Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And

Venetians.—Part IV.

In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a

fertile land, the northern conquerors of the Roman empire

insensibly mingled with the provincials, and rekindled the embers

of the arts of antiquity. Their settlements about the age of

Charlemagne had acquired some degree of order and stability, when

they were overwhelmed by new swarms of invaders, the Normans,

Saracens, 68 and Hungarians, who replunged the western countries

of Europe into their former state of anarchy and barbarism. About

the eleventh century, the second tempest had subsided by the

expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the tide

of civilization, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a

steady and accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was opened

to the hopes and efforts of the rising generations. Great was the

increase, and rapid the progress, during the two hundred years of

the crusades; and some philosophers have applauded the propitious

influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to have checked

rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe. 69 The lives and

labors of millions, which were buried in the East, would have

been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native

country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have

overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have

been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly

correspondence with the climates of the East. In one respect I

can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the crusades, not

so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger

portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil,

without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of

ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small,

alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive

system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of

the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker

ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction

of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the

poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and

order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord

of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and

every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron

weight of the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that

undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be

allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were

dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these

costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from

their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters

of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the

artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the

most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration

which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air

and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants

of the soil. 691

68 (return) [ If I rank the Saracens with the Barbarians, it is

only relative to their wars, or rather inroads, in Italy and

France, where their sole purpose was to plunder and destroy.]

69 (return) [ On this interesting subject, the progress of

society in Europe, a strong ray of philosophical light has broke

from Scotland in our own times; and it is with private, as well

as public regard, that I repeat the names of Hume, Robertson, and

Adam Smith.]

691 (return) [ On the consequences of the crusades, compare the

valuable Essay of Heeren, that of M. Choiseul d’Aillecourt, and a

chapter of Mr. Forster’s “Mahometanism Unveiled.” I may admire

this gentleman’s learning and industry, without pledging myself

to his wild theory of prophets interpretation.—M.]

_Digression On The Family Of Courtenay._

The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at Constantinople,

will authorize or excuse a digression on the origin and singular

fortunes of the house of Courtenay, 70 in the three principal

branches: I. Of Edessa; II. Of France; and III. Of England; of

which the last only has survived the revolutions of eight hundred

years.

70 (return) [ I have applied, but not confined, myself to _A

genealogical History of the noble and illustrious Family of

Courtenay, by Ezra Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir William Courtenay,

and Rector of Honiton; Exon. 1735, in folio._ The first part is

extracted from William of Tyre; the second from Bouchet’s French

history; and the third from various memorials, public,

provincial, and private, of the Courtenays of Devonshire The

rector of Honiton has more gratitude than industry, and more

industry than criticism.]

I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and

of knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the prerogative of birth

is most strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age,

the laws and manners of the Germans have discriminated the ranks

of society; the dukes and counts, who shared the empire of

Charlemagne, converted their office to an inheritance; and to his

children, each feudal lord bequeathed his honor and his sword.

The proudest families are content to lose, in the darkness of the

middle ages, the tree of their pedigree, which, however deep and

lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian root; and their

historians must descend ten centuries below the Christian æra,

before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence

of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first

rays of light, 71 we discern the nobility and opulence of Atho, a

French knight; his nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless

father; his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of

Courtenay in the district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to

the south of Paris. From the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh

Capet, the barons of Courtenay are conspicuous among the

immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin, the grandson of

Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes of the first

crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters)

attached him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second

count of Edessa; a princely fief, which he was worthy to receive,

and able to maintain, announces the number of his martial

followers; and after the departure of his cousin, Joscelin

himself was invested with the county of Edessa on both sides of

the Euphrates. By economy in peace, his territories were

replenished with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with

corn, wine, and oil; his castles with gold and silver, with arms

and horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years, he was alternately

a conqueror and a captive: but he died like a soldier, in a horse

litter at the head of his troops; and his last glance beheld the

flight of the Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and

infirmities. His son and successor, of the same name, was less

deficient in valor than in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot

that dominion is acquired and maintained by the same arms. He

challenged the hostility of the Turks, without securing the

friendship of the prince of Antioch; and, amidst the peaceful

luxury of Turbessel, in Syria, 72 Joscelin neglected the defence

of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence,

Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his

capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and

disloyal crowd of Orientals: the Franks were oppressed in a bold

attempt for its recovery, and Courtenay ended his days in the

prison of Aleppo. He still left a fair and ample patrimony But

the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides the weakness of a

widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual pension,

they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending, and

the shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The

countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two

children; the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a

king; the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of

seneschal, the first of the kingdom, and held his new estates in

Palestine by the service of fifty knights. His name appears with

honor in the transactions of peace and war; but he finally

vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and the name of Courtenay, in

this branch of Edessa, was lost by the marriage of his two

daughters with a French and German baron. 73

71 (return) [ The primitive record of the family is a passage of

the continuator of Aimoin, a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the

xiith century. See his Chronicle, in the Historians of France,

(tom. xi. p. 276.)]

72 (return) [ Turbessel, or, as it is now styled, Telbesher, is

fixed by D’Anville four-and-twenty miles from the great passage

over the Euphrates at Zeugma.]

73 (return) [ His possessions are distinguished in the Assises of

Jerusalem (c. B26) among the feudal tenures of the kingdom, which

must therefore have been collected between the years 1153 and

1187. His pedigree may be found in the Lignages d’Outremer, c.

16.]

II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder

brother Milo, the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued,

near the Seine, to possess the castle of their fathers, which was

at length inherited by Rainaud, or Reginald, the youngest of his

three sons. Examples of genius or virtue must be rare in the

annals of the oldest families; and, in a remote age their pride

will embrace a deed of rapine and violence; such, however, as

could not be perpetrated without some superiority of courage, or,

at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay may

blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several

merchants, after they had satisfied the king’s duties at Sens and

Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the bold offender

could not be compelled to obedience and restitution, till the

regent and the count of Champagne prepared to march against him

at the head of an army. 74 Reginald bestowed his estates on his

eldest daughter, and his daughter on the seventh son of King

Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned with a numerous

offspring. We might expect that a private should have merged in a

royal name; and that the descendants of Peter of France and

Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors

of princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim was long

neglected, and finally denied; and the causes of their disgrace

will represent the story of this second branch. _1._ Of all the

families now extant, the most ancient, doubtless, and the most

illustrious, is the house of France, which has occupied the same

throne above eight hundred years, and descends, in a clear and

lineal series of males, from the middle of the ninth century. 75

In the age of the crusades, it was already revered both in the

East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage of Peter, no

more than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and so

precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as a necessary

precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their

fathers. The peers of France have long maintained their

precedency before the younger branches of the royal line, nor had

the princes of the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that

hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the most remote

candidates for the succession. _2._ The barons of Courtenay must

have stood high in their own estimation, and in that of the

world, since they could impose on the son of a king the

obligation of adopting for himself and all his descendants the

name and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of

an heiress with her inferior or her equal, such exchange was

often required and allowed: but as they continued to diverge from

the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly

confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new Courtenays

might deserve to forfeit the honors of their birth, which a

motive of interest had tempted them to renounce. _3._ The shame

was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary blaze was

followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials,

Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the

sister of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of

Constantinople: he rashly accepted the invitation of the barons

of Romania; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin, successively held

and lost the remains of the Latin empire in the East, and the

granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with

the blood of France and of Valois. To support the expenses of a

troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates were

mortgaged or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople

depended on the annual charity of Rome and Naples.

74 (return) [ The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de

Courtenay, are preposterously arranged in the Epistles of the

abbot and regent Suger, (cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials of the

age, (Duchesne, Scriptores Hist. Franc. tom. iv. p. 530.)]

75 (return) [ In the beginning of the xith century, after naming

the father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk Glaber is

obliged to add, cujus genus valde in-ante reperitur obscurum. Yet

we are assured that the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was

Robert the Strong count of Anjou, (A.D. 863—873,) a noble Frank

of Neustria, Neustricus... generosæ stirpis, who was slain in the

defence of his country against the Normans, dum patriæ fines

tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture or fable. It is a

probable conjecture, that the third race descended from the

second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. It is an

absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by the

marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St.

Arnoul, with Blitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin

of the house of France is an ancient but incredible opinion. See

a judicious memoir of M. de Foncemagne, (Mémoires de l’Académie

des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 548—579.) He had promised to

declare his own opinion in a second memoir, which has never

appeared.]

While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic

adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a

plebeian owner, the younger branches of that adopted name were

propagated and multiplied. But their splendor was clouded by

poverty and time: after the decease of Robert, great butler of

France, they descended from princes to barons; the next

generations were confounded with the simple gentry; the

descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural

lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more adventurous

embraced without dishonor the profession of a soldier: the least

active and opulent might sink, like their cousins of the branch

of Dreux, into the condition of peasants. Their royal descent, in

a dark period of four hundred years, became each day more

obsolete and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead of being

enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully searched

by the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was not

till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a

family almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit of

the Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility

provoked them to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They

appealed to the justice and compassion of Henry the Fourth;

obtained a favorable opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and

Germany, and modestly compared themselves to the descendants of

King David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of

ages or the trade of a carpenter. 76 But every ear was deaf, and

every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful claims. The

Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois; the

princes of the blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the

alliance of his humble kindred: the parliament, without denying

their proofs, eluded a dangerous precedent by an arbitrary

distinction, and established St. Louis as the first father of the

royal line. 77 A repetition of complaints and protests was

repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless pursuit was terminated

in the present century by the death of the last male of the

family. 78 Their painful and anxious situation was alleviated by

the pride of conscious virtue: they sternly rejected the

temptations of fortune and favor; and a dying Courtenay would

have sacrificed his son, if the youth could have renounced, for

any temporal interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince

of the blood of France. 79

76 (return) [ Of the various petitions, apologies, &c., published

by the princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three following, all

in octavo: 1. De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita

sunt Responsa celeberrimorum Europæ Jurisconsultorum; Paris,

1607. 2. Representation du Procedé tenû a l’instance faicte

devant le Roi, par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conservation

de l’Honneur et Dignité de leur Maison, branche de la royalle

Maison de France; à Paris, 1613. 3. Representation du subject qui

a porté Messieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison de

Courtenay, à se retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide,

for which the Courtenays expected to be pardoned, or tried, as

princes of the blood.]

77 (return) [ The sense of the parliaments is thus expressed by

Thuanus Principis nomen nusquam in Galliâ tributum, nisi iis qui

per mares e regibus nostris originem repetunt; qui nunc tantum a

Ludovico none beatæ memoriæ numerantur; nam _Cortini_ et

Drocenses, a Ludovico crasso genus ducentes, hodie inter eos

minime recensentur. A distinction of expediency rather than

justice. The sanctity of Louis IX. could not invest him with any

special prerogative, and all the descendants of Hugh Capet must

be included in his original compact with the French nation.]

78 (return) [ The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger,

who died in the year 1730, without leaving any sons. The last

female was Helene de Courtenay, who married Louis de Beaufremont.

Her title of Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed

(February 7th, 1737) by an _arrêt_ of the parliament of Paris.]

79 (return) [ The singular anecdote to which I allude is related

in the Recueil des Pieces interessantes et peu connues,

(Maestricht, 1786, in 4 vols. 12mo.;) and the unknown editor

quotes his author, who had received it from Helene de Courtenay,

marquise de Beaufremont.]

III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays

of Devonshire are descended from Prince _Florus_, the second son

of Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat. 80 This fable of the

grateful or venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our

antiquaries, Cambden 81 and Dugdale: 82 but it is so clearly

repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the

family now refuses to accept this imaginary founder. Their most

faithful historians believe, that, after giving his daughter to

the king’s son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned his possessions

in France, and obtained from the English monarch a second wife

and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry the

Second distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the

name and arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine

race, of the Courtenays of France. The right of wardship enabled

a feudal lord to reward his vassal with the marriage and estate

of a noble heiress; and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair

establishment in Devonshire, where his posterity has been seated

above six hundred years. 83 From a Norman baron, Baldwin de

Brioniis, who had been invested by the Conqueror, Hawise, the

wife of Reginald, derived the honor of Okehampton, which was held

by the service of ninety-three knights; and a female might claim

the manly offices of hereditary viscount or sheriff, and of

captain of the royal castle of Exeter. Their son Robert married

the sister of the earl of Devon: at the end of a century, on the

failure of the family of Rivers, 84 his great-grandson, Hugh the

Second, succeeded to a title which was still considered as a

territorial dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire, of the name

of Courtenay, have flourished in a period of two hundred and

twenty years. They were ranked among the chief of the barons of

the realm; nor was it till after a strenuous dispute, that they

yielded to the fief of Arundel the first place in the parliament

of England: their alliances were contracted with the noblest

families, the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns, and

even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with John of

Lancaster, a Courtenay, bishop of London, and afterwards

archbishop of Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence

in the strength and number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of

Devon resided in their numerous castles and manors of the west;

their ample revenue was appropriated to devotion and hospitality;

and the epitaph of Edward, surnamed from his misfortune, the

_blind_, from his virtues, the _good_, earl, inculcates with much

ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by

thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration of the

fifty-five years of union and happiness which he enjoyed with

Mabe his wife, the good earl thus speaks from the tomb:—

“What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What we left, we

lost.” 85

But their _losses_, in this sense, were far superior to their

gifts and expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were

the objects of their paternal care. The sums which they paid for

livery and seizin attest the greatness of their possessions; and

several estates have remained in their family since the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In war, the Courtenays of

England fulfilled the duties, and deserved the honors, of

chivalry. They were often intrusted to levy and command the

militia of Devonshire and Cornwall; they often attended their

supreme lord to the borders of Scotland; and in foreign service,

for a stipulated price, they sometimes maintained fourscore

men-at-arms and as many archers. By sea and land they fought

under the standard of the Edwards and Henries: their names are

conspicuous in battles, in tournaments, and in the original list

of the Order of the Garter; three brothers shared the Spanish

victory of the Black Prince; and in the lapse of six generations,

the English Courtenays had learned to despise the nation and

country from which they derived their origin. In the quarrel of

the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered to the house of

Lancaster; and three brothers successively died either in the

field or on the scaffold. Their honors and estates were restored

by Henry the Seventh; a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not

disgraced by the nuptials of a Courtenay; their son, who was

created Marquis of Exeter, enjoyed the favor of his cousin Henry

the Eighth; and in the camp of Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance

against the French monarch. But the favor of Henry was the

prelude of disgrace; his disgrace was the signal of death; and of

the victims of the jealous tyrant, the marquis of Exeter is one

of the most noble and guiltless. His son Edward lived a prisoner

in the Tower, and died in exile at Padua; and the secret love of

Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the princess Elizabeth,

has shed a romantic color on the story of this beautiful youth.

The relics of his patrimony were conveyed into strange families

by the marriages of his four aunts; and his personal honors, as

if they had been legally extinct, were revived by the patents of

succeeding princes. But there still survived a lineal descendant

of Hugh, the first earl of Devon, a younger branch of the

Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham Castle above four

hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to the present

hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and

improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently

restored to the honors of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still

retain the plaintive motto, which asserts the innocence, and

deplores the fall, of their ancient house. 86 While they sigh for

past greatness, they are doubtless sensible of present blessings:

in the long series of the Courtenay annals, the most splendid æra

is likewise the most unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of

Britain be inclined to envy the emperors of Constantinople, who

wandered over Europe to solicit alms for the support of their

dignity and the defence of their capital.

80 (return) [ Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 786. Yet

this fable must have been invented before the reign of Edward

III. The profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford

Abbey was followed by oppression on one side and ingratitude on

the other; and in the sixth generation, the monks ceased to

register the births, actions, and deaths of their patrons.]

81 (return) [ In his Britannia, in the list of the earls of

Devonshire. His expression, e regio sanguine ortos, credunt,

betrays, however, some doubt or suspicion.]

82 (return) [ In his Baronage, P. i. p. 634, he refers to his own

Monasticon. Should he not have corrected the register of Ford

Abbey, and annihilated the phantom Florus, by the unquestionable

evidence of the French historians?]

83 (return) [ Besides the third and most valuable book of

Cleaveland’s History, I have consulted Dugdale, the father of our

genealogical science, (Baronage, P. i. p. 634—643.)]

84 (return) [ This great family, de Ripuariis, de Redvers, de

Rivers, ended, in Edward the Fifth’s time, in Isabella de

Fortibus, a famous and potent dowager, who long survived her

brother and husband, (Dugdale, Baronage, P i. p. 254—257.)]

85 (return) [ Cleaveland p. 142. By some it is assigned to a

Rivers earl of Devon; but the English denotes the xvth, rather

than the xiiith century.]

86 (return) [ _Ubi lapsus! Quid feci?_ a motto which was probably

adopted by the Powderham branch, after the loss of the earldom of

Devonshire, &c. The primitive arms of the Courtenays were, _Or_,

_three torteaux_, _Gules_, which seem to denote their affinity

with Godfrey of Bouillon, and the ancient counts of Boulogne.]

Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part I.

The Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Elevation And Reign

Of Michael Palæologus.—His False Union With The Pope And The Latin

Church.—Hostile Designs Of Charles Of Anjou.—Revolt Of Sicily.—War

Of The Catalans In Asia And Greece.—Revolutions And Present State

Of Athens.

The loss of Constantinople restored a momentary vigor to the

Greeks. From their palaces, the princes and nobles were driven

into the field; and the fragments of the falling monarchy were

grasped by the hands of the most vigorous or the most skilful

candidates. In the long and barren pages of the Byzantine annals,

1 it would not be an easy task to equal the two characters of

Theodore Lascaris and John Ducas Vataces, 2 who replanted and

upheld the Roman standard at Nice in Bithynia. The difference of

their virtues was happily suited to the diversity of their

situation. In his first efforts, the fugitive Lascaris commanded

only three cities and two thousand soldiers: his reign was the

season of generous and active despair: in every military

operation he staked his life and crown; and his enemies of the

Hellespont and the Mæander, were surprised by his celerity and

subdued by his boldness. A victorious reign of eighteen years

expanded the principality of Nice to the magnitude of an empire.

The throne of his successor and son-in-law Vataces was founded on

a more solid basis, a larger scope, and more plentiful resources;

and it was the temper, as well as the interest, of Vataces to

calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure the

success, of his ambitious designs. In the decline of the Latins,

I have briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks; the prudent

and gradual advances of a conqueror, who, in a reign of

thirty-three years, rescued the provinces from national and

foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all sides the Imperial city,

a leafless and sapless trunk, which must full at the first stroke

of the axe. But his interior and peaceful administration is still

more deserving of notice and praise. 3 The calamities of the

times had wasted the numbers and the substance of the Greeks; the

motives and the means of agriculture were extirpated; and the

most fertile lands were left without cultivation or inhabitants.

A portion of this vacant property was occupied and improved by

the command, and for the benefit, of the emperor: a powerful hand

and a vigilant eye supplied and surpassed, by a skilful

management, the minute diligence of a private farmer: the royal

domain became the garden and granary of Asia; and without

impoverishing the people, the sovereign acquired a fund of

innocent and productive wealth. According to the nature of the

soil, his lands were sown with corn or planted with vines; the

pastures were filled with horses and oxen, with sheep and hogs;

and when Vataces presented to the empress a crown of diamonds and

pearls, he informed her, with a smile, that this precious

ornament arose from the sale of the eggs of his innumerable

poultry. The produce of his domain was applied to the maintenance

of his palace and hospitals, the calls of dignity and

benevolence: the lesson was still more useful than the revenue:

the plough was restored to its ancient security and honor; and

the nobles were taught to seek a sure and independent revenue

from their estates, instead of adorning their splendid beggary by

the oppression of the people, or (what is almost the same) by the

favors of the court. The superfluous stock of corn and cattle was

eagerly purchased by the Turks, with whom Vataces preserved a

strict and sincere alliance; but he discouraged the importation

of foreign manufactures, the costly silks of the East, and the

curious labors of the Italian looms. “The demands of nature and

necessity,” was he accustomed to say, “are indispensable; but the

influence of fashion may rise and sink at the breath of a

monarch;” and both his precept and example recommended simplicity

of manners and the use of domestic industry. The education of

youth and the revival of learning were the most serious objects

of his care; and, without deciding the precedency, he pronounced

with truth, that a prince and a philosopher 4 are the two most

eminent characters of human society. His first wife was Irene,

the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more illustrious by

her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex, than by the

blood of the Angeli and Comneni that flowed in her veins, and

transmitted the inheritance of the empire. After her death he was

contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural daughter of the

emperor Frederic 499 the Second; but as the bride had not

attained the years of puberty, Vataces placed in his solitary bed

an Italian damsel of her train; and his amorous weakness bestowed

on the concubine the honors, though not the title, of a lawful

empress. His frailty was censured as a flagitious and damnable

sin by the monks; and their rude invectives exercised and

displayed the patience of the royal lover. A philosophic age may

excuse a single vice, which was redeemed by a crowd of virtues;

and in the review of his faults, and the more intemperate

passions of Lascaris, the judgment of their contemporaries was

softened by gratitude to the second founders of the empire. 5 The

slaves of the Latins, without law or peace, applauded the

happiness of their brethren who had resumed their national

freedom; and Vataces employed the laudable policy of convincing

the Greeks of every dominion that it was their interest to be

enrolled in the number of his subjects.

1 (return) [ For the reigns of the Nicene emperors, more

especially of John Vataces and his son, their minister, George

Acropolita, is the only genuine contemporary; but George Pachymer

returned to Constantinople with the Greeks at the age of

nineteen, (Hanckius de Script. Byzant. c. 33, 34, p. 564—578.

Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 448—460.) Yet the history of

Nicephorus Gregoras, though of the xivth century, is a valuable

narrative from the taking of Constantinople by the Latins.]

2 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras (l. ii. c. 1) distinguishes

between the oxeia ormh of Lascaris, and the eustaqeia of Vataces.

The two portraits are in a very good style.]

3 (return) [ Pachymer, l. i. c. 23, 24. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6.

The reader of the Byzantines must observe how rarely we are

indulged with such precious details.]

4 (return) [ Monoi gar apantwn anqrwpwn onomastotatoi basileuV

kai jilosojoV, (Greg. Acropol. c. 32.) The emperor, in a familiar

conversation, examined and encouraged the studies of his future

logothete.]

499 (return) [ Sister of Manfred, afterwards king of Naples. Nic.

Greg. p. 45.—M.]

5 (return) [ Compare Acropolita, (c. 18, 52,) and the two first

books of Nicephorus Gregoras.]

A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between John Vataces and

his son Theodore; between the founder who sustained the weight,

and the heir who enjoyed the splendor, of the Imperial crown. 6

Yet the character of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had

been educated in the school of his father, in the exercise of war

and hunting; Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three

years of a short reign, he thrice led his armies into the heart

of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a choleric and

suspicious temper: the first of these may be ascribed to the

ignorance of control; and the second might naturally arise from a

dark and imperfect view of the corruption of mankind. On a march

in Bulgaria, he consulted on a question of policy his principal

ministers; and the Greek logothete, George Acropolita, presumed

to offend him by the declaration of a free and honest opinion.

The emperor half unsheathed his cimeter; but his more deliberate

rage reserved Acropolita for a baser punishment. One of the first

officers of the empire was ordered to dismount, stripped of his

robes, and extended on the ground in the presence of the prince

and army. In this posture he was chastised with so many and such

heavy blows from the clubs of two guards or executioners, that

when Theodore commanded them to cease, the great logothete was

scarcely able to rise and crawl away to his tent. After a

seclusion of some days, he was recalled by a peremptory mandate

to his seat in council; and so dead were the Greeks to the sense

of honor and shame, that it is from the narrative of the sufferer

himself that we acquire the knowledge of his disgrace. 7 The

cruelty of the emperor was exasperated by the pangs of sickness,

the approach of a premature end, and the suspicion of poison and

magic. The lives and fortunes, the eyes and limbs, of his kinsmen

and nobles, were sacrificed to each sally of passion; and before

he died, the son of Vataces might deserve from the people, or at

least from the court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron of the

family of the Palæologi had provoked his anger by refusing to

bestow her beauteous daughter on the vile plebeian who was

recommended by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or age,

her body, as high as the neck, was enclosed in a sack with

several cats, who were pricked with pins to irritate their fury

against their unfortunate fellow-captive. In his last hours the

emperor testified a wish to forgive and be forgiven, a just

anxiety for the fate of John his son and successor, who, at the

age of eight years, was condemned to the dangers of a long

minority. His last choice intrusted the office of guardian to the

sanctity of the patriarch Arsenius, and to the courage of George

Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by the

royal favor and the public hatred. Since their connection with

the Latins, the names and privileges of hereditary rank had

insinuated themselves into the Greek monarchy; and the noble

families 8 were provoked by the elevation of a worthless

favorite, to whose influence they imputed the errors and

calamities of the late reign. In the first council, after the

emperor’s death, Muzalon, from a lofty throne, pronounced a

labored apology of his conduct and intentions: his modesty was

subdued by a unanimous assurance of esteem and fidelity; and his

most inveterate enemies were the loudest to salute him as the

guardian and savior of the Romans. Eight days were sufficient to

prepare the execution of the conspiracy. On the ninth, the

obsequies of the deceased monarch were solemnized in the

cathedral of Magnesia, 9 an Asiatic city, where he expired, on

the banks of the Hermus, and at the foot of Mount Sipylus. The

holy rites were interrupted by a sedition of the guards; Muzalon,

his brothers, and his adherents, were massacred at the foot of

the altar; and the absent patriarch was associated with a new

colleague, with Michael Palæologus, the most illustrious, in

birth and merit, of the Greek nobles. 10

6 (return) [ A Persian saying, that Cyrus was the _father_ and

Darius the _master_, of his subjects, was applied to Vataces and

his son. But Pachymer (l. i. c. 23) has mistaken the mild Darius

for the cruel Cambyses, despot or tyrant of his people. By the

institution of taxes, Darius had incurred the less odious, but

more contemptible, name of KaphloV, merchant or broker,

(Herodotus, iii. 89.)]

7 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 63) seems to admire his own firmness

in sustaining a beating, and not returning to council till he was

called. He relates the exploits of Theodore, and his own

services, from c. 53 to c. 74 of his history. See the third book

of Nicephorus Gregoras.]

8 (return) [ Pachymer (l. i. c. 21) names and discriminates

fifteen or twenty Greek families, kai osoi alloi, oiV h

megalogenhV seira kai crush sugkekrothto. Does he mean, by this

decoration, a figurative or a real golden chain? Perhaps, both.]

9 (return) [ The old geographers, with Cellarius and D’Anville,

and our travellers, particularly Pocock and Chandler, will teach

us to distinguish the two Magnesias of Asia Minor, of the Mæander

and of Sipylus. The latter, our present object, is still

flourishing for a Turkish city, and lies eight hours, or leagues,

to the north-east of Smyrna, (Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, tom.

iii. lettre xxii. p. 365—370. Chandler’s Travels into Asia Minor,

p. 267.)]

10 (return) [ See Acropolita, (c. 75, 76, &c.,) who lived too

near the times; Pachymer, (l. i. c. 13—25,) Gregoras, (l. iii. c.

3, 4, 5.)]

Of those who are proud of their ancestors, the far greater part

must be content with local or domestic renown; and few there are

who dare trust the memorials of their family to the public annals

of their country. As early as the middle of the eleventh century,

the noble race of the Palæologi 11 stands high and conspicuous in

the Byzantine history: it was the valiant George Palæologus who

placed the father of the Comneni on the throne; and his kinsmen

or descendants continue, in each generation, to lead the armies

and councils of the state. The purple was not dishonored by their

alliance, and had the law of succession, and female succession,

been strictly observed, the wife of Theodore Lascaris must have

yielded to her elder sister, the mother of Michael Palæologus,

who afterwards raised his family to the throne. In his person,

the splendor of birth was dignified by the merit of the soldier

and statesman: in his early youth he was promoted to the office

of _constable_ or commander of the French mercenaries; the

private expense of a day never exceeded three pieces of gold; but

his ambition was rapacious and profuse; and his gifts were

doubled by the graces of his conversation and manners. The love

of the soldiers and people excited the jealousy of the court, and

Michael thrice escaped from the dangers in which he was involved

by his own imprudence or that of his friends. I. Under the reign

of Justice and Vataces, a dispute arose 12 between two officers,

one of whom accused the other of maintaining the hereditary right

of the Palæologi The cause was decided, according to the new

jurisprudence of the Latins, by single combat; the defendant was

overthrown; but he persisted in declaring that himself alone was

guilty; and that he had uttered these rash or treasonable

speeches without the approbation or knowledge of his patron. Yet

a cloud of suspicion hung over the innocence of the constable; he

was still pursued by the whispers of malevolence; and a subtle

courtier, the archbishop of Philadelphia, urged him to accept the

judgment of God in the fiery proof of the ordeal. 13 Three days

before the trial, the patient’s arm was enclosed in a bag, and

secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear

a red-hot ball of iron three times from the altar to the rails of

the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury. Palæologus

eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. “I am

a soldier,” said he, “and will boldly enter the lists with my

accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with

the gift of miracles. _Your_ piety, most holy prelate, may

deserve the interposition of Heaven, and from your hands I will

receive the fiery globe, the pledge of my innocence.” The

archbishop started; the emperor smiled; and the absolution or

pardon of Michael was approved by new rewards and new services.

II. In the succeeding reign, as he held the government of Nice,

he was secretly informed, that the mind of the absent prince was

poisoned with jealousy; and that death, or blindness, would be

his final reward. Instead of awaiting the return and sentence of

Theodore, the constable, with some followers, escaped from the

city and the empire; and though he was plundered by the Turkmans

of the desert, he found a hospitable refuge in the court of the

sultan. In the ambiguous state of an exile, Michael reconciled

the duties of gratitude and loyalty: drawing his sword against

the Tartars; admonishing the garrisons of the Roman limit; and

promoting, by his influence, the restoration of peace, in which

his pardon and recall were honorably included. III. While he

guarded the West against the despot of Epirus, Michael was again

suspected and condemned in the palace; and such was his loyalty

or weakness, that he submitted to be led in chains above six

hundred miles from Durazzo to Nice. The civility of the messenger

alleviated his disgrace; the emperor’s sickness dispelled his

danger; and the last breath of Theodore, which recommended his

infant son, at once acknowledged the innocence and the power of

Palæologus.

11 (return) [ The pedigree of Palæologus is explained by Ducange,

(Famil. Byzant. p. 230, &c.:) the events of his private life are

related by Pachymer (l. i. c. 7—12) and Gregoras (l. ii. 8, l.

iii. 2, 4, l. iv. 1) with visible favor to the father of the

reigning dynasty.]

12 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 50) relates the circumstances of

this curious adventure, which seem to have escaped the more

recent writers.]

13 (return) [ Pachymer, (l. i. c. 12,) who speaks with proper

contempt of this barbarous trial, affirms, that he had seen in

his youth many person who had sustained, without injury, the

fiery ordeal. As a Greek, he is credulous; but the ingenuity of

the Greeks might furnish some remedies of art or fraud against

their own superstition, or that of their tyrant.]

But his innocence had been too unworthily treated, and his power

was too strongly felt, to curb an aspiring subject in the fair

field that was opened to his ambition. 14 In the council, after

the death of Theodore, he was the first to pronounce, and the

first to violate, the oath of allegiance to Muzalon; and so

dexterous was his conduct, that he reaped the benefit, without

incurring the guilt, or at least the reproach, of the subsequent

massacre. In the choice of a regent, he balanced the interests

and passions of the candidates; turned their envy and hatred from

himself against each other, and forced every competitor to own,

that after his own claims, those of Palæologus were best entitled

to the preference. Under the title of great duke, he accepted or

assumed, during a long minority, the active powers of government;

the patriarch was a venerable name; and the factious nobles were

seduced, or oppressed, by the ascendant of his genius. The fruits

of the economy of Vataces were deposited in a strong castle on

the banks of the Hermus, in the custody of the faithful

Varangians: the constable retained his command or influence over

the foreign troops; he employed the guards to possess the

treasure, and the treasure to corrupt the guards; and whatsoever

might be the abuse of the public money, his character was above

the suspicion of private avarice. By himself, or by his

emissaries, he strove to persuade every rank of subjects, that

their own prosperity would rise in just proportion to the

establishment of his authority. The weight of taxes was

suspended, the perpetual theme of popular complaint; and he

prohibited the trials by the ordeal and judicial combat. These

Barbaric institutions were already abolished or undermined in

France 15 and England; 16 and the appeal to the sword offended

the sense of a civilized, 17 and the temper of an unwarlike,

people. For the future maintenance of their wives and children,

the veterans were grateful: the priests and the philosophers

applauded his ardent zeal for the advancement of religion and

learning; and his vague promise of rewarding merit was applied by

every candidate to his own hopes. Conscious of the influence of

the clergy, Michael successfully labored to secure the suffrage

of that powerful order. Their expensive journey from Nice to

Magnesia, afforded a decent and ample pretence: the leading

prelates were tempted by the liberality of his nocturnal visits;

and the incorruptible patriarch was flattered by the homage of

his new colleague, who led his mule by the bridle into the town,

and removed to a respectful distance the importunity of the

crowd. Without renouncing his title by royal descent, Palæologus

encouraged a free discussion into the advantages of elective

monarchy; and his adherents asked, with the insolence of triumph,

what patient would trust his health, or what merchant would

abandon his vessel, to the _hereditary_ skill of a physician or a

pilot? The youth of the emperor, and the impending dangers of a

minority, required the support of a mature and experienced

guardian; of an associate raised above the envy of his equals,

and invested with the name and prerogatives of royalty. For the

interest of the prince and people, without any selfish views for

himself or his family, the great duke consented to guard and

instruct the son of Theodore; but he sighed for the happy moment

when he might restore to his firmer hands the administration of

his patrimony, and enjoy the blessings of a private station. He

was first invested with the title and prerogatives of _despot_,

which bestowed the purple ornaments and the second place in the

Roman monarchy. It was afterwards agreed that John and Michael

should be proclaimed as joint emperors, and raised on the

buckler, but that the preeminence should be reserved for the

birthright of the former. A mutual league of amity was pledged

between the royal partners; and in case of a rupture, the

subjects were bound, by their oath of allegiance, to declare

themselves against the aggressor; an ambiguous name, the seed of

discord and civil war. Palæologus was content; but, on the day of

the coronation, and in the cathedral of Nice, his zealous

adherents most vehemently urged the just priority of his age and

merit. The unseasonable dispute was eluded by postponing to a

more convenient opportunity the coronation of John Lascaris; and

he walked with a slight diadem in the train of his guardian, who

alone received the Imperial crown from the hands of the

patriarch. It was not without extreme reluctance that Arsenius

abandoned the cause of his pupil; out the Varangians brandished

their battle-axes; a sign of assent was extorted from the

trembling youth; and some voices were heard, that the life of a

child should no longer impede the settlement of the nation. A

full harvest of honors and employments was distributed among his

friends by the grateful Palæologus. In his own family he created

a despot and two sebastocrators; Alexius Strategopulus was

decorated with the title of Cæsar; and that veteran commander

soon repaid the obligation, by restoring Constantinople to the

Greek emperor.

14 (return) [ Without comparing Pachymer to Thucydides or

Tacitus, I will praise his narrative, (l. i. c. 13—32, l. ii. c.

1—9,) which pursues the ascent of Palæologus with eloquence,

perspicuity, and tolerable freedom. Acropolita is more cautious,

and Gregoras more concise.]

15 (return) [ The judicial combat was abolished by St. Louis in

his own territories; and his example and authority were at length

prevalent in France, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 29.)]

16 (return) [ In civil cases Henry II. gave an option to the

defendant: Glanville prefers the proof by evidence; and that by

judicial combat is reprobated in the Fleta. Yet the trial by

battle has never been abrogated in the English law, and it was

ordered by the judges as late as the beginning of the last

century. * Note : And even demanded in the present.—M.]

17 (return) [ Yet an ingenious friend has urged to me in

mitigation of this practice, 1. _That_ in nations emerging from

barbarism, it moderates the license of private war and arbitrary

revenge. 2. _That_ it is less absurd than the trials by the

ordeal, or boiling water, or the cross, which it has contributed

to abolish. 3. _That_ it served at least as a test of personal

courage; a quality so seldom united with a base disposition, that

the danger of a trial might be some check to a malicious

prosecutor, and a useful barrier against injustice supported by

power. The gallant and unfortunate earl of Surrey might probably

have escaped his unmerited fate, had not his demand of the combat

against his accuser been overruled.]

It was in the second year of his reign, while he resided in the

palace and gardens of Nymphæum, 18 near Smyrna, that the first

messenger arrived at the dead of night; and the stupendous

intelligence was imparted to Michael, after he had been gently

waked by the tender precaution of his sister Eulogia. The man was

unknown or obscure; he produced no letters from the victorious

Cæsar; nor could it easily be credited, after the defeat of

Vataces and the recent failure of Palæologus himself, that the

capital had been surprised by a detachment of eight hundred

soldiers. As a hostage, the doubtful author was confined, with

the assurance of death or an ample recompense; and the court was

left some hours in the anxiety of hope and fear, till the

messengers of Alexius arrived with the authentic intelligence,

and displayed the trophies of the conquest, the sword and

sceptre, 19 the buskins and bonnet, 20 of the usurper Baldwin,

which he had dropped in his precipitate flight. A general

assembly of the bishops, senators, and nobles, was immediately

convened, and never perhaps was an event received with more

heartfelt and universal joy. In a studied oration, the new

sovereign of Constantinople congratulated his own and the public

fortune. “There was a time,” said he, “a far distant time, when

the Roman empire extended to the Adriatic, the Tigris, and the

confines of Æthiopia. After the loss of the provinces, our

capital itself, in these last and calamitous days, has been

wrested from our hands by the Barbarians of the West. From the

lowest ebb, the tide of prosperity has again returned in our

favor; but our prosperity was that of fugitives and exiles: and

when we were asked, which was the country of the Romans, we

indicated with a blush the climate of the globe, and the quarter

of the heavens. The divine Providence has now restored to our

arms the city of Constantine, the sacred seat of religion and

empire; and it will depend on our valor and conduct to render

this important acquisition the pledge and omen of future

victories.” So eager was the impatience of the prince and people,

that Michael made his triumphal entry into Constantinople only

twenty days after the expulsion of the Latins. The golden gate

was thrown open at his approach; the devout conqueror dismounted

from his horse; and a miraculous image of Mary the Conductress

was borne before him, that the divine Virgin in person might

appear to conduct him to the temple of her Son, the cathedral of

St. Sophia. But after the first transport of devotion and pride,

he sighed at the dreary prospect of solitude and ruin. The palace

was defiled with smoke and dirt, and the gross intemperance of

the Franks; whole streets had been consumed by fire, or were

decayed by the injuries of time; the sacred and profane edifices

were stripped of their ornaments: and, as if they were conscious

of their approaching exile, the industry of the Latins had been

confined to the work of pillage and destruction. Trade had

expired under the pressure of anarchy and distress, and the

numbers of inhabitants had decreased with the opulence of the

city. It was the first care of the Greek monarch to reinstate the

nobles in the palaces of their fathers; and the houses or the

ground which they occupied were restored to the families that

could exhibit a legal right of inheritance. But the far greater

part was extinct or lost; the vacant property had devolved to the

lord; he repeopled Constantinople by a liberal invitation to the

provinces; and the brave _volunteers_ were seated in the capital

which had been recovered by their arms. The French barons and the

principal families had retired with their emperor; but the

patient and humble crowd of Latins was attached to the country,

and indifferent to the change of masters. Instead of banishing

the factories of the Pisans, Venetians, and Genoese, the prudent

conqueror accepted their oaths of allegiance, encouraged their

industry, confirmed their privileges, and allowed them to live

under the jurisdiction of their proper magistrates. Of these

nations, the Pisans and Venetians preserved their respective

quarters in the city; but the services and power of the Genoese

deserved at the same time the gratitude and the jealousy of the

Greeks. Their independent colony was first planted at the seaport

town of Heraclea in Thrace. They were speedily recalled, and

settled in the exclusive possession of the suburb of Galata, an

advantageous post, in which they revived the commerce, and

insulted the majesty, of the Byzantine empire. 21

18 (return) [ The site of Nymphæum is not clearly defined in

ancient or modern geography. But from the last hours of Vataces,

(Acropolita, c. 52,) it is evident the palace and gardens of his

favorite residence were in the neighborhood of Smyrna. Nymphæum

might be loosely placed in Lydia, (Gregoras, l. vi. 6.)]

19 (return) [ This sceptre, the emblem of justice and power, was

a long staff, such as was used by the heroes in Homer. By the

latter Greeks it was named _Dicanice_, and the Imperial sceptre

was distinguished as usual by the red or purple color.]

20 (return) [ Acropolita affirms (c. 87,) that this “Onnet” was

after the French fashion; but from the ruby at the point or

summit, Ducange (Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 28, 29) believes that it

was the high-crowned hat of the Greeks. Could Acropolita mistake

the dress of his own court?]

21 (return) [ See Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 28—33,) Acropolita, (c.

88,) Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. iv. 7,) and for the treatment of

the subject Latins, Ducange, (l. v. c. 30, 31.)]

The recovery of Constantinople was celebrated as the æra of a new

empire: the conqueror, alone, and by the right of the sword,

renewed his coronation in the church of St. Sophia; and the name

and honors of John Lascaris, his pupil and lawful sovereign, were

insensibly abolished. But his claims still lived in the minds of

the people; and the royal youth must speedily attain the years of

manhood and ambition. By fear or conscience, Palæologus was

restrained from dipping his hands in innocent and royal blood;

but the anxiety of a usurper and a parent urged him to secure his

throne by one of those imperfect crimes so familiar to the modern

Greeks. The loss of sight incapacitated the young prince for the

active business of the world; instead of the brutal violence of

tearing out his eyes, the visual nerve was destroyed by the

intense glare of a red-hot basin, 22 and John Lascaris was

removed to a distant castle, where he spent many years in privacy

and oblivion. Such cool and deliberate guilt may seem

incompatible with remorse; but if Michael could trust the mercy

of Heaven, he was not inaccessible to the reproaches and

vengeance of mankind, which he had provoked by cruelty and

treason. His cruelty imposed on a servile court the duties of

applause or silence; but the clergy had a right to speak in the

name of their invisible Master; and their holy legions were led

by a prelate, whose character was above the temptations of hope

or fear. After a short abdication of his dignity, Arsenius 23 had

consented to ascend the ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople,

and to preside in the restoration of the church. His pious

simplicity was long deceived by the arts of Palæologus; and his

patience and submission might soothe the usurper, and protect the

safety of the young prince. On the news of his inhuman treatment,

the patriarch unsheathed the spiritual sword; and superstition,

on this occasion, was enlisted in the cause of humanity and

justice. In a synod of bishops, who were stimulated by the

example of his zeal, the patriarch pronounced a sentence of

excommunication; though his prudence still repeated the name of

Michael in the public prayers. The Eastern prelates had not

adopted the dangerous maxims of ancient Rome; nor did they

presume to enforce their censures, by deposing princes, or

absolving nations from their oaths of allegiance. But the

Christian, who had been separated from God and the church, became

an object of horror; and, in a turbulent and fanatic capital,

that horror might arm the hand of an assassin, or inflame a

sedition of the people. Palæologus felt his danger, confessed his

guilt, and deprecated his judge: the act was irretrievable; the

prize was obtained; and the most rigorous penance, which he

solicited, would have raised the sinner to the reputation of a

saint. The unrelenting patriarch refused to announce any means of

atonement or any hopes of mercy; and condescended only to

pronounce, that for so great a crime, great indeed must be the

satisfaction. “Do you require,” said Michael, “that I should

abdicate the empire?” and at these words, he offered, or seemed

to offer, the sword of state. Arsenius eagerly grasped this

pledge of sovereignty; but when he perceived that the emperor was

unwilling to purchase absolution at so dear a rate, he

indignantly escaped to his cell, and left the royal sinner

kneeling and weeping before the door. 24

22 (return) [ This milder invention for extinguishing the sight

was tried by the philosopher Democritus on himself, when he

sought to withdraw his mind from the visible world: a foolish

story! The word _abacinare_, in Latin and Italian, has furnished

Ducange (Gloss. Lat.) with an opportunity to review the various

modes of blinding: the more violent were scooping, burning with

an iron, or hot vinegar, and binding the head with a strong cord

till the eyes burst from their sockets. Ingenious tyrants!]

23 (return) [ See the first retreat and restoration of Arsenius,

in Pachymer (l. ii. c. 15, l. iii. c. 1, 2) and Nicephorus

Gregoras, (l. iii. c. 1, l. iv. c. 1.) Posterity justly accused

the ajeleia and raqumia of Arsenius the virtues of a hermit, the

vices of a minister, (l. xii. c. 2.)]

24 (return) [ The crime and excommunication of Michael are fairly

told by Pachymer (l. iii. c. 10, 14, 19, &c.) and Gregoras, (l.

iv. c. 4.) His confession and penance restored their freedom.]

Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part II.

The danger and scandal of this excommunication subsisted above

three years, till the popular clamor was assuaged by time and

repentance; till the brethren of Arsenius condemned his

inflexible spirit, so repugnant to the unbounded forgiveness of

the gospel. The emperor had artfully insinuated, that, if he were

still rejected at home, he might seek, in the Roman pontiff, a

more indulgent judge; but it was far more easy and effectual to

find or to place that judge at the head of the Byzantine church.

Arsenius was involved in a vague rumor of conspiracy and

disaffection; 248 some irregular steps in his ordination and

government were liable to censure; a synod deposed him from the

episcopal office; and he was transported under a guard of

soldiers to a small island of the Propontis. Before his exile, he

sullenly requested that a strict account might be taken of the

treasures of the church; boasted, that his sole riches, three

pieces of gold, had been earned by transcribing the psalms;

continued to assert the freedom of his mind; and denied, with his

last breath, the pardon which was implored by the royal sinner.

25 After some delay, Gregory, 259 bishop of Adrianople, was

translated to the Byzantine throne; but his authority was found

insufficient to support the absolution of the emperor; and

Joseph, a reverend monk, was substituted to that important

function. This edifying scene was represented in the presence of

the senate and the people; at the end of six years the humble

penitent was restored to the communion of the faithful; and

humanity will rejoice, that a milder treatment of the captive

Lascaris was stipulated as a proof of his remorse. But the spirit

of Arsenius still survived in a powerful faction of the monks and

clergy, who persevered about forty-eight years in an obstinate

schism. Their scruples were treated with tenderness and respect

by Michael and his son; and the reconciliation of the Arsenites

was the serious labor of the church and state. In the confidence

of fanaticism, they had proposed to try their cause by a miracle;

and when the two papers, that contained their own and the adverse

cause, were cast into a fiery brazier, they expected that the

Catholic verity would be respected by the flames. Alas! the two

papers were indiscriminately consumed, and this unforeseen

accident produced the union of a day, and renewed the quarrel of

an age. 26 The final treaty displayed the victory of the

Arsenites: the clergy abstained during forty days from all

ecclesiastical functions; a slight penance was imposed on the

laity; the body of Arsenius was deposited in the sanctuary; and,

in the name of the departed saint, the prince and people were

released from the sins of their fathers. 27

248 (return) [ Except the omission of a prayer for the emperor,

the charges against Arsenius were of different nature: he was

accused of having allowed the sultan of Iconium to bathe in

vessels signed with the cross, and to have admitted him to the

church, though unbaptized, during the service. It was pleaded, in

favor of Arsenius, among other proofs of the sultan’s

Christianity, that he had offered to eat ham. Pachymer, l. iv. c.

4, p. 265. It was after his exile that he was involved in a

charge of conspiracy.—M.]

25 (return) [ Pachymer relates the exile of Arsenius, (l. iv. c.

1—16:) he was one of the commissaries who visited him in the

desert island. The last testament of the unforgiving patriarch is

still extant, (Dupin, Bibliothèque Ecclésiastique, tom. x. p.

95.)]

259 (return) [ Pachymer calls him Germanus.—M.]

26 (return) [ Pachymer (l. vii. c. 22) relates this miraculous

trial like a philosopher, and treats with similar contempt a plot

of the Arsenites, to hide a revelation in the coffin of some old

saint, (l. vii. c. 13.) He compensates this incredulity by an

image that weeps, another that bleeds, (l. vii. c. 30,) and the

miraculous cures of a deaf and a mute patient, (l. xi. c. 32.)]

27 (return) [ The story of the Arsenites is spread through the

thirteen books of Pachymer. Their union and triumph are reserved

for Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. vii. c. 9,) who neither loves nor

esteems these sectaries.]

The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the

pretence, of the crime of Palæologus; and he was impatient to

confirm the succession, by sharing with his eldest son the honors

of the purple. Andronicus, afterwards surnamed the Elder, was

proclaimed and crowned emperor of the Romans, in the fifteenth

year of his age; and, from the first æra of a prolix and

inglorious reign, he held that august title nine years as the

colleague, and fifty as the successor, of his father. Michael

himself, had he died in a private station, would have been

thought more worthy of the empire; and the assaults of his

temporal and spiritual enemies left him few moments to labor for

his own fame or the happiness of his subjects. He wrested from

the Franks several of the noblest islands of the Archipelago,

Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes: his brother Constantine was sent to

command in Malvasia and Sparta; and the eastern side of the

Morea, from Argos and Napoli to Cape Thinners, was repossessed by

the Greeks. This effusion of Christian blood was loudly condemned

by the patriarch; and the insolent priest presumed to interpose

his fears and scruples between the arms of princes. But in the

prosecution of these western conquests, the countries beyond the

Hellespont were left naked to the Turks; and their depredations

verified the prophecy of a dying senator, that the recovery of

Constantinople would be the ruin of Asia. The victories of

Michael were achieved by his lieutenants; his sword rusted in the

palace; and, in the transactions of the emperor with the popes

and the king of Naples, his political acts were stained with

cruelty and fraud. 28

28 (return) [ Of the xiii books of Pachymer, the first six (as

the ivth and vth of Nicephorus Gregoras) contain the reign of

Michael, at the time of whose death he was forty years of age.

Instead of breaking, like his editor the Père Poussin, his

history into two parts, I follow Ducange and Cousin, who number

the xiii. books in one series.]

I. The Vatican was the most natural refuge of a Latin emperor,

who had been driven from his throne; and Pope Urban the Fourth

appeared to pity the misfortunes, and vindicate the cause, of the

fugitive Baldwin. A crusade, with plenary indulgence, was

preached by his command against the schismatic Greeks: he

excommunicated their allies and adherents; solicited Louis the

Ninth in favor of his kinsman; and demanded a tenth of the

ecclesiastical revenues of France and England for the service of

the holy war. 29 The subtle Greek, who watched the rising tempest

of the West, attempted to suspend or soothe the hostility of the

pope, by suppliant embassies and respectful letters; but he

insinuated that the establishment of peace must prepare the

reconciliation and obedience of the Eastern church. The Roman

court could not be deceived by so gross an artifice; and Michael

was admonished, that the repentance of the son should precede the

forgiveness of the father; and that _faith_ (an ambiguous word)

was the only basis of friendship and alliance. After a long and

affected delay, the approach of danger, and the importunity of

Gregory the Tenth, compelled him to enter on a more serious

negotiation: he alleged the example of the great Vataces; and the

Greek clergy, who understood the intentions of their prince, were

not alarmed by the first steps of reconciliation and respect. But

when he pressed the conclusion of the treaty, they strenuously

declared, that the Latins, though not in name, were heretics in

fact, and that they despised those strangers as the vilest and

most despicable portion of the human race. 30 It was the task of

the emperor to persuade, to corrupt, to intimidate the most

popular ecclesiastics, to gain the vote of each individual, and

alternately to urge the arguments of Christian charity and the

public welfare. The texts of the fathers and the arms of the

Franks were balanced in the theological and political scale; and

without approving the addition to the Nicene creed, the most

moderate were taught to confess, that the two hostile

propositions of proceeding from the Father by the Son, and of

proceeding from the Father and the Son, might be reduced to a

safe and Catholic sense. 31 The supremacy of the pope was a

doctrine more easy to conceive, but more painful to acknowledge:

yet Michael represented to his monks and prelates, that they

might submit to name the Roman bishop as the first of the

patriarchs; and that their distance and discretion would guard

the liberties of the Eastern church from the mischievous

consequences of the right of appeal. He protested that he would

sacrifice his life and empire rather than yield the smallest

point of orthodox faith or national independence; and this

declaration was sealed and ratified by a golden bull. The

patriarch Joseph withdrew to a monastery, to resign or resume his

throne, according to the event of the treaty: the letters of

union and obedience were subscribed by the emperor, his son

Andronicus, and thirty-five archbishops and metropolitans, with

their respective synods; and the episcopal list was multiplied by

many dioceses which were annihilated under the yoke of the

infidels. An embassy was composed of some trusty ministers and

prelates: they embarked for Italy, with rich ornaments and rare

perfumes for the altar of St. Peter; and their secret orders

authorized and recommended a boundless compliance. They were

received in the general council of Lyons, by Pope Gregory the

Tenth, at the head of five hundred bishops. 32 He embraced with

tears his long-lost and repentant children; accepted the oath of

the ambassadors, who abjured the schism in the name of the two

emperors; adorned the prelates with the ring and mitre; chanted

in Greek and Latin the Nicene creed with the addition of

_filioque_; and rejoiced in the union of the East and West, which

had been reserved for his reign. To consummate this pious work,

the Byzantine deputies were speedily followed by the pope’s

nuncios; and their instruction discloses the policy of the

Vatican, which could not be satisfied with the vain title of

supremacy. After viewing the temper of the prince and people,

they were enjoined to absolve the schismatic clergy, who should

subscribe and swear their abjuration and obedience; to establish

in all the churches the use of the perfect creed; to prepare the

entrance of a cardinal legate, with the full powers and dignity

of his office; and to instruct the emperor in the advantages

which he might derive from the temporal protection of the Roman

pontiff. 33

29 (return) [ Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 33, &c., from the

Epistles of Urban IV.]

30 (return) [ From their mercantile intercourse with the

Venetians and Genoese, they branded the Latins as kaphloi and

banausoi, (Pachymer, l. v. c. 10.) “Some are heretics in name;

others, like the Latins, in fact,” said the learned Veccus, (l.

v. c. 12,) who soon afterwards became a convert (c. 15, 16) and a

patriarch, (c. 24.)]

31 (return) [ In this class we may place Pachymer himself, whose

copious and candid narrative occupies the vth and vith books of

his history. Yet the Greek is silent on the council of Lyons, and

seems to believe that the popes always resided in Rome and Italy,

(l. v. c. 17, 21.)]

32 (return) [ See the acts of the council of Lyons in the year

1274. Fleury, Hist. Ecclésiastique, tom. xviii. p. 181—199.

Dupin, Bibliot. Ecclés. tom. x. p. 135.]

33 (return) [ This curious instruction, which has been drawn with

more or less honesty by Wading and Leo Allatius from the archives

of the Vatican, is given in an abstract or version by Fleury,

(tom. xviii. p. 252—258.)]

But they found a country without a friend, a nation in which the

names of Rome and Union were pronounced with abhorrence. The

patriarch Joseph was indeed removed: his place was filled by

Veccus, an ecclesiastic of learning and moderation; and the

emperor was still urged by the same motives, to persevere in the

same professions. But in his private language Palæologus affected

to deplore the pride, and to blame the innovations, of the

Latins; and while he debased his character by this double

hypocrisy, he justified and punished the opposition of his

subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient Rome,

a sentence of excommunication was pronounced against the

obstinate schismatics; the censures of the church were executed

by the sword of Michael; on the failure of persuasion, he tried

the arguments of prison and exile, of whipping and mutilation;

those touchstones, says an historian, of cowards and the brave.

Two Greeks still reigned in Ætolia, Epirus, and Thessaly, with

the appellation of despots: they had yielded to the sovereign of

Constantinople, but they rejected the chains of the Roman

pontiff, and supported their refusal by successful arms. Under

their protection, the fugitive monks and bishops assembled in

hostile synods; and retorted the name of heretic with the galling

addition of apostate: the prince of Trebizond was tempted to

assume the forfeit title of emperor; 339 and even the Latins of

Negropont, Thebes, Athens, and the Morea, forgot the merits of

the convert, to join, with open or clandestine aid, the enemies

of Palæologus. His favorite generals, of his own blood, and

family, successively deserted, or betrayed, the sacrilegious

trust. His sister Eulogia, a niece, and two female cousins,

conspired against him; another niece, Mary queen of Bulgaria,

negotiated his ruin with the sultan of Egypt; and, in the public

eye, their treason was consecrated as the most sublime virtue. 34

To the pope’s nuncios, who urged the consummation of the work,

Palæologus exposed a naked recital of all that he had done and

suffered for their sake. They were assured that the guilty

sectaries, of both sexes and every rank, had been deprived of

their honors, their fortunes, and their liberty; a spreading list

of confiscation and punishment, which involved many persons, the

dearest to the emperor, or the best deserving of his favor. They

were conducted to the prison, to behold four princes of the royal

blood chained in the four corners, and shaking their fetters in

an agony of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards

released; the one by submission, the other by death: but the

obstinacy of their two companions was chastised by the loss of

their eyes; and the Greeks, the least adverse to the union,

deplored that cruel and inauspicious tragedy. 35 Persecutors must

expect the hatred of those whom they oppress; but they commonly

find some consolation in the testimony of their conscience, the

applause of their party, and, perhaps, the success of their

undertaking. But the hypocrisy of Michael, which was prompted

only by political motives, must have forced him to hate himself,

to despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel

champions by whom he was detested and despised. While his

violence was abhorred at Constantinople, at Rome his slowness was

arraigned, and his sincerity suspected; till at length Pope

Martin the Fourth excluded the Greek emperor from the pale of a

church, into which he was striving to reduce a schismatic people.

No sooner had the tyrant expired, than the union was dissolved,

and abjured by unanimous consent; the churches were purified; the

penitents were reconciled; and his son Andronicus, after weeping

the sins and errors of his youth most piously denied his father

the burial of a prince and a Christian. 36

339 (return) [ According to Fallmarayer he had always maintained

this title.—M.]

34 (return) [ This frank and authentic confession of Michael’s

distress is exhibited in barbarous Latin by Ogerius, who signs

himself Protonotarius Interpretum, and transcribed by Wading from

the MSS. of the Vatican, (A.D. 1278, No. 3.) His annals of the

Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in folio,

(Rome, 1741,) I have now accidentally seen among the waste paper

of a bookseller.]

35 (return) [ See the vith book of Pachymer, particularly the

chapters 1, 11, 16, 18, 24—27. He is the more credible, as he

speaks of this persecution with less anger than sorrow.]

36 (return) [ Pachymer, l. vii. c. 1—ii. 17. The speech of

Andronicus the Elder (lib. xii. c. 2) is a curious record, which

proves that if the Greeks were the slaves of the emperor, the

emperor was not less the slave of superstition and the clergy.]

II. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers of

Constantinople had fallen to decay: they were restored and

fortified by the policy of Michael, who deposited a plenteous

store of corn and salt provisions, to sustain the siege which he

might hourly expect from the resentment of the Western powers. Of

these, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies was the most formidable

neighbor: but as long as they were possessed by Mainfroy, the

bastard of Frederic the Second, his monarchy was the bulwark,

rather than the annoyance, of the Eastern empire. The usurper,

though a brave and active prince, was sufficiently employed in

the defence of his throne: his proscription by successive popes

had separated Mainfroy from the common cause of the Latins; and

the forces that might have besieged Constantinople were detained

in a crusade against the domestic enemy of Rome. The prize of her

avenger, the crown of the Two Sicilies, was won and worn by the

brother of St Louis, by Charles count of Anjou and Provence, who

led the chivalry of France on this holy expedition. 37 The

disaffection of his Christian subjects compelled Mainfroy to

enlist a colony of Saracens whom his father had planted in

Apulia; and this odious succor will explain the defiance of the

Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation. “Bear

this message,” said Charles, “to the sultan of Nocera, that God

and the sword are umpire between us; and that he shall either

send me to paradise, or I will send him to the pit of hell.” The

armies met: and though I am ignorant of Mainfroy’s doom in the

other world, in this he lost his friends, his kingdom, and his

life, in the bloody battle of Benevento. Naples and Sicily were

immediately peopled with a warlike race of French nobles; and

their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of Africa,

Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his

first arms against the Byzantine empire; and Palæologus,

diffident of his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the

ambition of Charles to the humanity of St. Louis, who still

preserved a just ascendant over the mind of his ferocious

brother. For a while the attention of that brother was confined

at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir to the

imperial house of Swabia; but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal

conflict; and his execution on a public scaffold taught the

rivals of Charles to tremble for their heads as well as their

dominions. A second respite was obtained by the last crusade of

St. Louis to the African coast; and the double motive of interest

and duty urged the king of Naples to assist, with his powers and

his presence, the holy enterprise. The death of St. Louis

released him from the importunity of a virtuous censor: the king

of Tunis confessed himself the tributary and vassal of the crown

of Sicily; and the boldest of the French knights were free to

enlist under his banner against the Greek empire. A treaty and a

marriage united his interest with the house of Courtenay; his

daughter Beatrice was promised to Philip, son and heir of the

emperor Baldwin; a pension of six hundred ounces of gold was

allowed for his maintenance; and his generous father distributed

among his aliens the kingdoms and provinces of the East,

reserving only Constantinople, and one day’s journey round the

city for the imperial domain. 38 In this perilous moment,

Palæologus was the most eager to subscribe the creed, and implore

the protection, of the Roman pontiff, who assumed, with propriety

and weight, the character of an angel of peace, the common father

of the Christians. By his voice, the sword of Charles was chained

in the scabbard; and the Greek ambassadors beheld him, in the

pope’s antechamber, biting his ivory sceptre in a transport of

fury, and deeply resenting the refusal to enfranchise and

consecrate his arms. He appears to have respected the

disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth; but Charles was

insensibly disgusted by the pride and partiality of Nicholas the

Third; and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family,

alienated the most strenuous champion from the service of the

church. The hostile league against the Greeks, of Philip the

Latin emperor, the king of the Two Sicilies, and the republic of

Venice, was ripened into execution; and the election of Martin

the Fourth, a French pope, gave a sanction to the cause. Of the

allies, Philip supplied his name; Martin, a bull of

excommunication; the Venetians, a squadron of forty galleys; and

the formidable powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten

thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a fleet of

more than three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was

appointed for assembling this mighty force in the harbor of

Brindisi; and a previous attempt was risked with a detachment of

three hundred knights, who invaded Albania, and besieged the

fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the

vanity of Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael,

despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy;

on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring 39 of

the Sicilian tyrant.

37 (return) [ The best accounts, the nearest the time, the most

full and entertaining, of the conquest of Naples by Charles of

Anjou, may be found in the Florentine Chronicles of Ricordano

Malespina, (c. 175—193,) and Giovanni Villani, (l. vii. c. 1—10,

25—30,) which are published by Muratori in the viiith and xiiith

volumes of the Historians of Italy. In his Annals (tom. xi. p.

56—72) he has abridged these great events which are likewise

described in the Istoria Civile of Giannone. tom. l. xix. tom.

iii. l. xx.]

38 (return) [ Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 49—56, l. vi. c.

1—13. See Pachymer, l. iv. c. 29, l. v. c. 7—10, 25 l. vi. c. 30,

32, 33, and Nicephorus Gregoras, l. iv. 5, l. v. 1, 6.]

39 (return) [ The reader of Herodotus will recollect how

miraculously the Assyrian host of Sennacherib was disarmed and

destroyed, (l. ii. c. 141.)]

Among the proscribed adherents of the house of Swabia, John of

Procida forfeited a small island of that name in the Bay of

Naples. His birth was noble, but his education was learned; and

in the poverty of exile, he was relieved by the practice of

physic, which he had studied in the school of Salerno. Fortune

had left him nothing to lose, except life; and to despise life is

the first qualification of a rebel. Procida was endowed with the

art of negotiation, to enforce his reasons and disguise his

motives; and in his various transactions with nations and men, he

could persuade each party that he labored solely for _their_

interest. The new kingdoms of Charles were afflicted by every

species of fiscal and military oppression; 40 and the lives and

fortunes of his Italian subjects were sacrificed to the greatness

of their master and the licentiousness of his followers. The

hatred of Naples was repressed by his presence; but the looser

government of his vicegerents excited the contempt, as well as

the aversion, of the Sicilians: the island was roused to a sense

of freedom by the eloquence of Procida; and he displayed to every

baron his private interest in the common cause. In the confidence

of foreign aid, he successively visited the courts of the Greek

emperor, and of Peter king of Arragon, 41 who possessed the

maritime countries of Valentia and Catalonia. To the ambitious

Peter a crown was presented, which he might justly claim by his

marriage with the sister 419 of Mainfroy, and by the dying voice

of Conradin, who from the scaffold had cast a ring to his heir

and avenger. Palæologus was easily persuaded to divert his enemy

from a foreign war by a rebellion at home; and a Greek subsidy of

twenty-five thousand ounces of gold was most profitably applied

to arm a Catalan fleet, which sailed under a holy banner to the

specious attack of the Saracens of Africa. In the disguise of a

monk or beggar, the indefatigable missionary of revolt flew from

Constantinople to Rome, and from Sicily to Saragossa: the treaty

was sealed with the signet of Pope Nicholas himself, the enemy of

Charles; and his deed of gift transferred the fiefs of St. Peter

from the house of Anjou to that of Arragon. So widely diffused

and so freely circulated, the secret was preserved above two

years with impenetrable discretion; and each of the conspirators

imbibed the maxim of Peter, who declared that he would cut off

his left hand if it were conscious of the intentions of his

right. The mine was prepared with deep and dangerous artifice;

but it may be questioned, whether the instant explosion of

Palermo were the effect of accident or design.

40 (return) [ According to Sabas Malaspina, (Hist. Sicula, l.

iii. c. 16, in Muratori, tom. viii. p. 832,) a zealous Guelph,

the subjects of Charles, who had reviled Mainfroy as a wolf,

began to regret him as a lamb; and he justifies their discontent

by the oppressions of the French government, (l. vi. c. 2, 7.)

See the Sicilian manifesto in Nicholas Specialis, (l. i. c. 11,

in Muratori, tom. x. p. 930.)]

41 (return) [ See the character and counsels of Peter, king of

Arragon, in Mariana, (Hist. Hispan. l. xiv. c. 6, tom. ii. p.

133.) The reader for gives the Jesuit’s defects, in favor, always

of his style, and often of his sense.]

419 (return) [ Daughter. See Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. i. p.

517.—M.]

On the vigil of Easter, a procession of the disarmed citizens

visited a church without the walls; and a noble damsel was rudely

insulted by a French soldier. 42 The ravisher was instantly

punished with death; and if the people was at first scattered by

a military force, their numbers and fury prevailed: the

conspirators seized the opportunity; the flame spread over the

island; and eight thousand French were exterminated in a

promiscuous massacre, which has obtained the name of the Sicilian

Vespers. 43 From every city the banners of freedom and the church

were displayed: the revolt was inspired by the presence or the

soul of Procida and Peter of Arragon, who sailed from the African

coast to Palermo, was saluted as the king and savior of the isle.

By the rebellion of a people on whom he had so long trampled with

impunity, Charles was astonished and confounded; and in the first

agony of grief and devotion, he was heard to exclaim, “O God! if

thou hast decreed to humble me, grant me at least a gentle and

gradual descent from the pinnacle of greatness!” His fleet and

army, which already filled the seaports of Italy, were hastily

recalled from the service of the Grecian war; and the situation

of Messina exposed that town to the first storm of his revenge.

Feeble in themselves, and yet hopeless of foreign succor, the

citizens would have repented, and submitted on the assurance of

full pardon and their ancient privileges. But the pride of the

monarch was already rekindled; and the most fervent entreaties of

the legate could extort no more than a promise, that he would

forgive the remainder, after a chosen list of eight hundred

rebels had been yielded to his discretion. The despair of the

Messinese renewed their courage: Peter of Arragon approached to

their relief; 44 and his rival was driven back by the failure of

provision and the terrors of the equinox to the Calabrian shore.

At the same moment, the Catalan admiral, the famous Roger de

Loria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron: the French

fleet, more numerous in transports than in galleys, was either

burnt or destroyed; and the same blow assured the independence of

Sicily and the safety of the Greek empire. A few days before his

death, the emperor Michael rejoiced in the fall of an enemy whom

he hated and esteemed; and perhaps he might be content with the

popular judgment, that had they not been matched with each other,

Constantinople and Italy must speedily have obeyed the same

master. 45 From this disastrous moment, the life of Charles was a

series of misfortunes: his capital was insulted, his son was made

prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without recovering the Isle

of Sicily, which, after a war of twenty years, was finally

severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred, as an

independent kingdom, to a younger branch of the house of Arragon.

46

42 (return) [ After enumerating the sufferings of his country,

Nicholas Specialis adds, in the true spirit of Italian jealousy,

Quæ omnia et graviora quidem, ut arbitror, patienti animo Siculi

tolerassent, nisi (quod primum cunctis dominantibus cavendum est)

alienas fminas invasissent, (l. i. c. 2, p. 924.)]

43 (return) [ The French were long taught to remember this bloody

lesson: “If I am provoked, (said Henry the Fourth,) I will

breakfast at Milan, and dine at Naples.” “Your majesty (replied

the Spanish ambassador) may perhaps arrive in Sicily for

vespers.”]

44 (return) [ This revolt, with the subsequent victory, are

related by two national writers, Bartholemy à Neocastro (in

Muratori, tom. xiii.,) and Nicholas Specialis (in Muratori, tom.

x.,) the one a contemporary, the other of the next century. The

patriot Specialis disclaims the name of rebellion, and all

previous correspondence with Peter of Arragon, (nullo communicato

consilio,) who _happened_ to be with a fleet and army on the

African coast, (l. i. c. 4, 9.)]

45 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras (l. v. c. 6) admires the wisdom

of Providence in this equal balance of states and princes. For

the honor of Palæologus, I had rather this balance had been

observed by an Italian writer.]

46 (return) [ See the Chronicle of Villani, the xith volume of

the Annali d’Italia of Muratori, and the xxth and xxist books of

the Istoria Civile of Giannone.]

Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part

III.

I shall not, I trust, be accused of superstition; but I must

remark that, even in this world, the natural order of events will

sometimes afford the strong appearances of moral retribution. The

first Palæologus had saved his empire by involving the kingdoms

of the West in rebellion and blood; and from these scenes of

discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and

endangered the empire of his son. In modern times our debts and

taxes are the secret poison which still corrodes the bosom of

peace: but in the weak and disorderly government of the middle

ages, it was agitated by the present evil of the disbanded

armies. Too idle to work, too proud to beg, the mercenaries were

accustomed to a life of rapine: they could rob with more dignity

and effect under a banner and a chief; and the sovereign, to whom

their service was useless, and their presence importunate,

endeavored to discharge the torrent on some neighboring

countries. After the peace of Sicily, many thousands of Genoese,

_Catalans_, 47 &c., who had fought, by sea and land, under the

standard of Anjou or Arragon, were blended into one nation by the

resemblance of their manners and interest. They heard that the

Greek provinces of Asia were invaded by the Turks: they resolved

to share the harvest of pay and plunder: and Frederic king of

Sicily most liberally contributed the means of their departure.

In a warfare of twenty years, a ship, or a camp, was become their

country; arms were their sole profession and property; valor was

the only virtue which they knew; their women had imbibed the

fearless temper of their lovers and husbands: it was reported,

that, with a stroke of their broadsword, the Catalans could

cleave a horseman and a horse; and the report itself was a

powerful weapon. Roger de Flor 477 was the most popular of their

chiefs; and his personal merit overshadowed the dignity of his

prouder rivals of Arragon. The offspring of a marriage between a

German gentleman of the court of Frederic the Second and a damsel

of Brindisi, Roger was successively a templar, an apostate, a

pirate, and at length the richest and most powerful admiral of

the Mediterranean. He sailed from Messina to Constantinople, with

eighteen galleys, four great ships, and eight thousand

adventurers; 478 and his previous treaty was faithfully

accomplished by Andronicus the elder, who accepted with joy and

terror this formidable succor. A palace was allotted for his

reception, and a niece of the emperor was given in marriage to

the valiant stranger, who was immediately created great duke or

admiral of Romania. After a decent repose, he transported his

troops over the Propontis, and boldly led them against the Turks:

in two bloody battles thirty thousand of the Moslems were slain:

he raised the siege of Philadelphia, and deserved the name of the

deliverer of Asia. But after a short season of prosperity, the

cloud of slavery and ruin again burst on that unhappy province.

The inhabitants escaped (says a Greek historian) from the smoke

into the flames; and the hostility of the Turks was less

pernicious than the friendship of the Catalans. 479 The lives and

fortunes which they had rescued they considered as their own: the

willing or reluctant maid was saved from the race of circumcision

for the embraces of a Christian soldier: the exaction of fines

and supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and arbitrary

executions; and, on the resistance of Magnesia, the great duke

besieged a city of the Roman empire. 48 These disorders he

excused by the wrongs and passions of a victorious army; nor

would his own authority or person have been safe, had he dared to

punish his faithful followers, who were defrauded of the just and

covenanted price of their services. The threats and complaints of

Andronicus disclosed the nakedness of the empire. His golden bull

had invited no more than five hundred horse and a thousand foot

soldiers; yet the crowds of volunteers, who migrated to the East,

had been enlisted and fed by his spontaneous bounty. While his

bravest allies were content with three byzants or pieces of gold,

for their monthly pay, an ounce, or even two ounces, of gold were

assigned to the Catalans, whose annual pension would thus amount

to near a hundred pounds sterling: one of their chiefs had

modestly rated at three hundred thousand crowns the value of his

_future_ merits; and above a million had been issued from the

treasury for the maintenance of these costly mercenaries. A cruel

tax had been imposed on the corn of the husbandman: one third was

retrenched from the salaries of the public officers; and the

standard of the coin was so shamefully debased, that of the

four-and-twenty parts only five were of pure gold. 49 At the

summons of the emperor, Roger evacuated a province which no

longer supplied the materials of rapine; 496 but he refused to

disperse his troops; and while his style was respectful, his

conduct was independent and hostile. He protested, that if the

emperor should march against him, he would advance forty paces to

kiss the ground before him; but in rising from this prostrate

attitude Roger had a life and sword at the service of his

friends. The great duke of Romania condescended to accept the

title and ornaments of Cæsar; but he rejected the new proposal of

the government of Asia with a subsidy of corn and money, 497 on

condition that he should reduce his troops to the harmless number

of three thousand men. Assassination is the last resource of

cowards. The Cæsar was tempted to visit the royal residence of

Adrianople; in the apartment, and before the eyes, of the empress

he was stabbed by the Alani guards; and though the deed was

imputed to their private revenge, 498 his countrymen, who dwelt

at Constantinople in the security of peace, were involved in the

same proscription by the prince or people. The loss of their

leader intimidated the crowd of adventurers, who hoisted the

sails of flight, and were soon scattered round the coasts of the

Mediterranean. But a veteran band of fifteen hundred Catalans, or

French, stood firm in the strong fortress of Gallipoli on the

Hellespont, displayed the banners of Arragon, and offered to

revenge and justify their chief, by an equal combat of ten or a

hundred warriors. Instead of accepting this bold defiance, the

emperor Michael, the son and colleague of Andronicus, resolved to

oppress them with the weight of multitudes: every nerve was

strained to form an army of thirteen thousand horse and thirty

thousand foot; and the Propontis was covered with the ships of

the Greeks and Genoese. In two battles by sea and land, these

mighty forces were encountered and overthrown by the despair and

discipline of the Catalans: the young emperor fled to the palace;

and an insufficient guard of light-horse was left for the

protection of the open country. Victory renewed the hopes and

numbers of the adventures: every nation was blended under the

name and standard of the _great company_; and three thousand

Turkish proselytes deserted from the Imperial service to join

this military association. In the possession of Gallipoli, 509

the Catalans intercepted the trade of Constantinople and the

Black Sea, while they spread their devastation on either side of

the Hellespont over the confines of Europe and Asia. To prevent

their approach, the greatest part of the Byzantine territory was

laid waste by the Greeks themselves: the peasants and their

cattle retired into the city; and myriads of sheep and oxen, for

which neither place nor food could be procured, were unprofitably

slaughtered on the same day. Four times the emperor Andronicus

sued for peace, and four times he was inflexibly repulsed, till

the want of provisions, and the discord of the chiefs, compelled

the Catalans to evacuate the banks of the Hellespont and the

neighborhood of the capital. After their separation from the

Turks, the remains of the great company pursued their march

through Macedonia and Thessaly, to seek a new establishment in

the heart of Greece. 50

47 (return) [ In this motley multitude, the Catalans and

Spaniards, the bravest of the soldiery, were styled by themselves

and the Greeks _Amogavares_. Moncada derives their origin from

the Goths, and Pachymer (l. xi. c. 22) from the Arabs; and in

spite of national and religious pride, I am afraid the latter is

in the right.]

477 (return) [ On Roger de Flor and his companions, see an

historical fragment, detailed and interesting, entitled “The

Spaniards of the Fourteenth Century,” and inserted in “L’Espagne

en 1808,” a work translated from the German, vol. ii. p. 167.

This narrative enables us to detect some slight errors which have

crept into that of Gibbon.—G.]