CHAPTER II

 

THE REIGNS OF NICEPHORUS I, MICHAEL I, AND LEO V THE ARMENIAN.

A.D. 802-820

 

Sect. I

THE REIGN OF NICEPHORUS I

 

 

NICEPHORUS held the office of grand logathetes, or treasurer, when he dethroned Irene. He was born at Seleucia, in Pisidia, of a family which claimed descent from the Arabian kings. His ancestor Djaballah, the Christian monarch of Ghassan in the time of Heraclius, abjured the allegiance of the Roman Empire, and embraced the Mohammedan religion. He carried among the stern and independent Moslems the monarchical pride and arrogance of a vassal court. As he was performing the religious rites of the pilgrimage in the mosque at Mecca, an Arab accidentally trod on his cloak; Djaballah, enraged that a king should be treated with so little respect, struck the careless Arab in the face, and knocked out some of his teeth. The justice of the Caliph Omar knew no distinction of persons, and the king of Ghassan was ordered to make satisfactory reparation to the injured Arab, or submit to the law of retaliation. The monarch's pride was so deeply wounded by this sentence that he fled to Constantinople, and renounced the Mohammedan religion. From this king the Arabs, who paid the most minute attention to genealogy, allow that Nicephorus was lineally descended.

The leading features of the reign of Nicephorus were political order and fiscal oppression. His character was said to be veiled in impenetrable hypocrisy; yet anecdotes are recounted which indicate that he made no secret of his avarice, and the other vices attributed to him. His orthodoxy was certainly suspicious, but, on the whole, he appears to have been an able and humane prince. He has certainly obtained a worse reputation in history than many emperors who have been guilty of greater crimes. Many anecdotes are recounted concerning his rapacity.

As soon as he received the Imperial crown, he bethought himself of the treasures Irene had concealed, and resolved to gain possession of them. These treasures are conceived by the Byzantine historians to be a part of the immense sums Leo III and Constantine V were supposed to have accumulated. The abundance and low price of provisions which had prevailed, particularly in the reign of Constantine V, was ascribed to the rarity of specie caused by the hoards accumulated by these emperors. Irene was said to know where all this wealth was concealed; and though her administration had been marked by lavish expenditure and a diminution of the taxes, still she was believed to possess immense sums. If we believe the story of the chronicles, Nicephorus presented himself to Irene in a private garb, and assured her that he had only assumed the imperial crown to serve her and save her life. By flattery mingled with intimidation, he obtained possession of her treasures, and then, in violation of his promises, banished her to Lesbos.

The dethroned Constantine had been left by his mother in possession of great wealth. Nicephorus is accused of ingratiating himself into the confidence of the blind prince, gaining possession of these treasures, and then neglecting him. Loud complaints were made against the extortion of the tax-gatherers in the reigns of Constantine VI and Irene, and Nicephorus established a court of review to revise the accounts of every public functionary. But his enemies accused him of converting this court into a means of confiscating the property of the guilty, instead of enabling the sufferers to recover their losses.

The accession of Nicephorus was an event unexpected both by the people and the army; and the success of a man whose name was previously almost unknown beyond the circle of the administration, held out a hope to every man of influence that an emperor, who owed his elevation to a conspiracy of eunuchs and a court intrigue, might easily be driven from the throne. Bardanes, whom Nicephorus appointed general of the troops of five Asiatic themes to march against the Saracens, instead of leading this army against Haroun Al Rashid, proclaimed himself emperor. He was supported by Thomas the Slavonian, as well as by Leo the Armenian and Michael the Armorian, who both subsequently mounted the throne. The crisis was one of extreme difficulty, but Nicephorus soon convinced the world that he was worthy of the throne. The rebel troops were discouraged by his preparations, and rendered ashamed of their conduct by his reproaches. Leo and Michael were gained over by a promise of promotion; and Bardanes, seeing his army rapidly dispersing, negotiated for his own pardon. He was allowed to retire to a monastery he had founded in the island of Prote, but his estates were confiscated. Shortly after, while Bardanes was living in seclusion as an humble monk, a band of Lycaonian brigands crossed over from the Asiatic coast and put out his eyes. As the perpetrators of this atrocity were evidently moved by personal vengeance, suspicion fell so strongly on the emperor, that he deemed it necessary to take a solemn oath in public that he had no knowledge of the crime, and never entertained a thought of violating the safe-conduct he had given to Bardanes. This safe-conduct, it must be observed, had received the ratification of the Patriarch and the senate. Bardanes himself did not appear to suspect the emperor; he showed the greatest resignation and piety; gave up the use of wheaten bread, wine, oil, and fish, living entirely on barley cakes, which he baked in the embers. In summer he wore a single leather garment, and in winter a mantle of hair-cloth. In this way he lived contentedly, and died during the reign of Leo the Armenian.

The civil transactions of the reign of Nicephorus present some interesting facts. Though a brave soldier, he was essentially a statesman, and his conviction that the finance department was the peculiar business of the sovereign, and the key of public affairs, can be traced in many significant events. He eagerly pursued the centralising policy of his Iconoclast predecessors, and strove to render the civil power supreme over the clergy and the Church. He forbade the Patriarch to hold any communications with the Pope, whom he considered as the Patriarch of Charlemagne; and this prudent measure has caused much of the virulence with which his memory has been attacked by ecclesiastical and orthodox historians. The Patriarch Tarasios had shown himself no enemy to the supremacy of the emperor, and he was highly esteemed by Nicephorus as one of the heads of the party, both in the church and state, which the emperor was anxious to conciliate. When Tarasios died, A.D. 806, Nicephorus made a solemn display of his grief. The body, and in the patriarchal robes, crowned with the mitre, and seated on the episcopal throne, according to the usage of the East, was transported to a monastery founded by the deceased Patriarch on the shores of the Bosphorus, where the funeral was performed with great pomp, the emperor assisting, embracing the body, and covering it with his purple robe.

Nicephorus succeeded in finding an able and popular prelate, disposed to support his secular views, worthy to succeed Tarasios. This was the historian Nicephorus. He had already retired from public life, and was residing in a monastery he had founded, though he had not yet taken monastic vows. On his election, he entered the clergy, and took the monastic habit. This last step was rendered necessary by the usage of the Greek Church, which now only admitted monks to the episcopal dignity. To give the ceremony additional splendour, Stavrakios, the son of the Emperor Nicephorus, who had received the imperial crown from his father, was deputed to be present at the tonsure.

The Patriarch Nicephoros was no sooner installed than the emperor began to execute his measures for establishing the supremacy of the civil power. Tarasios, after sanctioning the divorce of Constantine VI, and allowing the celebration of his second marriage, had yielded to the influence of Irene and the monks, and declared both acts illegal. The Emperor Nicephorus considered this a dangerous precedent, and resolved to obtain an affirmation of the validity of the second marriage. The new Patriarch assembled a synod, in which the marriage was declared valid, and the abbot Joseph, who had celebrated it, was absolved from all ecclesiastical censure. The monastic party, enraged at the emperor seeking emancipation from their authority, broke out into a furious opposition. Theodore Studita, their leader, calls this synod an assembly of adulterers and heretics, and reproached the Patriarch with sacrificing the interests of religion. But Nicephorus having succeeded in bringing about this explosion of monastic ire on a question in which he had no personal interest, the people, who now regarded the unfortunate Constantine VI as hardly used on the subject of his marriage with Theodota, could not be persuaded to take any part in the dispute. Theodore's violence was also supposed to arise from his disappointment at not being elected Patriarch.

Public opinion became so favourable to the emperor’s ecclesiastical views, that a synod assembled in 809 declared the Patriarch and bishops to possess the power of granting dispensations from rules of ecclesiastical law, and that the emperor was not bound by legislative provisions enacted for subjects. Nicephorus considered the time had now come for compelling the monks to obey his authority. He ordered Theodore Studita and Plato to take part in the ecclesiastical ceremonies with the Patriarch; and when these refractory abbots refused, he banished them to Prince’s Island, and then deposed them. Had the monks now opposed the emperor on the reasonable ground that he was violating the principles on which the security of society depended, by setting up his individual will against the systematic rules of justice, the maxims of Roman law, the established usages of the empire, and the eternal rules of equity, they would have found a response in the hearts of the people. Such doctrines might have led to some political reform in the government, and to the establishment of some constitutional check on the exercise of arbitrary power; and the exclamation of Theodore, in one of his letters to the Pope “Where now is the gospel for kings?” might then have revived the spirit of liberty among the Greeks.

At this time there existed a party which openly advocated the right of every man to the free exercise of his own religious opinions in private, and urged the policy of the government abstaining from every attempt to enforce unity. Some of this party probably indulged in as liberal speculations concerning the political rights of men, but such opinions were generally considered incompatible with social order. The emperor, however, favoured the tolerant party, and gave its members a predominant influence in his cabinet. Greatly to the dissatisfaction of the Greek party, he refused to persecute the Paulicians, who had formed a considerable community in the eastern provinces of Asia Minor; and he tolerated the Athingans in Pisidia and Lycaonia, allowing them to exercise their religion in peace, as long as they violated none of the laws of the empire.

The financial administration of Nicephorus is justly accused of severity, and even of rapacity. He affords a good personification of the fiscal genius of the Roman Empire, as described by the Emperor Justin II, upwards of three centuries earlier. His thoughts were chiefly of tributes and taxes; and, unfortunately for his subjects, his intimate acquaintance with financial affairs enabled him to extort a great increase of revenue, without appearing to impose new taxes. But though he is justly accused of oppression, he does not merit the reproach of avarice often urged against him. When he considered expenditure necessary, he was liberal of the public money. He spared no expense to keep up numerous armies, and it was not from ill-judged economy, but from want of military talents, that his campaigns were unsuccessful.

Nicephorus restored the duties levied at the entrance of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus, which had been remitted by Irene to purchase popularity after her cruelty to her son. He ordered all the provinces to furnish a stated number of able bodied recruits for the army, drawn from among the poor, and obliged each district to pay the sum of eighteen nomismata ahead for their equipment, enforcing the old Roman principle of mutual responsibility for the payment of any taxes, in case the recruits should possess property liable to taxation. One-twelfth was likewise added to the duty on public documents. An additional tax of two nomismata was imposed on all domestic slaves purchased beyond the Hellespont. The inhabitants of Asia Minor who engaged in commerce were compelled to purchase a certain quantity of landed property belonging to the fisc at a fixed valuation: and, what tended to blacken the emperor's reputation more than anything else, he extended the hearth-tax to the property of the church, to monasteries, and charitable institutions, which had hitherto been exempted from the burden; and he enforced the payment of arrears from the commencement of his reign. The innumerable private monasteries, which it was the fashion to multiply, withdrew so much property from taxation that this measure was absolutely necessary to prevent frauds on the fisc; but though necessary, it was unpopular. Nicephorus, moreover, permitted the sale of gold and silver plate dedicated as holy offerings by private superstition; and, like many modern princes, he quartered troops in monasteries. It is also made an accusation against his government, that he famished the merchants at Constantinople engaged in foreign trade with the sum of twelve pounds’ weight of gold, for which they were compelled to pay twenty per cent interest. It is difficult, from the statements of the Byzantine writers concerning the legislative acts, to form a precise idea of the emperor's object in some cases, or the effects of the law in others. His enemies do not hesitate to enumerate among his crimes the exertions he made to establish military colonies in the waste districts on the Bulgarian frontier, secured by the line of fortresses constructed by Constantine V. His object was to cut off effectually all communication between the unruly Slavonians in Thrace and the population to the north. There can be no doubt of his enforcing every claim of the government with rigor. He ordered a strict census of all agriculturists who were not natives to be made throughout the provinces, and the land they cultivated was declared to belong to the imperial domain. He then converted these cultivators into slaves of the fisc, by the application of an old law, which declared that all who had cultivated the same land for the space of thirty years consecutively, were restricted to the condition of coloni, or serfs attached to the soil.

The conspiracies which were formed against Nicephorus cannot be admitted as evidence of his unpopularity, for the best of the Byzantine monarchs were as often victims of secret plots as the worst. The elective title to the empire rendered the prize to successful ambition one which overpowered the respect due to their country’s laws in the breasts of the courtiers of Constantinople. It is only from popular insurrections that we can judge of the sovereign’s unpopularity. The principles of humanity that rendered Nicephorus averse to religious persecution caused him to treat conspirators with much less cruelty than most Byzantine emperors. Perhaps the historians hostile to his government have deceived posterity, giving considerable importance to insignificant plots, as we see modern diplomatists continually deceiving their courts by magnifying trifling expressions of dissatisfaction into dangerous presages of widespread discontent. In the year 808, however, a conspiracy was really formed to place Arsaber, a patrician, who held the office of questor, or minister of legislation, on the throne. Though Arsaber was of an Armenian family, many persons of rank were leagued with him; yet Nicephorus only confiscated his estates, and compelled him to embrace the monastic life. An attempt was made to assassinate the emperor by a man who rushed into the palace, and seized the sword of one of the guards of the imperial chamber, severely wounding many persons before he was secured. The criminal was a monk, who was put to the torture, according to the cruel practice of the time; but Nicephorus, on learning that he was a maniac, ordered him to be placed in a lunatic asylum. Indeed, though historians accuse Nicephorus of inhumanity, the punishment of death, in cases of treason, was never carried into effect during his reign.

The relations of Nicephorus with Charlemagne were for a short time amicable. A treaty was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 803, regulating the frontiers of the two empires. In this treaty, the supremacy of the Eastern Empire over Venice, Istria, the maritime parts of Dalmatia, and the south of Italy, was acknowledged; while the authority of the Western Empire in Rome, the exarchate of Ravenna, and the Pentapolis, was recognised by Nicephorus. The commerce of Venice with the East was already so important, and the Byzantine administration afforded so many guarantees for the security of property, that the Venetians, in spite of the menaces of Charlemagne, remained firm in their allegiance to Nicephorus. Istria, on the other hand, placed itself subsequently under the protection of the Frank emperor, and paid him a tribute of 354 marks. Pepin, king of Italy, was also charged by his father to render the Venetians, and the allies of the Byzantine Empire in the north of Italy, tributary to the Franks; but Nicephorus sent a fleet into the Adriatic, and effectually protected his friends. A body of people, called Orobiats, who maintained themselves as an independent community in the Apennines, pretending to preserve their allegiance to the emperor of Constantinople, plundered Populonium in Tuscany. They afford us proof how much easier Charlemagne found it to extend his conquests than to preserve order. Venice, it is true, found itself in the end compelled to purchase peace with the Frank Empire, by the payment of an annual tribute of thirty-six pounds of gold, in order to secure its commercial relations from interruption; and it was not released from this tribute until the time of Otho the Great. It was during the reign of Nicephorus that the site of the present city of Venice became the seat of the Venetian government, Rivalto (Rialto) becoming the residence of the duke and the principal inhabitants, who retired from the continent to escape the attacks of Pepin. Heraclea had previously been the capital of the Venetian municipality. In 810, peace was again concluded between Nicephorus and Charlemagne, without making any change in frontier of the two empires.

The power of the caliphate was never more actively employed than under Haroun Al Rashid, but the reputation of that prince was by no means so great among his contemporaries as it became in after times. Nicephorus was no sooner seated on the throne, than he refused to pay the caliph the tribute imposed on Irene. The Arabian historians pretend that his refusal was communicated to Haroun in an insolent letter. To resist the attacks of the Saracens, which he well knew would follow his refusal, he collected a powerful army in Asia Minor; but this army broke out into rebellion, and, as has been already mentioned, proclaimed Bardanes emperor. The caliph, availing himself of the defenceless state of the empire, laid waste Asia Minor; and when the rebellion of Bardanes was extinguished, Nicephorus, afraid to trust any of the veteran generals with the command of a large army, placed himself at the head of the troops in Asia, and was defeated in a great battle at Krasos in Phrygia. After this victory the Saracens laid waste the country in every direction, until a rebellion in Chorasan compelled Haroun to withdraw his troops from the Byzantine frontier, and gave Nicephorus time to reassemble a new army. As soon as the affairs in the East were tranquillised, the caliph again invaded the Byzantine Empire. Haroun himself fixed his headquarters at Tyana, where he built a mosque, to mark that he annexed that city to the Mohammedan empire. One division of his army, sixty thousand strong, took and destroyed Ancyra. Heraclea on Mount Taurus was also captured, and sixteen thousand prisoners were carried off in a single campaign, A.D. 806. Nicephorus, unable to arrest these ravages, endeavoured to obtain peace; and in spite of the religious bigotry which is supposed to have envenomed the hostilities of Haroun, the imperial embassy consisted of the bishop of Synnada, the abbot of Gulaias, and the economos of Amastris. As winter was approaching, and the Saracens were averse to remain longer beyond Mount Taurus, the three ecclesiastical ambassadors succeeded in arranging a treaty; but Nicephorus was compelled to submit to severe and degrading conditions. He engaged not to rebuild the frontier fortifications which had been destroyed by the caliph’s armies, and he consented to pay a tribute of thirty thousand pieces of gold annually, adding three additional pieces for himself, and three for his son and colleague Stavrakios, which we must suppose to have been medallions of superior size, since they were offered as a direct proof that the emperor of the Romans paid a personal tribute to the caliph.

Nicephorus seems to have been sadly deficient in feelings of honour, for, the moment he conceived he could evade the stipulations of the treaty without danger, he commenced repairing the ruined fortifications. His subjects suffered for his conduct. The caliph again sent troops to invade the empire; Cyprus and Rhodes were ravaged; the bishop of Cyprus was compelled to pay one thousand dinars as his ransom; and many Christians were carried away from Asia Minor, and settled in Syria.

The death of Haroun, in 809, delivered the Christians from a barbarous enemy, who ruined their country like a brigand, without endeavouring to subdue it like a conqueror. Haroun’s personal valour, his charity, his liberality to men of letters, and his religious zeal, have secured him interested panegyrics, which have drowned the voice of justice. The hero of the Arabian Tales and the ally of Charlemagne is vaunted as one of the greatest princes who ever occupied a throne. The disgraceful murder of the Barmecids, and many other acts of injustice and cruelty, give him a very different character in history. His plundering incursions into the Byzantine Empire might have been glorious proofs of courage in some petty Syrian chieftain, but they degrade the ruler of the richest and most extensive empire on the earth into a mere slave-dealer.

The Saracens continued their incursions, and in the year 811, Leo the Armenian, then lieutenant-governor of the Armeniac theme, left a sum of thirteen hundred pounds’ weight of silver, which had been collected as taxes, at Euchaites, without a sufficient guard. A band of Saracens carried off this money; and for his negligence Leo was ordered to Constantinople, where the future emperor was scourged, and deprived of his command.

The Slavonian colonies in Greece were now so powerful that they formed the project of rendering themselves masters of the Peloponnesus, and expelling the Greek population. The Byzantine expedition, in the early part of the regency of Irene, had only subjected these intruders to tribute, without diminishing their numbers or breaking their power. The troubled aspect of public affairs, after Nicephorus seized the throne, induced them to consider the moment favourable for gaining their independence. They assembled a numerous force under arms, and selected Patras as their first object of attack. The possession of a commercial port was necessary to their success, in order to enable them to supply their wants from abroad, and obtain a public revenue by the duties on the produce they exported. Patras was then the most flourishing harbour on the west coast of Greece, and its possession would have enabled the Slavonians to establish direct communications with, and draw assistance from, the kindred race established on the shores of the Adriatic, and from the Saracen pirates, among whose followers the Sclavi, or Slavonian captives and renegades, made a considerable figure. The property of the Greeks beyond the protection of the wailed towns was plundered, to supply the army destined to besiege Patras with provisions, and a communication was opened with a Saracen squadron of African pirates who blockaded the gulf. Patras was kept closely Invested, until want began to threaten the inhabitants with death, and compelled them to think of surrender.

The Byzantine government had no regular troops nearer than Corinth, which is three days’ march from Patras. But the governor of the province who resided there was unable immediately to detach a force sufficient to attack the besieging army. In the meantime, as the inhabitants were anxiously waiting for relief, one of their scouts, stationed to announce the approach of succours from Corinth, accidentally gave the signal agreed upon. The enthusiasm of the Greeks was excited to the highest pitch by the hopes of speedy deliverance, and, eager for revenge on their enemies, they threw open the city gates and made a vigorous attack on the besiegers, whom they drove from their position with considerable loss.

The Byzantine general arrived three days after this victory. His jealousy of the military success of the armed citizens induced him to give currency to the popular accounts, which he found the superstition of the people had already circulated, that St. Andrew, the patron of Patras, had shown himself on the field of battle. The devastations committed by the Slavonians, the victory of the Greeks, and the miraculous appearance of the apostle at the head of the besieged, were all announced to the Emperor Nicephorus, whose political views rendered him more willing to reward the church for St. Andrew’s assistance, than to allow his subjects to perceive that their own valour was sufficient to defend their property : he feared they might discover that a well-constituted municipal government would always be able to protect them, while a distant central authority was often incapable, and generally indifferent. Nicephorus was too experienced a statesman, with the examples of Venice and Cherson before his eyes, not to fear that such a discovery among the Greek population in the Peloponnesus would tend to circumscribe the fiscal energy of the Constantinopolitan treasury. The church, and not the people, profited by the success of the Greeks: the imperial share of the spoil taken from the Slavonians, both property and slaves, was bestowed on the church of St. Andrew; and the bishops of Methone, Lacedemon, and Corone, were declared suffragans of the metropolitan of Patras. This charter of Nicephorus was ratified by Leo VI, the Wise, in a new and extended act.

The Bulgarians were always troublesome neighbours, as a rude people generally proves to a wealthy population. Their king, Crumn, was an able and warlike prince. For some time after his accession, he was occupied by hostilities with the Avars, but as soon as that war was terminated, he seized an opportunity of plundering a Byzantine military chest, containing eleven hundred pounds of gold, destined for the payment of the troops stationed on the banks of the Strymon. After surprising the camp, dispersing the troops, murdering the officers, and capturing the treasure, he extended his ravages as far as Sardica, where he slew six thousand Roman soldiers.

Nicephorus immediately assembled a considerable army, and marched to re-establish the security of his northern frontier. The death of Haroun left so large a force at his disposal that he contemplated the destruction of the Bulgarian kingdom; but the Byzantine troops in Europe were in a disaffected state, and their indiscipline rendered the campaign abortive. The resolution of Nicephorus remained, nevertheless, unshaken, though his life was in danger from the seditious conduct of the soldiery; and he was in the end compelled to escape from his own camp, and seek safety in Constantinople.

In 811, a new army, consisting chiefly of conscripts and raw recruits, was hastily assembled, and hurried into the field. In preparing for the campaign, Nicephorus displayed extreme financial severity, and ridiculed the timidity of those who counselled delay with a degree of cynicism which paints well the singular character of this bold financier. Having resolved to tax monasteries, and levy an augmentation of the land-tax from the nobility for the eight preceding years, his ministers endeavoured to persuade him of the impolicy of his proceedings; but he only exclaimed, “What can you expect! God has hardened my heart, and my subjects can expect nothing else from me”. The historian Theophanes says that these words were repeated to him by Theodosios, the minister to whom they were addressed. The energy of Nicephorus was equal to his rapacity, but it was not supported by a corresponding degree of military skill. He led his army so rapidly to Markelles, a fortress built by Constantine VI, within the line of the Bulgarian frontier, that Crumn, alarmed at his vigour, sent an embassy to solicit peace. This proposal was rejected, and the emperor pushed forward and captured a residence of the Bulgarian monarch's near the frontiers, in which a considerable amount of treasure was found. Crumn, dispirited at this loss, offered to accept any terms of peace compatible with the existence of his independence, but Nicephorus would agree to no terms but absolute submission.

The only contemporary account of the following events is in the chronicle of Theophanes, and it leaves us in doubt whether the rashness of Nicephorus or the treason of his generals was the real cause of his disastrous defeat. Even if we give Crumn credit for great military skill, the success of the stratagem, by which he destroyed a Byzantine army greatly superior to his own, could not have been achieved without some treasonable co-operation in the enemy’s camp. It is certain that an officer of the emperor’s household had deserted at Markelles, carrying away the emperor's wardrobe and one hundred pounds' weight of gold, and that one of the ablest engineers in the Byzantine service had previously fled to Bulgaria. It seems not improbable, that by means of these officers treasonable communications were maintained with the disaffected in the Byzantine army.

When Nicephorus entered the Bulgarian territory, Crumn had a much larger force in his immediate vicinity than the emperor supposed. The Bulgarian troops, though defeated in the advance, were consequently allowed to watch the movements of the invaders, and entrench at no great distance without any attempt to dislodge them. It is even said that Crumn was allowed to work for two days, forming a strong palisade to circumscribe the operations of the imperial army, while Nicephorus was wasting his time collecting the booty found in the Bulgarian palace; and that, when the emperor saw the work finished, he exclaimed, “We have no chance of safety except by being transformed into birds!”. Yet even in this desperate position the emperor is said to have neglected the usual precautions to secure his camp against a night attack. Much of this seems incredible.

Crumn made a grand nocturnal attack on the camp of Nicephorus, just six days after the emperor had invaded the Bulgarian kingdom. The Byzantine army was taken by surprise, and their camp entered on every side; the whole baggage and military chest were taken; the Emperor Nicephorus and six patricians, with many officers of the highest rank, were slain; and the Bulgarian king made a drinking-cup of the skull of the emperor of the Romans, in which the Sclavonian princes of the Bulgarian court pledged him in the richest wines of Greece when he celebrated his triumphal festivals. The Bulgarians must have abandoned their strong palisade when they attacked the camp, for a considerable portion of the defeated army, with the Emperor Stavrakios, who was severely wounded, Stephen the general of the guard, and Theoctistos the master of the palace, reached Adrianople in safety. Stavrakios was immediately proclaimed his father’s successor, and the army was able and willing to maintain him on the throne, had he possessed health and ability equal to the crisis. But the fiscal severity of his father had created a host of enemies to the existing system of government, and in the Byzantine Empire a change of administration implied a change of the emperor. The numerous statesmen who expected to profit by a revolution declared in favour of Michael Rhangabé, an insignificant noble, who had married Procopia the daughter of Nicephorus. Stavrakios was compelled by his brother-in-law to retire into a monastery, where he soon died of his wounds. He had occupied the throne two months.

 

Sect. II.

MICHAEL I RHANGABÉ

A.D. 812-813

 

Michael I was crowned by the Patriarch Nicephoros, after signing a written declaration that he would defend the church, protect the ministers of religion, and never put the orthodox to death. This election of a tool of the bigoted party in the Byzantine church was a reaction against the tolerant policy of Nicephorus. The new emperor began his reign by remitting all the additional taxes imposed by his predecessor which had awakened clerical opposition. He was a weak, well-meaning man; but his wife Procopia was a lady of superior qualifications, who united to a virtuous and charitable disposition something of her father’s vigour of mind. Michael’s reign proved the necessity of always having a firm hand to guide that complicated administrative machine which the Byzantine sovereigns inherited from the empire of Rome.

Michael purchased popularity in the capital by the lavish manner in which he distributed the wealth left by Nicephorus in the imperial treasury. He bestowed large sums on monasteries, hospitals, poor-houses, and other charitable institutions, and he divided liberal gratuities among the leading members of the clergy, the chief dignitaries of the state, and the highest officers of the army. His piety, as well as his party connections, induced him to admit several monks to a place in his council; and he made it an object of political importance to reconcile the Patriarch Nicephoros with Theodore Studita. But by abandoning the policy of his predecessor, after it had received the Patriarch’s sanction and become the law of the church, Michael lost more in public opinion than he gained by the alliance of a troop of bigoted monks, who laboured to subject the power of the emperor and the policy of the state to their own narrow ideas. The abbot Joseph, who had celebrated the marriage of the Emperor Constantine VI, was again excommunicated, as the peace-offering which allowed the bigots to renew their communion with the Patriarch.

The counsels of Theodore Studita soon involved the government in fresh embarrassment. To signalise his zeal for orthodoxy, he persuaded the emperor to persecute the Iconoclasts, who during the preceding reign had been allowed to profess their opinions without molestation. It was also proposed, in an assembly of the senate, to put the leaders of the Paulicians and Athigans to death, in order to intimidate their followers and persuade them to become orthodox Christians. This method of converting men to the Greek church excited strong opposition on the part of the tolerant members of the senate; but the Patriarch and clergy having deserted the cause of humanity, the permanent interests of Christianity were sacrificed to the cause of orthodoxy.

While the emperor persecuted a large body of his subjects on the northern and eastern frontiers of his empire, he neglected to defend the provinces against the incursions of the Bulgarians, who ravaged great part of Thrace and Macedonia, and took several large and wealthy towns. The weight of taxation which fell on the mass of the population was not lightened when the emperor relieved the clergy and the nobility from the additional burdens imposed on them by Nicephorus. Discontent spread rapidly. A lunatic girl, placed in a prominent position, as the emperor passed through the streets of Constantinople, cried aloud “Descend from thy seat! descend, and make room for another!” The continual disasters which were announced from the Bulgarian frontier made the people and the army remember with regret the prosperous days of Constantine V, when the slave-markets of the capital were filled with their enemies. Encouraged by the general dissatisfaction, the Iconoclasts formed a conspiracy to convey the sons of Constantine V, who were living, blind and mute, in their exile at Panormus, to the army. The plot was discovered, and Michael ordered the helpless princes to be conveyed to Aphinsa, a small island in the Propontis, where they could be closely guarded. One of the conspirators had his tongue cut out.

The wars of Mohammed Alemen and Almamun, the sons of Haroun al Rashid, relieved the empire from all serious danger on the side of the Saracens. But the Bulgarian war, to which Michael owed his throne, soon proved the cause of his ruin. The army and the people despised him, because he owed his elevation, not to his talents, but to the accident of his marriage, his popularity with the monks, and the weakness of his character, which made him an instrument in the hands of a party. Public opinion soon decided that he was unfit to rule the empire. The year after the death of Nicephorus, Crumn invaded the empire with a numerous army and took the town of Develtos. Michael left the capital accompanied by the Empress Procopia, in order to place himself at the head of the troops in Thrace; but the soldiers showed so much dissatisfaction at the presence of a female court, that the emperor turned back to Constantinople from Tzourlou. The Bulgarian king took advantage of the disorder which ensued to capture Anchialos, Berrhoea, Nicaea, and Probaton in Thrace; and that province fell into such a state of anarchy, that many of the colonists established by Nicephorus in Philippopolis and on the banks of the Strymon abandoned their settlements and returned to Asia.

Crumn nevertheless offered peace to Michael, on the basis of a treaty concluded between the Emperor Theodosius III and Cornesius, prior to the victories of the Iconoclast princes. These terms, fixing the frontier at Meleona, and regulating the duties to be paid on merchandise in the Bulgarian kingdom, would have been accepted by Michael, but Crumn availed himself of his success to demand that all deserters and refugees should be given up. As the Bulgarians were in the habit of ransoming the greater part of their captives at the end of each campaign, and of killing the remainder, or selling them as slaves, this clause was introduced into the treaty to enable Crumn to gratify his vengeance against a number of refugees whom his tyranny had caused to quit Bulgaria, and who had generally embraced Christianity. The emperor remitted the examination of these conditions to the imperial council, and in the discussion which ensued, he, the Patriarch Nicephoros, and several bishops, declared themselves in favour of the treaty, on the ground that it was necessary to sacrifice the refugees for the safety of the natives of the empire who were in slavery in Bulgaria, and to preserve the population from further suffering. But Theoctistos the master of the palace, the energetic Theodore Studita, and a majority of the senators, declared that such conduct would be an indelible stain to the Roman Empire, and would only invite the Bulgarians to recommence hostilities by the fear shown in the concession. The civilians declared it would be an act of infamy to consign to death, or to a slavery worse than death, men who had been received as subjects; and Theodore pronounced that it was an act of impiety to think of delivering Christians into the hands of pagans, quoting St. John, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out”. The emperor, from motives of piety, yielded to the advice of Theodore. Could he have adopted something of the firm character of the abbot, he would either have obtained peace on his own terms, or secured victory to his army.

While the emperor was debating at Constantinople, Crumn pushed forward the siege of Mesembria, which fell into his hands in November, 812. He acquired great booty, as the place was a commercial town of considerable importance; and he made himself master of twenty-six of the brazen tubes used for propelling Greek fire, with a quantity of the combustible material prepared for use in this artillery. Yet, even after this alarming news had reached Constantinople, the weak emperor continued to devote his attention to ecclesiastical affairs instead of military. He seems to have felt that he was utterly unfit to conduct the war in person; yet the Byzantine or Roman army demanded to be led by the emperor.

In the spring of 813, Michael had an army in the field prepared to resist the Bulgarians; and Crumn, finding that his troops were suffering from a severe epidemic, retreated. The Emperor, proud of his success, returned to his capital. The epidemic which had interrupted the operations of the enemy was ascribed to the intervention of Tarasios, who had been canonised for his services to orthodoxy; and the emperor, in order to mark his gratitude for his unexpected acquisition of military renown, covered the tomb of St. Tarasios with plates of silver weighing ninety-five lb., an act of piety which added to the contempt the army already felt for their sovereign's courage and capacity.

In the month of May, Michael again resumed the command of the army, but instead of listening to the advice of the experienced generals who commanded the troops, he allowed himself to be guided by civilians and priests, or he listened to the suggestions of his own timidity. There were at the time three able officers in the army Leo the Armenian, the general of the Anatolic theme; Michael the Amorian, who commanded one wing of the army; and John Aplakes, the general of the Macedonian troops. Leo and Aplakes urged the emperor to attack the Bulgarians; but the Amorian, who was intriguing against Theoctistos the master of the palace, seems to have been disinclined to serve the emperor with sincerity. The Bulgarians were encamped at Bersinikia, about thirty miles from the Byzantine army; and Michael, after changing his plans more than once, resolved at last to risk a battle. Aplakes, who commanded the Macedonian and Thracian troops, consisting chiefly of hardy Slavonian recruits, defeated the Bulgarian division opposed to him; but a panic seized a party of the Byzantine troops; and Leo, with the Asiatic troops, was accused of allowing Aplakes to be surrounded and slain, when he might have saved him. Leo certainly saved his own division, and made it the rallying-point for the fugitives; yet he does not appear to have been considered guilty of any neglect by the soldiers themselves. The emperor fled to Constantinople, while the defeated army retreated to Adrianople.

Michael assembled his ministers in the capital, and talked of resigning his crown; for he deemed his defeat a judgment for mounting the throne of his brother-in-law. Procopia and his courtiers easily persuaded him to abandon his half-formed resolution. The army in the meantime decided the fate of the Empire. Leo the Armenian appeared alone worthy of the crown. The defeated troops saluted him Emperor, and marched to Constantinople, where nobody felt inclined to support the weak Michael; so that Leo was acknowledged without opposition, and crowned in St. Sophia's on the 11th July, 813.

The dethroned emperor was compelled to embrace the monastic life, and lived unmolested in the island of Prote, where he died in 845. His eldest son, Theophylactus, who had been crowned as his colleague, was emasculated, as well as his brother Ignatius, and forced into a monastery. Ignatius became Patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Michael III.

 

Sect. III

LEO V THE ARMENIAN

A.D. 813-820

 

 

When Leo entered the capital, the Patriarch Nicephoros endeavoured to convert the precedent which Michael I had given, of signing a written declaration of orthodoxy, into an established usage of the empire; but the new emperor excused himself from signing any document before his coronation, and afterwards he denied the right to require to favour the Iconoclasts, but he was no bigot. The Asiatic party in the army and in the administration, which supported him, were both enemies to image-worship. To strengthen the influence of his friends was naturally the first step of his reign. Michael the Amorian, who had warmly supported his election, was made a patrician. Thomas, another general, who is said to have been descended from the Slavonian colonists settled in Asia Minor, was appointed general of the federates. Manuel, an Armenian of the noble race of the Mamiconians, received the command of the Armenian troops, and subsequently of the Anatolic theme. At Christmas the title of Emperor was conferred on Sembat, the eldest son of Leo, who then changed his name to Constantine.

Leo was allowed little time to attend to civil business, for six days after his coronation, Crumn appeared before the walls of Constantinople. The Bulgarian king encamped in the suburb of St. Mamas, and extended his lines from the Blachernian to the Golden Gate; but he soon perceived that his army could not long maintain its position, and he allowed his troops to plunder and destroy the property of the citizens in every direction, in order to hasten the conclusion of a treaty of peace. Leo was anxious to save the possessions of his subjects from ruin, Crumn was eager to retreat without losing any of the plunder his army had collected. A treaty might have been concluded, had not Leo attempted to get rid of his enemy by an act of the basest treachery. A conference was appointed, to which the emperor and the king were to repair, attended only by a fixed number of guards. Leo laid a plot for assassinating Crumn at this meeting, and the Bulgarian monarch escaped with the greatest difficulty, leaving his chancellor dead, and most of his attendant’s captives. This infamous act was so generally approved by the perverted religious feelings of the Greek ecclesiastics, that the historian Theophanes, an abbot and holy confessor, in concluding his chronological record of the transactions of the Roman emperors, remarks that the empire was not permitted to witness the death of Crumn by this ambuscade, in consequence of the multitude of the people’s sins.

The Bulgarians avenged the emperor’s treachery on the helpless inhabitants of the empire in a terrible manner. They began by destroying the suburb of St. Mamas; palaces, churches, public and private buildings were burnt to the ground; the lead was torn from the domes, which were fireproof; the vessels taken at the head of the port were added to the conflagration; numerous beautiful works of art were destroyed, and many carried off, among which particular mention is made of a celebrated bronze lion, a bear, and a hydra. The Bulgarians then quitted their lines before Constantinople, and marched to Selymbria, destroying on their way the immense stone bridge over the river Athyras, (Karason,) celebrated for the beauty of its construction. Selymbria, Rhedestos, and Apres were sacked; the country round Ganas was ravaged, but Heraclea and Panion resisted the assaults of the invaders. Men were everywhere put to the sword, while the young women, children, and cattle were driven away to Bulgaria. Part of the army penetrated into the Thracian Chersonese, and laid waste the country, Adrianople was compelled to surrender by famine, and after it had been plundered, the barbarians retired unmolested with an incredible booty, and an innumerable train of slaves.

The success of this campaign induced a body of 30,000 Bulgarians to invade the empire during the winter. They captured Arcadiopolis; and though they were detained for a fortnight, during their retreat, by the swelling of the river Rheginas, (Bithyas,) Leo could not venture to attack them. They regained the Bulgarian frontier, carrying away fifty thousand captives and immense booty, and leaving behind them a terrible scene of desolation.

Emboldened by the apparent weakness of the empire Crumn made preparations for besieging Constantinople by collecting all the machines of war then in use. Leo thought it necessary to construct a new wall beyond that in existence at the Blachernian gate, and to add a deep ditch, for in this quarter the fortifications of the capital appeared weak. Crumn died before the opening of the campaign; and Leo, having by the greatest exertion at last collected an army capable of taking the field, marched to Mesembria. There he succeeded in surprising the Bulgarians by a night attack on their camp. The defeat was most sanguinary. The Bulgarian army was annihilated, and the place where the dead were buried was long called the Mountain of Leo, and avoided by the Bulgarians as a spot of evil augury. After this victory the emperor invaded Bulgaria, which he ravaged with as much cruelty as Crumn had ever shown in plundering the empire. At last a truce for thirty years was concluded with Montagon, the new king. The power of these dangerous neighbours was so weakened by the recent exertions they had made, and by the wealth they had acquired, that for many years they were disposed to remain at peace.

The influence of the Byzantine emperors in the West, though much diminished by the conquests of Charlemagne, the independence of the Popes, and the formation of two Saracen kingdoms in Africa and Spain, continued, nevertheless, to be very great, in consequence of the extensive mercantile connections of the Greeks, who then possessed the most lucrative part of the commerce of the Mediterranean.

At this time the Aglabits of Africa and the Ommiads of Spain ruled a rebellious and ill-organised society of Mohammedan chiefs of various races, which even arbitrary power could not bend to the habits of a settled administration. Both these states sent out piratical expeditions by sea, when their incursions by land were restrained by the warlike power of their neighbours. Michael I had been compelled to send an army to Sicily, to protect it from the incursions of pirates both from Africa and Spain. Lampedosa had been occupied by Saracen corsairs, and many Greek ships captured, before the joint forces of the Dukes of Sicily and Naples, with the vessels from Amalfi and Venice, defeated the plunderers and cleared the sea for a while. The quarrels of the Aglabits and Ommiads induced the former to conclude a truce for ten years with Leo, and to join the naval forces of the Greeks and Venetians in attacking the Spanish Saracens.

The disturbances which prevailed in the East during the caliphate of Almamun insured tranquillity to the Asiatic frontier of the empire, and allowed Leo to devote his whole attention to the internal state of his dominions. The church was the only public institution immediately connected with the feelings of the whole population. By its conduct the people were directly interested in the proceedings of the imperial government. Ecclesiastical affairs, offering the only field for the expression of public opinion, became naturally the centre of all political ideas and party struggles. Even in an administrative point of view, the regular organization of the clergy under parish priests, bishops, and provincial councils, gave the church a degree of power in the state which compelled the emperor to watch it attentively. The principles of ecclesiastical independence inculcated by Theodore Studita, and adopted by the monks, and that portion of the clergy which favoured image worship, alarmed the emperor. This party inculcated a belief in contemporary miracles, and in the daily intervention of God in human affairs. All prudence, all exertion on the part of individuals, was as nothing compared to the favour of some image accidentally endowed with divine grace. That such images could at any time reveal the existence of a hidden treasure, or raise the possessor to high official rank, was the common conviction of the superstitious and enthusiastic, both among the laity and the clergy; and such doctrines were especially favoured by the monks, so that the people, under the guidance of these teachers, became negligent of moral duties and regular industry. The Iconoclasts themselves appealed to the decision of Heaven as favouring their cause, by pointing to the misfortunes of Constantine VI, Irene, Nicephorus, and Michael I, who had supported image-worship, and contrasting their reigns with the victories and peaceful end of Leo the Isaurian, Constantine V, and Leo IV, who were the steady opponents of idolatry.

Leo V, though averse to image-worship, possessed so much prudence and moderation, that he was inclined to rest satisfied with a direct acknowledgment that the civil power possessed the right of tolerating religious difference. But the army demanded the abolition of image-worship, and the monks the persecution of Iconoclasts. Leo’s difficulties, in meddling with ecclesiastical affairs, gave his policy a dubious character, and obtained for him, among the Greeks, the name of the Chameleon. Several learned members of the clergy were opposed to image-worship; and of these the most eminent were the abbot John Hylilas, of the illustrious family of the Morochorzanians, and Anthony, bishop of Syllaeum. John, called, from his superior learning, the Grammarian, was accused by the ignorant of studying magic; and the nickname of Lekanomantis was given him, because he was said to read the secrets of futurity in a brazen basin. The Iconoclasts were also supported by Theodotos Kassiteras, son of the patrician Michael Melissenos, whose sister had been the third wife of Constantine V. These three endeavoured to persuade Leo to declare openly against image-worship. On the other hand, the majority of the Greek nation was firmly attached to image-worship; and the cause was supported by the Patriarch, by Theodore Studita, and a host of monks. The emperor flattered himself that he should be able to bring about an amicable arrangement to insure general toleration, and commanded John Hylilas to draw up a report of the opinions expressed by the earliest fathers of the church on the subject of image-worship.

As soon as he was in possession of this report, he asked the Patriarch to make some concessions on the subject of pictures, in order to satisfy the army and preserve peace in the church. He wished that the pictures should be placed so high as to prevent the people making the gross display of superstitious worship constantly witnessed in the churches. But the Patriarch coldly pronounced himself in favour of images and pictures, whose worship, he declared, was authorised by immemorial tradition, and the foundation of the orthodox faith was formed according to the opinion of the church on tradition as well as on Holy Scripture. He added that the opinions of the church were inspired by the Holy Spirit as well as the Scriptures. The emperor then proposed a conference between the two parties, and the clergy was thrown into a state of the greatest excitement at this proposition, which implied a doubt of their divine inspiration. The Patriarch summoned his partisans to pass the night in prayers for the safety of the church, in the cathedral of St. Sophia. The emperor had some reason to regard this as seditious, and he was alarmed at the disorders which must evidently arise from both parties appealing to popular support. He summoned the Patriarch to the palace, where the night was spent in controversy. Theodore Studita was one of those who attended the Patriarch on this occasion, and his steady assertion of ecclesiastical supremacy rendered him worthy, from his bold and uncompromising views, to have occupied the chair of St Peter. He declared plainly to the emperor that he had no authority to interfere with the doctrines of the church, since his rule only extended over the civil and military government of the empire. The church had full authority to govern itself. Leo was enraged at this boldness, and dissatisfied with the conduct of the Patriarch, who anathematised Anthony, the bishop of Syllaeum, who was viewed as the leader of the Iconoclasts; but for the present the clergy were only required to abstain from holding public assemblies.

The Iconoclasts, however, now began to remove images and pictures from the churches in possession of the clergy of their party, and the troops on several occasions insulted the image over the entrance of the imperial palace, which had been once removed by Leo the Isaurian, and replaced by Irene. The emperor now ordered it to be again removed, on the ground that this was necessary to avoid public disturbance. These acts induced Theodore Studita to call on the monks to subscribe a declaration that they adhered firmly to the doctrines of the church, with respect to image-worship, as then established. The emperor, alarmed at the danger of causing a new schism in the church, but feeling himself called upon to resist the attacks now made on his authority, determined to relieve the civil power from the necessity of engaging in a contest with the ecclesiastical, by assembling a general council of the church, and leaving the two parties in the priesthood to settle their own differences. As he was in doubt how to proceed, it happened that both the Patriarch and the abbot, John Hylilas, were officiating together in the Christmas ceremonies while Leo was present, and that John, in the performance of his duty, had to repeat the words of Isaiah, “To whom then will ye liken God? or what will ye compare unto him? The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains”. In pronouncing these words, he turned to the emperor, and uttered them in the most emphatic manner. A few days after this scene, a band of mutinous soldiers broke into the patriarchal palace and destroyed the pictures of the saints with which the building was adorned, and committing other disorders, until they were driven out by the regular guard. At length, in the month of April, 815, Leo ordered a provincial synod to assemble at Constantinople, and before this assembly the Patriarch Nicephoros was brought by force, for he denied its competency to take cognisance of his conduct. He was deposed, and confined in a monastery which he had founded, where he survived twelve years a time which he passed more usefully for the world, in compiling the historical works we possess, than he could have passed them amidst the contests of the patriarchal dignity.

The bigotry of both parties rendered the moderate policy of the emperor of no effect; and public attention became so exclusively absorbed by the state of the church, that it was impossible for him to remain any longer neuter. His first decided step was to nominate a new Patriarch hostile to image-worship; and he selected Theodotos Melissenos, a layman already mentioned, who held a high post in the imperial court. The example of the election of Tarasios prevented the votaries of image-worship disputing the legality of the election of a layman; but they refused to acknowledge Theodotos, on the ground that the deposition of Nicephoros was illegal, and that he was consequently still their lawful Patriarch. Theodotos was nevertheless ordained and consecrated, AD 815. He was a man of learning and ability, but his habits as a military man and a courtier were said to be visible in his manners, and he was accused of living with too great splendour, keeping a luxurious table, and indulging habitually in society of too worldly a character.

A general council of the church was now held at Constantinople, in which the new Patriarch, and Constantine the son of Leo, presided; for the emperor declined taking a personal part in the dispute, in order to allow the church to decide on questions of doctrine without any direct interference of the civil power. This council re-established the acts of that held in 754 by Constantine V, abolishing image-worship, and it anathematised the Patriarchs Tarasios and Nicephoros, and all image-worshippers. The clergy, therefore, who adhered to the principles of the image-worshippers were, in consequence, deprived of their ecclesiastical dignities, and sent into banishment; but the party revolutions that had frequently occurred in the Greek church had introduced a dishonourable system of compliance with the reigning faction, and most of the clergy were readier to yield up their opinions than their benefices. This habitual practice of falsehood received the mild name of arrangement, or economy, to soften the public aversion to such conduct.

The Iconoclast party, on this occasion, used its victory with unusual mildness. They naturally drove their opponents from their ecclesiastical offices; and when some bold monks persisted in preaching against the acts of the council, they banished these non-conformists to distant monasteries; but it does not appear that the civil power was called upon to enforce conformity with the customary rigor. The council had decided that images and pictures were to be removed from the churches, and if the people resisted their removal, or the clergy or monks replaced them, severe punishments were inflicted for this violation of the law. Cruelty was a feature in the Byzantine civil administration, without any impulse of religious fanaticism.

Theodore Studita, who feared neither patriarch nor emperor, and acknowledged no authority in ecclesiastical affairs but the church, while he recognised nothing as the church but what accorded with his own standard of orthodoxy, set the decrees of this council at defiance. He proceeded openly through the streets of the capital, followed by his monks in solemn procession, bearing aloft the pictures which had been removed from the churches, to give them a safe asylum within the walls of the monastery of Studion. For this display of contempt for the law he was banished by the emperor to Asia Minor; and his conduct in exile affords us a remarkable proof of the practical liberty the monks had acquired by their honest and steady resistance to the civil power. All eyes were fixed on Theodore as the leader of the monastic party; and so great was the power he exerted over public opinion that the emperor did not venture to employ any illegal severity against the bold monk he had imprisoned. Indeed, the administration of justice in the Byzantine Empire seems never to have been more regular and equitable than during the reign of Leo the Armenian.

Theodore from his prison corresponded not only with the most eminent bishops and monks of his party, and with ladies of piety and wealth, but also with the Pope, to whom, though now a foreign potentate, the bold abbot sent deputies, as if he were himself an independent Patriarch in the Eastern Church. His great object was to oppose the Iconoclasts in every way, and prevent all those over whose minds he exercised any influence from holding communion with those who conformed to their authority. One thing seems to have distressed and alarmed him, and he exerted all his eloquence to expose its fallacy. The Iconoclasts declared that no one could be a martyr for Christ's sake, who was only punished by the usual power for image-worship, since the question at issue had no connection with the truth of Christianity. Theodore argued that the night of heresy was darker than that of ignorance, and the merit of labouring to illuminate it was at least as great. The Emperor Leo was, however, too prudent to give any of Theodore’s party the slightest hope of claiming the crown of martyrdom. He persisted in his policy of enforcing the decrees of the council with so much mildness, and balancing his own expressions of personal opinion with such a degree of impartiality that he excited the dissatisfaction of the violent of both parties.

Even in a corrupted and factious society, most men appreciate the equitable administration of justice. Interest and ambition may indeed so far pervert the feelings of an administrative or aristocratic class, as to make the members of such privileged societies regard the equal distribution of justice to the mass of people as an infringement of their rights; and the passions engendered by religious zeal may blind those under its influence to any injustice committed against men of different opinions. Hence it is that a government, to secure the administration of justice, must be established on a broader basis than administrative wisdom, aristocratic pre-eminence or religious orthodoxy. In the Byzantine Empire, public opinion found no home among the mass of the population, whose minds and actions were regulated and enslaved by administrative influence, by the power of the wealthy, and by the authority of the clergy and the monks. One result of this state of society is visible in the violence of party passion displayed concerning insignificant matters in the capital; and hence it arose at last that the political interests of the empire were frequently disconnected with the subjects that exercised the greatest influence on the fate of the government. The moderation of Leo, which, had public opinion possessed any vitality, ought to have rendered his administration popular with the majority of his subjects in the provinces, certainly rendered it unpopular in Constantinople. Crowds, seeking excitement, express the temporary feelings of the people before deliberation has fixed the public opinion. Leo was hated by the Greeks as an Armenian and an Iconoclast; and he was disliked by many of the highest officers in the state and the army for the severity of his judicial administration, and the strictness with which he maintained moral as well as military discipline, so that no inconsiderable number of the class who directed state affairs were disposed to welcome a revolution. Irene had governed the empire by eunuchs, who had put up everything for sale; Nicephorus had thought of those reforms only that tended to fill the treasury; Michael I had been the tool of a bigoted faction. All these sovereigns had accumulated opposition to good government.

Leo undertook the task of purifying the administration, and he commenced his reforms by enforcing a stricter dispensation of justice. His enemies acknowledged that he put a stop to corruption with wonderful promptitude and ability. He restored the discipline of the army, he repressed bribery in the courts of justice, by strictly reviewing all judicial decisions, and he re-established an equitable system of collecting the revenue. He repaired the fortresses destroyed by the Bulgarians, and placed all the frontiers of the empire in a respectable state of defence. All this, it was universally acknowledged, was due to his personal activity in watching over the proceedings of his ministers. Even the Patriarch Nicephoros, whom he had deposed, gave testimony to his merits as an emperor. When he heard of Leo’s assassination he exclaimed, “The church is delivered from a dangerous enemy, but the empire has lost a useful sovereign”.

The officers of the court, who expected to profit by a change of measures, formed a conspiracy to overthrow Leo’s government, which was joined by Michael the Amorian, who had long been the emperor’s most intimate friend. The ambition of this turbulent and unprincipled soldier led him to think that he had as good a right to the throne as Leo; and when he perceived that a general opposition was felt in Constantinople to the emperor’s conduct, his ambition got the better of his gratitude, and he plotted to mount the throne. It was generally reported that Leo had refused to accept the Imperial crown, when proclaimed emperor by the army at Adrianople, from his knowledge of the difficulties with which he would have to contend, and that Michael forced him to yield his assent, by declaring that he must either accept the crown, or be put to death to make way for a new candidate. The turbulent character of Michael gave currency to this anecdote.

Michael’s conduct had long been seditious, when at length his share in a conspiracy against the government was discovered, and he was tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. It is said by the chronicles that the court of justice left it to the emperor to order his execution in any way he might think proper, and that Leo condemned him to be immediately cast into the furnace used for heating the baths of the palace, and prepared to attend the execution in person. It is needless to say that, though cruelty was the vice of the Byzantine court, we must rank this story as a tale fitter for the legends of the saints than for the history of the empire. The event took place on Christmas-eve, when the empress, hearing what was about to happen, and moved with compassion for one who had long been her husband’s intimate friend, hastened to Leo, and implored him to defer the execution until after Christmas-day. She urged the sin of participating in the Holy Communion with the cries of the dying companion of his youth echoing in his ear. Leo who, though severe, was not personally cruel yielded to his wife's entreaties, and consented with great reluctance to postpone the punishment, for his knowledge of the extent of the conspiracy gave him a presentiment of danger. After giving orders for staying the execution, he turned to the empress and said, “I grant your request: you think only of my eternal welfare; but you expose my life to the greatest peril, and your scruples may bring misfortune on you and on our children”.

Michael was conducted back to his dungeon, and the key of his fetters was brought to Leo. It was afterwards told in Constantinople that during the night the emperor was unable to sleep. A sense of impending danger, disturbing his imagination, impelled him to rise from his bed, envelop himself in a mantle, and secretly visit the cell in which Michael was confined. There he found the door unlocked and Michael stretched on the bed of his jailor, buried in profound sleep, while the jailor himself was lying on the criminal’s bed on the floor. The emperor’s alarm was increased at this spectacle. He withdrew to consider what measures he should take to watch both the prisoner and the jailor. But Michael had already many partisans within the walls of the palace, and one of these had, having observed the emperor's nocturnal visit to the criminal’s cell, immediately awakened Michael. There was not a moment to lose. As a friendly confessor had been introduced into the palace to afford the condemned criminal the consolations of religion, this priest was sent to Theoctistos to announce that, unless a blow was instantly struck, Michael would at daylight purchase his own pardon by revealing the names of the principal conspirators. This message caused the conspirators to resolve on the immediate assassination of the emperor.

The imperial palace was a fortress separated from the city like the present serai of the sultan. It was the practice of Leo to attend matins in his chapel, and as it was Christmas day, a number of the best singers in Constantinople were that morning admitted at a postern-gate before daybreak, in order to join in the celebration of the service, whose solemn chant was then the admiration of the Christian world. Leo, who was of a religious turn of mind, delighted in displaying his deep sonorous voice in the choir. He delayed his measures for securing Michael and the jailor to hasten to the chapel, and the conspirators availed themselves of his presence during the celebration of divine service to execute their plans. Disguised as choristers, with daggers concealed in their clothes, they obtained admittance at the postern, and ranged themselves among the singers in the imperial chapel.

The morning was dark and cold, and both the emperor and the officiating chaplain were enveloped in furred mantles, which, with the thick bonnets they wore as a protection against the damp, effectually concealed their faces. But as soon as the powerful voice of Leo was heard in the solemn hymns, the assassins pressed forward to stab him. Some, however, mistaking the chaplain for the emperor, wounded the priest, whose cries revealed the mistake, and then all turned on Leo, who defended himself for some time with the crucifix which he snatched up. His hand was soon cut off, and he fell before the communion-table, where his body was hewed in pieces.

The assassins then hurried to the cell of Michael, whom they proclaimed emperor, and thus consummated the revolution for which he was under sentence of death. Few sovereigns of the Byzantine Empire seem to have exerted themselves more sincerely than Leo V to perform the duties of their station, yet few have received less praise for their good qualities; nor did his assassination create any reaction of public opinion in his favour. Though he died with the crucifix in his hand, he was condemned as if he had been a bigoted iconoclast. His wife and children were compelled to adopt a monastic life.

 

CHAPTER III

THE AMORIAN DYNASTY, A.D. 820-867