RELATIONS WITH THE EAST.
Now that we are approaching the most important event in the life of
Charlemagne, his assumption of the imperial title, it will be necessary
to glance at his relations with the line of sovereigns who alone up to
the year 800 wore the title of Emperor, the Cæsars of Constantinople.
It will be hardly needful here to repeat the warning given by many
recent historians against considering the State which was governed from
Constantinople, between 476 and 800, as anything else than the _Roman_
empire. As its centre of gravity was now on the Bosphorus instead of
being on the Tiber, and as its chief possessions were situated on the
east of the Gulf of Venice, or even on the east of the Archipelago, it
is difficult to avoid speaking of it as the eastern empire; but for all
the centuries between the fifth and the ninth we must remember that
this is not a strictly accurate expression. It was during all that
period “_the empire_,” “the dominion of the world,” nay, it was still
the “Roman republic,” though the man who sat in Julius Cæsar’s seat was
practically the uncontrolled despot of the Roman world.
And during all these intermediate centuries, though the empire might
be cut very short, by Frank and Goth and Saxon in the west, or by the
Saracen in the east, it would be safe to say that it never acquiesced
in its limitations. Pre-eminently the wonderful reconquests of Italy,
of Africa, of part of Spain, which were wrought in the sixth century by
the generals of Justinian, might well keep alive the hope that, after
the “little systems” of barbarian and infidel had “had their day,” the
true Divinely-appointed world-ruler would emerge from his temporary
eclipse and be again supreme all round the shores of the Mediterranean.
Doubtless, though the name “Roman” was still kept and still gloried in,
the empire was, with each succeeding century, becoming more thoroughly
Greek, or rather Graeco-Asiatic, in its character. From this point
of view it has been observed by a modern historian that the great
pestilence which raged in 747 (five years after the birth of Charles)
was an important factor in the transformation of the empire. “A vast
portion of the inhabitants of Byzantium, who maintained Roman character
and many Roman traditions amid all their half-Hellenic, half-Oriental
ways, had been carried off by the plague, and were replaced by pure
Greeks who had not inherited the effect of Roman influence. This was
an important step in the direction of becoming a Greek nationality, to
which goal the Roman empire was steadily tending” (Bury, _History of
the Later Roman Empire_, ii. 456).
But, notwithstanding this, the emperor at Byzantium never forgot that
he was Roman, but always looked upon Italy as his lawful, his almost
inalienable, possession. Gaul, Spain, Britain--it might be necessary to
abandon these to the barbarians--but Italy, but Rome, were rightfully
his, and all the shades of all the buried Cæsars would pass in angry
procession before the eyes of the degenerate successor who should be so
base as formally to abandon his right to hold them. This, or something
like this, we may believe to have been the secret underlying thought of
the Leos and the Constantines when they heard what the Frank was doing
in Italy.
Through the greater part of the eighth century the Iconoclastic
controversy was the dominating element in the politics of the empire.
We have already seen something of the career of the first great
image-breaker, Leo III. On his death, which happened in 740 (two
years before the birth of Charlemagne) he was succeeded by his son
Constantine V., as able a general, as strong a statesman, and as
determined an image-breaker as his father. He was a great enemy also
of the monks, and both they and the image-worshippers suffered at his
hands a persecution which (at any rate according to their account of
it) might seem to recall the days of Decius and Diocletian.
To the court of Constantine V. fled the young Adelchis, son of
Desiderius, on the downfall of the Lombard kingdom (774).[55] He was
well received by the emperor, who bestowed upon him the high-sounding
title of Patrician, thus making him, as far as rank in the empire
went, at least the equal of his conqueror, Charles. We have seen how
the combination of rebellious Italian dukes, independent princes, and
Byzantine generals, which was formed to restore Adelchis to the Lombard
throne, failed, owing to the death of Constantine V. (September 775),
and how Hrodgaud of Friuli was left alone to bear and to sink under the
vengeful might of the Frankish king.[56]
The Emperor Constantine V. was succeeded by his son Leo IV., surnamed
the Khazar, his mother having been a princess of that barbarous Tartar
tribe, who dwelt by the Sea of Azof and under the Caucasus. The strain
of barbarian blood did not bring strength to the character of the young
emperor. Leo IV., though an earnest image-breaker, was distinctly a
weaker man than his father, and during his short reign the cause of
Iconoclasm probably retrograded rather than advanced.
The five years during which Leo the Khazar was on the throne (775–780)
were years during which Charles gave little attention to the affairs of
Italy, having much to occupy him elsewhere, for these were the years of
Roncesvalles and of the fresh outbreak of the Saxon revolt. His friend
and clamorous dependant, however, Pope Hadrian, sent him frequent
cries for help. “The Greeks hateful to God” (that is the generals
and ministers of Leo the Khazar) were conspiring with the “most
unutterable” Lombards of Benevento to seduce the towns in Campania from
their allegiance to Charles and Hadrian. The island of Sicily, the one
secure stronghold of the Byzantine power during all these centuries,
was the focus of this strife, but in order to prosecute it more
successfully the patrician of Sicily took up his headquarters at Gaeta,
and from thence, in concert with the Duke of Naples, was pressing hard
upon those Campanian and Latian cities which kept their loyalty to the
pope. Moreover, when Hadrian wrote one of his most urgent letters, in
779, it was daily expected that “the son of the most unutterable and
long ago absolutely unmentionable king Desiderius” would land in Italy
with soldiers lent him by his Imperial ally and head the anti-Papal,
anti-Frankish coalition.
Still, however, Adelchis lingered in Constantinople and once again a
vacancy in the palace of the Cæsars saved Italy from a war. On the 8th
of September 780, Leo the Khazar died and was succeeded by his son
Constantine VI., a boy of nine years old, ruling not under the regency
of, but jointly with, his mother Irene. This woman was a daughter of
Athens and a secret worshipper of images, though in her father-in-law’s
lifetime she had solemnly sworn always to adhere to the party of the
Iconoclasts. Like Queen Athaliah of old, she was passionately fond of
power, both for its own sake and as helping her to maintain the cause
of idolatry against the religious reformers, and she was ready, in
defence of her darling schemes of ambition, to violate not only the
oath which she had given to her father-in-law--that was a light and
pardonable offence--but the deepest and holiest instincts of a woman’s
heart, the love of a mother for her only son.
For the first ten years of the joint reign (780–790) the lad,
Constantine VI., quietly submitted to his mother’s ascendency, and
only her will and her projects require the historian’s attention. The
Iconoclastic spirit was strong among the soldiers of her late husband’s
family, and she had to wait four years before she could openly take
steps towards the restoration of the worship of images; but she seems
at once to have ceased the attacks on Hadrian’s subject cities, and
to have assumed a more friendly attitude towards Charles, who was not
himself at this time interested in the Iconoclastic controversy, but
whose friendship was important if the Patriarchate of Constantinople
was to be reconciled with that of Rome. Thus it came to pass that in
781, during Charles’s second visit to Rome, there appeared in that city
two high nobles of the Byzantine Court, the _sacellarius_ Constans
and the _primicerius_ Mamalus, who brought proposals for a marriage
between the young emperor and Charles’s daughter Hrotrud, whom the
Greeks called Eruthro. It was only an alliance at some future day that
was talked of, for the prospective bridegroom was but ten years old,
and the Frankish princess was probably about eight. But the match was a
splendid one, there having been no previous instance of a matrimonial
alliance between the Roman Cæsars and the Frankish kings, and Charles
gladly accepted the offer. A tutor named Elissæus was sent to the
Frankish court to instruct the future empress in the Greek tongue, and
there was peace in Italy between the Franks and the generals of the
empire.
During these years of peace Irene was maturing her plans for
the restoration of image-worship. In 784, Paul the Patriarch
of Constantinople resigned his great office and became a monk,
acknowledging to all the world that his conscience was troubled by the
isolation of Constantinople from all the other Patriarchates on the
ground of Iconoclasm. Nothing could have suited Irene’s plans better
than this resignation. Her secretary Tarasius, though a layman, was
made patriarch in the room of Paul, evidently on the understanding that
images were to be restored. In August, 785, an imperial letter from
Constantine and Irene was addressed to Pope Hadrian begging him to
fix a time for the convocation of a general council at Constantinople
to settle the question of Iconoclasm. The pope of course gladly
consented, though he took advantage of the re-opened intercourse
with Constantinople to demand the restoration of the “patrimonies”
(probably in Sicily) which had been taken away from St. Peter’s see
by the first Iconoclastic emperor: and though he also held up to the
Byzantine rulers the admirable example of Charles, “King of the Franks
and Lombards, and patrician of Rome, who had in all things obeyed the
admonitions of the pope his spiritual father, had subdued to himself
the barbarous nations of the west, and had given back to the church
of St. Peter many estates, provinces, and towns, of which it had been
despoiled by the faithless Lombards.”
The general council was opened at Constantinople in August, 786, but
failed of its purpose. The Iconoclastic spirit was still too strong
among the soldiers who were quartered in Constantinople, old comrades
of Leo III. and his son. The church was invaded by them, and the
image-worshipping bishops departed in fear. Next year, however, care
having been taken to dispose of the Iconoclastic troops elsewhere, a
general council was held at Nicæa (24th September to 23d October, 787),
and there the _cultus_ of images was re-established in full glory, only
with one of those distinctions dear to theologians which defined “that
it was right to salute and grovel in adoration before the holy images,
but not to give them that peculiar worship which is due to God alone.”
Thus, then, the great cause of ecclesiastical contention was removed,
and we might expect that the joyful event would be celebrated by the
marriage of the young affianced pair, Constantine and Hrotrud, now
aged sixteen and fourteen respectively. On the contrary, this was the
very year in which, after mysterious embassies backwards and forwards
between the two Courts, the marriage treaty was broken off and the
relations became more openly hostile than ever; but curiously enough
(as is not unfrequently the case in such affairs) there is a conflict
of testimony as to which side had the credit or discredit of breaking
off the match. The Frankish annalists say or hint that Charles refused
his daughter to the young Emperor, who was much angered by the refusal.
A Byzantine historian says that “Irene broke off the treaty with
the Franks and sent the Captain of the Guard to fetch a damsel from
Armenia named Mary whom she married to her son the Emperor Constantine,
he being much grieved thereat, and not liking his bride because his
inclination was towards the daughter of Charles, King of the Franks, to
whom he had been precontracted.”
It is hopeless with our scanty materials to discover the reason of
this mysterious rupture between the Courts. One of the most careful
of the German writers who have treated of this period attributes it
entirely to Charles’s invasion of Benevento and reduction of its prince
Arichis to vassalage, which, as has been already related, occurred in
the year 786. This, he considers, was a breach of the tacit agreement
to maintain the Italian _status quo ante_ entered into in 781, and
was resented accordingly. Others have seen in it a stroke of policy
on the part of Irene, who was already becoming jealous of her son’s
share in the Imperial authority, and feared to see him provided with a
too powerful father-in-law. If it be permitted to hazard yet another
conjecture, where all is conjectural, I would point out that in the
interval between 781 and 787, Hildegard, the mother of Hrotrud, had
died, and Charles had married another wife, the haughty and unpopular
Fastrada. Possibly that proud and jealous woman resented the idea of
seeing her little step-daughter raised higher than herself by her
exaltation to the throne of the Cæsars, and may have used her influence
with her husband to entangle still further the already ravelled hank of
the negotiations with Constantinople, and at last in disgust to break
off the match altogether? The whole story is a remarkable illustration
of the fact, so clearly shown in the negotiations for the Spanish
marriage of Charles I. when Prince of Wales, that a marriage treaty,
if not very carefully conducted, is quite as likely to embroil two
sovereigns as to unite them.[57]
One curious, though not immediate, result of the rapidly increasing
estrangement between Franks and Greeks was that in the great synod
which Charles held at Frankfurt in 794 for the condemnation of the
“Adoptian heresy,”[58] Charles induced his bishops to pass a severe
condemnation of “the synod held a few years before under Irene and her
son which called itself the Seventh Ecumenical Council, but which was
neither the seventh nor ecumenical, but was rejected by all present at
Frankfurt as absolutely superfluous.” At the same time it was declared
by the assembled bishops that neither worship nor adoration was to be
paid to the images of the saints. Thus was Charles, the great patron
and defender of the papacy, actually brought into controversy with the
pope on an important point of Christian practice.
The immediate effect of the rupture of the marriage treaty was seen
in an invasion of Italy by the Greeks, in which at last the long
lingering Adelchis took part. The intention was to make an attack on
Charles’s dominions in combination with the Prince of Benevento (on
whom the dignity of patrician was conferred) perhaps also with Tassilo
the Bavarian; but before the Imperial troops landed in Italy, Arichis
of Benevento was no more. He died on the 26th of August 787, a man
still in the flower of his age. It is striking to observe how much
Charles’s upward course to empire was facilitated by the opportune
deaths of his competitors. Carloman, Constantine V., Leo IV., and now
Arichis of Benevento, all died at the most seasonable time for the
success of Charles’s projects. At the time of the death of Arichis,
his son and heir Grimwald III. was in Charles’s keeping as a hostage.
Pope Hadrian earnestly besought the king never to permit one of the
God-hated dynasty to ascend the Beneventan throne, but Charles, after
some delay, allowed Grimwald to return and take his place in the palace
of Benevento. He was, however, compelled to promise to pay a yearly
tribute of 7000 _solidi_, to coin money with Charles’s effigy, to date
his charters by the years of the Frankish king, and in all things to
acknowledge him as his over-lord. For the present these conditions
were kept, and at the crisis of the Byzantine invasion Grimwald III.
comported himself as a loyal vassal of Charles. So it came to pass
that when at last the Byzantine troops landed in Calabria they were met
by the united forces of the Frankish king under his general Winighis,
and the Lombard dukes of Spoleto and Benevento. The defeat of the
Greeks was crushing (788). Four thousand of their warriors were slain,
among them the _sacellarius_ John, commander of the expedition; and
one thousand were taken prisoners. Adelchis appears to have made his
escape. He reappeared no more on the soil of Italy, but died many years
after, an elderly, probably a wealthy, patrician at Constantinople.
This last scion of the Lombard kings is not an interesting figure in
history.
Charles’s reply to this direct attack on his dominions in the south of
Italy was to lay hands on the Imperial province of Istria in the north,
a conquest desirable in itself, for the cities of Istria were numerous
and wealthy, and also one that facilitated the operations which he
was planning against the Avars. The Court of Constantinople, probably
dispirited by the defeat of the great armament under the _sacellarius_
John seems to have accepted the rebuff. For several years after this we
hear nothing more of Greek expeditions to Italy, though there may have
been intrigues with the young Prince of Benevento, who married a Greek
wife named Wantia, a relative of the Emperor, and in various ways
showed that he fretted under his galling vassalage to the Frankish king.
But in Constantinople itself during these years of truce with the
West, strange and terrible events were happening. The young Emperor
Constantine VI. found as he grew up to manhood that he was an absolute
cipher in his empire and in his palace. All power was kept by Irene in
her own hands, all orders went through her confidential minister the
eunuch Stauracius. To these two all suppliants dressed their petitions.
Constantine himself was treated as of no account to any man. Brooding
over the daily slights which he had to endure, and resenting also, it
is said, the manœuvre which had deprived him of his fair young Frankish
bride, and tied him to the unloved and childless Armenian, he began
in 790 to look around for partizans who would enable him to effect a
revolution and become a real instead of a puppet emperor. The plan of
the conspirators (among whom were two patricians and the great minister
called _magister officiorum_), was to arrest the empress, send her
off to banishment in Sicily, and proclaim Constantine sole emperor.
The ever watchful Stauracius, however, obtained intelligence of the
plot, arrested the conspirators, ordered some of them to be flogged,
tonsured, and sent into the Sicilian exile which they had planned for
Irene; the _magister officiorum_ received some degrading punishment
and was imprisoned in his own house; and lastly this same punishment
of seclusion was inflicted on Constantine, after his mother had
herself struck him and attacked him with an angry woman’s invective.
Then a new and strange oath was administered to all the soldiers in
the capital and its neighborhood. “So long as thou livest, O Empress!
we will not suffer thy son to reign.” These events took place in the
spring or summer of 791. In September of that year there came a change.
The soldiers who were stationed in Armenia, when they were required
to take the new oath, refused. “We will not put the name of Irene
before that of Constantine,” said they, “but will swear obedience
as of old to Constantine and Irene.” The disaffection spread; the
regiments which had sworn the new oath to Irene forgot their vows and
joined the soldiers from Armenia. By the end of October the revolution
was complete. Irene was compelled by the clamor of the soldiers to
liberate her son from confinement; she was deprived of all power, and
Constantine was hailed as sole emperor. Stauracius was beaten, tonsured
and sent into exile in Armenia. Aetius, another eunuch and confidant of
Irene, was also banished, and a clean sweep was made of all the menial
eunuch train, through whom apparently for ten years the empire had been
governed.
But, unfortunately, the character of the young emperor, weakened by the
subjection in which his mother had kept him, was utterly inadequate
to the duties of his new position. With extraordinary folly, after a
few months he drew Irene forth from the seclusion of her palace, and
allowed the people to shout once more, “Long life to Constantine and
Irene.” He went forth to war with the Bulgarians and was badly beaten.
This humiliation of the imperial arms caused the soldiers in the city
to plot for the elevation of Nicephorus, a half-brother of Leo IV. and
uncle of Constantine VI. The young emperor arrested Nicephorus and
ordered him to be blinded; and at the same time the tongues of four
other of his uncles were cut out (792). These barbarous punishments,
blinding and mutilation, were characteristic of the Constantinople of
that day, but the resort to them on so large a scale proved the alarm
as well as the cruelty of the young emperor, and must have helped to
lose him the hearts of his subjects. His mother and Stauracius (who
was now back again in the palace) were thought to have counselled
these cruel deeds; and they certainly succeeded in embroiling him with
his old supporters, the Armenian soldiers, whose revolts plunged the
empire in civil war.
The climax of the emperor’s unpopularity seems to have been reached
when (in January 795) he put away his Armenian wife, compelling her to
enter a convent, and in September of the same year publicly celebrated
his union with a lady of her bedchamber named Theodote. He had now lost
the favor of the multitude, while his mother was ever at work forming a
party among the officers by promises and bribes, suggesting that they
should depose her son and proclaim her sole empress. On the 14th of
June 797 Constantine went, after witnessing an equestrian performance
in the circus, to worship in the church of St. Mamas in the environs
of Constantinople. The conspirators, whose movements were directed
by Stauracius, endeavored to seize him there, but he seems to have
been warned, and escaped in the imperial boat to the Bithynian shore.
Unhappily his mother’s friends and his own bitterest foes accompanied
his flight. There was hesitation and delay, and there seemed a
possibility that the soldiers would rally round him and his cause might
yet triumph. The ruthless Irene sent a secret message to his adherents,
“Unless in some way or other you effect his capture I will inform the
emperor of all the plot which you and I have formed against him.”
Fear made the conspirators bold; they seized the emperor while at his
prayers, forced him to re-embark, and hurried him back across the Sea
of Marmora to Constantinople. There, after the lapse of some weeks,
in the Purple Chamber of the palace, they put out his eyes, purposely
performing the cruel operation with such brutality as to endanger
his life. It was, in fact, supposed by many that he was dead, but he
appears to have lingered on through many revolutions, an obscure and
forgotten sufferer, for more than twenty years after his mutilation.
The deed was done on Saturday the 15th of August 797, at the ninth
hour of the day. On the same day of the week and at the same hour,
five years before, had his uncle suffered the same punishment. Men
observed the coincidence and traced a divine retribution therein. But
with greater horror did they learn that the emperor had suffered this
brutal punishment in the Purple Chamber which was always reserved for
the birth of an emperor’s children. Here, in the very same room of the
palace where he first saw the light, did he with the connivance, if not
by the express command, of his mother lose the light of day and all
that makes life worth living. “For seventeen days,” says the historian,
himself an image-worshipper and adherent of Irene, “the sun was
darkened and did not give forth his rays, so that vessels lost their
course and drifted helplessly, and all men said and confessed that
because of the blinding of the emperor the sun did not show his beams.
Thus did Irene his mother obtain supreme power.”
The character of the Empress Irene receives unbounded praise from the
writers of the image-worshipping party. She is for them “the most
pious Irene,” “that strong-minded and God-guided woman, if, indeed, it
be right to call her a woman, who was armed against all foes and all
calamities with truly masculine temper.” “Irene, that strong-minded and
God-beloved woman, if we ought to call ‘woman’ one who surpassed even
man in her pious disposition, one through whom God mercifully expelled
the crooked heresy which had crept snakelike into the Church and
brought back orthodoxy.”
But neither these flatteries of the monkish image-worshippers, nor her
outward show of magnificence when, on Easter Monday (799), the proud
Athenian rode forth from the Church of the Apostles in a golden car
drawn by four white horses, which were driven by four patricians, and
showered money among the multitude after the fashion of the ancient
Consuls of Rome, represented the real place of the empress in the
hearts of her subjects. The rule of Irene meant, as every one knew,
the rule and the bickerings of the eunuchs who advised her. Moreover,
there was really no precedent for a woman sitting alone in the seat
of empire. When Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II., was hailed as
Augusta, it was on condition of her giving her hand to the soldier
Marcian. Theodora and Sophia were Augustæ, but ruled only during the
lifetime of their husbands. When Martina, widow of Heraclius, tried
to pose as joint-ruler with her son and stepson (641), the multitude
shouted an indignant denial of her claims. “How can you sit upon the
throne and answer foreign envoys when they come to the royal city. God
forbid that the polity of the Romans should come into such a plight
as that.” It was a hundred and fifty-six years since the Byzantine
populace had hurled these words at Martina and compelled her to
descend from the throne, but we may be sure that the spirit which
prompted them still dwelt in the hearts of the mass of the people
who yet called themselves Romans. To be ruled by a woman, and such a
woman, the despoiler and all but murderer of her own son, was felt
to be an unendurable humiliation. The insecurity of Irene’s position
was shown by the shortness of her reign, but that short reign of five
years (797–802) was long enough to include, in a certain sense to
necessitate, the great event which will be the subject of the following
chapter.