BOOK II

THE BASILIAN DYNASTY

PERIOD OF THE POWER AND GLORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

 

CHAPTER VII.

PERIOD OF CONSERVATISM ON THE EVE OF DECLINE, AD 1025-1057

 

Sect. I

CONSTANTINE VIII  A.D.1025-1028

 

 

THE conquest of the Sclavonians in the Thracian, Macedonian, and Illyrian mountains gave a degree of security to the Eastern Empire which it had not enjoyed since the time of Justinian I. If at this period the government had known how to adopt measures for developing the resources of the country, or the Greek people had possessed the energy and moral convictions necessary to force the court to respect their rights as men and citizens, the whole of the provinces lying to the south of Mount Haemus might have become thickly peopled by the natural increase of the Greek race. Land of the best quality was everywhere ready to receive a better cultivation from new colonists; but improvement was checked, on the part of the government, by exactions similar to those which arrest the progress of society in all arbitrary governments; and the Greeks were now destitute of the sentiment of national patriotism; they were as selfish as their government was rapacious. Exorbitant taxes, severe fiscal restrictions, and obstructive social trammels, bore heavily on the agricultural classes, and left them, as their share of the fruits of their labour, little more than was sufficient for perpetuating their race, and supplying a due succession of peasants to labour the lands on which their predecessors toiled. Great part of the extensive provinces, depopulated by the destructive system of hostilities pursued by Basil and Samuel, remained long uncultivated, and were gradually invaded by nomadic tribes, who were allowed to pasture their flocks and herds over the richest plains on paying tribute to the Byzantine authorities.

The position of the empire on the death of Basil required a judicious and economical sovereign to organise the civil administration on such a scale, as not to absorb too large a portion of the funds required for the maintenance of the large army with which it was necessary to guard the extensive frontiers, and yet on a footing that would insure an equitable and prompt administration of justice to the subjugated Slavonians. Unfortunately, Constantine VIII, though he was averse to war and military parade, had no taste for order, and no care for justice. In his personal appearance he bore a strong resemblance to his brother, but any similarity of disposition that ever showed itself was only in defects. His tall robust figure proclaimed the same strength of body and health of constitution, but he was destitute of the activity, fortitude, and courage of Basil. After he assumed the government, he continued to live as he had done while his brother kept him secluded from public business. In the interior of the palace he was surrounded by musicians, singers, dancing girls, and parasites, and he rarely quitted it except to indulge in the chase, or to celebrate public spectacles in the hippodrome for his own amusement and that of the idle populace of the capital. He left all public business to be transacted by his domestic servants, and he shunned the military pageants in which the emperors usually took an active part. Indeed, he appeared to dread the array of troops as more likely to suggest the idea of internal revolutions than foreign wars. His fears rendered him a suspicious and cruel tyrant; and his distrust of all men of talent and influence induced him to intrust the principal offices of the state to the eunuchs of his household: men bred up amidst scenes of dissipation, gambling, and hunting, and utterly destitute of all experience in public business, were suddenly charged with the most important duties in the empire.

The dignities of chamberlain, keeper of the wardrobe, and commander of the watch, were intrusted to three eunuchs of the domestic establishment of Constantine, and each received the title of President of the Senate. The command of the foreign mercenaries was conferred on a fourth. The Byzantine emperors, like other despots, preferred intrusting strangers with the guardianship of their persons. A fifth, named Spondyles, was appointed duke of Antioch, and intrusted with the command of the troops charged to resist the ambitious projects of the Fatimite caliphs in Syria. The object of the nomination was to furnish the army with a leader incapable of pretending to the throne, not to supply it with an able general. The sixth of this domestic band, named Niketas, became duke of Iberia. The Emperor Basil II must have beaten down the pride of the aristocracy during the latter part of his reign and effected a great change in the position they had held in the time of Basilios the chamberlain and the rebellions of Skleros and Phokas, or the direction of the government would not have been allowed to remain long in the hands of six eunuchs. The spirit of conservatism already pervaded society to such a degree as to form a firm support of despotism. The patience with which Constantine’s measures were endured gives us some insight into the social as well as the administrative changes effected by the long reign of his brother. We see that his policy had proved quite as successful in breaking the power of the great families, and in diminishing the influence of the generals of themes, as in destroying the Bulgarian kingdom and subjugating the Sclavonian people. All the power the emperor had taken from others was accumulated in his own person; nothing was done to confer any rights on the people, nor to secure them against injustice on the part of the imperial agents. The emperor’s power was made absolute in practice as in theory, and thus the worthless creatures of Constantine VIII were enabled to commit acts of greater oppression than the aristocratic officials whose power Basil had curtailed. Conservatism was now a principle of Byzantine policy, and it is usually a factitious phrase to delude the people from a devotion to order and justice.

Basil II is accused by the Byzantine historians of fiscal severity. In this accusation there is reason to suspect that we learn rather the murmurs of the nobles and populace of Constantinople than the deliberate expression of the public opinion of the whole empire. Basil endeavoured to levy from the rich their due proportion of the public burdens, and to put a stop to the absorption of the estates of the poor by the aristocracy, while at the same time he refrained from lavishing immense sums on the shows in the hippodrome. But whatever may have been the extent of his avarice, we see signs of true liberality in his exertions to lighten the burdens of the industrious classes, and real humanity in his endeavours to spare the poor. It has been already noticed that the taxes were two years in arrear when he died. The proceedings of Constantine form a contrast to those of his brother. On one hand, he exacted the arrears of the public taxes with the greatest severity, while, on the other, he lavished the money thus extorted from the provinces in wasteful expenditure in the capital. During his reign of three years he collected and expended the revenue of five. His palace, like that of a Saracen caliph, was filled with foreign slaves and eunuchs, whose strange appearance and barbarous language astonished the natural-born subjects of the empire.

Though no dangerous insurrection broke out, the general discontent could not be mistaken, and it excited the fears of Constantine and his creatures. Many eminent men, representatives of families renowned in the annals of the empire, were seized, and condemned to lose their sight, because the services of their ancestors in past generations appeared to give them too much influence on public opinion. It is difficult to determine, in each case, whether this was a measure of precaution, or a punishment for political imprudence or actual conspiracy. The names of some of the sufferers deserve a record, because they indicate the position of several distinguished families at the time. Nicephorus Comnenos, the governor of Media or Aspourakan, had bravely defended his province against the incursions of the Saracens; but his troops having given him some signs of indiscipline and timidity, he had invited them to take an oath that they would never desert him on the field of battle. This excited the jealousy of the emperor, who recalled Comnenos to Constantinople, where he was condemned to lose his sight for administering unlawful oaths to the army. Constantine, the son of Michael Burtzes, who took Antioch, was also deprived of sight; but in his case it was notorious that the punishment was an act of revenge, as this patrician had informed Basil of some unseemly practices of his brother, in order that they might be restrained. The grandsons of the rivals, Bardas Skleros and Bardas Phokas, were united in misfortune. These two patricians lost their sight on some vague accusations brought against them by the eunuchs of the imperial palace. Basilios Skleros had quarrelled with Prusian, the son of Ladislas, the last king of Achrida. Prusian, who held the rank of magister, and was governor of the theme Boukellarion, fought a duel with Skleros; for the pride of the Byzantine military aristocracy displayed itself with as much courage, if not with as much gallantry, as was ever shown by the chivalry of western Europe. The two duellists were exiled to different islands of the Princes’ group; but Basilios was soon deprived of his sight, on pretext that he was plotting to escape. Romanos Kurkuas, a member of a distinguished Armenian family, which had supplied the empire with many able generals, and of which the Emperor John Zimiskes was a scion, also lost his sight, as well as several individuals who bear names not unknown in Byzantine history, and others whose barbarous appellations prove that the Bulgarian and Slavonian aristocracy divided with the Greeks and Armenians a competent share of political influence at the court of Constantinople.

The extent of the disorder caused in the provinces by the creatures sent to govern them by Constantine and his eunuchs, is attested by the notice we possess of some occurrences at Naupactos. The government of that province was intrusted to an officer called, from his violence, Mad George, who, by his tyrannical conduct, drove the people to despair; and in an insurrection which ensued, Mad George was slain, and his palace plundered by the populace. This insurrection was soon quelled; but Constantine took severe vengeance on the inhabitants of Naupactos. Even the archbishop was deprived of his sight, for attempting to protect the people against the exactions of their tyrant.

Foreign nations soon heard how Constantine conducted the government, and hastened to profit by the disorderly state of public affairs. In 1027, the Patzinaks made an irruption into Bulgaria, where they laid waste everything on their line of march. A Saracen fleet cruised among the Cyclades, visiting the islands one after another, and collecting booty from all. But the spirit infused by Basil into the army and navy was not extinct, though their direction had fallen into unworthy hands. Diogenes, the governor of Sirmium, being created duke of Bulgaria, defeated the Patzinaks, and drove them back beyond the Danube. The governors of Samos and Chios assembled a naval force, with which they attacked the Saracen fleet, and captured twelve of the enemy's ships with all the crews.

Constantine VIII was suddenly attacked by a disease which was evidently mortal. When he was near his end, he fixed his eyes on Constantine Dalassenos as his successor. The choice was judicious; and a eunuch of the palace was despatched to summon Dalassenos from his residence in the Armeniac theme, when Simeon, the commander of the watch, expecting to find a weaker and more docile sovereign in Romanus Arghyros, who was connected with the imperial family, prevailed on the emperor to recall his first order, and transfer the empire to Romanus. The destined sovereign, on reaching the palace, was informed by Constantine that he was selected to mount the throne, but that he must divorce his wife, and marry one of the imperial princesses. Romanus hesitated to become emperor on this condition; but Constantine, to quicken his decision, informed him that he must either ascend the throne or lose his eyesight, and gave him a few hours to reflect on the choice. The wife of Romanus, learning the alternative, immediately ordered her head to be shaved, and entered a monastery; thus generously relieving her husband from the odium of sacrificing his honour to his timidity or ambition. Constantine had destined Theodora, the youngest of his three daughters, to be the wife of Romanus; but she refused to participate in the throne by marrying the husband of another woman. The emperor was compelled, therefore, to make his second daughter Zoe empress, for the eldest had retired into a monastery. The daughters of Constantine were already of mature age. Their education had been shamefully neglected by their father; and Zoe had taken advantage of the want of all moral restraint in which she lived. She had attained the age of forty-eight when she became a bride; but the posterity of Romanus II and Theophano were all remarkable for health, vigour, and longevity. Her marriage with Romanus III and their coronation was celebrated on the 19th November 1028. On the 21st of the month Constantine VIII expired.

 

 

Sect. II.

THE REIGNS OF THE HUSBANDS OF ZOE

Romanus III. AD 1028-1034

 

For twenty-nine years the empire was ruled by a succession of princes who owed their position on the throne to the daughters of Constantine VIII. Under such circumstances, it is natural that the affairs of the court of Constantinople attract more than usual attention in a review of Byzantine history. Every class of society in the empire appears during this period to have slumbered in prosperity, consuming its revenues in a firm conviction that no external power could disturb the internal security of the state. In no other portion of the civilized world did the inhabitants enjoy an equal degree of wealth and security for life and property; and the military power and financial resources of every neighbouring government appeared far inferior to those of the Byzantine Empire. Conservative lethargy was natural under such circumstances.

Romanus III was sixty years old when accident made him an emperor. He was allied to several of the oldest and most illustrious of the aristocracy, and is a type of the kind of sovereign a respectable Byzantine noble of conservative tendencies made, during a time when the political horizon was peculiarly tranquil in the East. He enjoyed the reputation of possessing both accomplishments and learning; but his vanity somewhat obscured the lustre of his talents. Feeling that his sudden elevation would excite the ambition of many of the nobility, he adopted measures to conciliate the favour of every class of his subjects. The church was propitiated by bestowing on the clergy of St. Sophia’s an annual revenue of eighty pounds’ weight of gold, secured as a permanent charge on the imperial treasury. To gain the nobility and the higher ecclesiastical dignitaries, he abolished the Allelengyon, or mutual responsibility of the rich for the taxes due by the poor in their district. It appears that this law, as established by Basil II, had been executed with such severity that several bishops had been reduced to poverty. He also granted a full pardon to all persons who had been persecuted by the jealousy of Constantine VIII. He purchased popularity among the people by releasing all who were confined in the public prisons for debt; and in order to combine justice with charity, he paid their debts to private individuals when he remitted those to the fisc. He redeemed the captives taken by the Patzinaks in their recent invasion of the empire; and, in short, he endeavored in many ways to render himself so generally popular as to deter any rival from aspiring at the throne. These measures for securing popularity were of themselves well chosen, but their favourable effect was greatly increased by a coincidence beyond the emperor’s control. The year of his accession proved one of singular fertility every species of grain was abundant in the capital, and a rich harvest of olives supplied the people of the provinces both with oil and money.

The piety of Romanus displayed itself in the usual superstition of his age. Considering the failure of his Syrian campaign as a punishment for his sins, and not a consequence of his ignorance of military affairs, he sought to propitiate Heaven by a lavish expenditure on ecclesiastical objects. He founded a new monastery of the Virgin called Semneion, on the church of which he laid out money with profusion. He endowed the monastery with such enormous revenues that even Byzantine ecclesiastics, in recording his liberality, blame the incongruity of placing monks in the position of luxurious nobles, and complain of the emperor seeking to acquire merit with God by exactions that ruined his subjects. Romanus also covered the capital of the columns in the churches of St Sophia’s and Blachern with gilding, and enriched the buildings with expensive ornaments. He is said likewise to have obtained permission from the Fatimite caliph Daher to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by Caliph Hakem in the year 1010. Subsequent disputes with the Egyptian government appear to have delayed the commencement of the work until the reign of Michael IV, and it was not completed until that of Constantine IX (Monomachus), in the year 1048.

Whenever early education has failed to implant moral feelings in the hearts of men, laws prove ineffectual to supply the want, whether in the case of individuals or nations. The people of the Byzantine Empire were now beginning to have the same hankering after hereditary succession which has lately been manifested by the continental nations of Europe for representative government; but in both cases there appears to have been a want of those firm convictions required for attaining any desired end. As usually happens in political matters, the fault lay with the higher and educated classes of society, who allowed themselves to quit the line of duty to pursue any lure held out to their prejudices or passions. Hence we find conspiracies and rebellions continuing to occur in rapid succession in the Byzantine Empire, where they were regarded as an unavoidable evil in the lot of man. Conservative tendencies were the most powerless political feeling that ever swayed the counsels of Constantinople. But we must not forget that the Byzantine Empire was a government without a nation.

The Empress Zoe never forgave her sister Theodora that superiority of character which had induced their father to offer her the empire, if she would accept the husband of his choice; and Romanus III disliked her for refusing his hand, and feared her on account of her talents. He set a spy over her conduct by drawing from his retreat John, one of the ministers of Basil II, who had deemed it prudent to retire into a monastery on the accession of Constantine VIII. John was now appointed syncellus, and intrusted with the superintendence of Theodora’s household. Prusian, the Bulgarian prince who had fought a duel with Romanus Skleros, the brother-in-law of the Emperor Romanus III, was accused of plotting with Theodora to seize the imperial crown. Whether true or false, the jealousy of Zoe and the aversion of Romanus were sure to obtain for this accusation a favourable reception. The emperor had already restored his brother-in-law to his former rank as magistros; he now revenged him by condemning Prusian to lose his sight, and by banishing his mother, the late queen of Bulgaria, to the monastery of Mantineion in the Boukellarian theme. Subsequently, when the court was alarmed at the prospect of a Bulgarian and Slavonian rebellion under the direction of Constantine Diogenes, Prusian was compelled to embrace the monastic life. It seems strange that the project of transferring the sovereignty of the Byzantine empire to a Bulgarian should be recorded by the Byzantine writers, without the smallest notice that such an event was likely to wound either the Roman pride of the aristocracy of Constantinople, or the national vanity of the Greek race; but we must recollect that the founder of the Basilian dynasty was generally considered to have been a Slavonian groom.

Another conspiracy, which was formed soon after that of Prusian, was connected with the same interests, and counted on the same feelings for success. Constantine Diogenes, the governor of Sirmium and duke of Bulgaria, had married a niece of the Emperor Romanus III, and had been appointed governor of Thessalonica. While there, it was discovered that he was engaged in frequent communications with the leaders of the Bulgarian and Slavonian population of the empire, and it was deemed necessary to transfer him to the government of the Thrakesian theme before arresting him. He was found guilty of conspiracy against the emperor, and condemned to be incarcerated as a monk in the monastery of Studion. John the syncellus, who seems to have been gained over by Theodora, whom he had been appointed to watch, Eustathios Daphnomeles, the governor of Achrida, two grandchildren of Michael Burtzes, the conqueror of Antioch, and George and Varasvatzes, nephews of the patrician Theudatos, were all condemned for participating in this conspiracy. They were publicly scourged, and then banished. Theodora, who was accused of being privy to their plots, was driven from her palace, and imprisoned in the monastery of Petrion. Some time after, the Empress Zoe visited her sister, and compelled her to assume the monastic habit. Constantine Diogenes was also accused by the archbishop of Thessalonica of plotting to escape into Illyria, in order to assume the title of emperor. To avoid the loss of his eyesight, and the disgrace of being scourged through the streets of the capital, he threw himself from a window, and was killed on the spot. He was buried in the place appropriated to those who committed suicide, A.D. 1032.

The negligence of Constantine VIII had weakened the military force of the empire. Spondyles, the eunuch intrusted with the government of Antioch, finding that the Saracen emirs who had been rendered tributary by Nicephorus II and John Zimiskes refused to pay tribute, undertook to re-establish the imperial authority. His rashness and incapacity led to the complete defeat of the Byzantine army on the 31st of October 1029, by which all the imperial possessions of Syria were exposed without defence to the attacks of the emirs of Aleppo and Tripolis, who pushed their incursions up to the walls of Antioch, and rendered themselves masters of the fort of Menik, which had been recently constructed in its immediate vicinity.

Romanus III resolved to redeem the honour of the empire at the head of his armies. His brother-in-law, Constantine Karantenos, was sent forward to supersede Spondyles. When the emperor reached Philomilion in Pisidia, he was met by an embassy from the emir of Aleppo, who offered to recognise the supremacy of the empire, and to pay the same tribute he had paid to Basil II. The wisest councillors of Romanus recommended him to accept these terms, for the season was ill suited for invading Syria, where the heat and want of water rendered great part of the country better adapted for the operations of the light-armed cavalry of the Arabs, than for the military tactics of the Byzantine troops, covered with heavy armour. The emperor was so destitute of military experience, that he believed it would be a matter of little difficulty to rival the exploits of Nicephorus, Zimiskes, and Basil, and he marched forward to take possession of Aleppo. He had arrived at a strong fortress called Azaz, about two days’ march from that city, when his outposts were attacked and driven in by the Arabs, who prevented his cavalry from collecting forage, and his troops from approaching the water in the neighbourhood. The position of the Byzantine camp was ill chosen; an attempt to repulse the Arabs led to an unpremeditated engagement, in which a considerable body of troops was defeated, and the fugitives, rushing into the camp, spread disorder far and wide. No measures were adopted for restoring order, and the victorious Arabs advanced up to the intrenchments, and kept the imperial army closely blockaded. The emperor was utterly helpless, and under such a commander there was no choice but to retreat to Antioch. This operation was conducted in the most disgraceful manner. At daylight Romanus abandoned the camp, leaving his own tents and baggage, and the warlike machines, tents, and baggage of the army, a prey to the enemy; and this booty fortunately detained the Arabs so long that a great part of the flying army gained Antioch in safety, August 1030.

Romanus, cured of his passion for military fame, hastened back to Constantinople. The generals he left in command of the army proved as incapable as their sovereign, and Menik, the fort in the vicinity of Antioch, remained in the hands of the Saracens. The emperor, however, at last sent Theoktistos, the commander of the foreign mercenaries, with a considerable reinforcement of native and foreign troops, and this officer having formed an alliance with the emir of Tripolis, who was alarmed at the progress of the Egyptian power in Syria, succeeded in taking the fort of Menik. Alach, the son of the emir of Tripolis, visited the court of Romanus, and so lax were the political and religious ideas of the Byzantines, in spite of their ecclesiastical bigotry, that he was honoured with the rank of a Roman patrician.

Shortly after the defeat of the Emperor Romanus at Azaz, an incident occurred which deserves notice, principally because it brought into notice an officer who soon took a prominent part in the military affairs of the empire, both in Asia and Europe. George Maniakes was governor of the small province called Telouch. After the flight of the army to Antioch, a body of eight hundred Arabs appeared before the walls of the fortress in which he was residing, announcing the death of the emperor, and the overthrow of the Byzantine power in Syria. They ordered Maniakes to evacuate the place, or they threatened to storm it next day, and put every person within its walls to the sword. Maniakes considered that the nature of their summons indicated either their weakness or their determination to fall on his troops by treachery; he therefore asked to be allowed to remain the night in the fortress, to make preparations for his retreat. The Arab camp was supplied with food and refreshments in abundance, and at midnight Maniakes led out the garrison to attack the enemy, who were found plunged in sleep without a guard. The greater part were slain, and two hundred and eighty camels, laden with the spoil of Romanus’s camp, were recaptured. This prize was sent as a present to the emperor, accompanied with the noses and ears of the vanquished.

To reward the valour of Maniakes, he was appointed governor of Lower Media, of which Samosata was the capital. The following year the Saracens invaded Mesopotamia, and plundered the country as far as Melitene; but in 1032, Maniakes contrived to bribe the governor of Edessa, who was subject to the emir of Miarfekin (Martyropolis), to deliver up the town. But as soon as the Byzantine troops got possession of three towers in the wall, they were assailed by the Saracen inhabitants, and Maniakes was soon attacked by Apomerman, the emir of Miarfekin, who hastened to expel him from his position. The Saracens, finding it impossible to regain possession of the towers, and learning that fresh troops were marching to the assistance of Maniakes, abandoned Edessa; but before quitting it they burned most of the houses, and destroyed the great church. Though the Saracens had time to carry off the greater part of the wealth of the city they left behind them what was infinitely more valuable in the eyes of the Christians of that age than the whole wealth of the caliphate. The people of Edessa had long boasted that they possessed a letter written by our Saviour to Abgarus, king of Edessa; this precious relic was now brought to Maniakes, and by him transmitted to Constantinople. It is not known at what period this precious document was fabricated. From the city and territory of Edessa a tribute of 50 Ib. of gold was annually remitted to the Byzantine treasury.

The disorganised state of the caliphate of Bagdad, and the power acquired by the Turkish mercenaries, induced several Saracen emirs to solicit the protection of Romanus. The emir of Aleppo, in spite of his victory, became tributary to the empire. Aleim, the emir of Perkrin a fortress of great importance, on account of its position delivered up that place to the emperor; and a body of six thousand Byzantine troops, under a Bulgarian patrician, was stationed to defend this advanced post. Aleim was, however, dissatisfied with the reward he received, and opened communications with the Persians, whom he contrived to introduce into Perkrin. The Byzantine garrison was surprised and put to the sword; but a powerful body of native troops and Russian mercenaries soon regained possession of the place, which was taken by assault, and Aleim was put to death.

The Saracens of Africa and Sicily were still in the habit of sending out the fleets to plunder the coasts of the empire. In the year 1031, these pirates laid waste Illyria and the island of Corfu, but they were defeated by the people of Ragusa and the governor of Nauplia, who destroyed the greater part of their fleet. Next year they returned with a large force, and, if we believe the accounts of the Byzantine writers, their fleet consisted of a thousand vessels, and transported ten thousand troops. Two divisions of this great armament were defeated by Nicephoras Karantenos, the governor of Nauplia, and upwards of a thousand prisoners were sent to Constantinople. In 1033, the imperial fleet, under the command of the protospatharios Tekneas, made a descent on the coast of Egypt, and after collecting considerable booty, and carrying off many prisoners, the expedition returned to Constantinople. Every government at this time found it much easier to plunder the territories of its rivals than to defend its own, for most sovereigns had adopted the policy of disarming the great body of their subjects, fearing that, if they possessed arms, they would employ their strength in delivering themselves from the fiscal exactions of their princes.

During the reign of Romanus III, several parts of Asia Minor suffered very severely from earthquakes, locusts, famine, and pestilence; and in a stationary condition of society these calamities often destroy an amount of capital which is never replaced, and become, therefore, an immediate cause of a rapid depopulation.

For two years before his death the emperor was afflicted by a disease which gradually wasted his frame, and caused his hair and beard to fall off. Many ascribed the disorder to the use of aphrodisiacs, which he took to an immoderate extent, in the hope of leaving an heir to the empire; but others believed that the disease originated in a slow poison administered either by the Empress Zoe or by John the orphanotrophos, who expected to raise his brother Michael to the throne.

This John was a eunuch and a monk, who had entered the household of Romanus while he was yet in a private station, but who, after he became emperor, received the rank of orphanotrophos, or minister of charitable institutions, an office which proves the existence of a high degree of civilization in the Byzantine administration. John had several brothers, one of whom, named Michael, commenced life as a goldsmith and money-changer, but while still young, received a place in the imperial household. The face of Michael had the beauty of a perfect statue; his figure was full of grace, and his manners were attractive and dignified, but the young man was liable to sudden and violent attacks of epilepsy. Zoe, though upwards of fifty, is said to have fallen in love with her handsome servant, and to have carried on an intrigue with him by the assistance of his brother John. Romanus, though informed of his wife's conduct, paid no attention to the accusations, which the epilepsy of Michael seemed to render improbable. In the meantime, the health of the emperor rapidly declined, and on the nth of April 1034 he was taken from the bath in a dying state. While life yet remained, he was visited by Zoe and some of the officers of the court, but he was already speechless, and the empress quitted his side to take measures with the orphanotrophos for placing her epileptic paramour on the throne.

The moment that life was extinct in the body of Romanus III, Zoe assembled the officers of state in the palace, and invested Michael IV with the imperial robes. He was immediately proclaimed Emperor of the Romans, and seated himself on the vacant throne beside Zoe. The promptitude with which this singular step of raising a domestic to the throne was conceived and executed prevented its encountering the slightest opposition. The Patriarch Alexios was summoned to the palace, where he learned the death of Romanus, and was, to his great astonishment, ordered to crown Michael the Paphlagonian, and celebrate his marriage with the widowed empress. The Patriarch would willingly have delayed making this open display of contempt for decency, but he saw Michael seated on the throne, and he was aware of the power and ability of his brother the orphanotrophos; so, admitting that reasons of state might overrule the dictates of virtue, he celebrated the marriage to avoid greater scandal. Thus a single night saw the aged Zoe the wife of two emperors, a widow and a bride, and Michael a menial and a sovereign. In order to render the sudden elevation of a domestic of the palace less strange in the distant provinces, John, who became his brother's prime-minister, despatched letters to all the governors, announcing that Michael had been selected by the deceased emperor for his successor, and crowned before his death.

 

Michael IV, the Paphlagonian, A.D. 1034-1041

 

The new emperor, though he ascended the throne in the most disgraceful manner, possessed some good qualities; and his natural good disposition appears neither to have been corrupted by his education as a money-changer, though calumny accused him of having been a fabricator of false coin; nor by his menial service at a corrupt and vicious court, of which he was a depraved member. After he mounted the throne, he soon lost the gaiety of disposition and tranquillity of mind which had increased the beauty of his figure and the grace of his manner. In spite of his constitutional infirmity, he was not destitute of considerable strength of character, and with his vices he united a strong sense of justice. The conduct of Zoe awakened in his mind feelings of distrust for his own safety, and he had spirit enough to dismiss from her service many of the eunuchs of her father’s household, who seemed fit agents for new plots. His conscience was soon troubled by his treachery to his benefactor, and during his whole reign he suffered the pangs of remorse. He sought pardon from heaven by praying at the shrines of different saints, and he wasted the revenues of the empire in building monasteries and chapels, and in making lavish donations to priests and monks. But as he continued to enjoy every advantage he had purchased by his crimes, the historians of his reign justly observe that he seemed to trust in the blindness of God for the forgiveness of his sins, as if divine justice could regard good deeds done at the expense of his subjects as any atonement for his private sins, or as any proof of sincere repentance on the part of the imperial sinner. It must be owned that there is more truth in this observation than is agreeable either to the Papal or the Greek Church. The anxiety produced by the cares of his situation soon increased the emperor's malady to such a degree that he became liable to sudden attacks; and even at public ceremonies, when he was seated on the throne, it was necessary to have the canopy of state hung round with curtains, which the chamberlains could let fall to hide him from the assembly as soon as his countenance indicated the approach of the terrible convulsions to which he was liable. When his malady seized him, his features were distorted into hideous expressions, his eyes rolled in wild agony, and he often struck his head against the wall until he fell exhausted on the floor. Though his malady was known to be of old date, the people persisted in regarding it as a judgment for his conduct to his benefactor Romanus, and appealed to it as a visible interposition of divine power, which abandoned him from time to time to be tormented by demons as a punishment for his treachery.

Under these circumstances, it appears strange that Michael retained the throne with so little difficulty, and met with no dangerous rival. It is true, he possessed an able prime minister in his brother, the Orphanotrophos, whose interests were completely identified with his own, and who was a statesman competent to relieve him from all the details of administrative labour. Michael could entertain no distrust of his brother John, who could neither supplant him on the throne nor covet it for his posterity. But though the Orphanotrophos was a faithful brother and an able minister, he was rapacious and tyrannical, and his administration, though serviceable to Michael, was injurious to the wealth and resources of the empire. He is said to have commenced life as a travelling doctor. While Romanus III was in a private station, he intrusted John with the direction of his household; but after he became emperor, his intendant, with the modest title of Orphanotrophos, and in the humble garb of a monk, directed the whole business in the imperial cabinet. When his brother ascended the throne, he openly assumed the duties of president of the imperial council, and though suffering under the loathsome disease of a cancer in the mouth, the energetic eunuch humbled the aristocracy and ruled the people with a rod of iron.

The administration of John the Orphanotrophos deserves attention, not only from forming a principal feature in the reign of Michael IV, but also from marking the era of a mischievous change in the financial system of the Byzantine government. The taxes were everywhere augmented, and collected in a more arbitrary manner. An additional charge of from four to twenty byzants was imposed on every landed estate, according to its extent. John’s avidity compelled the collectors of the revenue in the provinces to increase their exactions, for when they were regular in their remittances to the treasury, and liberal in their presents to the Orphanotrophos, their oppressive conduct to the provincials was easily overlooked. This system of extortion caused several serious insurrections during the reign of Michael IV. At its commencement the people of Antioch murdered the collector of taxes in that city, and, alarmed at the vengeance John was likely to take for such an offence, shut their gates against his brother Niketas, whom he sent to be their duke. Niketas succeeded in entering the city, where his first act was to put to death a hundred of the inhabitants, and confiscate the wealth of eleven of the richest families. The people of Aleppo also expelled the imperial commissioner sent to reside among them for fiscal purposes, and their position secured them from the vengeance of the Byzantine minister. When Maria, the emperor’s sister, and mother of the future emperor, Michael V, visited the city of Ephesus on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. John the Evangelist, she was struck with compassion at the sight of the excessive misery she beheld in all the country on her road. When she returned to Constantinople, she urged her brother, the Orphanotrophos, by every feeling of humanity and religion, to moderate the financial exactions which were rapidly depopulating the empire. The Orphanotrophos replied with a smile “You reason like a woman, ignorant of the necessities of the imperial treasury”. His conduct, however, proved in the end unprofitable as a financial operation, for it caused an extensive insurrection of the Bulgarian and Slavonian population, which cost more to suppress than had been wrung from them. Even the Greeks found their fiscal sufferings so great that they seemed disposed to join the Slavonians in an attempt to throw off the Byzantine yoke. The collector of the revenues of the theme of Nicopolis was torn in pieces by the people, and the western parts of Greece welcomed the Bulgarian troops.

A government so unpopular as that of Constantinople at this time required not only great talents to direct the central administration, but also a numerous body of firm supporters dispersed through all the provinces, interested to defend the system with all its abuses. This was effected by filling every office with men dependent on the family of Michael IV, and crowding the senate with creatures of the Orphanotrophos. On the death of Niketas, Constantine, who was almost as able and active as his brother John, was appointed duke of Antioch, and became afterwards grand domestikos. George was appointed protovestiarios, their brother-in-law Stephen was intrusted with the command of the fleet, and subsequently named commander-in-chief in Sicily; while his son Michael, called, from his father's early profession, Kalaphates, or the Caulker, was appointed by his uncle Caesar, which was almost tantamount to proclaiming him heir-apparent to the Byzantine empire.

John even carried his ambition so far as to make an attempt to place himself at the head of the church as well as the state. Having gained over a party among the bishops to object to the appointment of the Patriarch Alexios as uncanonical, on the ground that he had been intruded on the church by the nomination of Basil II, John proposed to depose Alexios. The Patriarch, however, encountered the attack with courage. He openly discussed the question, and asked what measures were to be taken if all the ordinations which he had made, during the twelve years he had governed the church, were now unexpectedly declared void; and he boldly reminded John, that even the coronation and marriage of the reigning emperor would thus be pronounced null. This boldness alarmed the emperor: and John was compelled to lay aside the hope of becoming Patriarch during the life of Alexios.

Avarice was always a pervading fault of Byzantine society; and the rapacity of the clergy at this period often rivalled the extortions of the fiscal agents of the imperial administration. Two anecdotes, that contrast the moral feelings of a Greek bishop with those of a troop of Varangian soldiers, deserve notice.

Theophanes, the metropolitan of Thessalonica, carried his avarice so far that he held back the payment of the salaries due to the clergy of his chapter; and even during a year of famine refused to pay them their arrears. The Emperor Michael happened to visit Thessalonica, and the starving priests complained to him of the conduct of their bishop; but even the reproof of the emperor failed to obtain justice to the claims of the clergy. Michael then determined to punish the bishop; but, in order to expose his avarice and meanness in a public manner, he sent one of his household to borrow a hundred pounds' weight of gold, promising to repay the money immediately on his arrival at Constantinople. The bishop excused himself on the score of poverty, declaring, with the most solemn oaths, that he had only thirty pounds' weight of gold in his palace. The emperor immediately sent a commission to search the palace, and the sum of three thousand three hundred pounds' weight of gold was found. Theophanes was banished to a country farm, and Prometheos named his successor.

The Varangian guard was dispersed in winter-quarters in the Thrakesian theme, where one of the soldiers, attempting to use violence on the person of a country-woman, she drew his sword and stabbed him. The man died on the spot; but as soon as the foreign troops heard the true history of the affair, instead of insisting on revenge, they applauded the woman's conduct, put her in possession of all the property her assailant had left in his quarters, and exposed his body without burial, as if he had committed suicide.

The only noble whose great wealth and high character excited the fears of Michael IV, and the jealousy of the Orphanotrophos, was Constantine Dalassenos, the man who had been first selected as the husband of Zoe. Dalassenos was residing on his immense estates in the Armeniac theme when he heard of the election and marriage of Michael. The contemptuous words he was said to have uttered sank deep in the mind of the new emperor; and Dalassenos soon received an invitation from the Orphanotrophos to visit Constantinople. He, however, declined trusting his person in the capital until he received a solemn assurance of his safety from the emperor. The guarantees he ventured to demand, and which Michael consented to give, afford a curious picture of the proud position of the great nobles, and a sad evidence of the prevalence of falsehood and treachery in the highest ranks of society. A member of the emperor's household, in high office, was sent to Dalassenos with a piece of the holy cross, with the napkin on which the figure of Christ was miraculously imprinted, with the autograph letter of Christ, and with the portrait of the Virgin Mary, painted by the hand of St. Luke; and on these sacred relics this officer swore that he had witnessed the Emperor Michael IV take an oath that Constantine Dalassenos should suffer no injury if he visited the capital. On this assurance Dalassenos repaired to Constantinople, where he was well received by the emperor, and received the title of Proconsul. But shortly after, Niketas, the emperor’s brother, who was duke of Antioch, accused him of being privy to the insurrection in which the imperial tax-gatherers had been slain; and on this improbable charge Dalassenos was confined in the island of Plate. His son-in-law Dukas was thrown into prison, and three nobles of great wealth had their estates confiscated, for complaining that this proceeding was a violation of the emperor's oath.

During the Bulgarian rebellion in 1040, a conspiracy was formed to dethrone Michael. Many of the chief men in Constantinople were accused of being privy to the plot; and though they escaped with their lives, the fortunes of the wealthy were confiscated. Among the conspirators was Michael Ceroularios, whose guilt compelled him to protect his person by becoming a monk. He afterwards attained the dignity of Patriarch, and displayed the same unquiet intriguing spirit at the head of the church as he had done in a private station.

Some seditious proceedings in the Asiatic army were suppressed by the emperor's brother, Constantine, who put out the eyes of several officers; and not venturing to punish their chief, Gregory the Taronite, who was a patrician, by a local tribunal, sent that dignitary to Constantinople, sewed up in the hide of a newly-slain ox, with only holes cut in it for his eyes, and for breathing.

The military power of the empire was not tarnished by the conduct of Michael IV, though he was sneered at by the aristocracy as a Paphlagonian money-changer. The Saracens vainly endeavored to recover the possessions which had been conquered by the Christians in Syria and Mesopotamia. The emperor’s brother, Constantine, while governor of Antioch, displayed some military talents. He relieved Edessa when attacked by a Saracen army. The possession of Edessa by the Byzantine emperors was a source of continual annoyance to the Mohammedans, and their endeavours to regain it were incessant. In the year 1038, two years after it had been relieved by Constantine, they made use of a stratagem which has obtained immortality as an Eastern tale, though, as a fact, it remains buried in the dullness of Byzantine history. Varasvatzes, a Georgian, commanded in Edessa when twelve Arabians of rank presented themselves before the gates, attended by an escort of five hundred horse, and followed by a train of five hundred camels, declaring that they were going on an embassy to the emperor with rich presents from the caliph. The wary Georgian, however, distrusted their numerous escort; and though he gave the chiefs a hospitable reception, and prepared for them a sumptuous entertainment in his palace, he ordered the escort and the train of camels to be encamped without the walls, and sharply watched. While the banquet was proceeding in the city, a poor Armenian, well versed in the Arabic language, offered his services to the travellers, and was permitted to wander about the encampment. While standing near the wicker baskets with which the camels had been laden, he overheard a man conversing with another, and perceived that a band of armed men, for the purpose of surprising Edessa, was the only present for the emperor which the camels carried. Hastening to the palace of the governor, he succeeded in revealing the secret to the watchful Georgian, who found an excuse for quitting his guests. A body of the garrison was sent to overpower the cavalry, while Varasvatzes, proceeding in person to the encampment, ordered the wicker baskets with the presents for the emperor to be opened, and slew the concealed soldiers as they were found. He then returned to his palace, where he ordered his guests to be seized, and informed them of the issue of their treachery. Eleven were put to death, and the chief, mutilated by the loss of his hands, ears, and nose, was sent to announce the result of the adventure to the court of Bagdad.

The ravages of the Saracen fleets from Africa and Sicily were now more destructive than the incursions of their armies in Asia. Myra in Lycia, and many towns in the Cyclades, were plundered in 1034; but in the following year, when two separate fleets returned to renew these devastations, they were both defeated by the governors of the Thrakesian and Kibyrraiot themes, and the prisoners were treated as pirates, and impaled along the Asiatic coast from Adramyttium to Strobilos.

To prevent the recurrence of these plundering expeditions, it was resolved to carry the war into Sicily with the greatest vigour. Maniakes, who had distinguished himself as governor of Vaspourakan, was charged with the task of expelling the Saracens from the island. Abulaphar, the emir of Sicily, having formed an alliance with the empire, received the title of Magistros; but his authority was contested by his brother Abucab, and Sicily was involved in a civil war. In the meantime, the independence of the Sicilian chiefs was so great, that many continued their piratical expeditions against the Christians, in spite of the friendly relations established with the emirs. The civil war, however, enabled the Byzantine troops to enter Sicily as allies of Abulaphar, and they met with such success that the two brothers became alarmed, and, forgetting their differences, united to get rid of allies who promised soon to become masters. The moment appeared favorable for expelling the Saracens from the island; and Michael ordered Maniakes, who commanded the Byzantine forces in Italy, to cross the straits of Messina, and sent a powerful fleet, under his brother-in-law Stephen, to assist the operations of the army. Among the troops that Maniakes had assembled in Calabria were three hundred Norman mercenaries, whose skill in arms had already obtained for them the highest military reputation, AD 1038.

Messina was taken by storm, and though a large army of Saracens arrived from Africa to defend their countrymen, the Sicilians were completely defeated by Maniakes at a place called Remata. This victory enabled the Byzantine general to subdue the greater part of the island, and he employed the winter in constructing citadels in the towns he had conquered, in order to keep the inhabitants in check; for the number of Saracen proprietors settled in the island, and their spirit of local independence, combined with the financial exigencies of the Byzantine administration, threatened the Byzantine government with a violent opposition. The importance of the exploits of Maniakes, and the solidity of his buildings, are attested by the renown of his name and the relics of his works. The thick walls and massive round towers of the citadel he constructed at Syracuse still bear the name of the Castle of Maniakes, and show us how much of the strength and stability of Roman architecture survived in the Byzantine system of fortification in the eleventh century. The site of another of his works retains his name, situated on the roots of Mount Etna; but all the remains have disappeared in constructing the modern town of Bronte.

In the spring of 1040, another African army arrived in Sicily, to support the Mohammedan domination. Maniakes made his dispositions for a battle with his usual talent, and, confident of success, he ordered Stephen, the admiral of the fleet, to make dispositions for cutting off the retreat of the Africans. The Byzantine army was worthy of its general, and the invaders were completely routed at a place called Draginas; but the incapacity and misconduct of Stephen allowed the beaten troops to escape on board their fleet, and put to sea. Maniakes was indignant at this proof of negligence or cowardice. On meeting Stephen, he lost all command over his temper, and reproached the emperor’s brother-in-law with his unfitness for his station; and when the admiral ventured to reply in an insolent manner, the proud Maniakes, recollecting the caulker, and forgetting the prince, struck him on the head with the seiromast (a kind of javelin) in his hand. This outbreak of passion caused the loss of Sicily. Stephen complained to the Orphanotroph of the aristocratic insolence of Maniakes, and accused him of a design to rebel; which appeared no improbable accusation, when brought against a man who dared to strike the emperor’s brother-in-law in the presence of many officers of the army. Maniakes was arrested, and sent prisoner to Constantinople, and Stephen was appointed his successor in the government of Sicily. Under a leader so incompetent, the affairs of the Christians soon fell into confusion. Fresh bands of Saracens arrived from Africa; the Byzantine authorities were driven from the towns conquered by Maniakes; the army under the command of Stephen was everywhere worsted; and in a short time Messina alone preserved its allegiance to the government at Constantinople, being preserved by the valour of its governor Katakalon.

The Patzinaks renewed their invasions of the European provinces in the year 1034, when they extended their ravages almost to the walls of Thessalonica. Two years after, they again invaded the empire and wasted Thrace with unusual barbarity, carrying off five imperial officers of high rank as prisoners.

In the year 1040, Servia, which had submitted to the Emperor Basil II, became so discontented with the fiscal measures of the Orphanotrophos, that the people rose in rebellion and shook off the Byzantine yoke. Stephen Bogislav placed himself at the head of his countrymen and expelled the imperial authorities. The success of his rebellion was promoted by the seizure of a vessel, with a thousand pounds’ weight of gold belonging to the imperial treasury, which was driven on the coast of Illyria. The emperor demanded the restitution of this sum, and when it was refused, sent George Provatas with a large army to reduce Stephen to obedience. The Byzantine troops were defeated through the incapacity of their general, and the independence of Servia firmly established and tacitly recognised.

The fiscal exactions of John the Orphanotrophos produced another rebellion, which threatened to deprive the empire of the fruits of the long campaigns of Basil II. The land-tax or tribute of the Slavonian population had been left, by their conqueror, on the footing it had been established by Samuel when he founded the kingdom of Achrida, and consisted of a moderate payment in kind annually for each yoke of oxen and each strema of vineyard. Michael IV, at the advice of his brother, ordered a tax to be levied in money in lieu of the established payments, and the discontent caused by the measure prepared the population for revolt. While everything proclaimed an approaching rebellion, a Bulgarian slave, named Peter Deleanos, fled from his master at Constantinople, and, on reaching Belgrade on the Danube, announced himself to be the grandson of Samuel, king of Achrida. He was soon joined by numbers of discontented Bulgarians, and was proclaimed king. His hopes of being able to resist the power of the Byzantine government lay in the Slavonian population of Macedonia and Epirus, not in the Bulgarians of the plains between the Danube and Mount Haemus. He succeeded in making himself master of many strong places in the theme of Dyrrachium, and he commenced the revolution by murdering all the Greeks who fell into his hands. Basil Synnadenos, the governor of Dyrrachium, advanced against him, hoping to extinguish the revolt in its birth; but some intrigues at Constantinople caused him to lose his place, and one of his officers, who was named his successor, proved incapable of executing the plan of operations already traced out. The new governor threw everything into confusion; and a large body of troops in the province consisting of Slavonians, they cast off their allegiance to the emperor, and proclaimed one of their own officers, Teichomeros, king of Bulgaria. Deleanos and Teichomeros agreed to act as allies, and divide the territory from which they might be able to expel the Byzantine officers; but when the two Slavonian armies formed a junction, Deleanos succeeded in persuading the soldiers to put Teichomeros to death in order to preserve the unity of the kingdom.

The rebels were now sufficiently powerful to advance against Thessalonica, where the Emperor Michael had fixed his residence, in order to pay his devotions at the celebrated shrine of St. Demetrius. Alarmed at the threatening aspect of the revolution, and the unprepared state of the central authorities in Macedonia and Greece, he hastened to Constantinople to expedite warlike preparations, leaving a Bulgarian named Ibatzes in charge of his baggage, with orders to follow him to the capital. Ibatzes fled to Deleanos, and delivered all the treasure intrusted to his care to the new monarch. In the meantime, Alusianos, the younger brother of Ladislas, the last king of Achrida, witnessing the rapid progress of the rebellion, and disgusted with the avarice and injustice of the Orphanotrophos, quitted Theodosiopolis, of which he was governor, and joined Deleanos in his camp at Ostrovos. He was intrusted with the command of a division of the Bulgarian army, and ordered to undertake the siege of Thessalonica, where he conducted his military operations so ill, that he was very soon defeated by the imperial troops, and lost about 15,000 men. The splendour of the victory was of course attributed to St. Demetrius, who was reported to have taken the command of the Greeks in person. The failure before Thessalonica was in some degree compensated by the capture of Dyrrachium, which had already fallen into the hands of Kaukanos, one of the Bulgarian generals. While these operations were going on in the north, a Sclavonian army under Anthimos invaded Greece, and endeavored to rouse their countrymen in the Peloponnesus to take up arms. The inhabitants of Thebes, which was then a wealthy and populous manufacturing city, boldly took the field to defend the cause of the Greek population, but were defeated with great loss.

The oppressive conduct of the Byzantine fiscal agents had been so general, that the Greeks were in some places more inclined to favour the Bulgarian revolution than to support the central government of Constantinople. The people in the theme of Nicopolis murdered Koutzomytes, the tax-collector of the province, and invited the Bulgarians to their assistance, who easily rendered themselves masters of all western Greece. The city of Naupaktos (Lepanto) was alone preserved in its allegiance by the presence of its garrison.

It was fortunate for the Byzantine empire that the political government of the rebels was directed by men destitute of talent and honesty, for the minds of the Greek population were in general so alienated, and the amount of the imperial forces in Greece was so trifling, that it would not have been a difficult matter to have subdued the whole country. But in place of attending to the public cause, Deleanos and Alusianos turned all their attention to intrigue. The first felt that, if he could not destroy his rival, he should lose his throne; and the other feared that his royal blood and his recent defeat would cost him his life. At last Alusianos found an opportunity of seizing the king by treachery, and, putting out his sovereign’s eyes, he assumed the vacant crown. But bred up amidst the luxuries of Byzantine civilization, and caring little for Slavonian nationality, he preferred enduring the insolence of the Orphanotrophos to encountering the hardships of a revolutionary war. He deserted his countrymen, resigned the title of king, and made his peace with the court of Constantinople.

The Emperor Michael IV was now suffering under a severe attack of dropsy, in addition to repeated paroxysms of his old malady; but he displayed the greatest energy from the moment that the Bulgarian rebellion broke out. He was well aware that he could not hope to survive for any length of time, but his mind seemed to gain vigour from his anxiety to transmit the sceptre he held without degradation to his successor. He assembled an army at Thessalonica, and accompanied its movements, though his disease had made such progress that he was lifted from his horse every evening utterly exhausted. The Bulgarian army, left without a leader by the treachery of Alusianos, was defeated and destroyed. The blind Deleanos and the deserter Ibatzes were both taken prisoners, and in one campaign the dying emperor reduced all the Bulgarians and Sclavonians who had taken arms to submission, and restored tranquillity in Macedonia, Epirus, and Greece. This vigorous and noble conduct closed the reign of Michael. He returned to Constantinople to die.

The people, who looked on his original malady as a divine judgment, were confirmed in this superstition by the prodigies they witnessed during his reign. Hailstones fell which killed men at their work; earthquakes followed one another with fearful rapidity; meteors blazed in the sky so bright, that the stars were rendered invisible at midnight; and a pestilence visited various parts of the empire with such terrible mortality that the living found it difficult to bury the dead. Taxation

also began to press with increasing severity on a stationary society, so that, in spite of Michael’s charitable works his building churches, monasteries, and hospitals his death was awaited with impatience by his subjects, in the hope that it would deliver the empire from the effects of divine wrath. Michael himself participated in the superstition of the people, and when he felt his end approaching, he retired from the imperial palace to the monastery of St. Anarghyros, where he assumed the habit of a monk. He died a few days after, on the 10th of December 1041, having reigned seven years and eight months.

 

Reign of Michael V Kalaphates, or the Caulker, A.D. 1042

 

The Empress Zoe now assumed the direction of the administration as the lawful heiress of the empire, and in virtue of the will of her deceased husband, and she attempted to carry on her government with the assistance of the eunuchs of her household. But a few days' experience of the toils which were imposed on the sovereign by the Byzantine system of administration soon showed her both the inconveniences and dangers of her position. Though the Athenian Irene had ruled the empire as absolute mistress for some years, and several female regents had presided over the government at different times, still the traditional aversion of the Roman state to female sway was not entirely extinct. Zoe, therefore, immediately perceived the necessity of giving the empire a male sovereign, and she took only three days to choose between adopting a son or marrying a husband. Michael the son of Stephen, the unlucky governor of Sicily, had been raised to the rank of Caesar by his uncle Michael IV, and he had the reputation of being a man of capacity and energy; but his uncle, who seems to have formed a more correct judgment of his disposition than the world at large, had seen so much to distrust in his character that he had excluded him from all share of public business, and given him no hope of mounting the throne as his successor. Zoe, too, displayed more confidence in his talents than in his principles; for before placing the crown on his head, she required him to swear in the most solemn manner that he would ever regard her as his benefactress, and treat her as his mother. She also required him to banish the Orphanotrophos, Constantine the domestikos, and George the protovestiarios. Michael promised everything and obtained the crown.

But as soon as he felt himself firmly established in power, he revealed his meanness of soul, and treated his benefactress with insolence as well as ingratitude. He recalled the Orphanotrophos to his counsels, and conferred on him the high dignity of despot; but he soon neglected his advice, and placed all his confidence in Constantine, whom he honoured with the rank of nobilissimus. He then began to intrigue against the Patriarch Alexios. After receiving the Patriarch with honour, and bestowing on him a donation of four lb. of gold, he appointed a meeting with him at a monastery on the Bosphorus, intending to exclude him from the city, and get a new Patriarch elected during his absence. At last he carried his presumption so far as to send the Empress Zoe to Prince’s Island, and compel her to adopt the monastic habit. But when the people heard of this last instance of his ingratitude, which he had the insolence to announce in a public proclamation, their fury burst through every restraint. They assailed the imperial heralds and paraded the city, exclaiming that “the caulker” had ceased to reign, and that they would scatter his bones abroad like dust. An assembly was held in the Church of St. Sophia, to which Theodora was brought from the monastery of Petrion, and proclaimed empress with her sister. In the meantime the emperor, alarmed at the progress of the sedition, brought Zoe back to the palace, and attempted to pacify the people by persuading her to appear at a balcony overlooking the hippodrome. The sight of Michael, however, who endeavoured to address the assembly, revived the popular fury, and preparations were made to storm the palace. The emperor now showed himself a coward as well as a tyrant, and wished to fly to the monastery of Studion. His uncle Constantine, however, made him understand that his only hope of life was in preserving the throne, and roused him to take measures for defending the palace.

The attack was made on the following day, and after a long defence the people, who assaulted it in three divisions from the hippodrome, the court of guard, and the tchukanisterion, stormed the palace. Katakalon, who saved Messina, had just returned from Sicily, and happening to be at the palace, directed the defensive arrangements, while Constantine the nobilissimus, assembling all his household in arms, added to the strength of the guards. The fury of the people overcame all resistance; but it is said that three thousand were slain before they forced their entrance into the interior of the building. Everything was then plundered, and the public registers were destroyed. Michael V and his uncle Constantine succeeded in escaping to the monastery of Studion during the confusion. Zoe immediately assumed the ensigns of the imperial power, and endeavoured to force her sister Theodora back into retirement, but the senate and people insisted that the two sisters should reign conjointly. Though Zoe was eager to tyrannize over her sister, she showed a disposition to spare her own tyrant Michael. She was, however, compelled by Theodora and the senate to join in his condemnation, for the populace shouted incessantly, “Let him be impaled, let him be crucified, let his eyes be put out!” Officers were therefore sent to drag him from his asylum and put out his eyes. When placed beside his uncle in the Sigma to suffer his sentence, he meanly entreated the executioners to put out the eyes of Constantine first; and that daring eunuch submitted to the punishment with the greatest firmness, while the dethroned emperor excited the contempt of the people by his cries and moans. They were then sent to pass the remainder of their lives as monks in the monastery of Elegmos. Michael the Caulker sate on the imperial throne four months and five days.

The joint government of Zoe and Theodora lasted less than two months. We need not wonder, therefore, that it is praised by all historians, for the salutary effects of a violent display of popular indignation were sure to extend over the whole period. Byzantine officials moderated their exactions in alarm, and the two empresses were reminded by the empty chambers of their palace that public opinion was not always to be despised with impunity. In order to secure the support of the imperial council of state, and of the municipality of Constantinople or of the Roman senate and people, as these bodies proudly styled themselves numerous promotions were made and large donations lavished. An ordinance was published prohibiting the sale of official situations, for this species of traffic had been rendered an ordinary source of revenue by the eunuchs of the imperial household, who had possessed themselves of most of the highest offices of the state. At the same time strict orders were issued to enforce the administration of justice with impartiality, and to restrain oppressive conduct on the part of the fiscal agents of government.

The unprincipled manner in which the adventurers and eunuchs, who had been introduced into the public service since the death of Basil II, appropriated the funds in the imperial treasury to their own use, deserves particular notice. Great deficiencies were detected in the accounts of the short financial administration of the nobilissimus Constantine; and the ministers of Zoe and Theodora found it necessary to examine him personally, in order to discover how the money had been employed. The blind monk, knowing that he had no chance of ever quitting the monastery in which he was confined, candidly informed the new ministers that he had abstracted the sum of 5300 lb. of gold from the treasury for his own use, and deposited it in a vaulted cistern attached to his palace, near the Church of the Holy Apostles.

The two sisters appeared always together at the meetings of the senate, and when they held courts of justice, or gave public audiences; but it was evident their union would not prove of long duration. Zoe was jealous of her sister, and though she was eager to be relieved of the burden of public business, she was determined not to allow Theodora to conduct it alone probably the more so, because Theodora showed great aptitude in state affairs, and took great pleasure in performing her administrative duties. Zoe, therefore, bethought herself of looking out for a third husband, to whom she might resign the throne, and thus deprive her sister of the influence she was rapidly acquiring. Zoe was now sixty-two years old, and, the age of passion having passed away, her memory reverted to the merits of Constantine Dalassenos, who had been destined by her father to be her first husband. She invited that proud noble to an interview in the imperial palace, in order to judge of his character before revealing her purpose. But in place of the splendid and gallant nobleman of her imagination, she met a stern old man, who expressed strongly his disapprobation of the whole system of the imperial administration since the death of Basil II; who openly blamed the vices of the court, and hardly concealed his contempt for her own conduct. Such a husband might have infused new vigour into the lethargic system of government, but Zoe was not inclined to submit her actions to the control of so severe a master.

She turned, therefore, to one of her former lovers, Constantine Artoklinas; but when his wife heard of the honor to which he was destined, she displayed none of the meekness of the wife of Romanus III. Artoklinas suddenly sickened and died, and his wife was supposed to have poisoned him, either from jealousy, or from her aversion to be immured in a convent Zoe was easily consoled. She again selected an old admirer, Constantine Monomachos, who had been banished to Mitylene by the jealousy of Michael IV, but recalled on the accession of Zoe and Theodora, and named Judge of Greece. A swift-rowing galley was despatched to convey him to the capital, where, on his arrival, he was invested with the Imperial robes. His marriage with Zoe was celebrated by one of the clergy, for the Patriarch Alexios declined officiating at a third marriage of the empress, which was doubly uncanonical, since both the bridegroom and the bride had been twice married. Nevertheless, on the day after the marriage ceremony, the Patriarch crowned the emperor with the usual solemnities.

 

Constantine IX Monomachus. A.D. 1042-1054

 

The reign of Constantine IX demands more attention from the historian of the Byzantine Empire than the worthless character of the man or the feeble policy of his cabinet appears at first glance to require. It typifies the moral degradation into which Byzantine society had fallen, for his vices were tolerated, if not approved of, by a large portion of his subjects. His open profligacy expresses the immorality of the age; his profusion indicated the general manner of living among all classes of his subjects; and while he destroyed the civil organisation of the government, and undermined the discipline of the Roman armies, they wasted the national capital and diminished the resources of the empire.

The domestic profligacy of Zoe had been concealed from the public by the household of eunuchs that surrounded her, and by whom the inhabitants of the palace were kept completely separated from the world without its walls. But her third husband, Constantine Monomachos, was so indifferent to all feelings of self-respect as to make an open parade of his vices at the public ceremonies of the court. After he had buried two wives, he obtained the favour of a beautiful young widow belonging to the powerful and wealthy family of Skleros. She was the granddaughter of that celebrated Bardas, who had disputed the empire with Basil II, and the daughter of Romanes Skleros, the brother-in-law of the Emperor Romanus III. The eminence of her family eclipsed the name of her husband, and she was called Skleraina. Infatuated by love for Constantine Monomachos, she openly assumed the position of his mistress, and shared his banishment at Mitylene. It is, however, only justice to the character of the fair Skleraina to observe that, in the opinion of the bigoted members of the Greek church, her position of mistress, as being less uncanonical, was more respectable than it would have been had she become the third wife of her lover. When Zoe raised Constantine to the throne, he bargained to retain his mistress, and the people of Constantinople were treated to the singular spectacle of an emperor of the Romans making his public appearance with two female companions dignified with the title of empress, one as his wife and the other as his mistress. Skleraina was regularly saluted with the title of Augusta, and installed in apartments in the palace, with a separate court as empress, and a rank equal to that held by Theodora. Zoe and she lived together on the best terms, and the want of jealousy of the aged wife is less surprising than her want of self-respect. The disposition of the beautiful Skleraina was extremely amiable, and she was respected to a certain degree for the constancy of her attachment to her lover in his misfortunes, which contrasted with the behaviour of Zoe, who had never allowed any passion, however violent, to retain permanent hold of her heart. She soon lost whatever popularity she enjoyed with the people, on account of the lavish expenditure of the emperor. She had possessed an ample fortune when Constantine was an impoverished exile, and her wealth had been consumed to gratify her lover’s luxurious habits. The good-natured sensualist now strove to repay Skleraina with unbounded liberality. Her apartments were rendered more splendid than any Constantinople had yet seen, her elegant manners created round her a graceful court, which seemed more brilliant from its contrast with the dull ceremony that reigned in the apartments of Zoe and Theodora. As the populace can rarely be so completely corrupted in their moral feelings as their superiors, the extravagant expenditure of the emperor on his concubine awakened the public indignation. They felt the financial oppression more grievous when they saw their money employed to insult their feelings, and they began to fancy that the lives of Zoe and Theodora might be in danger in a palace where vice was honoured, and where secret murder was supposed to be an ordinary occurrence.

Constantine IX had pursued his career of voluptuous extravagance for two years, without a thought of his duties either to God or to his subjects, when he was suddenly awakened to a sense of the danger of his situation by a furious sedition of the people. On the feast of the Forty Martyrs it was usual for the emperor to walk in solemn procession to the Church of our Saviour in Chalke, from whence he proceeded on horseback to the Church of the Martyrs. But as the procession was about to move from the palace, a cry was raised, “Down with Skleraina; we will not have her for empress! Zoe and Theodora are our mothers we will not allow them to be murdered!”. The fury of the populace was ungovernable, and they made an attempt to lay hands on the emperor, to tear him to pieces. Many persons were trodden to death in the tumult, and Constantine was in imminent danger of his life, when the sudden appearance of Zoe and Theodora at a balcony drew off the attention of the crowd, and allowed the emperor to escape. The sisters assured the people that they were not in the smallest danger, and as no leaders stepped forward to direct the populace, tranquillity was easily restored; but the emperor did not accompany the procession to the Church of the Forty Martyrs in the year 1044.

There are some articles in the expenditure of Constantine IX which indicate that he lived in an enlightened age, and reigned over a civilized people. To solace his conscience, he constructed houses of refuge for the aged and hospitals for the poor, as well as monasteries and churches for the clergy. He also raised the most distinguished literary men of his time to high offices. He completed the rebuilding the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and augmented the endowments of the clergy of St. Sophia’s, in order that service might be performed with due pomp every day.

In order to fill the treasury, when he had drained it by his lavish expenditure, he adopted a measure which proved ruinous to the empire, and was an immediate cause of the success of the Seljouk Turks in Asia Minor. The frontier provinces of the East had been exempted from the payment of direct taxes to the central government, and the dependent states in alliance with the empire in that quarter had been relieved from tribute, on the condition of maintaining bodies of regular militia constantly under arms, to defend their territories. Constantine IX consented to relieve them from these obligations, on their paying a sum of money into his exhausted treasury. By this impolitic proceeding, an army of fifty thousand men on the Iberian and Armenian frontiers was disbanded, and the Asiatic provinces left open to the invasion of the Seljouk Turks, whose power was rapidly increasing. The money remitted to Constantinople was quickly despatched in luxury and vice.

The death of the Patriarch Alexios, who died in the year 1043, after having ruled the Byzantine Church upwards of seventeen years with some reputation, afforded a sad confirmation of the depraved state of society, and the frightful extent to which avarice had corrupted the Eastern clergy. The emperor, who knew that the Patriarch had heaped up considerable sums of money in a monastery he had constructed, sent and seized this treasure, which was found to amount to the sum of 2500 lb. of gold. Michael Keroularios, who had been compelled to enter a monastery on account of the part he had taken in a conspiracy against Michael IV, was appointed Patriarch, and distinguished himself by his violent proceedings in the disagreement between the sees of Rome and Constantinople.

Theodora, though by her sister’s marriage she was deprived of all direct influence over the administration, still possessed the power of violating the law with impunity. John the Orphanotrophos was seized by her order while living tranquilly in banishment at Marykatos, and deprived of sight. It was said by some that this cruel deed was executed without the emperor’s permission, but others attributed it to revenge on the part of Constantine, who ascribed his long exile at Mitylene to the malice of the Orphanotrophos. We must recollect, however, that Theodora was of a sterner and more unforgiving temper than her brother-in-law, and that she had probably good reason for complaining of the conduct of the orphanotrophos, even when he was minister of Romanus III. In any case, it is a sufficient proof of the disorganization of the administration that the act is ascribed to Theodora by Zonaras, who was himself a minister, and that it was inflicted without even the formality of a legal sentence.

A weak and lavish court, surrounded by a proud and wealthy aristocracy, under the government of an absolute sovereign, is the hotbed of rebellion. Constantine IX had ascended the throne, without any merit of his own, by the shameless preference of a worthless old woman. It is not surprising, therefore, that many nobles should have attempted to wrench the sceptre from his hand; but it is a strong proof of the original excellence of the organization of the Byzantine system of administration that all these attempts proved unsuccessful. The conservative tendencies of society, which had grown out of the system of government, presented a passive resistance to all revolutionary endeavours to disturb the established order of things. A sedition in Cyprus, however, occurred even before Constantine IX, mounted the throne. No sooner was it known throughout the empire that Michael V had been dethroned by a popular insurrection, and that the government of Zoe and Theodora was not likely to prove of long duration, than Theophilos Erotikos, the governor of Cyprus, formed the project of gaining possession of that rich island for himself during the threatened confusion. Theophilos was a turbulent and presumptuous man, of ability far inferior to his ambition. Two years previous to his rebellion in Cyprus he had been driven from Servia, which he then governed, by Stephen Bogislav; he now incited the people to attack Theophylaktos, the intendant of finance, on the ground that this officer collected the taxes with undue rigor. Theophylaktos was slain, and the governor expected that, in removing a check on his plot, he had succeeded in compromising the inhabitants so far as to secure their support to his ambitious project. Constantine IX, however, immediately on assuming the government, despatched a force to suppress the revolt, and as the Cypriots had no idea of waging war against the central government at Constantinople, or of aiding Theophilos to assume the imperial crown, they offered no resistance, and the governor was arrested and sent a prisoner to the capital. The insurrection was considered so contemptible that Theophilos was exhibited to the people at the public games in a female dress, and escaped with the confiscation of his estates.

The rebellion of Maniakes, which occurred in the first year of the reign of Constantine IX, would in all probability have deprived him of the throne, had it not been suddenly terminated by one of those strokes of fortune by which Heaven deranges the wisest plans and destroys the most powerful expeditions. Maniakes was released from confinement at the death of Michael IV, and reappointed to the command of the Byzantine possessions in Italy. He found the Italians everywhere in rebellion, and the chief military power in the hands of the Norman mercenaries, who had formed themselves into an independent community: the cities of Bari, Brindisi, Otranto, and Tarento were alone occupied by Byzantine garrisons. The moment Maniakes landed, he commenced his military operations with the vigour and skill for which he was so remarkable. He defeated the Normans in a well-contested battle between Monopoli and Matera; and as these two towns had shown a hostile disposition, he allowed them to be plundered by his troops, and even ordered two hundred of the principal inhabitants of the latter to be decapitated for favouring the Normans. The animosity between the Greeks and Italians was now so violent that the success of the Normans and the separation of the two churches were produced rather by the hatred of the parties than by the superior valour of the Normans, or by any religious arguments of the clergy. Though the Italians were destitute of the virtue and endurance necessary to gain their independence, they possessed at this time an able and active leader, Arghyros, the son of Mel, and it was in moral far more than in military qualities that they were inferior to the northern mercenaries.

The progress of Maniakes was suddenly arrested by the news that Constantine Monomachos, the lover of Skleraina, was named emperor, for Maniakes was engaged in violent contests with her brother, Romanes Skleros, concerning the limits of their hereditary estates in Asia Minor. Romanes, who had the courage to contend personally with the fiery Maniakes, as his father had contended with Prusianos, the Bulgarian prince, had received some deep insults, for which he now avenged himself by seducing his enemy's wife and seizing the disputed property. Maniakes knew that there was no hope of obtaining justice from the emperor, over whom Skleraina exercised unbounded influence; he resolved, therefore, to administer justice in his own cause. He immediately recruited his army with all the Norman and other mercenaries he was able to collect in Italy, and proclaimed himself emperor. Constantine IX, the moment he heard of the rebellion, sent an officer with a body of troops to arrest Maniakes, expecting that it would be as easy to do so on this occasion as it had proved in Sicily. But Maniakes fell on the Byzantine troops at the moment of their arrival, routed them, and, gaining possession of the treasure they had brought, embarked his own army at Otranto, and landed at Dyrrachium, in the month of February, 1043. The emperor sent an army, under the command of one of Zoe’s eunuchs, named Stephen, to arrest the progress of the rebel. Maniakes, despising the unwarlike character of his opponent, attacked the imperial army near Ostrovos. His charge bore down everything, and victory seemed assured to his standard, when an arrow from an unknown hand pierced him to the heart. His death left his followers without a cause, as well as without a leader, and they instantly retired from the field of battle. The Norman, Frank, and Italian mercenaries in the rebel army entered the Byzantine service, and continued for many years to make a prominent figure in the wars of the empire. The victorious eunuch made his public entry into Constantinople mounted on a white charger, with the head of Maniakes borne before him on a lance.

Stephen’s accidental success awakened his ambition, and when he found, on his return to the capital, that the emperor did not estimate his services as highly as he considered was their due, he began to plot against him. He selected Leo, the governor of Melitene, as the future emperor, but his intrigues were discovered. Leo and his son Lampros were deprived of sight, but Stephen was only immured in a monastery after his estates were confiscated.

In the year 1047, Constantine IX was again in danger of losing his throne by the rebellion of his own relation, Leo Tornikios. The character of Leo rendered him extremely popular at Adrianople, where he resided. To remove him from the seat of his influence, the emperor named him governor of Iberia, where he was soon accused of aspiring to the throne. Constantine IX, jealous of his talents and popularity, ordered him to resign his governorship and adopt the monastic life; but the friends of Tornikios put him on his guard in time to enable him to escape to Adrianople, where he was immediately proclaimed emperor. At the head of the garrison of that city, and such motley forces as he could assemble on the spur of the occasion, he marched to Constantinople. He hoped to render himself master of the capital by the favour of the citizens, counting more on their aversion to the emperor's conduct than on the military force under his own orders. But the inhabitants feared a military revolution far more than they hated their sovereign. Constantine also, on receiving the first information of the revolt, despatched orders to a Saracen eunuch, who commanded a corps of Byzantine troops in Iberia, to march rapidly to the capital, with all the forces he could concentrate on the way.

Tornikios encamped before the walls in the month of September, and being unable to invest the line of the fortifications from the port to the Sea of Marmora, established himself before the gate of Blachern. The emperor, who, in spite of his warlike surname, was utterly ignorant of military affairs, ordered a party of a thousand men to intrench themselves outside this gate. The operation was undertaken against the advice of his military counsellors; and, to see the result of his own tactics, the emperor placed himself in a balcony overhanging the walls, in mil view of the position of his advanced, guard. Tornikios immediately took advantage of the imperial folly; he stormed the intrenchment, and the rebel archers, sending a flight of arrows at the balcony, compelled the emperor and his court to abandon their position with ludicrous celerity, amidst the derisive cheers of the citizens as well as of the enemy. But Tornikios, proud of the day’s exploit, and trusting always to the delusive hope that the inhabitants would open the gates, delayed pressing the assault as the fugitives were entering within the walls. Next day, when he found the people would hold no communication with him, he ordered a general assault. The garrison had employed the whole night in making preparations to meet it; and as the defence was intrusted to experienced officers, and the citizens supported the regular troops, to save their property from the danger to which it would be exposed if a victorious enemy entered the city, Tornikios was defeated with considerable loss. He now found it necessary to raise the siege and retire to Arcadiopolis. Shortly after, he attacked the city of Rhedestos, and the bishop keeping the inhabitants firm in their allegiance, he was again defeated. His cause now became desperate; for the news reaching his camp that the Asiatic troops had arrived at Constantinople, his followers quitted his standard, and he was forced to seek refuge in a church, from which he was taken by force, and sent to the emperor in chains. On Christmas Eve he was deprived of his sight.

In the year 1050, several nobles of distinction were accused of conspiring to dethrone the emperor. The accusation may have been nothing more than a court intrigue or a fiscal measure, for only one was punished by the confiscation of his estates.

Another plot shows the contemptible condition to which the imperial power had fallen in the estimation of the courtiers. Boilas, a man of low birth, had gained the favour of Constantine IX by his talents for buffoonery and his capacity for business. He amused the emperor by his wit, and relieved him from much embarrassment by his application. Boilas being utterly destitute of all principle, and possessing little judgment with a daring character, conceived the preposterous idea of making himself emperor. He knew that he was fitter to fill the throne than the reigning emperor, and he thought the court so worthless that he expected to succeed in his design. He applied to several persons in high office to secure their assistance, and found intriguers and malcontents who were willing to make him an instrument in their hands, while he believed he was using them as the servants of his own ambition. The conspiracy was revealed on the very night it had been resolved to assassinate Constantine; but it seems the emperor was never persuaded that his favourite was really guilty, for he soon restored him to his office, in order to enjoy his buffoonery.

The reign of Basil II marks the summit of the military power of the Byzantine Empire. In the reign of Constantine IX the first traces of decay are visible in the military system, which, for three centuries and a half, had upheld a standing army equal to the Saracen forces in the East, and superior to any troops the nations of Europe had been able to maintain permanently in the field. The alliance of the Servians and Armenians was now lost; the Normans were allowed to acquire an independent existence in Italy; and though the Russians and Patzinaks were defeated, the Seljouk Turks began to undermine the whole fabric of the Byzantine power in Asia.

The disorders which attended the dethronement of Michael V induced Stephen Bogislav, the sovereign of Servia, to invade Illyria and Macedonia, from which he carried off immense booty, ravaging the country like a wild beast rather than a man. Constantine IX, in order to prevent his repeating his depredations, ordered the governor of Dyrrachium to march into Servia with a large body of troops the garrisons of all the neighbouring themes that could be immediately concentrated; and it was pretended that the army consisted of sixty thousand men. The general, ignorant of military science, trusted entirely to his numbers, which the Servians were unable to resist in the open field. He pushed carelessly forward into the heart of the country, ravaging everything around, and collecting booty, until he involved himself in the mountainous district, full of narrow defiles and rugged roads. As no enemy was to be found, he here gave the order to return to Dyrrachium; but no sooner was the retreat commenced than the Servians resumed their activity, and Stephen suddenly beset the passes with his army. The head and rear of the Byzantine columns were assailed at the same time, the march was delayed, and the booty lost. The Byzantine general, incapable of combining the movements of his different divisions for their mutual support, and his lieutenants, ignorant of one another's movements, were thrown into inextricable confusion. A general attack of the Servians in one of the mountain passes completed the rout of the army, and, if we believe the Byzantine writers, seven generals and forty thousand men perished in this expedition.

We have already seen that the social condition of the inhabitants of Russia in the preceding century was considerably more advanced than that of the people in Western Europe. Their commerce with the Byzantine Empire, which had been one of the causes of their progress in wealth and civilization, was greatly extended during the present century; and after the conquest of Cherson, and the decay of that flourishing city, a considerable number of Russian merchants established themselves at Constantinople. The influence of these traders soon became very great, for, besides the regular trade they carried on between the north and south, they also acted as bankers for the Varangian and Russian mercenaries in the Byzantine service, and as agents for many Bulgarian and Slavonian landed proprietors, whose produce they purchased. About the commencement of the year 1043, it happened that a Russian of rank was slain in a tumult, and the sovereign of Kief, Yaroslaf, deemed it a favourable occasion for making conquests in the Byzantine territory, as the Normans had done in France, and the Danes in England. The Emperor Constantine in vain offered all reasonable satisfaction; the Northmen and the Russians were determined to try the fortune of war, for they wanted to obtain something very different from indemnity for the consequences of a tumult in the streets of Constantinople. An expedition, composed of Varangians and Russians, under the command of Vladimir, son of Yaroslaf, who had been elected prince of Novgorod by his father’s influence, and Viuchata, as his counsellor and lieutenant general, crossed the Black Sea. The commerce of Russia was a matter of so much importance to the capital, the Varangians and Russian mercenaries formed so valuable a part of the imperial land-forces, and the indolent Constantine was so averse to war, that he made a sacrifice of the punctilio of Byzantine diplomacy, and again demanded peace when the hostile armament appeared off the entrance of the Bosphorus. But the Russians, bent on plunder and conquest, rejected peace, unless the emperor would engage to pay three pounds weight of gold to each soldier in the expedition.

Constantine now made active preparations for repulsing the attack on his capital. He had already arrested all the Russian merchants and soldiers in the empire, and sent them into distant themes, to be guarded as prisoners until the war should be terminated. The greater part of the Byzantine fleet was either absent in the Archipelago or employed on the coast of Italy, but the ships in the port of Constantinople were prepared for sea; and their size, as well as the use of Greek fire, gave them such a superiority over the boats of the Russians that the sailors were eager for a battle. The first naval engagement proved indecisive, and the Russians contrived to destroy a part of the Greek fleet which separated from the main squadron; but in another action the Russians suffered great loss, and a storm shortly after completed the ruin of their enterprise. In landing to plunder, their troops were also defeated. On their retreat, a second storm overtook them in passing Varna, and their losses were so great that, according to the accounts of their own historians, fifteen thousand men perished. Three years elapsed before peace was re-established, but a treaty was then concluded, and the trade at Constantinople placed on the old footing. From this period the alliance of the Russians with the Byzantine empire was long uninterrupted; and as the Greeks became more deeply imbued with ecclesiastical prejudices, and more hostile to the Latin nations, the Eastern church became, in their eyes, the symbol of their nationality, and the bigoted attachment of the Russians to the same religious formalities obtained for them from the Byzantine Greeks the appellation of the most Christian nation.

The Patzinaks, who still occupied the whole country from the Dnieper to the Danube, had not repeated the ravages they committed in the year 1036. They were occupied by wars with the Russians and with the Uzes, a nomadic nation of Turkish race like themselves, but who proved their irreconcilable enemies. Tyrach was at this time king of the Patzinaks, and Keghenes, a man whose merits as a soldier had raised him to rank, commanded the army. The fame of the general excited the envy of the king, and Keghenes was forced to seek shelter in the Byzantine Empire, to which he retired with a numerous body of followers. From an island in the Danube, near Dorystolon, in which he had intrenched himself, the Patzinak general solicited permission to enter the empire, and Constantine IX, well pleased to gain the services of so distinguished a warrior, gave orders that he should be honourably received. Keghenes embraced the Christian religion, and received the title of a Roman patrician. His followers were established in forts on the banks of the Danube, where they employed themselves in plundering the country they had quitted. Tyrach called on the emperor to restrain these forays, but, finding his reclamations neglected, he took advantage of the severe winter of 1048 to cross the Danube on the ice, and invade the empire with a numerous army. Bulgaria was ravaged, but the sudden changes of plenty and privation to which the invaders were compelled to submit spread disease through their ranks. The followers of Keghenes and the Byzantine troops concentrated round them, their numbers were thinned by disease, famine, and incessant attacks, until Tyrach and his whole surviving army were compelled to surrender at discretion. Keghenes urged the Byzantine generals to put all their prisoners to death, observing that it was wise to kill the viper when he was benumbed, lest the returning warmth of the sun should enable him to escape and use his venom; but the Byzantine empire was too civilised for such an act of wholesale inhumanity, and the captive soldiers were established as agricultural colonists on waste lands near Bardica and Naissos. It had always been one of the problems in the Roman empire how to find the means of filling up the drain of the native population that time seemed perpetually to sweep away with unsparing activity. The king and many of the Patzinak nobles were sent to Constantinople, where they embraced Christianity, and were well treated by the emperor.

In the meantime fifteen thousand of the ablest soldiers were selected from among the prisoners, enrolled in the Byzantine army, and sent to join the troops on the Armenian frontier, where an army was preparing to encounter a threatened attack of the Seljouk Turks under Togrulbeg. This body of Patzinaks was placed under the command of the patrician Constantine Artovalan, but was formed into four divisions under native officers. On reaching Damatrys, Kataleim, one of the Patzinak generals, persuaded his countrymen to attempt forcing their way home. A rapid march enabled them to reach the Bosphorus, but when they arrived at the monastery of St. Taraslos, on the narrowest part of the straits, they found no boats to cross into Europe. Kataleim immediately arranged a body of cavalry in order, and plunged into the stream at their head. A sufficiency of boats was easily secured on the European side, and the whole army transported over. Without any delay they pushed on to Sardica and Naissos, where they were joined by their countrymen, who had been established in that country as agricultural colonists, and then, hastening to the banks of the Danube, they occupied a strong position near the mouth of the river Osmos. They also formed a second camp at a place called the Hundred Hills, and from these stations plundered the districts in their vicinity.

On hearing of this daring movement, the emperor summoned Keghenes and his followers to Constantinople. As these troops lay encamped without the walls waiting for orders, three Patzinaks attempted to assassinate Keghenes, but were secured after inflicting on him some severe wounds. When brought before the emperor, they accused Keghenes of treasonable correspondence with the fugitives, and Constantine, with suspicious timidity, gave credit to their improbable story, and ordered Keghenes to be put under arrest. The immediate consequence of this false step was, that the followers of the arrested general fled and joined their countrymen, who had advanced to the neighbourhood of Adrianople. The emperor in his alarm released Tyrach, the Patzinak king, on receiving his oath to reduce his countrymen to obedience; but that monarch, on regaining his liberty, laid aside his Christianity, repudiated his promises, and placed himself at the head of a powerful army, eager to avenge his former defeat. Two Byzantine armies were routed with great slaughter.

Great exertions were used to assemble another army in order to repress the ravages of the Patzinaks, who were devastating all the country between the Danube and Adrianople. Nicephorus Bryennios took the command at the head of the Frank and Varangian mercenaries, and the Asiatic cavalry from Telouch, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia. Keghenes was restored to favour, and sent to negotiate terms of peace with his countrymen. The military operations circumscribed the forays of the enemy, and the Byzantine army surprised and destroyed a number of the Patzinaks at Chariopolis; but Keghenes, trusting himself among his countrymen, was treacherously murdered. After many vicissitudes, the Patzinaks were forced to retreat, and concluded a truce for thirty years.

In Italy the affairs of the empire went to ruin after the departure of Maniakes. Constantine IX favoured Arghyros because he had opposed Maniakes, and that chief rendered himself virtually independent, and assumed the title of Prince of Bari and Duke of Apulia. The Normans, taking advantage of the intrigues and dissensions that prevailed, quitted their profession of mercenaries for that of feudal chieftains, and by taking such a part in the wars between Arghyros and Guaimar, prince of Salerno, as their own interests dictated, they succeeded in forming their captains into a confederation of territorial barons, under a leader, who became count of Apulia. Their progress excited the alarm of the emperor of Constantinople, the emperor of Germany, and the Pope; but their services were so often in requisition by powerful rivals, and their conduct was so prudent, that they prevented any coalition of their enemies which might have crushed them in their early career. The Byzantine troops were defeated, the intrigues of the emperor of Germany were baffled, Pope Leo IX, who ventured to appeal to arms, was beaten and taken prisoner, while the victors, as pious as politic, purchased the support of the See of Rome from their captive by offering to hold all their conquests as a fief of St. Peter’s chair. The schism of the Greek and Latin churches, which broke out with great animosity about this time, increased the aversion of the Italians to Byzantine domination, and tended quite as much as the military superiority of the Norman troops to give stability to their government.

The capture of Otranto by the Normans under Robert Guiscard, in the year 1055, maybe considered as the termination of the Greek power in Italy.

While the Byzantine Empire was beginning to exhibit symptoms of decline in the West, Constantine IX added to its territories in the East by destroying the Armenian kingdom of the Bagratians, which had long acted a brilliant part in the military history of Asia. No act, however, could have been more unnecessary or imprudent than the annexation of the city of Ani, the last capital of Armenian independence, to the empire, for the whole of the Byzantine frontier was thus thrown open to the invasion of the Seljouk Turks, without the barrier of independent Christian mountaineers that had hung on the flank of previous invaders. It has been mentioned that the Emperor Basil II, during his campaign against the Iberians in 1022, compelled Joannes Sembat to sign a treaty ceding, at his death, Ani and his whole kingdom to the emperor. Constantine IX considered the moment favourable for calling on Gagik, the nephew of Joannes, to fulfil the obligations of this treaty; and when the Armenian objected, he formed an alliance with Aboulsewar, the Saracen emir of Tibium (Tovin), and sent a Byzantine army to attack Ani. The treachery of the Armenian nobles aided the progress of the Byzantine and Saracen arms. Gagik, a prince of some ability, finding it useless to struggle with so powerful a combination, consulted the interests of his subjects by submitting to the Christians. On receiving a safe-conduct for his person, he repaired to plead his cause before the emperor at Constantinople, and the city of Ani surrendered to the Byzantine troops, A.D. 1045. Gagik, finding there was no hope of preserving his ancestral kingdom, accepted the rank of magistros, and received extensive estates in Cappadocia. Thus the oldest Christian kingdom was erased from the list of independent states by a Christian emperor. The only Armenian district which continued to preserve its independence between the Byzantines and Saracens was Kars, where Gagik Abas, a member of the family of the Bagratians, ruled as prince. The Byzantine government carried its jealousy of the Armenians so far as to compel their Patriarch, Peter, to quit the city of Ani and take up his residence at Arzen, from whence they subsequently transferred him to Constantinople.

In the year 1048 the Seljouk Turks attacked the empire. They were one of the hordes which formed itself out of the fragments of that great Turkish Empire, whose commercial connection with Constantinople occupied the attention of Roman statesmen in the time of Justinian. Togrulbeg, called by the Byzantine historians Tangrolipix, was its chief. The Turkish tribes of central Asia were now acting the part, in the empire of the caliphs of Bagdad, which the Goths formerly acted in the Roman Empire. Under Mahmoud the Gaznevid, the Turkish hordes which furnished mercenaries to the caliphs founded for themselves an empire, but the son of the Gasnevid was defeated by new hordes, who elected Togrulbeg as their chief. This new sovereign, after destroying the dynasty of the Bowides, became sultan of Persia, and the limits of his dominions touched the frontiers of the Byzantine conquests in Armenia. Togrulbeg visited Bagdad, assumed the title of Defender of the Faith and Protector of the Caliph; and when he had rendered himself completely master of the temporal power at Bagdad, he compelled the haughty caliph to receive him as a son-in-law, by showing the representative of the Prophet that he possessed the power of starving him on his sacred throne.

Eight years before Togrulbeg succeeded in establishing himself as a sovereign in Baghdad, he sent his cousin Koutoulmish to attack the emir of Diarbekir. Koutoulmish was defeated, and compelled to retreat to the Armenian frontier of Vasparoukan, where he solicited permission to pass through the Byzantine territory, promising to maintain the strictest discipline in his march. The governor of Vasparoukan refused the request of the defeated general, and prepared to oppose the Turks, should they venture to pass the frontier. Koutoulmish, who saw that only prompt and vigorous measures could save him from being surrounded, attacked the Byzantine governor, routed his army, and, carrying him away as a prisoner, sold him as a slave in Tabriz. On his return, he vaunted so loudly the fertility of Vasparoukan, and spoke with such contempt of the Byzantine troops, that Togrulbeg determined to invade the empire. Hassan the Deaf was intrusted with the vanguard, amounting to twenty thousand men, but was completely defeated near the river Stragna by Aaron the son of Ladislas, the last king of Bulgaria, who was governor of Vasparoukan, and Katakalon the governor of Ani. The main body of the Turkish army, however, under Ibrahim Inal, the nephew of Togrulbeg, avenged the defeat. It was composed of Turks, Kaberoi, and Limnites. Katakalon, an experienced general, wished to meet this army in the field, as it was composed chiefly of infantry, or cavalry whose horses were unshod; but his Bulgarian colleague appealed to the emperor’s instructions, which ordered his army to await the arrival of Liparites the prince of Abasgia. The Turkish general, finding the greater part of the wealth of the country secured in strong fortresses, advanced to attack the populous city of Arzen, which was unfortified. The inhabitants, trusting to their numbers and valour, had neglected to convey their valuable effects into the impregnable fortress of Theodosiopolis, in their neighbourhood. Arzen was at this time one of the principal centres of Asiatic commerce, and was filled with warehouses belonging to Syrian and Armenian merchants. The inhabitants defended themselves against the Turks with courage for six days, by barricading the streets and assailing the enemy from the roofs of the houses. Katakalon in vain urged his colleague to march to the relief of the place. Ibrahim, however, felt the danger of an attack on his rear, and, abandoning the hope of securing booty by the taking of the place, thought only of destroying the resources it furnished to the Byzantine government. He set fire to the place and reduced the whole of this great commercial city to ashes. Never was so great a conflagration witnessed before, and it has only since been rivalled by the burning of Moscow. One hundred and forty thousand persons are said to have perished by fire and sword, yet the Turks captured so many prisoners that the slave-markets of Asia were filled with ladies and children from Arzen. The Armenian historians dwell with deep feeling on this terrible calamity, for it commenced a long series of woes which gradually destroyed all the capital accumulated by ages of industry in the mountains of Armenia, rendering them one of the richest and most populous districts in the East Indeed, the rain of Arzen was the first step to the dispersion of the Armenian Christians and the desolation of Asia Minor.

As soon as Liparites effected the junction of the Iberian and Abasgian troops with the Byzantine army, a battle was fought with the Turks near Kapetron, on the 18th September 1048. The loss on both sides was great and the results indecisive, but Liparites was taken prisoner, and the Byzantine troops retired. Ibrahim, however, found himself unable to continue the campaign, and returned to Rey. Togrulbeg released Liparites without ransom, or rather he bestowed the ransom sent by the Byzantine emperor on the Abasgian prince, recommending him to be always a friend to the Turks. It is said by Arabian historians that Constantine IX, in order to equal the generosity of Togrul, repaired the Mohammedan mosque at Constantinople.

Negotiations were commenced between Constantine and Togrul, but they led to no result, and Togrul invaded the Byzantine Empire in person. His first attack was directed against the independent principality of Kars, and the Armenians were defeated in battle, and their general, Thatoul, taken prisoner. Thatoul was said to have wounded Arsouran, the son of the favourite minister of Togrul, and when the captive general was led before his conqueror, the sultan told him that if the young man died he should be put to death. To this Thatoul calmly replied, “Sultan, if the wound was inflicted by my hand, your warrior will certainly die”. This proved true, and Togrul had the barbarity to execute the brave Armenian, and send his head to the minister whose son had died, as a proof that it could not slay another.

Togrul then directed his forces against the city of Manzikert, employing in the siege an immense ballista which had been constructed by the Emperor Basil II, which he had taken in the town of Bitlis. This immense engine required four hundred men to drag it along, yet it proved of little use to the Turks, for a Gaul in the Byzantine service destroyed it by breaking over it three bottles of an inflammable mixture, while he was approaching the camp of the besiegers as the bearer of a letter to the sultan. The loss of this engine, however, did not abate the courage of the troops, and Alkan, the general of the Khorasmians, promised the sultan to carry the place by assault. The governor of Manzikert made preparations for giving the storming party a desperate reception. The walls were garnished with engines, and the artillery was well supplied with ponderous stones, gigantic arrows, and beams shod with iron, to launch on the assailants. The defenders were ordered to remain carefully concealed behind the battlements, and Alkan, after commencing the attack with volleys of missiles, advanced to the foot of the wall, satisfied that he had silenced the enemy. But when his men began to plant their ladders, a tempest of stones, arrows, beams, boiling pitch, and smokeballs overwhelmed the bravest, and the rest shrunk back. Their hesitation was the signal for a furious sally, in which Alkan was taken prisoner, and immediately beheaded on the city walls, in sight of the sultan. Togrul, finding that he could not take Manzikert, gave up all hope of breaking through the barrier of fortresses that defended the frontier of the empire, and retired into Persia, AD 1050.

He again invaded the empire in 1052, but the Byzantine army having received a strong reinforcement of Frank and Varangian mercenaries, showed itself so superior to that of the Seljouk sultan in military discipline, that Togrul thought it prudent to retire without hazarding a battle. The military system established by Leo III and Constantine V, and perfected by Nicephorus II, John I, and Basil II, still upheld the glory of the Byzantine arms.

In looking back from modern times at the history of the Byzantine empire, the separation of the Greek and Latin churches appears the most important event in the reign of Constantine IX; but its prominency is owing, on the one hand, to the circumstance that a closer connection began shortly after to exist between the Eastern and Western nations; and, on the other, to the decline in the power of the Byzantine Empire, which gave ecclesiastical affairs greater importance than they would otherwise have merited. Had the successors of Constantine IX continued to possess the power and resources of the successors of Leo III or Basil I, the schism would never have acquired the political importance it actually attained; for as it related to points of opinion on secondary questions, and details of ecclesiastical practice, the people would have abandoned the subject to the clergy and the church, as one not affecting the welfare of Christians, nor the interests of Christianity. The Emperor Basil II, who was bigoted as well as pious, had still good sense to view the question as a political rather than a religious one. He knew that it would be impossible to reunite the two churches; he saw the disposition of the Greek clergy to commence a quarrel, to avoid which he endeavoured to negotiate the amicable separation of the Byzantine ecclesiastical establishment from the papal supremacy. He proposed that the Pope should be honoured as the first Christian bishop in rank, but that he should receive a pecuniary indemnity, and admit the right of the Eastern Church to govern its own affairs according to its own constitution and local usages, and acknowledge the Patriarch of Constantinople as its head. This plan, reasonable as it might appear to statesmen, had little chance of success. The claim of the Bishop of Rome to be the agent of the theocracy which ruled the Christian church was too generally admitted to allow any limits to be put to his authority. The propositions of Basil II were rejected, but the open rupture with Rome did not take place until 1053, when it was caused by the violent and unjust conduct of the Greek patriarch, Michael Keroularios. He ordered all the Latin churches in the Byzantine empire, in which mass was celebrated according to the rites of the Western church, to be closed; and, in conjunction with Leo, bishop of Achrida, the Patriarch of Bulgaria addressed a controversial letter to the bishop of Trani, which revived all the old disputes with the papal church, adding the question about the use of unleavened bread in the holy communion. The people on both sides, who understood little of the points contested by the clergy, adopted the simple rule that it was their duty to hate the members of the other church; and the Greeks, having their nationality condensed in their ecclesiastical establishment, far exceeded the Western nations in ecclesiastical bigotry, for the people in the western nations of Europe were often not very friendly to papal pretensions. The extreme bigotry of the Greeks soon tended to make the people of the Byzantine Empire averse to all intercourse with the Latins, as equals, and they assumed a superiority over nations rapidly advancing in activity, wealth, power, and intelligence, merely because they deemed them heretics. The separation of the two churches proved, consequently, more injurious to the Greeks, in their stationary condition of society, than to the Western Christians, who were eagerly pressing forward in many paths of social improvement.

The Empress Zoe died in the year 1050, at the age of seventy. Constantine IX survived to the year 1054. When the emperor felt his end approaching, he ordered himself, according to the superstitious fashion of the time, to be transported to the monastery of Mangana, which he had constructed. His ministers, and especially his prime-minister, John the logothetes, and president of the senate, urged him to name Nicephorus Bryennios, who commanded the Macedonian troops, his successor. The forms of the imperial constitution rendered it necessary that the sovereign should be crowned in Constantinople, and a courier was despatched to summon Bryennios to the capital. But as soon as Theodora heard of this attempt of her brother-in-law to deprive her of the throne she had been compelled to cede to him, she hastened to the imperial palace, convoked the senate, ordered the guards to be drawn out, and, presenting herself as the lawful empress, was proclaimed sovereign of the empire with universal acclamations. The news of this event embittered the last moments of the dying voluptuary, who hated Theodora for the respect her conduct inspired.

 

Sect. III

REIGNS OF THEODORA AND MICHAEL VI STRATIOTIKOS, OR THE WARLIKE, A.D. 1054-1057

 

Theodora, with a good deal of masculine vigour of character, possessed the confined views and acrimonious passions of a recluse. Her first act was to revenge on Bryennios the attempt which her brother-in-law had made to deprive her of the throne. He and his partisans were banished, and his estates confiscated. Her personal attention to the duties of a sovereign, and the strictness with which she overlooked the general administration, proved that, unlike her predecessor, she acted according to the dictates of her own conscience in public affairs, and not as the passive instrument of those who were willing, for their own ends, to relieve her from exertion. Yet she followed the system by which the members of her family, in establishing their despotic power, had undermined the fabric of the Byzantine administration. Instead of selecting the ablest native senators to act as ministers and judges, she intrusted the direction of every department of government to eunuchs of her household, and her prime minister was Leo Strabospondyles, an ecclesiastic, synkellos of the Patriarch of Constantinople. She even sent one of her eunuchs to supersede Isaac Comnenos as commander-in-chief of the army placed on the frontier to watch the movements of the Turks. Isaac belonged to one of those great aristocratic families in Asia Minor whose wealth and power had long excited the jealousy of the emperors; and Theodora now displayed much too openly the distrust with which they were regarded by the central administration. To preserve all power as much as possible in her own hands, she presided in person in the cabinet and the senate, and even heard appeals as supreme judge in civil cases. The performance of this last duty, though little in harmony with the executive power, was in her age looked upon by her subjects as a most laudable act.

Fortune favoured Theodora in the circumstances of her short reign, and her popularity was in a great measure derived from events over which she exercised no control. She was the last scion of a family which had upheld with glory the institutions of the empire for nearly two centuries, which had secured to its subjects a degree of internal tranquillity and commercial prosperity far greater than had been enjoyed during the same period by any equal portion of the human race, and the memory of which in succeeding years excited deep regret in the breasts of the Greeks themselves, though the Greeks were the body of their subjects treated with greatest neglect. During her reign, the empire was disturbed by no civil war, nor desolated by any foreign Invasion. The seasons were temperate, the fertility of the earth enabled the people to enjoy the blessings of peace, and a pestilence which had previously ravaged the principal cities of the empire suddenly ceased.

At the advanced age of seventy-six, Theodora felt herself so robust that she looked forward to a long life; and the monks who swarmed in her palace, observing her infatuated confidence in the vigour of her frame, flattered her with prophecies that she was destined to reign for many years. The superstitious feelings of the time, as well as the personal vanity of Theodora, caused her to place implicit confidence in these ecclesiastical soothsayers; but in the midst of her projects she was suddenly attacked by an intestine disorder that brought her to the grave. To prevent the government falling into the hands of the territorial aristocracy, she, with her dying breath, named Michael Stratiotikos as her successor. He had been a general of some reputation, and an efficient member of the official establishment; but advanced age had converted him into a decrepit general and doting senator. The prime-minister and the eunuchs of Theodora had nevertheless suggested his nomination, as it promised to place on the throne one who could not avoid being an instrument in their hands. Theodora, hoping to recover her health, compelled the new emperor to swear with the most tremendous imprecations that he would always remain obedient to her orders, but she survived his nomination only a few hours; and with her expired the race of Basil the Slavonian groom, and the administrative glory of the Byzantine Empire, on the 30th of August, 1057.

The accession of Michael VI was no sooner known than the president of the senate, Theodosios Monomachos, nephew of Constantine IX, attempted to mount the throne, pretending a hereditary claim to the imperial succession. To enforce his ridiculous pretension, he armed his household slaves, who formed a numerous body, collected assistance from his friends, assembled a mob, and, proceeding through the streets of Constantinople at the head of this band, broke open the public prisons and talked of revolution. His plan was to storm the palace; but the moment his movements were made known to the officers of the native and Varangian companies of guards on duty, they marched against him, and he was immediately abandoned by all his followers. When he sought an asylum in St. Sophia's, he found the doors of the church closed against him and was taken with his son sitting on the steps. This sedition was so contemptible that the people ridiculed the affair in a lampoon, and the emperor only banished its leader to Pergamus.

Michael VI was a man of a limited capacity, and his faculties were now dulled by age; yet accident intrusted him with the direction of the government at a delicate crisis. He was called upon to maintain the integrity of the Roman administrative system against the assaults of a territorial aristocracy, on whom the manners of the age and the altered relations of society had conferred powers at variance with the strict centralization of the empire. Yet the incapacity of Michael must be regarded as having only accelerated a change which it would have required the genius and energy of a great administrative reformer like Leo III to avert, and which could only have been averted by remodelling the constitution of the empire.

The administrative vigour of the government was diminished; its legal supremacy had vanished; the connection between the provinces and the capital was weakened; the people at a distance no longer respected the emperor as the centre of social order and the fountain of impartial justice; ruined roads had broken up the administrative unity of empire; great nobles governed their immense estates as sovereign princes; and frontier communities, being often compelled to defend themselves against foreign invaders by their own resources, began to consider how far those resources could be rendered available to lessen the fiscal extortions of the central government. The territorial aristocracy of the Byzantine Empire had also at this time become warriors like the barons of the feudal states, and as they joined learning to their military qualities, they were able to perform the duties of judges and magistrates on their estates. Jealousy of their power, and the corruption of society in the capital, had led the emperors to intrust not only the direction of the civil administration, but even the highest military commands, to eunuchs of the imperial household, and a gradual hostility had grown up between this class and the territorial aristocracy. This employment of slaves and domestics as generals and statesmen seems strange to those who judge of the past by the actual condition of society; but no feature in Eastern manners has been more permanent than the high social position acquired by slaves in their masters' families. Their education was often as carefully attended to, their character and abilities more impartially estimated, and their faults more judiciously eradicated, than those of the children of the house. The oldest records of society show us the slave as superior to the hired servant; and the administration of the Ottoman Empire, even in modern times, has been of easier access to the slave than to the citizen. Despotism is also compelled to seek rather for personal devotion than systematic service, and no stronger proof can be adduced of the progress which the Byzantine government had made towards pure despotism, than the power the emperors had acquired of ruling their subjects by the members of their household.

Michael VI was not blind to the hostile feelings of a powerful class of his subjects, but he relied on the permanence of the established order of things. The support of the senate, the obedience of the municipality of Constantinople, the conservative feelings of the clubs of the hippodrome, and of the corporations of the traders, seemed a complete guarantee against the success of any revolution; and the emperor treated all these classes with liberality. He felt, likewise, so confident in the attachment of the soldiers to their military organization, that he imprudently wounded the pride and self-interest of the principal officers of the army and the official nobility, by holding back from them the promotions and donatives they were accustomed to receive at Easter. Other measures, equally ill-judged, were adopted about the same time. Katakalon, the most popular general in the empire, was deprived of the command at Antioch on a charge of fraudulently enriching himself by diminishing the number of soldiers in his government, and extorting money from the inhabitants. The justice of the act was, however, suspected, as he was replaced by Michael Ouranos, a nephew of the emperor. Michael VI, likewise, on re-establishing Nicephorus Bryennios to the rank of which he had been deprived by Theodora, refused to restore his private fortune, which had been unjustly sequestrated; and when Bryennios urged his claim in person, the old emperor cut short his solicitations by saying, “Finished work alone merits wages”. He had already ordered the restored general to load a division of three thousand men to reinforce the army in Cappadocia, and Bryennios now left the capital inflamed with anger. Several of the most powerful nobles of Asia Minor had already formed a plot to overthrow the existing government, and they availed themselves of the offence given to Katakalon and Bryennios to establish secret communications with these officers and engage them in the conspiracy. Isaac Comnenus, Romanes Skleros, Michael Burtzes, and Nicephoras Botaneiates, who resided at Constantinople in princely state, directed the plot and arranged the plan of rebellion.

The attention of government was diverted from these conspirators by the conduct of an officer with whom they had no connection. Hervé, a Norman general, who had distinguished himself under Maniakes, had subsequently served the empire with zeal and fidelity. On soliciting the rank of magistros, his claim was treated by the emperor in a way which irritated the pride of the Norman to such a degree that he quitted Constantinople, and hastened to an estate he possessed at Dabarme in Armenia. Collecting three hundred of his countrymen from the garrisons in the neighbourhood, he deserted to the Turks. He found, however, that the Infidels were less inclined to tolerate the proud spirit of independence that characterised the Normans than the Byzantines, and, separating from Samouch, the Seljouk leader, with whom he quarrelled, heled his little band to the city of Aklat, where he was surprised and made prisoner by the emir Aponasar.

The rashness of Bryennios was even greater than that of Hervé; and as he was one of the conspirators, his conduct might have ruined their enterprise. The chiefs at Constantinople, having settled their plans, decided that Isaac Comnenus was to be the future emperor; and after plighting their mutual faith, with all the religious ceremonies and horrid imprecations which were then considered necessary to bind the conscience, retired to their estates to collect troops. Bryennios had, in the meantime, reached Cappadocia, where he ordered the paymaster of the army to make an advance of pay to the soldiers under his command. This was refused, as being at variance with the emperor’s orders. John Opsaras, who held the office of paymaster, was a patrician; yet, when he visited Bryennios in his tent, that officer so completely lost all command over his temper, that he struck him on the face, pulled his beard, threw him on the ground, and then ordered him to be dragged to prison. Another patrician, Lykanthos, who commanded the troops of Pisidia and Lycaonia in a separate camp, convinced that the conduct of Bryennios announced an intention to rebel, hastened with his guards to the spot, delivered Opsaras from confinement, and arrested Bryennios, whose eyes Opsaras ordered to be put out, and then sent him a prisoner to Constantinople.

The principal conspirators, fearing that their plot was discovered, repaired to Kastamona in Paphlagonia, where Isaac Comnenus was waiting, at his family seat, until the preparations for the rebellion were completed. The assembly of the conspirators having put an end to concealment, Isaac Comnenus was conducted by his partisans to the plain of Gounavia, and proclaimed emperor, on the 8th June 1057. Katakalon, finding some difficulty in joining his companions, forged an imperial order, giving him the command of five legions, which he concentrated in the plain of Nicopolis, pretending that he was to lead them against Samouch, a Turkish chief who had invaded the empire. By promises and threats, he succeeded in engaging the officers of this force to join the rebellion; and, effecting a junction with the troops Isaac had already assembled, the rebels crossed the Sangarius, and gained possession of Nice.

The Emperor Michael placed the imperial army under the command of Theodore, a eunuch whom he had raised to the rank of Domestikos of the East, and the Bulgarian prince, Aaron, who, though a brother-in-law of Isaac, was his personal enemy. The imperial generals broke down the bridges over the Sangarius, in order to cut off the communications of the rebels with the provinces in which their family influence lay, and then approached Nicaea. Isaac Comnenus was encamped about twelve stades to the north of the city, and the foragers of the two armies were soon in constant communication; the leaders on both sides overlooking the intercourse, in the expectation of gaining deserters. The imperialists urged their opponents not to sacrifice their lives for an ambitious rebel, who exposed their lives and fortunes for his own profit; while the rebels laughed at the idea of serving an old dotard, who intrusted the command of his armies to eunuchs. Isaac, seeing that nothing was to be gained by these conversations, gave strict orders to break off all communication; and Theodore, attributing the measure to fear, advanced to Petroa, only fifteen stades from the rebel camp.

A battle was thus inevitable. Isaac Comnenus drew out his army, which was composed of veteran troops, at a place called Hades. Katakalon commanded the left wing, and was opposed to Basil Tarchaniotes, the general of the European troops, the ablest and most distinguished of the Macedonian nobility. Romanos Skleros, at the head of the right wing, was opposed to Aaron, who had under his orders the patrician Lykanthos and the Norman Randolph. Isaac and Theodore directed their respective centres. The battle was not severely contested. Aaron routed the right wing of the rebels, but his success led to no result; for Katakalon, having defeated the Macedonian troops, stormed the imperial camp, while Isaac overthrew their centre. The aristocratic constitution of society displays itself in the incidents of this battle. The superior temper of the arms of the chiefs gave their exploits as much importance as in the Homeric battles. When the victorious troops of Isaac and Katakalon assailed the troops of Aaron, Randolph found himself borne away among a crowd of fugitives. Disengaging himself, he perceived Nicephorus Botaneiates leading the pursuers. Shouting his war-cry, the Norman knight met the Asiatic noble; but his sword was broken on the well-tempered helmet of his enemy, and he was led a prisoner to the rebel camp. Several officers of rank were slain in the imperial army, and many made prisoners. The victors lost only one man of rank. Isaac Comnenus advanced to Nicomedia, where he was met by envoys from the Emperor Michael, who offered him the title of Caesar for himself, and a general amnesty for his partisans, if they would lay aside their arms. Isaac knew that he had no safety but as emperor, and Katakalon boldly opposed all terms of arrangement. Michael Psellos, called the Prince of Philosophers, was one of the envoys, and seeing how matters were likely to end, he deserted the cause of his old master with more promptitude than might have been expected from a learned pedant. The emperor, finding he had nothing to expect from negotiation, attempted to fortify himself in Constantinople. He compelled the senators to take an oath, and subscribe a declaration, that they would never acknowledge Isaac Comnenus as emperor; and he lavished money, places, promotions, and privileges, on the people and the municipality. Yet the moment the victors reached the palace of Damatrys, the senators rushed to St. Sophia’s, and begged the Patriarch to absolve them from the oath they had just taken. The stern Patriarch, Michael Keroularios, affected to resist, but consented to be himself the medium of communication with the new emperor. The cause of Michael VI was now hopeless; Isaac was proclaimed emperor, and his predecessor was ordered to quit the imperial palace, that it might be prepared for the reception of the new sovereign. It is said the old man, before departing, sent to ask the Patriarch what he would give him for his resignation; the intriguing pontiff replied, with sarcastic humility, “The kingdom of heaven”. On the 31st of August, Michael VI returned as a private individual to his own house, where he lived undisturbed, dying two years after. On the 2nd of September, Isaac I received the imperial crown in the Church of St. Sophia.

To contemporaries, this revolution presented nothing to distinguish it from the changes of sovereign, which had been an ordinary event in the Byzantine empire, and which were ascribed by the wisest statesmen of the time to the decree of Heaven, and not to the working of political and moral causes, which the will of God allows the intelligence of man to employ for effecting the improvement or decline of human affairs. It would be an error to ascribe the success of this rebellion to the weakness of the reigning emperor, and to the defects of his administration, or to the ability of bold and rapacious conspirators, without taking into account the apathy of the inhabitants of the empire to a mere change in the name of their emperor. Perhaps no man then living perceived that this event was destined to change the whole system of government, destroy the fabric of the central administration, deliver up the provinces of Asia an easy conquest to the Seljouk Turks, and the capital a prey to a band of crusaders.

 

General Observations

 

We have now traced the progress of the Eastern Roman Empire through an eventful period of three centuries and a half. We have contemplated the rare spectacle of a great empire reviving from a state of political anarchy and social disorganisation; we have seen it reinvigorated by the establishment of a high degree of order and security for life and property; and we have recorded its progress to the attainment of great military power. We have endeavoured to trace the causes that led to this change, as well as to record the events which accompanied it. It would now be an instructive task to compare the condition of the population living under this reformed Roman Empire with that of the inhabitants of the countries which had once constituted the Empire of the West; but scholars have not yet performed the preliminary work necessary for such an inquiry, so that even a superficial examination of the subject would run into discussions on vague details. Each student of history, therefore, who may happen to turn over the pages of this volume, must institute the comparison for himself in that branch of historical or antiquarian research with which he is most familiar. Unfortunately the records of the Eastern Empire are deprived of one great source of historical interest they tell us very little concerning the condition of the mass of the population; and while they enable us to study the actions and the policy of the emperors, and even to observe the political consequences of their respective administrations, they leave us in ignorance concerning many important questions relating to the composition of the mass of society; they supply few facts for discriminating its separate elements, or for forming a classification of its social ranks. We know that freemen, serfs, and slaves were mingled together in every city and province; and over the whole surface of the Byzantine dominions, heterogeneous races of mankind were compressed into apparent unity by the powerful government that ruled at Constantinople. But we are without the means of assigning to each class of society, and to each discordant nationality, its exact share and influence in the mass that composed the empire. We perceive that there was no real unity among the people, and yet the unity created by the government was so imposing, that both contemporary and modern historians have treated the history of the Byzantine empire as if it represented the feelings and interests of a Byzantine nation, and almost overlooked the indelible distinctions of the Greek, Armenian, and Sclavonian races, which, while forced into simultaneous action by the great administrative power that ruled them, constantly retained their own national peculiarities.

Two grand social distinctions illuminate the obscurities of Byzantine history during the period comprised in this volume. A regular administration of justice, that secured a high degree of security for life and property, gave the people an immeasurable superiority over the subjects of all contemporary governments, and bound the various nations within the limits of the Eastern Empire in willing submission to the central power.

Through all the darkness of the Byzantine annals, we perceive that a middle class exerted some influence on society, and that it formed an element of the population, independent of the heterogeneous national races from which it was composed. But the nature of its composition explains sufficiently why its political influence proved extremely insignificant when compared with its numbers, wealth, and social importance. Local institutions were reduced to such a state of subordination to the central authority, that they wanted the power to train the different nations of which the middle class was composed to similar political sentiments. All attempts of the people to reform their own condition proved fruitless, and demands for redress of public grievances could only prove successful by a revolution. Perhaps this evil may be inherent in the nature of all governments which carry centralization so far as to suppress the expression of public opinion in municipal bodies. In such governments, whether monarchical or republican, the central authority becomes so powerful, that public opinion is rendered inefficacious to effect reform, and the people soon learn to regard revolutions as the only chance of improvement

The middle class through the Byzantine Empire was a remnant of ancient society an element that had survived from the days of municipal liberty and national independence. Many free citizens still continued to till their lands many were occupied in manufactures and commerce. It was the existence of this class which filled the treasury of the emperors (taxation yields comparatively little in a state peopled by great nobles and impoverished serfs); and it was the wealth of the Byzantine government which gave it an ultimate superiority over all its contemporaries for several centuries.

Military excellence was at that time as much the effect of individual strength and activity in the soldier, as of discipline in the army or talent in the general. The wealth of the Byzantine emperors enabled them to fill their armies with the best soldiers in Europe; in their mercenary legions, knights and nobles fought in the ranks, and the captains of their guards were kings and princes. Nor were the native troops inferior to the foreign mercenaries. The lance of the Byzantine officer was famous in personal encounters long before the aristocracy of Western Europe sought military renown by imitating an exercise in which sleight-of-hand rather than valour secured the victory.

It is not difficult to point out generally the causes which supplied the Byzantine treasury with large revenues, at a period when the precious metals were extremely rare in the west of Europe. A curious comparison might be made between the riches and luxury of the court of Constantinople during the reign of Theophilus, and the poverty and rudeness that prevailed at the court of Winchester under his contemporary, Egbert. The difference of the value of the precious metals is peculiarly striking. Theophilus gave two pounds’ weight of gold, or a hundred and forty-four byzants, for a fine horse, of which the market value appears to have been a hundred byzants; yet, among the Saxons, about the same time, the price of a common horse was two-thirds of a pound weight of silver. It is difficult to explain the rarity of the precious metals in the West, when we remember that the tin of Egbert’s dominions found its way to Constantinople, and that the byzants of the Eastern emperors were the current gold coin throughout England. The subjects of fee Byzantine empire supplied the greater part of western and the whole of northern Europe with Indian produce, spices, precious stones, silk, fine woollen cloth, carpets, cotton, what we now call morocco leather, dye-stuffs, gums, oil, wine, and fruits; besides most manufactured articles, and all luxuries. Yet, from the poverty of the Western nations, their consumption must have been comparatively small. The profits of the trade, however exorbitant they might have been on particular transactions, would not have formed an important article of national wealth, unless a constant profit had been realized by the difference of value of the precious metals in the various countries with which dealings were carried on. Few of the Western nations worked any mines, and yet they were constantly consuming a considerable amount of gold and silver; the Byzantine Empire possessed considerable mines of silver and we know that gold was always abundant in the treasury. Gold and silver coin and slaves were consequently commodities on which a sure profit was always realised. But in the eleventh century a great change took place in society in Western Europe, coincident with the stationary condition of the Byzantine Empire. In the West, the spirit of social reform infused a sentiment of justice into the counsels of kings; in the East, a spirit of conservation, pervading the imperial administration, withered the energies of society.

 

 

CHAPTER VIII.

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT MODIFIED BY THE DESTRUCTION OF THE POPULATION IN ASIA MINOR. A.D. 1057-1081