THE WIVES OF LEO THE PHILOSOPHER
Basil the Macedonian, or Basil the groom, son of a Macedonian peasant
of Armenian extraction, enjoyed his imperial wealth, and made excellent
use of his imperial power, during nearly twenty years. His story is not
one to encourage the venerable adage that honesty is the best policy.
But we have dismissed his Empress, Eudocia Ingerina, whose only known
features are great beauty and equally great licence in love, and we
pass on to review the remarkable series of Empresses whom his son
successively married. I say his son, but no historian doubts that Leo
VI. was really the son of Michael the Drunkard. The temper of Eudocia
Ingerina had been so accommodating that royal genealogists have to
indulge largely in arithmetical calculation in order to determine
the paternity of her children, or the maternity of Basil’s children.
Briefly, Basil’s eldest son, Constantine, was probably a child of the
poor Maria who had been sent back to Macedonia with her pockets full
of gold, but he died before his father and will not interest us; the
second son, Leo, was almost certainly the son of Michael and Eudocia,
who had been transferred in a state of pregnancy from the embraces of
the Emperor to the embraces of his groom; the third and fourth sons,
Alexander and Stephen, were presumably born of Basil and Eudocia; and
the four daughters must, in despair, be distributed over the group of
parents.
When Leo had reached the age of fifteen or sixteen, his elder brother
having died two years before, Basil and Eudocia sought him a wife, and
we are at last so fortunate as to meet a really blameless Empress,
and one whose title to her place in the calendar of the saints will
not be disputed by the most irreverent historians of modern times. St
Theophano has, moreover, been revealed to us more fully in recent years
by the publication of ancient Greek manuscripts that were unknown in
the days of Gibbon.[20] That they enlarge her virtues and attenuate the
vices of her husband is only what we should expect in Byzantine writers
of the time, but they enable us to give a satisfactory portrait of an
imperial saint and to set it in pleasant contrast to the figures of her
contemporaries and successors. Theophano is a stray lily in a garden of
roses.
The first wife of Leo was the very pretty and pious daughter of a
distinguished noble of the city, Constantinus Martinacius. Her mother
had died in her early years, but her education had proceeded on lines
of the most orthodox piety, and she had a genius for assimilating
its ascetic prescriptions. The piety of her father, however, did not
prevent him from putting forward his fifteen-year-old daughter when,
in the winter of 881–882, Basil and Eudocia sought a mate for Leo. The
city and provinces were, as usual, scoured by the special matrimonial
commissioners, and Theophano was one of the dozen maids introduced
into the great palace for inspection. Eudocia, a good judge, reviewed
them in the Magnaura palace, and selected Theophano and two others.
Eudocia’s high birth probably gave her some advantage over the obscure
Athenian girl and another rival who ran her close in the competition.
She was exhibited to Basil, and he at once placed a ring on her young
finger and ordered Leo to marry her. Much subsequent evil might have
been avoided if the youth had been consulted. Either the excessive
piety of Theophano was distasteful to him, or he had already set his
mind on another lady. But Basil was never indulgent to Leo, whom he
must have regarded as Michael’s son, and the children were married with
all the splendid ceremony which the Emperor Constantine describes for
us, and entered upon their duty of sustaining the dynasty.
The pious Theophano soon found that life in a court was not a mere
monotonous round of ceremonies. The chief friend and adviser of Basil
was a compatriot--that is to say, a Macedonian of Armenian origin
(Armenian colonies having been transferred, on account of the Saracens,
to Macedonia)--named Stylianus Zautzes, and Zautzes had a pretty and
lively daughter named Zoe. It is probable that Leo had contracted a
boyish love of Zoe before he was forced to marry the young saint,
and he was not of a nature to sacrifice the rose to the lily. Not
very long after the marriage Theophano complained to Basil, we learn
from the life of Euthymius, that her husband was making love to Zoe.
Leo naturally protests to the patriarch, and no doubt protested to
Basil, that his admiration was Platonic, but we shall see that he did
not usually confine himself to that academic emotion. Basil believed
the charge, caught Leo by the hair and flung him to the ground, and
compelled Zoe to marry, out of hand, a man to whom she was more than
indifferent. He was sowing a crop of tragedies.
Eudocia died about this time, and the young Theophano took her place in
the rich ceremonial of the Court, walking in the endless processions
and being borne in the golden litter, drawn by white horses, to the
great church and the lesser shrines and palaces. Her new dignity cannot
have lasted many months when a fresh and more furious storm broke upon
her virtue, and she bore herself admirably. The second most intimate
friend and counsellor of Basil was the abbot Theodore, of Santabaris
in Phrygia, a very enterprising and peculiar monk. He was a master
of magic and was regarded with the greatest awe by the Emperor. Leo
ventured to urge on Basil that the man was an impostor and humbug, and
the chroniclers say that the abbot turned vindictively on Leo. No one
was allowed to have weapons in the company of the Emperor, but Theodore
persuaded Leo that, if he kept a knife concealed in his boot when he
was hunting with Basil, he might be able in an emergency to render a
service and disarm Basil’s anger. Leo hid a knife in his boot, and
the monk promptly advised Basil to search the prince, as he feared
conspiracy.
So from the palace Leo passed to prison, or confinement in the Pearl
palace, and Theophano went with her little daughter Eudocia to keep him
company and impress on him the duty of resignation to the divine will.
The chroniclers differ as to the length of the imprisonment; some make
it three months and others three years. As Zautzes and the Senators
intervened and begged Basil to reconsider his verdict, I prefer to
accept the shorter term. One of the chroniclers tells us that the most
effective pleader for Leo was a parrot, kept in the palace, which
someone taught to cry: “Poor Leo, poor Leo.” At all events, Zautzes,
and the patriarch Photius, and numbers of the Senators, insisted that
Leo was innocent; and he was set at liberty. He was now the obvious
heir to the throne. Basil could not put him aside in favour of a
younger son without admitting his irregular parentage, and it is not
unlikely that the old Emperor had a regard for Theophano. For a few
years, therefore, the young Empress continued to rule the great palace,
to which Basil had made superb additions, and to practise the high
virtues which her husband so little appreciated. Then (in March 886)
Basil left his purple robes to Leo, and Leo and his wife and child to
the care of Zautzes.
The first concern of Leo the Philosopher--who was no philosopher at
all, though he was well read in the letters of the time--was to seek
Abbot Theodore of Santabaris. The monk had prudently retired to a
bishopric in remote Pontus before Leo came to the throne, but he was
brought to Constantinople, deposed, scourged, and exiled to Athens,
where his eyes were afterwards cut out. It was the punishment he had
recommended Basil to inflict on Leo. As the patriarch Photius was
believed to have been in league with the monk-magician, he also was
deposed, and Leo’s younger brother, Stephen, was made archbishop. Leo’s
four sisters had already been turned into nuns by the prudent Basil,
and there remained only the second brother Alexander, who was content
to await the hour for his own imperial debauch.
Leo’s next care was to renew his pleasant relations with the
fascinating Zoe, “the most beautiful woman of her age.” A few added
years would have merely ripened her charms, and her father regarded
with complacency her promotion to the place of imperial concubine, and
continued to discharge his functions as commander of the foreign guards
(_hetæriarch_). To Theophano only was it a grave affliction to find the
palace enlivened by the fiery and beautiful oriental. She endured the
outrage for some years, patiently working at her embroidery for the
altars and spending long hours in prayer, until her one child died,
in the winter of 892–893, and she begged Leo to allow her to retire
to a convent, leaving him free to marry. Leo was not unwilling, but
the patriarch Euthymius foolishly refused to consecrate her, and she
languished for a few months longer in her uncongenial world.
The situation is illuminated by a passage in the chronicles which leads
up to the first plot on Leo’s life. Some time in 891, apparently, Leo
and Zoe and Zautzes, with other members of their family, went to stay
at the Damian palace in the suburbs, probably for a hunt. Theophano,
the chronicler says, was not with them; she was “busy praying” in the
Blachernæ palace, to which she seems to have generally retired from
the dissolute Court. For some entirely obscure reason Zoe’s brother
and his friends concerted a plot against the life of Leo; we can
hardly suppose that it was a case of outraged brothers wiping out the
dishonour of their sister, seeing that Zautzes himself was a member of
the house-party. Whatever the cause was, Zoe, who was sleeping with
Leo, heard whispering in the garden without, and, creeping to the
window, learned that her brother Tzantzes and others were about to
murder Leo. These are the sober details given in the chronicles, but
Byzantine history is so full of melodrama that we need not hesitate to
accept them. She roused her lover, and they stole from the house and
reached Constantinople. Leo suspected that Zautzes himself had been
privy to the plot and was estranged from him for some months.
This seems to have been the position during the early years of Leo’s
reign: his wife “busy praying,” or mortifying her frail body, in the
quieter palace at Blachernæ, while Leo floated over the Sea of Marmora
with Zoe in the great pleasure-galleys he had constructed, or wantoned
in his various palaces. Theophano died in the seventh year of his
reign--on 10th November 893 according to de Boor’s calculations, though
her festival is celebrated by the Greek Church on 16th December. The
modern mind would be little impressed by an account of the miracles
which her remains are said to have wrought after death, nor can one
read without a certain amusement that, in the words of a later Emperor
and most of the chroniclers, she deserved the aureole of sanctity by
“her freedom from jealousy and her patient endurance of the contempt of
Zoe.” The nobles of Constantinople would not be unwilling to see such
virtues consecrated by the Church. There is, however, no doubt that the
daughter of Constantinus Martinacius merited her place in the calendar
of the Church, and she is one of the few blameless women to gratify the
biographer of the Empresses.
From the saint we pass to the sinner; from “the lilies and languors of
virtue” to the “roses and raptures of vice.” In the following year
Leo violated all decency by taking Zoe into the sacred palace. Her
husband, the patrician Theodore Guniazitza, died so opportunely that
it was inevitably believed that he had been poisoned; and, although
the statement is no more than a rumour, and one may hesitate to-day to
admit that “an adulteress may easily become a poisoner,” it cannot be
said to be improbable. Leo now approached the patriarch Euthymius on
the question of marrying Zoe, and the prelate again blundered, in too
narrow a zeal for his ideals, and sternly resisted. He was removed to
a monastery, and before the end of 894 Zoe was the legitimate Empress
of the Roman world. It was, however, only to enjoy a few more hours
of pleasure in the gilded palace. Her father died in the spring of
896, and Zoe followed him in the autumn or winter of the same year,
having worn the crown for one year and eight months. For her the
ecclesiastical chroniclers have no praise; they affirm that, when men
came to lay her remains in her marble sarcophagus, the words “Miserable
daughter of Babylon” were found to have been mysteriously carved on the
stone. Beautiful, careless and sensual as she was, one may doubt if a
single stone could be flung at her if Leo had been allowed to consult
his own heart at the time of his first marriage.
Leo was now, in his thirtieth year, a widower for the second time,
and he was little reconciled to that condition. Not only was his
dissipated brother Alexander greedily waiting to occupy his throne,
but an astrologer had assured Leo that he would yet have a son, and
the message of the stars must be fulfilled. Third marriages, on the
other hand, were subjected to grave ecclesiastical censure, and for
several years the Emperor did not venture to take the forbidden step.
Indeed, when he did begin to speak of marriage, Zoe’s relatives and
other disappointed courtiers took alarm and plotted against his life.
Her nephew Basil had his hair oiled and fired, and all the survivors
of the Zautzes family were driven from the city. The clearance made
room for fresh courtiers, one of whom, a Saracen named Samonas, became
the master of intrigue which we almost invariably find in the palace
in each generation. One instance of his wit will suffice to make him
known and to illustrate life at the Court. The commander Andronicus had
taken alarm and fled to the Saracens. Leo had no wish to injure him,
and he entrusted a message to that effect to a captive Saracen and bade
him deliver it to Andronicus. In order to outwit Samonas, who did not
wish the able officer to return and dispute his power, the message was
ingeniously enclosed in a wax candle. Before he left Constantinople,
however, Samonas told the Saracen that the candle contained a plot
against his country, and it was never delivered to Andronicus.
At the beginning of 899 Leo braved the censures of the clergy
and, apparently, sent out his commissioners in search of a bride.
As a result he married, probably at Easter, a beautiful maiden
from the Opsikian district--the region of Asia Minor nearest to
Constantinople--named Eudocia. To his great mortification, Eudocia
gave birth to a boy, but both mother and child died immediately.
The majority of Christian Emperors would have resigned themselves
to this third disappointment, but it seems to have increased Leo’s
determination. Most historians admit that it was not so much
sensuality, which such a man as Leo could easily gratify, as the
determination to have a son, which inspired Leo’s defiance of the
Church; not impossibly he also had regard to the complaisance of the
Western clergy in face of the conduct of the great Frankish monarchs.
It is conjectured by de Boor that Eudocia died about Easter of the year
900, and before the end of that, or in the following, year Leo began
to look for another spouse. In place of the patriarch Euthymius, who
had resisted his marriage to Zoe, he had appointed a certain Nicholas,
an intimate friend of his in earlier years, and he expected the new
prelate to be accommodating. Nicholas, however, violently opposed
the idea of a fourth marriage, and a long and stormy struggle with
the Church party followed. On one occasion a man attempted the life
of the Emperor in a church, and Alexander and Nicholas were strongly
suspected of treachery, but no torture could wring a confession from
the assailant.
Leo took a first defiant step by again admitting a lady to the palace.
Zoe Carbonopsina, as she was named, seems to have had a humble origin,
since her son, the imperial historian, Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
cannot devise any genealogy for her. Diligent research, however, finds
that she was related to the famous abbot St Epiphanius, the admiral
Himerius, and the patrician Nicholas, so that we must not imagine her
as a flower transplanted by imperial commissioners from some rural
garden. Her later career will confirm the impression she makes on her
first entry into the pages of history as mistress of the Emperor. She
was a woman of great vigour and faint scruples: a less pleasant type of
sinner than the Zoe who had preceded her in the halls of Daphne.
We do not know how long Zoe lived in the palace as Leo’s mistress, nor
is it material to seek to determine. It is enough that in the course
of the year 905 she promised to become a mother, and Leo renewed his
effort to provide a _legitimate_ heir to his throne. The confused and
poorly written records of the time merely tantalize us with fragmentary
or conflicting statements, and one must present a connected version of
the accession to the throne of Zoe Carbonopsina with some hesitation.
Apparently (“Life of Euthymius”) the patriarch Nicholas was at first
not unfriendly. He blessed the womb which gave promise of an heir,
ordered prayers in the churches, and met Zoe without a blush in the
palace. These candid details need a short explanation. A bitter feud
had set in between the followers of the deposed patriarch Euthymius
and the followers of Nicholas, so that an admirer of the former may be
trusted to say even more than the truth in regard to Nicholas. Leo
seems to have promised the clergy that he would put away Zoe as soon
as she gave him an heir to the throne. But the biographer of Euthymius
professes to throw another light on the situation. A rising took place
in the provinces, and Leo secured a letter which proved that Nicholas
was involved in it. It was in order to avoid the consequences of this
treachery that he submitted to Leo.
A boy, the future Emperor and writer Constantine Porphyrogenitus, saw
the light in the course of the year 905--a comet appearing in the
heavens, in ominous conjunction, at the time--and in the beginning
of 906 he was solemnly baptized by the patriarch, and had his uncle
Alexander and some of the highest Senators as godfathers. The modern
reader is amazed at the spirit which will permit the heads of Church
and State to gather thus in their grandest robes about the cradle of an
illegitimate child, yet resist, even to death, a fourth marriage which
might supply a legitimate heir to the imperial house; but Byzantine
life will exhibit singular features to the end of its history. The
child was baptized, and the clergy trusted to hear no more of marriage.
To their great anger Leo recalled Zoe to the palace, from which she had
been temporarily removed, and found a priest to marry them. At the same
time Zoe was made Augusta and Basilissa (Queen) of the Empire.
The clergy now assailed Leo with every invective, and the patriarch
forbade him to enter the church. One almost despairs of following the
Constantinopolitans through their tangle of scruples and licences,
but we find that Leo met the prelate by entering the church at a side
door and sitting in a part, apparently, where the singers used to
take refreshments. He also sent a request that the Roman bishop and
the three patriarchs of the East would pronounce upon the validity of
his marriage. When they declared in his favour, and Nicholas still
resisted, Samonas consulted his large faculty for intrigue; indeed,
we may confidently trace the counsel of that wily courtier, a great
friend of Zoe, in the whole procedure. Nicholas was invited to dine at
the Bucoleon palace, on the shore of the Sea of Marmora. In the middle
of the banquet he was again pressed to withdraw, and again refused; and
the chamberlain’s servants dragged him down the stairs which led to
the palace quay and shipped him to Asia. Euthymius now returned to the
see, and, after a decent show of reluctance, recognized the marriage
of Zoe. Some of his admirers recount that he was directed in a vision
to overrule the law of the Church; others tell us that Leo compelled
him by threatening to enact a law that every citizen might have, if
he pleased, three or four simultaneous wives. If we change the word
“simultaneous” into “successive” we shall not be far from the truth.
The adventurous career of Zoe Carbonopsina now ran quietly for a few
years. Her boy flourished, and was, about four years later, associated
in the purple with his father. The only event to ruffle the even flow
of her pleasant life in the palace was one of those deadly feuds of
rival courtiers which were of constant occurrence in the great palace.
Samonas had introduced into her service a handsome Paphlagonian named
Constantine, and, about the year 911, was alarmed to perceive that this
man was supplanting him in the royal favour. He denounced Constantine
to Leo for improper conduct with the Empress. In another passage the
chronicler has already described Constantine as a eunuch, and it is
not the only occasion on which we find this strange charge against an
Empress in the chronicles; it may be added that another writer marries
Constantine to a cousin of Zoe. Leo, at all events, was convinced, and
ordered that Constantine be shaved and put in a monastery. He repented,
however, and brought the eunuch back to the palace. In revenge Samonas
drew up a libellous writing on the Emperor, and secretly put it in
the church. There was great agitation in the palace, especially as
an eclipse of the moon occurred at the height of the quarrel. Leo
the Philosopher trembled and sent for a bishop who was better versed
than he in astrology. On this occasion the reader of the stars proved
correct. When Samonas intercepted him, and asked whether the darkening
of the moon portended evil for him or for Leo, the bishop answered:
“You.” In a few days he was betrayed, and he exchanged his hope of the
throne for the obscurity of a monastery.
Leo died in the next year, commending his wife and child to the
Senators, who swore tearful oaths to protect her and the boy from any
misconduct on the part of his successor and younger brother Alexander.
But Alexander met no opposition when, as soon as he had ascended the
throne, he bade Zoe leave her child and quit the palace. Even the boy
had a narrow escape, as Alexander ordered that he should be castrated,
but his guardians happily lied to the Emperor and represented that
Constantine was too delicate to live. All knew that the reign of
Constantine would be short. Although only in his twenty-first year, he
had ruined his constitution by vicious indulgence, and the life he led
after mounting the throne was killing him. He perished miserably from
intemperance within a year, leaving his young colleague to a Council of
Regents, from which he had carefully excluded Zoe.
The imperial career of Zoe was, however, by no means closed. A regency
was the opportunity of a Byzantine Empress, and Zoe had, no doubt,
faithful servants about her boy in the palace. He was now seven years
old, and he insisted that his mother must return to the palace. She at
once took the lead in the administration, and, having the support of a
group of experienced statesmen and several able commanders, she must
have looked forward to a long and prosperous rule. At one moment it was
gravely threatened with premature extinction. One of the commanders in
Asia Minor was invited by some of the disaffected nobles to seize the
throne, and it seemed to the vigorous Constantine Ducas that the hour
long ago promised to him by astrologers had come. He crossed the sea in
the night, and had seized the anterior part of the palace before the
guards were thoroughly roused. Then one of the regents flung himself
upon the intruders with a troop of armed servants and sailors--there
seems to have been treason among the guards--and Zoe presently learned
that Ducas and, it is said, three thousand of the combatants lay in a
lake of blood on the marble floor of the palace. A terrible vengeance
purified Constantinople of those who were opposed to the rule of Zoe
and her son. Women were shorn, boys castrated, and men hung on gallows
along the Asiatic shore for all Constantinople to see.
During several years Zoe seems to have governed with vigour and
judgment, but since it is impossible to disentangle her share from that
of her servants and counsellors, it would be inexpedient to enter into
the prosy details of the administration. A personal note is sounded
when we find, in a later page of one of the chronicles, that she was
intimate with the admiral, and later Emperor, Romanus. Neither of the
two can be regarded as very scrupulous, but it is probable that Bishop
Luidprand, who accuses her, is in this hastily retailing the gossip he
picked up in Constantinople. A disappointed ambassador is apt to be a
libeller.
The behaviour of Romanus in the crisis which, in the year 919, put
an end to her reign does not encourage the idea of a liaison. By
dexterous diplomacy Zoe had obtained peace with the Saracens and then
withdrawn all her forces from Asia, to make a concentrated attack
upon the Bulgarians. It was admirable, if not very subtle, policy,
since at that time the Saracens and Bulgarians were the upper and
nether stones that threatened to grind the Eastern capital between
them. Unhappily the jealousy of her two chief commanders betrayed and
ruined her. A vast army was assembled at Constantinople, new arms and
equipment were supplied, and advance pay was liberally given to the
soldiers. The cross was borne at their head by the clergy, and, with
a last entreaty that all would be faithful to their country, Zoe sent
forth the great army which was to begin the restoration of the Empire.
And in a few weeks the fleet returned with the news of complete and
irreparable disaster. The admiral Romanus had, out of jealousy of the
land commander, failed to transfer their northern allies across the
Danube; the general of the troops, Leo Phocas, too eager for glory, had
attacked without his allies and been utterly routed.
Zoe at once summoned a council and proposed that her alleged lover
should lose his eyes for his failure to co-operate. Romanus had,
however, a firm hold on the affection of the sailors, and it was
judged inexpedient to attempt to displace him. But the position of
Zoe was, through no fault of hers, terribly weakened, and a change of
government was openly expected. Zoe’s chief hope lay in the fact that
the two commanders, Leo Phocas and Romanus, could not share the power,
yet neither was likely to suffer the other to occupy it, and for some
time matters remained in suspense. Then the experienced intriguers
of the palace began to act, and the quarrel hastened to its climax.
Constantine, the favourite chamberlain, urged Zoe to build on Leo
Phocas (who had married his sister) and take him into the Regency. A
rival courtier, the young Emperor’s tutor, Theodore, then espoused
the cause of Romanus, and secretly urged him to declare himself the
protector of the boy. Zoe ordered Romanus to sail with the fleet to
the Black Sea, and, when Romanus pleaded that the pay was in arrears
and the sailors disaffected, the chamberlain himself rowed out to the
commander’s vessel with the money. He did not return, and Zoe was soon
alarmed to hear that the admiral had imprisoned him on the fleet.
The patriarch and Senators were summoned to the palace, and it was
decided that their leaders should row out to the fleet and demand
an explanation of Romanus. By this time the citizens were keenly
interested in the quarrel. The fleet lay in sight of all on the Sea of
Marmora, and the detention of the chief eunuch of the palace became
known and seems to have pleased the people. When the patriarch and the
heads of the Senate went down to the quay, they were stoned and forced
to retire. Early the next morning Zoe went to the Bucoleon palace,
where Constantine and his tutor lived, and demanded an explanation.
Strong in the support of the admiral, whom he now induced to draw up
the fleet in battle array opposite the Bucoleon palace, the tutor
replied insolently that the time had come for Constantine to take the
reins; the eunuch Constantine, he said, had ruined the palace and Leo
Phocas had wasted the army. Zoe saw that she had lost the battle. She
submitted very quietly, except that when the aggressive tutor ordered
her to quit the palace she appealed to her son, and was allowed to
remain.
Little remains to be told of the fourth wife of Leo the Philosopher.
She was for a time an idle spectator, in the palace, of the course of
events. The patriarch Nicholas sternly challenged the admiral, and,
when he disavowed the charge of treason, invited him ashore to clear
himself. In the historic church by the lighthouse a number of the
higher officials gathered to hear Romanus swear the “direst oaths”
on the true cross that he would be loyal to the young Emperor, and
the reconciliation was sealed by Constantine wedding the admiral’s
daughter Helena in April (919), a month later. Leo Phocas had meantime
retired to the provinces and raised an army. By the characteristically
Byzantine device of sending a prostitute with a secret message among
his troops, his force was weakened and his rebellion soon trodden out.
Zoe now played her last and most desperate card, and attempted the
life of Romanus. Some of the chroniclers give the charge as a rumour,
but when her son observes that she was “detected” in an attempt to
poison the food of Romanus, by means of one of his servants, we cannot
hesitate to believe it. She was at once removed from the palace, forced
to take the vows of religion, and ended her romantic life, at some
unknown date, in the monastery of St Euphemia at Petrion.