keen and friendly blue eyes and a crown of
almost golden hair. I must be pardoned for inserting such portraits
of the Emperors as we have, while seeming to omit the more desirable
portraits of their consorts. The Byzantine chroniclers rarely give
us more than the very vaguest assurances that Empresses were “very
beautiful,” and so on, and the few surviving representations of them in
ivory or bronze or mosaic are not portraits on which one would dare to
found a physiognomical study.
In the autumn of 969 Zimiskes was living impatiently on his private
estate in Armenia, when he received an assurance that Theophano had
persuaded his uncle to allow him to return to Court. Whether or no it
is true that he had previously enjoyed the favours of Theophano, he now
certainly became her ally and accomplice. She seems to have deluded
Nicephorus with diabolical duplicity. A rumour, which most historians
plausibly ascribe to her, was circulated in Constantinople, to the
effect that Nicephorus intended to castrate her sons and leave the
crown to his brother Leo, who, on account of his extortions, was no
less hated than he. On the other hand, Theophano persuaded Nicephorus
that the interest of herself and her children would be best consulted
if Zimiskes were recalled to the capital and compelled to marry some
noble lady of the city. Nicephorus assented, and his nephew came to
Constantinople. Then it seems to have been betrayed to the Emperor,
probably by his brother, that Zimiskes was being secretly admitted to
the Empress’s apartments, and he placed restrictions on him. Zimiskes
retired to his mansion at Chalcedon, on the Asiatic side, and continued
to communicate with Theophano.
The culmination of the plot is a thrilling, if sordid, page of
romance. On the night of 10th December Theophano visited her husband
and persuaded him to leave his chamber door unfastened, as she would
see him later. He still failed to suspect her, although some watchful
priest had warned him of the plot. Some time before a group of tall,
veiled women had presented themselves at the palace door and been
admitted; and, when they had reached the secret chambers assigned to
them by Theophano, it was a group of bronzed soldiers who emerged from
the mantles and veils. Someone betrayed them, and Nicephorus sent an
officer to explore the palace, but he, probably being in the pay of
Theophano, reported that all was well, and Nicephorus turned to his
long psalms. Theophano and her servants were in the upper part of the
palace looking out anxiously over the Sea of Marmora. It was a dark
wintry night, and the snow was falling heavily. At length a faint
whistle from below told them that a boat had arrived from Chalcedon
and lay under the walls. A basket (some say a ladder) was tied to a
rope and lowered into the depths, and presently Zimiskes and several
companions were within the palace. An Arab historian would have us
believe that Theophano herself led them, with drawn swords, to her
husband’s room; it is more probable that, as the Greek writers say, she
left this to one of her eunuchs.
For a moment the conspirators started back in alarm; the imperial bed
was empty, and they fancied that the plot was known, and Nicephorus
would fall on them. But the eunuch showed them the sleeping form of the
Emperor on his panther-rug, and, with a cry for help to the Virgin,
the strange soldier-monk passed out of the imperial world he had
invaded. Basil, the astute head chamberlain, had an opportune illness
at the moment, and only recovered in time to do reverence to his new
sovereign. The guards alone rushed from their quarters and attacked the
conspirators, but the sight of the grisly head of the late Emperor,
which was exhibited at the window, induced them to sheathe their swords
and accept a new paymaster. So Zimiskes proceeded gaily to the golden
palace (Chrysotriclinon) to put on the purple slippers, and Theophano
retired to her room to reflect on the next phase of her career: perhaps
to glance now and again at the ghastly trunk of her late husband, which
lay, all night and all the following day, in the snow without. This,
surely, was the last crime she need commit. She was still young, and
might look forward to many years of power with the robust soldier she
had invited to share her throne.
Six days later Zimiskes went in state to St Sophia to receive his
diadem, and found the stern patriarch Polyeuctes again boldly barring
the way. He refused to crown Zimiskes except on three conditions: he
must undo the anti-clerical work of his predecessor, he must deliver to
justice the actual murderer of Nicephorus, and he must drive the guilty
Theophano from the palace. Theophano now discovered the full brutality
of her accomplice. He bowed at once to the commands of the patriarch,
and the beautiful young Empress--she must still have been in her
twenties, unless she was much older than her husband at the time of her
first marriage--was dragged from her apartments to the Bucoleon quay
and shipped to one of the dreary island prisons in the Sea of Marmora.
She was furious with rage and disappointment. After a time she escaped
and contrived to reach the altar in St Sophia; but even the mob of
Constantinople shrank from the murderess, and her former confederate,
Basil, was allowed to tear her from the altar. In her frenzy she beat
the grand chamberlain with her own white hands and, reverting to
the language of the tavern, poured her invectives on the “Scythian
bastard.”[23] Her career had been so darkened with suspicion, and had
so plainly ended in murder, that her appeals fell on a cold, if not
jeering, audience, and she was conveyed to distant Armenia and confined
in a monastery.
The rest of the story of Theophano, as far as it is known to us, is
told in the curt statement that she was recalled to Court in the reign
of her eldest son, Basil, and again enjoyed the imperial position
for half-a-century. John Zimiskes retained only for a few years the
power for which he had paid so base a price. The marriage which he
presently contracted was not much less sordid than the marriage he
had intended to contract; if, indeed, he ever had a serious desire to
make so dangerous a woman as Theophano the partner of his throne. He
took a nun from her monastery, bade the patriarch--whose scruples had
their limits--relieve her of her vows, and married her. The Empress
Theodora is not clearly outlined in the chronicles, but she is not
without interest. She was one of those daughters of Constantine whom
her brother Romanus had forced to take the veil. Zimiskes had felt that
an alliance with the late dynasty would strengthen his position, and
it may be remembered that the daughters of Constantine were not at all
scrupulous. They had refused to wear the black robe or eat the bread
and beans of the monastery. Constantinople is said to have indulged
in the most boisterous rejoicing over the marriage, and even the
heavens seemed to express their satisfaction, when one of the Senators
discovered in his orchard an ancient stone on which was miraculously
inscribed: “Long Life to John and Theodora.” There were, however,
sceptics in the city, as it was recalled that a similar “discovery”
had been made in the interest of Irene and her son, yet the blessing
had proved illusory. The Senator was richly rewarded, but he may have
lived to see the futility of his miracle. After a few years (976) the
handsome chamberlain Basil bribed John’s cook to put less innocent
things than condiments in his dishes, and he went the beaten way of
Byzantine Emperors. Theodora disappears after his death, though we can
hardly suppose that she returned to her monastery.
Theophano’s sons, Basil and Constantine, now became joint Emperors,
and they recalled their mother from Armenia to the palace. One would
be inclined to suspect that the poisoning did not come to her as a
surprise, but the chroniclers do not impeach her, and we need not
strive to lengthen the list of her misdeeds. She makes no further mark,
for good or evil, in the chronicles. Possibly the terrible experiences
of her early womanhood and seven years of sober reflection in her
monastic prison had destroyed her passion for intrigue. In any case,
the very vigorous administration of her elder son left her little
room to interfere, and she seems to have been content with the quiet
enjoyment of the position of a dowager Empress. According to George
the Monk (or his continuer) she lived for fifty years after the death
of her first husband--that is to say, after 963--and so she must have
passed her seventieth year at the time of her death. There seems to
have been no rival Empress during that time. We may trust that the
character of Theophano sobered and matured, and that the forty years’
silence means that she led a regular and unambitious life. However that
may be, the personality she shows when she is under the full limelight
on the imperial stage is one of unrestrained passion and greed. She was
a tavern-keeper’s daughter in the purple, an appalling instance of the
lowest type of Greek beauty.
CHAPTER X
TWO IMPERIAL SISTERS
The long and prosperous reign of Basil II. (976–1025) has no further
interest for us, since we find in the chronicles no reference to a wife
of that hardy and brilliant soldier. His younger brother, Constantine,
was more like their mother: a man of passion and greed, though with
no higher ambition than that of an imperial enjoyment of wine and
women, and in that enjoyment he was quite willing to await the natural
death of his more sober and more distinguished brother. Although he
approached his seventieth year when the undivided rule fell to him,
his ways were still those of an aged and jaded, and not very refined,
Sybarite, and the three years of his reign interest us only because
they show us the earlier environment of his two daughters, Zoe and
Theodora, who are the next to occupy--alternately or simultaneously,
according to the course of the romance--the gynæceum, or women’s
quarters, of the palace.
Constantine’s wife, Helena, daughter of the patrician Alypius, is
a mere cipher in the imperial records, and seems to have died much
earlier, leaving three daughters--Eudocia, Zoe and Theodora--to grow
up as they might in the palace of her voluptuous husband. Eudocia, the
eldest, lost during an attack of smallpox whatever comeliness she may
have had, and retired to hide her disfigured countenance under the veil
of a nun. There remained Zoe and Theodora, and Constantine determined
to marry one of the two to some important noble and leave the crown
to him. The elder of the two was nearly fifty years old, and Theodora
cannot have been much younger. It is not very clear why they had not
married earlier. Their father, who could hardly be induced to take the
least interest in his Empire, had wholly neglected his daughters until
he held the sceptre in his hands, and felt that the time was at hand
when he must relinquish it to another. He was a very large and robust
man, absorbed in hunting, gambling and other less reputable pleasures,
and, even when he was sole Emperor, he left the cares of state to
his eunuchs and retained his imperial attention for the theatre,
the banquet and the dance. In his home the sisters had, says the
chronicler, “lived as they listed,” and the further course of the story
will make it probable that Zoe had not failed to enjoy her liberty.
Theodora was less sensual, but we shall have to include both sisters in
the list of Empresses who were little embarrassed by moral scruples.
In approaching their careers we have the rare advantage of an excellent
guide. Michael Psellus, one of the leading philosophers and literary
men of Byzantine history, not only lived at their Court, and knew them
intimately, but he had a genial taste for the tattle and scandal of a
court and not the least reluctance to entrust it to his graceful pen.
He has been called the Voltaire of Byzantine letters on account of his
brilliant, caustic and very candid way of writing the story of his
times. We shall find his “Chronography” of inestimable value, provided
we make due allowance for the prejudices of the politician and the
amiable unscrupulousness of the anecdotist.
Zoe and Theodora were very different types of women. Zoe, who will
interest us most, was a woman of fine complexion, very graceful figure
and ardent passions. She had large sensuous eyes under heavy eyebrows,
a mass of blonde hair, and a skin of remarkable whiteness. She was of
middle height, and preferred to dress in simple robes, which exhibited
her figure, rather than in the heavy and gorgeous draperies and massive
jewellery of an Empress; though this simplicity of taste was limited,
on one side, by a passion for perfumes and cosmetics, of which she
gathered the material from all parts of the world and compounded,
either with her own hands or by her maids, so industriously that her
room “looked like a workshop.” She took such care of her smooth and
clear skin and blonde hair that even in her seventieth year she had no
wrinkle or other mark of age. She retained youth also in her blood, and
we shall find her remarkably amorous in her sixth decade of life. Such
a woman we shall hardly expect to find richly endowed with intellect
or greatly restrained by moral sentiments, yet I think that M. Diehl
follows too literally the facile witticism of Psellus when he speaks of
Zoe as “childish” and “silly,” and I will prefer to let the story of
her life tell us the limitations of her intelligence and character.
Theodora will interest us much less than Zoe, and it will suffice to
say that she was in all respects different from her sister. Her tall
and graceless figure and her very plain features were compensated by
a stronger intelligence and greater force of character. She could be
coldly stern, even cruel, on occasions, while cruelty only came to Zoe
in the impulsive anger of her thwarted passions. We shall see that,
when the occasion came to her, she cherished a very high ideal of
public duty and used her power with an intelligence and beneficence
that Psellus greatly underrates.
Such were the two daughters who, in middle age, were warned by their
father that one of them must marry and inherit the Empire. The choice
of Constantine first fell upon a distinguished noble named Constantine
Delassenus, and a eunuch was sent to bring him from Armenia, where duty
had taken him, to the Court. Much tragedy might have been prevented if
that eunuch had reached his destination in time, but he was recalled
by a second courier and told that the Emperor had changed his mind. It
appears that the commander of the palace guards had felt that he would
not have much influence on a noble like Delassenus, and he had brought
to the notice of the Emperor a less young and less vigorous candidate,
Romanus Argyrus, who was related to Constantine. Romanus was sixty
years old, and had little to recommend him except his incompetency,
which would suit the designs of the officers of the Court. He had,
however, a wife living in Constantinople at the time, and it seems to
have been supposed that he might not be willing to abandon her. The
petty schemers of the Court were accordingly directed to bring about
a separation, and, as Polyeuctes was dead, and a more accommodating
patriarch held the see, no opposition was expected from the Church.
A file of soldiers entered the mansion of Romanus and told him that
he had incurred the anger of the Emperor. They were, they said, to
lead him to the palace for execution, and his wife was to enter a
monastery. Many eyes had been put out, on slight grounds, during the
three years’ licentious reign of Constantine, and the threat was
serious. The wife fled at once to a monastery, and Romanus was brought,
in some trepidation, to the royal presence--to learn that, since his
wife was now a nun, he was free to marry the Emperor’s daughter and
thus secure the purple. Instead of retiring to thrust a dagger in his
heart, as an older Roman would probably have done, the sixty-year-old
noble graciously submitted his person to the princesses. Theodora, the
favourite of her father, had the first choice, but she turned away in
disgust. Possibly Romanus did not regret that this gave him the hand of
the more charming Zoe, who, in her forty-ninth year, fully preserved
the fresh and brilliant complexion and the warm passions of a young
woman. He had set out from home prepared for death, and must have been
bewildered by his fortune. The clergy obligingly disentangled the
somewhat complicated relation in which they stood to each other, in the
eyes of the Church; they were married and crowned on 19th November
1028; and, as Constantine died three or four days afterwards, the duty,
or pleasure, of governing the Empire fell on them during the first week
of their singular honeymoon.
After this inauspicious beginning we shall hardly expect the reign
of Romanus III. and Zoe to be one of brilliant and inspiring deeds;
indeed, we may say briefly that it was merely an inglorious effort to
retain the crowns they had obtained. They adopted the easy device of
emptying the treasury on the common folk, the clergy and the monks. The
private debts of citizens were paid by them, more churches were built
or richly decorated, the clergy were relieved from taxation, and the
monks--it was the very culmination of their golden age--were lodged in
luxurious mansions which made their calling one of the most attractive
in the Empire. The graver nobles frowned, plotted and were savagely
punished, but we are interested in these conspiracies only in so far as
they involve the imperial sisters.
Theodora, a spirited and intelligent woman, naturally despised the
marriage which she had refused, and was regarded with suspicion and
hatred by her sister. By some means Zoe put at the head of Theodora’s
household a Paphlagonian eunuch in her own pay, a very crafty and
unscrupulous man named John, who was enjoined to watch Theodora’s
conduct. This very interesting person will be better known to us
presently, as he was destined to be the most powerful man in Zoe’s
Court. For the moment it is enough to say that, about a year after the
coronation, Theodora was discovered to have some share in a conspiracy
which was set afoot by Constantine, a relative of the Emperor. It
is curious that John also was found guilty, though whether this was
merely a trick to conceal his spying, or he had really been gained
by Theodora, it would be difficult to say. Theodora was expelled
from the palace and confined in a building at Petrion, on the Golden
Horn, which seems to have had the mixed characters of a monastery, a
state prison and a fort. It was the building to which Nicephorus had
consigned Theophano for a few weeks before their marriage, and would
have comfortable apartments. A year later Romanus was ignominiously
beaten by the Saracens and the conspiracy revived. There is no proof
that Theodora took part in it, but its aim would be, no doubt, to place
her on the throne. In one of those moments of energy which passion
occasionally gave her, Zoe went to Petrion, and forced her royal sister
to take the vows and adopt the dress of a nun.
As a number of other malcontents lost their eyes or their liberty
at the same time, the throne of Zoe and Romanus seemed to be firmly
established. Unfortunately, a very grave breach now took place between
the imperial pair, and, as a handsome official entered the service
of the palace, there happened what so commonly happens in Byzantine
history under the circumstances: Zoe fell in love with the handsome
servant, and Romanus died, of a mysterious complaint.
Delicacy compels me to refer the inquisitive reader to the Greek
text of Psellus, or to the chronicle of the monk Zonaras, for a full
explanation of the rift in the sacred palace. Briefly, Romanus had been
assured by one of those soothsayers who were in such high repute at
Constantinople that he would have a son, and he zealously studied and
employed the whole known range of aphrodisiacs and other contrivances
that might help to ensure the fulfilment of the prophecy. After two
or three years of this peculiar activity he retired in despair from
the struggle, leaving Zoe untouched and indignant. As she had now
certainly entered her sixth decade of life, the modern reader will
have but a slender sympathy with her, and will recognize a very low
quality of character in her conduct. Her husband became ill, and his
favourite chamberlain, Michael, was often summoned to attend him,
even when Zoe shared his bed. This chamberlain was a tall, handsome,
fresh-faced young man, whose form pleased the Empress, but there was a
deeper intrigue in the affair; the chamberlain was a brother of the
Paphlagonian eunuch John, whom we saw in charge of Theodora’s mansion,
and it is now necessary to present him more intelligibly.
John was a very shrewd, ambitious, vulpine provincial of mean family;
he had been converted into a eunuch in early years, had held office
in the employment of the Emperor Basil, and had then retired to a
monastery. His character is so far removed from religious ideals that
one is disposed to imagine him as having been compelled to take the
black robe for some indiscretion, but it is quite possible that he
adopted it voluntarily, as at this time many of the monasteries were
merely luxurious colonies of bachelors living on a swollen stream of
legacies. Romanus, who knew his ability, brought him from his monastery
to supervise Theodora and her affairs. In spite of the curious
statement that he was himself involved in the conspiracy, he was soon
back at Court, and in great favour. He had five brothers and a sister,
and the general character of the family may be deduced from the fact
that three of the six brothers were moneylenders, two (John and Simeon)
were monks, while the sister, Maria, had married a ship-caulker at the
quays. John used his influence to introduce these brothers into the
very lucrative service of the State. Within a few years the beau of the
family became Emperor, the son of the ship-caulker also became Emperor,
the ship-caulker himself became High Admiral of the Fleet, two other
brothers had the rank of generals, and John became the virtual ruler of
the Empire.
It was chiefly through his young and attractive-looking brother that
John pushed their fortunes. Michael was a young man of large and
well-proportioned figure, with that freshness of complexion which
we often find in nerve-diseased or epileptic subjects. He became a
favourite chamberlain of Romanus, and John presently noticed that Zoe
was interested in him. Romanus was visibly failing, and Michael was at
times called in to chafe his feet as he lay in bed with Zoe. “Who will
believe,” the monk Zonaras asks, “that he did not take the opportunity
to rub Zoe’s feet also?” Zoe expressed to John a lively interest in his
brother, and John took care that their movements should not be hampered
by any of the restrictions that normally curtailed the liberty of a
Byzantine Empress. The pale Paphlagonian, in the black dress of a monk,
was already the supreme master of the palace, but the most piquant
feature of his position is to find him chiding the nervous hesitation
of his brother and feeding the improper admiration of the Empress.
Psellus dilates, almost gloats, for pages over the development of this
singular love story, in a way that hardly becomes a great exponent of
Plato and Aristotle. Before long the relation of the two was known to
the whole Court. Michael was loaded with jewels and other presents,
and not infrequently courtiers would find him sitting, still rather
nervously, on the same couch with the infatuated Empress. One day a
servant entered the throne-room for some purpose, and almost fell to
the ground in astonishment. Zoe had made Michael sit on the throne,
had put the crown on his head and the sceptre in his hand, and was
admiringly murmuring: “My darling, my flower of beauty, joy of my eyes,
consoler of my soul,” etc. Instead of bursting into passion at the
entrance of the official, she bade him do homage to the man who would
one day be his Emperor. So says, at least, the philosophic Psellus,
whom many believe. It is quite certain that Zoe made flagrant love to
the chamberlain, and that the Emperor knew it. His sister, Pulcheria,
angrily spoke to him of the notorious scandal, but he professed to be
ignorant of it and was content to exact from Michael an oath that there
was no truth in the rumour. Other writers say that he overlooked the
liaison because it preserved his middle-aged spouse from promiscuous
irregularity.
Romanus forgot that such love affairs were apt to entail tragic
consequences for the superfluous man. As Zoe’s passion increased, he
found himself suffering from an alarming and mysterious illness. His
hair fell out in patches, his breathing was laboured, his face--a more
significant symptom in an old man like Romanus--became livid and puffy.
Whether this illness was really due to a slow poison, and whether the
poison was administered by John or Zoe, are points which we must leave
as we find them in the chronicles--uncertain. Since there is very
little doubt that Romanus was murdered in the end, the theory of poison
is not reckless; but Romanus was aged and worn, and the illness may
have been natural. However that may be, Romanus lingered in a frightful
condition until Holy Thursday of the year 1041. On that sacred day
Romanus distributed to the Senators the ceremonious gifts prescribed
in the ritual, and retired to the bath. From the bath he was presently
removed in a dying condition to his bed. However possible it may be
that he had had a serious attack of his illness in the bath, we cannot
easily ignore the persistent statement that men entered the bathroom,
and either strangled the Emperor or held his head under the water.
Psellus gives this as a rumour, but even he seems to believe it. Both
Michael and John are accused of the murder, and it is left uncertain
whether Zoe was privy to the plot. Her immediate conduct will not
dispose us to be eager to clear her memory of the suspicion, but we may
be sure that the monk John was the soul of the plot.
Zoe came, with ostentatious (the chronicler says feigned) tears, to see
that her husband was really dead or dying, though she did not await the
end, which occurred soon afterwards. When we learn that she announced
her intention of marrying Michael _the same evening_ we are disposed to
see in her an element of cold-blooded calculation which does not very
well assort with the character we have given her. It would probably be
much more correct to conceive her as nervous and confused, and simply
yielding to the dictation of the monk John. Her father’s eunuchs,
who had remained in her service, begged her to wait some time,
but John bullied and threatened, and Michael was forthwith decked in
the dead man’s robes and placed beside Zoe in the gold-roofed hall.
The patriarch was summoned to the palace and curtly ordered to crown
Michael and marry him at once to the very recent widow, in the presence
of the assembled Senators. The whole scene is so repulsive that we need
not hesitate to accept the last touch given to it in the chronicles.
The archbishop hesitated, but a present of a hundred pounds in gold
from John removed his scruples, and he invoked the blessing of God on
the new imperial marriage.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS ZÖE
FROM ‘CONSTANTINOPLE’ BY E. A. GROSVENOR]
After this authentic episode it is superfluous to seek to determine
the share of Zoe in the illness and death of her first husband. The
monk-eunuch was capable of any crime, and it is, perhaps, not likely
that he would take others into his confidence in perpetrating them.
His brother Michael was a feeble-minded man, of no criminal instincts,
whom we shall presently find smitten with the deepest remorse for the
part he had played. Zoe also was little more than a tool in the hands
of John. Had he communicated his criminal design to them, they would
probably have consented, but there is no evidence that he did so. The
marriage, however, is a sordid fact that no casuistry can excuse.
It would, no doubt, be represented to Zoe that delay would give an
opportunity for a revolution, and there were always at Constantinople
nobles who were ready to aspire to the throne when so excellent a
pretext was afforded. These considerations may explain, but cannot
excuse, Zoe’s action. She was almost, if not quite, devoid of moral
feeling. The utmost we can say for her is that it was not merely her
passion for Michael that gave such indecent precipitancy to a woman
of fifty-four years. But she had no children to protect, and she lent
herself to this disgraceful procedure merely in order to retain her
royal position.
We read, therefore, without the least sympathy that, while the change
made the fortune of the astute John and his brethren, it brought great
disappointment and chagrin to Zoe. She had, the chronicler says,
imagined that the lowly chamberlain, grateful for his elevation to
the throne, would be her slave, and she at once gathered about her
the former servants of her father and began to rule. But the monk
had no intention of handing to her the power he had purchased so
heavily. His official position was merely that of “orphanotrophos,”
or director of charitable institutions; his real position was that of
Emperor. Most of the brothers were able men, but Michael was, as John
probably took into account from the first, epileptic and incapable of
self-assertion. John, therefore, took the reins in his own hands. He
summarily dismissed Zoe’s eunuchs and maids and put about her an army
of servants in his own employment, so that she could not even go to
the bath without the permission and knowledge of the eunuch. To the
Empire and its affairs, it may be said, he devoted the most careful and
intelligent attention. Even in the midst of a solitary carouse--for
the monk was fond of wine--he would turn with alacrity to any pressing
business. It was only in the dishonest enrichment of himself and his
brothers, whom he at once promoted to the highest commands, that he
overreached himself.
One noble only, the Constantine Delassenus who had so narrowly missed
the Empire and the hand of Zoe, rebelled against this division of the
Empire among a family of low-born eunuchs and money-changers, and
the punishment of Delassenus so well illustrates the world in which
Zoe now found herself that it may be briefly recounted. John secured
the loyalty of the Senators by a generous distribution of money, and
then sent a eunuch to assure Delassenus, who was in Armenia, that
his conduct would be overlooked if he disarmed at once. Delassenus
required some tremendous security of such a promise on the part of
John, and it was left to the clergy to devise a new and particularly
ponderous oath. The evolution of the oath in Byzantine life is one of
the many ways in which we may trace the degradation of its character;
no one had any longer the faintest confidence in oaths on the true
cross or the Sacrament. A group of clerics were therefore sent with
the most sacred objects in the reliquaries of Constantinople, and they
marshalled before the eyes of Delassenus the cross, the napkin bearing
a miraculous image of Christ, the original letter of Christ to King
Abgar, and the portrait of Mary painted by St Luke. On these portentous
relics an oath was taken that no punishment would be inflicted on him.
He submitted; and a few months later, when the people of Antioch rose
against their oppressive tax-gatherers, the revolt was subtly traced to
the distant noble, and he was exiled and ruined.
Zoe tolerated the domination of the odious monk for a few years
impatiently, and at length made an attempt on his life. She won one of
the eunuchs whom John had placed about her, and directed him to offer
John’s medical attendant a vast sum of money if he would poison his
master. But, by one of those convenient accidents which commonly happen
in novels and in Byzantine history, the doctor’s boy discovered the
plot and denounced it to John. Her eunuch was drastically punished, and
Zoe was treated worse than ever.
At the same time her condition became more unpleasant, because
Michael’s illness became worse. The popular belief in Constantinople
was that a devil had invaded the Emperor, to punish him for his
mendacious denial, to Romanus, of intimacy with Zoe. Men told of the
suddenness with which the quiet, rosy-cheeked Emperor would be, at any
moment, converted into a frothing maniac, and it was noticed that, on
the rare occasions on which he appeared on the throne, purple curtains
were looped in readiness about it, and servants stood to draw them
round the throne if the devil should choose that moment to indulge his
frolics. Even the Byzantine writers take this theory seriously; though
some of them offer the alternative theory of insanity. We recognize the
symptoms of epilepsy, and see that Zoe’s choice had failed. Between
the attacks Michael, who seems to have believed in the devil, was
gloomy and penitent. He and his brothers walked barefoot through the
city, at the head of processions, bearing the swaddling-clothes of the
infant Christ and all the other priceless relics I have mentioned; but
the only answer of the heavens was a storm of such hail that the stones
crashed through the tiled roofs. He visited shrines, built churches and
monasteries, showered gold on the clergy, and even gave a baptism-fee
to every new-born babe; and famine, pestilence and earthquake vexed the
over-burdened Empire, and men cursed Michael and his brothers.
At length dropsy was added to epilepsy, and Michael determined to
resign and enter a monastery. Zoe seems by this time to have been
completely cowed by the arrogant monk, and she made little opposition
when he went on to provide a new and strange aspirant to the throne.
His sister Maria was, as I said, married to a ship-caulker named
Stephen, who had been put in command of the fleet. They had a boy
named Michael, a vicious youth, but young enough to submit to his
uncle’s rule if he obtained the crown, and the Emperor and Zoe were
persuaded or coerced to adopt this child and clothe him with the
dignity of Cæsar. One of the chroniclers tells that they deceived Zoe
by representing the boy as the son of a noble matron. Some such fiction
may have been served to the populace, but Zoe could hardly be deceived
on the point; and even the people were not long deceived, if at all,
since he has passed into history as Michael the Caulker. In the chapel
at Blachernæ the boy was accepted into the imperial family, after
swearing the customary ponderous oaths to respect Zoe as his mother and
mistress. It is not impossible that Zoe felt that this adoption of a
son who was to wear the crown made her own position more secure.
Some time afterwards Michael IV. retired to a monastery, and Michael
V. began to look forward to his imperial opportunities of indulgence.
The next course of events is not quite clear, but it seems that the
retiring Emperor felt some scruple about his action and had relegated
the boy to a house without the walls. He died, refusing to see Zoe,
soon afterwards (10th December 1041), and John forged a letter in his
name, bidding the guards deliver the young Cæsar, and brought him to
the palace. We are then told that Zoe asserted her power, bestowed the
crown on the youth only on the strictest promise of obedience to her,
and expelled the three brothers--John, George and Constantine--from the
palace. It seems more likely that the brothers quarrelled with each
other. John, promising the most absolute power to Zoe, had his younger
brothers exiled, and then Constantine intrigued with the young Emperor
and displaced his brother.
These details are of little moment for our purpose. By the spring of
1042, three months after the death of her husband, we find Zoe sharing
the power with her adopted son and his uncle Constantine, and a fresh
chapter of romance opens in her story.
Constantine, apparently, urged the youth to get rid of Zoe and rule
alone. A vicious and conceited youth, he was little troubled by the
oaths he had taken a few months before, but he felt it necessary to
proceed cautiously. He began to slight Zoe, then to treat her with
disdain and harshness. He confined her to her palace, and refused
to let her control the treasury. One day he announced one of those
imperial processions through the city which the people regarded as
opportunities to express their feelings, and rode out alone. To his
delight he was received with the liveliest rejoicing. The citizens
hung their choicest silks and tapestries before their houses, and
displayed their silver and other treasures on their balconies, as
they were wont to do on the most festive occasions. Elated with his
apparent popularity, Michael consulted his unofficial council of
fast-living young sportsmen, as soon as he returned to the palace,
and they decided to dismiss Zoe at once. It is said that Michael
himself brutally told her of his decision, and even slapped the fair
face of his adopted mother. The charge he put forward was that she was
preparing a poison for him. It would not be difficult to believe, if
there were any serious evidence, but it was probably only a pretext to
get rid of her. That night she was put on ship at the quay, rowed to
the islands and consecrated a nun.
On the following day, however, the laments of Zoe were cut short in
a very unexpected manner. A boat came at its highest speed from the
palace, and a royal official bade her at once return to her dignity.
The people had resented the flagrant conduct of her adopted son, and he
had hastily summoned her to her palace. A herald had been sent into the
public square to announce that the most pious Emperor had deposed his
mother and the patriarch for conspiring against his throne and would
himself care for their interests in the future. From the sullen crowd
a voice protested angrily that they “wanted their mother Zoe, not the
son of the caulker”; it was repeated fervently on every side, and the
prefect had to fly under a shower of stones. Then the crowd poured into
the cathedral, from which the patriarch had not yet departed, and a
noisy debate took place. A council of the clergy and Senators was then
held in the church, the singular resolution was taken to bring Theodora
from her convent and clothe her with the purple.
The younger sister of Zoe had, it will be recalled, been compelled by
her to take the monastic vows at Petrion eleven years before, and this
sudden recall to life--a recall without precedent, since she was not
summoned for the purpose of marrying--gave a remarkable turn to her
career. She had passed from the luxury and dissipation of her father’s
palace, with a brief interval of independent life, to the shade of the
monastery, and now she was to spend the last fifteen years of her life
on the imperial throne. She was of sterner stuff than Zoe, and the
Senators must have concluded that she alone could check the audacity
of the low-born Paphlagonians. This does not in itself argue any great
strength of character in Theodora. We must remember that there was
always a party of ambitious eunuchs or statesmen behind each of the
names that is put forward by the historian.
When the news of this decision reached Michael, and the crowd stormed
angrily at the gates of the palace, he sent an officer on a swift
vessel to the Princes’ Islands for Zoe. In the palace she was quickly
stripped of her nun’s robe, and clothed in her former garments. It is
clear that Michael’s uncle, Constantine, who was not without ability,
directed the campaign in the palace. Michael was advised to take Zoe
with him into the imperial lodge overlooking the Hippodrome and show
the citizens, who had gathered in the enclosure, that all was well. The
only reply he got was a shower of stones, arrows and epithets, and, as
the chroniclers remark, the young lion became at once a timid hare, and
proposed to run for shelter to the monastery at Studion, on the Asiatic
side. His uncle prevented him, however, and marshalled the guards in
the fore part of the palace. The battle which followed ended in a
complete victory for the people. Constantine and Michael fled across
the water to Studion, in the early morning of Wednesday in Holy Week,
and the new Empress Theodora was conducted into the palace over the
corpses of some three thousand of the combatants.
The royal sisters, it will be understood, did not fly into each other’s
arms. Theodora had to thank Zoe for eleven years’ confinement, and Zoe
herself was very reluctant to share her power with her younger sister.
However, a formal reconciliation was arranged by the Senators, and the
two Empresses sat side by side to receive the homage of the leading
citizens and decide what was to be done with the late Emperor and his
uncle. If there were any who wondered in what spirit Theodora would
wield her power after a decade of religious life, they were not left
long in doubt. Zoe asked what the will of her advisers was in regard to
the fugitives, and such cries as “Out with their eyes!” and “Crucify
them!” rang furiously through the chamber. Zoe recoiled and pleaded for
leniency, but Theodora, a much better speaker than her sister, sternly
ordered the prefect to see that their eyes were put out. A great crowd
crossed the sea with the officers, and saw Michael, who had hidden
under the altar, and his more stoical uncle dragged from the chapel.
The same crowd had applauded Michael in his procession hardly a week
before; now they stood by with wild delight to see the brutal sentence
carried out. It was 21st April: Michael the Caulker had reigned for
four months.
For a few weeks the imperial sisters ruled their kingdom in complete
harmony and with exemplary zeal. M. Diehl, too lightly following the
censorious Psellus, rates the intelligence and character of both at a
very low level, but that estimate is hardly supported by the facts.
Few Emperors had dared to attack the administrative corruption of the
Empire as Zoe and Theodora attacked it in the first freshness of their
power, and as we have every reason to believe that they would have
continued to attack it. For centuries the State had been the easy prey
of ambitious eunuchs at Court and corrupt officials in the provinces.
Zoe and Theodora issued decrees to the effect that all injustice
must cease and that the law must be administered with equity. They
themselves sat on the highest tribunal of the city to hear cases, and
the sale of offices was strictly prohibited. The accounts of the late
chief minister were examined, and Constantine, eyeless and shaven,
was brought from his monastery to explain the enormous deficiency.
The power of his family was broken for ever, and the miserable man
disclosed that 5300 pounds of gold (nearly a quarter of a million
sterling) was hidden in a cistern in his house. Legates and petitions
were heard with dignity by the royal sisters, and it must have seemed
to many that the Empire had, by this singular adventure, obtained
juster and finer rulers than it had known for many a century. We cannot
discriminate in the joint public action of the sisters, but it is
clear that the strong will and intelligence of Theodora were the chief
power of the administration. How drastically the Empire needed such a
purification may be gathered from the fact that, when the patriarch
Alexis died in the following year, a secret and dishonest hoard of
gold, amounting to more than £100,000, was discovered in his palace.
This brilliant example of feminine rule might have been expected to
disarm the old Byzantine prejudice against women, but prejudices of
that nature are too deeply rooted to be displaced by facts. The cry
was raised that an Emperor was needed, and Zoe once more expressed her
willingness to marry. The careful chronicler tells us that her conduct
was not necessarily inspired by a carnal feeling--she was now sixty-two
years old--but that she may have feared that Theodora and her ministers
wished to dislodge her. Her age, no less than the remarkable conditions
of her third and last marriage, will easily persuade us that the motive
was political. There were those who said that, as Theodora had been the
chief agent in expelling Michael, the throne belonged to her alone,
and Zoe sought an ally. The first noble chosen by her was Constantine
Delassenus, who had almost obtained her hand and the throne fourteen
years before. But Constantine, when he was invited to the Court for
inspection, proved so brusque and independent that he was again
dismissed. Her next choice was Constantine Catepano, a handsome officer
of the palace, with whom, in spite of her age, the gossips of the Court
already connected Zoe somewhat too intimately. Constantine, however,
had a wife living, and this lady is said to have poisoned him as soon
as she heard of the proposal to divorce her.
If we may believe the gossipy chronicles, Zoe met the disappointment
with tranquillity, as she had another lover among the officials of the
palace. Constantine Monomachos, a very handsome and distinguished and
dissolute noble, had been exiled from Court to Mitylene by Michael
IV. on the suspicion of intimacy with Zoe, and had for some years
gilded the hours of his distant exile with the enjoyment of letters,
the pleasures of the table and the affection of a pretty and devoted
cousin. When his second wife had died, he had obeyed the injunction
of the Church to refrain from a third marriage and had been content
with the free companionship of the beautiful Sclerena, a sister of
the distinguished noble Romanus Sclerus--a member, that is to say, of
one of the proudest Byzantine families. She had followed her lover
to Lesbos, used her fortune to mitigate the harshness of his exile,
and was living with him at the time when Zoe recalled him to Court.
“Handsome as Achilles,” uniting a prodigious strength with a singular
delicacy and elegance of appearance, equally devoted to the robust
pleasures of the chase and the enervating delights of love, Constantine
Monomachos at once returned to his place in the heart of the ageing
Empress, and was invited to wed her. He is said to have stipulated
beforehand that the fair Sclerena should be allowed to come to
Constantinople, and Zoe genially consented. They were married, and Zoe
entered upon the last and strangest part of her strange career.
While the sexless Theodora continued to rule the Empire and put out the
eyes of her enemies, while Constantine revelled in the new and more
exquisite luxuries of his position, Zoe seems quietly to have enjoyed
the secure and restful days which her marriage obtained for her. She
still, with her maids, compounded and distilled the perfumes which were
almost her one luxury, but she now paid a scrupulous attention to her
devotions and burned much incense before the icons. Sclerena at first
dwelt apart, and Constantine set about building a magnificent palace
for her, thinly veiling his liaison with the pretence of going daily to
see the progress of the works. As the citizens smiled at the connexion,
and Zoe seemed to be piously indifferent to it, he became bolder and
asked Zoe to allow him to bring Sclerena to live in the palace. Again
Zoe consented, and the _ménage à trois_ was maintained in the most
pleasant harmony. She gave Sclerena the title of Empress, embraced her,
when they met, with entire goodwill, and showed her such consideration
that she never visited her husband without first ascertaining if he was
disengaged. Constantine occupied the central part of the palace, and
his wife and mistress had apartments on each side.
Although Zoe now approached her seventieth year, she still retained
the freshness of her complexion and had no wrinkles. Psellus says that
a stranger would have been sure that she was still a young woman. She
shared the pleasures of the gay Court, and made no protest against the
frivolous Constantine emptying the treasury on his mistress. If we may
believe implicitly all the details given by Psellus, there was little
delicacy in the fun which enlivened the gardens or halls--for Zoe
disliked the open air--of the sacred domain. Music and skilful dancing
were too fine for his appreciation. He liked the broader merriment of
mimes, and took especial pleasure in imitations of stammering. His
chief entertainers would go so far as to represent, pantomimically, the
chaste Theodora lying abed in child-birth, and Theodora herself joined
in the loud laughter of Constantine as the man imitated the shrieks
which befitted such an occasion. The months passed very merrily, and
the treasury emptied.
And as the treasury emptied, and the citizens saw their funds passing
into the marvellous palace which Constantine was building for Sclerena,
clouds began to gather over the life of the epicure. One day, in the
year 1044, as he rode with his guards at the head of a religious
procession, a cry broke from the crowd: “We don’t want Sclerena as
Empress, nor to see our lawful mistresses, Zoe and Theodora, perish on
her account.” The cry was a spark to the spreading discontent, and the
small troop of guards were surrounded by a threatening mob. Fortunately
for the Emperor, the Empresses were watching the procession from the
balcony, and they sent troops to rescue him. Later, a discontented
noble led some Macedonian troops against the city, and encamped
opposite the Blachernæ gate. Constantine disdainfully ordered a chair
to be placed for him outside the gate, in order that he might see, and
be seen by, the rebels. For a time they were content to sing comic
songs about him--of which there must have been a good supply in the
city--then they made a dash and scattered his guards, and could have
penetrated into the city, possibly taken it, if they had not foolishly
retired. On such slender threads did crowns hang in that singular
Empire.
Sclerena relieved the growing discontent by a premature death,
apparently about the year 1045, and the superb palace which had been
intended for Constantine’s mistress was turned into a monastery. Five
years later Zoe closed her long and romantic career, at the age of
seventy. Constantine mourned for her as if she had been a beloved
child, and even pressed the Church to put her on the list of the
canonized; he may have read how St Theodora had won the aureole largely
by her freedom from jealousy. When it was found, after a time, that
some curious fungi had grown about her monument, he insisted that they
were heaven-sent assurances that Zoe had been admitted at once into the
company of the saints. The Greek Church, however, was not persuaded to
add Zoe to its quaint list of the blessed, and few will reflect on the
many events which reveal her personality to us without admitting that,
whether or no she was guilty of the positive crimes attributed to her,
she had little or no moral feeling.
Constantine found consolation in the charms of a young Alan princess
who was detained as a hostage at Constantinople. The milk-white skin
and fine eyes of the unknown so fascinated him that he gave her the
imperial title and emptied the remainder of the treasury upon her and
the relatives who flocked to share her fortune. He was by this time
a miserable wreck of his former magnificent person, and could not
sit unaided on a horse, but the Court still rang with laughter and
buffoonery. His favourite, a man who had been raised from the position
of street buffoon to that of Court jester, became so infatuated with
his wealth and privileges that he dreamed of possessing the pretty Alan
princess and the purple. He was caught in Constantine’s bedroom with a
drawn sword. The Emperor asked why he had attempted assassination, and,
when the man said that he had an irresistible passion to see himself
in the crown and imperial robes, burst into laughter and ordered the
attendants to put them on him. He returned to his position, and, to the
amusement of Constantine, made more open love than before to the fair
Circassian mistress. But the Emperor died in 1054, and his mistress
returned to her previous obscurity.
When it was seen that Constantine was failing, a number of the nobles
and officials conspired to put on the throne Nicephorus Bryennius, but
Theodora’s supporters forestalled the plot. They sent a swift vessel
for her and lodged her in the sacred palace before their opponents
could bring Bryennius from Bulgaria, which he governed. She seems to
have been forced out of affairs during the later years of Constantine,
and the sending of a boat implies, apparently, that she had retired
to the suburbs. She was still, in her seventh decade of life, erect
of form and clear in mind, and drastic punishment was inflicted on
the conspirators. She then began again to control the affairs of the
Empire as she had done in conjunction with Zoe. She personally received
ambassadors and heard trials, and resumed her war on corrupt officials.
Psellus is disdainful of her rule, and unjust to her. The only grave
defect we can recognize is that she put the higher offices and commands
at the disposal of men who were less distinguished for ability than
for devotion to her. A very strong provincial aristocracy had by this
time arisen in the Empire, and from their vast estates a number of able
nobles and officers kept a discontented eye on the hierarchy of eunuchs
at Constantinople.
Theodora, conscious of her vigour, and sustained by the prophetical
assurance of a monk that she would wear the crown for a long time,
maintained her power for three further years, and then became seriously
ill. It is said that she chose an aged and feeble noble of the city,
Michael Stratioticus, to don the purple, but one is rather disposed
to see in the choice of Stratioticus the action of the Court party,
whose influence was threatened by the provincial nobles. Theodora still
confided in the monk’s prophecy; she had the aged soldier brought to
her sickbed and bound him by the direst oaths to promise obedience
to herself. She died a few days later, however, on 30th August 1057,
leaving the crown to the frail charge of Michael VI. The historian must
regret that Theodora had not a larger opportunity to prove her value as
a ruler and exhibit her personality. She was a woman of great vigour
and generally high political ideals, and she incurs the reproach only
of stooping at times to the common Byzantine level in securing her
power. It was not she, but the contemptible Constantine, who emptied
the treasury for frivolous purposes, and, in spite of the light disdain
of Psellus, her rule compares most favourably with that of most of the
Emperors.
CHAPTER XI
EUDOCIA
The struggle which Theodora had foreseen was not long deferred after
her death, and Michael Stratioticus was compelled, after a few months
of feeble imperial experiment, to retire to the private life from which
he had been unwisely drawn. The great territorial nobles--one might
almost say, the feudal nobles--concentrated upon the capital and put
one of their number, Isaac Comnenus, upon the throne. Isaac had in
earlier years married a Bulgarian princess, and her career as mistress
of a large provincial domain, and then as Empress of Constantinople,
suggests a very interesting study. Unfortunately, her husband’s reign
lasted only two years, and the events yield us only few and fleeting
glimpses of the new Empress.
Æcatherina, as the best contemporary authority, Nicephorus Bryennius,
calls her (though later writers often say Catherina), descended from
the Bulgarian royal family, which had fallen from its high estate
when “Basil the Bulgarian-slayer” had won a definitive victory over
the nation. Bryennius makes her a daughter of the King Samuel, and
we have in a later chronicle a picture of Samuel’s daughters which
would dispose us to imagine Æcatherina as a very fiery and interesting
personality. When, in the presence of Basil, they were brought face to
face with the woman whose husband had killed their brother, the Emperor
and his officers had great difficulty in preventing a very violent
and undignified scene. The dates, however, make it improbable that
Æcatherina was one of the daughters of Samuel--others more probably
suggest that she was his niece, or grand-niece--and in character
she seems rather to have been gentle and religious. She was brought
from her remote provincial home and made Augusta, but she proved to
be one of the quiet and retiring Empresses who leave no mark in the
chronicles. The only reference to her is that, in 1059, she encouraged
her husband, who had met with a serious accident or illness, to
resign, and she herself took the veil of the nun. One suspects that
her husband’s policy of curtailing the funds of the luxurious and
innumerable monks alarmed her, and she was ready to believe that, as
rumour maintained, the wild boar which led him into grave peril in
1059 was no ordinary animal. He resigned, and Æcatherina, changing her
name to Helena, retired with her daughter Maria to a quiet mansion,
where they practised monastic discipline and were esteemed so holy
that Æcatherina was eventually buried in the cemetery of the monks of
Studion.
With the next Empress, Eudocia, we return to the more familiar and
more piquant type of Byzantine princess: the woman who unites with
her subservience to the Church a skill in casuistry which protects
her human inclinations from the harsher control of the Church’s
ascetic standards. Eudocia Macrembolitissa, or Eudocia the daughter
of Macrembolites, a distinguished noble of Constantinople, had some
beauty and no little wit, as well as good birth and breeding. In the
reign of Michael IV. and Zoe she had been wooed and won by a handsome
and learned, if not very warlike, commander named Constantine Ducas,
and had in the subsequent twenty years of changing rulers borne three
sons and three daughters to her elderly husband. Constantine was at
least ten years older than she, and had no higher ambition than to
be regarded as a prince of letters and rhetoric. It must, therefore,
have been an agreeable surprise to Eudocia to learn, in 1059, that the
retiring Emperor had transferred his crown to her husband, and she was
henceforth to be the mistress of the sacred palace. She was then,
probably, in her later thirties. She was entitled Augusta, and the
imperial dignity was conferred also on her six children, of whom the
youngest was born after her coronation.
During the eight years of her husband’s reign Eudocia remained a silent
witness of his futility and unpopularity. He retained his pedantry, and
sought the laurels of learning and eloquence, while formidable enemies
threatened the Empire on every side. In 1067 he perceived that his
inglorious reign was about to end, and summoned Eudocia, the nobles
and the patriarch to his couch. The nobles were commanded to swear to
maintain the throne of Eudocia and her sons, and Eudocia was compelled
to swear a portentous oath that she would not marry again. Possibly
Constantine felt that he was not imposing a very heavy sacrifice on
a woman who approached her fiftieth year, and it was plainly to the
interest of his sons that she should not marry. Eudocia signed the
written oath, and it was entrusted to the patriarch Xiphilin to keep in
the great church.
The regency of Eudocia lasted about seven months, during which she
emulated the conduct of Zoe and Theodora. She received ambassadors,
heard trials and paid more direct and closer attention to the
affairs of the Empire than her late husband had done. Two things,
however, concerned her and illustrated the weakness of woman-rule at
Constantinople. The Turks and other hostile neighbours were raiding
the provinces with greater vigour, and the nobles were making this a
pretext for intrigue to replace Eudocia with an Emperor. Before the
year was out Eudocia decided to marry again and sought a means of
evading the oath which the patriarch grimly guarded.
The story of her outwitting the patriarch is, as we find it in the
later chronicles, in the finest vein of Byzantine melodrama. She took
into her confidence one of the wiliest eunuchs of her Court, who
assured her that it was quite easy to induce the patriarch to release
her. This Xiphilin, the patriarch at the time, was himself as casuistic
as he was religious. Originally a noble, he had voluntarily embraced
the black robe of the monk, and had been withdrawn from the monastery
to rule the Eastern Church. He had in Constantinople a brother named
Bardas, whose gallantries and sybaritic ways were notorious. When the
eunuch proposed the subject of marriage, Xiphilin sternly maintained
that the oath was binding and that Eudocia must remain a widow, but
when the astute eunuch regretted that such was his view, since it was
his brother Bardas whom Eudocia wished to marry, Xiphilin reconsidered
the matter. It is not for us to analyse his reasoning. It is enough
that in a short time he declared to the assembled Senators that the
oath was unjust and invalid, a mere wanton outrage on the part of a
jealous man, and he handed the precious document back to Eudocia to
destroy. His feelings may be imagined when, a few hours later, he
heard that the Empress was married, not to his brother, but to Romanus
Diogenes.
The contemporary writer Psellus gives a more sober version, but,
although Psellus was one of Eudocia’s chief ministers at the time,
there can be little doubt that his vanity and policy have somewhat
tempered the veracity of his narrative. Eudocia, he says, came to him
in tears to complain that the cares of Empire were an intolerable
burden for a single woman’s shoulders, and she wished to marry. The
story is, perhaps, not inconsistent with the story of her outwitting
the patriarch. In any case, the second marriage of Eudocia had an
element of romance.
In the state prison of Constantinople at the time was a handsome young
noble and commander named Romanus Diogenes, who ran some risk of losing
his head for high treason. Distinguished by birth and in person, and a
man of great spirit, he reflected that the throne of the Eastern Empire
had been reached by less able men than he, and cherished a daydream of
wearing the purple. At the death of Constantine in 1067, when there
was much discussion of the empty throne and the imperial widow, he
imprudently confessed his ambition to those about him in the remote
province of Thrace, which he governed; he was denounced in the capital;
and he was brought in bonds to Constantinople and put on trial. He had
then completed his thirtieth year: a tall, comely, broad-shouldered
man, with the dark skin of a Cappadocian and very winning eyes.
Constantinople looked with sympathy on the manly, but impetuous, young
noble. He was connected by birth with the greatest families of the
Asiatic provinces, and he pleaded that it was only his concern for
the safety of the menaced Empire that had wrung from him words of
dissatisfaction. His treason was, however, apparent, and he was found
guilty and restored to jail.
Eudocia was probably present at the trial of Romanus, and noted the
handsome form and flashing eye. She professed afterwards that the
trial was unsatisfactory and must be revised, and the young commander
found himself acquitted and free to return to his native province. The
time was not yet ripe for the marriage project; in fact, one of the
historians states that Romanus was already married, and went to join
his wife and family in Cappadocia. About Christmas (1067), however, he
received an order from Eudocia to return to Constantinople, and may
or may not have been surprised to hear that she proposed to marry and
crown him. His wife and family seem to have been deserted with great
cheerfulness--unless we prefer to regard the statement in the chronicle
as an error[24]--and Eudocia secretly prepared for the marriage.
Senators were bribed to support the proposal, and, on 31st December,
the patriarch was won by the stratagem which I have already described.
That very night Romanus was introduced, fully armed, into the palace
and secretly wedded to the Empress, and on the first day of the new
year the young Emperor and his middle-aged Empress were ceremoniously
presented to the people. For a moment it seemed as if the fierce
Varangian guards were about to avenge what they regarded as a violation
of the oath to the dead Constantine, but Eudocia prevailed on her elder
sons to assure the guards that they had consented to the marriage, and
the trouble was averted for the time.
It was, however, in face of considerable hostility that Eudocia and
Romanus entered upon their task of governing the Empire. The clergy
were naturally hostile, since their leader had been tricked into
an ignominious concession; more distinguished nobles than Romanus
envied his elevation; and courtiers who were attached to the fortunes
of Eudocia’s elder sons regarded the new Emperor, and the possible
issue of the new marriage, with sullen distrust. Michael Psellus, the
historian who boasts that he guided Eudocia’s counsels in regard to
the marriage, is transparently hostile to Romanus, and his historical
work is largely responsible for the traditional prejudice against that
brave and spirited, but injudicious and unfortunate, monarch. Psellus
was not merely the chief student of philosophy in Constantinople, but
an ambitious and successful courtier. His great repute in letters and
philosophy gave him a commanding position in the Court of Eudocia, who
had herself some literary ambition,[25] and his secret and sinuous
counsels must have deeply influenced the later course of the careers
of Romanus and Eudocia. A philosopher-statesman was the great ideal
which Plato, whose works he revived, had urged upon the Greeks, but the
fortunes of Psellus remain so even throughout the various revolutions
he outlived that one is tempted to compare him rather with
Talleyrand than with Plato’s ideal.
[Illustration: EUDOCIA AND ROMANUS IV
FROM AN IVORY IN THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE, PARIS]
Into this atmosphere of culture the robust Romanus was little fitted to
enter, and some disdain must have been felt of his uncultivated ways.
On the other hand, the brother of the late Constantine, John Ducas,
who bore the dignity of Cæsar and jealously guarded the position of
his nephews, was not less hostile to Romanus. The boys had received
the purple before the death of their father, and the time was rapidly
approaching when, with the assistance of their uncle and Psellus,
they might begin to exercise their power. To this plan Romanus was a
considerable obstacle. When we further learn that Romanus was gravely
conscious of his duty to restore the strength and discipline of the
army, and diverted funds from the entertainment of idle citizens to the
pay and equipment of his troops, we realize that the life of the palace
was preparing for one more of those tragic revolutions which punctuate
the history of the Byzantine Empire.
From this Court atmosphere of pedantry and intrigue Romanus turned
to the field of battle; he would strengthen his position by winning
such laurels as his vigorous and warlike character seemed to promise
him. Two months after his coronation a fresh invasion of the Turks was
announced, and he led a large army out to meet them. After nearly a
year’s absence he returned with some report of victories, but there had
in the same year been heavy losses, and his success was not decisive
enough to override the intrigues of his opponents. Already, we are
told, he found Eudocia colder. Her attitude is attributed to his
arrogance and boastfulness; we may suppose that it was just as much
due to an instinctive irritation when her robust husband strode into
the philosophic atmosphere of the palace with the smell of the camp
clinging to him and the language of war on his lips. In two or three
months he was off once more to the field, leaving Eudocia to her master
of philosophy and her brother-in-law. Into their hands she placed the
more virile cares of State, while she enlarged libraries, cultivated
men of letters and fostered the higher ambition of making verses. Her
eldest son, Michael, was associated with her in her cultural work.
When Romanus returned in the following winter, still without decisive
success, he seems to have concluded that it would be better to remain
in Constantinople, and the campaign of the third year was entrusted to
his generals, but in the spring of 1071 he again prepared to take the
field. Nothing but a crushing victory over the enemies of the Empire
would enable him to silence his enemies in the Court and capital.
Eudocia seems by this time to have wavered between admiration of her
young and manly spouse and repugnance to his more robust standards of
life. She was now certainly over fifty, and had never been particularly
sensuous, but we cannot doubt that she had married Romanus for love and
that that love was not yet extinct. As he set out from port for his
last crossing to Asia a singular dark-plumaged pigeon circled his royal
galley. He directed that it should be caught and sent to the Empress;
and it was said in later years that Eudocia nervously recognized in
the rare bird an omen of the evil fortune that was about to befall her
husband.
And in the course of the summer stragglers made their way hastily to
Constantinople with the news that Romanus had been heavily defeated
and his large army shattered. The Emperor himself had been slain,
some said, but at length there came men who had seen him captured and
borne away, a prisoner, by the Turks. The hour of the malcontents had
come, and a council was summoned to discuss the situation. It was at
once decided that no effort would be made to save Romanus--some of
the authorities declare that it was the treachery of the Cæsar’s son,
acting on the instructions of his father, which led to the reverse--but
the eldest son, Michael, should be appointed ruling Emperor, together
with his mother.
That Eudocia at once surrendered her husband becomes quite clear from
the subsequent course of events. The new administration had hardly
settled to its work when Eudocia received a joyful letter from her
husband announcing that he was free, and on his way to Constantinople.
How the Turk had entirely falsified his repute for barbarity, treated
Romanus as a brother king in misfortune, and eventually released him
on promise of a ransom, is a familiar and attractive picture in the
history of the time. Romanus was hastening to the arms of his beloved
wife. Eudocia is described by contemporary writers as “distracted” and
eager to consult those about her as to her conduct. Of wifely feeling
she did not exhibit one sincere particle, and, however we may remind
ourselves of the inevitable coldness of a woman in her sixth decade of
life, her conduct is somewhat repellent. Had she known that the Cæsar
was bent on bringing her to a common ruin with her husband, she might
at least have purchased some loyalty to him, in the usual Byzantine
fashion; but she was either ignorant or powerless, and she accepted the
counsel that Romanus should be disowned and repelled by force from his
Empire.
John Ducas, however, concluded that the opportunity was convenient
for the removal of both Emperor and Empress. A decree was issued to
the provinces to arrest the advance of Romanus, and the guards were
marshalled. At this date the mercenary troops in charge of the palace
were the famous and formidable Varangian guards, in whom modern
authorities recognize the blue-eyed giants of distant Scandinavia and
even of Britain. Romanus had favoured the native troops of the Empire
rather than these foreign mercenaries, and they at once accepted the
command of the Cæsar. One half of them went to the apartments of
Michael, and declared him sole Emperor of the Romans; the other body
went in search of Eudocia, with orders to transfer her to a monastery.
Eudocia at once concluded that the end of her rule had come when she
heard the jubilant clash of axe on shield, the deep guttural voices,
raised in song, of the northern soldiers, and their heavy tread across
the gardens and terraces. Fearing for her life, she hid herself in some
sort of hut in the grounds of her palace, but the door was presently
flung open and she looked on the fierce hairy faces and shining
weapons of the Varangians. She was prostrate with terror when the
Cæsar arrived, to give her the comparative consolation that her life
would be spared, but her empire was over. From the palace, spoiled of
all the ensigns of royalty, we follow her along the short and painful
route that we have seen so many proud rulers of the sacred palace
take. At the Bucoleon quays a swift galley waited to take her to the
Asiatic shore, where she was lodged in a monastery which she herself
had founded. A further message soon came, ordering her to take the
black veil, and the frail and unfortunate woman bade farewell to all
the glories of imperial life. It was only four years since she had been
left in control of the Empire by her first husband.
Shortly afterwards she was summoned to bury Romanus, and with him the
last flickering hope of a return to power. He had collected an army and
resolved to fight for his throne, and the troops of Ducas at length
pinned him in a town of Cilicia. In order to end the civil war John
now sent an assurance that the life of Romanus would be spared if he
would resign his claim and enter a monastery; nay, three archbishops
were sent to give him a solemn testimony that John had sworn and would
fulfil his oath. Frail as the most formidable oaths had become in
Eastern Christendom, Romanus opened the gates and yielded to the sons
of the Cæsar. The rest of the story is a chapter of nauseous horror,
and concerns us, fortunately, only in outline. Romanus was conveyed
across Asia Minor, in the robe of a monk, with studied insult. Most
of the chroniclers affirm that poison was administered to him, but
that his powerful constitution prevented it from doing more than add
to his misery. At length his eyes were cut out with more than ordinary
brutality, the roughest and most elementary attention to his bleeding
sockets was refused, and he was borne once more on a mule, dying by
inches in the most ghastly conceivable fashion, across Asia Minor.
He reached the island of Prote in time to die on the soil that was
already watered by so many imperial tears, and the chroniclers add that
Eudocia gave a splendid funeral to the remains of the man whom she had
transferred from the jail to the palace, less than four years before,
in the full pride of a magnificent manhood.
I have said that with the remains of Romanus she buried her last hope
of returning to power, yet some seven years afterwards a strange
message reached her in her cloister, recalling the memory, if not the
hope, of imperial power. Her son Michael proved an ineffective ruler.
The tradition of culture which had lingered in the palace since the
days of Psellus absorbed all his energy, and he could not be diverted
from the dialogues of Plato or the iridescent dreams of Plotinus by
mere conspiracies against his throne or invasions of his Empire.
Indeed, it was with difficulty, sometimes, that they could drag him
to table or persuade him to refrain from spending the night over his
books. The irony of the situation was that, while the Greek writings
over which he lingered urged that a profound study of philosophy was
the fittest education of monarchs, Michael remained as helpless and
heedless as a boy, precisely on account of his studies. Fortunately,
he had the casual inspiration to call to the palace a wily eunuch,
named Nicephorus, who become the virtual ruler. Nicephoritzes--as the
people, using the diminutive form of his name, called the pale and
shrunken little eunuch--soon displaced the Cæsar John, and, as was the
invariable custom of his kind, enriched himself at the expense of the
impoverished and decaying provinces.
Under Nicephoritzes Eudocia had no chance of a return to power. He had
endeavoured to persuade her first husband, the Emperor Constantine,
that she was unfaithful to him, and had been driven from office during
her regency. But the Empress’s quarters in the palace were not vacant;
a new type of Empress was added to the long and varied gallery.
Shortly before his accession to the supreme throne Michael had married
a princess of one of the tribes that had settled in Asia Minor. The
father of the Empress Maria is conflictingly described as a king of the
Iberians and the Alans, and is said to have been a ruler of great fame
and power; but he is not named, and it seems that he was not powerful
enough to avert or temper the tragedy of his daughter’s career. Her
dowry had been her beauty. I have complained at times of the lamentable
indifference of the male historians of Constantinople to the physical
features of the Empresses, and the lack of portraits which might bring
the living figure with any fulness or accuracy before the imagination.
We now, however, approach a period, the history of which has been
written for us by a woman, the famous Anna Comnena, and her pen happily
wanders at times back to the age of Eudocia, of which her husband,
Nicephorus Bryennius, was the chief historian.
Unhappily, the art of which Anna Comnena was so patently proud did not
include skill in portraiture. Maria was the most beautiful woman of her
time, and, although her interests become opposed to those of Anna and
her family, and the learned princess was capable of malignant hatred,
Anna Comnena rises to the height of superlative when her pen delineates
the figure of Maria. Her grace of form and beauty of face were beyond
the artist’s power to convey; though one must add that Anna not
infrequently uses that formula, in order to enhance the artistic wonder
of her own descriptions. Maria, she says, was tall and graceful as a
cypress; her body was white as snow, save for the roses that bloomed
in her cheeks, and the luminous blue eyes which shone beneath the
perfect and lofty arch of her auburn eyebrows. To this vague poetical
description we may add at once that the beautiful young princess was
not wholly devoid of the spirit of her tribe, and was prepared for
romantic adventure in support of the imperial dignity.
The seven years of Michael’s reign do not interest us. The Emperor
lived in the remote solitude of his exalted studies; Maria enjoyed the
superb luxury of her position, and brought a prince into the world for
the greater security of her throne; Eudocia languished in the royal
monastery of the Virgin across the straits. Usurpers rose and fell, and
the defrauded people spoke with bitterness of the young pedant who let
his ministers rob them while he studied the divine maxims of Plato.
Another princess, daughter of Robert of Lombardy, was introduced from
the West, but she was, like Maria’s son, to whom she was betrothed,
a child of tender years, looking with strange blue eyes on the vast
palaces she would one day govern--they said--and the boy who shyly
shrank from her companionship.
At last, in 1078, a more fortunate rebel advanced on Constantinople,
the clergy and nobles were bribed to espouse his cause, and Michael
fled to the Blachernæ palace in the suburbs. Maria accompanied him,
and what we know of her character emboldens us to fancy her urging
the distracted scholar to draw a sword on behalf of his throne. His
friends, however, found it impossible to move him, and, yielding to
the usurper, he was conducted on an ass to the monastery at Studion,
where he might prosecute his studies with even greater leisure. The new
Emperor had so genial a disdain for him that he made him titular Bishop
of Ephesus, and allowed him to return and live in the capital.
Maria, in accordance with custom, entered the suburban monastery at
Petrion. She did not, however, take the vows of the religious life,
and it was not long before the interesting news came that the new
Emperor designed to marry her. Nicephorus Botaneiates was an elderly
voluptuary, who had seized the throne only because so little energy was
needed for the task. For the administration of public business he had
two slaves of his own household, of Slavonian extraction, who at once
put an end to the life of Nicephoritzes and diverted the stream of gold
to their own pockets. For their master the pleasures of the table and
the couch sufficed. He had brought to the throne an obscure Empress
named Berdena, but she died shortly afterwards, and the aged Sybarite
consulted his ministers. To their cold and impartial judgment it seemed
that political considerations must rule the choice and they were
divided between the claims of Maria and those of Eudocia. It is true
that Nicephorus had been twice married, that Eudocia was a nun, and
that Maria was not yet a widow; but such difficulties were never beyond
the casuistic resources of the Constantinopolitan clergy. The Emperor
must marry, since the sacred ritual of the Court demanded the presence
of an Empress.
The politicians favoured the suit of Eudocia, and she was actually
informed that Nicephorus wished to marry her, and expressed her cordial
willingness to sacrifice her monastic estate in view of such august
considerations. Nicephorus, however, was, as I said, a Sybarite, and
even advanced age did not blur his experienced eye to the charms of
Maria. We may, therefore, suppose that Nicephorus was neither surprised
nor pained when a certain very holy monk appeared at the monastery of
the Virgin and sternly forbade Eudocia to quit her black robe. It may
be that the monk was one of the chaplains of the monastery; it is at
least clear that his zeal did not take him to the monastery at Petrion,
where Maria resided. The beautiful young Empress was recalled from
her prayers and fasts and conducted to the side of the Emperor in the
palace chapel. The patriarch, who seems to have had some scruples, was
not summoned to perform the ceremony, and Nicephorus noticed with
irritation that the priest who was called hesitated to come to the
sanctuary; Nicephorus had no dispensation for a third marriage, and
Maria’s husband still lived. A courtier, however, had foreseen the
difficulty and had a more accommodating priest at hand. The irregular
knot was tied, or regarded as tied, and Maria returned to enjoy, with
her son, the pleasures of the Emperor’s luxurious Court.
It is, perhaps, no alleviation of the conduct of Maria, in purchasing
her crown by an invalid marriage to an elderly sensualist, to say
that--the chroniclers assure us--quite a number of noble ladies
at Constantinople were eager to be chosen. Eudocia, her youngest
daughter, Zoe, and many other ladies had been pressed upon the notice
of Nicephorus. It is merely one more indication of the inferiority of
character, both in men and women, in the Byzantine Empire. But Maria
was not destined to enjoy long the throne which she had purchased.
Contemptible as the reign of Michael had been, it was succeeded by
one far more contemptible, and sullen murmurs filled the palace and
the city. Men told each other how the aged Emperor, who ought to be
thinking of eternity, changed his splendid robes ten times a day,
anointed his jaded frame with the most costly unguents, and sat down,
day after day, to the most superb banquets that the Empire could
afford; while the two barbaric slaves whom he had made his chief
ministers ground the despairing provinces and disgusted the nobles.
Within a year or two of Maria’s return to power, the customary,
inevitable revolt arose, and she was driven back to her monastery.
This revolution, however, introduces us to the strong women of the
Comnenian house and must commence a fresh chapter. Of Eudocia we hear
no more. If we accept the statement of one of the chroniclers, that
she had married in the reign of Michael IV. (1034–1041), she must now
have reached her seventh decade of life, and would probably not long
survive her last disappointment. Her readiness, in her later sixties,
and after seven years of monastic life, to accept the embraces of
a _roué_ like Nicephorus, in return for the crown, is a sufficient
measure of her character; her violation of her oath to her first
husband, and her desertion of her second husband, point to the same
feebly vicious and unattractive type of personality. Through the favour
of Nicephorus she was permitted to leave the suburban monastery, and
spend her last years in considerable comfort in the city.
CHAPTER XII
IRENE AND ANNA COMNENA
The distinguished family of the Comneni has already made its appearance
in our narrative. It may be recalled that the last chapter opened
with a march of the great provincial nobles upon the capital, and
the placing of one of their ablest representatives, Isaac Comnenus,
upon the throne. Isaac’s brave life had ended in heroic foolishness.
Terrified by an apparition, he embraced the monastic life, ignored the
natural desire of his brother John to succeed him, and handed the crown
to the Ducas family. During the reign of Eudocia the widow of John
Comnenus, Anna, remained in Constantinople to guard the fortunes of her
children and eventually to help them to secure the throne. She was a
woman of the old Roman build, rather than Byzantine; strong, ambitious,
able and despotic. The Cæsar John Ducas looked on her with just
suspicion, and accused her of treasonable correspondence with Romanus,
when he was struggling to regain his throne. She boldly asserted that
the letters were forged, and brandished an image of Christ in the eyes
of her judges; but it was expedient to condemn her, and she passed to
the melancholy Princes’ Islands.
Michael the Scholar released her as soon as Diogenes was dead, and
she returned to Constantinople, to watch and work. She had something
of the spirit of her father, who had sent so many of the enemy to
the land of shades that he had won the name of Alexius _Charon_: her
mother had been of the great family of the Delasseni. The feebleness of
Michael and the insipidity of Nicephorus gave promise of a successful
revolution, and Anna and her two sons were shrewd enough not to force
the opportunity. The youth had first to learn the mastery of legions
and to marry. There were, in fact, four women in Constantinople, all
able and ambitious, who sought the throne for their children, and
a stupendous amount of intrigue must have been expended. The four
were: Anna Comnena, the Empresses Eudocia and Maria, and the wife of
Andronicus, son of the Cæsar John Ducas. Andronicus had been fatally
wounded in war, and condemned to a lingering death, and his wife
pressed the Cæsar to find good alliances for her three daughters. She
was one of those virile and beautiful Bulgarian princesses who had
found the way to Constantinople, and her eldest daughter, Irene, was
now just marriageable.
The wife of Andronicus--we do not know her name--shrewdly concluded
that an alliance with the Comneni would best serve her ambition, and
she pressed her father-in-law to bring about a marriage between Irene
and Alexis, the elder of Anna’s two sons. Alexis was a very promising
and successful commander who had recently lost his first wife, and he
was not unwilling to wed the fair Irene. Anna Comnena (the younger)
describes the pair for us, with her usual verbosity and inexactness,
premising that it is beyond the power of art to reproduce their
comeliness. Alexis was, it seems, a man of medium height, with very
broad shoulders and massive chest, eyes of “terrible splendour,” and a
look that was “at once both truculent and bland.” He seems, in fact,
to have been a very ordinary young man, with an extraordinary capacity
for ruse and intrigue. Irene (Anna’s mother) was, of course, a paragon.
Her face was “like the moon,” though not quite so round, and her rosy
cheeks and fine blue eyes make the simile somewhat weak; her look, like
that of her husband, was “at once sweet and terrible”--the look of
“a Minerva of heavenly splendour”--and calm and storm succeeded each
other, as on the sea, in her expressive blue eyes; her arms and hands
were like carven ivory, and her constant gestures extremely graceful.
In other words, Irene was a very pretty maiden of thirteen summers at
the time, with a large share of the spirit and temper of her Bulgarian
mother. These fragments of Anna Comnena’s art may serve to illustrate
Gibbon’s indulgent complaint that it is more feminine than the artist
herself.
The prospect of so significant a marriage released a fresh flood of
intrigue. Anna, the mother of Alexis, remembered that it was John Ducas
who had driven her into exile, and would not hear of a match with
his daughter-in-law. The Emperor Michael regarded the marriage with
distrust; his brother Constantine wanted to marry Alexis to his sister
Zoe, Eudocia’s youngest daughter. Through this thicket of obstacles
and intrigues the wife of Andronicus fought her way with spirit, and
not a little bribery, and the marriage took place. We may assume that
this was in the second or third year of Nicephorus, when Irene, who was
only fifteen at her coronation, cannot have been more than thirteen or
fourteen years old.
The Empress Eudocia had now played her last card, and resigned herself
to the life of the monastery; it remained to secure the favour of the
lovely Empress Maria. Isaac Comnenus had married her cousin Irene, and
had therefore the _entrée_ of her palace. The Slavonian ministers of
Nicephorus watched him and his brother with concern, but he won the
affection of Maria and, by generous distribution of money, the service
of her eunuchs. It was presently announced that the Empress Maria
proposed to adopt the successful young commander of the troops, Alexis
Comnenus, and when this ceremony had been performed both brothers were
at liberty to make lengthy visits to the Empress. It is not difficult
to accept the rumour that the relation of Alexis to his “mother” was
not entirely filial. Alexis was no ascetic, and he notoriously strayed
from his girl-wife. On the other hand, Maria had not shown much
delicacy in marrying the white-haired sensualist, and the privilege
of intimacy with a handsome young general of thirty-seven, her eunuchs
being bribed in his and her favour, would be appreciated by her. Her
mind was not strong and penetrating enough to see through the trickery
of Alexis. He posed as an unambitious general, loyally devoted to her
reign and that of her son.
The Emperor Nicephorus probably felt that the young men would await the
natural termination of his imperial orgies before seizing the throne,
and seems to have regarded them with a certain genial indifference. His
ministers, however, knew that their fortunes were ruined if Alexis came
to the throne, and they insisted that Nicephorus must name a successor.
He chose his nephew, a handsome young noble named Synadenus. Maria was
now seriously alarmed, since the accession of Synadenus would mean the
monastery for her and, possibly, death for her son, and she allowed
the Comneni to witness her tears. They were, they said, devoted to her
cause. Nay, they swore on the holy cross that they would acknowledge no
rulers but Maria and her son, and she promised, in return, that they
should be informed of any step that might be contemplated against them
in the palace. I am following, almost entirely, the narrative of Anna
Comnena, who enlarges with the most candid pleasure on the deceit of
her father, and assures us that her grandmother, Anna, was the soul of
the plot. In the palace of the Comneni councils were held daily, and
the virile mother directed the movements of her sons. It was a time of
great anxiety. One night Nicephorus invited Alexis and Isaac to his
banquet, and Anna depicts them nervously glancing round them during
the meal for the guards or assassins who might have been summoned to
despatch them. But Alexis, a master of ruse and insinuation, won the
Emperor, and, when a charge of treason was afterwards brought against
him, he easily cleared himself.
At last a message came to the mansion of the Comneni from Maria that
Barilas (one of the Slav ministers) intended to seize the throne and
put out the eyes of Alexis; and it was decided that the time had come
for action. Alexis hastily made a tour of the city, persuading some,
bribing others, until he had a large number of officers and Senators
bound by secret oath to support him. Anna meantime made preparations
for the flight of the family during the night. The chief weakness of
their position was that a young relative of the Emperor had recently
married a young girl of their family, and lived, with a tutor, in an
outlying part of their mansion. Anna, regarding the tutor as a spy,
locked them in their rooms when they were asleep, and before dawn
the whole Comneni family set out on foot to cross the city. At that
hour of the night there was little watch in Constantinople, and the
nervous band--the mother, the two brothers with their wives, children,
and sisters, and a few servants--passed safely and silently down the
colonnaded main street as far as the Forum of Constantine, where horses
awaited the men. They bade each other farewell in the darkness of
the early spring morning, and the brothers galloped to the Blachernæ
palace, where they broke into the stables, chose the swiftest horses,
hamstrung the rest of the horses, and fled to the army which awaited
them in Thrace.
The women and children made their way noiselessly back along the Mese
to the cathedral. As they went along the street, the glare of a torch
appeared in the distance and they found themselves inconveniently
accosted by the tutor spy. Anna kept her presence of mind, however.
They had heard, she said, that they were accused of some crime and they
were going at once to St Sophia, but as soon as the day broke they
would go to the palace to demand justice, and she begged the tutor to
go on to the palace to announce their intention. As soon as he had
gone, they made for the house of Bishop Nicholas, an annexe of the
cathedral into which fugitives were admitted during the night. Rousing
the doorkeeper, they announced themselves--they were all heavily
veiled--as a party of women who had just landed at the quays from the
east, and who would render thanks to the Almighty before repairing to
their homes. They were admitted to the church, and, when the officers
of the infuriated Emperor arrived, in the early morning, they found
that nothing less than a violation of the sanctuary would put the women
in the power of Nicephorus. Anna, in fact, clung to the gates of the
sanctuary, and exclaimed that the soldiers would have to cut off her
hands to remove her from the church, as the Slav ministers threatened.
Isaac’s wife Irene, an Iberian princess like her cousin Maria, followed
the example of her mother-in-law, and we must imagine the younger Irene
and the children standing by, with large and tearful blue eyes, taking
their first lesson in Byzantine politics. Nicephorus temporized, and
swore to spare their lives. Anna shrewdly stipulated that his oath
should be taken on the large cross which the Sybarite Emperor always
wore, and, when this had been brought and the oath guaranteed to them,
the women passed from the church to the palace-fortress-monastery at
Petrion, on the Golden Horn. There they were soon joined by the wife
and mother-in-law of George Paleologus, a dashing young commander who
had fled with the Comneni, and, by sharing their delicate meats and
wines liberally with their jailers, they secured a constant account of
the progress of the insurgent brothers.
They heard presently that Alexis and Isaac had safely reached the camp
in Thrace, and that it had needed only a little further intrigue on the
part of Alexis for the troops to proclaim him Emperor. The next news of
importance was that the brothers were encamped with their troops on the
higher ground without the city walls, and Nicephorus was distracted and
terrified. But we may tell in few words the success of the Comneni. The
formidable walls of Constantinople were held by the Varangian guards
and Immortals, on whose blind fidelity a ruling (and paying) Emperor
could always rely. But the extravagance of Nicephorus had in three
years exhausted the treasury--its doors stood open for any man to enter
the empty building--the troops were few, and uncertain mercenaries had
to be enlisted in the defence. Alexis bribed the German soldiers who
held the tower overlooking the Blachernæ gate, and at dawn of Maundy
Thursday (1081) his troops poured into the city.
It is one of the few points in favour of Alexis that he here made a
very human blunder which might have cost him his life and his ambition.
Instead of holding his troops to scatter the guards, who had retreated
upon the palace, he rode at once to Petrion to see that the women were
safe, and his soldiers--a motley and savage crowd of Thracian and
Macedonian mercenaries--spread with fiendish delight over the city,
violating nuns in the monasteries and burdening themselves with wine
and loot. Paleologus saved them by a bold and crafty seizure of the
fleet, cutting off the Emperor’s retreat to Asia. Nicephorus wavered
between the vigorous counsels of his ministers and the command of
the patriarch that he should abdicate and prevent civil war, but his
hesitation enabled the troops to rally, and, with a melancholy farewell
to his perfumed baths and opulent banquets, he suffered himself to be
shipped to the opposite shore and shaved into a monk.
The Empress Maria is described as trembling in her palace during these
critical days of the Holy Week, clinging to her boy Constantine, a
pretty seven-year-old lad with curly golden hair and pink and white
complexion. Alexis had apparently deceived her, and the Comnenian
women would have little consideration for her. For some days, however,
she remained in quiet possession of her apartments, and a very keen
discussion took place in Constantinople as to the intentions of Alexis.
He had put Irene, with her mother and sisters, in the lower and older
palace, while he, his mother, brother, and other relations had taken
residence in the more important Bucoleon palace, by the water. Did he
propose to put away his doll-wife and wed the riper beauty? Such things
had happened before, and the careful reader of Anna Comnena’s discreet
narrative will easily believe that that was the intention, or the
disposition, of Alexis. He had treated Irene with coldness and disdain
(other chroniclers tell us), and been unfaithful to her. But the little
Irene had her party, or Maria had her enemies, and the indecision of
Alexis was forced. Paleologus drew up the fleet before Bucoleon. When
Alexis sent orders to him that the sailors must not acclaim Irene,
he boldly replied that he had “not done all this for Alexis, but for
Irene,” and her name rolled from galley to galley. Next the Cæsar John
Ducas intervened, and urged Maria to retire; probably he sought favour
with Anna. Alexis still hesitated, and Irene was not crowned with him.
Speculation in the city was now seething, but a curious circumstance
soon ended the hesitation of Alexis. His mother was devoted to monks
generally, and one in particular she so esteemed that she insisted on
his being appointed at once patriarch of Constantinople. The actual
patriarch, Cosmas, swore that he would not resign in favour of the monk
until he had crowned Irene, and Anna had now an additional incentive
to press her son. Within a week of the coronation of Alexis the second
coronation took place, and Irene began to share the bed and the throne
of her husband. The last hope of Maria had gone down before her more
virile and older antagonist, and she prepared to retire. Her son
Constantine was clothed with the imperial dignity, and an imperial
rescript, written in the red or purple ink and signed with the golden
seal of the Emperor, guaranteed their safety. With this precious
document Maria retired, accompanied by her son, to a somewhat remote
palace in the imperial domain, and we may briefly dismiss her from the
story. Some years later a pretext was found to remove her from her
semi-imperial state and lodge her in a monastery. Her last recorded act
is that she bethought herself of her first and real husband, who still
lived in Constantinople as titular Bishop of Ephesus, and asked and
obtained forgiveness.
Alexis now hastened to form about his throne a bulwark of loyal, and
richly rewarded, friends, and the Court resounded with sonorous new
titles and glittered with new insignia. Another noble, Nicephorus
Melissenus, had sought the throne at the same time as Alexis; he
was disarmed with the dignity of Cæsar and the remote governorship
of Thessalonica. Isaac received the newly created dignity of
Sebastocrator; Michael Taroneita, who had married a sister of Alexis,
rejoiced in the opulent name of Panhypersebastos; and younger brothers
were created Protosebastos and Sebastos.[26] When we recollect that the
wife of each had a corresponding title and state, we appreciate the
splendour of the processions which now constantly fed the enthusiasm of
Constantinople.
For a time, however, life in the palace wore a humorously mournful
complexion. The appalling outrages of Alexis’s troops had sown
bitterness in the minds of the people, and the memory of them had
to be obliterated. Any other Emperor would have at once provided a
glorious series of chariot races and flung gold in showers from his
chariot. Alexis Comnenus found a less expensive device; unless we
care to attribute the scheme to his mother, whom he consulted. The
new patriarch was humbly begged to impose a penance on all the royal
inmates of the palace, and he decided that forty days of fasting and
prayer would efface the stain. Alexis himself generously went beyond
the letter of the penance; he slept nightly on the ground and wore a
hair shirt--and took care that all the citizens knew it. His brothers,
his mother and the other women of the family embraced their share of
the imposition, and for five or six weeks the Bucoleon palace resembled
a monastery.
When the period of mourning came to an end Alexis turned to face the
numerous and pressing enemies of his Empire, and his mother became the
active ruler. Her granddaughter would have us believe that the elder
Anna had no ambition to wield power; she was disposed to retire at once
into a monastery, and it was only in obedience to a solemn decree of
Alexis that she consented to remain in the palace and use the powers
of her absent son. But Anna Comnena, the royal historian, possessed
in a considerable degree the faculty for ruse and duplicity which
distinguished her family,[27] and we have little difficulty in seeing
that the older Anna claimed and clung to power. Irene was, of course,
still a negligible child. Anna at once set about the restoration of
discipline in the palace, which had been so grossly neglected under
Nicephorus and Maria. Hours were fixed for meals and prayers and the
chanting of hymns, and her table was rarely without the blessing of
some priest or monk who would discuss with her the sacred books and
theological issues in which she was interested. Sober in diet, liberal
to the poor and the Church, awake beyond the hours of most mortals
with her long prayers, yet up early in the morning for those imperial
duties which the golden bull of her son had laid on her, Anna was at
least not unworthy of the power she had intrigued to secure. We must,
however, not exaggerate her political influence. A few years later we
find Alexis, when he sets out for the field, entrusting the reins of
government to his brother, and no doubt Isaac generally controlled the
administration.
Of Irene we hear little until the latter part of her husband’s reign,
when her services as nurse make him appreciate her value. In spite of
the glowing assurances of their daughter, we perceive confidently
that Irene was slighted, both by the mother and the son, and we shall
ultimately find her dismissing him from the world with an assurance of
her profound disdain. For two years the chronicles are silent about
her, and the one reference to her in twenty years is that she bore
children to her spouse. As Christmas approached in 1083 she began
to feel the first pangs of travail. Alexis was expected home from
his campaign against Robert Guiscard in two days, and Anna Comnena,
who is not hypersensitive in her narrative, relates that the young
mother signed her body with a cross and said: “Stay where you are, my
boy, until your father arrives.” It was not a boy, but the historian
herself, who saw the light two days later, and Anna--a fierce and
murderous rebel against her brother--asks us to applaud her very early
practice of the virtue of obedience.
In view of this silence concerning the Empresses we will hold ourselves
dispensed from following Alexis through the campaigns, plots and
counter-plots of the next twenty years. Five years were spent in
struggle with Robert Guiscard of Italy: five in repelling the wild
Patzinaks of Scythia: five more in suppressing conspiracies, or alleged
conspiracies, against the throne. It may seem ungenerous to suspect
that the hard-working Alexis invented these conspiracies in order to
rid his camp and Court of suspected relatives or nobles, but Byzantine
historians not obscurely hint such a suspicion. One conspiracy only
need be related, since Irene appears on the stage at the time.
Some years after his accession to the throne--the date is
uncertain--Alexis consented to the retirement of his mother into the
monastery to which, her granddaughter says, her heart had always
turned. Very probably Irene, as she grew to womanhood, resented the
older woman’s restraint and piety, and insisted on her removal. She
died, a nun, a few years afterwards. From that time Alexis drew nearer
to Irene, and used to take her with him on his campaigns. In 1092 or
1093 there was trouble in Dalmatia, and Irene accompanied her husband
and shared his tent in the camp. It was noticed with some alarm by the
officers that Nicephorus Diogenes, son of Eudocia, who had received
imperial dignity in his infancy and might aspire to regain it, pitched
his tent nearer to that of the Emperor than courtesy permitted. Alexis
scouted their suspicions, and retired to rest with Irene; but in the
middle of the night the maid who was engaged in keeping the flies, or
other insects, off the royal sleepers, aroused them with the news that
Nicephorus had entered the tent with a drawn sword. One hesitates to
say which is the more remarkable: that there should be no guard to the
imperial tent, or that Alexis should take no notice of this attempt on
his life. A few days later, Anna assures us, Nicephorus renewed the
attempt, and was detected with drawn sword near the Emperor’s bath.
He was now put to the torture and provided a list of nobles who were
obnoxious to the Emperor and were duly punished. It is interesting to
find that the ex-Empress Maria was included among the conspirators, and
it was possibly on this occasion that she was sent to a nunnery. But
the narrated details of the conspiracy are so clumsy, and the issue
proved so profitable to Alexis, that historians regard it with grave
suspicion.
We come next to the page of Byzantine history which is least unfamiliar
to English readers, the page restored to life by Sir Walter Scott in
his “Count Robert of Paris.”[28] But, profoundly important as the
passage of the first Crusaders is in Byzantine history and in the
biography of Alexis, we have no decent pretext to enlarge on that
fascinating episode in a biography of the Empresses. We need say only
that Irene trembled with her husband, or more than her husband, at the
formidable tide of the invasion. Thinking to secure a few thousand
spears to assist him in his warfare with the Turks, Alexis had added
a pathetic, if not hypocritical, plea to the eloquence of Peter the
Hermit. The response was, in 1096, a devouring and destructive army of
locusts: a flood of 300,000 men, women and children, who, before they
could be persuaded to cross the straits and leave their bones on the
plains of Asia Minor, gravely embarrassed the Byzantine Court. In their
train came a more formidable menace: Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of
Flanders, the princes of Western chivalry, with their hawks and hounds
and ladies, and their vast hordes of hungry and blustering men-at-arms.
Their suspicions, ferocious outbursts, disdain, and greed of wealth,
called out every diplomatic resource at the command of Alexis, and few
will do more than smile at his duplicity in such circumstances. At
one moment, when it was rumoured in their camp without the walls that
Alexis had imprisoned some of their leaders, they flung themselves
against the city, and a howl of terror was heard from Blachernæ to the
Sea of Marmora. How Alexis astutely drew them from the fascinations
of his capital, and hovered in their rear, jackal-like, to recover
the towns from which they expelled the Turk, and at last brought on a
conflict of Latin and Greek, must be read in history. Seven further
years of the reign of Alexis and Irene passed in these adventures.
The next decade was full of war against Bohemund, son of his former
antagonist Robert Guiscard, and other Crusaders. In the course of the
war, in 1105, we again catch a glimpse of Irene, who accompanied Alexis
to the camp of Thessalonica. Apropos of the journey her daughter, who
was now a mature eyewitness of events, depicts Irene’s character in
phrases which we read with some discretion. She was, it seems, so
devoted to the reading of sacred books, the conversation of holy men
and the discharge of her domestic duties, that she was reluctant to
make these journeys; indeed, she could never appear in public without
a nervous blush. It is not like the Irene whom we shall know more
fully anon. But her husband needed her, and she obeyed. Plotters and
conspirators surrounded him, and he suffered acutely from gout in the
feet. Of the constant plots Anna offers no explanation; it is not from
her that we learn how Alexis so far debased the coinage that his “gold”
pieces (almost entirely bronze) were a thing of contempt throughout
Europe, how he further oppressed his subjects with monopolies, and how
savagely he could at times treat malcontents and heretics. His gout,
however, she is eager to explain. It was due, not to any generosity of
diet, but to an injury to his knee in early years, aggravated by the
stupid “barbarians of the West” (the Crusaders), who kept the sacred
Emperor _standing_ for hours to listen to their unceasing torrents of
talk. So Irene had to accompany her husband, to chafe his poignant
limbs when the gout racked him and to scare away conspirators. She
travelled with great modesty, in a litter borne by two mules and so
enwrapped with purple that “her divine body was not visible.”
In the following year a conspiracy was “detected” at Constantinople.
A wealthy Senator named Solomon and four brothers of Saracenic origin
were the chief plotters, and the treasury was enriched by their
fortunes. Solomon’s mansion was given to Irene, who is said to have
restored it to the wife of the Senator. For once Anna admits that
her father could be truculent. Anna was at a window of the palace
overlooking the Forum, or the streets near it, when the soldiers and
mob passed with the four brother conspirators. They were mounted on
oxen, and were derisively adorned with the horns and entrails of oxen
by the theatrical folk to whom they had been entrusted before their
eyes were put out; from another historian we learn that the hair had
already been torn, by means of pitch, from their heads and chins. Anna
called her mother, and the two women forced Alexis to put an end to the
horrible display and spare the prisoners’ eyes.
A year or two later Irene is said to have saved her husband’s life from
fresh conspirators. She had again set out with him for Thessalonica,
and, as they camped at Psyllus on the way, a plot was formed to murder
Alexis as soon as Irene should return to the city. Alexis would not
part with her, and the impatient conspirators threw a parchment in his
tent, deriding him for his reluctance to take the field and urging
the dismissal of Irene. Shortly afterwards a more violent diatribe
was placed under their bed while they slept, but one of Irene’s
eunuchs was on guard and arrested the man, who betrayed the plotters.
Then the death of Bohemund put an end to the war in the West, and
the indefatigable Emperor turned to face the Turks and the Crusaders
who had settled in the East. Irene became seriously ill when she
accompanied Alexis to the Chersonesus in 1112, yet we find her with him
at Philippopolis in the following year.
Irene was little more than nurse to the gouty monarch during these
campaigns, yet we must, in order to understand her last fierce word to
him, glance for a moment at the conduct she observed in him. She had
for years seen how he conducted wars and diplomacy chiefly by guile and
deceit, and she now saw how he converted heretics. A few years before
he had set out to refute the tenets of the “Bogomilians,” one of the
many sects, mingling Eastern and Western ideas, in which age after age
the protestant feeling against the superstitions and corruption of the
Greek Church found expression. By the use of torture Alexis discovered
that the leader of the sect was a staid and venerable monk named
Basil, invited the monk to visit him in the palace, and, by a grossly
hypocritical pretence that he himself leaned to the sect, induced him
to talk freely of their doctrines. When he had “vomited his heresy,”
Alexis drew aside a curtain, and showed the man that a shorthand-writer
had secretly taken down his words. Basil was imprisoned, and Alexis
spent hours in argumentation with him; and a few years later the
“archsatrap of Satan” and large numbers of his followers were burned
alive for refusing to see the force of the imperial logic. Similar
tactics were now adopted at Philippopolis, where Alexis and Irene spent
the greater part of 1113. It was an important seat of the Paulicians
(a modified Manichæan sect), and Alexis spent days in disputation with
their leaders; when persuasion failed, he resorted to bribery and
coercion.
These few instances will suffice to illustrate the relations of Irene
and Alexis, and we may hasten to the final scene. The last years
were occupied with a campaign against the Turks, but Alexis was now
seriously ill and the enemy advanced and reviled him for his cowardice.
In their camp they bore about a bed with an effigy of Alexis pretending
that gouty feet prevented him from taking the field. Irene was awakened
one night with the news that the Turks were upon them, and Alexis was
forced to let her return to the capital. There is no doubt that she
accompanied Alexis on these later campaigns only because he compelled
her, and one wonders whether he was not afraid to leave her in the
palace. He retreated, and recalled her at once to Nicomedia. Here she
found that his own subjects were singing, on the streets, comic songs
about the gout of the great Emperor and his flight before the Turks. He
was undoubtedly very ill, and in the spring of 1118 he was brought back
to the palace to die. Then arose a fierce struggle for the throne.
Anna Comnena, the princess born in 1083, had been betrothed, in her
tender years, to the Empress Maria’s pretty boy Constantine. The
boy died, however, and in time she was married to the distinguished
and ambitious noble, Nicephorus Bryennius, who received the title
of Cæsar and then that of Panhypersebastos (“the august above all
others”). Bryennius was a scholar: Anna a prodigy of female learning, a
cyclopædia of arts and philosophy, a most imposing writer, and--strange
to say--a spirited and ambitious princess. The brilliance of this
imperial pair dazzled the Court and the capital, and it was very
naturally suggested that the crowns could not be placed on wiser and
more fitting heads than theirs. Such was the opinion of Irene. But
Alexis and Irene had three sons (John, Andronicus and Isaac) and three
daughters (Maria, Eudocia and Theodora) besides the gifted Anna, and
the crown belonged, by such right as was recognized in Byzantium,
to the eldest son. John was a plain, quiet youth of--as events
proved--sterling character and no ostentation. His father appreciated
him, though few others knew him. He observed with sullen eyes the
efforts of his mother to displace him, and secretly engaged officers
and nobles to support him against her; and Irene retorted by forbidding
them to have any intercourse with John. This struggle was now to reach
the height of passion round the deathbed of the Emperor.
The last ten pages of Anna’s narrative give a vivid account of the
progress of her father’s illness. She was appointed to a kind of
presidency over the skilled medical men who were summoned from all
parts of the Empire to check the “mysterious” illness--of a gouty
old man of seventy. I will quote only that, when relics failed to
improve his condition, they applied a red-hot iron to his stomach--to
counterpoise the pain at the extremities, perhaps--and, when this
brought about no relief, removed him to the Mangana palace, near what
is now known as the Seraglio Point. Irene watched her husband night and
day (carefully excluding John), and, although the monks assured her
that he would live to visit the Holy Sepulchre, she shed “more tears
than the waters of the Nile,” Anna says.
In the afternoon of 15th August 1118, Alexis lay dying on his purple
couch. The description of the scene, which closes Anna’s narrative,
has reached us only in a torn and fragmentary condition, but the
chronicle of the monk Zonaras, who lived about this date, is full
and authoritative, and it is supported by the chronicle of Nicetas.
Their account of that last scene in the life of Alexis shows that Anna
Comnena crowns her work with a masterpiece of deliberate lying. She
depicts her mother overwhelmed with sorrow at the impending loss of
her husband, crying that thrones and crowns are vanity, and calling
for the black robe of a nun, if not actually shearing her golden
tresses, before the last breath has left her husband’s body. Of the
real features of the scene there is merely a faint and vague report
that John is hurrying to the main palace and the city is disturbed. The
truth is less touching, more dramatic.
Availing himself of a temporary absence of his mother--probably bribing
the guards--John entered the room and approached the bed of the dying
and speechless monarch. Alexis was still conscious; but whether he
gave his ring to John, or the son detached it from his finger, the
chroniclers are not agreed. No doubt Alexis was too feeble to detach
and give it, and merely looked assent when John detached it; Alexis had
always favoured John. By the time Irene returned John was galloping
across the imperial domain to the chief palace (either Daphne or,
more probably, Bucoleon), and the Empress was furious. She angrily
observed to Alexis that his son was seizing the throne while he yet
lived. Alexis feebly, and equivocally--though some writers say that
he smiled--lifted his hands and eyes toward heaven, as if to intimate
that there was the only throne about which he was now concerned.
Nicephorus Bryennius was summoned, and Irene urged him to unite with
her in claiming the throne. He refused, and she returned to her
husband. The last words, loudly and harshly spoken, which she gave the
dying man were: “Husband, while you lived, you were full of guile,
saying one thing and thinking another; you are no better now that you
are dying.”[29] We may assume that Alexis had deceived her about the
succession. He died that evening, so completely deserted that there
were no ministers to perform the ceremonial services over his remains.
The interest had passed to the main palace.
John had found before the door a regiment of the Varangians, who, even
when he showed his father’s ring, refused to allow him to enter. But
they grounded their formidable two-edged axes, and stood aside, when
he swore (a false oath) that his father was already dead, and had
appointed him successor. He at once secured the palace and the crown,
and the reign of Irene Comnena was over, the hope of Anna Comnena
shattered. John would not even issue to attend the funeral of Alexis,
so determined he was to hold the palace. The women were beaten by the
quiet, ugly little youth they had despised, and a few words of the
chroniclers dismiss them from the stage of history.
Irene, changing her name to that of Xene, retired to a monastery which
she had built in the city. Curiously enough, a manuscript copy of
the rules of this monastery has survived, and been published,[30] so
that we have an interesting glimpse of Irene’s later years and of the
monastic life of the time. The inmates were to number between thirty
and forty, were to sleep in a common dormitory, and were to elect a
prefect. Besides the steward, who was to be a eunuch, and the two
chaplains, who must be monks and eunuchs, no man was ever to enter the
monastery, and the reception of visitors was strictly controlled. There
was midnight office to be chanted, and the remaining offices and meals
and other details were planned much as in a modern “convent” (a Latin
word unknown in the East). Each nun was permitted to have a bath once a
month. Irene little dreamed, when she sanctioned this ascetic scheme,
that she would one day be forced to adopt it. But the last glimpse we
catch of her in the chronicles suggests that she did not embrace it
in all its rigour. Fifteen years later, when another Irene came from
the West to wed the Emperor Manuel, she noticed, among the crowd of
notabilities who welcomed her to the city, an aged lady whose dark
monastic robe was relieved by strips of purple and edges of gold. When
she asked the name of this royal nun, she learned that it was the widow
of the great Alexis. Probably Irene tempered the diet and prayers, as
well as the robe, of the monastery. She was then seventy-seven years
old, and cannot have lived much longer.
Anna Comnena seems to have retained her liberty and rank at the
accession of her brother. He soon proved his worthiness of the crown,
and the corrupt nobles and ministers, shrinking from his inflexible
justice, gathered darkly about Anna and Bryennius. Anna was the
most active spirit in the plot, and it would have succeeded but for
the irresolution, or humanity, of Bryennius. The doorkeeper of the
palace was bribed, and John might have been murdered in his bed. When
Bryennius failed to use the advantage, Anna turned upon him with fury.
Nicetas tells us that she complained, “in somewhat obscene language,”
that Nature had made her a woman and him a man. John was content to
confiscate their property; though, when he gave Anna’s luxurious palace
and all it contained to his Turkish minister, that strange type of
Byzantine official begged his master to lay aside his anger and permit
him to restore the palace to Anna. Some years later she entered her
mother’s monastery--probably when her husband died in 1128--and lived
there at least twenty years, writing her famous work, the “Alexiad,” a
chronicle of her father’s deeds. That work--affected, insincere and
ambitious--reflects the character of its author, nor can its lavish use
of the art of suppressing some facts and enlarging others efface from
our memory the ignoble attitude of Irene and Anna by the bedside of the
dying Alexis and toward his legitimate heir.
CHAPTER XIII
A BREATH OF CHIVALRY
Our last chapter introduced the chivalry of the West into the
East, and, as numbers of the princes of the West remained and set
up principalities in the East, and mingled with it in matrimonial
alliance, the hope may be entertained that at last we shall witness
some signal alteration of the Greek character. The more informed
reader, who knows how the severe historians of recent times have washed
much of the colour from “the days of chivalry,” whose acquaintance with
that epoch extends beyond the “Idylls of the King,” will, perhaps,
not expect any transformation of the character of the East. I will
not anticipate the verdict. We have reached a time when the ideas and
sentiments of the Western knights make a marked impression on the minds
and ways of the East, and it will be interesting to see what types of
women now arise. I shall therefore not confine myself rigidly, in this
chapter, to those women who are fortunate enough to attain the supreme
title, but include in the survey a number of princesses who, in various
ways, approach the throne.
John the Handsome, as the citizens of Constantinople came to call the
dark and by no means handsome young Emperor they had now obtained, does
not provide us with an Empress of distinct or interesting character.
His wife Irene, a daughter of Wratislav, King of Hungary, was too
virtuous to leave a mark in the Byzantine chronicles. While her able
and upright husband flung back the invaders from his territory, and
essayed such improvement in its condition as his poor political faculty
enabled him to achieve, she spent her days in prayer and the rearing
of her family. Pearls and diamonds had no dangerous fascination for
her; she maintained a modest demeanour in the pomp of the palace and
gave the superfluous wealth to the poor and the monks. After bringing
five children into the world, she died about six years after her
coronation, and John remained a widower for the twenty further years
of his arduous and exemplary reign. In the winter of 1142–1143, as
he spent the truce from campaigning in hunting in Asia Minor, he
accidentally poisoned himself with an arrow, nominated his youngest son
Manuel for the succession, and died a few days afterwards.
Of his four sons: two--Alexis and Andronicus--had died before their
father: two--Isaac and Manuel--survived. Manuel was in the field with
his father, and he at once sent to Constantinople his father’s able
Turkish minister to secure the throne for him, while he remained to
care for and convey the royal remains. The Turk was vigorous, and not
unfamiliar with Byzantine history. Before a soul in Constantinople had
heard of the Emperor’s death he lodged the elder son, Isaac, in a safe
monastery, promised an enormous sum of money to the clergy, and had
the path to the throne lined with subservient courtiers when Manuel
arrived. A shower of gold upon the city completed the preparation, and
Manuel I., a tall, handsome, vigorous and fairly cultivated youth, took
in hand the reins of the Empire. The spirit of Western chivalry had
found an apt pupil in Manuel, and his robust frame, reckless daring,
and fiery passions made him at once a brother of the Crusaders and
their Eastern descendants. For generations men told of his feats of
strength and boldness.
His first Empress was the daughter of the Count of Sulzbach, an
important Bavarian noble, and sister to the wife of Conrad, the
ruling Emperor of Germany. Bertha had been betrothed to Manuel before
the death of his father, and some time after his coronation she was
conducted from the humble castle of her father to the world-famed
splendour of Constantinople. Her name was to be changed to Irene, and
she must have had a momentary shudder when an aged lady, whose dark
nun’s robe was faintly edged with royal purple and gold, was introduced
to her, among the welcoming crowd, as the great Irene who had once
occupied the throne. But the impression was effaced by the brilliance
of the marriage ceremonies and the manly beauty of her imperial
husband. He returned at once to the field and spent a considerable time
in expelling the Persian invaders. After that he remained a few years
in his capital, attempting to reform the Court and the administration,
and the royal spouses came to know, and probably dislike, each other.
Manuel had the vices, as well as the virtues, of a Western knight;
Irene had no vices, and her virtues were old-fashioned. The emergence
of these modest and tender young women, such as the last two Irenes,
from the Courts of central Europe warns us to refrain from thinking
that chivalry everywhere meant gaiety and licence of conduct. Irene had
no love of luxury or of the breaking of lances. Such comeliness as she
had she declined to adorn with perfumes and fine silks, placing her
ideal in the practice of Church virtues and the quiet performance of a
mother’s duties. But Manuel had the eye and the blood of unrestrained
youth, and he soon wandered from his cold and passive spouse to other
women of the Court. His elder brother, Andronicus, had left three
fascinating daughters, and two of these were of a temper to welcome the
freer and livelier spirit which Manuel encouraged. The eldest of the
three, Maria, confined herself to a sober marriage, but Theodora became
the acknowledged lover of the Emperor (her uncle), and the youngest,
Eudocia, was even more flagrantly connected with the Emperor’s cousin,
Andronicus, one of the most handsome, most daring and most unscrupulous
nobles of the time. Andronicus, who in time ascended the throne, will
engage us, with his lady-loves, presently. For the moment we have only
to note that the Comneni princesses lived at Court without a pretence
of restraint. Manuel frowned when he heard that his cousin met what
little expostulation was made with the cheerful assurance that he felt
it his duty to imitate the example and copy the taste of his sovereign;
but Manuel had himself too little self-control to dismiss Theodora.
The clergy were at the time too corrupt and subservient to interfere,
and the courtiers are contemptuously dismissed by the historian Finlay
as “a herd of knaves.” The chief minister, a keen financier and most
successful extortioner, was known to sell in the market, even two or
three times over, the choice fish or game which suitors presented to
him. The favourite minister, John Camateros, was a handsome man of
gigantic stature, who enjoyed the repute of drinking more wine, and
retaining a clearer head, than any man of his time. He won a bet off
the Emperor by emptying at two draughts an immense porphyry vase full
of water.
Such were the character and pursuits of the Court into which the
virtuous Irene had entered, and in which she remained a silent and
despised figure for fourteen years. The second Crusade, led by her
brother-in-law, Conrad, passed through Constantinople, on its way
to destruction, without altering her condition. Manuel was not less
unwilling than his people to cheat the despised Westerners, and further
seeds of bitterness were sown in the soil of the time. Irene lingered
on for some years, while Manuel waged his endless campaigns against
Sicilians, Servians, Scythians and Turks, or flung himself into hunts
and tournaments for the entertainment of his mistress and her friends.
Then, about the year 1158, Irene died, leaving a young daughter (a
second daughter having died in infancy) to the care of her boisterous
spouse.
For his second wife Manuel turned to the Latin nobility who had settled
in Syria. During a recent campaign in the east he had joined with
the Latins in a tournament at Antioch, and made a deep impression on
them by his personal bravery, the golden trappings of his charger,
and the embroidered silk tunics and mantles of his suite. He begged
Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem, to choose for him a bride among
the Latin nobility, and professed that he would abide by Baldwin’s
choice. Baldwin selected Melisend, sister of Raymond, Count of Tripoli
(on the Phœnician coast), and legates were sent to obtain the ready
consent of her father and inquire carefully into the lady’s morals and
physical condition. The sad story of Melisend’s disappointment is very
differently told by the Greek and the Latin historians. According to
the Eastern writers Melisend passed the tests of Manuel’s legates, and
for some months the city of Tripoli was enlivened by the preparations
for her exalted marriage. The most splendid clothing, plate and
jewels that the family and principality of Raymond could provide were
contributed to her trousseau, and no less than twelve large galleys,
laden with her treasures, lay beside the imperial trireme at the
quays. The day of departure came, and the princess bade farewell to
her proud relatives; but the ships had not advanced far from port when
Melisend became so ill that they were forced to return. She recovered,
and they set sail again, but the mysterious illness returned, and as
often as they attempted to convey her across the seas she became livid
with sickness or burning with fever. The legates then made a closer
inquiry--of a local soothsayer--found that there was a grave flaw in
the genealogical tree of the princess, and departed without her.
There is no doubt that this story is a malignant untruth published
by the Greeks in order to cover the heartless vacillation of their
Emperor. The Latin historian of the time in the East, William of
Tyre, tells a simpler story. Manuel’s legates lingered at Tripoli,
month after month, until Raymond angrily asked them either to convey
his daughter or refund the cost of the preparations. They then fled
secretly, offering no reason whatever for the desertion, and the only
consolation afforded to the wounded Melisend was that her father handed
over her twelve bridal galleys to a band of pirates, and sent them to
spread their terrible ravages along the Greek coasts and islands. We
know little of Melisend; she may have been a woman of mature years,
and one of the most lamentable signs of the abandonment of the times
was the eagerness of monarchs and nobles for child brides. Manuel had
discovered a child of ravishing beauty in the Court of Antioch.
Maria, daughter of Raymond of Poitou, the prince of Antioch, must
have been in her early teens when Manuel’s legates reported her
beauty to him. Her mother, Constance, and stepfather, Reginald of
Chatillon, a French adventurer, eagerly welcomed the alliance with the
powerful Manuel, and the young girl was conveyed on a gilded galley to
Constantinople and married to Manuel, in or about 1161, with the utmost
splendour. She received the imperial title, but she naturally escapes
the notice of chroniclers during the next ten years, and we may assume
that Manuel continued to entertain his more mature niece, who bore him
a son and was rewarded with one of the most luxurious palaces in the
city. Corrupt as Constantinople was, an illegitimate son could not hope
to wear the purple, and Manuel was concerned about the succession.
He betrothed his daughter Maria (daughter of Irene) to the younger
brother of the King of Hungary, but six years later Maria retired to
the Porphyra palace, and Manuel, a keen student of astrology, consulted
the heavens with feverish anxiety. The conjunction of the planets was
auspicious at the hour of delivery, the child proved to be a son and
heir, and the wildest rejoicing filled the Court and city. From that
time Maria became “mistress” in reality as well as name, and Theodora
passes from the chronicles. The Hungarian prince, who awaited his
marriage and elevation at the Court, was wedded to Philippa of Antioch,
and the nobles were summoned to swear allegiance to Maria and the
infant Alexis. The princess Maria, Manuel’s daughter, was now thrust
aside as of no political importance, and was suffered to continue,
“celibate and sad,” at the Court until the leisure of old age permitted
her father to reflect on his neglect of her.
Ten further years of warfare occupy the chronicles, and leave no room
for the mention of princesses and Empresses. Then the tireless and
restless monarch begins to show signs of age, and we prepare for the
crisis which so frequently brings the imperial women more prominently
before us. Manuel’s last campaign had been overcast by grave disasters;
he had lost the vigour of youth and had never possessed any large
and orderly power of controlling events. Weary and saddened, he
concluded an indecisive peace with the Turk, and returned to ensure
the succession to the throne. His legitimate son Alexis was now, in
the year 1180,[31] turned twelve years old, and therefore, in view
of the political circumstances and the lax feeling of the time, fit
for marriage. Some years before Manuel had learned from one of the
Crusaders that Louis of France had a beautiful young daughter, and
legates were sent to ask her hand for Alexis. One reads with strange
feelings that the child was only seven years old when, in the spring
of 1180, she was wedded to Alexis in the ancient palace of Daphne. We
shall see to what a sordid fate this premature marriage to a helpless
boy exposed her. From the Latin writers we learn that her name was
Agnes, but it seems to have been changed to Anna (as the Greeks always
call her) at her marriage. She at once received the imperial title,
and must have seemed a strange young figure in the stiff gold-cloth
garments and rich jewels of a Byzantine Empress.
It is interesting to notice that the thought of matrimony reminded
Manuel of his “celibate and sad” daughter Maria. She was now in
her thirty-first year. A spouse was found for her in a handsome
seventeen-year-old Western youth, Reyner, son of the Marquis of
Montferrat, and they were married with pomp at the Blachernæ palace.
But the character of Maria will presently become clearer to us, and we
shall see that it does not call for sympathy.
Weary and ill as Manuel was, he had by no means the idea that he was
preparing for death in making these arrangements. The astrologers, in
whom he put supreme confidence, assured him that he would yet live
fourteen years, and he looked forward to rising from his bed and once
more dashing with lance and sword against the Turks or Persians. A
few months spent in his capital must have shaken his confidence.
Thirty-five years of strenuous war had added no material security to
his Empire and had alienated his subjects. Vast sums had been wrung
from them, but they had passed into the purses of soldiers, foreigners,
monks and astrologers, and the civil framework of the vast Empire
was in a state of decay. Men spoke with bitterness of the superb
palaces, their ceilings plated with gold, their walls lined with mosaic
representations of the Emperor’s victories, which Manuel had added to
the imperial town. He grew sombre, his illness increased, and, one day
in September, he felt his own pulse and concluded that he was sinking.
Impetuous to the last, he slapped his thigh and called for the robe
of a monk. He at once exchanged his purple for the rough cloth, gave
his signature to a condemnation of astrology, and bade farewell to
the world. He died a few days later; and the shadow of tragedy began
to creep over the gold-roofed halls in which his young widow, and the
child-bride of his son, played with the imperial toys while men looked
on with dark and selfish designs.
The character of the Empress Maria is obscured for us by the somewhat
conflicting reports or suggestions of the authorities. Finlay says
that she at once retired to a monastery, and, although I can find no
direct authority for this, she is so frequently named “Xene” in later
passages that one may conclude that she took the veil and changed her
name. The next statement about her, however, is little in accord with
this. The central and most powerful person at the Court after the death
of Manuel was Alexis, brother of the sisters Theodora and Eudocia whose
amours had enlivened the Court. Now advanced in years, but ambitious,
covetous and luxurious, he became the virtual ruler of the Empire. A
somewhat repulsive picture is drawn of his efforts to maintain himself
in sufficient health to enjoy the sensual rewards of his position, and
it is added that he contracted a liaison with Manuel’s young widow.
We are quite free to reject this sordid suggestion, as a calumny of
those who sought to displace her or of those who afterwards murdered
her, but it must be recollected that we have arrived at a period of
grosser immorality than ever. It is essential only to observe that she
was closely allied to Alexis (the minister) and was accused of intimacy
with him.
The Emperor Alexis, who was only thirteen years old at his coronation,
was a flippant and heedless boy. The base and astute intriguers
about him encouraged him to spend his time in hunting or drinking or
dressing in imperial finery. On the other hand, his sister Maria (the
daughter of Manuel) now began to display a dangerous ambition and
an unscrupulous character. The supposed intimacy of the Empress and
Alexis alarmed her; she feared, or affected to fear, that Alexis would
marry Maria and seize the throne. She therefore conspired with her
relatives, and sent assassins to make an end of Alexis, as he hunted
in the country. Presently, however, a messenger returned, not with the
head of the minister, but with the news that he had discovered the plot
and was returning to wreak his vengeance. Maria and her young husband
fled to St Sophia, and, as the crowd gathered in the church at the
news, she loudly and bitterly harangued them on the scandalous vices
of the Empress and the licentious dotage of her uncle. A judicious
distribution of money opened the ears of the clergy and the mob to
her charges, and she grew bolder. When the Emperor, or his minister,
threatened to drag her from the church, she enlisted a troop of Italian
gladiators and Iberian soldiers, and, before the clergy could follow
her furious proceedings, turned the cathedral into a fortified citadel,
and egged on the mob to loot the mansions of Alexis and his friends.
On 7th May the troops issued from the palace, and a bloody battle was
fought at the entrance to St Sophia, but the horrified clergy now
intervened, and Maria and her husband were allowed to return in safety
to the palace.
On this squabble of hawks there now descended a veritable eagle of
intrigue, and a brief account of his story will greatly add to our
knowledge of the noble women of the time. I have previously mentioned
that, while Manuel made love to his niece Theodora, her sister Eudocia
was the mistress of Manuel’s cousin Andronicus, one of the most
romantic figures in history. Andronicus Comnenus, in whom the great
line of the Comneni comes to an appalling end, was one of the most
handsome, most robust, most fascinating and most unscrupulous men of
his age. Tall and massive of build, tender and engaging in countenance,
endowed with a voice of singular strength and sweetness and an easy
flow of language, he could enslave any woman on whom his heart was set;
and it was set on many. Sober in diet and drink, he would avoid the
revels and carouses of his brother officers, and spend hours of delight
in reading the rugged epistles of St Paul. But in the enjoyment of love
or the pursuit of ambition he recognized no moral principle whatever,
and few men ever crowded more adventure into a single career.
His father was the elder brother of the Emperor John, Manuel’s
father, and, on the accession of Manuel, he was called to Court. He
was married, but he admitted with equal freedom the devotion of his
pretty cousin Eudocia and that of other ladies of less distinction.
His wife seems to have cheerfully recognized that large need of his
nature, and the lips of Manuel were sealed by his own love affair; but
there were men and women of the family who cherished the older ideas,
and Andronicus nearly lost his life at an early date. After failing
in Armenia--for he was a lax and unskilful general--he was appointed
governor of some of the chief towns on the Hungarian frontier.
Hither the devoted Eudocia accompanied him, and she lay in his arms,
one night, in the tent when it was announced that her brother and
brother-in-law were approaching with drawn swords. She pressed him to
disguise himself in some of her garments, but he buckled on his immense
sword, slit the canvas of the tent, and was deep in the neighbouring
forest when the young men arrived.
He was next detected in treasonable correspondence with the Hungarians.
Manuel overlooked his crime, but Andronicus went on to make two
attempts on the life of his cousin, and wore so brazen a face when he
was charged, that he was sent in chains to Constantinople and lodged in
a strong tower connected with the palace. Here he one day discovered an
old and forgotten passage, almost filled with rubbish, which branched
from his prison. He scooped out a hiding-place in it with his hands,
entered it, and concealed the entrance. When the furious search of the
guards had ended, and messengers had been despatched over the Empire
with orders to arrest the fugitive, the Emperor, suspecting that his
cousin’s wife had aided him to escape, ordered her to be lodged in
the tower. No sooner had the jailers left her than the poor woman was
terrified, and then delighted, to see the burly form of her missing
husband emerge from a heap of rubbish, and they fell into each other’s
arms. For a long time husband and wife lived together in the prison,
but at length Andronicus escaped. His splendid frame betrayed him, and
he was recaptured and enclosed in a more formidable prison. Once more
he escaped and was caught, and for nine years he remained in prison.
At length he induced the boy who brought his meals to take an
impression in wax of the key of his prison while the jailers enjoyed
their midday siesta, the impression was sent to his faithful wife and
son (the fruit of his earlier confinement in the tower), and a key and
a rope were stealthily conveyed to him. He escaped at sundown, lay
in the long grass in the garden for two days, until the search was
abandoned, and then took a boat at the quay by night and reached his
wife’s house, where his fetters were struck off. He returned to his
boat, rowed to a district beyond the walls where a horse awaited him,
and set out in the direction of Russia. Once again he was captured,
but, as the soldiers conducted him through a forest during the night,
he feigned illness and retired a few yards. After repeating the trick
a few times, so that they watched him less closely, he put his mantle
and hat on his stick, so that the soldiers seemed to perceive his
figure crouching in the dark, and plunged into the forest. He reached
Scythia in safety, and was after a time recalled by Manuel, pardoned,
and, after striking a few heavy blows in the wars, was made Governor of
Cilicia. Here a fresh chapter of his love stories opened. Eudocia had
married after the vigorous intervention of her brother, and his wife
seems to have entered a monastery.
Endowed by Manuel with the rich revenues of the island of Cyprus, as
well as the poorer proceeds of his province, he entered with alacrity
the gay circle of the Latin nobles at Antioch, clothed himself in the
finest embroidered silks, and kept about him a handsome suite of young
courtiers. It was not long before his fascinating manner and brilliant
appearance won the heart of the Princess Philippa of Antioch, a sister
of the Empress Maria, and she proved to be no more scrupulous than the
Greek ladies had been. William of Tyre says that he married her, but
the Greek writers speak of the relation as a scandal, and the sequel
favours their view. Manuel was enraged at this outrage, and because
Andronicus dallied in Antioch instead of taking the field against the
Armenians, and he sent a noble to replace Andronicus in his office and
in the affections of Philippa. The young princess scorned the meaner
figure of the new governor, but Andronicus was alarmed and, quitting
his new love with a light heart and taking with him all the imperial
funds he could secure, he fled to Palestine.
In the town of Acre, to which he soon repaired, he found a pretty
and wealthy widow with whom he could claim a cousinship, and we are
introduced to another branch of the Comneni family. Eudocia and
Theodora, the frail ladies who have previously engaged our attention,
were the daughters of Manuel’s brother Andronicus. A third brother,
Isaac, had left six daughters, of whom the eldest, Theodora, had been
married in her fourteenth year to Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem.
Baldwin had died four years afterwards, and the young widow had
received the town of Acre as her estate. She was still in her early
twenties, in the ripest development of her charms and her passions,
when the handsome Andronicus came to tell the story of his misfortunes.
From mutual consolation they quickly passed to love, and Manuel was
once more infuriated to hear that his scapegrace cousin was openly
fouling the honour of the family in the friendly kingdom of the Latins.
He sent to Acre a secret and pressing request that the _beaux yeux_ of
his cousin should be cut out, and his dangerous person forwarded to
Constantinople. But the letter fell into the hands of Theodora, she
showed it to her lover, and the devoted pair packed their treasures and
fled to Damascus and on to Mesopotamia.
A few years, in which several children were born, were spent in this
extraordinary exile by the rivers of Babylon, where the passionate love
of the young ex-queen endured without regret the rude accommodation
of a camp in what was almost a desert. Andronicus turned brigand when
their money and jewels failed, and, at the head of his little band of
Arabs, raided the territory of his imperial cousin and even carried
off the Christian inhabitants to be sold as slaves. His queen and he
laughed at the anathema which the Greek Church laid on them. At last
the Governor of Trebizond, at the request of Manuel, enticed Theodora
from the camp and captured her, and Andronicus sought pardon once
more. We may honour the reluctance of Manuel to shed the blood of his
subjects, but in the case of Andronicus it was an almost criminal
weakness. That astute adventurer put a heavy iron chain round his neck,
covered it with his mantle, and sank on his knees at a respectful
distance from his cousin’s throne. When he was pressed to come forward
to receive a cousinly embrace, he opened his cloak and protested that
he must be dragged by the chain to the feet of the Emperor. The comedy
ended in his receiving a wealthy appointment, but he was separated from
Theodora and sent into a comfortable exile on the southern shores of
the Black Sea.
Such was the man who, after the death of Manuel, came forward as the
champion of the moral principle and Byzantine honour. Manuel’s daughter
Maria, “the virago,” as Nicetas calls her, appealed to him to end the
scandalous rule of the Empress Maria and her reputed lover. Age had
made him cautious, however, and he allowed the conflicting parties
to exhaust themselves, and the young Emperor fully to reveal his
incapacity and unworthiness. Then he began to write indignant letters
on the state of the Court to the patriarch and to the provincial
authorities. In his great anxiety for the welfare of the Empire he
left his exile and moved nearer to Constantinople, winning many to
his side by his tears and his venerable appearance. He was now a
white-haired old man, approaching his seventieth year, his still robust
and magnificent frame made more attractive by the apparent sobering
of his character. At length he reached Chalcedon, and the citizens of
Constantinople went across the straits in crowds to hail the deliverer
of the Empire, or of the Emperor, as he was careful to say. The sins
of Andronicus had faded in the memories of their fathers, and they
returned to the city to praise his loyalty and his demeanour. Before
long they arrested the minister Alexis and put out his eyes. It
remained to disarm the clergy, who had been forced to excommunicate him
for enslaving Christians. When the patriarch came over to visit him,
the wily hypocrite fell at his feet and kissed them, protesting that
the archbishop had saved the Emperor, to whose cause he was devoted.
In brief, Andronicus was presently installed in the palace, and a
ruthless suppression of his opponents began. Eyes were cut from their
sockets, the jails were filled with nobles, and confiscated property
swelled his treasury. The Princess Maria, who had appealed to him,
and must now have seen her error, perished with her vigorous husband;
one of their eunuchs was bribed by Andronicus to poison their food.
The clergy next discovered his hypocrisy. He ordered the patriarch to
marry his illegitimate daughter Irene to Manuel’s illegitimate son
Alexis--the natural children of two sisters--and, when he refused,
deposed him and found some other bishop complaisant enough to perform
the ceremony. The nobles hastily plotted to displace him, but it was
too late. Another batch of condemnations routed his opponents and
enriched his purse. The people, it is lamentable to find, supported his
every deed with enthusiasm, and were not slow to take up the cry of
“Andronicus Emperor” which his creatures soon whispered in their ears.
It was the late summer of 1183, only three years after the death
of Manuel. The foolish young Alexis still caroused and hunted in
frivolous unconcern, but his mother now saw that the end of her reign
approached, and might come in dreadful form. She was transferred to
a suburban palace, and her life was embittered by calumny and petty
persecution. It is in view of these circumstances that we must hesitate
to accept the charge of misconduct with the minister Alexis; she seems
to have been one of the best of the princesses of the time, though
her personality never comes clearly before us. Presently Andronicus
charged her with treachery. Her sister, Philippa, was, after being
detached from Andronicus, married to the King of Hungary, and it is
not impossible that some letters were exchanged between them in regard
to the monster who now aimed at the throne. Philippa would retain
little tenderness for him since he had fled straight from her arms to
those of Theodora. Maria was, of course, found guilty, and lodged in a
dungeon. Her son, little dreaming how soon he would follow her, signed
the death-warrant, and in the month of August 1183 her sufferings came
to an end. A high commander of the army and a eunuch of the Court
strangled her with a bowtring.
Alexis lightheartedly pursued his pleasures for a few weeks, until he
heard about him the cry of “Andronicus Emperor.” He nervously applauded
it, and offered a share of his throne; and, with feigned reluctance,
Andronicus yielded to the general demand and was crowned by the clergy
in St Sophia. When, in the course of the coronation Mass, the chalice
was brought to him containing the consecrated wine, he took it in his
hands and swore on the living body of Christ that he accepted the
crown only in order to assist Alexis. A few days later the youth was
strangled by his orders, and, when the lifeless body was placed at his
feet, he kicked it and observed that it was the child of a perjurer
and a whore. One further detail will complete the picture of the
degradation of the Eastern Empire. Two high officials of the Court took
the body out in a boat, flung it in the sea, and sang gay songs as
they returned to the Bucoleon quay. One of them became Archbishop of
Bulgaria.
The two years’ reign of the Emperor Andronicus was an orgy of
bloodshed, spoliation and vice. Perhaps the most abominable detail of
it is that he at once married the child-widow of Alexis, Anna, the
beautiful daughter of Louis VII. She had not yet completed her twelfth
year, yet she now became the daily and--one fears--nightly companion of
an erotic old man of seventy, whose devices to maintain his virility
are hardly less repulsive than his murders. It is in one sense a
relief to know that little Anna was only one member of a veritable
harem of singing and dancing girls, and some nobler women, who filled
the palaces, especially the pleasure-palaces on the Asiatic coast, of
the repulsive monarch. Powerful in frame and fresh in countenance to
the end, Andronicus maintained even in the palace his sobriety and
moderation at table in order to preserve his youthful vigour. He was,
if ever a man was, an erotomaniac, one of the strangest personalities
in the whole of Byzantine history. He brought about several excellent
reforms in the administration of the failing Empire, and had, almost to
the end, the enthusiastic attachment of his people; but his brutality
in the punishment of rebels, who were numerous, was too appalling to be
described, and his conduct in many ways approached insanity. He raised
a statue in the city to his first wife; she was represented as a nun
accompanied by a handsome youth.
We hasten through this welter of brutality and licence to the natural
termination. Deliverers of the Empire arose in various places, and
were either savagely crushed or showed a savagery equal to that of
Andronicus. The natural son of Manuel, whom he had married to his
daughter Irene, rebelled; his secretary was burned alive in the
Hippodrome, his eyes were removed, and Irene was banished for shedding
tears over his fate. A nephew of his mistress Theodora (of Acre)
rebelled, and captured the island of Cyprus, and Andronicus impotently
ordered the two innocent nobles who were Isaac’s sureties to be stoned
to death by their fellow-nobles in the palace; but Isaac proved as
savage and licentious as Andronicus. Then another Alexis Comnenus,
a grand-nephew of Manuel, fled to the West for assistance, and the
Sicilian army set sail for Constantinople; but the soldiers merely
fell like a fresh flood of savagery on the miserable Greeks. At last a
deliverer arose, almost by accident, in the city.
Sorcery and astrology were at that time as rife in the Eastern Empire
as they had been in the worst days of ancient Rome; the clergy were
deeply corrupted and were almost idle (and wealthy) spectators of the
vices and superstitions of Court and people. One of the more astute
of these diviners was consulted as to the successor of Andronicus,
and, by a device which was a thousand years old in the Roman world,
he caused the letters I.S. to appear in answer to the inquiry. When
Andronicus heard the result of the consultation, he concluded that
Isaac of Cyprus, his rival in power and licentiousness, was the fated
individual, and felt confident as long as that tyrant was unable to
leave his island. But the prediction also assigned a very near date for
the succession, and the chief minister of Andronicus was concerned.
There was in the city a timid and unambitious noble, of a provincial
family, named Isaac Angelus, and the minister insisted that this was
the man designated by the diviner. Andronicus cheerfully ridiculed the
idea, placed his little wife upon the royal galley, and went with her
to join his gay ladies in one of the palaces across the water. It was
the early autumn of the second year of his reign (1185).
Within a few days a messenger from the palace broke into their pleasant
dalliance with the news that Constantinople was aflame with revolt,
and Andronicus, taking with him his wife and a favourite courtesan,
made with all speed for Bucoleon. It appeared that after his departure
his minister had gone in person to arrest Isaac Angelus, and, in a
surprising fit of boldness, the noble had drawn his sword and buried
it in the body of the minister. He fled at once to St Sophia, and the
people, flocking to see the man who had slain the hated minister, made
him a hero in spite of himself, and burst open the prisons that all the
victims of Andronicus might come and support him. He still shrank, even
when they offered him the crown, and his elderly uncle, John Ducas,
cheerfully presented his own bald head to receive it. “No more bald
heads, especially with forked beards,” cried the people--as those were
features of Andronicus--and the trembling Isaac was crowned.
At this point Andronicus and his companions reached the palace, only
to discover that there were no royal troops to defend the throne. In
impotent rage Andronicus snatched a bow, and, from one of the towers or
balconies of the palace which overlooked the square, sent a few arrows
into the crowd, but they burst into the palace, and he returned in
haste to his galley. With his twelve-year-old wife and his favourite,
Maraptica, he made with all speed for the Black Sea, but his popularity
had turned to hatred throughout the Empire, and he was dragged from the
ship at the first port and sent in chains to Isaac. His right hand and
eye were removed, and he was delivered to the vengeance of the mob,
whose savage torture and execution of the adventurous prince must be
read in the dead language in which they are described.
The young daughter of Louis of France will come again upon the
imperial stage at a later date. Already, in her thirteenth year, the
widow of two murdered Emperors, she was destined to wed and lose an
ambitious soldier, Branas, and for the third time, almost before
she reached womanhood, weep over the bloody corpse of a husband.
Nor were her sufferings to end here. We shall see that she remained
in Constantinople, and it was reserved for her to witness the final
tragedy which the chivalry of the West was to bring upon her adopted
country.
CHAPTER XIV
EUPHROSYNE DUCÆNA
The new Emperor, whom so extraordinary a chance had raised to the
throne, was a worthless and entirely incompetent man of thirty summers,
with the courage of a mouse, the vanity of a peacock, and the small
cunning of a Byzantine mediocrity. Finlay contemptuously observes that
he was “a fair specimen of the Byzantine nobility of his age.” He had
accepted the control of an Empire which only a Hercules could save from
ruin; and he proceeded to extort money from its distracted citizens for
the building of palaces and decoration of churches, to surround himself
with a hedge of actors and actresses which shut out the misery of his
provinces, to cast the cares of government upon a crowd of praying and
feasting monks, and to place his ideal of monarchy in the possession of
endless wardrobes and the enjoyment of stupendous banquets.
He was an upstart in epicureanism, and it is therefore not strange
that he followed the recent and abominable practice of taking a child
to wife. An earlier wife, of whom he had a son named Alexis and two
daughters, had died, and, when he came to the throne, there was the
customary scanning of the lists of royal families in order to secure an
Empress. His choice fell on the nine-year-old daughter of Bela, King
of Hungary, and the wondering maiden was brought to Constantinople by
his resplendent officers and eunuchs and prepared for the impressive
ceremonies of an imperial marriage. The tender little Margaret became
the Empress Maria, and was entrusted to the care of the troop of
strange beings whom she would learn to call her eunuchs. She would not
be old enough to know that Isaac provoked a dangerous revolt at once
by imposing the cost of his marriage on the overburdened provinces: or
to perceive that the vast aggregation of palaces had, for the first
time in Byzantine history, been looted by the mob. Isaac had ignobly
lingered in the Blachernæ palace while the people of Constantinople,
after despatching Andronicus, had wandered through the imperial
apartments and stolen all the money and portable treasures they
contained. One pious looter had even carried off the autograph letter
of Christ to King Abgar. But Isaac, as soon as his throne was secure,
repented of his liberality, and, by means of extortion and spoliation
and adulteration of the coinage, contrived even to surpass the luxury
and parade of his predecessor.
Maria will not interest us until, in her womanhood, she begins to
encounter the adventures of a fallen Empress, and one or two anecdotes
will serve to describe the kind of life she endured during the ten
years’ reign (1185–1195) of her husband. Isaac was a florid-faced,
red-haired young man with imperial appetites. His banquets consisted,
Nicetas says, of “a mountain of bread, a forest of game, a sea of
fishes and an ocean of wine,” at which he sat, richly perfumed and
clothed with the conscious gorgeousness of a peacock, amidst a crowd of
female relatives, and other females who were not relatives. When the
dishes were removed, the choicest mimes and conjurers and musicians
of the Empire were summoned to entertain him and his guests. It is
narrated that one famous comedian, when he was for the first time
admitted into the presence of this cohort of wine-flushed ladies, bowed
to the Emperor and said: “Let us make the acquaintance of these first,
and then you may bring the rest.”
Nearly his whole reign was filled by a great revolt of the Wallachians
and Bulgarians, and in 1195 he set out to take the field in person
against them. One day he rode out from the camp to hunt, and had not
proceeded far when he heard an alarming tumult in his rear. He found
that his brother Alexis, who had astutely awaited his opportunity, was
being acclaimed Emperor, and, without a struggle, he galloped across
the country. He was captured, blinded and imprisoned; and his young
wife now gives place to a more interesting type of Empress. Maria
remained in Constantinople, and will re-enter the story presently.
Euphrosyne Ducæna--that is to say, Euphrosyne of the famous Ducas
family, into which some ancestor of hers had married--was an energetic
and ambitious woman of middle age at the time of her accession. Her
father, Gregory Camaterus, had been an imperial secretary, and had
taken advantage of his favoured position to marry into the nobility.
Euphrosyne must have been born some time before 1150, in the reign
of Manuel, and have witnessed the later series of revolutions and
assassinations. In time she married the elder brother of Isaac Angelus,
a provincial noble of no distinction or wealth, and, during the bloody
reign of Andronicus, Alexis had taken refuge among the Turks. Even
whole populations gladly put themselves under the Turks or Saracens to
escape the vices of their Christian rulers. We cannot, however, say if
Euphrosyne accompanied her husband or remained in Constantinople. At
last Alexis heard the strange news that his brother was on the throne,
and he hastened to Constantinople. He was arrested on the way by the
Prince of Antioch, ransomed by Isaac, and promoted to high office
and wealth. He was a more energetic, more handsome and superficially
more attractive man than his younger brother, but his slender list of
virtues did not include gratitude.
He had communicated to Euphrosyne, if not received from her, his design
of seizing the crown, and she threw herself ardently into the work of
preparing the city. She was a woman of great ability, of persuasive
tongue, and still not without beauty; and it was not difficult to
persuade Senators and priests that Isaac was a disgrace to the purple.
Her own husband was little, if at all, better, but he had the advantage
of an imposing exterior and of concealing his real character. When
a messenger reached her with the news that Alexis was declared, she
bribed a priest to proclaim him from the pulpit of the cathedral, and
promised heavy rewards to the nobles who would support him. Alexis
himself was following the same line of lavishing offices (even if they
had to be created) and money on his supporters. As a result Euphrosyne
was able to occupy the palace almost without opposition, and the
Senators hastened to kiss her slippers and lie at her feet, while she
“stroked the bellies of the pigs,” in the scornful language of Nicetas,
who was a Court official of the time--on the wrong side. She announced
that the new Emperor would adopt the name of Comnenus, instead of
Angelus. It was an indiscretion, as the artisans of the city said that
they had had enough of the Comneni, and met in the Forum to place a
crown on the head of a popular astrologer of the hour. But Euphrosyne
sent a troop of her obedient nobles to scatter the rabble and their
king, and in a few days welcomed Alexis to his golden throne. People
shook their heads, however, when, as Alexis came out of St Sophia
wearing the crown, his fiery Arab at first refused to let him mount,
and then plunged so violently that the crown fell off and was broken.
The people of Constantinople soon discovered that they had exchanged
brother for brother. Alexis emptied the war-chest, which Isaac had
at length filled, into the pockets of his supporters, leaving the
Bulgarians and other foes to raid the provinces. He hastened to don
the gorgeous golden robes, and to restore the opulent banquets and
merry parties of his predecessor, and soon “knew no more about the
cares of his Empire than the inhabitants of Thule.” Euphrosyne is said
to have equalled him in luxury and display, but she had some idea of
statesmanship. She promptly undertook to rule the Empire, and we can
well believe that, even when she incurs the censure of Nicetas for
going about in a golden litter borne on the shoulders of distinguished
nobles, she was acting from policy. She ignored her husband, overruled
his decrees, placed her own relatives in office, and had her own
lovers. When important ambassadors were to be received, she had her
throne placed beside that of the Emperor, and Senators had to visit and
pay homage at her palace as well as at that of Alexis. Her husband was
happy in his imperial lake of luxury, and for a time took no notice. If
a noble offered him a sum of money for the office of ploughing the sand
he accepted it cheerfully. Euphrosyne, however, forbade the selling of
offices, and made a sincere effort to arrest that diversion of funds
from public purposes which had been wasting the blood of the Empire for
centuries.
Her integrity as a ruler soon excited the hostility of the vicious
nobles, and a struggle began which makes it difficult for us to
judge certain aspects of the character of Euphrosyne. The rule at
Constantinople was to impeach the morals of an Empress when her public
virtue was beyond question, and this the angry nobles proceeded to do.
She had ventured to appoint a first minister on the mere ground of
ability, and her brother Basil, her son-in-law and other nobles plotted
to restrict her power. They approached Alexis and whispered that
Euphrosyne was criminally intimate with a handsome young officer named
Vatatzes, and that he might before long find his throne occupied by her
paramour.
Nicetas, who was at the Court, has clearly no doubt about the liaison,
and we must admit that Euphrosyne’s family is not distinguished for
asceticism. Her youngest daughter, Eudocia, had been married in 1185
to the King of Servia, and had, after a few years, been driven from
the Court, naked, for her misconduct, and brought back in shame to
Constantinople. Euphrosyne’s brother Basil, who owed his office to her,
was her chief accuser. Alexis, at all events, was convinced. He sent
for the head of Vatatzes, who was in Bithynia at the time, and, when
it was brought, addressed it, says Nicetas, “in words which cannot be
included in this history.” Euphrosyne trembled, and appealed to her
courtiers to intercede. Alexis had gone to Thrace for a time, and he
returned to find the Court divided into two parties over the affair.
Some said that she was guilty; some were for punishing the libellers.
He went with Euphrosyne to the Blachernæ palace, and his dark demeanour
and refusal to sleep with her made her fear that her head would be the
next to fall. She therefore demanded a trial of the charge, but Alexis
merely handed her maids and eunuchs to the official torturer, and they
could only obtain release from their horrible sufferings by declaring
her guilty. Alexis was not normally a cruel man; very little blood was
shed in his reign. But the suggestion that Euphrosyne meditated taking
from him his throne and his splendid pleasures alarmed him. He stripped
her of her gold and purple, dressed her in the rough tunic of a common
prostitute, and handed her to two barbaric slaves to be conveyed to the
Nematorea monastery, near the entrance to the Black Sea. There, guarded
by two uncivilized slaves who could hardly speak Greek, she looked back
with bitterness on the two or three years of power and the ingratitude
of her brother and son-in-law. But Constantinople pitied her, or at
least despised her opponents. Basil and Andronicus were assailed in the
street with jeers and popular songs, and began to repent. They had not,
they pleaded, imagined that the luxurious Emperor had energy enough
to take such a step; they had wished only to restrict the power of
Euphrosyne. They and others now pleaded with the Emperor to reconsider
his decision, and, after a solitary confinement of six months,
Euphrosyne returned in triumph to the palace and wielded more power
than ever. It is pleasant to read that Alexis found himself incapable
of ruling without her judicious aid; and that she took no vengeance
whatever on her accusers.
In the following year Alexis fell seriously ill, and the question
of successor was opened. He suffered much from gout and despised
physicians. Unfortunately his own ideas of medical treatment were
much more crude than those of the doctors of the time. He ordered his
servants to cauterize his gouty limbs with red-hot irons, and passed
into a dangerous condition. As he had no sons, a wide field was opened
for competitors, owing to the abominable Byzantine system, which knew
neither the hereditary principle nor serious election, and the palace
was enlivened by the intrigues of a score of aspirants. None of them
seemed to have the faintest suspicion that the Byzantine Empire was
within five years of its first destruction. However, to Euphrosyne’s
relief, Alexis recovered, and, as the earlier husbands of his elder
daughters died (Eudocia was still in Servia), they were wedded to
distinguished nobles, and the year ended with prolonged gaieties at the
Blachernæ palace.
A long absence of the Emperor in Thrace left the supreme power in the
hands of Euphrosyne, and, as so many Byzantine women had done, she held
the reins with a firmer and more skilful hand than her husband. The
only defect noted by the censorious Nicetas is that she was lenient
to members of her own family. Fraudulent officials she punished with
a severity that was rarely witnessed in the East, but the admiral
Michael Stryphnus, who had married her sister, was permitted to indulge
criminal malpractices, for which the Empire would soon pay a heavy
price. He sold even the stores and equipment of the existing galleys,
and they rotted in the harbours, while pirates spread terror throughout
the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. These were not crimes at which
the short-sighted Emperor could cavil. Not only did he cheat his
people by creating and selling sinecures, but he resorted to practices
which amounted to piracy. He once sent six galleys of the fleet into
the Black Sea for the ostensible purpose of salving a wreck, but with
secret orders to board and loot every vessel they met. Large numbers
of mercantile galleys were returning with cargoes from the Black Sea
ports, often in charge of the merchants themselves, some of whom were
flung overboard for resisting. The others returned to Constantinople
in great anger, and, although they stood at the door of St Sophia,
candle in hand, when the Emperor came to pray, he merely laughed at
their complaints. From the clergy such sufferers received little
sympathy; the patriarch was a brother of Euphrosyne. The city was full
of violence and knavery: the seas were scoured by pirates: the remoter
provinces were ground between the imperial tax-gatherers and the
foreign raiders.
Yet in this melancholy putrescence of the once mighty Empire Alexis and
Euphrosyne maintained all the glamour of the imperial Court. Euphrosyne
is the only Empress whom we find engaging in the chase as the Emperors
did. Nicetas describes her setting out amid large companies of nobles,
a falcon resting on her gold-embroidered glove, or a kennel of dogs
rushing at her virile call. It is even said that she believed in, and
practised, the incantations and divinations which had become generally
popular among the decaying people. Her magic seems to have taken some
unfamiliar form, since she had the snout cut off a famous bronze
boar in the Hippodrome, had a beautiful marble statue of Hercules
flogged, and ordered mutilations of other works of art that reminded
Constantinople of better days. She seems to have been an able and
well-disposed woman tainted by the perversity of her age.
The Empire was sinking rapidly, living on its capital, yet suffering
the roads and bridges and forts to fall to ruin, the helpless provinces
to writhe under the heel of every invader, and the funds that should
have been spent on defence to be wasted in courtly luxury and the
maintenance of a crowd of ignoble parasites. An anecdote of the time
(about the year 1200) shows to what an extraordinary degree the funds
had been diverted from the army. There was in Constantinople a
descendant of the Comneni who, from his barrel-like shape, went by the
name of John the Fat. This paltry and contemptible conspirator won a
few followers among the nobility, went with them into the cathedral,
and put upon his own head one of the imperial crowns that hung over the
altar. The report ran through the city and a great crowd assembled and
conducted the waddling and perspiring John to the palace. Alexis and
Euphrosyne seem to have been at Blachernæ, or in one of the Asiatic
palaces, but the strange thing is that there seem to have been no
guards whatever, where former Emperors had kept whole regiments of
Scholarians and Excubitors or, at the later date, Varangians. We know
that there were still Varangians in the imperial service, but they seem
to have been too few to defend the numerous palaces. However, John
the Fat had not wit or grit enough to secure the palace when he had
entered, and, as darkness came on, a few imperial soldiers penetrated
to his apartments and killed him.
At length, in the year 1202, the Empire passed into the penumbra of its
great tragedy. Isaac II., the younger brother whom Alexis had displaced
and blinded, had lived in Constantinople, in a humble mansion near
the shore, during the seven years that followed his deposition, and
was regarded with so little concern that no watch was kept upon his
movements. It was not noticed that the Latin soldiers who lived in, or
constantly passed through, Constantinople were frequent visitors at his
house, and it was not known that the letters he wrote to his daughter
Irene, who had married Philip of Germany, were treasonable in their
import. But the blind and neglected brother was dreaming of a return to
his imperial debauches. It is probable that Maria, who would now be a
comely young woman of sixteen, lived with him, but of that we are not
assured; she was somewhere in Constantinople. At length the time seemed
ripe for his effort, and he sent his son Alexis, a youth as ardently
and unscrupulously bent on returning to power as he, to the Court of
Philip and Irene in Sicily.
It was the eve of the fourth Crusade, and the knights of the West were
gathering for a fresh effort to break the power of the Turk, and to
gather loot by the way. To these noble buccaneers the Emperor Philip
introduced the young Alexis and proposed that they should restore him
and his father to their throne. Neither East nor West attracts our
sympathy for a moment. The Angeli brothers were squabbling for the
right to indulge their sordid tastes on an imperial scale, and the
younger Alexis had no more serious ideal. The Venetians, who had an
important voice in the matter, sought their own profit and a discharge
of their debts, and there can be little doubt that the Western knights,
as a body, were allured by the vague hope of plundering, in one way
or another, the richest and most splendid city in Europe. An infamous
bargain was struck. The princes of Western chivalry did not hesitate
to accept from the frivolous and irresponsible youth a promise of the
payment of 200,000 silver marks, a year’s supply of provisions to their
troops and other preposterous rewards for dethroning Alexis. Even the
papacy had its share in the sordid bargain; the Greek Church was to be
forced to submit to the Vatican.
In the month of April (1203) the fourth Crusade set sail in one hundred
and seventy large vessels, and some smaller ships, for Constantinople.
Alexis awoke from his dreams to find that a score of worn triremes was
all the navy he possessed, and he must resign himself to meet a siege
of his capital. The vivid story of the fall of Constantinople cannot be
told here. Toward the end of June the Crusaders landed near Chalcedon
and gazed with covetous eyes, most of them for the first time, at the
innumerable spires of churches--schismatical churches, and therefore
fair prey--that rose above the clustered houses, the princely villas
that shone between the cypresses in the wealthier suburbs, and the
bronze roofs and marble walls of the superb palaces which glittered
in the sun among the vast imperial gardens on either side of the Sea
of Marmora. When the news of their sailing had reached Alexis he had
made it a table joke; now he and his trembled within the walls of their
capital. By the middle of July the Crusaders were encamped outside the
land walls; the Venetians lay beneath the walls which girt the shores;
and the great assault began. Alexis, from a tower of the Blachernæ
palace, saw the double-edged axes of the brave English Varangians
scatter the Germans and Italians, but he learned that the Venetians had
broken in. Packing his treasures and his money, he took ship at dawn of
the following day, with his daughter Irene, and fled to Thrace, where
a retreat had been prudently prepared for such an emergency. George
Acropolites, whose chronicle now opens, says that he took Euphrosyne,
but Nicetas, an eyewitness, more correctly observes that the imperial
egoist deserted his wife, his city and his Empire.
In their anger at the flight of Alexis the people now swept aside
Euphrosyne and her relatives, and turned to Isaac, for whom the
eunuch-treasurer secured the Varangians. He was brought to the palace
and proclaimed, and Euphrosyne, her discredited daughter, Eudocia, and
other relatives, were put in confinement. The Latins were informed
that the object of their expedition had been attained, and when Isaac
had ratified the preposterous contract signed by his son, the young
Alexis rode proudly into the city between Baldwin of Flanders, almost
the one _noble_ of the crusading party, and the blind, but astute and
formidable, Doge of Venice. One of the Latin knights, Villehardouin,
has left us a vivid narrative of the conquest, and enlightened us as
to the fate of some of the imperial women we have encountered. When
the Latins entered the Blachernæ palace they found the eyeless monarch
sitting on his golden throne in robes “the like of which you would seek
in vain throughout the world.” By his side sat the “most fair lady,”
Maria, who, we may therefore conclude, had faithfully clung to her
husband in his blindness and humiliation. And amongst the crowd of fine
ladies, superbly dressed and glittering with jewels, who stood about
the throne, was Agnes, or Anna, the beautiful and pathetic widow of
the Emperor Alexis, the Emperor Andronicus, and the would-be Emperor
Branas. She was still only thirty years old. Her presence in the palace
suggests that she had accepted some office in it under Isaac and Maria.
But the joy and confidence of the returning throng were doomed to be
speedily overcast. The end was merely postponed for a month or two.
The Empire had, in its most solemn crisis, received a worthless and
despicable pair of rulers, and the Latins pressed for their pound of
flesh. Isaac, blind, gouty and weak-minded, spent his days among monks
and astrologers, who, while they devoured the choicest dishes that
the palace could afford, assured him that he had entered upon a long
and glorious reign, that his gout would quickly disappear, and that
his eyes would be miraculously restored to their arid sockets. The
younger Alexis drank and gambled with the experienced knights of the
fourth Crusade. When the leaders of the Crusade pressed for the payment
of their reward, all the wealth of Euphrosyne and her relatives was
confiscated--Alexis had left little to seize--the jewels and plate
of the palaces were pledged, even the precious reliquaries of the
churches and monasteries and the great silver lamps of St Sophia were
appropriated; yet the jaws of the West still stood wide open, and the
Latin troops lingered and demanded food and drink. The fugitive Alexis
had, in the meantime, raised an army in Thrace, and the citizens of
Constantinople were embittered and disaffected. In August a quarrel
with some of Baldwin’s soldiers had led to a conflagration which, it
being the height of summer, had burned for two days and destroyed
nearly half the city. The clergy and people met in the cathedral to
appoint a new Emperor, but, though some undistinguished officer
afterwards accepted the title from the mob, no serious aspirant dare
take the crown in face of the hostile Latins.
Isaac died in the midst of the turmoil, and the young Empress Maria
lost her crown almost as soon as she had received it. We shall see
presently that she found consolation among the Crusaders, but it is
necessary first to follow the adventurous fortune of Euphrosyne and her
daughter. The young Alexis, distracted and feeble as ever, proposed to
leave the city and join the Westerners in their camp without the walls.
As he prepared for flight there came to him a fiery and ambitious
young officer who felt that the time was opportune for laying his own
hand on the sacred crown. Alexis Ducas Murtzuphlus--his last name, or
nickname, was due to the fact that he had a peculiar connexion of the
bushy eyebrows which stood out over his crafty eyes--was one of the
party in the city who, to the applause of the crowd, urged direct war
upon the Latins, and his popularity emboldened him to remove Alexis and
ally himself with Euphrosyne. By a liberal outlay of money he secured
the Varangian guards, and he then approached Alexis and whispered
to him that his leaning to the Latins had exasperated the citizens.
When Alexis trembled, the adventurer offered to lodge him in a secure
retreat until the rage of the people should have calmed. It is hardly
necessary to add that the young Emperor was conducted to one of the
dungeons of the palace, where his egregious folly was presently ended
with a bowstring.
Euphrosyne and her daughter were now delivered from their confinement
and restored to the palace, and, as Murtzuphlus had the characteristic
looseness of his age in regard to conjugal matters--he had already
discarded two wives--he soon sought and obtained the affection of
Eudocia. The contemporary courtier and writer Nicetas says that Eudocia
was merely his mistress, but others say that he married Eudocia and it
is difficult, as the sequel will show, to determine the point. Probably
he did, after a time, marry Euphrosyne’s daughter, and he then set to
work to defend the city against the Crusaders. The issue is one of the
great pages of history, but its details do not concern us. On 9th April
the Latins moved their formidable rams and catapults and towers against
the walls, and the Venetians drew up their vessels along the Golden
Horn. Three days later, after a furious assault, amid showers of mighty
stones and the blaze of burning houses, the heroes of the cross burst
into the city and began that historic ravage which puts them for all
time far below the moral level of the Turks they had set out to combat.
Murtzuphlus, finding his troops discouraged, had retired to the
Bucoleon palace, where Euphrosyne and Eudocia awaited the issue. He
had lost, he said; and from the palace quay, where the stone lion and
bull, which gave the place its name, had witnessed so many flights,
they took ship and sped in the direction of Thrace. The ex-Emperor
Alexis would surely welcome his wife and daughter, and he would feel
little tenderness in regard to the murder of his perfidious nephew.
Murtzuphlus arrived in confidence at the ex-Emperor’s new home, and
was received in apparent friendliness. For some reason, however, which
is not very clear, Alexis concealed under his friendly appearance a
deadly and murderous hatred of the adventurer. It seems to me that,
if a marriage had really taken place between Eudocia and Murtzuphlus,
Alexis regarded it as invalid. He ordered a bath to be prepared for
his daughter and Murtzuphlus, and, when the young officer had entered
it, sent in his servants to put out his eyes. Eudocia, we are told,
stood at the door angrily upbraiding her father, and he turned upon her
with language which leaves little doubt as to her character. I may add
that the blind adventurer was captured by the Latins, as he wandered
miserably about the provinces. He was taken to Constantinople and
flung from the top of one of the loftiest columns in one of the public
squares of the city.
In order to follow the further fortunes of our ex-Empresses we must
turn back for a moment to Constantinople. After they had allowed their
soldiers to loot and rape with impunity--to perpetrate, with the aid of
their camp-followers and prostitutes, a veritable orgy of desecration
in the most sacred shrine of the Greeks--for several days, the leaders
of the Crusade met to divide the spoil. Twelve electors, chosen from
amongst themselves, were in future to appoint the Latin Emperor of
Constantinople, and its territories were to be distributed among his
feudal supporters and the Venetians. Baldwin of Flanders was chosen to
be the first Emperor of the new series. His most serious competitor
was the commander of the army, Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, who
had occupied the Bucoleon palace, but the shrewd Doge of Venice had
preferred to set on the throne a prince whose native seat was at a
safer distance from Venice and Greece. Boniface had to be content with
the title of King of Saloniki and such territory in Macedonia and
Greece as he could wrest from, and hold against, the Greeks.
Among the noble dames whom Boniface found in the Bucoleon palace were
Agnes, the widow of Andronicus and daughter of Louis of France, and
Maria, the widow of Isaac. It is the last appearance in the chronicles
of the unfortunate daughter of King Louis; we must assume that she
spent the rest of her life in quiet attachment to the Latin Court. The
Hungarian princess Maria was destined to enter once more the field
of royal ambitions. She had not yet reached her thirtieth year, and
her beauty won the heart, possibly an alliance with her supported the
policy, of the ambitious Marquis. He married Maria in Constantinople,
and started with his queen for Thessalonica, the seat of the new
kingdom. How at the outset he nearly forfeited it by a civil war
with Baldwin must be read elsewhere. The quarrel was adjusted and
they settled in Thessalonica. And at their Court in that city there
presently appeared the ex-Emperor Alexis, with his wife and daughter,
soliciting peace and friendship.
Alexis had now concluded that the recovery of the Byzantine Empire
was impossible and he was prepared to submit. He was compelled to
lay aside such ensigns of royalty as he still wore, and a pleasant
residence was afforded him and his family in Thessalonica. Nicetas
makes the singular statement (followed at a later date by Ephraem)
that Boniface sent Alexis and Euphrosyne “across the sea to the Prince
of Germany.” It is clear that this is incorrect. They lived for some
months at Thessalonica, and it is one of the few traits we have of
Maria’s character that she received with kindly hospitality the man
who had deposed and blinded her husband. But the tranquil life of a
retired monarch did not suit Alexis, and we have already seen that his
base character was devoid of gratitude. He was detected in an intrigue
with the citizens of Thessalonica, and Euphrosyne and Eudocia had to
accompany him once more in his wandering.
The next page in their career is singularly adventurous, but scantily
preserved. As they wandered over the Greek province they met Leo
Sgurus, a Peloponnesian noble who had been governor, under the
Byzantine Empire, of part of Greece. He clung to his little power
in the chaos which followed the fall of Constantinople, and Alexis
decided to join him. The troops of Boniface were steadily restricting
his range, and, shortly after the alliance with him of the imperial
family, his life was little better than that of a brigand. He lived
in the decaying old citadel of Corinth, and marched out periodically
at the head of his men to forage and to harass the Latin troops. In
this quaint home the imperial family found shelter for a few further
months, and Eudocia married Sgurus. It was the fourth romantic marriage
of that adventurous princess, and was destined to be as unfortunate as
its predecessors. In her early girlhood she had been sent, while still
immature, to wed the King of Servia. He had adopted the robe of the
monk soon afterwards, and his son and successor, a fiery, brutal youth,
had claimed the pretty young bride of his father and married her. After
some years she had, on a charge of misconduct, been thrust out of the
Servian capital, her sole garment a narrow strip of cloth round her
loins, and had had to await, in the castle of a sympathetic noble, the
arrival of clothes and a litter from her father. Then, as we saw, she
married the already married Murtzuphlus, and shared his adventures
for a few months. Now she found herself the wife of an outlaw, living
in the rude and dilapidated chambers of the old Acropolis. But Sgurus
was shortly afterwards captured by the troops of Boniface, and we lose
sight of the unfortunate Eudocia. She was probably still in her early
twenties, yet the widow of two kings, an Emperor, and an adventurer.
Such was life in mediæval Byzantium.
Alexis and Euphrosyne took to ship when Sgurus was defeated, and sailed
for Ætolia and Epirus (on the eastern coast of the Adriatic), where
a certain Michael, a natural son of the Emperor’s uncle Constantine,
had set up a sovereignty over the rude mountaineers and few towns of
that isolated region. On the voyage the ship was captured by Lombard
pirates, but Alexis and Euphrosyne were ransomed by their nephew, and
at length reached Arta, the chief town of his dominion. The Byzantine
world was at the time full of small rulers, and would-be rulers. The
leading Crusaders had received their various slices of the dismembered
Empire, and here and there some fugitive Byzantine noble, especially
if he were connected with the imperial house, had set up a small
throne and defended it against the Latins. In this way Michael, the
illegitimate son of Constantine Angelus, had fled from the captured
city to Epirus, married a native lady of wealth, and constituted
himself “despot” of the whole region. In his chief town, Arta,
Euphrosyne tranquilly passed her last year or two of life. Her restless
husband still thirsted for power, and, when he found that his nephew
was not at all disposed to put on his head once more the crown which he
demanded, he took to ship again and sailed for the lands of the Turk in
Asia Minor. Euphrosyne did not accompany him. She died at Arta, either
just before or soon after his departure. Ten years’ experience of
imperial life had sated her ambition.
The ex-Empress Maria, now Queen of Saloniki, continued for many years
to enjoy the restricted power and state which she had won by her
marriage, but they were years of anxiety and care. Two years after her
settlement in Thessalonica, the Greeks rebelled and, in alliance with
the Bulgarians, spread fire and sword over the province, and pinned
Maria in the citadel of her capital. In that rebellion the Latin
Emperor Baldwin was captured, and his brother and successor, Henry of
Flanders, occupied the throne. Some years later Boniface was killed in
his struggle against the Bulgarians, and Maria became regent for her
infant son, Demetrius. It is the last glance we have in the chronicles
of the beautiful Margaret of Hungary, who, as the Empress Maria, had
come to spend so extraordinary a youth in the Byzantine capital.
There remained one other imperial daughter of Euphrosyne, Anna, who
had married the able and ambitious noble Theodore Lascaris. When
Murtzuphlus had abandoned Constantinople, Theodore had a momentary
ambition to collect the scattered troops and make a struggle for the
throne. He found that the attempt would be futile, and, with his wife
and three daughters, joined the throng of noble families at the quays
who were flying from the doomed city and the barbarous troops of the
West. They reached Nicæa, but the city, concerned about its future,
refused to admit him. He persuaded the citizens, however, to receive
his wife and daughters, and departed to seek allies among the Persians.
In a short time he had an army powerful enough to take Nicæa, and he
established himself as governor in the name of Alexis. When, in the
year 1206, the Latins were diverted for a moment by the trouble in
Greece, Theodore was crowned by the citizens, and Euphrosyne’s second
daughter, Anna, attained the dignity of Empress.
Disappointed in Epirus, her father, Alexis, had now, as we saw,
deserted the little kingdom of his nephew and sailed for Asia Minor. In
earlier years he had befriended the Turkish Sultan of Iconium, and he
now proposed to ask the hospitality of the Sultan and intrigue for the
crown of his son-in-law. The Turk received him with great cordiality,
and wrote to inform the Emperor Theodore that his father-in-law, in
whose name he was presumed to hold power, had arrived in Asia. We must
not too hastily admire the gratitude of the Turk; he had regarded with
some concern the establishment of Theodore’s empire at Nicæa, and
welcomed a pretext to dispute it. But in the war which followed, the
Sultan was defeated, and the active career of Alexis came to a close.
He was treated with respect, but his son-in-law prudently confined him
in a monastery under his own eyes at Nicæa, and the arch-intriguer
ended his days in the monotonous chant of psalms and prayers. His
daughter Anna died soon afterwards, the last of the group of imperial
women who had struggled for power and wealth while the great Empire
tottered to its fall. We shall find that that terrible catastrophe made
no deep impression on the men and women who filled the less opulent
Court at Nicæa, or on those who, half-a-century later, returned to
the lamentable ruin from which they at length dislodged the Western
knights.
CHAPTER XV
THE NEW CONSTANTINOPLE
For fifty-seven years the metropolis of the East remained in the
power of the Western knights, but our Empresses have already come so
frequently from the West that we shall not be tempted to expect a
new or higher type of woman on the throne at Constantinople during
the Latin occupation. That half-century may, indeed, be dismissed in
a few lines as far as the purpose of this work is concerned. We saw
that Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was selected by the Venetians and
Crusaders to fill the throne. The Blachernæ and Bucoleon palaces were
placed at his disposal, and one-fourth of the old Empire was assigned
for his immediate rule. But Baldwin’s wife, Mary, daughter of the Count
of Champagne, did not live to adorn herself with such remnants of the
imperial finery as were still to be found in the palaces. Baldwin
had left her in Flanders, and, when she at length attempted to join
her high-minded husband in his new dignity, she died at Acre, on the
journey.
Baldwin himself was captured a few years later by the Bulgarians, and
died in prison. His brother Henry, who succeeded him, married the
daughter of Boniface, the King of Saloniki, whose adventures we have
described. Agnes was, of course, not the daughter of the ex-Empress
Maria, but of an earlier wife. She was summoned from Lombardy, married
to Henry on 4th February 1207 in St Sophia, and the marriage day ended
with a great banquet in the Bucoleon palace, in the older Byzantine
fashion. But that is all we know of the Empress Agnes. Henry died in
1216, and his sister Yolande became Empress. Even of Yolande, however,
the very scanty chronicles furnish a very poor portrait. Her husband,
Peter of Courtenay, was, after being crowned at Rome by the Pope,
arrested in Epirus, through which he had foolishly endeavoured to cut
his way, and died in prison. As regent for her children Yolande remains
almost imperceptible, and an anecdote of the reign of her son Robert is
all that need be given to illustrate the character of the new dynasty.
Robert, who had a light idea of chivalry, brought into his palace, as
mistress, the daughter of one of the Crusaders, and her mother. She
had been betrothed to a Burgundian knight, and the embittered lover,
supported by a few friends, forced his way into the palace, cut off
the nose and lips of the faithless lady, and bore off her mother to be
drowned in the Sea of Marmora.
As Robert’s brother was a mere boy, the King of Jerusalem, a worthy
old man of eighty, was summoned to fill the throne for nine years,
and then Baldwin II. entered upon his long and inglorious reign; of
which we need only say that, in spite of his extreme liberality in
selling, especially to St Louis of France, the valuable relics (the
crown of thorns, the rod of Moses, etc.) which had accumulated in
Constantinople, and in spite of all the efforts of the Pope to maintain
the worthless monarch on his throne, and that throne subservient to the
Vatican, the feeble and incompetent rule of the Latins sank lower and
lower, until, in 1261, a regiment of Greeks put an end to it.
This slight account of the Latin rule at Constantinople will suffice
to enable us to follow intelligently the fortunes of the descendants
of the Byzantine monarchs who had set up a throne at Nicæa. Theodore
Lascaris had married Alexis’s daughter Anna, who died early in the
reign of her husband, and her two successors in his affection are even
less known to us than she. The first was Philippa, daughter of the King
of Armenia; but, after giving birth to a boy, Philippa was, for some
unstated but imaginable reason, sent back to the ruder Court of her
father, and Maria, daughter of Yolande of Constantinople, occupied her
place. Maria died, childless, after a few years, and, when Theodore
himself departed in 1222, his only son (the child of Philippa) was a
boy of eight years. The Empire was, therefore, wisely entrusted to a
powerful and distinguished noble, John Ducas Vatatzes, and we at length
reach an Empress of distinct and admirable personality.
The Empress Irene, who, in the year 1222, ascended the throne with
Vatatzes, was the eldest of the three daughters of Theodore Lascaris
and Anna, and therefore a granddaughter of the Emperor Alexis and
Euphrosyne. While the Princess Eudocia had inherited the character, or
lack of character, of Alexis, her elder sister Anna had, as far as we
can judge, shared the comparative sobriety of Euphrosyne, and Irene
united in her person all the best features of the family, without
its ancestral defects. She was prudent, equable, pious and virtuous.
Her first husband, Andronicus Paleologus, died prematurely, and her
father then united her to the able commander to whom he designed to
confide the Empire.[32] When Irene received her share of the imperial
responsibility, she proved to be, says Ephrem, “a new Deborah,” and
the few anecdotes preserved in regard to her suggest a sober and
high-minded woman, associated in perfect harmony with (as long as she
lived) a sober and high-minded and valiant husband. Unfortunately,
Irene led so well-regulated a life during the twenty years in which she
shared the rule of Vatatzes that there is little to record of her, and,
however much we may resent it, we are dragged onward by the misguided
chroniclers until we reach John’s later and less virtuous companions.
But the contrast of this later period will be the more piquant, and
the more honourable to Irene, if we dwell for a moment on the exemplary
years that preceded it.
The greater part of John’s days were spent in warfare, but in the
intervals of his wars he was attentive to the development of his
little Empire, and in this he was finely supported by Irene. It is
true that they adulterated the coinage, but that device had become
a Byzantine tradition and we must set against it a large number of
reforms. John was a just and simple-minded monarch. He developed his
estates so industriously, in the periods of peace, that he at length
relieved his subjects of the financial burden of royalty, and enabled
them to prosper. The character of the Court is, perhaps, best seen,
and attracts a lively admiration, in the following anecdote. One day
John presented his consort with a modest jewelled coronet, and informed
her, with pride, that it had been purchased by the profit on the eggs
alone which his poultry farms yielded. He forbade his courtiers to
wear Persian, or Syrian, or Italian silks, though they might wear the
product of the silkworms of his own dominions, and he one day severely
rebuked his son for going out to hunt in a tunic of cloth of gold.
Irene admired and encouraged this care for their subjects. Acropolites,
our chief authority for the period, was a student attached to the
Court at the time, and he gives high praise to the Empress. One day
there was an eclipse of the sun, and Irene turned to the learned young
man for an explanation. The work of the earlier Greeks was not yet
entirely forgotten, and Acropolites was able to tell the Empress,
with due modesty, that the body of the moon had passed before the
face of the sun and momentarily cut off its light. But superstition
was spreading its unhappy growth over the ruins of Greek culture, and
other courtiers, especially the Empress’s physician, ridiculed the
youth’s explanation. Irene laughingly told Acropolites that he was “a
young fool”; but she regretted afterwards, in telling the matter to
John, that she had used so arrogant an expression. Acropolites almost
spoils the story by going on to tell us that, in his own conviction,
the eclipse foreboded the death of the Empress, which occurred soon
afterwards.
One other story confirms this excellent impression of the life of the
Court in the palace at Nicæa, or in the country palaces at Nymphæum
and Smyrna. Irene had one child, her son Theodore; an accident, as
she rode to hunt and was thrown from her horse, prevented her from
enlarging her family. When Theodore reached his twelfth year, the
Emperor, who was himself over fifty, decided to marry him, and, as he
was allied with the Bulgarians against the Latins, he sought the hand
of a Bulgarian princess. The only available daughter of John Asan, the
Bulgarian king, was a girl of tender years named Helen, and, though
the marriage ceremony was performed, the two children lived together
only as children under the watchful eye of Irene. The Bulgarian king at
length repented of his alliance, and begged that the little Helen, now
ten years old, might return for a visit to her parents. Vatatzes and
Irene concluded at once that this was only a preliminary to breaking
the alliance, but they scorned to detain the child. We read that she
wept bitterly at being separated from Irene. During the journey to
her father’s capital she was so inconsolable, even when Asan took her
on his own saddle, that the monarch lost his temper and slapped her
face. Helen did in time return to her spouse, but she will have little
interest for us.
After nineteen years of this placid and useful co-operation with the
Emperor, Irene passed away, and, after a decent interval of mourning,
John Vatatzes, though now advanced in years, sought another Empress.
He succeeded, in spite of the opposition of the papacy, in obtaining
the hand of Anna, daughter of Frederick II., and sister of Manfred of
Sicily. Anna was a pretty maiden of tender years, a mere symbol of
alliance with the two powerful and independent monarchs I have named.
John may have reflected that, as he had now entered his sixth decade
of life, the immaturity of his bride would matter little. In the train
of the young Empress, however, was an Italian marchioness[33] whose
eyes were, the chronicler says, “unescapable nets,” and John soon fell
into them. Nicephorus says that the lady employed philtres and her fine
Italian eyes in the conquest of the Emperor’s heart. We will be content
to think that the eyes sufficed.
For the remaining decade of John’s reign the favoured marchioness was
the most prominent figure at the Court. She did not, apparently, desire
to interfere in politics. It was enough that she was permitted to
wear purple slippers and other ensigns of royalty, and that courtiers
should gather about her rather than attend the young Empress. It is
related that she on one occasion went, decked in her imperial robes
and accompanied by her glittering suite, to visit the famous chapel
attached to one of the chief monasteries of Nicæa. The abbot of this
monastery, Nicephorus Blemmydas, was tutor to Irene’s son Theodore,
and, though we shall find his royal pupil affording little proof of the
excellence of his education, the Abbot Nicephorus was a rare type among
the degenerate clergy of the time. He shut the doors of the chapel and
refused to admit the marchioness. Infuriated at the humiliation, and
stimulated by her followers, she begged John to punish the abbot. John
refused, and tearfully admitted that his own weakness was the proper
occasion of the trouble.
In 1254 the valiant Vatatzes bequeathed the crown to his son, and Anna
and the marchioness made way for the Bulgarian princess, Helen. Anna
seems to have remained attached to the Court, or in some mansion at
Nicæa, and we shall meet her again. But Helen died in a year or two;
her husband followed after a short and licentious reign of four years,
and the relinquishment of the throne to a boy of tender years, their
son John, opened the gates of the palace to a shrewd and unscrupulous
adventurer and his wife.
One of the commanders of the troops under Vatatzes and Theodore was
Michael Paleologus, a grandson of the Emperor Alexis’s daughter Irene.
Bold and crafty, passionate, yet ever ready to stoop to lies and oaths
to cover his ambition, sensible that he was one of the most capable men
to undertake the government and that his grandfather had at one time
been destined for the throne, Michael directed his steps toward the
palace from early youth. In later years his favourite sister, Eulogia,
who reared him, used to tell how, when nothing else would soothe the
restless infant, she used to put him to sleep with the strange lullaby:
“Hush, Emperor of the city. You will go in at the golden gate, and do
such-and-such things.” She _may_ have mentioned to him this almost
miraculous inspiration when he came to years of discretion. By sobriety
of life--apart from love affairs--and liberality to his friends and
dependants, he won great popularity and early incurred suspicion. John
Vatatzes, in his later years, summoned him to reply to a charge of
treason, and said that he must purge himself by the ordeal: one of the
enlightened practices which the Crusaders had introduced into the East.
Michael glanced at the iron balls glowing in the fire, and protested
that, although he was innocent of treason, he feared that so sinful a
man as he could hardly hope to carry the red-hot globes with impunity.
When a bishop, who stood by, rebuked his lack of faith in Providence,
he shrewdly suggested that the bishop, being innocent, might take the
balls from the fire with his hands and deliver them to him.
His wit and boldness disturbed the solemn Court, and, instead of
losing his head or his eyes, he won the favour of John and married the
Empress’s great-niece, Theodora. She was a daughter of John Ducas, a
nephew of the Emperor, and had been left to his guardianship. Michael
was then twenty-seven years old, and we cannot say if the young
Theodora accompanied him in his new command of the troops. However
that may be, he was again denounced, to the new Emperor Theodore, and
compelled to take a particularly sonorous oath of fidelity to Theodore
and his infant son. In two or three years he was recalled to Court
to repeat his oath. His eldest sister Martha--sometimes also called
Maria--had a charming daughter, whom the Emperor ordered to marry one
of his servants. The young people had just succeeded in falling in love
with each other when Theodore, who was now diseased and capricious,
changed his mind, and ordered the girl to marry a noble of her own
rank. It was reported to the Emperor after a time that this marriage
was not consummated, and could not be, because Martha had vindictively
laid on it a form of incantation known as “Venus’s knot.” Martha was
put, naked, in a sack with a number of cats; the cats were pricked with
pins in order to make them lacerate her; and the abominable Emperor sat
by to interrogate her about her incantations. After this it was thought
prudent to compel Michael to repeat his oath, which he did fluently,
and the impenetrable geniality of his manner quite disarmed Theodore.
Theodore died soon afterwards, and his boy (variously described as
six, eight and nine years old) was left to rule the Empire under the
tutorship of the first minister, George Muzalon, and the patriarch.
Not only Michael, but all the other commanders and nobles, had sworn
heavily to respect this arrangement. But the body of Theodore had
scarcely been interred before Michael began secretly to agitate and to
bribe his colleagues. Muzalon was an upstart, not a noble by birth,
and it was not difficult to cast on him the blame of the brutalities
of Theodore’s later years. Three days after the burial of the Emperor,
Muzalon and his brothers and a large company of nobles and noble ladies
gathered in the royal monastery at Sosander, without the city, for a
memorial service, when, in the midst of the chanting, the heavy and
regular tread of soldiers was heard. A band of officers and men burst
into the chapel, and, before the eyes of the shrieking dames and the
horrified priests, cut Muzalon and his friends to pieces beside the
altars. National catastrophe, it will be seen, had not chastened the
Byzantine character.
From Constable of the Empire, Michael was now raised to the dignity
of Despot, and became tutor of the young Emperor. Then a convenient
coalition of Western powers against the Empire gave Michael’s friends
the opportunity to suggest that the strong man ought to be associated
with the boy in the supreme power. On New Year’s Day (1259) he was
openly proclaimed Emperor. The patriarch almost alone professed some
concern about the terrible oath they had all taken only four months
before; Michael met his concern by giving him a written affidavit,
sealed with ponderous oaths, that he would restore the full sovereignty
to John VI. when he came of age, and would recognize no claim of his
own heirs to power. It was therefore agreed that Michael and John
should be crowned together. When, however, the hour of coronation
arrived, John was not present to respond to the call of the patriarch,
and Michael and Theodora alone received crowns. Michael had made a
little arrangement with the bishops beforehand, and only one of the
lords spiritual protested. The crowd may have murmured when, after the
ceremony, they saw the boy, crownless, walking after the new Emperor
and Empress, but a liberal shower of gold coin put an end to their
scruples.
Such was the initiation to power and dignity of the Empress Theodora.
Two other women, who will engage our attention, shared the elevation.
These were Michael’s two sisters, Martha and Eulogia, who began to
have an even more important voice than Theodora in the administration.
Both of them were widows, and had, after the death of their husbands,
assumed the monastic habit. Probably Martha took the name of Maria
when she adopted the black robe, and Eulogia was the monastic name
of the younger sister, Irene. Finlay remarks that at least in this
decaying period of the Empire the women showed no less ability than
the men, and assuredly there was not in the Greek world of that time
the least effort to confine women within the gynæceum. During the
remaining two centuries the chronicles are full of references to active
and ambitious women, and we shall see that Maria and Eulogia were
not prevented by their religious vows from taking their share in the
political life.
From the first year of his reign Michael gave his thoughts to the
recapture of Constantinople, and in 1260 he led his troops against the
city, but he had not the rams and catapults necessary to shake its
stout walls. He retired to the palace at Nymphæum, to arrange for the
strengthening of his forces, and one of his generals, hearing that the
bulk of the Latin defenders had sailed on an expedition to the Black
Sea, and that the Greeks in the city were prepared to aid him, boldly
entered Constantinople during the night, burned out the Venetians from
their quarters, and, when the Latin galleys hastily returned, laughed
at them from the impregnable ramparts. Their monarch had fled at the
first shock, and the whole of the Latins now (in the summer of 1261)
returned to the West.
On the day following the entry of the city Michael was awakened by his
sister Eulogia. The chronicler praises the prudence with which she
broke the good news to her brother. One of her servants had heard it
in the early morning, and she entered the bedroom of Michael to tell
him. She thoughtfully tickled his feet to awaken him in a natural
manner, and stood smiling by the bed until he had full possession of
his faculties and she could tell him without risk. Michael at once
moved his forces and his family to the Asiatic suburbs in view of
Constantinople, where the crown and the royal boots were brought to
him. Not until a becoming ceremony could be arranged, however, would
Michael enter his capital, and then only with the most conspicuous
piety. After spending the night of 14th August in a monastery outside
the walls, near the Blachernæ palace, he entered, in the dress of a
plain citizen, preceded by the picture of the Virgin which was believed
to have come from the brush of St Luke.
The brilliant August sun lit up for them a melancholy spectacle, as the
Emperor--John had been left to amuse himself in Asia--and his wife and
sisters rode or drove down the Mese to the cathedral. The Blachernæ
palace itself was uninhabitable. Its mosaic walls were blackened with
the smoke of the fires by which Latin soldiers had roasted their game,
and its tessellated floors were in a sordid condition. Filthy, too,
were the colonnaded streets and squares that had once been the pride of
Constantinople. I will presume that the reader knows something of the
indescribable ways of our Latin and Teutonic fathers at that time, and
for centuries afterwards. Not a statue or ornament of value remained in
the public squares; the vast piles of stone still lay where once had
been the graceful mansions of the Byzantine nobility; and great areas
of the city were now but scorched skeletons of once gay and populous
districts. The Bucoleon palace alone had been preserved with any care,
and to it, cleansed for their reception, the royal party proceeded,
after a thanksgiving service in St Sophia.
Before long the Court stealthily discussed the fate of the young
Emperor who had been left at Nymphæum. Michael was said to have
reflected that he had now obtained an Empire of his own, and that the
obligation of his oath did not extend to this new dominion. Eulogia, a
fanatically religious woman, as we shall see, supported her brother;
indeed, it is said that the two nun sisters, whom Michael consulted
daily, urged him to depose John and bury him in a monastery. Sinister
rumours circulated in Constantinople, especially when Michael proceeded
to marry John’s sisters to obscure Western nobles, who happened to be
in the city, and gave them money enough to take their brides away to
their distant countries. But this topic was presently displaced for a
time by one of greater interest. It was said that Michael proposed to
divorce the plain and quiet Theodora, and marry the Italian widow of
John Vatatzes.
Anna had remained in the East after the death of her husband in 1254,
and would be about twenty years old, or in the ripest development of
her beauty, at the time we have reached. She came to Constantinople
with the Court, and, from his slender resources, the Emperor supplied
her with a revenue which enabled her to live and dress luxuriously. It
was, no doubt, politic for Michael to invite the favour of the Italian
monarch by this generous treatment of his sister, but Anna soon learned
that the policy was strongly supported by inclination. Directly, or by
means of his servants, Michael made violent love to her, and begged a
fitting return for his liberality. Anna refused to be his mistress. It
is characteristic that the chroniclers do not represent her as spurning
his advances on the ground of virtue; she was, they say, too conscious
of her superior origin to enter into such a relation with Michael,
and, instead of rejecting his gifts and returning to her father’s
Court, she let Michael know that, though she disdained the position of
mistress, she would not refuse that of wife. The kindly and patriotic
chronicler would have us believe that this was merely a ruse to protect
her dignity, and we may or may not believe this. The immediate effect
was that Michael began openly to speak of divorcing Theodora. She was,
he gracefully acknowledged, a faithful wife and excellent woman, but
considerations of State made it advisable for him to marry Anna. There
was a fear that the Latins would make an effort to retake the city,
and it was prudent to form an alliance with some of their strongest
princes. Theodora, who had given birth to her fourth son since they
had reached Constantinople, vehemently protested against the proposal
and enlisted the interest of the patriarch, so that Michael was forced
to send back Anna, with a splendid escort and equipment, to plead his
cause in Italy.
[Illustration: THEODORA, WIFE OF MICHAEL VIII
FROM DU CANGE’S HISTORIA BYZANTINA]
Michael now returned to the problem of John, and, when he remarked
to his courtiers that it was absurd to have “two heads under one
hat,” they knew that the youth was doomed. We have no reason to doubt
the statement of the chronicler that Eulogia supported him in this
design, but we may at least assume that the manner of executing it
was due to Michael alone. He ordered that the harmless and helpless
young man should be blinded. A long experience had made the Greeks
ingenious in this operation, and, instead of removing the eyes with
knives, or using hot irons, they now sometimes blinded a man by an
elaborate concentration of intense light on the retina or by the use
of boiling vinegar. The more humane method of blinding by an intense
light was used in the case of John, and the unfortunate youth was then
incarcerated for life in a fortress on the coast of Bithynia. This
ghastly operation was performed on the day on which the churches and
monasteries of the Byzantine Empire offered their clouds of incense in
honour of the birth of Christ. It is at least gratifying to find that
it did not pass without protest. A warm-hearted youth attached to the
Court lost his nose and lips for speaking too freely about it, and many
others had to be punished.
Theodora seems to have been a silent, perhaps disgusted, witness of
her husband’s course, and there is some faint evidence that Michael’s
elder sister dissented from it. In fact, the patriarch Arsenius himself
openly resented this flagrant violation of a thrice-repeated oath,
and thus led to a long and fierce ecclesiastical struggle in which
the two royal nuns were actively engaged. The patriarch’s procedure
was not as emphatic and thorough as it ought to have been, but he at
least distinguished himself among the crowd of corrupt and servile
bishops and abbots by more or less excommunicating Michael. A council
of bishops then obliged the Emperor by deposing Arsenius and putting a
more courtly prelate in his place, but the hostility and derision of
the people soon induced Germanus to retire, and a clerical diplomatist
named Joseph occupied the see. As the furious schism of the Arsenians
and the Josephites, which followed, will cross the lines of our story
for some time to come, it is necessary to introduce this fragment of
ecclesiastical history. For the moment it is enough to say that in 1268
the patriarch Joseph absolved from his sin the ostentatiously penitent
Emperor, before a crowd of weeping Senators and priests.
The twenty years that followed the return to Constantinople were
absorbed in the work of restoring the Empire and adjusting the quarrels
of the partisans of the rival patriarchs. Of the restoration it is
enough to say that, as in all similar efforts during the last three
centuries of the Empire, it consisted in recovering the revenue of
the Court and enriching the Emperor’s supporters, not in any serious
attempt to revive the industries and commerce of the Empire.[34] Nor
were Michael’s attempts to make foreign alliances much more successful.
Foiled in his efforts to secure the interest of Latin rulers, he
turned to the Servians and Bulgarians. In 1272 he decided that his
second daughter, Anna, should marry the King of Servia. Theodora had
some misgiving that the barbaric Servians were unfit to receive her
daughter, and she directed the ministers who took Anna to the frontier
to send on in advance a party to explore the Servian Court, and to
linger sufficiently on the journey to receive their report. It proved
a wise precaution. The Servians had gathered round the advance party
like--as described in the Byzantine chronicles--a group of savages.
Anna’s eunuchs excited their intense curiosity, though not their
admiration, and the superb equipment of the princess was heatedly
criticized. They brought out Anna’s prospective mother-in-law, a dirty
and coarsely dressed woman, to show the Greeks a model queen. They
also stole the imperial horses. So the advance party hastily sent a
report to the ministers who lingered on the way with Anna and she was
conducted back to her mother.
In the same year Eulogia’s daughter Maria was married to the King
of Bulgaria, but the marriage brought little profit to the Emperor.
Eulogia had now quarrelled with Michael. She took the part of the
ex-patriarch Germanus, and she and her daughters and her favourite
monks threw themselves so ardently into the religious quarrel, which
the Emperor vainly endeavoured to settle, that Michael was very angry
with them. Monks now travelled constantly between the young Queen
of Bulgaria and the Empress-nun, her mother, and gravely disturbed
Michael’s work. After a time Maria sent some of the monks to Palestine
to induce the Sultan to harass her uncle’s territory, and she even
persuaded her husband to declare war on him. Michael hated the monks as
heartily as Eulogia loved them, and he at length expelled his sister
from the capital. When he went on to propose a union of the Latin and
Greek Churches, and induced a synod at Constantinople to acknowledge
the supremacy of the Pope, Eulogia’s love was turned into violent
hatred of the Emperor.
Martha seems to have died during the struggle, and Theodora was too
weak, or too indifferent to clerical matters, to take any part in
it. She must have watched with disdain the last vain efforts of her
unscrupulous husband to escape the dangers which threatened him. In
the early winter of that year (1282) he set out to crush a rebellious
noble of the Ducas family. Theodora tried in vain to dissuade him from
leading an expedition to Thrace in such a bad season, and a month later
she received the news of his death.
Her son Andronicus now took the purple, and, as Andronicus was orthodox
and his royal aunt Eulogia at once returned to the scene, Theodora
had a more dreary time than ever. Her brother was damned, Eulogia
insisted, and his remains and memory were not to be honoured by the
pompous ceremonies of the Greek Church. The young monarch--he was in
his twenty-fifth year--bent to her commands, and the body of Michael
was buried, almost without a prayer, in the military camp where he
had died. Theodora feebly protested, and was assured by the fanatical
Eulogia that her own soul was in danger, and her name could not be
included in the list of those who were commended to the prayers of
the faithful in St Sophia until she had purged herself of her guilt.
She was compelled to sign a repudiation of the authority of the Pope,
which would cost her little, and to promise that she would not ask the
prayers of the Church for her husband.
Into the appalling struggle of the Church factions which followed we
need not enter. One of the best historians of the time, who saw the
Empire slowly perishing while its whole soul was absorbed in this
quarrel, bitterly observes that “for the sake of a single coin both
sides were prepared to take oaths so horrible that the pen cannot
describe them.” One day they appealed to miracle; each side wrote out a
statement of its case, and a vast crowd gathered to see the two rolls
of parchment cast into the flames and howl for the intervention of God
in favour of the just cause. But both documents were burned to ashes,
and the ferocious struggle continued for decades, while the Turks
spread over the Asiatic provinces, pirates swarmed in all the seas, and
the Venetians and Genoese captured all the trade of the Empire. Eulogia
disappears in the midst of this struggle, fighting to the last in the
cause of the monks, a pathetic example of the way in which the age
perverted its ablest and most spirited women.
Theodora lived on for twenty-two years, and saw two new Empresses enter
the palace, but the chroniclers of the time are too much occupied with
the ecclesiastical controversy to tell us much of the personal life of
the Court. George Pachymeres has left us a large volume on the history
of his times, but fully one-half of it is taken up with the patriarchal
struggle. I will therefore be content to tell the later sufferings of
Theodora, and then return to the Empresses whom her son Andronicus put
on the throne.
The family of the Emperor Michael had consisted of four sons, three
daughters and two illegitimate daughters. The daughters were bestowed
upon various nobles or petty monarchs, and of the four sons three
survived to intrigue, or suspect each other of intriguing, for the
throne. Andronicus was the eldest, and he succeeded his father without
opposition. The second son, Constantine, had, however, been the
favourite of his parents; he had received great wealth from Michael,
and it was known that Michael intended, when death closed his career,
to set up Constantine as an independent Emperor in Greek territory.
From the first, therefore, Andronicus regarded his younger brother with
a jealous eye. Constantine was a good-looking and very popular youth,
very liberal with his money and surrounded by friends. Unfortunately he
had, like most of the Greeks of the time, little or no self-control,
and in 1291 he gave his brother an opportunity to destroy him.
Some short time before 1291 Constantine had married the daughter of
Raul, one of the chief officials of the Court. She was a beautiful
and somewhat vain young woman, very conscious of her new dignity. On
the Feast of the Apostles, one of the many days on which the ladies
of Constantinople were wont to pay ceremonious visits to the ruling
Empress, Constantine’s wife--we do not know her name--repaired in
great splendour to the palace of Irene. In the hall sat an aged
and noble dame named Strategopulina: in other words, a lady of the
distinguished Strategopulos family, and herself a niece of a former
Emperor. She had arrived too early for the reception, and sat on
a couch without the Empress’s chamber. On account of her age and
rank Strategopulina did not rise, as she ought to have done, when
Constantine’s wife passed, and the offended princess returned to her
husband in such rage that she fell ill. Most probably the old lady
knew that Andronicus and his wife would not be very displeased with
her action. But Constantine, egged on by his wife, took the matter in
his own hands. Acquainted as we are with the morals of Constantinople,
we are hardly surprised to learn that Strategopulina was believed, in
spite of her age, to be intimate with one of her servants. Constantine
sent some of his servants to flog this man in public, and drag him
naked round the Forum.
The scandal, the storm of chatter, and the gross injury to one of his
wife’s friends, angered Andronicus, and for some time he looked darkly
on his brother. Constantine was alarmed, and took pains to conciliate
him, but he was displaced from his position at Court and sent on some
mission to Nymphæum.
With his sixty thousand gold pieces a year and his pretty wife
Constantine would still find life desirable in Asia Minor. Presently,
however, Andronicus came to Nymphæum, and took up his residence in
the old palace of the Nicene Emperors. To this palace Constantine was
summoned one morning in March (1291). He found it full of soldiers,
learned that his brother had found him guilty of treason, and was
given into custody. His luxurious belongings and his great income were
confiscated by Andronicus, and he was destined to spend the remaining
fifteen years of his life in a new and particularly ignominious prison.
Andronicus was afraid to lodge him in a fixed jail, lest his supporters
should free him and start a revolt, and he therefore had a portable
prison--a litter converted into a strong-barred cage--made for him.
In this plight Theodora found her handsome son when, a month of two
later, Andronicus brought him to Constantinople. The Emperor had now
taken a decisive step, and he disregarded his mother’s prayers and
tears. When she pleaded that her son had been convicted, without trial,
on the secret denunciation of a monk, Andronicus merely summoned a
council in the palace and compelled his obsequious courtiers to ratify
his sentence. Theodora continued to assail him, but she had never had
much influence in the administration, and under Andronicus she was
completely powerless. Andronicus gave her no opportunity to thwart his
policy by intrigue or violence. When he was compelled to go into the
provinces, he took Constantine with him in his portable prison, and the
miserable young prince, dressed and shaven as a monk, dragged out year
after year without the least prospect of escape. The third and youngest
brother, Theodore, took warning by Constantine’s fate, put off all
signs of royal estate, and, living as a private citizen, endeavoured
to disarm the jealousy of the Emperor. These misfortunes, and the
thick gathering of clouds about the Empire, saddened the last years of
Theodora’s long life. The regaining of Constantinople had put no new
spirit, no healthier blood, into either people or Court. The Byzantine
power was doomed, and the last sad glances of the aged Empress fell on
a capital fiercely rent with ecclesiastical quarrels, a shrunken Empire
trodden under the feet of the Turk, and a sea swept by innumerable
pirates. She died in 1304, respected and superbly lamented by the
citizens of Constantinople. Without strength of character to make her
mark on the life of the Empire during nearly fifty years of imperial
authority, she had at least kept her slender record unstained by crime
or vice in a criminal and vicious world. At the most we can regret only
that she clung so faithfully to Michael Paleologus through all the
crimes and deceits of his tortuous career.
CHAPTER XVI
IRENE OF MONTFERRAT
The story of the unfortunate Theodora has led us to make a somewhat
premature excursion into the fourteenth century. We have now to return
a few decades, in order to begin the story of the Empress Irene, who
succeeds her in the gallery of prominent Empresses. Andronicus had in
his sixteenth year married Anna of Hungary, a daughter of Stephen V.
One of the daughters of Theodore Lascaris, the first Nicene Emperor,
had married a King of Hungary, so that the daughter of Stephen V. had
Byzantine blood--the blood of the Angeli family--in her veins. Her
mother, however, was not of royal, or even noble, birth. Stephen had
fallen in love with a pretty Choman captive, and married her, and the
beautiful young girl whose hand Michael asked for his son was the issue
of their marriage. At her baptism according to the Greek rite her name
was changed to Anna, and she, with her husband, received the crown of
a junior Empress. Unfortunately she died the year before Andronicus
attained supreme power, and we have merely to record that she left two
sons, Michael and Constantine, to maintain the valuable dynasty of the
Paleologi.
As Andronicus intended that one or other of these sons should inherit
the purple, he did not seek his second wife among the more powerful
courts of Europe. Two or three years after his accession to the throne
he married Irene, daughter of the ruling Marquis of Montferrat. At
the time she was a very pretty little maiden of eleven summers, and
Andronicus may be excused for overlooking the possibility that, even
if there were no powerful Court to espouse or create her interests,
there might be a character in the lady herself which would interfere
with his designs. For some years nothing occurred to make him regret
his choice. In the Blachernæ and Bucoleon palaces, or in the old Nicene
mansions, Irene slowly grew up to womanhood, and added three sons and a
daughter to the imperial family. The daughter, Simonides, will interest
us no less than the sons, and an interesting light may be thrown on the
character of the time by telling the origin of her very unusual name.
Andronicus desired to have a daughter, and was in despair when Irene
had, in succession, three stillborn female children. A daughter, at
Constantinople, meant a useful foreign alliance; though Constantinople
never seems to have given any aid to the Courts from which it drew its
own Empresses. In the year 1292 Irene again approached childbirth, and
the anxious Emperor consulted “a venerable and experienced matron” in
regard to his hope. Acting on her advice he set up, in a room of the
palace, statues of the Twelve Apostles, with candles of exactly equal
weight and size before each. A group of monks were then introduced to
pray energetically for the issue, the candles were lighted, and careful
watch was made to see which of the candles burned the longest. The
apostle Simon won the contest, and it was resolved that the forthcoming
little daughter should be put under his protection and named Simonides.
The superstition must have gained enormous prestige when a daughter
_was_ born, and lived to experience a number of highly interesting,
though not very apostolic, adventures.
Another incident of the same year illustrates a different aspect of
high life in the Eastern metropolis. Theodore, the younger brother of
Andronicus, had now reached a marriageable age, and was, as I said,
observing a very discreet behaviour in view of the recent fate of
his brother Constantine. He bore the lower dignity of “Despot,” and
was careful not to aspire to anything more than the slender circle
of gold, with few jewels, which marked that dignity. Theodora had
earnestly pressed her son to grant Theodore the title of Augustus,
as it was customary to do, but he gravely replied that he had made
some mysterious vow in earlier years which prevented him from doing
so. He now decided to marry Theodore to the daughter of Muzalo,
one of his chief ministers. They were betrothed, but before the
day of the marriage arrived Muzalo’s daughter was found to be in a
painful condition, as a result of too great a liking for a cousin of
hers. Betrothal was a very solemn ceremony in the eyes of the Greek
Church, and it took a special synod of the bishops to determine that
in this case the bond was invalid. The affections of Theodore were
transferred to the daughter of another official, and, to reward the
faithful services of her father, the soiled hand of Muzalo’s daughter
was bestowed on Constantine, the second son of Andronicus and Anna.
Experience had taught Andronicus that, if his eldest son, Michael, was
to succeed him, all others must be kept away from the throne.
A third curious incident of the time may be recorded to illustrate the
kind of world in which Irene grew to womanhood. The fierce struggle
of the Arsenians and the Josephites still enlivened the environs of
St Sophia, but the controversy entered upon a new phase after the
imprisonment of Constantine. The young prince had been denounced
to his brother by a monk who was a favourite of the patriarch,
and, as this became known, the opponents of the patriarch assailed
him with a furious tempest of invective. Nearly the whole of his
clergy turned against him, and the charges they made against his
personal character--charges which were loudly echoed in the public
streets--were of the most sordid nature. He was compelled to resign,
but he planned an elaborate revenge. He wrote a letter in which he
invoked eternal punishment on the Emperor and all who had joined in
his humiliation, and, in the characteristic Byzantine vein of ruse
and intrigue, concealed the letter in one of the holes on the roof of
St Sophia where the pigeons nested. He then retired to a monastery
and contemplated with malicious joy the spectacle of the priests and
citizens going about their work with this dire and authentic sentence
of excommunication suspended over their heads. A year later the vase
containing the letter was found by some youths who had sought pigeons’
eggs, and a panic seized the Court and city. For twelve months they
had all lived, unconscious of their danger, on the very brink of hell.
Athanasius was quickly summoned from his monastery and forced to
withdraw his censure.
In this atmosphere of intrigue, ambition and hypocritical selfishness
Irene of Montferrat developed her character. The Empire was tumbling
into ruins, yet the one thought of the vast majority of its citizens,
of all orders, was to obtain as much money as possible out of its
shrinking treasury and close their eyes to its future. Even the
Emperor, who looked as far ahead as the next generation, consulted only
the future of his family. His eldest son was, apart from any question
of merit or competency, to succeed him in the tarnished splendour of
the Bucoleon palace. To ensure this Irene saw him stoop to the crime
of barbarously imprisoning his brother, and the spectacle of the young
prince, travelling everywhere among the Emperor’s baggage like a caged
bear, would impress deeply on her young mind the first duty of man, as
it was conceived in Constantinople. For her own part she would take
care to secure her position and that of her children.
Irene was now a mature and very spirited young woman in her early
twenties. She had great force of character, a keen and strong
intelligence, and an unchallenged virtue. It was an age of general
laxity of morals, as we shall realize, yet Irene is not assailed on
that ground. But ambition for her children became her dominant quality,
and, as it grew stronger and more imperious in face of obstacles, it
warped her character, saddened her life, and made her career inglorious
and futile. Had she been the first wife of Andronicus, she might have
rendered very valuable service to the Empire; as it was, she became
recklessly absorbed in her ambition, and only added to its formidable
burdens. When, in 1296, Andronicus married his eldest son to Maria of
Armenia, she began that sombre brooding on the inferior position of her
own children which was to embitter the latter part of her life. The
policy of Andronicus would be to make poor matches for her children;
her policy was to prevent it.
We shall be glad to think that Irene had no voice in the first
matrimonial settlement of one of her children--the marriage of
Simonides to the King of Servia--for it was a sordid and abominable
transaction, but she seems at least to have played her part in the
ceremony without resentment. We had, in the last chapter, a glimpse
of the condition of Servia in the thirteenth century. In the year
1298, which we have reached, there was on the throne a particularly
objectionable type of “kral,” as the Servians called their ruler. He
had first married the daughter of a neighbouring king, but he had led
astray his brother’s wife, who was a sister of Anna of Hungary, and,
when a third sister came on a visit to his Court, he conceived so
violent a passion for her that he sent his wife home to her father.
This lady was a nun, yet the Kral persuaded her to discard her black
robe and go through a form of marriage with him. He then tired of the
royal nun in turn, and married the daughter of King Terter of Bulgaria.
By the year 1298 he was ready for a third change. None of his three
queens had given him an heir to the throne, and he was therefore
disposed to listen to the expostulations of his clergy and the advances
of Andronicus.
At this time the Emperor’s sister Eudocia returned, a young and
attractive widow, to the Court at Constantinople. She had married,
and recently lost, the Emperor of Trebizond, and came home to enjoy
her fortune in her native city. Andronicus pressed her to marry the
Kral of Servia, whose army would be useful to him. When Eudocia
indignantly refused, there was no lady of the imperial house to offer
to the Kral except the little Simonides, who had not yet reached her
seventh birthday. The only serious obstacle which Andronicus saw to
the alliance was the fact that the Kral’s first wife still lived,
and both the Servian and Byzantine clergy would regard the marriage
as invalid. But this obstacle was opportunely, perhaps artificially,
removed by the death of that lady, and the child of six summers was
taken by Andronicus and Irene to the Servian capital--we notice the
caged Constantine still among the Emperor’s luggage--and married to the
middle-aged and hot-blooded barbarian.
Since we shall find Irene in the following year making a most violent
and effective protest against the marriage of her eldest son, and do
not find her making any protest at all in regard to the marriage of
Simonides, we must conclude that she consented to this abominable
procedure. The patriarch of Constantinople, who had been deceived by
them, felt so strong a repugnance to the marriage that he followed
the Emperor to Servia and vainly endeavoured to secure an audience.
Irene seems to have given him no assistance. The husband proposed for
her child was a king: the wife proposed for her son in the following
year was _not_ of royal birth. We see her ambition already corrupting
her nature. She was content to stipulate that Simonides should be
treated as a sister until she reached the condition of puberty, and
entrusted her to the “honour” of the fiercely sensual and unscrupulous
Kral; though we shall find in the course of time that Irene herself
became largely responsible for the Kral’s breach of his engagement
to respect the age of her daughter. Irene and Andronicus returned
to Constantinople, bringing with them the Bulgarian princess whom
Simonides had replaced. This lady, it is interesting to note, was
married soon afterwards to the Emperor’s brother-in-law, Michael
Cutrules, who had wedded, and recently lost, Andronicus’s youngest
sister. But her career ended in prison before many years, as Michael
was convicted of treason and placed for life, with his wife, in one of
the palace dungeons.
In the following year, 1299, Andronicus proposed to marry Irene’s
eldest son, John, and the struggle of her life began. The wife chosen
for him was a daughter of one of the chief ministers, Nicephorus
Chumnus, and Irene now fought her husband with such vigour that he was
compelled to desist. Andronicus wished to remove her children from any
possible rivalry with his son Michael; Irene was determined that they
should make royal matches and wear diadems. She had probably by this
time conceived the ambitious idea which wrecked her life, and trusted
to induce Andronicus to detach fragments of his Empire in which her
sons might set up independent Courts. In this she was, no doubt, mainly
inspired by ambition for her children, but the later course of the
quarrel will show that she had secret personal grievances against her
husband, and she may have contemplated retiring to the Court of one of
her sons. For five years Irene resisted the design of her husband and,
with tears at one time and threats at another, urged her own scheme
upon him. Andronicus became weary and irritated. The ecclesiastical
quarrel still distracted his capital, the Turk ravaged his provinces,
the pirate swept his seas, and a new burden was added to his cares.
An army of Spaniards, who had been set free by the termination of the
Twenty Years’ War in Italy, came eastward in search of adventure, and,
being employed by Andronicus to fight the Turk, soon proved a very
fertile source of anxiety and trouble.
In the midst of these harassing cares Andronicus impatiently resented
the importunity of his wife, and their life became one of incessant
quarrel. Irene threatened that she would not share his bed unless he
either associated her sons in power with Michael or secured them
independent kingdoms at his death; Andronicus retorted by locking his
door against her, and Irene was further embittered. In 1304 her son
John married Irene, the daughter of Chumnus, and the Empress went at
once to live at Thessalonica. The chroniclers relate that Andronicus
had at length persuaded his wife to consent to this marriage, but that
seems to be a half-truth put forward by the Emperor. He gave John the
government of Thessaly, and Irene accompanied him and the younger Irene
to Thessalonica, where, as we saw, there had been a palace since the
days of Boniface.
In the capital of the Greek province Irene now entered upon an activity
that gave her husband more anxiety than ever. He presently learned
that she was openly telling to the monks and matrons of her Court
certain indelicate details of their conjugal life which “the most
brazen courtesan would blush to tell,” says the chronicler. Through her
daughter these details were forwarded to the Kral of Servia, but such
matters were not of a nature to induce that monarch to declare war on
his erring father-in-law. The Duke of Athens was then assailed by the
ambitious Empress; he was urged to marry his daughter to her second
son, Theodore, and then wrest the province of Thessaly from Andronicus.
Irene’s plan was now clear. The most westerly part of the Empire was to
be detached and converted into a kingdom for her and her children. The
Duke of Athens declined to pit his small force against the Byzantine
mercenaries, and Theodore was sent to Lombardy to wed the daughter of
the Marquis Spinola, who held a small territory in the north of Italy.
The marriage was spiteful, as Andronicus was not consulted, but it did
not bring to Irene an alliance of any material value; and, as John
died, childless, about the same time (1307), she turned again to the
Kral of Servia.
Andronicus was alarmed. He was at the height of his trouble with
the Catalans and at war with Bulgaria, so that fresh trouble with
Servia would be a serious complication. He made every effort, short of
granting her extreme demand, to conciliate Irene, but the passionate
woman determined to profit by the Empire’s difficulties and carried on
the war with a spirit and ability that deserved a better cause. She had
taken with her to Thessaly a vast quantity of money and treasure, and
she now employed this more persuasive argument on the Kral of Servia.
She sent him a superb crown from the Byzantine treasury and some of
the richly embroidered robes of the Byzantine Court for himself and
her daughter; and she forwarded to him, the chronicler says, money
enough “to equip and maintain a hundred triremes for ever.” It is
unfortunate that we do not know more particulars about her departure
from Constantinople and the way in which she became possessed of all
this treasure. It looks as if she had been collecting resources for
some years, and had left with a quite definite intention of fighting
her husband. Her present policy was to induce the Kral to make war on
Andronicus and take Constantinople. Her ambition had degenerated into a
disease and a crime.
There is grave reason to blame Irene for another issue of her
ambition which, no doubt, she did not intend. Next to the taking of
Constantinople Irene most desired to see her daughter have a son to
inherit the new Empire, and it is plain that she impressed this on the
Servian monarch. Simonides was now fourteen or fifteen years old, and
would be regarded in the East as a possible mother, but, whatever the
details may be, the fact is recorded by the chroniclers that her womb
was injured in some way and Irene was told that her daughter would
never have children. Her next plan was that the Kral should adopt one
of her sons as his heir, and, as her treasury was ample, the Kral
consented. Demetrius, her youngest son, was sent with a splendid escort
and luxurious outfit to the Servian Court, but its rough ways disgusted
the spoiled youth and he returned to his mother. As a last resource
Irene recalled Theodore from Lombardy and sent him to Servia.
When Theodore also found the ways of the Servians unbearable, and
returned to Lombardy, Irene’s fiery spirit was quenched. Her four
years’ struggle for a kingdom had entirely failed, and her health
was affected. She confessed her defeat and requested Andronicus to
allow her to return to Constantinople. We are scarcely surprised that
Andronicus refused permission, politely assuring her that, as the Turks
now swarmed in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, she was safer at
Thessalonica. Even when, in the following year, the Catalan troops
returned to the West, and relieved him of one of his burdens, the
Emperor gave her no invitation to return. She lived on for eight years
in complete obscurity at Thessalonica, and died of fever at Drama, in
Thessaly, where she had a country palace, in 1317, leaving, in spite
of her great expenditure, a considerable fortune. The dead body of his
fiery spouse was not feared by Andronicus. He permitted Simonides to
bring it to the metropolis and inter it with imperial ceremonies among
the royal graves.
The further career of Simonides herself is not without interest, though
we have no very definite portrait of the daughter of Irene and protégée
of the Apostle Simon. Once in Constantinople, she declared that she
would not return to the less luxurious Court and the rough manners of
her husband. Andronicus did not interfere until, after a time, the
Kral sent word that he would attack Constantinople if his wife did not
return. She was forced by the Emperor to join the Servian envoys, and
set out with them for Belgrade. But Simonides had not a little of the
spirit of her mother. When they had proceeded some two or three days’
journey toward Servia, she cut her hair and donned the black robe of
a nun. The Kral’s servants were stupefied, and, thinking it better
to anticipate the order of their monarch, drew their swords. With
Simonides, however, was her half-brother Constantine, who saw a more
reasonable solution of the difficulty. He stripped her of the monastic
robe with his own hands, compelled her to put on her royal garments,
and sent her to her Court. The Kral died a few years afterwards, and
Simonides returned to live in Constantinople and find more congenial
lovers, as we shall see, amongst its more refined nobility.
But the adventures of Irene’s daughter continue into the next reign,
and it is time to turn back and consider the new Empress who had been
crowned in Constantinople in 1296. Once more we shall find a story of
a woman of excellent character, though less gifted than Irene, tainted
by the Byzantine atmosphere and driven to assist in rending the dying
Empire. Nothing but a strong infusion of virile moral feeling could
have arrested the decay of the Empire. Unhappily, moral sentiment sinks
lower and lower at Constantinople after the death of Irene, while the
energetic Turk slowly advances to its destruction.
CHAPTER XVII
MARIA OF ARMENIA
In the year 1295 Michael, the eldest son of Andronicus II. and Anna,
received the imperial title, and there ensued a remarkable competition
of monarchs, great and little, for the honour of wedding a daughter
to him. Charles of Sicily made an early offer of the hand of his
daughter, but the legates returned disappointed to their master, and
the smaller kings of the East sent in descriptions of the charms of
their marriageable daughters. Amongst them was the King of Armenia,
and the patriarch Alexis was deputed to go and examine the candidate.
Alexis was captured by pirates as he crossed the sea, and, although
the prelate made a skilful and vigorous escape, it was thought that
Armenia was too remote and inaccessible. Legates were therefore sent to
learn the terms of the King of Cyprus, and observe the merits of his
daughter. When these also were unsuccessful, a stronger embassy was
sent to Armenia, and the troop presently returned with two blushing
candidates for the position of Empress.
The King of Armenia had, it seems, two marriageable daughters, and
they were so equal in grace and beauty that no courtier could decide
which was the more eligible. The Armenians insisted that both Ricta and
Theophano should be conveyed to Constantinople, where noble husbands
were still plentiful, and a message was sent to the capital to notify
their coming. Andronicus gave them a princely welcome at the palace
quay, and decided that the elder of the two should marry Michael.
Their names were changed to Maria and Theodora, and, when the elder
was united to the young Emperor, and received herself the imperial
title, the younger was consoled by an alliance with the “Sebastocrator”
John and a share of his sonorous title and more slender diadem. We do
not know the age of Maria and are, as usual, without a description of
her person; in fact, the quiet, unassuming ways of her very mediocre
husband leave her in considerable obscurity for the first half of her
life. We find her in 1306 setting out with him for the Bulgarian war
and showing a fine spirit of patriotism. Andronicus had no money to pay
the troops, and Maria, who remained in Adrianople, sold the jewels and
melted the plate which had formed part of her dowry, in order to win
success for her husband. They then returned to Constantinople to await,
in exemplary patience, the natural transfer to them of the supreme
power.
In 1318 their eldest son, Andronicus, was married to Irene, daughter
of the Duke of Brunswick, and Michael and Maria went to Thessaly and
engaged in the peaceful administration of that province. Two years
later came a terrible message from Constantinople which put an end
to the life of Michael and changed and saddened the whole course of
Maria’s career. They had had two sons and two daughters. One daughter,
Theodora, married the King of Bulgaria; the elder, Anna, married
the Prince of Epirus, and, when he was assassinated, married his
murderer. Tragedy seemed to dog the footsteps of the descendants of
Michael Paleologus and Theodora, and a far more terrible experience
was reserved for the sons, Andronicus and Manuel. Their father had
consented to leave them at Court under the eye of the old Emperor, and
that monarch’s idea of training them was unhappily consistent with a
great deal of spoiling and pampering. Manuel, the younger brother,
seems to have had a more sober and industrious character; the elder,
Andronicus, was a vain, handsome and unscrupulous youth, whose light
head was soon turned by the flattery of courtiers. His days were spent
in hunting, his nights in the pleasures of the table, the dice-board,
or the enervating chambers of courtesans. He was the natural heir to
the throne, after his father, and already enjoyed the imperial title,
so that parasites gathered thick about his person. He outran his ample
income, and was forced to borrow large sums of money from the Genoese
bankers of the suburb of Galata in order to maintain his luxuries and
his mistresses.
The old Emperor did not fail to perceive the debasement of the
character of his favourite grandson, and sharply to reprove him, but
the young man sank more deeply into debt, and began at length to feel
impatient of the long delay that must ensue before the keys of the
imperial treasury would come into his hands. He contemplated a series
of wild intrigues for the purpose of securing an immediate independence
and control of at least a small dominion. At one moment he meditated
seizing the throne of Armenia, on the pretext that it was his mother’s
appanage; at other times he aspired to rule the island of Lesbos, the
Peloponnesus, or any other fragment of the Empire from which he could
wring the price of his pleasures.
The older Andronicus watched him vigilantly, and his intemperance soon
led to a tragedy which definitely turned his grandfather against him.
He was informed that a rival secretly visited the house of one of his
mistresses, a lady of the Byzantine nobility and of very Byzantine
laxness of morals, and he posted a band of archers and swordsmen near
the house, with orders to fall upon any man who approached. It happened
that on the same evening, about midnight, Manuel had occasion to see
his elder brother at once, and expected to find him at the house of his
mistress. He was not recognized by the assassins, and was murdered.
This was the news which came to Michael and Maria in the autumn of
1320. Michael was in poor health at the time, and the shock ended his
life. Maria seems to have taken the veil, as we generally find her
named Xene in the chronicles after this date, but we shall find that
she neither repudiated her elder son nor retired wholly from the world.
The elder Andronicus now made it clear that his grandson should not
inherit the purple, but he unfortunately committed a fresh blunder,
which strengthened the hands of the young Emperor. The proper and most
worthy--or least unworthy--heir to the throne was now the younger son
of Anna of Hungary, Constantine, who had for some years been content
with the lower title of “despot” and the government of Thessaly and
Macedonia. He had, as we saw, married the daughter of the minister
Muzalo. Finding a pretty maid among the common servants of his wife’s
household, he had made her his mistress, and, as Muzalo’s daughter
soon died, Cathara was raised to the rank of companion. They had a
remarkably beautiful boy, who went by the name of Michael Cathara.
After a time the roving eye of Constantine was arrested by the charm
of the wife of one of his secretaries, and he proposed to bestow part
of his affection on her. She pleaded the claims of her husband and
the prescriptions of virtue; her husband promptly disappeared, as so
many inconvenient husbands did in the Byzantine Empire; and the “new
Hypatia,” as the chronicler calls her, shared the crown and the couch
of the Despot of Thessaly. Her beauty, wit and culture are said to have
placed her before all other women of her age, though there is a taint
of sacrilege in the comparison with the virtuous, philosophical and
venerable Hypatia of Alexandria. Cathara was dismissed, and Michael
Cathara became a page at the Court of the elder Andronicus.
The Emperor, now a gouty and feeble old man of sixty-four, was again
seduced by the superficial charm of a handsome boy, and treated Michael
with a favour which clearly marked him for the ultimate possession of
the throne. He gave the boy the imperial title, and kept him by his
side when he received ambassadors. When the elder Michael died, and it
was necessary, according to custom, to frame a new oath of allegiance
to the Emperors, the name of the younger Andronicus was expressly
excluded, and the officers swore only to obey the old Emperor and
whomsoever he might associate with himself. This imprudent choice gave
some of the discontented nobles a pretext to disregard their oaths,
and they entered into secret alliance with the younger Andronicus. In
order, however, to follow intelligibly the further fortunes of the
imperial women, it will be necessary to give a brief account of this
conspiracy and its leaders.
The most prominent figure among the discontented nobles was John
Cantacuzenus, a very distinguished and cultivated noble, a later
Emperor, and one of the chief historians of the period. The
tortuousness of his career and the cloak of hypocrisy in which he
foolishly imagines that he has concealed his ambition warn us to read
his account of his times with discretion. His history opens with a
deliberate concealment of the murder of Manuel and of the flagrant
vices of his associate, Andronicus, and it remains mendacious and
hypocritical to the last page. Such was the chief character who will
mingle in the story of the Empresses for the next twenty years. He
frowned on the low birth of Michael Cathara, was indifferent to the
vices of Andronicus, and secretly cherished an ambition to occupy the
throne. With him were Theodore Synadenus, a noble of equal distinction
and more substantial character; Sir Janni (probably Sir John), an
unscrupulous Choman adventurer; and Apocaucus, a successful financier,
of low birth, who begged to be allowed to share the risk and profits of
the speculation. Secret vows of fidelity were exchanged, and the more
wealthy members of the group purchased the administration of distant
provinces, in which they might raise and arm troops.
The old Emperor detected the conspiracy, and made an effort to
check it. In the spring of 1321, on the morning of Passion Sunday,
Andronicus was summoned to the palace of his grandfather and was
forbidden to communicate with any person until he had seen the Emperor.
The message was alarming, but the messenger was probably open to
bribery, and the other conspirators were hastily warned. They decided
to bring a troop of armed men into the hall of the palace, and, if
the old Emperor were heard to speak angrily to his grandson in the
inner chamber, rush in and despatch him. It will be noticed that the
Byzantine Court was now but the shadow of its former greatness. The
thousands of watchful Scholarians and Excubitors had long disappeared,
even the stalwart and faithful English and Scandinavian Varangians
could be hired no longer in any number, and a group of venal Cretan
or Italian guards alone protected the approach to the throne. But the
elder Andronicus, who had gathered the bishops in his chamber to hear
him charge and convict his grandson, learned that a troop waited in the
hall without, and the conference ended in hypocritical embraces and
vows of mutual fidelity. The nobles, however, resented this solution.
In their respective provinces, to which they were ordered, they raised
their troops and concentrated at Adrianople. When Andronicus saw that
they had a serious army he fled to join them, and they soon began to
march over the provinces toward the capital.
Andronicus the elder was at first content to send a regiments of
priests and monks into the streets of Constantinople with Bibles,
making every citizen swear not to desert their lawful monarch. The oath
was taken with the customary fluency, and the customary reserve; but
the insurgents came nearer and nearer over the roads of Thrace, and a
fresh peace had to be arranged. The grandson was now to have Thrace
for his personal dominion, with Adrianople for capital, and the right
of succession to the whole Empire. The young Empress Irene, who seems
to have been little more than a spectator of the stormy seas into
which her marriage had drawn her, joined her husband at Adrianople,
presented him with a baby, and lived for a few months longer to witness
his debauchery and infidelity. Before very long her reckless husband
attempted to seduce the wife of one of his chief supporters, Sir
Janni, and that commander, already jealous of the greater favour shown
to Cantacuzenus, deserted to Constantinople and persuaded the elder
Andronicus to try the fortune of war once more.
The Empress Maria, or the nun Xene, as she seems to have become, took
the part of her son in the quarrel with the older Emperor. There is
no evidence that she was a sincerely religious woman; indeed, the
fact that she sided with her worthless son prevents us from supposing
this. She probably trusted to return to Court in his train. She had
remained in Thessalonica since the death of her husband, and she
endeavoured to secure interest for her son in that province. The
older Emperor, however, sent his son Constantine to Thessalonica, and
Xene was arrested and shipped, in a very unceremonious fashion, to
Constantinople. Constantine was now in a fair way to attain the Empire,
and his “new Hypatia” must have enjoyed visions of a very speedy
accession to power. But soon afterwards Constantine was captured by
his nephew’s troops and committed to prison, from which he would never
emerge. The unknown lady of such remarkable beauty and accomplishments,
Constantine’s wife, now disappeared into the obscurity from which she
had come, and Xene returned to hope.
The old Emperor was checked by the disaster of his son and sued for
peace. He sent Xene to negotiate with him, and Andronicus and his
friends were soon enjoying themselves once more in the capital. Irene
had set out with him from Adrianople, but she died on the journey. Her
life must have been unhappy, but the widower found consolation, and
we find the earlier Irene’s daughter, Simonides, included in the list
of the noble dames who consoled him. Simonides had entered the world
encircled by a halo of miracle, but she was not destined to issue from
it in a corresponding odour of sanctity. Few did in mediæval Byzantium.
She had, as I said, returned from Servia after the death of the Kral,
and was living in the city, a comfortable widow of thirty-three, when
her handsome and profligate nephew came back to Court, more wealthy
and luxurious than ever. There is no room for doubt that she entered
into a liaison with Andronicus, since the old Emperor himself publicly
referred to it as a notorious fact.
Xene had remained in Thrace, where, after a second marriage, which we
will describe in the next chapter, Andronicus joined her. The town
of Didymoteichus (now Demotica), about twenty miles to the south of
Adrianople, became at this point the seat of a royal residence and
a most important centre of intrigue in Byzantine history. From that
town Xene and her son presently sent a most affectionate message to
Xene’s daughter Theodora, who had married the King of Bulgaria, or
two kings of Bulgaria in succession. The ladies of the Paleologi
family were almost all remarkable for their adaptability to changes of
domestic circumstances. It was twenty-three years since Xene had sent
her daughter to Bulgaria, and she had not seen her since; Andronicus
had never seen his sister. They now felt a sudden and most pressing
desire to meet her, and she and King Michael came to spend a week at
Didymoteichus. The real object was, of course, to arrange an alliance
with Bulgaria, to counterbalance the older Emperor’s alliance, through
Simonides, with Servia. Michael, a man of loose life and coarse and
repulsive manners, was flattered by the liberal attentions of the
imperial nun, and when Andronicus gave him a more substantial proof of
their esteem, in the shape of a large promise of money and territory,
he went home to mobilize his troops. In a short time the news reached
Constantinople that the banners of civil war were to be raised once
more. No one was surprised, as the year had opened with unmistakable
portents. A muddy pig had scattered a procession of bishops, which
accurately foreshadowed trouble in the Church; and there had been two
eclipses of the moon in three months, than which there could be no
surer foreboding of trouble in the State.
The senior Emperor had recourse at once to his futile diplomacy and
his synods of bishops. He drew up a formidable indictment of his
grandson, and submitted to the Empire that a man who had seduced his
aunt, appropriated imperial funds, and committed many other grave
crimes, was unfit to wear the purple. In his history of the time
Cantacuzenus laboriously meets this indictment, but his answers are
feeble and evasive, and, since he prudently overlooks the charge of a
liaison with Simonides, we have little hope of relieving her character
of that imputation. It does not seem to have made any difference to
Xene’s loyalty to her son, and we must conclude that she was bent on
returning with him to the Court. However, after some months of mutual
incrimination, the troops were set in motion, Constantinople was taken
(23rd May 1328), and the long and lively reign of Andronicus II. came
to a close. Few tears were shed, or ever will be shed, over the fall of
that selfish and incompetent ruler. He was granted a generous income,
and he continued to live, in complete privacy, for four years.
Xene remained at Didymoteichus, which had now become an important
centre of the shrunken Empire. The success of her son brought her to
realize that he was surrounded by men and women who were bitterly
hostile to her, and she no doubt felt it more prudent or agreeable to
enjoy the tranquillity of the provincial palace. This tranquillity was
rudely disturbed two years later, when Andronicus fell seriously ill at
Didymoteichus, and the members of the Cantacuzenus family and faction
betrayed their ambition.
The picture of the scene which we have in the pages of Cantacuzenus
himself is just as affecting, and just as mendacious, as Anna Comnena’s
picture of the scene at her father’s death. The dying Andronicus--it
was, at all events, believed by all that he was dying--summoned his
wife and friends to his couch, and, putting the right hand of the
Empress in the right hand of his faithful Cantacuzenus, entrusts to
him her safety and that of the Empire. When the mother of Cantacuzenus
(a quaint type of nun whose acquaintance we shall make presently) asks
him his wishes in regard to his mother, he feebly murmurs that “there
cannot be two rulers.” Cantacuzenus weeps so copiously that he must
retire to wash his face, in order to hide his grief from his beloved
friend. Courtiers press him to seize the purple, and he refuses.
They urge him to put to death, or put out the eyes of, the despot
Constantine, Andronicus’s uncle, who still lingers in his prison.
Again Cantacuzenus shrinks from the suggestion, and, in order to
protect Constantine from their murderous designs, he hides him in an
underground chamber.
One feels that the whole story is a masterpiece of lying, and it is
not difficult to learn the truth. Round the bed of the unconscious
Andronicus Cantacuzenus and his mother and friends pursued a desperate
intrigue for power. Anna was young and helpless, and might be used
for furthering their plan. Xene, however, watched their intrigue
with furious anger and fear, and pitted her hatred against that of
the mother of Cantacuzenus. Constantine was thrust in a loathsome
and secret dungeon by Cantacuzenus, lest any faction should remember
that he was the real heir to the throne. Even the old ex-Emperor at
Constantinople was approached, and was offered the alternative of
death, exile or the monk’s tonsure. With many tears he embraced the
least painful of the three proposals and adopted the name of Antony.
The triumph of Cantacuzenus seemed to be assured when, to their
astonishment and mortification, Andronicus emerged from his stupor and
returned to health.
Xene at once appealed to her son to punish the intriguers, but he was
either deceived by the hypocritical professions of Cantacuzenus or
not strong enough to face his hostility. Xene now felt that she had
incurred their mortal vindictiveness and retired to Thessalonica.
There she induced the citizens to swear that they would protect her,
and she even adopted as her son the wily and accommodating Sir Janni,
who governed the province. Sir Janni had not long to wait for his
reward--the fortune of his “mother.” She died four years later (1334),
and was buried at Thessalonica, having run a strange course since she
had nervously quitted her Armenian home thirty-eight years before.
The older Andronicus had died two years before, at the age of
seventy-two. Nicephorus Gregoras, our best authority for the time,
tells us how he spent a night in pleasant conversation with the old man
in February 1332. Andronicus, or Antony, died the next day, and was
buried in his monkish robe. The same passage of Gregoras gives us our
penultimate reference to the interesting Simonides. She was present
at the conversation, and we seem to be justified in inferring that
she “kept house” for her father. The last glimpse we have of her is a
fitting crown to her strange career. We faintly discern her, some years
later, as a royal nun in the Court of her nephew and former lover.
CHAPTER XVIII
ANNA OF SAVOY
The first wife of Andronicus III., Irene of Brunswick, had died
prematurely five years after her marriage. Andronicus had quickly
recovered from his grief, and plunged again into his customary
pleasures, but his grandfather insisted that the throne of the Empress
must not remain vacant. Whatever substitute for an “Almanach de Gotha”
the times afforded was scanned once more, and it was discovered
that the young Count of Savoy had an eligible sister named Jeanne.
The little principality, which was destined to have so important an
influence on the fortunes of Europe, had only recently been carved out
of the German Empire, and the name of the ruling house was in high
esteem. It was still, however, a mere patch of the hills and valleys of
Switzerland, and, when legates came from the Byzantine Court for the
hand of Jeanne, she was readily yielded to them.
Whether Anna, as the Greeks promptly christened her, would find
Constantinople equal to the reputation of its splendour that still
lingered in Europe may be doubted. The majority of the gorgeous palaces
in which our earlier Empresses had moved were now heaps of ruins.
From the roofs of the public and imperial buildings the copper had
been torn to make coin, and the marble from their facades and halls
had gone to deck the palaces of Venice and Genoa. Great stretches
of desolate, ruin-encumbered spaces existed within the crumbling
walls, and the streets no longer glittered with a proud display of
domestic treasure on the balconies as a royal cavalcade passed along.
Some gold and silver may still have lingered in the reduced palaces
before the disastrous civil war, but the display now made in the
imperial households and processions was largely a display of imitation
diamonds and gilded furniture. For the first time, in fact, we find
Constantinople itself impressed by its visitors, even from the small
Court in Savoy. The Count had sent with his sister a large escort of
knights, and, as the marriage was deferred for eight months, they had
ample time to exhibit their skill in tournaments. Why the marriage was
postponed from February (1326) to October must be left more or less
to the imagination. Cantacuzenus observes that Anna was indisposed
after her journey, but one may find more enlightenment in his casual
remark that Andronicus was ill and, after receiving his betrothed,
went for some months into Thrace. It would probably be indelicate and
impertinent to attempt a diagnosis. He returned in the autumn, married
and crowned Anna, and permitted her train of knights to return to Savoy.
Since Byzantine history is too full of large and tragic matters to
recount the small details of domestic life, and since the Empresses
would in their early years, if they were fortunate, be confined to
these small domestic interests, we pass lightly over the youth of Anna
of Savoy. In the spring after their marriage she accompanied Andronicus
to Didymoteichus, and would be faintly interested in the conferences of
Andronicus and his mother with the King of Bulgaria. In the following
year Andronicus dethroned his grandfather, and Anna found herself
mistress of the Empire. The scene at Didymoteichus during the illness
of her husband two years afterwards would complete her introduction to
Byzantine politics, and make her realize the importance of Cantacuzenus
and his friends.
Andronicus was, however, still a comparatively young man, and it was
probable that he would outlive the older intriguers about him. He was
only thirty-four years old at the time of his dangerous illness, and
he returned to his boisterous sports and gaieties. In 1332 Anna, who
was at Didymoteichus, gave birth to a son, and Andronicus came on
the scene in a mood of wild rejoicing. His Olympic games and Western
jousts alarmed and scandalized elderly ministers, who shuddered to see
the sacred breast of an Emperor expanded boldly to meet a lance. But
he laughed at etiquette, told his courtiers to put away the kind of
silk-covered mitres that they had hitherto been compelled to wear at
Court, and allowed them to have any dress or headgear they pleased.
Fun and good-fellowship were his ideals. He kept, to the despair of
the imperial treasurer, a vast number of hounds, horses and hawks, and
there was no better way to secure a favour than to present him with a
good dog or horse.
It is just to add that Andronicus made a sincere attempt to improve
the administration of justice in the Empire, but apart from this one
sincere and fruitless effort at reconstruction he danced down the road
of death like all his frivolous subjects. A little war, the suppression
of a rebellion or two, and mighty hunting and jousting filled the
thirteen years of his single reign. The Turk drew nearer and nearer,
and received no very serious check. The city of Nicæa had now fallen
into the hands of the Turks, and the crescent flashed on the shores of
the Sea of Marmora. Andronicus could do little more than trust the old
Byzantine weapon--intrigue, ruse, diplomacy. His sister Anna, who had
married the Prince of Epirus, assassinated her husband and invited her
brother to annex the territory. His daughter Irene, who had married
the Emperor of Trebizond and found him unfaithful, assassinated her
husband, and sent to Andronicus for a ruler. He was endeavouring to
profit by these assassinations when death overtook him. Earlier in
his reign the veteran Sir Janni had rebelled. Andronicus, knowing the
mettle of his opponent, had fortified and victualled the palace, where
he left Anna and her boy, and gone out to the field; but he removed
the danger in the end by deception and assassination. At length, in the
early summer of 1341, Andronicus became alarmingly ill. He shrewdly put
off his stained purple and retired to a monastery, in preparation for
death, and he passed away on 15th June, leaving Anna with two boys of
nine and four years. Then began the romance of Anna of Savoy.
The chief personæ of the romance, apart from the Empress, are the
ambitious intriguers we have previously seen about the sickbed of
Andronicus: the courtly and cultivated Cantacuzenus, the meaner though
less hypocritical financier, Apocaucus, and the mother of Cantacuzenus.
Theodora Paleologina was, as her name implies, herself a member of
the Paleologi family. She was a descendant of Martha, the sister and
counsellor of Michael Paleologus, the virile lady who had been put in
a sack with cats by Theodore Lascaris: a strong and able and ambitious
woman, although, since her husband’s death, she had worn the robe of
a nun. There was a complete understanding between her and her less
resolute son. Apocaucus, on the other hand, an active, restless,
unscrupulous little man, who slept little at nights, was prepared
to ally himself with either Anna or the Cantacuzeni, as seemed most
profitable.
We have no reason to doubt the statement of Cantacuzenus that, when
Andronicus lay dying, Apocaucus urged him, directly and through his
mother, to seize the crown, and that he refused. He was not in the
habit of acting so promptly. He went to the palace in which Anna wept
with her boys, assured her that he would protect them, and placed
five hundred guards about the palace. It may have occurred to Anna
that there was no one, except himself, from whom they needed to be
protected. Andronicus died on the following day, and she went (as
Cantacuzenus would have foreseen) to spend the customary nine days in
mourning by the remains of her husband. What Cantacuzenus might have
done while she kept her dreary vigil in the monastery we cannot say,
for his plans were interrupted. On the fourth day Anna surprised him
by breaking the sacred custom and returning to the palace. It argues
some strength of character in her that she should take this step,
though it was not an original inspiration. Apocaucus had changed sides,
and had gone to warn Anna that his rival aimed at the throne and she
must return to watch him. But Cantacuzenus was even more surprised and
baffled when the patriarch now came forward with the will of the late
Emperor, and read from it that he, the patriarch, was to be guardian of
the young princes and their Empire.
The maze of intrigue that followed can very well be imagined, and is
fairly described in the chronicles. In fact, Gregoras and Cantacuzenus
profess to give verbatim reports of the very lengthy speeches which,
it seems, took the place of conversation in those days. The three
aspirants to power besieged the chamber of Anna in turns, and each
spent many hours in assuring her of his loyalty, and of the disloyalty
of all the others. Though the strain made the Empress ill, she seems
to have acted almost throughout with good judgment. The patriarch was
her safest supporter, since each of the other two really aimed at the
throne, and to the patriarch she clung, only tempering his advice by a
fear of angering the two nobles and driving them to a coalition, which
would be fatal to her. The patriarch urged her to crown her elder boy
John at once; it would be an effective step, but when Cantacuzenus and
Apocaucus protested that it could not be done in a time of mourning,
she thought it best to refrain. At last some kind of settlement was
reached. Cantacuzenus was to be the Magnus Domesticus (or “major-domo”
on an imperial scale), and to lead out the troops to check the
advancing Bulgarians and Turks in Thrace.
Apocaucus was dissatisfied, and, as soon as his rival had departed, he
made a bold attempt to seize power. He had on the fringe of the city,
by the seashore, a strongly fortified house, or castle, in which he
could withstand an attack even of troops. It was impregnable, except
to a large force, on the land side, and a galley waited always at its
private wharf on the other side to convey him by sea in case of need.
His plan was to carry off John to this castle and then dictate his
terms to the Empress. Anna, however, was warned in time. The young
prince was actually in the hands of the schemer, when her servants were
sent to the rescue and Apocaucus fled to his fortress and barred the
doors. Cantacuzenus returned in haste to the city, and set a troop of
soldiers to watch the castle, but the Empress, on the advice of the
patriarch, refused to take extreme measures. As long as the two deadly
rivals were poised against each other, her position was more secure. We
must not, of course, attribute this prudent policy entirely, or mainly,
to the inexperienced young Empress. The patriarch was its chief author;
and, though the patriarch was by no means disinterested, he could not
aspire to the throne. There can be no doubt that, ill and weary as she
was, Anna acted with good judgment.
Thwarted and exasperated, Cantacuzenus in his turn now meditated a
_coup_, and it was only the singular irresolution or hypocrisy of his
nature and the boldness of the patriarch that prevented it from being
successful. One day, while he was discussing the situation with Anna,
they heard a tumultuous rush and angry voices in the hall without. Anna
asked the cause, and Cantacuzenus, professing that he did not know and
going to learn, lightly reported that a crowd of soldiers and young
nobles had penetrated the palace and were hectoring the patriarch.
They insisted, he said, that Cantacuzenus should be allowed to enter
the palace on horseback (an imperial prerogative) when he called, and
the patriarch opposed them. He had, he told the Empress, scolded the
patriarch for even listening to the young fools, and had driven them
from the palace, and he advised the Empress to admonish or punish them.
It seems quite clear that in this case a rather weak, but deliberate,
plot on the part of Cantacuzenus had been foiled by the patriarch. The
Magnus Domesticus then returned to the field, leaving his mother to
watch the Empress, and threatening that he would punish any man who
gave her anxiety in his absence. Gregoras says that he took with him an
enormous sum of money, and we may conclude that he went with a fairly
clear intention to raise the provinces.
As soon as he had removed his troops to Thrace his rivals set to
work in deadly earnest. Apocaucus was pardoned, at the instance of
the patriarch, and promoted to the dignity of Grand Duke and Prefect
of Constantinople. So far the policy was sound enough, but it was,
no doubt, impossible for the ailing young Empress to maintain the
equilibrium any longer in face of their passion and the perfidy of
their opponent, and they plunged into civil war. Cantacuzenus was
declared to be deposed, and it was even understood in the city that
the patriarch promised the open gate of heaven to any man who would
assassinate him. His friends and relatives were alarmed and fled to
the deserted meadows beyond the walls, where they passed the night;
and, as they learned in the morning that their property had been
confiscated, they hurried to the camp at Didymoteichus with loud
cries of “Cantacuzenus Emperor!” After a becoming parade of real or
feigned reluctance, the commander of the troops consented to accept
the purple and prepared for civil war. An imperial outfit was hastily
made at Didymoteichus--so hastily that, as the vain Cantacuzenus
complains, the tunic was far too short, while the mantle hung about
him like a sack--and the coronation took place. The ceremony gives us
another Empress of a not uninteresting character. Cantacuzenus was
married to Irene, daughter of a Court official of the former royal
family of Bulgaria; her mother had been Irene Paleologina, daughter of
Michael Paleologus and Theodora. She remained, tearful and anxious,
at Didymoteichus while her husband led out his troops, but she would
afterwards take a vigorous part in the struggle.
Irene’s mother-in-law was the first victim of her own and her son’s
ambition, and of the hatred of his enemies. Cantacuzenus, who always
speaks with respect, if not generosity, of Anna, tells us that the
Empress was not responsible for the barbarous treatment and death of
his mother. She was imprisoned in one of the palace cells as soon as
the trouble began, and from her dreary room she could hear the rabble
of Constantinople shouting their customary obscene abuse of her and
her son, and acclaiming Anna and John V. The young prince had been
crowned at once by the patriarch. It was the early winter, and the aged
Theodora was treated with studied insult and severity by her jailers.
Her health soon broke, and she died in the palace dungeon. Cantacuzenus
relates that a royal nun who had assisted and, consoled his mother
went to reprove Anna for the brutality to which she had been exposed,
but he adds that Anna was ignorant of it and blameless. The close of
the career of Theodora Paleologina is one of the many reminders that
to the end the Byzantine Empire did not lack _strong_ men and women;
what it lacked was sound moral and patriotic feeling. The stock was
not “outworn” and “enfeebled,” as historical writers are apt to say
of decaying civilizations. Its strength was tainted and misdirected.
The royal nun, I may add, who had visited Theodora in her cell was
Theodora, daughter of Andronicus the elder, and widow of Michael of
Bulgaria, who here is seen for the last time.
The course of the long civil war need not be followed here. It opened
disastrously for Cantacuzenus. Anna, Cantacuzenus tells us, longed for
peace, and proposed that he should hold the chief power in the Empire,
though not wear the purple, and that his daughter Helena should marry
her son, the Emperor John. It would have been the best settlement, but
it did not suit the ambition of Apocaucus and the patriarch. Apocaucus
urged the patriarch to live in the palace and bribed Anna’s servants
to watch her day and night, in order to prevent her from communicating
with Cantacuzenus. Later Cantacuzenus visited the famous monks of Mount
Athos, and induced them to send a few of their community to plead
with Anna to arrest this shedding of Christian blood. But the monks
were intercepted by the patriarch, and converted to his view of the
situation, before they reached the Empress.
After three years of indecisive warfare Apocaucus was assassinated.
He had at the beginning of the war filled the palace dungeons with
prisoners, and he augmented their number continually with nobles or
officials who ventured to dissent from his plans. In the summer of 1345
he was building a new and formidable prison in the palace grounds, and
the prisoners looked with concern on the frowning edifice and readily
believed that he was going to inflict all kinds of atrocities on them.
One afternoon he went, without his usual company of guards, to see
how the work progressed, and imprudently entered the yard where the
prisoners were. One of them snatched a heavy piece of wood and felled
him, and the others, seizing the axes and tools that lay about, ended
his life and exhibited his head to the guards on the other side of the
wall. Anna was alarmed and perplexed, and allowed the wife of the dead
minister to take a fearful vengeance. The rowers of the fleet were
armed and discharged upon the prisoners, and it is said that about two
hundred of them were butchered.
Cantacuzenus now sent fresh proposals of peace, which were approved by
the patriarch, and Anna made the grave and somewhat obscure blunder
of rejecting them. Gregoras says that she was jealous of Irene, but
Gregoras, for theological reasons which will appear presently, is not
generous to the Empress. It is possible that Cantacuzenus insisted on
retaining his crown. However that may be, the war continued for another
year, and began to turn in favour of Cantacuzenus, who now detached a
large body of Turks from the service of the Empress. Anna’s conduct,
in fact, now becomes weak and blundering. She quarrelled with the
patriarch, and allowed herself to be influenced by the meaner monks and
bishops who opposed him. Apocaucus had so completely relieved her of
the work of administration that she paid little attention to it after
his death, and, as a new heresy now entered Constantinople and won her
favour, she became absorbed in a theological quarrel, while her enemy
crept nearer to Constantinople.
On 2nd February 1347 Anna convoked a large gathering of bishops and
monks at the Blachernæ palace. They met to judge and depose the
patriarch John, who opposed the new heresy. Its tenets do not concern
us, but, as it will complicate the story of the Empresses throughout
the chapter, we may say that Palamism, as it was called, had discovered
a plurality of “divinities” (in the sense of divine energies) in God,
and its opponents retorted that this was a return to Polytheism.
The discovery is said to have been made originally by some of the
contemplative monks on Mount Athos, whose quaint device for raising
themselves to a state of trance cannot with delicacy be described here.
On this second day of February, therefore, Anna listened with delight,
in her Blachernæ palace, to the heated discussion of the light which
was seen on Mount Thabor and other phases of the controversy. None of
the gifted seers were able to tell her that Cantacuzenus and his troops
were only a few miles away, and that he had already bribed some of her
soldiers to open the Golden Gate to him that very night. The patriarch
was deposed, and Anna and her bishops sat down to a festive banquet
and the making of “not very modest jokes,” says Gregoras, about their
late archbishop. They were alarmed for a moment by a messenger who
rushed in to say that Cantacuzenus and his army were approaching, but
Anna concluded that this was a ruse of the patriarch, and the banquet
continued merrily.
She was awakened in the grey dawn the next morning to hear that
Cantacuzenus was master of the city. He had marched with a thousand
picked men by an unaccustomed route, had been admitted by the Golden
Gate at midnight, and was making for the palace. It was at once closed
and fortified, and such guards as there were took up a position in its
lower approaches. Anna had returned from the light on Mount Thabor to
a very vigorous concern about earthly things. Cantacuzenus sent to
her a proposal that she should share the imperial title with him; her
name would come first in announcements and acclamations, but the real
administration should be entrusted to him. She drove out his messengers
angrily and abusively, and sent her servants to raise the citizens
against him and bring over the Italian soldiers from Galata. There was
still a good deal of loyalty to her, though her conduct during the last
year had alienated many, but the troops routed her supporters and even
began to storm the palace. They were recalled by Cantacuzenus, who
then sent the bishops to persuade her to yield. Cantacuzenus behaved
with restraint and humanity in his hour of triumph. He was, we may
recall, a refined and cultivated noble, though his singular mingling of
ambition and moral pretentiousness invests his conduct, and especially
his words, with a repellent hypocrisy. Anna refused the mediation of
the clergy, but, in the miserable night which followed, she saw the
hopelessness of her position, called a council of her supporters, and
decided to make peace. The prisoners were set free, and the gates of
the palace thrown open. It is said that John, who was now a boy of
fifteen, strongly pleaded for peace and weakened the determination of
his mother.
When Cantacuzenus entered the palace he found Anna and her sons
standing under a picture of the Virgin which adorned the hall. The
Empress was sullen and defiant, and probably expected some vindictive
action on the part of the victor, but that was never the way of the
silken Cantacuzenus. He venerated the sacred picture, kissed the
hand of the young Emperor, and swore on the Virgin that he had not,
and had never had, any intention of hurting the imperial family. A
general amnesty was granted, and the proposal to wed John and Helena
was renewed. It was agreed between them that Cantacuzenus should have
sole control of the Empire for ten years, and should relinquish it to
John on his twenty-fifth birthday. These conditions were singularly
moderate, and Cantacuzenus assures us that some of the troops could
hardly be persuaded to subscribe to the new oath when it was found
to include the name of John. Anna and John, moreover, were left in
possession of the best palace, that at Blachernæ, and Cantacuzenus
repaired one of the decaying palaces for himself and Irene, who was
summoned from Adrianople and graciously received at the gate by Anna.
Thus two royal families settled down once more to an unstable peace on
the ruins of the once mighty Empire. The coronation of Cantacuzenus and
Irene, which followed on 13th May, served only to exhibit the poverty
and decay of Constantinople. St Sophia was partly in ruins from the
great earthquake of the previous year, and there was no money to repair
it. The ceremony had to be performed in the chapel at Blachernæ, and in
the banquet dishes of pewter and earthenware had to serve instead of
the opulent gold and silver plate of earlier times. A week later the
royal children--John was fifteen years old and Helena thirteen--were
married, and a glittering group of two Emperors and three Empresses
stood proudly on the balcony of the palace to receive the applause of
the dwindling population; but it was commonly known that the stones
which flashed from crown and mantle were almost all spurious, and that
the apparent golden trappings were merely gilded leather. The treasury
was empty; the nobility consisted, not of great lords of the land, but
salaried officials; and the Empire that had once spread, under the
Roman eagles, to the deserts of Arabia and the waters of the Euphrates
was now restricted, on the Asiatic side, to so narrow a strip of the
neighbouring coast that you could almost see from the ramparts of
Constantinople the victorious crescent gleaming in the sun. On the west
there still remained the greater part of what we now know as Turkey
and Greece, but they were exhausted by the unceasing ravages of Turk,
Servian and Bulgarian, and tens of thousands of Christian slaves passed
yearly into the harems and workshops of the East.
In the midst of this desolation Cantacuzenus set up a Court of cheap
and showy and incompetent dignitaries. Irene’s two brothers, John and
Manuel, received the title of Sebastocrator, and were added to the
imposing processions and the list of pensionaries. Money was urgently
needed, and Cantacuzenus summoned to his palace all the wealthier
citizens and eloquently appealed to them to fill his treasury. They
refused to make the least donation. Cantacuzenus would have us admire
the restraint with which he declined to extort the money from them,
but we know that, if he shrewdly avoided violence, he did not scruple
to obtain money in other irregular ways. A few years afterwards the
Russian Church sent a large sum of money for the repairing of St
Sophia, and Gregoras tells us that the Emperor appropriated it for
the payment of his Turkish mercenaries. Two years later, again, when
another army of Turks had to be paid to defend his throne, he seized a
great quantity of the gold and silver vessels and jewels that remained
in the churches and monasteries.
We may assume that Anna watched without concern the troubles that
now rained upon the head of the impolitic Emperor. In the year after
his coronation his son Michael was persuaded to rebel, and set up a
sovereignty over part of Thrace. Irene was sent to discuss the matter
with him--Gregoras gives us a six-page speech which she is supposed
to have made to him--and it ended in the father leaving his son in
possession, though without the imperial title. Anna’s supporters
naturally suggested that there had been collusion between Cantacuzenus
and Michael, though that is not at all certain. When Irene returned
from her mission, she was pained to learn that the plague had carried
off her younger son during her absence. Even greater was her pain,
however, the historian says, that her husband favoured the Palamite
heresy. Gregoras was one of the chief protagonists of orthodoxy against
the heretics, and it will give some idea of the superfluous confusion
that was brought upon the affairs of the distracted Empire if I simply
observe that some five hundred pages of the remainder of his chronicle
are devoted to the controversy.
To this heretical taint Irene tearfully ascribed all the calamities
which affected her husband’s reign. He had hardly arranged matters in
Thrace, and was still detained by illness at Didymoteichus, when he
learned that the Genoese of Galata had burned the fleet which he had
laboriously collected money to build, and had attacked the capital.
The Genoese had for some time farmed the revenues--in plainer terms,
pocketed about four-fifths of the revenues--of Constantinople, and the
Emperor had endeavoured to lessen their profit. During his absence
they made a raid upon the shipping and the city, and Irene is said to
have shown great energy in directing the defence. For the next year
or two the Bulgarians and Servians ravaged his little Empire, and the
Turks, whom he hired to meet them, could be paid only by permission to
loot in their turn and carry off his subjects into slavery. In these
circumstances Cantacuzenus saw a tide of disaffection rising against
him, and the young Emperor John began to dream of independence.
Writing years afterwards in his quiet monastic home, Cantacuzenus says
that Irene and he were weary of the unprofitable conflict and were both
disposed to abdicate and take the black robe; that only the recurrence
of trouble in the West and the danger to the Empire kept them “in the
world.” This statement is easily refuted by his conduct. He built, not
a monastery, but a stout citadel or fortress near the Golden Gate,
as if in expectation of the time when John would claim his Empire,
and hired a strong guard of Turkish and Spanish soldiers. Then when
the Servian outbreak in the west, of which he speaks, took place, he
insisted that John should accompany him. Anna vehemently protested.
The youth was too young to be left in Thessaly she said, meaning that
she distrusted the Emperor. Cantacuzenus smoothly replied that it was
necessary for her son’s protection; that the sultan, wrongly thinking
to oblige him, had sent a eunuch to cut the youth’s throat. Anna must
have felt that the eunuch, if he existed, would have an easier task
in Thessaly than in the Blachernæ palace, but Cantacuzenus refused
to yield, and John set out with him. John was now a good-looking and
popular, if a somewhat dissolute and entirely worthless, prince of
eighteen, and it would be dangerous to leave him in Constantinople. The
Genoese across the water were partisans of the Paleologi.
In the course of the following year, 1351, Cantacuzenus returned
to attack the Genoese, with the aid of their mortal enemies, the
Venetians. As he seems to have intended from the beginning, he left
John in Thessalonica, with the young Empress Helena, but he was alarmed
and surprised in the following year to hear that the young Emperor
was corresponding with the Kral of Servia. Gregoras says that, under
pressure from the Kral, John engaged to divorce Helena and marry the
Kral’s sister. When Cantacuzenus heard this, he went with Anna into
the venerable chapel of the Virgin at Blachernæ, and swore that he
would resign the crown to John if he would abandon the Kral and bring
Helena to Constantinople. The oath was committed to writing, and Anna
herself conveyed it to Thessalonica. It says something for the singular
character of Cantacuzenus that they implicitly trusted his oath, and
the young couple returned to the capital. After a few weeks, however,
John distrusted his colleague and returned to Thrace with Helena. Her
father seems to have tried to detach her from John, but she protested,
Gregoras says, that she would “rather die with John than live with her
parents.”
In return, apparently, for this fidelity John made a new compact with
the Kral and received an army without abandoning his wife. He at once
attacked Matthew, the Emperor’s son, in Adrianople, and let civil war
loose once more upon the surviving province of the Empire; if, indeed,
one can call “civil war” a contest in which hardly a single Greek
soldier was enlisted. For the sake of rival Byzantine ambitions Turk
fought Servian and Bulgarian on land, and Venetian fought Genoese at
sea, and the decrepit Empire sank into its last stage.
The Empress Irene once more endeavoured to make peace between the
combatants. She went to Thrace and laid before the young Emperor a
politic and admirable scheme--admirable, at least, on the supposition
that Cantacuzenus is lying when he declares that he and Irene were
minded to enter a monastery, which would have been the best solution.
On the other hand, John does not command our sympathy and respect. In
three years’ time he would be twenty-five, and might have laid claim
to the throne with perfect right and more success. Irene proposed
that John and Matthew should divide the western territory, and that
Cantacuzenus should hold the remainder until his death. John refused
the terms, Irene returned to Court, and the Turks and Servians flew at
each other.
It is only necessary to say that in a comparatively short time John
and Helena were flying on ships to the island of Tenedos, and Matthew
was declared Emperor. The unceasing pendulum of Byzantine Court life
had now thrust the young Empress Helena into obscurity, and brought a
young rival into prominence and hope of the succession. John and Helena
were declared to have forfeited the imperial title. Matthew and Irene
Paleologina (granddaughter of the elder Andronicus) were crowned in
1354. But we have hardly time to glance at the new Empress before the
pendulum swings back and Helena returns to the light and the throne.
Cantacuzenus was now detested by all in Constantinople. His heresy,
his broken oath, his feud with the Genoese, and the consistent record
of disaster during his reign, united almost every class against him.
Urgent appeals were made to John to come and displace him, and it was
not long before a few ships were placed at his disposal and, during an
absence of the Emperor, he descended on the capital. But Irene again
vigorously defended the cause of her husband, and, after sailing round
the walls, firing a few harmless volleys of abuse at the partisans of
the Emperor who smiled on the walls, and spending a night with the
Italians at Galata, John returned in dejection to his wife and child.
Then a quaint type of wealthy adventurer chanced to touch at the port
of Tenedos and confer with John, and he returned to power by one of the
most singular of adventures.
One stormy night in December (1354), when the Emperor slept peacefully
in his palace, the soldiers who lived in the tower which guarded one of
the gates by the port were awakened by a heavy crash and loud cries for
help. They flung open the gate and descended the stairs, and faintly
perceived a few large vessels rolling in the heavy sea. The sailors
cried that one of their vessels, which were laden with jars of oil, had
been dashed against the walls, and the soldiers went to the water-edge
to help them to moor the vessels. Scores of armed men then rushed from
the holds, killed the guards, and occupied the tower; and before the
citizens could grasp what was happening, the enterprising Genoese had
lodged John in the tower, and were marching through the streets at
the head of two thousand men, crying “Long live the Emperor John!”
The citizens swarmed to the Hippodrome in the faint morning light,
repeating the cry, and Cantacuzenus was awakened to hear that his enemy
was in the city with an army.
It is worth while giving the explanation of this remarkable change in
the fortunes of John and Helena. Their vigorous and resourceful ally
was a Genoese noble of some wealth, who, with a small fleet, had sailed
east in the hope of securing some fragments of the dismembered Empire.
John offered him the island of Lesbos and the hand of his sister Maria
if he would help him to gain the throne, and he consented. Two large
triremes (galleys with two banks of oars) and sixteen uniremes (with
one bank of oars) were not the kind of fleet one needed to carry
Constantinople by storm, but Francesco Gattilusio was a strategist. He
emptied the oil from the vessels on one of his boats, crept up to the
wall in the darkness, and bade the sailors fling the great jars against
the wall. This was the noise that awakened the warders of the tower by
the quay, and the stratagem succeeded as happily as in a romance. I may
add that John afterwards carried out his compact, and Gattilusio became
Prince of Lesbos and brother-in-law of the Emperor.
Cantacuzenus did not venture from his palace. He explains that he
could easily have scattered the intruders, which is probably more true
than he knew at the time, but he conferred with Irene and they decided
that the time had come to enter a monastery. Gregoras says that he was
afraid to leave the palace, and, as he was isolated from his citadel
by the Golden Gate and would hardly know the strength of his opponent,
one prefers this explanation. He was by no means anxious to enter a
monastery. Drawing up his guards at the entrance to the palace, he
entered into negotiations with John and succeeded in getting a promise
that the imperial power would be divided. That solution, however, did
not please the people, and for several days he was assailed with abuse
and threats. He yielded to the “voice of God,” abdicated his dignity,
and, under the name of Joasaph, retired to the monastic world, to
write his flowing and elegant and mendacious chronicle of his times.
Irene was now forced to take the veil, and her robust personality
was converted into the black-robed figure of the royal nun Eugenia.
We do not know when she died, but some years later we find her, in
her monastery, guiding the education of her granddaughter, Theodora.
Theodora’s parents, Matthew and Irene, continued the civil war for two
or three years, but Matthew was then captured and was sent, with his
ex-Empress, to spend the remainder of their lives in the island to
which they had driven John and Helena.
Helena had followed her victorious husband and, with warm and mutual
embraces, joined him at the palace. We do not know how long she lived
to enjoy her fortune. I find no further reference to her. Anna is not
mentioned further in the Byzantine chronicles, but a little more may be
gleaned about her from Italian writers. Du Cange quotes the Franciscan
historian, Luke Wadding, as saying that she died about the year 1350,
and her body was transferred for burial to the shrine of St Francis of
Assisi, for whom she had had a great veneration. I do not find this in
Wadding--the reference, at least, is wrong--but Wadding does in other
pages (at the years 1343 and 1349) refer to Anna. In 1343 she sent a
Franciscan monk from the convent at Pera to confer with the Pope in
regard to the union of the Latin and Greek Churches. It is clear that
she remained Latin at heart, and no doubt she had brought with her
from the West a veneration for the gentle saint of Assisi. Then the
civil war and the triumph of Cantacuzenus put an end for a time to the
project of union, but the correspondence was renewed in 1349. From a
reference to her in one of the Pope’s letters we may deduce that she
still lived in Constantinople in 1349, and it is the last reference. An
Italian writer says that she died in that year, but I am unable to find
in Wadding’s “Annales” the statement that she was buried at Assisi.
CHAPTER XIX
THE LAST BYZANTINE EMPRESSES
A hundred years of life still awaited the Eastern Empire from the time
when John IV. returned to the throne, and half-a-dozen Empresses were
yet to play their varied parts on the imperial stage. Had any impartial
and sagacious observer reflected on the condition of the Empire at
the time, as we have described it, he would hardly have promised it
a new lease of one hundred years’ tenancy of its stricken domain. At
Constantinople, of course, no one foresaw the end. It is usually in
fairly robust, not in really dying, civilizations that we find an
apprehension of impending ruin: as in France and England to-day. But
the Byzantine Empire had shrunk to such proportions, the Turks were
closing round its capital with such steady advance, and there was so
little enlightenment in its mind, or real patriotism in its heart,
that it seemed to be very near the end. No miracle was wrought in its
favour, but it was saved for a time by one of the accidents of human
history. The Tartars or Moguls attained the height of their power under
the famous Timour, and the ambition of the Turk was distracted and
enfeebled.
There should be a peculiar interest in studying the features of the
Empresses who occupy the familiar palaces during this hundred years’
grace of the doomed civilization. We are so accustomed to finding the
character of a period reflected in the character of the Empresses that
the last representatives of the imperial line should afford us an
instructive insight into the final life-phase of a civilization. The
idea has become somewhat popular that nations grow old, as individuals
do, and die of loss of vitality; and that in their last years they pass
into singular convulsions or eccentricities. We shall, unfortunately,
be impeded in this interesting study by the scantiness of the records.
The ample chronicles of Cantacuzenus and his theological rival close,
and two or three confused and ill-proportioned writers alone preserve
for us a fragmentary record of the last hundred years. As in all such
meagre records, the story of the women suffers most. Still, enough is
said to give us an adequate idea of the remaining Empresses and their
times; and it may be said in a word that we find no convulsions, or
eccentricities, or increasing debility of individuals, but the familiar
and unfortunate Byzantine character pursuing its selfish ambitions
and passions until the great broom of the Turk sweeps the degenerate
successors of the Romans for ever out of the East.
John IV., now a young man of twenty-five, occupies the throne for
nearly forty years out of the remaining century, but this reign is
almost barren of interest for us, and must be treated only as an
introduction of his children. Helena had brought with her from Tenedos
a young boy named Andronicus, and two brothers, Manuel and Theodore,
were added in the course of time to the family. That is all that we
find recorded of the Empress Helena. She may have died early in her
husband’s reign, though the fact that he does not marry again until old
age, suggests, in the case of such a man, that she lived to witness
his amours and his political ineptitude. The interest passes to her
children.
Andronicus, a pretty and spoiled boy, was betrothed in his tenth
year to Maria, daughter of Alexander of Trebizond, who was about the
same age when she became the Empress-elect. However, the character
of Andronicus was to defraud her of the promise of the crown. We do
not know in what year they were married, but it must have been before
1369, when John went to Italy, leaving Constantinople in charge of
Andronicus. The Turks were again advancing, and John could see no
escape except with the assistance of the Latins. He first visited
Venice, and received a most flattering welcome, but no material help.
Borrowing a sum of money from Venetian bankers, he went on to Rome
and opened negotiations with the Vatican. It seemed to the Vatican
an excellent opportunity to convince the Greeks that the Holy Ghost
did proceed from _both_ the Father and the Son--the chief dogmatical
point at issue between the two Churches--and John hurriedly embraced
that dogma, and would have embraced any number of dogmas, in the hope
of being rewarded with an army. The reward was very meagre, however,
and, after trying a few more princes with no more success, he returned
to Venice to re-embark for the East. Then the Venetian moneylenders
detained his imperial person as a common debtor, and he appealed to
Andronicus to seize sufficient Church treasure to pay the debt.
Andronicus was enjoying his short spell of power over the shrunken
treasury during his father’s absence, and the demand was irksome. He
sent word to Venice that the clergy declined to allow him to seize
their chalices and reliquaries, and that, to his regret, he saw no
way of delivering his father from the debtors’ prison. He was a true
Paleologus: a selfish voluptuary, eager only to have the sole right
to the keys of the treasury. His younger brother Manuel, however,
professed indignation, zealously gathered funds to meet the debt, and
hastened to Venice to release his father. He _may_ have been prompted
by a sincere piety; but the natural effect of his action was that,
when John returned dolefully to the city, Manuel began to wear purple
boots, and the chances of Andronicus and Maria occupying the throne
became slender. It appeared that, the less the Empire became, the
fiercer was the struggle for it. The Turks had already reached and
taken Adrianople, and Thessalonica was now the only large town in
the possession of the Empire besides the capital. A few years later
Thessalonica went. Manuel, who governed it, and was a youth of spirit
and ambition, made a futile effort to break loose of the Turks. He was
pardoned by the Sultan Murad, but he lost Thessalonica.
After the return of John the pressure of the Turks had been evaded
by a voluntary subjection, and the Emperor of Constantinople was now
a vassal of the Sultan, holding, under his sovereign lord the Turk,
the city itself and a few thousand square miles of poverty-stricken
territory to the west of the capital. He was compelled to do homage,
and to supply a hundred soldiers, captained by one of his sons,
whenever the Sultan pleased. There was, however, still a fair revenue
from such sources as trade and port duties, and John contrived to
excite the envy of his elder son by the luxurious dinners, the choice
wines and the pretty dancing-girls, which he could still afford to
enjoy. It is enough to say that John IV., in his desolate little
Empire, contracted a very severe gout, and Andronicus was not unwilling
to run the same risk.
When, therefore, John was summoned to join the Sultan’s army in Asia,
and Andronicus was once more left in charge, the foolish and egoistical
youth made another effort to secure his father’s income. Sultan Murad
had left his son Saudgi in charge of his European possessions, and
the two princes became close friends. In 1376 the news reached the
Sultan that they had disowned their fathers and proclaimed themselves
independent sovereigns. The unhappy John was at once suspected of
collusion, though the Sultan came in time to realize that John was not
at all willing to leave the palace to his son until he was compelled
to do so. The conspiracy was soon settled. As the Sultan’s troops
approached, the two youths threw themselves in Didymoteichus, but
they were compelled to surrender. Murad put out the eyes of Saudgi,
and sent Andronicus to his father with orders to inflict the same
punishment on him, under pain of war. John directed that his sight
should be destroyed by boiling vinegar, and Andronicus was confined in
a tower near the Blachernæ palace. His son, a boy of tender years, was
punished in the same way, and Maria sadly joined them in the dreary
tower.
For two years Andronicus and Maria lamented their evil fortune in
the tower of Anemas. In the course of time it had appeared that the
blinding was not complete; Andronicus recovered the use of one eye, and
his son was merely afflicted with a squint. The Sultan Murad, moreover,
died, and Constantinople was not at all extravagantly devoted to the
ruling monarch. Andronicus therefore found a means of communicating
with the Genoese at Galata, and, with their aid, the family were
stealthily delivered from the tower and taken across the water. During
his brief rebellion Andronicus had promised the island of Tenedos to
the Genoese in return for their help, and they had, of course, no
hope of getting it from John. From Galata Andronicus made his way to
the camp of the new Sultan, and promised him several hundred pounds
of gold a year if he would lend him an army with which to attack his
father. The Turk had, as we may see presently, a large and expensive
establishment to maintain, and he accepted the bargain. Of moral or
decent feeling there seemed to be a complete absence at the time in
all parties. The troops were put under the command of the one-eyed
fugitive, and he drew cautiously near the city.
He had the good fortune to find John and Manuel, quite unsuspicious
of his approach, in a suburban palace, and the two, together with the
younger brother Theodore, were promptly lodged in the tower of Anemas,
from which Andronicus had escaped. The more thoroughgoing Sultan urged
Andronicus to put them to death, but such conduct did not become a
Christian monarch. They were entrusted to the care of a corps of
Bulgarian guards, and Andronicus and Maria mounted the gilded thrones.
But their tenure did not last more than two or three years, and we may
close the series of petty revolutions in a few words.
John and Manuel communicated with the Venetians and offered _them_ the
island of Tenedos--one of the few fragments of Empire that a Byzantine
ruler might still sell for a tawdry crown--if they would displace
Andronicus. The plot was detected in time, and the Venetians were
repulsed; though they consoled themselves with taking Tenedos. In the
third year of imprisonment, however, the Bulgarian guards were duped by
a half-witted servant named Angel, and nicknamed Devil or Devilangel,
and John and his sons escaped to Scutari and opened in their turn
a deal with the Sultan. They offered him twice the sum offered by
Andronicus. He genially sent an officer to learn _which_ monarch the
people really did prefer, and would defend, and was informed that
Manuel was the favourite. Lest one should be disposed to think Manuel
much better than the rest of the family, I may emphasize that Manuel
had offered a vast sum of money out of the poor revenue of the city,
and had promised to lead out two thousand troops every spring in the
service of the Turk, if the crown were conferred on him. It was a
sordid squabble for the last coppers of the beggared city, and it
ended in a compromise. John was to occupy the throne; Andronicus and
his son to be his heirs. A more or less royal residence was found for
Andronicus and Maria at Selymbria, and on the revenues of that and a
few other towns they contrived to maintain a tolerable state.
As soon as Andronicus had gone John crowned Manuel, in defiance of
the treaty, and sought a fitting wife for him; and his search had the
effect of bringing one more pathetic young Empress upon the scene.
John was now in his sixth decade of life, a prematurely aged and very
gouty man, hardly able to stand erect, but his sensuous nature was
not extinct. He sent to Trebizond to ask Manuel for the daughter of
the Emperor Alexis, and Eudocia Comnena, the young widow of a Turkish
noble, proved to be so beautiful that the veteran libertine decided to
marry her himself. He was not an old man; Du Cange puts the marriage,
with some reason, about the year 1380, when John would be fifty-one
years old. But he is described by the indignant chronicler as worn with
debauch and tottering with gout, and we must think lightly of the lady
who could accept his hand in order to share his crown--the crown of
imitation diamonds. We have, however, no direct knowledge of Eudocia.
She shared John’s imperial poverty for ten years, and disappeared at
his death. We are disposed to suspect her influence when we find John,
in his old age, beginning to restore the fortifications of the city in
order to prepare for the last conflict with the Turk. Sultan Bayezid
suddenly called on Manuel to appear at his Court, and then ordered John
to destroy the two marble towers he had built beside the Golden Gate,
or he would put out the eyes of Manuel. The old Emperor obeyed, and
wearily lay down to die (1391).
Andronicus had died before his father, and, by the treaty of 1381,
the crown should pass to his son John. But Manuel had been crowned
in 1384, and he determined to seize the purple. He was still in the
Court of Bayezid when the news of his father’s death came. The Turkish
monarchs now had their capital at Brusa (originally Prusa), a town
about sixty miles from Constantinople across the Sea of Marmora, which
had been famed for some centuries as a pleasure and health resort on
account of its warm springs. Here the later sultans had gathered all
the luxury which would in an earlier age have passed to Constantinople.
No imitation stones flashed from the turban or the scimitar of the
Sultan and his nobles, for he had great stores of emeralds, rubies and
diamonds; a large park sheltered curious beasts and birds from all
parts of the known world; and the quiet gardens and gorgeous halls were
enlivened by the forced song of the most beautiful boys and women that
Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and even more distant Christian
countries could supply. On this sybaritic paradise the dreaded Timour
was to fall in a few years, but in 1391 the Tartars still lingered in
the wilds, and the Turk dreamed of world-dominion. Manuel was one
mean vassal among a crowd, the captain of a hundred feudal soldiers,
in this glittering Court, and he decided to fly to Constantinople and
shut himself behind its still formidable walls. They proved worthy of
his trust, and for several years, though to the great suffering of the
inhabitants, Manuel defied the Sultan.
During the siege, apparently, Manuel married, so that an Empress shared
the straits of the long and terrible siege. She was Irene (or Helene),
the daughter of Constantine Dragases, who governed a part of Macedonia.
Irene is rarely mentioned in the scrappy and contradictory chronicles
of the time, but she is one of the few of whom we have a pictorial
representation. The miniature--found in a manuscript of the works of
Denis, the so-called Areopagite--is a very quaint, though not very
instructive, picture of Irene and Manuel and their two sons, but he
would be a bold physiognomist who would venture to make a text of the
flat and conventional features of a Byzantine portrait. Her experience
of Byzantine life was dreary. During nearly seven or eight years
(including the brief respite) the Turks swarmed round the walls of
Constantinople, and were only prevented by their lack of powerful rams
and slings--to say nothing of that new implement called a cannon, which
was just entering European warfare--from penetrating. The great areas
of desolation within the walls became more desolate, and the scanty
supplies of food sold at appalling prices. With the Sultan outside
could be seen John, the son of Andronicus, whom Bayezid affected to
consider the lawful Emperor, and, although Manuel was a brave and
humane ruler, the weary citizens were ready to acclaim John. But Manuel
received the aid of Marshal de Boucicault and two thousand men, as well
as a fleet of Venetians and Genoese, and held out stoutly until, at the
close of 1399, the appearance of Timour the Tartar in the rear of the
Sultan persuaded him to make peace. John was admitted as co-Emperor,
and an effort was made to restore the stricken city.[35]
Manuel was the finest of the later Paleologi, and, although we cannot
admire many of the steps he took to attain power, he made an excellent
effort to use it for the restoration of the Empire. It seemed to him
that his hope lay in enlisting the interest of the West against the
infidel, and he set out at once with Irene and her two children.
He left Irene in Greece, however, with his brother Theodore and
Bartholomæa, and thus no Byzantine Empress was ever seen farther west
than Greece. Manuel took ship to Italy, where very little was to be
obtained, went to Paris, where he found Charles VI. insane, and even
crossed the sea to the little island which had once sent so many
Varangians to Constantinople. This visit to England induces one of
the later Byzantine chroniclers (Chalcocondylas) to tell his readers
something of that country, and we are interested to learn that, in
the days of Henry IV., Englishmen shared their wives in common when
they travelled, and held it their first duty to offer their wives to
visitors; but he adds that London is already the greatest city of the
West, though the strange island produces no wine and its inhabitants
speak a most peculiar language.
Manuel obtained little money and few volunteers, and was returning
in dejection when he heard that Timour had routed the Turks. Only
a few years before Bayezid had received legates from Timour in his
palace at Brusa. He had disdainfully shaved them and sent them back
to their barbaric master. Then the Tartars had swept over Asia Minor,
scattered all the pretty boys and ladies of the Brusa pleasance,
and compelled John of Constantinople to transfer his alliance from
Bayezid to himself. Manuel confirmed the vassalage on his return, but
he sent John into exile and set about restoring his Empire while
the giants wore down each other’s strength. But I pass over the next
decade, during which the internal troubles of the Turks gave Manuel an
opportunity to reform and reconstruct. Our historian, Finlay, speaks
somewhat contemptuously of his work, and, able and well-intentioned as
Manuel was, it may be admitted that the work was too vast for him. In
any case we lose sight of Irene for several decades, after the return
of Manuel in 1405, and will pass at once to the next and, as far as we
know, last Empress of Constantinople.
The introduction of Maria of Trebizond is preceded by some romantic
adventures in the private life of the Court, of which the chroniclers
give us a fairly ample account. Irene had six sons, of whom the eldest,
John, married the daughter of the Grand Duke of Moscow in the year
1414. He was already twenty-four years old, and of irregular life, but
the hands of the princesses and princes of Byzantium were no longer
sought in the Courts of the world. Anna was a child of eleven years,
and we may assume that John remained with his mistresses until, three
years later, Anna was carried off by the plague. Again there seems
to have been some difficulty in finding a wife for the heir to the
throne, but in or about the year 1420 legates were sent to Italy, and
they returned with two eligible young ladies. Cleope, the beautiful
and gifted daughter of Count Malatesta of Rimini, was married to
Irene’s second son, Theodore, and went to spend an unhappy life with
that restless prince in Lacedæmonia. For John the legates had brought
Sophia, daughter of the Marquis of Montferrat, and she and her husband
at once received the imperial title.
The appearance of Sophia of Montferrat on the imperial stage was brief
and eventful. She was a tall and very graceful young woman, with
golden hair that fell to her feet, a beautiful neck and broad round
shoulders, fine arms, and hands and fingers “like crystal,” says the
chronicler. But nature had spoiled these many perfections by misshaping
her nose and giving a very careless finish to her eyes and eyebrows.
John disliked her, kept himself coldly aloof from her, and pressed
his father to send her back to Montferrat. A more chatty chronicler,
however, gives a more serious reason for John’s dislike. Sophia had
been as virtuous as she was beautiful until she came to Constantinople,
but, whether it was the taint in the atmosphere of the Court (most of
the Paleologi have natural children) or the example of her husband,
she quickly lapsed. There was a natural son of her husband about the
Court, and this youth she incited into a most unnatural relation. A
maid of the Court caught them _in flagrante delicto_ and told her
lover; and the lover informed John. By making a hole in the wall of the
bedroom John convinced himself of the truth of the story and was very
indignant. It may be stated on behalf of Sophia that, when John spoke
of the indignity to one of the Court jesters, he was reminded that he
had himself some time before stolen his son’s mistress; it is therefore
not impossible that the seduction was on the side of the youth and had
a vindictive character.
Such was the kind of life witnessed in the last ruins of the Eastern
Empire. John insisted that Sophia must go home; Manuel, possibly
conscious of the difficulty of finding alliances, was reluctant to send
her. Sophia found her position intolerable, however, and decided to run
away, with the aid of the Genoese of Galata. They moored a galley at
the foot of the imperial gardens, and Sophia, pretending to go for a
stroll in the garden with her Italian maids and young courtiers, walked
to the quay and was shipped over the water to Pera before her flight
became known. It was published in the city the next day, and there
was much buckling of arms and preparing of boats to avenge this last
outrage of the hated Genoese. Manuel was, however, now overshadowed by
his son, and Sophia was permitted to depart quietly for her home. The
chronicler adds that she was received with great honour and rejoicing
at Montferrat, and ended her days in a nunnery.
The date of Sophia’s flight and of John’s third marriage is difficult
to determine. The plainest reading of the contradictory chronicles is
that the trouble occurred in the last year of Manuel’s reign and the
flight took place a month after his death, but this is inconsistent
with the express declaration that the old Emperor intervened in the
dispute. Manuel died on 25th July 1425. For some years the ambition
of the Turk, who had quickly recovered from the heavy blows dealt
by Timour, had fully revived and had given him great anxiety. A
young Sultan, Murad II., had succeeded to the throne, and Manuel had
imprudently recognized a pretender to the succession. When the young
Sultan vigorously took the field, hanged the pretender, and drew up
under the walls of Constantinople, Manuel, now a feeble old man of
seventy-five, left the direction of affairs to John, and retired to
pursue that ardent study of the Scriptures which absorbed him in his
later years.
John abjectly apologized, but the angry Sultan ranged his machines
against the walls and proceeded to batter them. He was drawn off for
a time by the strategy of John, who had the Sultan’s brother conveyed
to Brusa and set up as Sultan, but Murad returned more angry than
ever, and one of the last earthly sounds to catch the ear of the aged
Manuel was the roar of the first cannons that seem to have appeared at
Constantinople. The diffusion of knowledge at the time may be gathered
from the fact that one of the most learned of the chroniclers, in
discussing these “bombards,” observes that he does not think they are
of very ancient origin. Before the end of the siege Manuel was warned
by an attack of apoplexy that his death was near. He donned the black
robe, became plain Brother Matthew, and died two days--not two years,
as Finlay says--afterwards, at the age of seventy-seven. Irene also
then retired from the world and became the nun Hypomene, whom we shall
later find endeavouring to settle the quarrels of her selfish children.
She remained “mistress” (_despoine_) of the Empire and watched its slow
decay with concern.
John was able, after the death of his father, to obtain peace from the
Sultan at the price of a heavy annual subsidy, and the Empire entered
upon its last quarter of a century of melancholy decay. Long years
of effort had taught the sultans that their siege engines were not
powerful enough to crack the heavy shell in which earlier Emperors had
enclosed the city, and they were content to hold it in vassalage and
draw a large tribute from its sinking revenue. The time had gone by for
the last serious effort to save the Empire. Its trade had passed to
the Italians, and of the provinces from which it had so long extorted
its rich supply of gold there now remained only a few towns to the
west of Constantinople, a part of the Peloponnesus, and Thessalonica
(which would soon be sold to Venice for fifty thousand gold coins). The
metropolis, therefore, continued to shrink within its eighteen-mile
enclosure, and, as a severe pestilence fell on the inhabitants for the
last time in 1431, they were reduced to something like one hundred
thousand, instead of the million they had once been.
It was over this dismal little Empire that the last Empress, Maria
of Trebizond, was called to preside. Whether the flight of Sophia
came before or after the death of Manuel, John V., who succeeded
his father, soon found it necessary to seek a bride. He married,
in 1427, the daughter of Alexis of Trebizond, a handsome woman of
excellent character, and we are fortunate enough to have a short
description, from the pen of a French knight, of Maria and her desolate
surroundings. Bertrandon de la Brocquière made a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, and returned through Constantinople in the year 1432. The plague
had ravaged it in the previous year, and Bertrandon sympathetically
refers to the broad spaces of ruin that half filled the enclosure
within the walls. He notes that the Greeks are still busy with their
processions, religious and imperial, and that they still cherish in
their churches such important relics as the pillar at which Christ was
scourged, the board on which his body was laid out, the gridiron on
which St Lawrence had been martyred, and the stone on which Abraham had
offered food to his angel visitors. Apparently the credentials of these
relics had not been imposing enough to convince Western purchasers,
indulgent as they were.[36]
When the knight heard that the Empress was about to proceed to St
Sophia, and on to the Blachernæ palace, he went to the square to see
the procession. We know what the spectacle would have been at an
earlier date. First would come a corps of Excubitors or Varangians,
with shining axes and gold accoutrements, clearing a way through the
crowd. Then a regiment of pale-faced eunuchs, their leaders dressed
in white silk and glittering with jewels, would precede a large body
of maids and dames, from foreign slaves to the greatest ladies of the
Empire, more superbly dressed than most of the queens of Europe. And
lastly would come the gold-plated, gem-encrusted litter, drawn by four
white horses, possibly with one of the highest nobles in Europe at the
rein of each, the Empress sitting stiffly in her gold-cloth tunic,
over which spread the mantle of purple silk with deep embroidered
edges, and, if it were a solemn occasion, a massive domed crown on her
head, from which large diamonds and pearls fell in long chains to her
shoulders. Very different was the spectacle witnessed by Bertrandon de
la Brocquière. Maria’s suite consisted of two ladies, three eunuchs,
and three aged ministers. With this poor escort she was to drive the
several miles of road to the Blachernæ palace. She wore a high hat
(probably a silk-covered mitre) with three golden plumes, and she had
broad flat rings, set with a few jewels, in her ears. She was young
and fair; “I should not,” says the pilgrim, “have had a fault to find
with her had she not been painted, and assuredly she had not any need
of it.” The paint seems to have been the one surviving portion of the
luxurious inheritance of the Empresses of Constantinople.
Maria was a woman of tame and mediocre, if faultless, character, and,
as her husband was weak and incompetent, the miserable Empire lay
helplessly awaiting the end. Patriotism was an extinct virtue. “The
absence of truth, honour and patriotism,” says Finlay, “among the
Greek aristocracy during the last century of the Eastern Empire is
almost without a parallel in history.” The Western Empire had, even in
its last years, had its Symmachus, its Prætextatus and its Flavianus.
Irene’s sons could do no more than quarrel for their selfish interests
in the ruins. Andronicus, who had charge of Thessalonica, which was
restored to the Greeks for a time, sold it to Venice, and went to enjoy
his fortune in the Peloponnesus. In that last fragment of the Empire
Theodore and Constantine were on the verge of civil war owing to the
clash of their petty ambitions. There seemed to be no resource in the
East, and John, leaving the city in charge of his wife and mother, went
to make a last appeal to his fellow-Christians of the West to stem the
Mohammedan tide. It was now clear that the Greek Church would, as the
price of assistance, have to surrender its independence to the papacy,
and John took with him the patriarch and his bishops.
It may be read in history how, at the Councils of Ferrara (1438) and
Florence (1439), the Greek bishops abandoned the positions they had
fiercely maintained for so many centuries against the Western Church
and, with one exception, signed the Roman claims. I will add from
the Byzantine writers only that, whatever arguments were discussed
in open Council, and however pressing the need of the Empire, it was
a secret and generous payment of gold to the Byzantine bishops which
finally convinced them. They bargained, like Syrian pedlars, for their
signature. It may also be read in history how John returned in deep
dejection to his mother. Instead of the promised fleet, the Pope had
given him only two galleys and three hundred men and a very moderate
sum of money. His wife, Maria, had died during his absence; the Sultan
was pressing for an explanation of this visit to Italy; and the people
and lower clergy of Constantinople were infuriated at the surrender of
their spiritual independence, and were now treacherously joined by the
corrupt bishops, who had signed the decrees. John wearily sustained the
attack, assuring the Sultan that he had visited Italy only in order to
discuss certain details of the Christian faith, and secretly pressing
the Pope and the Western monarchs to fulfil their promises.
Hypomene, now an aged and venerable lady, sadly watched the struggle of
her sons, and endeavoured to curb their selfish tempers. Demetrius, her
youngest son, recollected that he, unlike John, had been “born in the
Porphyra,” and disputed the shaking throne of his brother. He gathered
about him a ragged army of Turks and looted whatever was left of the
suburbs beyond the walls, until his force melted away on account of the
poverty of the plunder, and he consented to be reconciled. Theodore,
the second son, complained that he had not enough income to maintain
his state in the town of Selymbria, which he governed, and he demanded
a share of John’s. It was refused, and he in turn was about to lead
troops against the capital when John, in his fifty-eighth year, was
removed by a greater power (31st October 1448) from the scene of his
troubles.
No one even now suspected that the next Emperor would be the last--that
in five years the crescent would glitter over the imperial palaces--and
the struggle for the throne broke out afresh. Demetrius alone was
in the city when John died, and he noisily renewed his claim to the
purple, but his character was too well known for him to find serious
adherents. His mother united with the citizens in preventing him
from succeeding, and they sent legates to ask the Sultan to allow
Constantine, the ablest of the brothers, to be crowned. He had
lately been opposed to the Sultan, but permission was given, and to
his “despotate” at Sparta the legates were sent with the imperial
ensigns. Constantinople did not even enjoy a last coronation, as the
new Emperor was crowned at Sparta (6th January 1449) and would not
have the ceremony repeated. He favoured the union of the Churches. He
reached Constantinople in March, and the royal brothers gathered in
the presence of Hypomene and such nobles as Constantinople could still
boast to swear resonant oaths of peace and loyalty.
Constantine had been twice married and widowed when, in his early
forties, he ascended the throne. His first wife, Theodora, daughter
of the Count of Tocco, had died in 1429; his second wife, Catharine,
daughter of Notaras Paleologus, had died in 1443, two years after her
marriage. There were no children of either marriage, and Constantine
made it one of his first duties to provide a third wife and an heir to
the throne. The historian Phrantzes was entrusted with this delicate
mission, and he set out from Constantinople with an escort which,
it was thought, would impress the King of Iberia and the Emperor of
Trebizond, to whom he was sent. It was, as he describes it, a weird
mixture of monks, musicians and medical men; their baggage consisted
mainly of musical instruments, instead of the superb robes and plate
that an earlier escort might have taken, and Phrantzes says that
they did impress and astonish the foreign Courts. But they were
unfortunately wrecked on the way to Iberia, a country between the
Black Sea and the Caspian, and seem to have been detained for nearly
two years by lack of funds; and they then discovered that the King of
Iberia expected a gift _for_ his daughter, instead of presenting one
_with_ her, and returned unsuccessful to Constantinople.
In the meantime--apparently on 23rd March 1450--Hypomene had brought
to a close her long and troubled life. With her death the series of
Empresses of Constantinople comes to an end, but their story cannot be
intelligibly concluded without a glance at the great catastrophe which,
three years later, swept away the tottering thrones and made an end of
Christian Byzantium.
The Sultan Murad II., who had so long looked with indulgent eye on the
remnant of the Byzantine Empire, died in 1451. His son and successor,
Mohammed II., was a young man of twenty-one years: a very able, highly
cultivated and extremely ambitious young prince. To him the existence
of this Christian island, the city of Constantinople, in the ocean of
Mohammedan conquest was an intolerable anomaly. The Turks had long
since carried the crescent over what we now call Turkey in Europe, and
it was only by sea that Constantinople could communicate directly with
the other Christian powers. To put an end to this Christian avenue into
the heart of his dominion and make the great city the capital of the
Mohammedan world was the early ambition of Mohammed II. Probably every
sultan for a hundred years or more had desired this, but their siege
machinery had hitherto proved incapable of shattering the stout old
walls of that city.
Constantine XI. underrated the young Sultan, and very soon gave him a
pretext for an attack. Mohammed had signed a truce with the Hungarians,
and gone to settle certain disturbances in his Asiatic dominions, when
he received a most insolent and offensive message from Constantinople.
He must at once increase the pension of Prince Orkhan (the nephew of
Suleiman, then living in retirement at Constantinople), or else the
Greeks will consider Orkhan’s claim to the Turkish throne. It was the
last blunder of the Paleologi. Mohammed courteously heard and dismissed
the legates, and proceeded to pacify his Asiatic province. Constantine
had grossly failed to appreciate the young Sultan’s character. After
his coronation at Adrianople his Christian vassals--the Emperors of
Trebizond and Constantinople, the Duke of Athens, etc.--had hastened
to do homage, and had seen only an accomplished, amiable and, in
private life, vicious young man, from whom they had little to fear.
Shortly afterwards the Court at Constantinople was alarmed to hear that
a large army of Turkish workmen had arrived at a spot on the Asiatic
coast only five miles from the city, and were, with great rapidity,
building a powerful fort which would command the entrance to the Black
Sea. Constantine sent a protest; Mohammed disdainfully replied that he
would do as he liked in his own dominions. In time the Turkish soldiers
of the district fell to quarrels with Constantine’s subjects, and the
Emperor, ordering the gates of the city to be closed, demanded some
recompense. Mohammed at once declared war, and went to Adrianople to
concentrate his forces and gather a more powerful armament than his
predecessors had used. The value of powder was now realized, and,
although they were crude objects of only moderate effectiveness,
immense cannons, which could throw stone balls weighing more than a
hundred pounds, were associated with the old rams and slings and towers.
Constantine quickly realized the gravity of his position, and
made every effort to patch the fortifications, enlist troops and
provision the town. An urgent appeal was sent to Italy, and hundreds
of volunteers and adventurers were attracted; though the Pope was
still mainly concerned about the recognition of his supremacy, and
sent a cardinal who distracted the doomed city with fierce religious
controversy. When the hour came, Constantine found that barely six
thousand Greeks could be induced to enlist in the last defence of their
city, and these, with other two or three thousand Italians, had to hold
fifteen miles of wall, with many gates, against seventy thousand Turks
and three hundred vessels.
On 12th December 1452 the church of St Sophia rang with its last
great Christian celebration, the solemn union of the Latin and Greek
Churches, the price of that secular aid which was destined never to
arrive. Four months later the vanguard of the Turks was descried from
the walls, and day by day the endless regiments and engines of attack
and the monstrous cannons came from the line of the horizon and took up
their stations. For a time the spirits of the besieged were maintained
by those little successes which so often precede a great catastrophe.
Four large Italian ships had fought their way through the Turkish
fleet and brought provisions: Mohammed’s biggest gun had burst: a
general attack of the enemy had been repulsed. But the incessant rain
of projectiles made at last a ghastly breach in the stout wall, and
on 29th May, before dawn, the dreaded Janissaries flung themselves at
the defenders. The last of the Paleologi died like a man. Later in the
day the victorious Turks swept over his body and the bodies of some
thousands of his people, and the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire
was swallowed up in the Mohammedan tide. And the relics of its culture
passed westward and, meeting and blending with the humanism of the
later Middle Ages, begot the new man and new woman of the Renaissance,
the heralds of modern times.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Readers of Professor Bury’s incomplete “History of the Later
Roman Empire” may wonder that I continue to use the phrase “Byzantine
Empire” after Bury’s protest against that phrase. But it seems to me
that if “Roman Empire” means an Empire centred in Rome, “Byzantine
Empire” is the most congruous name for a dominion that centres in
ancient Byzantium and has, during the far greater part of its story, no
connexion whatever with Rome. Most historians continue to speak of it
as Byzantine.
[2] See, especially, J. Ebersolt, “Le Grand Palais de Constantinople.”
1910.
[3] There was no hereditary right to the throne in the Roman Empire,
though a father generally contrived to secure it for his son. “Born in
the purple” is, by the way, an inaccurate description of the imperial
children, though not uncommon. They were “born in the Porphyra,” or
porphyry-lined palace; but, as the Greek word _porphura_ properly means
“purple,” it is mistranslated at times. There are those who maintain
that the imperial colour was rather red than what we know as purple.
[4] The date of the marriage is much disputed. Chroniclers assign it to
various years, and, when the son of Ariadne and Zeno mounts the throne,
he is variously described as an infant, a boy of seven, and a youth of
seventeen. Professor Bury puts the marriage in 458 or 459. I prefer
the estimate of Tillemont, that it took place in 468, the year of the
disgrace of Basiliscus.
[5] It is a popular fallacy, as we shall frequently see, that the
Romans had abandoned these bloody spectacles in the days of Honorius.
[6] See, especially, the work of Débidour, “L’Impératrice Théodora,”
and a summary and approval of Débidour’s arguments in an article by
Mr Mallett in _The English Historical Review_, January 1887. Mr W. G.
Holmes’s learned work, “The Age of Justinian and Theodora” (2 vols.,
1907), is much too meagre in its references to Theodora.
[7] See the Latin translation (“Commentarii de Beatis Orientalibus”) by
Douwen and Land of this Syriac work (Amsterdam, 1889). John also speaks
of her as “a most astute woman,” and, although his work teems with the
immense services done to his Church by Theodora, he never mentions her
with more than stiff and formal respect.
[8] It is necessary to explain to the unfamiliar the “factions”
of the Hippodrome. In the chariot contests the rival drivers were
distinguished by their colours: white, red, blue and green. The white
and red were of little account, but the blue and green divided the
populace of Constantinople into bitterly hostile parties or “factions.”
These parties were almost in the nature of sporting clubs: they were
publicly recognized, and had their own premises, chariots, beasts,
officers, etc. We shall find the fate of dynasties almost turning at
times on the struggle of the “blues” and “greens.”
[9] This conversation (preserved in Theophanes) is sometimes described
as a free discharge of invectives against Justinian, and surprise is
expressed that the character of his wife is not included. The dialogue
is not at all a general attack on Justinian. It is, for the most part,
a sober and earnest demand of justice, and contains only one insulting
line--possibly an isolated cry of some more impetuous member of the
party.
[10] I have passed in silence an earlier charge against Theodora
in the “Anecdotes.” The Gothic queen Amalasuntha had appealed to
Justinian, and Theodora is said to have sent an officer to cause her
to be assassinated, lest her great beauty should seduce the Emperor.
Procopius gives a different version of the murder of Amalasuntha in his
“Gothic War,” and we have no serious reason to involve Theodora.
[11] Shorthand (_notatio_) was, of course, familiar to the Romans and
daily practised. It may not be superfluous to add that the dignity of
Cæsar was a semi-imperial rank conferred usually on sons or possible
successors of the Emperor, or King (_basileus_), as the eastern Romans
came to call their monarch.
[12] It should be noted that the organized factions were not nearly
so large as these incidents suggest. When Maurice had wished to arm
them against the usurper, he found that the blues numbered only nine
hundred, and the greens fifteen hundred. The entire population was
about a million.
[13] See Pernice’s “L’Imperatore Eraclio,” 1905, p. 25.
[14] Professor Bury gives his age as twenty-three, and assumes that
he was born in 615, but Nicephorus places his birth in the second
Persian campaign (623). The first son of Martina had died. His name (or
nickname) is spelt either Heraclonas or Heracleonas.
[15] The readers of Gibbon may often notice that words or speeches
quoted here differ materially from corresponding quotations in the
great historian. The reason is that Gibbon invariably paraphrases such
quotations. They are in this work translated literally from the Greek
chroniclers.
[16] I have not been able to consult this interesting “Life of
St Philaretus,” and am quoting Diehl’s admirable work, “Figures
Byzantines.”
[17] A monk of this monastery, Theodore of Studium, has left us a
number of letters and works, though they give little satisfaction
to the profane historian. One letter, however, is addressed to the
ex-Empress Maria, and we learn from it that her daughter, or one of her
daughters (Euphrosyne and Irene), pressed her to come and live in her
palace. Theodore sternly forbids her to return to that world of sin.
[18] Finlay rejects the story on the ground that Theodora could not
possibly have made her husband believe that sacred images were dolls
for her children. But that is not the story; Theodora denied that she
had any dolls at all.
[19] The mystery of the children of Theophilus is yet unsolved. Michael
was born, of Theodora, about 828, and we know that another boy, named
Constantine, was born. But the five daughters--Thecla, Anna, Anastasia,
Pulcheria and Maria--are a puzzle, to which the wretched Byzantine
chroniclers give us no clue. They make Thecla, the eldest, a gay and
dissolute woman thirty years afterwards, and they marry Maria, the
youngest, about 832; while they speak of the whole of them as young
girls, playing with their grandmother’s dolls, about the time when the
youngest of them marries Alexius. It is frequently suggested that they
were the daughters of an earlier wife of Theophilus, but this is hardly
consistent with the later gaiety of Thecla (down to 868) or the doll
story; nor, although we do not know the exact age of Theophilus, can
we easily admit that he had been married for twenty years--which is
necessary to make Maria fifteen in 832--before he chose Theodora under
the guidance of his stepmother.
[20] “Zwei Griechische Texte über die H. Theophano,” edited by E.
Kurtz, in the “Mémoires de l’Academie Impériale de St Petersbourg,”
viii. series, vol 3. Unfortunately, the legendary and partisan
character of the essays compels us to use them with discretion. I have
also taken much from the Greek life of the patriarch Euthymius, and
have been much helped by the notes of its editor, de Boor.
[21] The mixture of palaces and monasteries may cause some perplexity.
The explanation is that for a long time it was a pious and very common
custom of wealthy Constantinopolitans to ensure prayers for their soul
by leaving their palaces to the monks, and even converting them into
monasteries before they died, so as to die in the ranks of the monks.
We shall find the next Emperor checking this practice, to the great
anger of the monks.
[22] G. Schlumherger. “Un Empereur Byzantin au Dixième Siècle.” (1890);
a very fine and ample study of Byzantine life.
[23] Basil was a natural son of Romanus I. and a Russian (or else
Bulgarian) slave. It is a curious mistake on the part of Gibbon, and
even of Schlumberger, to confuse the Basil whom she belaboured with her
own son Basil.
[24] In point of fact, a writer of the time, Michael Atteliates, says
that he had no wife. Flach (“Die Kaiserin Eudokia,” 1876) seems to have
overlooked this authority.
[25] Until recent years Eudocia was, as one reads in Gibbon, reputed to
have been the authoress of “Ionia,” but later writers have shown that
this was an error. She undoubtedly wandered in the fields of letters
and philosophy under the guidance of Psellus, and seems to have written
a little.
[26] _Sebastos_ is the Greek equivalent of the Latin _Augustus_. It
must not be forgotten that, while I continue to use the words “Emperor”
and “Empress,” they were now more commonly called “King” and “Queen,”
“Lord” and “Lady,” or “Master” and “Mistress.”
[27] Since the princess, or Cæsaress, has her apologists, if not
admirers, this may seem a hasty judgment. It is based simply on her
narrative, controlled by the accounts of other chroniclers. The last
pages of her history are superb in their mendacity, and she commonly
suppresses or perverts the facts. For the difficulties of her father’s
position, and the great services he rendered to the Empire, which must
be put in the scale against his duplicity and fraud, I must send the
reader to historians.
[28] One or two remarks on the novel may not be without interest. It is
far the weakest of Scott’s historical romances. Byzantine antiquities
were little known in England at the time when it was written, and the
great novelist is reduced to a meagreness or inaccuracy of detail which
places the story in unfavourable contrast to his Scottish romances,
and he is forced to admit countless anachronisms. Anna Comnena was
only thirteen years old at the time, and did not begin to write her
“Alexiad” until twenty or thirty years later. The golden birds and
lions, also, which Scott puts beside the imperial throne, had been
melted down by Michael the Drunkard two hundred years before. I mention
these features only because Scott is usually so conscientious, even in
romance.
[29] It may be well to repeat that the neater phrase in Gibbon is an
artistic paraphrase, not a translation, of the original Greek.
[30] “Typicum, sive Regula, Irenes Augustæ,” published by the
Benedictines of St Maur in their “Analecta Græca” (1688).
[31] The marriage of Alexis is placed by Finlay in 1178, but William of
Tyre, who was in Constantinople at the time, says that it took place in
the year of the death of Louis VII. and of Manuel. Nicetas also says
that Anna was “not quite eleven” when she married Andronicus (in 1183)
and “not quite eight” when she married Alexis.
[32] Finlay, following Nicephorus Gregoras, wrongly says that Theodore
had left “no son” to inherit the purple. George Acropolites, the better
authority, says that he left “no mature son.” The son of Philippa
was eight years old, and seems to have lived under the cloud of his
mother’s disgrace.
[33] This lady is sometimes named Markesina, but the term is merely a
Greek attempt to speak of her as “the Marchioness.” Her real name is
unknown.
[34] Finlay declines to regard the dominion which was re-established by
the Greeks in 1261 as “the Byzantine Empire.” But as there had never
been any dynastic continuity, and as “Byzantine Empire” merely means an
empire which has its seat in Constantinople, or ancient Byzantium (the
name still commonly given to the city by its own writers), I see no
reason to discard the phrase.
[35] Manuel’s younger brother, Theodore, was never crowned and had
been crushed by the Sultan, so that his beautiful wife, Bartholomæa,
daughter of the Duke of Athens, does not enter our list; and as
Bartholomæa had no children (though her husband had several) there was
no complication of the new arrangement to be feared from that side.
[36] Bertrandon’s interesting narrative may be read in English in T.
Wright’s “Early Travels in Palestine.”
INDEX
A
Acacius, 25
Æcatherina, 181
Aetius, 98
Agapetus, 40
Agnes, wife of Henry of Flanders, 257
“Alexiad,” the, 208, 216
Alexis II., 226, 233
Alexis III., 246, 248, 250
Alexis Angelus, 240–249, 251, 253
Alexis Comnenus, 198, 199, 200, 202–215
Alexius, 93, 94
Amalasuntha, 43
Amantius, 21, 22
Anastasia (Ino), 57, 60, 62, 63
Anastasia, wife of Constantine IV., 81, 83
Anastasius, 19, 21
Andronicus, 220, 227, 228–236
Andronicus II., 272–274, 276–295, 297
Andronicus III., 290, 292, 295–301
Andronicus IV., 318, 319, 320–322
Andronicus Paleogogus, 259
Anna Comnena, the elder, 197, 198, 199, 200–206
Anna Comnena, the younger, 192, 198, 199, 200, 207, 213, 216
Anna of Hungary, 276
Anna of Moscow, 326
Anna of Savoy, 298–316
Anna, wife of Alexis II., 224, 234, 236, 249
Anna, wife of Theodore Lascaris, 255, 256, 258
Anna, wife of Vatatzes, 261, 268
Anthemius, 11, 15
Anthimus, 40, 46
Antonina, 31, 41, 43, 45, 49
Apocaucus, 291, 301, 302, 305, 306
Ariadne, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18–20
Arsenius, 33
Arsenius the Patriarch, 269
Artabanes, 50
Asper, 1, 2, 9
Athalaric, 75
Augusteum, the, 4
B
Baldwin of Flanders, 248, 252, 257
Bardas, 111, 113, 115, 117
Bardas, brother of Xiphilin, 184
Basil the Chamberlain, 155, 156
Basil the Macedonian, 117, 118, 120–123
Basil, son of Romanus I., 115
Basil II., 158
Basiliscus, 9, 12, 13, 14
Bassus, 48
Bayezid, Sultan, 323, 324
Belisarius, 28, 31, 40, 49
Bertha, wife of Romanus II., 139
Bertrandon de la Brocquière, 329
Bigleniza, 22
Blachernæ Palace, the, 110
Blues, the, 26, 36
Bogomilians, the, 211
Bohemund, 209, 211
Boniface of Montferrat, 252, 255
Bucoleon Palace, the, 150, 151
Buza, 49
C
Candidates, the, 5
Casia, 107
Cathara, 290
Catherine Paleologina, 333
Chalcedon, Council of, 92
Chalke, the, 5
Charito, 58, 61
Charlemagne, 90, 92, 98
Christopher, 137, 138
Cleope of Rimini, 326
Comitona, 26, 31
Consistorium, the, 5
Constans II., 81
Constantina, 58, 62, 65, 66
Constantine, brother of Andronicus II., 273, 274, 275, 296
Constantine Catepano, 175
Constantine Copronymus, 83, 85, 86
Constantine Delassenus, 160, 168, 175
Constantine Ducas, 182, 183
Constantine the Paphlagonian, 130, 133
Constantine IV., 81
Constantine VI., 87, 89, 93, 95, 96, 97
Constantine, brother of Michael IV., 171, 173, 174
Constantine Monomachos, 176–180
Constantine Porphyrogenitus (VII)., 129, 131, 138, 141
Constantine XI., 333, 334–336
Constantinople, 3
Constantinople captured by Latins, 251
Constantinople captured by Turks, 336
Constantinople recovered by Greeks, 267
Corippus, 53
Crusaders, the, 208, 210, 218, 221, 247
D
Daphne, 6, 8
Demetrius, 284
Demetrius, son of John VI., 332
Denderis, 109
Drizibion, 150
E
Eclipses, Greek view of, 260
Elpidius, 90
Epiphania Eudocia, 75
Eudocia Comnena, 322
Eudocia, daughter of Constantine VIII., 158
Eudocia Decopolitana, 114
Eudocia Ingerina, 114, 116, 118, 119, 120
Eudocia Macrembolitissa, 182, 183–194, 199
Eudocia, mistress of Andronicus, 220, 227, 228
Eudocia, sister of Andronicus II., 280
Eudocia, wife of Constantine V., 84
Eudocia, wife of Heraclius, 69, 70
Eudocia, wife of Leo VI., 127
Eudocia, wife of Murtzuphlus, 250–251, 253–254
Eudocia, wife of Theodosius, viii
Eudoxia, viii
Eulogia, 263, 265, 266, 271, 272
Euphemia, 21, 22, 29
Euphrosyne Ducæna, 240, 244–255
Euphrosyne, wife of Michael II., 106, 107
Euthymius, 127, 128, 130
Evagrius, 47, 53
Excubitors, the, 5
F
Fabia, 68
G
George Paleologus, 202, 204
George of Pisidia, 72
Germanus, 49, 55
Greens, the, 26, 36
Gregoria Anastasia, 78
Gryllus, 118
H
Harmatius, 13, 14, 15
Hecebolus, 27
Helen of Bulgaria, 261, 262
Helen, wife of John V., 305, 309, 312–315, 318
Helena, daughter of Constantine VIII., 158
Helena, wife of Constantine VII., 134, 137, 138, 141
Heraclius, 67, 68, 69, 70–76
Heraclius Constantine, 69, 72, 73, 76, 78
Heraclonas, 73, 75, 76, 79
Hieria Palace, the, 30
Hippodrome, the, 3, 25, 26
Hormisdas Palace, the, 30, 33, 34
Hypatius, 38
Hypomene, 328, 332, 333
I
Iconoclasts, the, 85, 86, 90, 91, 111
Illus, 14, 16, 17, 18
Ino, 57, 58, 59, 60
“Ionia,” the, 186
Irene of Brunswick, 288, 297
Irene of Montferrat, 276–286
Irene Paleologina, 313, 314
Irene, wife of Alexis Comnenus, 198, 202, 203, 204, 207–215
Irene, wife of Cantacuzenus, 304, 309, 310, 311–316
Irene, wife of John, 283
Irene, wife of John Comnenus, 216
Irene, wife of Leo IV., 84, 85–100
Irene, wife of Manuel I., 220, 221
Irene, wife of Manuel III., 324, 325, 328
Irene, wife of Vatatzes, 259–261
Isaac Angelus (II.), 235, 238, 246, 249
Isaac Comnenus, 181, 197
J
Joannina, 50
John Camateros, 221
John Cantacuzenus, 291, 296, 301–318
John Comnenus, 213, 214, 215–219
John Ducas, 187, 189, 191, 197
John of Cappodocia, 42, 43, 44
John of Constantinople, 112, 113
John of Ephesus, 24, 29
John the Eunuch, 162, 164, 166, 168, 171
John the Fat, 246
John Vatatzes, 259–262
John Zimiskes, 145, 152
John V., 305, 309, 310–315, 318–323
John VI., 265, 267, 268, 269, 326, 328, 329
Joseph Bringas, 143, 144, 145, 146
Joseph the Patriarch, 270
Julius Nepos, 11
Justin, 22, 28, 29
Justin II., 52, 54, 56–59
Justina, 49
Justinian, 23, 24, 25, 28–29, 37, 38, 43, 48, 53
Justinian II., 81, 82, 83
K
Kathisma, the, 4, 54
L
Leo Phocas, 133, 134
Leo the Armenian, 104, 106
Leo Sgurus, 253
Leo the Deacon, 143
Leo the Isaurian, 2, 6, 10
Leo IV., 84, 85, 86, 88
Leo VI., 120, 121, 123–131
Leontia, wife of Marcian, 11, 15, 16
Leontia, wife of Phocas, 64, 65, 67, 68
Leontius, 17, 18
Liberatus, 24, 40
M
Magnaura Palace, the, 6, 109
Manuel I., 219, 220, 222–225
Manuel Paleologus, 288, 289
Manuel, uncle of St Theodora, 111, 115
Manuel III., 319, 321, 322, 323–328
Maria, daughter of Eulogia, 271
Maria, daughter of Manuel I., 225, 226, 227, 231, 232
Maria of Armenia, 280, 287–297
Maria of Trebizond, 318, 320, 321, 322, 326, 329–332
Maria, wife of Constantine VI., 93, 95, 96
Maria, wife of Isaac Angelus, 238, 239, 248, 252, 255
Maria, wife of Leo, 83, 84
Maria, wife of Manuel I., 223
Maria, wife of Michael VI., 192, 193, 194, 199, 200, 203, 204
Maria, wife of Theodore Lascaris, 259
Maraptica, 236
Marcian, 1, 2
Martha Paleologina, 264, 265, 271
Martina, 70–80
Martinacius, 121, 125
Mary, wife of Baldwin, 257
Maurice, 62, 63, 64
Melisend, 222, 223
Mese, the, 4
Methodius, 112
Michael I., 102, 103
Michael II., 104, 105
Michael III., the Drunkard, 110, 111, 113–118
Michael IV., 164, 165, 166–170
Michael V., the Caulker, 170, 171, 173, 174
Michael VI., 188, 189, 191, 193, 199
Michael Angelus, 254
Michael Cathara, 290, 291
Michael Paleologus, 263–272
Michael Psellus, 159, 163, 165, 177, 186
Mohammed II., 334
Monophysites, the, 13, 20, 32, 40, 79
Morality of the Eastern Empire, 136–137
Murad, Sultan, 320, 321
Murad II., 328, 334
Muzalon, 264
Murtzuphlus, 250–252
N
Nicephoritzes, 191, 192, 194
Nicephorus Blemmydas, 262
Nicephorus Botaneiates, 194, 195, 196, 200
Nicephorus Bryennius, 179, 181, 213
Nicephorus Diogenes, 208
Nicephorus Melissenus, 205
Nicephorus Phocas, 143, 144, 145, 146–153
Nicephorus, son of Eudocia, 87, 95
Nicholas the Patriarch, 127, 128, 130
Nikin, Bishop of, 79
O
Oath, the, at Constantinople, 168, 169
P
Palace, the Imperial, 4
Palamism, 307, 311
Patricius, 11, 13
Paul, 9
Pepin the Frank, 84
Peter Barsymes, 48
Philagrius, 28, 79
Philaretus, St., 92
Philippa of Antioch, 230, 233
Phocas, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68
Photius, son of Antonina, 45
Phrantzes, 333
Polyeuctes, 144, 146, 147, 148
Porphyra, the, 8
Porphyrogenitus, 8
Priscus, 67, 69
Procopia, wife of Michael, 102, 103
Procopius, 23, 24, 25
Pulcheria, viii, 1
Pyrrhus, 77, 79
R
Raymond of Tripoli, 222
Relics at Constantinople, 169, 170, 258
Robert Guiscard, 207
Romanus I., 132, 133, 134, 137
Romanus II., 139, 141, 142, 143
Romanus Argyrus (III.), 161, 163, 165, 166
Romanus Diogenes, 184–191
S
Samonas, 127, 129, 130
Saudgi, 320
Scholarians, the, 5
Scott, Sir Walter, 208
Sclerena, 176, 177, 178
Sergius, 70, 76
Shorthand in ancient times, 56
Silverius, 40, 41
Simonides, 277, 280, 281, 284, 285
Sir Janni, 291, 293, 297, 300
Solomon’s Throne, 109
Sophia, 52–63
Sophia of Montferrat, 326–328
Stauracius, 88, 89, 91, 94, 98
St Daniel Stylites, 8
Strategopulina, 274
St Simeon, 33
St Sophia, church of, 4, 38, 39, 47
St Stephen, church of, 6
Stylianus Zautzes, 122, 123
Synadenus, 200
T
Tarasius, 91, 96
Tartars, the, 324, 325
Thecla, daughter of Theophilus, 110, 117, 119
Thecla, wife of Michael II., 106
Theoclistos, 110, 115
Theodora, daughter of Constantine VIII., 158, 199–162, 173–180
Theodora, mistress of Manuel I., 220, 223
Theodora Paleologina, 301, 305
Theodora, St, 101, 106–119
Theodora of Tocco, 333
Theodora, wife of Baldwin III., 230, 231
Theodora, wife of Justinian, 8, 21, 23, 26, 27, 28–51
Theodora, wife of Justinian II., 82, 83
Theodora, wife of Michael Paleologus, 263, 265, 268, 269–275
Theodora, wife of Romanus, 137
Theodora, wife of Zimiskes, 155
Theodore, Abbot, 122, 123, 124
Theodore Guniazitza, 126
Theodore Lascaris, 256, 258
Theodore Synadenus, 291
Theodosia, wife of Leo, 104, 105
Theodosius, 41
Theodosius, son of Maurice, 62, 63, 64, 65
Theodote, 95, 96, 97, 98
Theophanes, 113
Theophano, St, 121, 122, 123
Theophano, wife of Romanus II., 140–157
Theophano, wife of Stauracius, 102
Theophilus, 106–110
Theophobos, 110
Tiberius, 56, 58, 61, 62
Trascallisseus, 9
Tribonian, 52
Triclinon, the, 7
Tzantzes, 125
V
Valentine, 28, 79
Verina, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12–18
Vigilius, 40, 42
X
Xene, 289, 294
Xiphilin, 183, 184
Y
Yolande, 258
Z
Zeno, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19
Zenonis, 12, 13, 14
Zoe Carbonopsina, 128–135
Zoe, daughter of Constantine VIII., 158, 159–178
Zoe, daughter of Zautzes, 122, 124, 126
Zonarus, 24
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaired quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unpaired.
Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been collected and
moved to precede the Index.
The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
references.
Page 106: A duplicate image was removed; the correct one remains,
following page 138.
Page 116: The appearance of the transcription of Greek in the
illustration will vary according to the fonts installed on your reading
device.
Page 315: “Two large triremes (galleys with two banks of oars)” was
printed that way; should be either “biremes” or “three banks”.
Footnote 22 (originally on page 143): “G. Schlumherger” should be
“G. Schlumberger”.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Empresses of Constantinople" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.