THE EMPRESS THEODORA
We have seen how Theodora rewarded the friends, and must now see
how she punished the enemies, of her earlier career. It will be
remembered that her father had been a servant of the “greens” of the
Hippodrome, but that this party had greeted her mother with derision
when she appealed for sympathy with her three children, while the
“blues” received them compassionately. Twenty years afterwards the
young circus-girl had become the most powerful woman in the world,
and the blues began to tyrannize with impunity over their rivals. In
the earliest years of the reign of Theodora and Justinian we find
them swollen with conceit and encouraged in the perpetration of every
kind of disorder. The livelier “sparks” of that faction advertised
their formidable character by adopting the trousers and sandals of the
fierce Huns and trimming their hair after the fashion of those terrible
invaders; they wore long moustaches and beards, shaved the front part
of the head, and cultivated long hair at the back.
A few outrages soon taught them that the laws would not be enforced
against them, and before long the city of Constantinople became,
during the night, a land of terror. The citizen who dared to pass
along the streets with a gold clasp to his belt or his cloak or money
in his purse was robbed, and women could not move after nightfall.
The continued silence of the authorities encouraged the blues, and
drew all the dissolute elements of the city into their ranks. They now
began to force the doors of the houses, plunder the coffers, rape the
wives and daughters, and carry off the more handsome slaves and boys.
At the least resistance their deadly poniards were drawn, and murder
became frequent. When the authorities intervened, none but the greens
were punished. The evil rapidly spread from night to day, and from the
metropolis to other cities. It would be futile in this case to quarrel
with the details given in the “Anecdotes.” The great riot into which
the greens were stung by this reign of terror is an historical fact;
and nothing but the vindictive memory of Theodora can explain how
Justinian, the great legislator, permitted so appalling a disorder.
Theodora meantime enjoyed the conversation of her monks and hermits,
and even Justinian seems to have been unconscious that he was slipping
the leash of beasts whom he might be powerless to control. At length,
on 14th January 532, the greens stirred. The Emperor appeared in
his _kathisma_ at the Hippodrome, and an appeal was made to him for
justice. His officer replied disdainfully, and a long and curious
conversation took place.[9] The Emperor still refused to grant the
impartial administration of justice or to punish the murderers, and
the greens left the Hippodrome. They gathered in strength in the
streets, and, although Justinian prudently sent to learn and partly
to remove their grievances, they remained in arms. Belisarius was now
sent against them with a troop of Goths, and the rioting and burning
began. Unfortunately for the Court an accident then happened which had
the singular effect of uniting the two factions against the troops.
Seven criminals were to be executed, and Procopius cannot conceal
the fact--in spite of his insistence that the blues were never
punished--that some of the seven were blues and some greens. After
five of the seven had been despatched, the rope broke, and the crowd
demanded the acquittal of the remaining two. The authorities refused,
and, as one criminal was a blue and the other a green, the factions
turned in common anger upon the prefect and the troops.
The terrible riot that followed during four days must be read in
history. The first part of the palace, the great church of St Sophia,
and many other churches, mansions and public buildings were destroyed.
Priests who rushed into the fray holding aloft the disarming emblems
of their faith were cut down. On the fourth day, a Sunday, Justinian
entered the Hippodrome with a Bible in his hand, and took a solemn oath
to spare the offenders if they would disarm. “Ass, thou art perjuring
thyself,” was the infuriated answer; and he retired to contemplate with
Theodora the impending ruin of their reign. On the following day the
crowd forced Hypatius, nephew of the Emperor Anastasius, to accept such
purple robes as they could obtain, marched with him in triumph to the
Hippodrome, and exulted in the downfall of Justinian and Theodora, who
were believed to have fled to Asia.
The “great” Justinian makes a lamentable appearance throughout the
whole riot, which he had guiltily occasioned, but Theodora and the
abler ministers were not minded to yield. As they gathered in the hall
of the palace, to which the cries in the Hippodrome must almost have
penetrated, the chief eunuch Narses came to report that by a judicious
distribution of money he had distracted the factions and weakened the
cause of Hypatius. It is probably this news that turned the scale
in the wavering counsels of Justinian and his ministers, but it was
Theodora who pressed it home. The speech which Procopius assigns to
her is worth reproducing, though we cannot regard it as more than a
rhetorical paraphrase of the words she used:
“In my opinion this is no time to admit the maxim that a woman
must not act as a man among men; nor, if she fires the courage
of the halting, are we to consider whether she does right or
no. When matters come to a crisis, we must agree as to the
best course to take. My opinion is that, although we may save
ourselves by flight, it is not to our interest. Every man that
sees the light must die, but the man who has once been raised
to the height of empire cannot suffer himself to go into exile
and survive his dignity. God forbid that I should ever be seen
stripped of this purple, or live a single day on which I am not
to be saluted as Mistress. If thou desirest to go, Emperor,
nothing prevents thee. There is the sea; there are the steps to
the boats. But have a care that when thou leavest here, thou
dost not exchange this sweet light for an ignoble death. For my
part I like the old saying: empire is a fine winding-sheet.”
Some such sentiments, we may believe, were urged by Theodora, and
affected the decision. The populace was penned in the Hippodrome, and
Justinian’s officers and troops stealthily surrounded it. Rushing in at
the various entrances, they fell with such fury upon the people that
the sun went down on the corpses of between thirty and forty thousand
citizens heaped in its arena or on the terraced seats.
The health of Theodora suffered from the strain of this terrible week,
and she went to take the waters at the Pythian baths in Bithynia: a
crowd of nobles and four thousand soldiers and eunuchs forming her
retinue. Meantime Justinian set about the congenial task of re-erecting
the Chalke (or front part of the palace), the church of St Sophia and
the other ruined buildings, on a more splendid scale than before.
We shall see later by what means he and his Empress obtained the
prodigious sums of money they needed for their enormous expenditure.
We will also postpone for a moment the early relations of Theodora to
the general Belisarius and his romantic spouse, and consider the next
important episode in which her character is seen.
In spite of the orthodoxy and religious zeal of Justinian, his wife
had such influence over him and apart from him that in the year 535
she secured the see of Constantinople for the Monophysite Anthimus, to
the unbounded delight of her sect and amidst the furious maledictions
of the orthodox throughout the Empire. Rome was at that time regarded
only as a sister Church of great authority and antiquity, but its
venerable Bishop Agapetus was summoned to the Eastern metropolis and
he succeeded in ousting Theodora’s favourite. Agapetus, however, died
soon afterwards at Constantinople, and Theodora now conceived the bold
design of putting a Monophysite pope upon the throne at Rome itself.
For the remarkable events which follow I am not using the “Anecdotes”
at all. The story is told in substance by a contemporary ecclesiastical
writer, Liberatus the Deacon, of Carthage, and the chronicler Victor,
and is repeated, with large and legendary additions, by Anastasius, the
Roman librarian, of the ninth century.
In the suite of Agapetus at Constantinople was an ambitious and courtly
deacon named Vigilius, who contrived to let his accommodating temper
become known to the Empress. He was taken to her apartments, and he
promised, if the Roman see and a large sum of money were bestowed on
him, to reinstate Anthimus and the other Monophysite bishops. In the
meantime the Gothic ruler of Italy had appointed a certain Silverius to
the Roman see. Theodora tested him with a request that he would restore
Anthimus, but he refused; murmuring, it is said, as he wrote the
letter: “This will cost me my life,” as it did. The Byzantine general
Belisarius had meantime taken and occupied Rome, and a few words must
be said to introduce him, and his wife Antonina, into the story of
Theodora.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS THEODORA AND HER ATTENDANTS
MOSAIC OF THE 6TH CENTURY IN S. VITALE, RAVENNA]
I have previously mentioned an eleventh-century legend concerning
Belisarius and Justinian and their wives. It was said that the two men
had one day entered a house of ill-fame, found there two captive and
fascinating Amazons named Antonia [Theodora] and Antonina, and married
them. The myth seems to have crystallized about a belief that Antonina
had risen from the same depths as Theodora, as the “Anecdotes” say,
and the fact that Antonina was a woman of abandoned character and a
leading lady in the service of the Empress seems to confirm this. In
any case, she is openly assailed by Procopius (her husband’s secretary)
in his historical works as “capable of anything,” and is described in
the Lexicon of Suidas as “an infamous adulteress.” She had married
Belisarius, and accompanied him in 533 on his brilliant campaign for
the recovery of Africa from the Vandals. With them went a handsome
and foppish Thracian youth named Theodosius. He was fresh from the
baptismal font, in which the patriarch had washed away his Monophysite
heresy, and it was believed that the presence of so sacred a youth
would bring luck to the fleet. Before they reached Carthage Antonina
enjoyed the secret love of the youth, but a servant betrayed them, and
Theodosius fled to Ephesus, where we must leave him for a time. It is
said that Antonina had the servant’s tongue cut out.
Belisarius passed from the subjugation of North Africa to a victorious
war in Italy, and he and Antonina were staying at a palace on the
Pincian Hill at Rome when the deacon Vigilius--now, no doubt, a
priest--came with the commands of Theodora. “Trump up a charge against
Silverius, and send him to Constantinople,” the order ran, according to
the Roman librarian, and as the more authoritative Liberatus affirms
that the charge was false, and was supported by mendacious witnesses
and forged letters, there is no possibility of freeing Theodora from
this grave imputation. The Pope was summoned to the palace, where
Antonina lay on a couch with Belisarius at her feet. Antonina at once
charged him with treasonable correspondence with the Goths. We may
or may not believe the picturesque version of Anastasius: that the
servants at once stripped the Pope of his robes, dressed him as a monk,
and interred him in a distant monastery. It is certain, at least, that
Silverius was, at Theodora’s command, deposed on a false charge and
thrust out of sight. Vigilius became Pope, and the fate of Silverius is
unknown to history.
I cannot entirely omit a later sequel to this sacrilegious and
unscrupulous deed, though it rests only on the feebler authority of
Anastasius. For a few years Theodora demanded in vain that Vigilius
should fulfil his promise. He had, he said, come to see the heinousness
of such a promise, and could not discharge it. In 544, therefore,
Theodora sent an officer to Rome with a command which Anastasius gives
in these words: “If you find him in the church of St Peter spare
him, but if in the Lateran or the palace, or in any other church,
put him on ship at once, and bring him to us. If you fail, I will,
by Him that liveth for ever, have your skin torn from your body.” It
is known, at least, that Vigilius was shipped away from Rome at the
end of 544; but that he was at once taken to Constantinople, and that
Theodora had him dragged through the streets like a bear, is untrue. He
reached Constantinople after her death. We cannot therefore follow the
deposition of Vigilius as confidently as we follow the sordid story of
his elevation, but we can have little doubt that Theodora punished him.
Another authentic episode of the time reveals the same unscrupulous
disdain of principles in the patroness of the Monophysite sect. The
story is told by Procopius, not in the “Anecdotes,” but in his open and
authoritative work “On the Persian War,” in spite of his usual extreme
care to suppress offensive details. The Prefect of Constantinople,
John of Cappadocia, had incurred the bitter hostility of the Empress.
The very unattractive portrait which Procopius supplies, and Gibbon
reproduces, of John prevents us from thinking that in this case an
innocent man was persecuted. While he freely promoted all the schemes
of Justinian and his notorious steward to wring money out of the
citizens--“by fair means and foul,” as Zonaras says--he levied his
private tithe on all their gains, and was popularly believed to indulge
in secret the most sensual tastes and the even worse abominations of
some pagan cult. He seems to have been the one man to regard Theodora
with open disdain, and she retorted with venomous hate. Although
guards surrounded his bedroom, he started every hour from his feverish
slumbers to look for the expected assassin.
His value to Justinian enabled him to keep his position until the
year 540, when Belisarius and Antonina returned from Italy to
Constantinople.[10] Antonina remained in the city while her husband
went against the Persians. She feverishly summoned her Thracian lover
from the monastery in which he hypocritically lingered at Ephesus, but
the wrath of Belisarius held him aloof. Whether or no Antonina then
deliberately sought the intervention of the Empress, we cannot say, but
she proceeded to merit it. She learned of Theodora’s hatred of John,
and conceived a plot for his destruction.
John had an ingenuous and amiable daughter who seems to have been not
unacquainted with the political situation. Twice had the brilliant
Belisarius been withdrawn to the city in a fit of jealousy, and there
were rumours that the strong man was wearying of serving an Emperor
who could do nothing but employ others and reap their glory. Antonina
won her way to the heart and confidence of the girl, and betrayed to
her that her husband was secretly disaffected. The artless Euphemia
hastened to tell her father that there was a prospect of overthrowing
Theodora, whom they both hated. Even John was deceived by the astute
adventuress. It was arranged that Antonina should go to her suburban
palace and meet John there during the night. We do not know that
Theodora had a share in framing this diabolical plot, but it was now
communicated to her by Antonina, and she at once pressed it and used
her resources for carrying it out with safety. In the dead of the
following night John entered the palace of the unscrupulous adventuress
and listened to her whispers of treachery. Procopius says that Theodora
had initiated the Emperor to the plot, and he had consented, but at the
last moment sent a messenger to John not to see Antonina. This seems
to be a piece of polite fiction in the interest of the Emperor; it is
incredible that an astute and experienced minister would risk his neck
after such a message. John went, and, in the apparently lonely palace,
spoke his secret sympathy with the supposed design of Belisarius. No
sooner had he uttered the words than a troop of imperial guards entered
the room to arrest or assassinate him, but John also had brought
soldiers and they enabled him to escape.
Had John gone straight to the palace of Justinian, he might still have
saved his position. Instead, he fled nervously to the sanctuary, and
Theodora hardened the mind of her husband. The wealthy and powerful
noble was stripped of his estates and forced to enter the ranks of the
clergy--one of the quaintest penalties of the time--in the suburb of
Cyzicus. There the people whom he had oppressed might behold their once
powerful enemy, the secret pagan and Sybarite, shaven and humiliated.
It appears that Theodora was not yet satisfied, though she is not
directly implicated by Procopius in the last act of the tragedy. The
Bishop of Cyzicus was murdered, and as John was one of his many bitter
enemies, he was arrested, scourged, and driven into exile and poverty.
The fate of the unhappy Euphemia is unknown; she was probably compelled
to enter a nunnery and weep there over the memory of the imperial
tigress and her friend.
This story of perfidy, corruption and vindictiveness, which Procopius
tells openly in his historical work, disposes us to believe the sequel,
as it is narrated in the “Anecdotes,” even if we must regard certain
details of the narrative with reserve. There was with Belisarius in
Persia a son of Antonina by a former husband (or lover) of the name of
Photius. Bitterly ashamed of his mother’s conduct, he accepted from
Belisarius the charge of watching her lover Theodosius. At Ephesus he
learned that Theodosius was in Constantinople, and soon caused him to
fly back to Ephesus and cling to the altars which had sheltered so
much vice and crime since the law of sanctuary had been established.
The prelate, however, delivered Theodosius to the youth, and he was
imprisoned in Cilicia.
Theodora was now eager to reward her friend and she had Photius
arrested and scourged. He refused to reveal the prison in which he had
placed Theodosius, but an officer was bribed to betray the secret,
and the Thracian was brought to Theodora’s apartments. Theodora then
sent for Antonina and said: “Dear patrician, yesterday there fell
into my hands a gem finer than any that mortal eye has ever seen; if
you would like to see it, I will show it to you.” Procopius concludes
this astounding story by saying that Photius was kept for four years
in the Empress’s underground dungeons. Twice he escaped to the church
of St Sophia, and twice he was dragged back; at length he got away
from Constantinople and hid from the vindictiveness of Theodora in
the robes of a monk. There are writers who flatly refuse to believe
this statement, though the authentic actions of Theodora which we have
described lend it some plausibility. Once more, however, the recently
published works of the contemporary Bishop of Ephesus supply some
confirmation. We read in them that Photius, son of Antonina, “became
a monk for some cause or other”; but the pathos of Gibbon’s picture of
his fate is somewhat lessened when we read that he still enlivened the
monastic life with his genial soldierly vices and led the troops to the
plunder of the southern provinces.
I have mentioned the underground prisons of Theodora. Since it is from
the “Anecdotes” alone that we learn of these dungeons, we should regard
the statements with some reserve, and in this case there is additional
reason for reserve. As Gibbon says: “Darkness is propitious to cruelty,
but it is likewise favourable to calumny and fiction.” Procopius seems
to know too much of what passed in these carefully guarded places.
Theodora doubtless had spies everywhere, and it would be easy enough
for her to have her enemies conveyed into the palace during the night,
or to some prison in remote provinces. Somewhere about this time (541),
we learn from John of Ephesus, her episcopal friend Anthimus incurred
the anger of the Emperor and disappeared. John assures us that Anthimus
was hidden in the Empress’s apartments _for seven years_. The two
chamberlains who waited on him alone knew the secret, besides Theodora,
until the day of her death. A woman with such resources could easily
maintain private dungeons if she willed, and we can hardly say that it
would be inconsistent with her character. But when Procopius minutely
describes the fetid condition of these prisons, and tells how fiercely
the prisoners were scourged, or how cords were tightened round their
heads until the eyes started from their sockets, we are disposed to
think that he has hastily admitted popular rumours which the judicious
historian must set aside as unauthoritative.
On the other hand, a set of grave charges which Procopius combines
with these statements are not without very serious confirmation.
His most persistent charge against Justinian and Theodora is that
they extorted money by cruel and flagrantly dishonest means. The
superb buildings--the new palace, the new St Sophia, etc.--with which
Justinian adorned the city absorbed stupendous sums of money; and the
personal luxury and religious munificence of Theodora were such that
a vast fortune would be needed to sustain them. It is equally certain
that the money was largely raised by corrupt means. I have quoted the
monastic writer Zonaras saying that Justinian raised money “by fair
means and foul” and by “dishonest practices”; and the weighty testimony
of Evagrius that the Emperor was of such “insatiable avarice” that
he would share the “vile gain” of loose women impeaching wealthy men
on false charges. The most that we can say for Justinian is that the
money was not spent in personal luxury, and that it was extorted by
subordinate officers. Agathias, another good authority, tells us how
the steward Anatolius used to forge or suppress wills, and practise
other dishonest arts, so that he might affix to houses and estates the
strip of purple which betokened that they had become the property of
the Emperor.
It is indisputable that the metropolis and the provinces suffered a
most unjust and corrupt spoliation in order to sustain the splendour
of the reign of Justinian and Theodora. Now Zonaras declares that the
Empress was “worse than Justinian in extorting money, both by unlawful
and lawful means,” and that she was “especially ingenious in finding
ways” to enrich herself. Wealthy men had charges of secret heresy or
unnatural vice brought against them, and their fortunes passed into
the coffers of Theodora. This must mean that her servants, as the
informers, claimed for her the legal share of the confiscated property
which went to an informer.
Here again, therefore, the charges in the “Anecdotes” are substantially
confirmed. Not content with securing testaments in her favour, she
had them forged or altered. She suborned witnesses to support charges
of vice or heresy. The only difference from Zonaras is in the added
allegation of physical cruelty, and on this point Procopius is at times
explicit. A member of the blue party, Bassus, a refined and delicate
youth, issued some squib upon the Empress, possibly referring to her
early career. He was dragged from the church in which he had taken
refuge, charged with and convicted of vice, and subjected, before an
indignant crowd, to the barbaric mutilation with which such vice was
then punished. His property went to Theodora--in part, I assume, for
laying information. Usually it was the greens who suffered. So angry
were the people that they accused Theodora of a secret (but “impotent”)
love of the sinister Syrian financier, Peter Barsymes, who had
succeeded John of Cappadocia in the duty of governing and exploiting
Constantinople. The restraint with which Procopius represents her love
as “impotent” lends credit to his other charges. An accusation of an
actual liaison would have been more credible than some of the stories
he reproduces.
A few episodes remain in the career of Theodora from which we may
confirm our impression of her remarkable personality. Unfortunately,
they rest entirely on the authority of the “Anecdotes,” and cannot
be pressed; we know only from another, and a sound, authority that
Belisarius was maliciously attacked and disgraced after his many
brilliant campaigns on behalf of the Empire.
To the evils of oppression, spoliation, corruption of justice, and
persecution which afflicted the Eastern Empire under Justinian and
Theodora there was added in the year 542 the deadly scourge of the
plague, and for several years in succession it scattered the seeds
of death over the broad provinces. Justinian at length contracted
it, and became dangerously ill. As he had no son, the question of
the succession to the throne was very naturally discussed, and
the generals Belisarius and Buza in the Persian camp incautiously
expressed themselves on the rumour that Justinian was dying, or were
represented to the Empress by her spies as having done so. She at
once ordered them to Constantinople. Buza is said to have been lodged
in her underground prisons, and Belisarius was stripped of his rank,
his guard and his immense wealth. A eunuch was sent by Theodora to
secure the large sums he had deposited in the east, and the chosen
soldiers who formed his personal guard, and were maintained at his
expense, were distributed among the army. The greatest soldier that
the Eastern Empire ever possessed, the most brilliant contributor to
the success of Justinian’s reign, a man who had preserved his loyalty
in a decade of supreme military power, he was received at the palace
with cold haughtiness, and retired in deep distress to his mansion.
When at length he observed the approach of a servant of the Empress,
he prepared for death. Instead of death, however, Theodora’s officer
brought this extraordinary message: “You know what you have done to me,
Belisarius, but I forgive your crimes on account of what your wife has
done for me. Hope for the future through her, but know that we shall
hear how you bear yourself to Antonina.” And the episode closes with
the great soldier kissing the feet of his perfidious wife, vowing that
he will be her slave, and accepting the office of master of the stables
in the imperial service which he had so gloriously illumined. Theodora
had secured an enormous sum of money and intimidated an enemy.
Up to the last year of Theodora’s life (548) the implacable writer of
the “Anecdotes” pursues his record of her misdeeds. Ever attentive
to the men who might some day dislodge her and her relatives from
the palace, Theodora watched with especial jealousy the grave
and distinguished nephew of the Emperor, Germanus, and his three
children. His eldest daughter Justina was in her nineteenth year, yet
none had dared, out of fear of Theodora, to offer marriage to her.
Theodora then decided to unite the fortunes of the two houses, and
secure the succession, by commanding Justina to wed her grandson
Anastasius--obviously the son of an illegitimate daughter of the
Empress, since it was little over twenty years since her marriage
to Justinian. Justina refused, and was vindictively married by the
Empress to a common officer. She then commanded the daughter of
Belisarius, Joannina, to wed Anastasius. Procopius, forgetting that he
has stripped Belisarius of almost all his wealth (an exaggeration),
says that Theodora wanted in this way to secure the general’s fortune,
but we may assume that Theodora was mainly endeavouring to secure the
succession to the throne for her grandson. Her own health was delicate,
and Justinian was well over sixty. Belisarius shrank from the union,
and even Antonina seems to have refused to further it. All knew that
a struggle impended between the families of Justinian and Theodora,
and it must have been the general feeling that the former would win.
Theodora is said to have angrily united Joannina to her grandson in the
loose popular form of marriage; indeed later rumour said that she had
the young woman violated first.
Another matrimonial interference of the Empress in her later years
exhibits the better features of her character. An ambitious general,
Artabanes, sought and obtained the hand of Justinian’s niece, whom he
had delivered from peril in Africa. Soon afterwards, however, a woman
appeared who claimed that she was the legitimate wife of Artabanes. She
appealed to the Empress, and Theodora forced Artabanes to take back
his humbler wife. Procopius tells this story in one of the historical
works in which he was careful not to offend the ruling powers, and
he courteously adds that “it was the nature of Theodora to befriend
afflicted women.” It is the only instance of her doing so that has
reached us, and, ungracious as it may seem to cast a doubt upon the
pure humanity of that one recorded good deed, one is compelled to
suggest that it was not to her interest to see a niece of Justinian
married to a successful commander.
On the 29th of June 548, after a reign of twenty-one years, Theodora
died of cancer. Her body was embalmed and exposed for public veneration
in the golden-roofed Triclinon of the palace. There, still dressed in
the imperial purple, still bearing the magnificent diadem for a few
days, she lay on a golden bed for friends and enemies to gaze upon the
last state of one of the most remarkable personalities of the time.
The character of Theodora must be interpreted in so purely oriental
a sense that it is difficult for the modern European to understand
it. Whether Greek or Syrian in origin, she was an incarnation of the
spirit of the great metropolis in whose life Syria and Greece were
so singularly blended. It is useless any longer to cast doubt upon
her earlier career. She was reared in that old theatrical world in
which moral restraint was wholly unknown; and her beauty, vivacity and
nervous strength make it probable enough that she was distinguished
in it for dissoluteness. That in her later life she spent vast sums
of money on the Church and philanthropy is unquestionable; nor would
I doubt for a moment that she was perfectly sincere in her endless
conversations with holy men. But her passionate nature, difficult
position and supple intelligence gave her a genius for casuistry, and
she fell into vices far worse than the vices of her youth. Quite apart
from the attacks of her bitter, anonymous enemy, we have ample evidence
that she was vindictive, cruel, unscrupulous, dishonest and callous.
To send a bejewelled cross to the holy church at Jerusalem, or build
a monastery, she would ruin and despoil an innocent man or wreck the
happiness of a woman: to secure the preaching of the true faith in
Christ she would depose an upright Pope on forged evidence and put a
scoundrel in the most sacred chair in Christendom. It was the temper of
Constantinople--to rise from vice and folly to defend the doctrines of
the Church and enforce them with the dagger or the torch. The further
things that are said of her in the famous “Anecdotes” must, for the
serious historian, remain unproved but not improbable.