THE EASTERN EMPIRE IN THE NINTH CENTURY
802-912
Nicephorus I. and his wars—He is slain by the Bulgarians—Short reign of
Michael I.—Leo V. defeats the Bulgarians—His ecclesiastical
troubles—Michael the Amorian dethrones him and reigns nine years—His
policy—Reign of Theophilus—His wars with the Caliphs—He persecutes
image-worshippers—Long minority of Michael III.—Restoration of
image-worship—Orgies and end of Michael—Basil I. and the Macedonian
dynasty.
The East-Roman Empire was always at its best when it was subject for
several generations to princes of the same family; it was always at its
worst in the periods between the fall of one dynasty and the rise of
another, when the crown had become for the moment a prize that could be
grasped by every successful general or intriguing statesman. In such
times attempts at usurpation grew so frequent that civil war became an
endemic disease, and while the empire was troubled within, foreign
enemies were always ready to take their opportunity to assail it from
without. We have already noted one of these anarchic and disastrous
intervals, that between 695 and 717, when the house of Heraclius had
fallen, and that of Leo the Isaurian had not yet come to the front. We
have now to record a second period of short reigns, and of troubles both
at home and abroad, between the deposition of the empress Irene and the
establishment on the throne of Michael the Amorian, the founder of the
next dynasty. This period, which filled the years between 802 and 820,
was by no means so disastrous as that which followed the fall of
Justinian II. in the earlier century, but, nevertheless, it was
distinctly a time of decline and decay, from which the empire took many
years to recover.
The wicked empress Irene was dethroned, as we have already had occasion
to relate, by a palace-conspiracy, headed by her high-treasurer,
Nicephorus. The new monarch was a man of mature years, who was known
merely as a capable finance minister, and had never been suspected of
any great ambition. When he had seized the reins of government he proved
that he had more character, more self-will, and more energy than his
contemporaries had credited him with. He put down with success two
rebellions of discontented military chiefs, who thought that they had as
good a right to the throne as he, and established himself so firmly on
his seat that none could shake him. In matters ecclesiastical he
reversed the policy of the superstitious Irene, and showed a perfect
tolerance for the Iconoclasts, as well as for all the other dissident
sects in the empire. He kept a firm hand over the patriarch and clergy,
who would have been glad to persecute these schismatics, a fact which
probably explains the bitterness with which the chroniclers of the
succeeding age write of him,—a bitterness which nothing in his actions
seems to justify. He was neither cruel nor arbitrary in his rule, and
the only accusation against him which seems to have the least
foundation, is that after his accession he still remained too much of
the high-treasurer, caring more for a good balance in the exchequer than
for the welfare of his subjects.
Nicephorus’s reign was not untroubled by wars. Haroun-al-Raschid still
sat on the throne of Bagdad, and the caliphate was still a dangerous
neighbour to the empire. Nicephorus refused to pay the tribute which
Irene had promised to the Saracen, so Haroun renewed the intermittent
war with the East-Romans, which had dragged on, with short intervals,
ever since the days of Constantine Copronymus. [Sidenote: War with the
Caliph.] The emperor was not favoured by fortune in the war; it would
seem that the maladministration of Irene’s eunuch-ministers had caused
the army to deteriorate, and matters went so ill that Nicephorus was
glad to buy a peace when Haroun offered to grant him one. The emperor
was to pay 30,000 _solidi_ annually, beside—a curious detail—six large
gold medals of greater weight for himself, and one for his son and heir,
Stauracius.
In spite of this humiliating treaty it was not the Saracen war that was
to prove Nicephorus’s direst trouble; nor did he fare very badly in his
struggle with Charles the Great. The long and desultory war with the new
western empire terminated in a treaty which left Frank and East-Romans
exactly where they started. Not even Venice, which was now completely
surrounded by the dominions of Charles, and which had been for a time in
his hands, was sacrificed. Nor did Nicephorus find himself compelled to
take what he would have regarded as the degrading step of recognising
Charles as his equal and colleague in the administration of the empire.
It was a war with the comparatively insignificant power of the
Bulgarians which was to be the worst of the disasters of Nicephorus.
Since the failure of the great expedition of Constantine VI. in 796, the
predatory tribe behind the Balkans had been growing more and more
venturesome. Under a new king, the cruel but able Crumn, they were
making raids far into Thrace, which at last drove Nicephorus to take the
field against them in person. At the head of a great army, drawn from
all the European and Asiatic themes, and accompanied by his son
Stauracius, he crossed the Balkans in 811. Victory at first crowned his
arms; he defeated the Bulgarians in the open field, and took and
plundered their king’s palace. [Sidenote: Nicephorus slain by the
Bulgarians, 811.] But a few days later, as his victorious army lay
carelessly encamped and paying no heed to the defeated enemy, it was
beset by a fierce night-attack. In the confusion and panic which
followed the emperor was slain, and his son Stauracius desperately
wounded. Left without a leader the Byzantine army broke up, and retired
in great disorder, leaving the body of the emperor with those of many of
his chief officers upon the field. The Bulgarian king cut off the head
of Nicephorus, and made his skull into a drinking-cup, as Alboin had
done with the skull of king Cunimund three centuries before.
The wrecks of the imperial army rallied at Adrianople, whither the
wounded Stauracius was borne. He was at once proclaimed Augustus in his
father’s room; but he never rose from his couch, for his hurt was
mortal. It was evident that his end was near, and that his crown would
soon be the prize of some usurper. Seeing this, his brother-in-law,
Michael Rhangabe, who had married the only daughter of Nicephorus I.,
bribed the guards of his dying master, and had himself saluted as
emperor before the breath was out of Stauracius’s body (812).
Michael Rhangabe owed his rise purely to the chance that had connected
him with the family of Nicephorus. He was personally insignificant,
superstitious, and cowardly. But his accession had some importance from
the religious point of view; he was a European Greek—the first of his
race that had yet worn the imperial crown—and, like most of his
countrymen, was a strong Iconodule, and wholly opposed to his
father-in-law’s tolerant ecclesiastical policy. He surrounded himself
with fanatical monks, and set to work to reverse the doings of
Nicephorus, and to remove all Iconoclasts from high office in state and
army.
These actions might have been popular if Michael had been a man of
strength and energy; but he was a weak and incapable ruler. He refused
for some time to enter the field against the Bulgarians, who were
ravaging Thrace far and wide, and when he did at last head an army, it
was only to suffer a crushing defeat. He took what his subjects
considered the degrading step of conciliating the Franks, by formally
recognising Charles the Great as a legitimate emperor, and treating with
him as an equal. In everything that he did indecision and want of
courage was to be traced.
The army was fated to be the instrument of Michael’s fall. It was deeply
leavened with Iconoclastic feeling, and highly discontented with a
master who sent it neither encouragement nor orders. At last, when
Michael allowed king Crumn to penetrate so far into Thrace that he
actually approached the walls of the capital, the army concentrated at
Adrianople openly threw off its allegiance, and took the decisive step
of saluting as emperor one of its generals, Leo the Armenian. [Sidenote:
Fall of Michael I. 813.] Priests and courtiers could give Michael
Rhangabe little support when the whole military caste turned against
him; he was deposed with little trouble and sent into a monastery, while
the rough soldier who had headed the revolt became emperor in his stead
(813).
Leo the Armenian was a capable man, not destitute of good qualities, who
might have founded a dynasty had fortune played him fair. He
successfully discharged the task for which he had been chosen
emperor—the ending of the Bulgarian war. Immediately after his accession
the king of Bulgaria marched up to the very walls of Constantinople and
camped over against it. Leo at first strove to get rid of Crumn by the
dishonourable expedient of attempting to seize or slay him at a
conference—much as Charles the Fat dealt with king Godfred. [Sidenote:
Leo V. defeats the Bulgarians, 814.] This attempt failed, but the
Bulgarians, after plundering the suburbs, retired from before the walls,
and in the next year when they again advanced into Thrace, Leo met them
at Mesembria and inflicted on them a bloody defeat. So crushing was the
reverse that the new Bulgarian king instantly asked for peace, and the
empire was not troubled by another Bulgarian invasion till a whole
generation had gone by.
Leo reigned for six years more, unvexed by wars without, and swaying the
sceptre with a very firm hand. He reorganised the army and the finances,
and did much to repair the harm caused by the depredations of Saracen
and Bulgarian in the reigns of Nicephorus I. and Michael Rhangabe. But
unfortunately for himself and the empire, he soon became involved in the
old Iconoclastic controversy, and had no peace thereafter. Leo was, like
most of the inhabitants of the Eastern themes, and most of the higher
officers in the army, strongly imbued with the doctrines of his great
namesake the Isaurian. For the first two years of his reign he kept his
opinions to himself, and endeavoured to maintain a strict neutrality
between the image-worshippers and the image-breakers. But the Iconodule
clergy were too vehement, and Leo himself too conscientious for such a
truce to endure for very long. In 815 the struggle broke out: Leo had
requested the patriarch Nicephorus to order certain images, which were
especial stumbling-blocks to the Iconoclasts, owing to the grovelling
popular devotion which they attracted, to be raised so far from the
ground that devotees should no longer be able to kiss and embrace them.
The patriarch refused, bade all his clergy commence special prayers for
deliverance, because the church was in danger, and excommunicated a
bishop whom he suspected of having counselled the imperial order. Leo
replied by deposing Nicephorus, and substituting for him a successor of
decided Iconoclast views. The new patriarch at once held a council which
declared image-worship superstitious, and re-affirmed all the decrees
against it which had been passed in 754, by the synod held by
Constantine Copronymus. [Sidenote: Leo V. and the Iconodules.] But Leo
did not plunge into persecution as his Isaurian predecessor had done:
beyond removing a few church dignitaries from office, and banishing an
abbot who made an open display of images in the streets of the capital,
he took no repressive measures against the Iconodules. His moderation
profited him little, for the image-worshippers hated a heretic as much
as a persecutor, and his mildness only gave them the better opportunity
of intriguing and conspiring against him. The last years of his reign,
though full of outward prosperity, were a time of discontent and unrest
beneath the surface, and it was felt that he had offended too many of
his subjects for his life to be safe, or his throne secure. Knowing of
this, unquiet spirits among his generals and courtiers began to draw
together and plot against him.
The chief of these malcontents was Michael the Amorian, a turbulent
soldier who had been the emperor’s close friend when both were private
persons, and who had been promoted to high office when Leo gained the
crown. His conspiracy was detected, and he was thrown into prison, but
when his confederates learnt that they were in danger of discovery, they
resolved to strike at once before they were arrested. Leo was attending
matins on Christmas Day in his private chapel, when the conspirators
fell upon him. Snatching the great cross from the altar he fought
desperately with it against his assailants, but before help could arrive
he was cut down, and fell dead in the sanctuary.
The murderers hastened to the cell of Michael the Amorian, and saluted
him as emperor. He was drawn from his dungeon and presented to the
people in the imperial robes, before the fetters had been struck from
his feet, and ere the day was ended the patriarch had crowned him in St.
Sophia (December 25, 820). Michael was very inferior to the man whom he
had dethroned: he had nothing to back him save his military talent and a
certain measure of unscrupulous ability. He was quite uneducated, and
his provincial dialect and ungrammatical expressions were the jest of
the court and capital. But he knew how to strike hard, and his harshness
cowed his enemies more than Leo the Armenian’s mild policy. His
accession was the signal for rebellion all over the empire: a certain
Thomas raised the heretical sects of Asia Minor and the Iconoclast
partisans of the late emperor in rebellion, and for three years made
Michael’s throne insecure. He even beleaguered Constantinople, and might
have taken it, had not his followers alienated public sympathy by their
ravages in its neighbourhood. He was ultimately put down and slain, but
his rebellion caused a serious loss to the empire. While the whole of
the imperial fleet and army was acting against him, a horde of Saracen
pirates descended on the great island of Crete, and overran it from end
to end (825). After peace had been restored, Michael made two attempts
to expel the adventurers, but both failed, and for a hundred and thirty
five years the ‘island of the hundred cities’ remained a Saracen
outpost, and a sad hindrance to the commerce of the Ægean. [Sidenote:
Loss of Crete and Sicily.] Hardly had the expeditions sent against Crete
returned with loss and disgrace, than Michael heard that a new province
was being assailed by the same enemy. In 827 the Moslems of Africa,
summoned by the traitor Euphemius, landed in Sicily, and began the
conquest of that island. We have described its slow but steady progress
in another chapter.[67]
Footnote 67:
See pp. 448 and 449.
The loss of these two outlying provinces does not seem to have troubled
Michael. He was perhaps content that he was preserved from a greater
Saracen war with the whole force of the caliphate, owing to the civil
strife of the descendants of Haroun-al-Raschid. Nor did the peaceful
Lewis the Pious stir up the Franks against him. The conquest of Crete
and Sicily was a vexatious incident, not a pressing danger.
In dealing with the thorny ecclesiastical questions which had proved so
dangerous to his predecessor, Michael the Amorian showed caution rather
than zeal. His accession had been supported by the image-worshippers,
who cordially detested Leo the Armenian. But when safe on the throne he
refused to put himself into their hands, or to commence a persecution of
the Iconoclasts. He was probably at heart a contemner of images himself,
and his son and colleague Theophilus had a fierce hatred for them. His
line of policy was to proclaim complete toleration of both parties, and
to recall and replace the prelates whom Leo had banished. But in public
worship he maintained the condition of things that he found existing,
and refused to restore the images which his predecessor had removed or
mutilated. On the other hand he allowed such figures and pictures as had
escaped Leo’s hand to remain, and permitted the monks to practise as
many superstitions as they pleased within the walls of their
monasteries. Neither party was satisfied; both accused Michael of
time-serving and lukewarm service of God, but they kept fairly quiet,
and the controversy was for a time quiescent.
Michael reigned for nine years only, and at his death in 829 left the
throne to his eldest son Theophilus, a man of much greater mark and
individuality than himself. The new emperor was an active warlike
prince, with a great love of splendour and pomp, and a strong
determination to have his own will in all things. Moreover—and this was
certain to give the empire troublous times—he was a firm and
conscientious Iconoclast: it had been with great difficulty that his
father restrained him from taking harsh measures against image-worship,
while he was still only his junior colleague on the throne. The
chroniclers bear strong witness to his courage, his personal virtues,
and his even-handed justice, but his meddling in things ecclesiastical
has sufficed to blacken his character in their pages.
The greater part of the reign of Theophilus was taken up with a long
struggle with the caliphate. The Abbasside empire had been much weakened
since the death of Haroun-al-Raschid, first by the civil strife between
his sons, and then by the religious wars excited by the heterodox caliph
El-Mamun. Theophilus thought that the ancient enemy was so reduced by
the loss of many outlying provinces, and by long strife at home, that
the empire would be able to win back some of the lands lost two
centuries before by Heraclius. Accordingly he provoked a war with
El-Mamun by sheltering the many refugees from Persia and Syria, who fled
before the persecutions of the caliph. Unfortunately for Theophilus, the
troubles of his adversary were just at an end, and the Saracens had
their hands once more free for a struggle with the empire. The long war
which set in revealed that the forces of the caliph and the emperor were
now so evenly balanced that it was impossible for either to deal the
other any deadly blow, but quite possible for each to harry and molest
the other’s frontiers for an indefinite time. With some trifling
interruptions of truce and armistice, it lasted more than thirty years.
The caliph began the struggle by invading his neighbour’s Cappadocian
borders, and overrunning the land as far as Heraclea (831). His fleets
at the same time made some descents on the Cyclades and the Mysian
coast. El-Mamun led three expeditions in person into Asia Minor, and
after getting possession of the passes of Taurus, took the great town of
Tyana at their northern exit, and fortified it as a base for further
operations. Fortunately for Theophilus the caliph died at this moment,
and his armies retired to Tarsus, abandoning their conquests beyond the
mountains. The emperor was more fortunate against the new Saracen
monarch, El-Motassem, the brother of El-Mamun. Theophilus was able to
invade Syria and Mesopotamia, and to capture the important town of
Samosata, where the Byzantine banners had not been seen since the time
of Constantine Copronymus. But the ravages of Theophilus on the
Euphrates, and especially his sack of Zapetra, a place for which
El-Motassem had a special regard, provoked the Saracens to greater
efforts. In 838 the caliph took the field at the head of a vast army: he
had sworn to sack the emperor’s birthplace, Amorium, in revenge for the
plundering of Zapetra, and it is said that 130,000 men marched out of
Tarsus, each with the word ‘Amorium’ painted on his shield. [Sidenote:
Theophilus beaten by Saracens, 838.] Theophilus hastened forth to defend
his ancestral town: but one division of the Saracen army defeated him
with great slaughter at Dasymon, while another, under the caliph’s
personal orders, stormed Amorium and slew the whole population—men,
women, and children—to the number of not less than 30,000.
Such a disaster, and the sight of the caliph’s troops advancing as far
as the centre of Phrygia, seemed to portend danger to the empire. But
having satiated his wrath and vengeance, El-Motassem retired, and the
generals of Theophilus recovered the whole of the lost lands as far as
the line of Taurus. Intestine troubles kept the caliph busy at home, and
after the East-Romans had recommenced their invasions of Syria and taken
Laodicea, the port of Antioch, a truce was patched up, which lasted,
with some intermissions, down to the death of the emperor and the
caliph, both of whom expired in 842.
[Sidenote: Theophilus persecutes image-worshippers.] When not employed
in the field against the Saracens, Theophilus had been busy at home
against the image-worshippers. In 832 he issued an edict against all
kinds of representations of our Lord and the Saints, whether in the form
of statues, pictures, or mosaics, and had them sought out and destroyed
not only in public places, but in monasteries and private dwellings. His
especial wrath was reserved for the painters whom he found working in
secret to reproduce the prohibited figures; he mutilated their
disobedient hands with hot irons, and branded their foreheads with words
of contumely. The patriarch John the Grammarian aided the emperor by
excommunicating all the clergy who refused to abide by the decrees of
the synod of 754. Theophilus then laid hands on the recalcitrant monks
and bishops, and imprisoned or banished them. His wrath, however, did
not lead him into the extremes that the Isaurian emperors had
countenanced; he did not inflict the penalty of death for disobedience,
nor did he endeavour to suppress the monastic system, like Constantine
Copronymus. Those who bent before the storm met no harsh treatment: it
was only open disobedience that moved Theophilus to anger. His very
palace was full of secret image-worshippers, chief among whom was his
own wife, the empress Theodora.
Like his western contemporary Lewis the Pious, the emperor yielded to
the unhappy inspiration of choosing a second wife by public competition.
When his childless empress died in 830, he summoned all the fairest
daughters of his nobles to his Court, and passed them in review. His eye
was caught by the young Theodora, the child of the high-admiral Marinus,
and he espoused her without taking the trouble to discover that she was
a fervent and bigoted image-worshipper. During her husband’s life she
concealed her views, and contented herself with protecting all the
Iconodules whom she could shelter. But after Theophilus’s death she was
destined to undo all his religious schemes, and to bring up his children
to loathe their father’s creed.
In spite of the Saracen war and the ecclesiastical quarrels which
rendered his life unquiet, the reign of Theophilus—like that of his
father—was not an unprosperous time for the empire. His strict and exact
justice benefited far more of his subjects than his bigotry harmed. The
revenue was in such good condition that even in war-time he was able to
execute many great public works—such as the strengthening and
embellishing of the walls of the capital, and the building of many
palaces and hospitals. His care for the fostering of trade was shown by
the conclusion of commercial treaties, not only with Lewis the Pious,
but even with the distant caliph of Cordova; and Constantinople became
in his day more than ever the centre of the whole trade of Europe,
because the Italian ports, which were her only rivals, were now
suffering greatly from the occupation of the central Mediterranean by
the Moors of Sicily.
To the great loss of the empire, Theophilus died in 842, while still in
the prime of his life, leaving a son and heir of only four years of age.
We have already spoken, more than once, of the dangers of a long
minority in that time, and the youth of Michael III. was not to be an
exception to the rule. For fourteen years a council of regency governed
in his behalf to the small profit of the empire. [Sidenote: Theodora
restores Iconoduly.] The chief place in it was taken by the
empress-dowager, whose interests were mainly religious. Almost before
the breath was out of her husband’s body Theodora set to work to undo
his policy. Calling to her aid the whole image-loving party in the
palace, she deposed the patriarch, drove into exile the chief
Iconoclastic bishops, and summoned a council at Constantinople, which
anathematised the enemies of images, and re-affirmed all the doctrines
which had been condemned in 830 by order of Theophilus. Only thirty days
after the new reign had begun Iconoduly had once more become orthodox,
and Iconoclasm was proscribed. Active persecution against heretics
followed; the Paulicians and other dissidents of Asia Minor were so
maltreated that they migrated _en masse_ to the dominions of the caliph,
and from thence revenged themselves by making incursions into the
empire.
The two men who shared the chief power with Theodora were her worthless
brother Bardas, and the count Theoctistus: they were bitterly jealous of
each other, and Bardas ultimately procured his rival’s death. Each of
these personages believed himself to be a great general, and their
ambitious but ill-managed expeditions against the Saracens ended in
uniform disaster. It was fortunate for the empire that the caliphate had
now passed into the hands of two incapable bigots and debauchees, Wathek
and Motawakkel, who were quite unable to profit by their neighbour’s
weakness (842-861). Indeed the Byzantine arms won some success when
neither Bardas nor Theoctistus were present, and one daring expedition
even seized and held Alexandria for a year. The long, weary war dragged
on, but neither empire nor caliphate got any advantage from it.
In 856 the young Michael attained his eighteenth year, and took the
government into his own hands. He at once sent away his mother, whose
long domination he had secretly resented, and confiscated most of her
treasure and estates. Michael was an ill-disposed youth, but owed much
of his evil character to his uncle Bardas, who had brought him up in the
worst of fashions, and taught him to plunge, while yet a mere boy, into
drinking, gambling, and debauchery. Michael and his uncle were sworn
companions in all kinds of ribaldry and evil-living, and their court was
a scene of perpetual scandals. Bardas was made Caesar in 862, and for
the next four years had as much to do with the government of the empire
as his nephew. But he was unwise enough to take too much upon him, to
treat Michael as a drunken boy, and to assume a superiority over him
which the young emperor could not brook. After they had reigned together
four years Michael caused his uncle to be slain, and took another
associate in the empire (866).
His new colleague was Basil the Macedonian, a young man of Slavonic
descent, who had long been one of his boon-companions. When Michael was
still a boy he had been impressed by the courage and strength of Basil,
who had entered his service as a groom. The young emperor promoted him
from one office to another, till he became _Protostrator_, or Count of
the Stables—Marshal as he would have been called in a western monarchy.
The new favourite was bold, ready-witted, and hard-headed; he could
drink down the emperor himself at their feasts—a power which inspired
Michael with the greatest respect. So trusting to the faith of the
friend of his youth, Michael preferred him to the place of the murdered
Bardas.
When not under the influence of the wine-cup, Michael the Drunkard—as
his subjects named him—was a warlike and energetic sovereign. He often
took the field against the Saracens and the Bulgarians, and sometimes
met with success when courage could take the place of strategy. After a
successful campaign beyond the Balkans he forced the Bulgarian king not
only to do him homage, but to become a Christian, a change which did
much in later years to make relations easier between the empire and its
northern neighbours.
Michael sometimes busied himself about things ecclesiastical: his mother
had brought him up as a fervent image-worshipper, and he distinguished
himself when he came to years of discretion by the disgraceful outrage
of exhuming and burning the bodies of Constantine Copronymus and the
patriarch John, the chief representatives—lay and spiritual—of
Iconoclasm. Another of his doings had a graver consequence: it was he
who, offended by the austere morals of the patriarch Ignatius, deposed
him and nominated Photius in his stead. The preferment of Photius was,
as we have already stated when dealing with the Papacy, the original
cause of that breach between East and West which has never yet been
healed.[68]
Footnote 68:
See pages 453-454.
[Sidenote: Basil I. murders Michael III., 867.] Michael had attained the
age of thirty-one, and seemed destined to rule for many more years, when
he was suddenly cut off. His friend and boon-companion, Basil, whom he
had raised from a groom to be a Caesar, was the murderer. At the end of
one of their debauches the Macedonian rose and bade some of his friends
slay his benefactor. Michael was stabbed as he lay in a drunken sleep,
and the crown passed away from the Amorian house (867). Basil had
already, as colleague in the empire, got the reins of power in his
hands, and the murder of Michael passed unrevenged. No one raised his
voice in behalf of the dead man’s infant sons, and the new dynasty was
inaugurated without a struggle or a civil war.
The Macedonian, though he had shown himself an ungrateful traitor, was a
man of great ability. He held firmly to his ill-gotten crown, and
founded the longest dynasty that ever sat upon the Byzantine throne. It
was not till 1056 that his house was extinguished. As emperor he did all
that he could to make his subjects forget that he had once been the
deep-drinking favourite of Michael III. He proved himself a hard-working
sovereign, economical, prudent, and judicious, and the empire flourished
under his rule. Some of his work was destined to be permanent; his code,
a new revision of the laws of Justinian, superseding Leo the Isaurian’s
_Ecloga_, remained the text-book of the eastern empire down to its last
days. His financial arrangements, which seem to have been excellent,
were also destined to endure for nearly two centuries. In matters
ecclesiastical he did his best to patch up the breach with the Roman
church; he reinstated the deposed patriarch Ignatius, and sent Photius
into private life; but though the cause of offence was removed the
quarrel remained, and the exorbitant claims of the Popes prevented any
reunion of the East and West. Finding this to be the case, Basil
restored Photius when Ignatius died, and allowed things to take their
inevitable course.
Except in Sicily the wars of Basil were generally successful. The empire
of the caliphs was rapidly breaking up; the dynasty of the Saffarides
had lopped off the eastern provinces of their realm, and Egypt had
fallen into the hands of Ahmed-ibn-Tulun. Four caliphs had been murdered
in nine years (861-9), and the incessant civil war which raged at Bagdad
stripped the Saracen frontier of most of its defenders. The Christian
arms, therefore, did not fare badly during the reign of Basil and his
son Leo, and for the first time the East-Roman boundary began to move
eastward, and new themes were carved out of the captured territory. The
Byzantine armies ravaged northern Syria and Mesopotamia as far as Amida
and Aleppo. Cyprus was recovered, though only for a time, and the
rebellion of the Paulician heretics on the Armenian frontier was
suppressed. [Sidenote: Wars of Basil I.] At the same time Basil’s fleets
won victories in the Ægean and the Ionian sea over the corsairs of Crete
and Africa. We have already mentioned, in another place, how the admiral
Oriphas aided Lewis II. to reconquer Bari, and how Nicephorus Phocas
drove out the Saracens from Lucania and Bruttium, and added the southern
peninsula of Italy to his master’s realm. In Sicily alone was disaster
met; the fall of Syracuse in 878 marks the practical extinction of the
East-Roman power in that island. But success elsewhere atoned for this
single loss.
If Basil had been succeeded by a strong and energetic ruler, the
East-Roman empire might have had an opportunity of extending its sway
over almost all the provinces that had obeyed Justinian three centuries
before. The caliphate grew more and more decrepit: Italy was, as we have
already seen, a prey to anarchy for more than half a century, and the
Slavs of Eastern Europe were being crushed by the newly-arrived horde of
the Magyars. None of them could have opposed any strong defence against
a capable commander heading the well-armed and well-disciplined host
that the Eastern empire could send out. But the son and grandson of
Basil, whose long reigns occupied the next eighty years, were a couple
of narrow-minded and pedantic men of letters, equally destitute of taste
and of ability for engaging in schemes of conquest. [Sidenote: Reign of
Leo the Wise, 886-912.] Leo VI., whom after generations called Leo the
Wise, not for his practical cleverness, but because he had a taste for
the occult sciences and wrote obscure prophecies, was the immediate
successor of Basil. By some strange freak of nature the hard-drinking,
unscrupulous, energetic Macedonian usurper was the father of a laborious
compiler of books, the mildest and least stirring of men. Leo’s
prophetic oracles and his ecclesiastical writings are of small profit to
the reader, but posterity must acknowledge that it owes him a
considerable debt for publishing his _Tactica_, a military manual giving
an excellent account of the organisation, strategy, and tactics of the
Byzantine armies, with useful notes as to the habits and manners of the
enemies whom the army was called upon to face. It was probably fortunate
for the empire that he never tried to put his book-knowledge of things
military to practical use in the field.
In spite of Leo’s feeble personality, and of the fact that his
negligence occasionally allowed the foes of the empire to snatch
unexpected advantages, this reign was a time of growth for the imperial
borders. The new themes of ‘Lycandus’ and ‘Mesopotamia’ were won from
the enfeebled caliphate; Apulia was conquered from the dukes of
Benevento and the Italian Saracens, and formed into the theme of
‘Langobardia.’ Benevento itself was for some years in Leo’s hands,[69]
and if he had shown a little more energy he might have pushed his army
up to the gates of Rome, while the counts of central Italy were engaged
in their endless bickerings with king Berengar. But the emperor
neglected to support his generals, and with a tranquil mind let them
fail for want of resources.
Footnote 69:
See page 460.
Leo died in 912, leaving the throne to his only son Constantine VII.,
better known as Constantine Porphyrogenitus, a weak literary man of the
same type as himself. The new emperor was a boy of only five, and his
whole reign was one long minority, for after he reached manhood he
allowed others to govern for him, and remained buried in his books.
But in spite of the feebleness of Leo and Constantine, the empire was
faring well. Its neighbours were too weak to trouble it with serious
wars, though now and then a disaster occurred, such as the surprise of
Thessalonica by the African pirates in 904. Such misfortunes were due to
the misdirection of the empire’s resources, not to their inadequacy for
defence. The realm was never richer nor stronger since the days of
Justinian; Constantinople had become the sole centre of the commerce of
the Christian world, the one place where East and West could freely
exchange their commodities. The revenue was abundant and easily raised,
the army well paid and efficient, and only needed adequate generals to
enable it to set out on a wide career of conquest. But the empire was
not to obtain a capable ruler for many years; the days of John Zimisces
and Basil Bulgaroktonos were still far off, and meanwhile the
East-Romans, under the feeble leadership of Leo and Constantine,
remained in a condition of stationary prosperity, due to the
well-organised administration of the empire. The Byzantine civil service
was well able to carry on the business of government, unless it was
handicapped by the presence on the throne of a strong-handed tyrant, and
whatever were their faults the sovereigns of the Macedonian house never
deserved that name. There are worse things for any realm than a series
of mediocrities on the throne.
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