EUDOCIA
The struggle which Theodora had foreseen was not long deferred after
her death, and Michael Stratioticus was compelled, after a few months
of feeble imperial experiment, to retire to the private life from which
he had been unwisely drawn. The great territorial nobles--one might
almost say, the feudal nobles--concentrated upon the capital and put
one of their number, Isaac Comnenus, upon the throne. Isaac had in
earlier years married a Bulgarian princess, and her career as mistress
of a large provincial domain, and then as Empress of Constantinople,
suggests a very interesting study. Unfortunately, her husband’s reign
lasted only two years, and the events yield us only few and fleeting
glimpses of the new Empress.
Æcatherina, as the best contemporary authority, Nicephorus Bryennius,
calls her (though later writers often say Catherina), descended from
the Bulgarian royal family, which had fallen from its high estate
when “Basil the Bulgarian-slayer” had won a definitive victory over
the nation. Bryennius makes her a daughter of the King Samuel, and
we have in a later chronicle a picture of Samuel’s daughters which
would dispose us to imagine Æcatherina as a very fiery and interesting
personality. When, in the presence of Basil, they were brought face to
face with the woman whose husband had killed their brother, the Emperor
and his officers had great difficulty in preventing a very violent
and undignified scene. The dates, however, make it improbable that
Æcatherina was one of the daughters of Samuel--others more probably
suggest that she was his niece, or grand-niece--and in character
she seems rather to have been gentle and religious. She was brought
from her remote provincial home and made Augusta, but she proved to
be one of the quiet and retiring Empresses who leave no mark in the
chronicles. The only reference to her is that, in 1059, she encouraged
her husband, who had met with a serious accident or illness, to
resign, and she herself took the veil of the nun. One suspects that
her husband’s policy of curtailing the funds of the luxurious and
innumerable monks alarmed her, and she was ready to believe that, as
rumour maintained, the wild boar which led him into grave peril in
1059 was no ordinary animal. He resigned, and Æcatherina, changing her
name to Helena, retired with her daughter Maria to a quiet mansion,
where they practised monastic discipline and were esteemed so holy
that Æcatherina was eventually buried in the cemetery of the monks of
Studion.
With the next Empress, Eudocia, we return to the more familiar and
more piquant type of Byzantine princess: the woman who unites with
her subservience to the Church a skill in casuistry which protects
her human inclinations from the harsher control of the Church’s
ascetic standards. Eudocia Macrembolitissa, or Eudocia the daughter
of Macrembolites, a distinguished noble of Constantinople, had some
beauty and no little wit, as well as good birth and breeding. In the
reign of Michael IV. and Zoe she had been wooed and won by a handsome
and learned, if not very warlike, commander named Constantine Ducas,
and had in the subsequent twenty years of changing rulers borne three
sons and three daughters to her elderly husband. Constantine was at
least ten years older than she, and had no higher ambition than to
be regarded as a prince of letters and rhetoric. It must, therefore,
have been an agreeable surprise to Eudocia to learn, in 1059, that the
retiring Emperor had transferred his crown to her husband, and she was
henceforth to be the mistress of the sacred palace. She was then,
probably, in her later thirties. She was entitled Augusta, and the
imperial dignity was conferred also on her six children, of whom the
youngest was born after her coronation.
During the eight years of her husband’s reign Eudocia remained a silent
witness of his futility and unpopularity. He retained his pedantry, and
sought the laurels of learning and eloquence, while formidable enemies
threatened the Empire on every side. In 1067 he perceived that his
inglorious reign was about to end, and summoned Eudocia, the nobles
and the patriarch to his couch. The nobles were commanded to swear to
maintain the throne of Eudocia and her sons, and Eudocia was compelled
to swear a portentous oath that she would not marry again. Possibly
Constantine felt that he was not imposing a very heavy sacrifice on
a woman who approached her fiftieth year, and it was plainly to the
interest of his sons that she should not marry. Eudocia signed the
written oath, and it was entrusted to the patriarch Xiphilin to keep in
the great church.
The regency of Eudocia lasted about seven months, during which she
emulated the conduct of Zoe and Theodora. She received ambassadors,
heard trials and paid more direct and closer attention to the
affairs of the Empire than her late husband had done. Two things,
however, concerned her and illustrated the weakness of woman-rule at
Constantinople. The Turks and other hostile neighbours were raiding
the provinces with greater vigour, and the nobles were making this a
pretext for intrigue to replace Eudocia with an Emperor. Before the
year was out Eudocia decided to marry again and sought a means of
evading the oath which the patriarch grimly guarded.
The story of her outwitting the patriarch is, as we find it in the
later chronicles, in the finest vein of Byzantine melodrama. She took
into her confidence one of the wiliest eunuchs of her Court, who
assured her that it was quite easy to induce the patriarch to release
her. This Xiphilin, the patriarch at the time, was himself as casuistic
as he was religious. Originally a noble, he had voluntarily embraced
the black robe of the monk, and had been withdrawn from the monastery
to rule the Eastern Church. He had in Constantinople a brother named
Bardas, whose gallantries and sybaritic ways were notorious. When the
eunuch proposed the subject of marriage, Xiphilin sternly maintained
that the oath was binding and that Eudocia must remain a widow, but
when the astute eunuch regretted that such was his view, since it was
his brother Bardas whom Eudocia wished to marry, Xiphilin reconsidered
the matter. It is not for us to analyse his reasoning. It is enough
that in a short time he declared to the assembled Senators that the
oath was unjust and invalid, a mere wanton outrage on the part of a
jealous man, and he handed the precious document back to Eudocia to
destroy. His feelings may be imagined when, a few hours later, he
heard that the Empress was married, not to his brother, but to Romanus
Diogenes.
The contemporary writer Psellus gives a more sober version, but,
although Psellus was one of Eudocia’s chief ministers at the time,
there can be little doubt that his vanity and policy have somewhat
tempered the veracity of his narrative. Eudocia, he says, came to him
in tears to complain that the cares of Empire were an intolerable
burden for a single woman’s shoulders, and she wished to marry. The
story is, perhaps, not inconsistent with the story of her outwitting
the patriarch. In any case, the second marriage of Eudocia had an
element of romance.
In the state prison of Constantinople at the time was a handsome young
noble and commander named Romanus Diogenes, who ran some risk of losing
his head for high treason. Distinguished by birth and in person, and a
man of great spirit, he reflected that the throne of the Eastern Empire
had been reached by less able men than he, and cherished a daydream of
wearing the purple. At the death of Constantine in 1067, when there
was much discussion of the empty throne and the imperial widow, he
imprudently confessed his ambition to those about him in the remote
province of Thrace, which he governed; he was denounced in the capital;
and he was brought in bonds to Constantinople and put on trial. He had
then completed his thirtieth year: a tall, comely, broad-shouldered
man, with the dark skin of a Cappadocian and very winning eyes.
Constantinople looked with sympathy on the manly, but impetuous, young
noble. He was connected by birth with the greatest families of the
Asiatic provinces, and he pleaded that it was only his concern for
the safety of the menaced Empire that had wrung from him words of
dissatisfaction. His treason was, however, apparent, and he was found
guilty and restored to jail.
Eudocia was probably present at the trial of Romanus, and noted the
handsome form and flashing eye. She professed afterwards that the
trial was unsatisfactory and must be revised, and the young commander
found himself acquitted and free to return to his native province. The
time was not yet ripe for the marriage project; in fact, one of the
historians states that Romanus was already married, and went to join
his wife and family in Cappadocia. About Christmas (1067), however, he
received an order from Eudocia to return to Constantinople, and may
or may not have been surprised to hear that she proposed to marry and
crown him. His wife and family seem to have been deserted with great
cheerfulness--unless we prefer to regard the statement in the chronicle
as an error[24]--and Eudocia secretly prepared for the marriage.
Senators were bribed to support the proposal, and, on 31st December,
the patriarch was won by the stratagem which I have already described.
That very night Romanus was introduced, fully armed, into the palace
and secretly wedded to the Empress, and on the first day of the new
year the young Emperor and his middle-aged Empress were ceremoniously
presented to the people. For a moment it seemed as if the fierce
Varangian guards were about to avenge what they regarded as a violation
of the oath to the dead Constantine, but Eudocia prevailed on her elder
sons to assure the guards that they had consented to the marriage, and
the trouble was averted for the time.
It was, however, in face of considerable hostility that Eudocia and
Romanus entered upon their task of governing the Empire. The clergy
were naturally hostile, since their leader had been tricked into
an ignominious concession; more distinguished nobles than Romanus
envied his elevation; and courtiers who were attached to the fortunes
of Eudocia’s elder sons regarded the new Emperor, and the possible
issue of the new marriage, with sullen distrust. Michael Psellus, the
historian who boasts that he guided Eudocia’s counsels in regard to
the marriage, is transparently hostile to Romanus, and his historical
work is largely responsible for the traditional prejudice against that
brave and spirited, but injudicious and unfortunate, monarch. Psellus
was not merely the chief student of philosophy in Constantinople, but
an ambitious and successful courtier. His great repute in letters and
philosophy gave him a commanding position in the Court of Eudocia, who
had herself some literary ambition,[25] and his secret and sinuous
counsels must have deeply influenced the later course of the careers
of Romanus and Eudocia. A philosopher-statesman was the great ideal
which Plato, whose works he revived, had urged upon the Greeks, but the
fortunes of Psellus remain so even throughout the various revolutions
he outlived that one is tempted to compare him rather with
Talleyrand than with Plato’s ideal.
[Illustration: EUDOCIA AND ROMANUS IV
FROM AN IVORY IN THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE, PARIS]
Into this atmosphere of culture the robust Romanus was little fitted to
enter, and some disdain must have been felt of his uncultivated ways.
On the other hand, the brother of the late Constantine, John Ducas,
who bore the dignity of Cæsar and jealously guarded the position of
his nephews, was not less hostile to Romanus. The boys had received
the purple before the death of their father, and the time was rapidly
approaching when, with the assistance of their uncle and Psellus,
they might begin to exercise their power. To this plan Romanus was a
considerable obstacle. When we further learn that Romanus was gravely
conscious of his duty to restore the strength and discipline of the
army, and diverted funds from the entertainment of idle citizens to the
pay and equipment of his troops, we realize that the life of the palace
was preparing for one more of those tragic revolutions which punctuate
the history of the Byzantine Empire.
From this Court atmosphere of pedantry and intrigue Romanus turned
to the field of battle; he would strengthen his position by winning
such laurels as his vigorous and warlike character seemed to promise
him. Two months after his coronation a fresh invasion of the Turks was
announced, and he led a large army out to meet them. After nearly a
year’s absence he returned with some report of victories, but there had
in the same year been heavy losses, and his success was not decisive
enough to override the intrigues of his opponents. Already, we are
told, he found Eudocia colder. Her attitude is attributed to his
arrogance and boastfulness; we may suppose that it was just as much
due to an instinctive irritation when her robust husband strode into
the philosophic atmosphere of the palace with the smell of the camp
clinging to him and the language of war on his lips. In two or three
months he was off once more to the field, leaving Eudocia to her master
of philosophy and her brother-in-law. Into their hands she placed the
more virile cares of State, while she enlarged libraries, cultivated
men of letters and fostered the higher ambition of making verses. Her
eldest son, Michael, was associated with her in her cultural work.
When Romanus returned in the following winter, still without decisive
success, he seems to have concluded that it would be better to remain
in Constantinople, and the campaign of the third year was entrusted to
his generals, but in the spring of 1071 he again prepared to take the
field. Nothing but a crushing victory over the enemies of the Empire
would enable him to silence his enemies in the Court and capital.
Eudocia seems by this time to have wavered between admiration of her
young and manly spouse and repugnance to his more robust standards of
life. She was now certainly over fifty, and had never been particularly
sensuous, but we cannot doubt that she had married Romanus for love and
that that love was not yet extinct. As he set out from port for his
last crossing to Asia a singular dark-plumaged pigeon circled his royal
galley. He directed that it should be caught and sent to the Empress;
and it was said in later years that Eudocia nervously recognized in
the rare bird an omen of the evil fortune that was about to befall her
husband.
And in the course of the summer stragglers made their way hastily to
Constantinople with the news that Romanus had been heavily defeated
and his large army shattered. The Emperor himself had been slain,
some said, but at length there came men who had seen him captured and
borne away, a prisoner, by the Turks. The hour of the malcontents had
come, and a council was summoned to discuss the situation. It was at
once decided that no effort would be made to save Romanus--some of
the authorities declare that it was the treachery of the Cæsar’s son,
acting on the instructions of his father, which led to the reverse--but
the eldest son, Michael, should be appointed ruling Emperor, together
with his mother.
That Eudocia at once surrendered her husband becomes quite clear from
the subsequent course of events. The new administration had hardly
settled to its work when Eudocia received a joyful letter from her
husband announcing that he was free, and on his way to Constantinople.
How the Turk had entirely falsified his repute for barbarity, treated
Romanus as a brother king in misfortune, and eventually released him
on promise of a ransom, is a familiar and attractive picture in the
history of the time. Romanus was hastening to the arms of his beloved
wife. Eudocia is described by contemporary writers as “distracted” and
eager to consult those about her as to her conduct. Of wifely feeling
she did not exhibit one sincere particle, and, however we may remind
ourselves of the inevitable coldness of a woman in her sixth decade of
life, her conduct is somewhat repellent. Had she known that the Cæsar
was bent on bringing her to a common ruin with her husband, she might
at least have purchased some loyalty to him, in the usual Byzantine
fashion; but she was either ignorant or powerless, and she accepted the
counsel that Romanus should be disowned and repelled by force from his
Empire.
John Ducas, however, concluded that the opportunity was convenient
for the removal of both Emperor and Empress. A decree was issued to
the provinces to arrest the advance of Romanus, and the guards were
marshalled. At this date the mercenary troops in charge of the palace
were the famous and formidable Varangian guards, in whom modern
authorities recognize the blue-eyed giants of distant Scandinavia and
even of Britain. Romanus had favoured the native troops of the Empire
rather than these foreign mercenaries, and they at once accepted the
command of the Cæsar. One half of them went to the apartments of
Michael, and declared him sole Emperor of the Romans; the other body
went in search of Eudocia, with orders to transfer her to a monastery.
Eudocia at once concluded that the end of her rule had come when she
heard the jubilant clash of axe on shield, the deep guttural voices,
raised in song, of the northern soldiers, and their heavy tread across
the gardens and terraces. Fearing for her life, she hid herself in some
sort of hut in the grounds of her palace, but the door was presently
flung open and she looked on the fierce hairy faces and shining
weapons of the Varangians. She was prostrate with terror when the
Cæsar arrived, to give her the comparative consolation that her life
would be spared, but her empire was over. From the palace, spoiled of
all the ensigns of royalty, we follow her along the short and painful
route that we have seen so many proud rulers of the sacred palace
take. At the Bucoleon quays a swift galley waited to take her to the
Asiatic shore, where she was lodged in a monastery which she herself
had founded. A further message soon came, ordering her to take the
black veil, and the frail and unfortunate woman bade farewell to all
the glories of imperial life. It was only four years since she had been
left in control of the Empire by her first husband.
Shortly afterwards she was summoned to bury Romanus, and with him the
last flickering hope of a return to power. He had collected an army and
resolved to fight for his throne, and the troops of Ducas at length
pinned him in a town of Cilicia. In order to end the civil war John
now sent an assurance that the life of Romanus would be spared if he
would resign his claim and enter a monastery; nay, three archbishops
were sent to give him a solemn testimony that John had sworn and would
fulfil his oath. Frail as the most formidable oaths had become in
Eastern Christendom, Romanus opened the gates and yielded to the sons
of the Cæsar. The rest of the story is a chapter of nauseous horror,
and concerns us, fortunately, only in outline. Romanus was conveyed
across Asia Minor, in the robe of a monk, with studied insult. Most
of the chroniclers affirm that poison was administered to him, but
that his powerful constitution prevented it from doing more than add
to his misery. At length his eyes were cut out with more than ordinary
brutality, the roughest and most elementary attention to his bleeding
sockets was refused, and he was borne once more on a mule, dying by
inches in the most ghastly conceivable fashion, across Asia Minor.
He reached the island of Prote in time to die on the soil that was
already watered by so many imperial tears, and the chroniclers add that
Eudocia gave a splendid funeral to the remains of the man whom she had
transferred from the jail to the palace, less than four years before,
in the full pride of a magnificent manhood.
I have said that with the remains of Romanus she buried her last hope
of returning to power, yet some seven years afterwards a strange
message reached her in her cloister, recalling the memory, if not the
hope, of imperial power. Her son Michael proved an ineffective ruler.
The tradition of culture which had lingered in the palace since the
days of Psellus absorbed all his energy, and he could not be diverted
from the dialogues of Plato or the iridescent dreams of Plotinus by
mere conspiracies against his throne or invasions of his Empire.
Indeed, it was with difficulty, sometimes, that they could drag him
to table or persuade him to refrain from spending the night over his
books. The irony of the situation was that, while the Greek writings
over which he lingered urged that a profound study of philosophy was
the fittest education of monarchs, Michael remained as helpless and
heedless as a boy, precisely on account of his studies. Fortunately,
he had the casual inspiration to call to the palace a wily eunuch,
named Nicephorus, who become the virtual ruler. Nicephoritzes--as the
people, using the diminutive form of his name, called the pale and
shrunken little eunuch--soon displaced the Cæsar John, and, as was the
invariable custom of his kind, enriched himself at the expense of the
impoverished and decaying provinces.
Under Nicephoritzes Eudocia had no chance of a return to power. He had
endeavoured to persuade her first husband, the Emperor Constantine,
that she was unfaithful to him, and had been driven from office during
her regency. But the Empress’s quarters in the palace were not vacant;
a new type of Empress was added to the long and varied gallery.
Shortly before his accession to the supreme throne Michael had married
a princess of one of the tribes that had settled in Asia Minor. The
father of the Empress Maria is conflictingly described as a king of the
Iberians and the Alans, and is said to have been a ruler of great fame
and power; but he is not named, and it seems that he was not powerful
enough to avert or temper the tragedy of his daughter’s career. Her
dowry had been her beauty. I have complained at times of the lamentable
indifference of the male historians of Constantinople to the physical
features of the Empresses, and the lack of portraits which might bring
the living figure with any fulness or accuracy before the imagination.
We now, however, approach a period, the history of which has been
written for us by a woman, the famous Anna Comnena, and her pen happily
wanders at times back to the age of Eudocia, of which her husband,
Nicephorus Bryennius, was the chief historian.
Unhappily, the art of which Anna Comnena was so patently proud did not
include skill in portraiture. Maria was the most beautiful woman of her
time, and, although her interests become opposed to those of Anna and
her family, and the learned princess was capable of malignant hatred,
Anna Comnena rises to the height of superlative when her pen delineates
the figure of Maria. Her grace of form and beauty of face were beyond
the artist’s power to convey; though one must add that Anna not
infrequently uses that formula, in order to enhance the artistic wonder
of her own descriptions. Maria, she says, was tall and graceful as a
cypress; her body was white as snow, save for the roses that bloomed
in her cheeks, and the luminous blue eyes which shone beneath the
perfect and lofty arch of her auburn eyebrows. To this vague poetical
description we may add at once that the beautiful young princess was
not wholly devoid of the spirit of her tribe, and was prepared for
romantic adventure in support of the imperial dignity.
The seven years of Michael’s reign do not interest us. The Emperor
lived in the remote solitude of his exalted studies; Maria enjoyed the
superb luxury of her position, and brought a prince into the world for
the greater security of her throne; Eudocia languished in the royal
monastery of the Virgin across the straits. Usurpers rose and fell, and
the defrauded people spoke with bitterness of the young pedant who let
his ministers rob them while he studied the divine maxims of Plato.
Another princess, daughter of Robert of Lombardy, was introduced from
the West, but she was, like Maria’s son, to whom she was betrothed,
a child of tender years, looking with strange blue eyes on the vast
palaces she would one day govern--they said--and the boy who shyly
shrank from her companionship.
At last, in 1078, a more fortunate rebel advanced on Constantinople,
the clergy and nobles were bribed to espouse his cause, and Michael
fled to the Blachernæ palace in the suburbs. Maria accompanied him,
and what we know of her character emboldens us to fancy her urging
the distracted scholar to draw a sword on behalf of his throne. His
friends, however, found it impossible to move him, and, yielding to
the usurper, he was conducted on an ass to the monastery at Studion,
where he might prosecute his studies with even greater leisure. The new
Emperor had so genial a disdain for him that he made him titular Bishop
of Ephesus, and allowed him to return and live in the capital.
Maria, in accordance with custom, entered the suburban monastery at
Petrion. She did not, however, take the vows of the religious life,
and it was not long before the interesting news came that the new
Emperor designed to marry her. Nicephorus Botaneiates was an elderly
voluptuary, who had seized the throne only because so little energy was
needed for the task. For the administration of public business he had
two slaves of his own household, of Slavonian extraction, who at once
put an end to the life of Nicephoritzes and diverted the stream of gold
to their own pockets. For their master the pleasures of the table and
the couch sufficed. He had brought to the throne an obscure Empress
named Berdena, but she died shortly afterwards, and the aged Sybarite
consulted his ministers. To their cold and impartial judgment it seemed
that political considerations must rule the choice and they were
divided between the claims of Maria and those of Eudocia. It is true
that Nicephorus had been twice married, that Eudocia was a nun, and
that Maria was not yet a widow; but such difficulties were never beyond
the casuistic resources of the Constantinopolitan clergy. The Emperor
must marry, since the sacred ritual of the Court demanded the presence
of an Empress.
The politicians favoured the suit of Eudocia, and she was actually
informed that Nicephorus wished to marry her, and expressed her cordial
willingness to sacrifice her monastic estate in view of such august
considerations. Nicephorus, however, was, as I said, a Sybarite, and
even advanced age did not blur his experienced eye to the charms of
Maria. We may, therefore, suppose that Nicephorus was neither surprised
nor pained when a certain very holy monk appeared at the monastery of
the Virgin and sternly forbade Eudocia to quit her black robe. It may
be that the monk was one of the chaplains of the monastery; it is at
least clear that his zeal did not take him to the monastery at Petrion,
where Maria resided. The beautiful young Empress was recalled from
her prayers and fasts and conducted to the side of the Emperor in the
palace chapel. The patriarch, who seems to have had some scruples, was
not summoned to perform the ceremony, and Nicephorus noticed with
irritation that the priest who was called hesitated to come to the
sanctuary; Nicephorus had no dispensation for a third marriage, and
Maria’s husband still lived. A courtier, however, had foreseen the
difficulty and had a more accommodating priest at hand. The irregular
knot was tied, or regarded as tied, and Maria returned to enjoy, with
her son, the pleasures of the Emperor’s luxurious Court.
It is, perhaps, no alleviation of the conduct of Maria, in purchasing
her crown by an invalid marriage to an elderly sensualist, to say
that--the chroniclers assure us--quite a number of noble ladies
at Constantinople were eager to be chosen. Eudocia, her youngest
daughter, Zoe, and many other ladies had been pressed upon the notice
of Nicephorus. It is merely one more indication of the inferiority of
character, both in men and women, in the Byzantine Empire. But Maria
was not destined to enjoy long the throne which she had purchased.
Contemptible as the reign of Michael had been, it was succeeded by
one far more contemptible, and sullen murmurs filled the palace and
the city. Men told each other how the aged Emperor, who ought to be
thinking of eternity, changed his splendid robes ten times a day,
anointed his jaded frame with the most costly unguents, and sat down,
day after day, to the most superb banquets that the Empire could
afford; while the two barbaric slaves whom he had made his chief
ministers ground the despairing provinces and disgusted the nobles.
Within a year or two of Maria’s return to power, the customary,
inevitable revolt arose, and she was driven back to her monastery.
This revolution, however, introduces us to the strong women of the
Comnenian house and must commence a fresh chapter. Of Eudocia we hear
no more. If we accept the statement of one of the chroniclers, that
she had married in the reign of Michael IV. (1034–1041), she must now
have reached her seventh decade of life, and would probably not long
survive her last disappointment. Her readiness, in her later sixties,
and after seven years of monastic life, to accept the embraces of
a _roué_ like Nicephorus, in return for the crown, is a sufficient
measure of her character; her violation of her oath to her first
husband, and her desertion of her second husband, point to the same
feebly vicious and unattractive type of personality. Through the favour
of Nicephorus she was permitted to leave the suburban monastery, and
spend her last years in considerable comfort in the city.