THE TAVERN-KEEPER’S DAUGHTER
It may not be inexpedient to pause for a moment to consider the
general character of the period through which the romantic story
of the Empresses is hurrying us. The reader may learn with some
astonishment that we are now, in the tenth century, in the golden
age of Byzantine history; or that, at least, the Roman Empire in the
East has nearly returned to the altitude it had reached in the days
of Justinian and Theodora. It is not a part of a biographer’s duty to
enlarge on historical themes, and the somewhat slender thread which he
pursues through the web of history may lead to erroneous conclusions.
Precisely on that account, however, it seems advisable to say a word in
correction of the prejudice which the restricted study of one set of
characters may create. It shall be brief.
The truth in regard to the Byzantine Empire seems to lie between the
disdain of older historians like Gibbon and Finlay and the exaggerated
claims made for it by some recent writers. I speak of character only,
not of art or industry or military success. In some respects--in
regard to unnatural vice, for instance--it is superior to the older
Empire of the West; in ordinary licentiousness it has no superiority
whatever, and the ascetic code it so pompously boasts only makes its
guilt the greater; while there are persistent strains of coarseness
in its character which tempt one to characterize it as barbaric.
Castration and the excision of eyes continue for many centuries, under
almost every Emperor and Empress, ordinary punishments of political
offence; and the constant violation of the most terrible oaths that the
clergy can devise, the abominable device of filling the priesthood
and the monastic world with reputed criminals, the unceasing intrigues
of eunuchs and officers, the sanguinary coercion of heretics, the
persistent financial and administrative corruption, and the lamentable
casuistry of priests and religious women, betray a new and general
type of character which no amount of appreciation of Byzantine art can
restore to honour. The four hundred years of Byzantine history that we
have traversed, compared with the four hundred years which preceded
them in Roman history, show no elevation of the type of womanhood, nor
will the four centuries that remain compel us to alter this conclusion.
The young Empress Helena, daughter of Romanus, whom we introduced at
the close of the last chapter is imperfectly, but not favourably, known
to us. Beautiful and intelligent, she found no occasion to assert
herself as long as her father lived. That unscrupulous commander had
very quickly found a way to gratify his personal ambition without
violating the letter of his solemn oaths. He had in March sworn on
the wood of the true cross to be loyal to Constantine; in September
of the same year he received, or obtained, the dignity of Cæsar, and
three months later he was co-Emperor. In the following January he made
his wife Theodora Empress, and in May he conferred imperial rank on
his son Christopher and his wife Sophia. Later he gave the purple to
his two remaining sons, and destined his fourth son, Theophylactus,
for the patriarchate. Further, “in order to prevent plots,” which
were frequent, he put his own name before that of Constantine, and
arrogated the whole work of administration. He lived in the largest,
latest and most superb palace of the imperial town--the golden-roofed
Chrysotriclinon--and, plebeian as he was by birth, carried the
pageantry and ceremonial of the Court to its highest point. His wife
Theodora did not long survive her elevation, and Helena seems to have
taken the chief place as Empress in the glittering crowd, but she
escapes our scrutiny altogether until the close of the twenty-five
years’ reign of her father.
Romanus seems in his later years to have shown symptoms of remorse and
made edifying preparations for death. His philanthropy and religious
fervour alarmed his sons, who concluded, apparently, that if his
repentance were carried too far they might lose their purple robes. The
eldest son, Christopher, had died, and the youngest, Theophylactus, was
quite happy in possession of the patriarchate; he had, it seemed to
the pious, turned the cathedral into a theatre and the bishop’s house
into a place of debauch, and his religious duties were so far postponed
to the cares of his stable of two thousand horses that he would cut
a ceremony short when a groom came to the altar to whisper that a
favourite mare had foaled. There remained Stephen and Constantine,
whose royal position seemed to be threatened. Stephen, with the consent
of his brother, deposed his father at the end of 944, and sent him into
a monastery on the Princes’ Islands.
Helena was the chief inspirer of the next intrigue. Constantine
Porphyrogenitus had sought consolation in art and letters for the
imperial power of which he had been defrauded. He was now a tall,
straight, well-made man of thirty-nine, with mild blue eyes and
fresh, ruddy countenance, but he had little faculty or disposition
for politics, and was more interested in the pleasures of the table
and the library. His attainments in art and science would have been
respectable in any other than a king. Helena, however, supplied the
resolution he lacked, and watched the procedure of her brothers. She
concluded that they intended to displace or ignore her husband, and
she stimulated him to action, or, more probably, acted herself with
the aid of her head chamberlain Basil, an illegitimate son of Romanus.
On the evening of 27th January the royal brothers were invited to
sup with their mild-mannered and long-suffering colleague, and they
found themselves dragged from their purple couches by his servants,
bound, and put aboard a waiting vessel at the palace quay. Some of
the authorities improbably state that they asked permission to visit
their father, Romanus, in his monastery, so that Gibbon’s genial
picture of the father cynically greeting his sons at the shore is not
without foundation. The story is unlikely, however, and they were soon
despatched to remote parts.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS HELENA
FROM DU CANGE’S ‘HISTORIA BYZANTINA’]
During the fifteen years’ reign of her husband Helena is known to us
only for the unscrupulousness with which, in collusion with the head
chamberlain Basil, she sold offices of state to the highest bidders.
The interest passes to the new and singular types of Empresses who now
enter the chronicles. The first is the most pathetic and remarkable
figure in the whole strange gallery of the Byzantine Empresses. Helena
and Constantine had a son named Romanus, and the elder Romanus, who was
most assiduous at making royal matches for his descendants, had decided
to marry the boy in good time. It seems not unlikely that, in his
last year of life, he realized the unscrupulousness of his sons, and
entertained a tardy concern about his oath. At that time the kingdom
of Italy was ruled by Hugh, a violent and half-barbaric monarch, whose
conjugal arrangements were calculated to furnish a rich supply of royal
alliances. Romanus sent an envoy to ask the hand of one of his natural
daughters, and the little Bertha, a beautiful child of tender years,
was conducted to Constantinople by the Bishop of Parma and married
to the boy Emperor. Romanus was five years old, and it is not likely
that Bertha, or Eudocia, as she was now named, was older than he. What
type of woman the little princess, offspring of a wild Teuton and his
concubine, would have made, we shall never know, for she died five
years afterwards. The chroniclers are careful to add that she died a
virgin.
The young prince was allowed to grow, and develop his vices, for a few
years, before contracting a second marriage. It seems to have been
in his eighteenth year that he took a second wife, and his choice
illustrates at once the supineness of his father, the selfishness
of his mother, and the unrestrained passion of the son. He married
Anastaso, the daughter of a tavern-keeper named Crateros. We have seen
so many types of Empresses ascend the throne that it might cause us
little surprise to find a woman passing from the counter of a wine-shop
to the palace, but there is grave suspicion that Theophano--the name
substituted for Anastaso--was base in more than the genealogical sense
of the word. She is accused of poisoning her father-in-law and her
first husband, and she certainly led the assassins to the chamber
of her second husband. Whatever allowance we make for the prejudice
against her humble birth, authentic facts in her story show that she
was licentious and criminal.
We do not know how the son of a highly cultivated Emperor made the
acquaintance of a tavern-girl. It is clear that she was a young woman
of singular beauty--“a kind of miracle of nature,” Zonaras says--and
most graceful figure, and I would conjecture that some courtier among
the disreputable followers of the young prince brought her to his
notice. There may have been a “beauty show,” and the publican may have
boldly pressed the merits of his daughter, but some attention was
generally paid to birth in these matrimonial contests. A tavern-woman
was still held to be equivalent to a prostitute or an actress. It is
useless to speculate. Constantine idly acquiesced, and the beautiful
Theophano passed from the sordid scenes of a little wine-shop to
the wonderful splendours of the palace. Courtly writers afterwards
discovered that there was royal blood in her veins. The only serious
clue we have to her origin is that she came from Laconia, and we may
regard her as a common type of Greek.
It is calculated that the marriage took place about the end of the
year 956. For three years no events occur that enable us to penetrate
the secluded life of the palace, though the subsequent events suggest
that Helena and her daughters were disdainful of the vulgar beauty and
were met with a virulent hatred. At the end of three years (August
or September 959) Constantine died, and the ampler chronicles tell
a circumstantial story of his being poisoned by his son Romanus and
Theophano. A poison was, it is said, put in his physic. Either by
accident or from suspicion he spilled most of the contents of the cup
and escaped death. But his health was gravely impaired; he went to
visit the monasteries of Mount Olympus, fell dangerously ill there--the
chronicler says that _perhaps_ more poison was administered--and was
brought back to the palace to die.
We must regard this charge of poisoning as probably a construction
put on his illness by the officials or people of Constantinople. It
may or may not be true. We have no right to conclude at once that it
is an historical fact, but it seems to me that some recent historians
have just as little right to reject it as “improbable.” Romanus was a
licentious and unscrupulous man, carrying his father’s amiable weakness
for wine to the pitch of debauch and ruining his constitution by vice.
Theophano, we shall see, was capable of murder, and her ambition would
most certainly lead her to wish the older imperial family out of the
way. On the other hand, there would be a prejudice against her in
Constantinople, and in the mind of later writers, and we must leave
this first charge against her what it is in the chronicles--a suspicion.
Her next step was to get rid of the sisters of Romanus. Helena and her
five daughters still lived in the palace, or in one out of the great
cluster of palaces. There were now at least eight palaces, connected
by superb colonnades or separated by choice gardens and terraces, in
the vast imperial domain between the Hippodrome and the Sea of Marmora;
there were, in addition, several palaces on the Asiatic coast; and the
palace at Blachernæ, in the cool, hilly district to the north, had
in turn become a vast cluster of palaces, chapels, colonnades and
terraced gardens. The mother and sisters of Romanus could therefore
find ample hospitality without being compelled to witness the daily
dissipation of the Emperor, his drunken banquets and his troops of
lascivious actors and women, but they frowned on the kind of Court over
which Theophano presided, and she persuaded her husband to remove them.
He bade his five sisters adopt the monastic life. Theophano now had two
sons and a daughter, and would feel safer if their royal aunts were
prevented from making aristocratic marriages. The young women were,
however, not at all disposed to embrace a religious life and there
were furious scenes in the palace. They were removed to the monastery
into which the palace of Theodora’s minister, Theoclistus, had been
converted, near the Hippodrome, but they seem still to have intrigued,
and were separated and transferred to other monasteries.[21]
Romanus was not cruel or malignant. His temper was to live and let
live, provided that no check was placed on his imperial pleasures. He
merely smiled, therefore, when he heard that, in their convents, his
sisters refused to exchange their silks for the hated black robe, or
abstain from the delicate meats to which they had been accustomed. We
shall later find one of them coming out, in spite of her vows, to marry
an Emperor, to the intense mortification of Theophano, who had murdered
her husband to marry him herself. Helena was the chief sufferer. She
sank into melancholy and illness after the departure of her daughters,
and died in September 961.
The Emperor continued for two years to enjoy his pleasures and hasten
his death, leaving the care of the Empire to his very capable
ministers and officers. Amongst these officers was a very singular
commander named Nicephorus Phocas, whose romantic career still puzzles
historians. Whether he was a profound hypocrite, or a deeply religious
man fascinated and seduced by Theophano, it is difficult to determine.
“God only knows,” says Leo the Deacon, a chronicler of the time to
whom we owe most of our knowledge. Nicephorus was a very able general
of about fifty years: a dark, robust little man, with black hair and
small dark eyes under thick eyebrows, a very stern look, and the chest
and arms of a Hercules. He was not at all handsome, but he was one of
the greatest soldiers of his time. The singular feature about his life
was that, in consequence of a tragic accident of earlier years, he had
adopted a very religious and ascetic life. He wore a hair shirt under
his armour and linen, abstained from flesh and women as rigidly as a
monk, and was understood to have vowed chastity.
It appears that, as her husband sickened, Theophano set out to seduce
this remarkable soldier-monk and succeeded. The other great power in
the State was Joseph Bringas, the leading civilian and statesman;
but Joseph was a eunuch, and of no use to Theophano. She would marry
Nicephorus. Leo the Deacon says that she admitted, or drew, the ascetic
to her arms before the death of her husband, and it is not impossible,
as the chief biographer of Nicephorus admits.[22] However that may be,
Romanus died in 963, after a giddy reign of four years, at the age of
twenty-four. Once more Theophano is charged with poisoning, and once
more we must refrain from pressing the charge. The nearest authority,
Leo the Deacon, leaves it an open question whether Romanus died of
poison or had closed his own life prematurely by debauch; and we may
do the same. Historians are too apt to conclude that because Romanus
_did_ wear himself out by his excesses, we may dismiss the charge
against Theophano. Disease, on the contrary, would furnish a cloak to
an artful poisoner, and Theophano certainly wished to get rid of the
despotic eunuch Bringas, whom Nicephorus would quickly displace. The
chief reason why we must hesitate is because Theophano was prostrate at
the time and unable to master the new situation. She had given birth to
a second daughter two days before the death of Romanus, and there is
reason to think that Bringas and others were anxious to remove her from
power. The circumstance is not decisive, as her servants might carry
out a plan made at an earlier date.
As soon as Theophano recovered she entered upon the struggle with
Bringas. It seems, from the movements of Nicephorus, that the Empress
was in communication with him before the death of Romanus, and that at
least she sent him a secret and flattering message when Romanus died.
Nicephorus had disbanded the army with which he had conducted two
brilliant campaigns against the Saracens, and was little equipped to
contest the power of Bringas, but he went at once to the city in order
to be near Theophano. Bringas had made desperate efforts to keep him
away, even going so far as to propose in the council that the general’s
eyes should be put out for his treasonable ambition. His great
victory over the Saracens and his repute for sanctity had, however,
won a large body of admirers for Nicephorus, and when he entered the
city in triumph, driving before his car groups of Saracen prisoners,
and exhibiting the holy relics he had rescued from the hands of the
heathen, citizens and soldiers and priests united in acclaiming him.
A private conversation with the new patriarch Polyeuctes, a fanatical
monk and eunuch, secured the favour of that prelate and his clergy, and
it is even said that he ventured into the house of Bringas and revealed
to that cautious statesman the hair shirt which he wore below his fine
robes and the monastic heart that beat beneath it. But for his intense
devotion to the young princes, he said, he would at once retire into a
monastery.
If we can believe this last statement, the situation was not without
humour, because Bringas presently discovered that his pious rival was
being surreptitiously admitted to the Empress’s apartments. Whether it
is true or no that Nicephorus had previously been intimate with her, it
is certain that he now became infatuated with Theophano, and received
an assurance that she would marry him, if not more intimate pledges of
her love. We may be confident that Theophano did not love him; he was
not physically attractive to her sensual taste, and his incongruous
mixture of piety and passion and deceit must have excited her disdain.
He was merely the best instrument at hand for the achievement of her
ambition. Then, as I said, Bringas discovered the secret meetings and
renewed his attack. He invited Nicephorus to the palace. The gallant,
but prudent, soldier preferred to fly to the altar of St Sophia and
secure the protection of the patriarch. The Senate was convoked, the
prelate warmly espoused the cause of Nicephorus, and he departed in
honour to take supreme command of the army in Asia and await the orders
of Theophano.
The next move of Bringas was a blunder and the beginning of his
downfall. One of Nicephorus’s chief officers was his nephew, John
Zimiskes, the later Emperor. When we find Zimiskes murdering his uncle
with the aid of Theophano, and then callously repudiating her, we
shall not suppose him to be a man of tender conscience, and Bringas,
no doubt, regarded him as venal. He sent a secret messenger to offer
Zimiskes the supreme command if he would send his uncle in bonds to
Constantinople. Zimiskes calculated that he would have the command,
in any case, if his uncle became Emperor, and he showed the letter to
Nicephorus, and urged him to assume the purple. They were in Cæsarea at
the time, and from that city Bringas soon learned that Nicephorus had
accepted the title of Emperor and would march on Constantinople.
The spirited events which followed must here be told briefly. On Sunday
morning, 9th August, the advance-guard of Nicephorus’s army appeared on
the Asiatic shore in sight of the city, at the point where Scutari now
is, and the people began to make their choice in the usual sanguinary
way. The services in the great church were desecrated with riot, the
battle against the guards who were faithful to Bringas was conducted
in the streets, and by midnight the houses of his supporters were in
flames. Theophano remained with her children behind the barrier of
palace guards, listening, not unwillingly, to the increasing cries
for Nicephorus. We may very well assume that she had had her share in
the riot. One of the most formidable leaders of those who called for
Nicephorus was the bold and ambitious Basil, the natural son of the
elder Romanus. Castrated by his father, that he might never aspire
to the purple, yet promoted to wealth and high office, he seems to
have come to an agreement with Theophano. As soon as the battle began
he led three thousand of his servants and followers, armed, into the
Augusteum, and they continued all Sunday and throughout the night to
hunt the soldiers of Bringas and loot the mansions of his friends.
Nicephorus had meantime reached the Hieria palace on the Asiatic side,
and on the following Sunday he made his triumphant entry by the Golden
Gate, and along the Mese, to St Sophia, the citizens draping their
houses with the scarlet of rejoicing and adorning the way with laurel
and myrtle. The patriarch Polyeuctes met him at the cathedral, and
Theophano would be present on her golden throne, in her violet mourning
robes, when the crown was put on his head.
His next step must have caused a sensation in the city and entirely
deceived the clergy. He sent a monk to conduct Theophano from the
palace to the fortress, or higher prison, of Petrion on the Golden
Horn, and maintained for a few weeks his austere aversion from wine
and women. We hardly need the assurance of the chroniclers that
this was done by arrangement between the two, and we may regard it
as a device of Theophano. Nicephorus was now aflame like a youth.
In the middle of September he “threw off the mask,” in the words of
the ecclesiastical chronicler, and announced that he was to marry
Theophano on 20th September. His monastic advisers, he explained, had
concluded that his new position demanded that he should marry. The
marriage service was performed by the patriarch himself in a chapel
in the grounds of the palace, and, while the Emperor went to kiss the
altars at St Sophia, Theophano retired to her familiar apartments, to
congratulate herself on the fortunate issue of her difficult manœuvres.
And presently the Emperor returned in terrible rage to tell her that a
formidable obstacle had revealed itself. When he had reached the door
of the sanctuary, the patriarch Polyeuctes had barred his way and said
that he would be excluded from the church for a year for contracting
a second marriage. His angry protest had availed nothing; before a
vast crowd of his subjects he had had to submit to the austere priest,
and he was to remain in the ignominious position of a penitent for
a year. Concealing their anger, they concluded the day, as usual,
with a banquet to the leading officers and nobles in the gold-roofed
_triclinon_, now restored and magnificently decorated by Constantine,
and retired to discuss Polyeuctes.
The patriarch was undoubtedly a stern and conscientious priest,
insisting upon a plain law of his Church. We may, however, assume that
another feeling mingled with his sense of discipline. Nicephorus had,
in the literal meaning, tasted blood at his matrimonial banquet, and
he passionately refused to forgo the embraces of Theophano. His pious
practices were wholly discarded in a day, and the clergy must have been
bitterly disappointed to see him passing from their allegiance to that
of the beautiful adventuress. So Polyeuctes had made a bold bid for
power; and he had made a serious mistake. From that moment Nicephorus
conceived, not merely a personal hatred of the patriarch, but an
anti-clerical spirit, and began to restrict the wealth and power of the
priests and monks. He clung to his enchanting young bride and sternly
faced the clergy. In the discussion that at once filled the palace and
the city some careless noble, named Stylianus, had recalled the fact
that Nicephorus was godfather to one of the Empress’s children, and
the patriarch learned this. He at once pronounced that the marriage
was invalid, as the Church regarded this spiritual relationship as
an insuperable impediment to marriage, and bade the Emperor dismiss
Theophano.
The feelings of Theophano during these days of disappointment and
anxiety are left to our imagination. It is enough that her charms held
Nicephorus to her in spite of the terrible threats of the patriarch,
and it may be that it was she who approached the unfortunate Stylianus
and persuaded him to commit perjury. Nicephorus gathered a council
of pliant bishops and Senators, and they decided that, as the law
invoked by the patriarch had been passed by the heretic Constantine
Copronymus, it was not binding. Polyeuctes scorned their decision.
Then Stylianus came forward to swear that Nicephorus had _not_ been
godfather to any child of Theophano, and the Emperor’s father, Bardas,
came forward to swear that _he_ was the godfather. The patriarch
knew that they were lying, but his clergy were anxious to escape a
formidable struggle and he was forced to yield. To Theophano it was,
no doubt, immaterial whether or no she was married to Nicephorus; she
had a strong and devoted soldier to protect her and her children. How
the pious Nicephorus reconciled himself to the situation is one of the
things that “God only knows.” All that we know is that the possession
of Theophano dissipated his asceticism as the summer sun disperses the
mists, and he eagerly embraced a woman to whom, under the creed of his
Church, he was not married.
During the six years’ reign of Nicephorus the Empress had little
occasion to assert her wayward personality, but it is significant that
the one statement made of her is an accusation of crime. One of the
sons of the older Romanus still languished in captivity, and it seemed
possible, in view of the growing discontent at Constantinople, that an
intrigue would be formed to put him on the throne. “Theophano,” we are
curtly informed, “made an end of him.” There is no reason to doubt that
messengers were sent to his distant prison with an order that he should
be put to death, and it is more probable that the order came from
Theophano than from Nicephorus. For the first year or two, however,
Nicephorus prudently removed his fiery young bride from the seditious
and immoral atmosphere of Constantinople, and she passed her days in
unwonted innocence amid the lonely mountains of Cilicia.
The Emperor had spent a few months in an effort, by lavish
entertainment, to dispel the suspicion of parsimony and meanness under
which he had ascended the throne. The Hippodrome rang daily with the
applause and contests of the citizens, and the winter was enlivened
with great gaiety. Meantime Nicephorus was gathering an immense army
for the more substantial work of driving back the Saracens, and when,
in the early spring, the cosmopolitan regiments were assembled along
the Asiatic shore, he announced that the Empress would accompany him
to the field. He knew Theophano too well to leave her in that world
of intriguing eunuchs and ambitious courtiers. A little pot-bellied
man, with dark skin and little dark eyes, with short greyish beard
betraying his age, and with disproportionately long arms and short legs
to his stumpy figure, he felt that he was not likely to grow fonder
to the heart of the fascinating Theophano during two or three years’
absence. On the other hand, one must not imagine the sensual young
Empress as being inconvenienced by the rough ways of a camp. The
rulers of Constantinople carried their luxury even into the camp, on
the occasions on which they condescended to take the field in person.
Eighty horses were needed for the transport of the kitchen equipment
and table silver alone, and thirty were required to convey the imperial
wardrobe from town to town; while the whole countryside was laid under
contribution to supply delicacies for the table. No doubt these normal
glories of an imperial march would be at least doubled in view of the
presence of Theophano.
They sailed from the Bucoleon port in the great gold and purple galley
of the imperial family, and joined the army at Cæsarea. From that city
Theophano accompanied her husband across the hills and plains of Asia
Minor until they came to the beginning of the Taurus range. Here the
Emperor left Theophano and her sons, in safe charge, while he led his
troops into the more dangerous country beyond. At the entrance of the
narrow defile which the ancients knew as the “Cilician Gates” was the
massive fortress of Drizibion, a solitary and rugged castle in a wild
mountainous district. It was in this quiet and cool home, removed from
communication with the metropolis, that Theophano and her children
spent the summer of the year 964. She would, of course, have an ample
retinue of eunuchs and women, and every provision would be made for
her comfort, but, whether it was the jealousy or the amorousness of
Nicephorus that detained her in this healthy solitude, she would be
sure to resent it. At the beginning of the winter he returned to her,
with modest laurels, and may have conducted her to Cæsarea, or some
other city of the plains, for the enjoyment of the winter. But the
early spring called him once more to the field, and it seems that
Theophano had to spend another summer in the wilds of Cilicia. It
was only in the autumn of 965 that she re-entered Constantinople, to
witness the splendid triumph of her husband.
In the following year Nicephorus made another campaign, and from the
time of his return in the autumn of 966 the shadow of tragedy began
to creep over his life. His vast armies and laborious victories had
laid a heavy burden of taxation on the Empire, and, passionately as
Constantinople loved to see a herd of captives driven before the royal
chariot in the hour of triumph, it was little disposed to pay for
remote victories. The clergy also were embittered. Nicephorus, soured
by the action of the patriarch, and thus made sensible of the revolting
spread of luxurious idleness under the name of monasticism, curtailed
the revenues of the clergy, forbade the further conversion of mansions
and palaces into monasteries, and claimed the right to appoint bishops.
The people became sullen and hostile. When, on Easter Sunday, 967,
Nicephorus crossed the Augusteum to go to church, they pelted him with
mud and stones so violently that a group of the more sober citizens had
to rescue him. It was expected that he would inflict some punishment,
and when, a few weeks later, he ordered his guards to descend to the
arena in the Hippodrome and begin their military evolutions, either to
impress or to entertain the spectators, there was a frantic rush for
the gates and many were trodden underfoot.
By the summer of 969 life in the sacred palace had become very
sombre and unpleasant, and Theophano began to seek a new companion.
The ardour of her husband’s passion had been chilled by the terrors
which now surrounded him, and, in preparation for the death which was
foretold to him, he returned zealously to his monastic habits. Even the
soldiers were now hostile to him, except his immediate corps of foreign
mercenaries. Nicephorus relied on their formidable axes, converted
the old and decaying Bucoleon palace into a massive fortress, girt
the whole enclosure with a lofty castellated wall, and retired within
this heavily guarded circle to spend his days and nights in prayer and
penitence.
It is one of the most curious features of the story that, while he
moodily punished his bravest officers for their very victories, the
lithe and insidious Theophano retained his confidence. She had no
longer the comparative solace of his sensual fire, and she must have
looked on with deep disdain when he refused to share the imperial bed
at night and, after long hours of prayer and psalm-reading, flung
himself for a brief and feverish sleep on a panther-skin spread
upon the ground in the corner of his chamber. But Theophano was not
excluded from the Bucoleon palace, and she laid her plans to defeat his
desperate entrenchments. The new partner whom she chose to encourage
was the general Zimiskes, the Emperor’s nephew, whom we have seen on an
earlier page revealing the perfidy of Bringas to his uncle. He had been
dismissed from office by Nicephorus “on account of certain suspicions”;
and we have little trouble in inferring that he was suspected of
liaison with Theophano and eagerness for the throne. He was, like
his uncle, a very little and robust man, but much more handsome than
Nicephorus; his broad chest and great brawny arms were redeemed by a
fair countenance, a pair of keen and friendly blue eyes and a crown of
almost golden hair. I must be pardoned for inserting such portraits
of the Emperors as we have, while seeming to omit the more desirable
portraits of their consorts. The Byzantine chroniclers rarely give
us more than the very vaguest assurances that Empresses were “very
beautiful,” and so on, and the few surviving representations of them in
ivory or bronze or mosaic are not portraits on which one would dare to
found a physiognomical study.
In the autumn of 969 Zimiskes was living impatiently on his private
estate in Armenia, when he received an assurance that Theophano had
persuaded his uncle to allow him to return to Court. Whether or no it
is true that he had previously enjoyed the favours of Theophano, he now
certainly became her ally and accomplice. She seems to have deluded
Nicephorus with diabolical duplicity. A rumour, which most historians
plausibly ascribe to her, was circulated in Constantinople, to the
effect that Nicephorus intended to castrate her sons and leave the
crown to his brother Leo, who, on account of his extortions, was no
less hated than he. On the other hand, Theophano persuaded Nicephorus
that the interest of herself and her children would be best consulted
if Zimiskes were recalled to the capital and compelled to marry some
noble lady of the city. Nicephorus assented, and his nephew came to
Constantinople. Then it seems to have been betrayed to the Emperor,
probably by his brother, that Zimiskes was being secretly admitted to
the Empress’s apartments, and he placed restrictions on him. Zimiskes
retired to his mansion at Chalcedon, on the Asiatic side, and continued
to communicate with Theophano.
The culmination of the plot is a thrilling, if sordid, page of
romance. On the night of 10th December Theophano visited her husband
and persuaded him to leave his chamber door unfastened, as she would
see him later. He still failed to suspect her, although some watchful
priest had warned him of the plot. Some time before a group of tall,
veiled women had presented themselves at the palace door and been
admitted; and, when they had reached the secret chambers assigned to
them by Theophano, it was a group of bronzed soldiers who emerged from
the mantles and veils. Someone betrayed them, and Nicephorus sent an
officer to explore the palace, but he, probably being in the pay of
Theophano, reported that all was well, and Nicephorus turned to his
long psalms. Theophano and her servants were in the upper part of the
palace looking out anxiously over the Sea of Marmora. It was a dark
wintry night, and the snow was falling heavily. At length a faint
whistle from below told them that a boat had arrived from Chalcedon
and lay under the walls. A basket (some say a ladder) was tied to a
rope and lowered into the depths, and presently Zimiskes and several
companions were within the palace. An Arab historian would have us
believe that Theophano herself led them, with drawn swords, to her
husband’s room; it is more probable that, as the Greek writers say, she
left this to one of her eunuchs.
For a moment the conspirators started back in alarm; the imperial bed
was empty, and they fancied that the plot was known, and Nicephorus
would fall on them. But the eunuch showed them the sleeping form of the
Emperor on his panther-rug, and, with a cry for help to the Virgin,
the strange soldier-monk passed out of the imperial world he had
invaded. Basil, the astute head chamberlain, had an opportune illness
at the moment, and only recovered in time to do reverence to his new
sovereign. The guards alone rushed from their quarters and attacked the
conspirators, but the sight of the grisly head of the late Emperor,
which was exhibited at the window, induced them to sheathe their swords
and accept a new paymaster. So Zimiskes proceeded gaily to the golden
palace (Chrysotriclinon) to put on the purple slippers, and Theophano
retired to her room to reflect on the next phase of her career: perhaps
to glance now and again at the ghastly trunk of her late husband, which
lay, all night and all the following day, in the snow without. This,
surely, was the last crime she need commit. She was still young, and
might look forward to many years of power with the robust soldier she
had invited to share her throne.
Six days later Zimiskes went in state to St Sophia to receive his
diadem, and found the stern patriarch Polyeuctes again boldly barring
the way. He refused to crown Zimiskes except on three conditions: he
must undo the anti-clerical work of his predecessor, he must deliver to
justice the actual murderer of Nicephorus, and he must drive the guilty
Theophano from the palace. Theophano now discovered the full brutality
of her accomplice. He bowed at once to the commands of the patriarch,
and the beautiful young Empress--she must still have been in her
twenties, unless she was much older than her husband at the time of her
first marriage--was dragged from her apartments to the Bucoleon quay
and shipped to one of the dreary island prisons in the Sea of Marmora.
She was furious with rage and disappointment. After a time she escaped
and contrived to reach the altar in St Sophia; but even the mob of
Constantinople shrank from the murderess, and her former confederate,
Basil, was allowed to tear her from the altar. In her frenzy she beat
the grand chamberlain with her own white hands and, reverting to
the language of the tavern, poured her invectives on the “Scythian
bastard.”[23] Her career had been so darkened with suspicion, and had
so plainly ended in murder, that her appeals fell on a cold, if not
jeering, audience, and she was conveyed to distant Armenia and confined
in a monastery.
The rest of the story of Theophano, as far as it is known to us, is
told in the curt statement that she was recalled to Court in the reign
of her eldest son, Basil, and again enjoyed the imperial position
for half-a-century. John Zimiskes retained only for a few years the
power for which he had paid so base a price. The marriage which he
presently contracted was not much less sordid than the marriage he
had intended to contract; if, indeed, he ever had a serious desire to
make so dangerous a woman as Theophano the partner of his throne. He
took a nun from her monastery, bade the patriarch--whose scruples had
their limits--relieve her of her vows, and married her. The Empress
Theodora is not clearly outlined in the chronicles, but she is not
without interest. She was one of those daughters of Constantine whom
her brother Romanus had forced to take the veil. Zimiskes had felt that
an alliance with the late dynasty would strengthen his position, and
it may be remembered that the daughters of Constantine were not at all
scrupulous. They had refused to wear the black robe or eat the bread
and beans of the monastery. Constantinople is said to have indulged
in the most boisterous rejoicing over the marriage, and even the
heavens seemed to express their satisfaction, when one of the Senators
discovered in his orchard an ancient stone on which was miraculously
inscribed: “Long Life to John and Theodora.” There were, however,
sceptics in the city, as it was recalled that a similar “discovery”
had been made in the interest of Irene and her son, yet the blessing
had proved illusory. The Senator was richly rewarded, but he may have
lived to see the futility of his miracle. After a few years (976) the
handsome chamberlain Basil bribed John’s cook to put less innocent
things than condiments in his dishes, and he went the beaten way of
Byzantine Emperors. Theodora disappears after his death, though we can
hardly suppose that she returned to her monastery.
Theophano’s sons, Basil and Constantine, now became joint Emperors,
and they recalled their mother from Armenia to the palace. One would
be inclined to suspect that the poisoning did not come to her as a
surprise, but the chroniclers do not impeach her, and we need not
strive to lengthen the list of her misdeeds. She makes no further mark,
for good or evil, in the chronicles. Possibly the terrible experiences
of her early womanhood and seven years of sober reflection in her
monastic prison had destroyed her passion for intrigue. In any case,
the very vigorous administration of her elder son left her little
room to interfere, and she seems to have been content with the quiet
enjoyment of the position of a dowager Empress. According to George
the Monk (or his continuer) she lived for fifty years after the death
of her first husband--that is to say, after 963--and so she must have
passed her seventieth year at the time of her death. There seems to
have been no rival Empress during that time. We may trust that the
character of Theophano sobered and matured, and that the forty years’
silence means that she led a regular and unambitious life. However that
may be, the personality she shows when she is under the full limelight
on the imperial stage is one of unrestrained passion and greed. She was
a tavern-keeper’s daughter in the purple, an appalling instance of the
lowest type of Greek beauty.