It was not wholly the work of Leo, for the Bulgarians came from the

north to his aid, and a pestilence, even before the storms of the

Dardanelles destroyed their fleet, caused the withdrawal of the

Saracen host. Then as an administrator he reformed the government, as

a legist he reissued and revised the laws. The great earthquake of 739

caused the institution of a new tax, if not a new financial system.

"Some of the oldest monuments in the city were thrown down by the

shock, the statue of Constantine the Great, at the gate of Attalus;

the statue and sculptured column of Arcadius; the statue of

Theodosius I., over the Golden Gate, and the church of Irene, close to

S. Sophia. The land walls of the city were also subverted; and in

order to repair the fortifications Leo increased the taxes by

one-twelfth, or a miliarision in a nomisma."

Thus Professor Bury.[11] But to such acts, important though they were,

Leo the Isaurian does not owe the fact that his name will never be

forgotten in the history of the Empire which he ruled. It was he who

began the attack upon the ancient custom of the Eastern churches which

gave rise to the long and bitter iconoclastic controversy. It were

idle for a Western accustomed to the severity and restraint of English

worship to pretend to judge without partiality the conflict which

arose in the eighth century among the Easterns. To Englishmen it comes

with a shock of surprise to learn that they are regarded as Romanists,

as has recently happened, because they do not use incense in every

public service of the Church, according to the immemorial usage of the

East. Similarly it is with diffidence that we learn to recognise the

reverence paid to icons, pictures of sacred things, as a true and

helpful part of Oriental devotion. It tends, we think, to

superstition; as much perhaps as our grandfathers' pride in the black

gown of the preacher, or the curious customs which led in England to

the "plethoric Sunday afternoon." Leo the Isaurian, and after him his

son, Constantine V. (nicknamed Copronymus by his people, probably

"from his devotion to the stables"), of whom the latter certainly had

no sense of the reality of religion, embarked on an ill-omened attempt

to purge from the Church, and to destroy in the sacred buildings

themselves, all the brilliant pictures and mosaics which commemorated

the saints and received the homage, bordering no doubt on

superstition, of the faithful. They objected that it was a sin to

represent Christ in art at all; and that the representation of His

Mother tended to the exaltation of her name into that of a Divinity.

"Apostles of rationalism" these Emperors have strangely been called,

who fought against an ineradicable passion of their people. As dear to

the hearts of the Greek Christians as their subtle questionings into

the deep meanings of divine things, their determination to be

satisfied with nothing less than a precise and logical definition of

the faith once for all given to the saints, was their craving for

outward and visible signs to represent the gifts of God at once in the

Divine Life and in the lives of the saintly followers of the Lord, and

their own reverence and consecration of all that was beautiful in the

work of man. The force of Mohammedanism had lain in its austere

rejection of any outward image of Divine things; heretics, Judaising

or Monophysite, had from time to time taken up the cry against these

innocent representations of the saints. If the "worship" of images

tended to obscure the spiritual truth of religion, the destruction of

all visible memorials of the saints, emblems of the divine attributes,

or representations of the passion of Christ, was even more certain to

tell against the real belief of a race at once ignorant and dramatic,

to whom the eye was the constant teacher of the mind. However strange

and unedifying the reverence paid to icons may seem to the modern

Western mind, it is but the shallowest ignorance which would call it

idolatry, and it is plain that any hasty attempt to interfere with the

popular expression of religious ideas must tend, if hastily and

unskilfully conducted, to impair the faith of the people itself. Led

by men who were believed by the enthusiastic and conservative

Byzantines to be influenced by Monophysites, Jews and Mohammedans, it

was certain to provoke a desperate resistance, and that the more

widespread because the issue was not an intricate matter of scholastic

teaching, but a plain issue of practice in which every day passions

were deeply concerned.

In 726, almost, it would seem, without warning, the Emperor Leo issued

an edict that all images in churches should be utterly abolished. The

patriarch, rather than consent to the action, resigned his office. The

story of what followed may be given in the words of Mr Tozer.[12]

"The work of destruction now commenced in earnest; the statues were

everywhere removed, and the pictures on the walls were whitewashed

over, and though numerous outbreaks occurred, and some executions took

place before it was accomplished, yet on the whole the opposition was

not formidable. The act which caused the greatest indignation was the

removal of the magnificent image of Christ which surmounted the bronze

gateway of the imperial palace, and was the object of great reverence.

In order to take down this statue and burn it, a soldier of the guard

had mounted a ladder, when a number of women assembled at the spot to

beg that it might be spared; but, instead of listening to them, the

soldier struck his axe into the face of the image. Infuriated by this,

which appeared to them to be an insult offered to the Saviour Himself,

they dragged the ladder from under his feet and killed him. The

Emperor avenged his agent by executing some, and exiling others, of

the offenders, and set up in the place of the statue a plain cross,

with an inscription explaining the significance of the change.

"In the defence of images there stood forth two champions, the one in

the West, the other in the East; and the points of view from which

they respectively regarded them illustrate the different feelings of

the two churches on the subject. The former of these was Pope Gregory

II., who at first strongly remonstrated with the Emperor on his edict,

and afterwards, when he endeavoured to enforce its observance in

Italy, encouraged his people to disregard the order, and defied his

nominal sovereign in violent and even insulting language. At last he

excommunicated his nominee, the patriarch Anastasius. But he advocated

the retention of images on the practical ground of their utility in

instructing the young and ignorant, and as being an incentive to

devotion. Far more exalted and more subtly defined was the position

attributed to them by the other advocate, who spoke from the distant

East. This was John of Damascus, otherwise known as S. John Damascene,

the last of the Fathers of the Greek Church. This learned and acute

theologian, who in many ways was superior to the age in which he

lived, at one time filled a civil post of some importance under the

Caliphs, who now ruled in Syria, but afterwards retired to the

monastery of S. Saba, in the wilderness of Engedi, the strange

position of which, overhanging a deep gorge that leads down to the

Dead Sea, is still the wonder of the traveller. As he lived in the

dominion of the Saracens he was beyond the reach of the Emperor's arm,

and now undertook the cause of his suffering co-religionists. In three

powerful addresses he set forth his arguments for image worship. Some

of them follow the familiar lines of defence, that these objects were

memorials of the mysteries of the faith; and that in the adoration of

them the spiritual was reached through the medium of the material. But

beyond this he made it plain that, to his mind, and the minds of those

who thought with him, the worship of images was closely connected with

the doctrine of the Incarnation, the earthly material having been

once for all sanctified when the Son of God took human flesh, and

being thenceforth worthy of all honour. From this we may learn both

how it came to pass that the most religious men of the age became

enthusiasts for what was in itself superstitious, and also what was

the cardinal point of difference between them and their opponents.

For, while the one side regarded figures of Christ as a degradation of

a heavenly being, to the other they were a practical confession of His

true humanity, and any disregard of them appeared in the light of a

denial of the Incarnation. At last, when it was found that the Emperor

persevered in his attack, the iconoclasts were anathematised by the

orthodox congregations in all the Mahometan countries outside the

Empire. Both John and Gregory protested throughout against the

interference of the State with the Church in this matter as being

beyond its province; and, owing to the close connection which existed

between the clergy and the people, they were generally regarded as the

assertors of liberty and of the right of private judgment in

opposition to despotism."

The indirect effects of Leo's action were even more important than the

obvious ones. The division which ensued between Italy, resisting

iconoclasm under the Pope's authority, and the imperial power made the

Emperor decide to transfer to the patriarch of Constantinople the

jurisdiction over Sicily and Calabria, leaving to the Pope that over

the exarchate of Ravenna which still nominally obeyed the Cæsar. The

meaning of this is thus expressed by Professor Bury.

"The effect of this act of Leo, which went far to decide the mediæval

history of Southern Italy, was to bring the boundary between the

ecclesiastical dominions of New Rome and Old Rome into coincidence

with the boundary between the Greek and the Latin nationalities. In

other words, it laid the basis of the distinction between the Greek

and the Latin Churches. The only part of the Empire in which the Pope

now possessed authority was the exarchate, including Rome, Ravenna and

Venice. The geographical position of Naples, intermediate between Rome

and the extremities of Italy, determined that its sympathies should be

drawn in two directions; in religious matters it inclined towards Old

Rome, in political matters it was tenacious of its loyalty to New

Rome."[13]

But this was not all. An immense immigration of persecuted monks and

priests as well as lay folk practically recolonised much of Southern

Italy.

Constantine Copronymus was far more eager than his father to push the

iconoclastic campaign. In 761 he began a deliberate and bitter

persecution of those who opposed him. Already, under Leo the Isaurian,

the virgin Theodosia had been martyred. Her festival is still kept on

May 29, and the church raised to her memory still stands transformed

into a mosque just within the Aya Kapou, on the Golden Horn. Many whom

the Greek Church still commemorates were now slain and others

tortured. Constantine was equally hostile to monks, and he was as

bitter against his creatures whom he suspected as against those who

openly disputed his will. The patriarch whom he had set up fell into

disgrace in spite of his support of iconoclasm. He was degraded in S.

Sophia, carried round the Hippodrome sitting backwards on an ass, and

at last beheaded as a traitor.

The successor of Constantine, Leo IV., was significant only in that he

followed his policy of persecution. He left the crown in 780 to his

son Constantine and his widow Irene. Conspiracies, real or alleged, of

his brothers were bitterly punished. The Empress Irene was satisfied

so long as her son was still a boy to allow him a nominal share in the

government; but when he grew up and showed an independent spirit, she

used the growing unpopularity which came upon him after his

repudiation of his wife to raise a party against him, and hired troops

to take his life. He escaped death only to lose his eyes, and his

wicked mother, surrounded by degraded favourites, reigned alone. It

was she whom the great Teutonic King Charles was ready to wed, and the

failure of the negotiations led, with other more notable causes, to

the creation of the new empire of the West, so long held by German

Cæsars, but professing still to be--as that of Constantinople

historically was--the heir of the ancient empire of the Roman world.

Wicked as Irene was, it was given to her to restore peace to the

Church, and to reunite though only for a time the Catholic Church

throughout the world. So completely was the popular feeling against

the iconoclasts that it needed little of the intrigue or violence

which Irene was so ready to use to secure the result she desired. In

786, when her worst passions had not been revealed and she still lived

in union with her son, the seventh General Council met at Nicaea. It

was attended by representatives from Italy as well as from the East,

and as its decisions represent the use and teaching of the Eastern

Church to-day, they may here be summarised in Professor Bury's words.

"At the seventh sitting (5th or 6th October), the definition (ὅρος)

of doctrine was drawn up; after a summary repetition of the chief

points of theology established by previous Universal Councils, it

is laid down that the figure of the holy cross and holy images,

whether coloured or plain, whether consisting of stone or of any other

material, may be represented on vessels, garment, walls or tables, in

houses or on public roads; especially figures of Christ, the Virgin,

angels, or holy men: such representations, it is observed, stimulate

spectators to think of the originals, and, while they must not be

adored with that worship which is only for God (λατρεία) deserve

adoration (προσκύνησις)."[14]

But Irene's services to the Church were not allowed then, any more

than we should allow them now, to preserve her in power. The stars in

their courses seemed to the superstitious to fight against her, and,

though she held the crown she had so ill-won for five years, the end

came at last by the treachery of those she had raised to highest

place. "For five years," says Gibbon, "the Roman world bowed to the

government of a female; and, as she moved through the streets of

Constantinople, the reins of four milk-white steeds were held by as

many patricians, who marched on foot before the golden chariot of

their queen." But among the patricians whom she had chosen was the

treasurer Nicephorus, who on October 31, 802, having captured his

benefactress, and with some spark of generosity, undestroyed by his

ambition and his avarice, sent her to banishment rather than to death,

ascended the throne of the Cæsars.

With him began a new dynasty, a new century, and in some ways a new

era for the imperial city.

During the eighth century Constantinople, as a city, underwent a great

change. This was not merely due to the incessant ebb and flow of

population, the coming and going of different detachments of the

imperial army, the founding of new monasteries by men from all parts

of the Christian world, the opening of new commercial establishments,

the coming of new trading embassies, but to one great and

irremediable disaster. From 745 to 747 the city was devastated by the

plague, that bubonic distemper, so familiar already but now more

terribly destructive than ever before. The words of Theophanes, who

lived when the remembrance of it was still fresh, though they have

been often quoted, may be quoted again. They stand side by side with

the modern records of the still powerful pestilence.

"And in the spring of the first indiction (747) the pestilence spread

to a greater extent, and in summer its flame culminated to such a

height that whole houses were entirely shut up, and those on whom the

office devolved could not bury their dead. In the embarrassment of the

circumstances, the plan was conceived of carrying out the dead on

saddled animals, on whose backs were placed frameworks of planks. In

the same way they placed the corpses above one another in waggons. And

when all the burying-grounds in the city and suburbs had been filled,

and also the dry cisterns and tanks, and very many vineyards had been

dug up, the gardens too within the old walls were used for the purpose

of burying human bodies, and even thus the need was hardly met."

[Illustration: THE AQUEDUCT OF VALENS]

The effect of the great loss of life which ensued was felt at once. At

the very time when multitudes were seeking refuge in Italy from the

iconoclastic persecution, came this new depopulation, and Constantine

found himself obliged to encourage, and even enforce, immigration from

every part of his dominions. Chiefly he brought Greeks from the

mainland, and their places were filled by Slaves from the North.

Greece and the Balkan States as they appear to-day, and even to some

degree Constantinople itself took a new and marked departure in the

middle of the eighth century. Constantinople received a new Greek

population and, while its official classes still preserved the pomp

and dignity of Roman traditions, began to feel itself more than ever

Greek. None the less it was still actively and obviously cosmopolitan.

Scholars from all parts of the world came to the university where

ancient classics were still read and where Greek was still a living

tongue. Constantine actually made Nicetas, a man of Slavonic race,

patriarch, and it is said that his clergy mocked at his pronunciation

of the Greek of the Gospel. Armenians had already become almost as

prominent in the city as they are to-day; at the beginning of the

ninth century one of them actually became Emperor. As early as the

reign of Justin II. a large colony of traders from Central Asia was

established in the city. When communication became easier and the

power of the Roman State, reviving under Heraclius, more wide spread,

the riches of the city increased. It is noted that the influence of

the Church was steadily directed against luxury, and that nothing at

all like the scenes described by Juvenal or Petronius marked the

Byzantium of the days of the iconoclasts. Constantine himself was a

man who lived freely, and the monks whom he attacked commented

severely on his life. But the rich men of Constantinople, as a rule,

though they delighted in the outward adorning of gold and precious

stones, and loved entertainments, the circus and excursions on the

Bosphorus, lived on the whole simply. Though the churches, as well as

the houses, glittered with mosaics and gems, the asceticism which the

many monasteries kept always visibly before the eyes of the people,

had its influence among the rich as well as the poor. Rich though the

imperial city was it was rich most of all in its churches and its

relics. And indeed the constant danger from without, and the pressing

needs of a large population, both gave employment to great numbers and

gave to the government always some practical work which kept up the

taxes. The laws, it has been observed, recognised the duty of the

State to provide work for the people, and to see that they did it.

Idleness was regarded as a crime as well as a sin: the State declared

that for this reason it must actively discourage it, and no less

because "it is unfair that strong men should live by the consumption

of the superfluity of the labour of others, because that superfluity

is owed to the weak." It is noted also that "besides the inevitable

staff of public workmen, who, in a city like Byzantium, where fires

were frequent and earthquakes not uncommon, had much to do beyond the

repairs necessitated by the wear and tear of time, the State also

supported multitudes of bakers"--for the State still followed the

Roman rule and provided the poor with bread as well as public

games--"and we are taught that the gardens, to which we sometimes meet

casual references in the historians, were not the property of private

citizens, but were parks for the people, kept up at the State's

expense." Already we see that some of the features most prominent in

the city to-day belonged to it in the early Middle Age. The great Dome

of S. Sophia glittered upon the wayfarer as he sailed up towards the

mouth of the Golden Horn, and the city as the soldier looked at it

from the tower of Heraclius was a city set in bowers of perpetual

green. Another feature as prominent, which the foreigner sees from the

heights of Pera, owes its preservation to Constantine Copronymus. The

aqueduct of Valens had been destroyed by the Avars in the reign of

Heraclius, Constantine brought thousands of workmen together and

repaired it, and the water flowed as of old into the capacious

cisterns which were the work of the greatest of eastern architects.

The ninth century began with the new and short-lived dynasty of

Nicephorus. "His character," says Gibbon, "was stained with the three

odious vices of hypocrisy, ingratitude and avarice; his want of virtue

was not redeemed by any superior talents nor his want of talents by

any pleasing qualifications." The historians, being ecclesiastics,

resented his attempt to assert the most extreme claims of the

iconoclastic emperors to rule the Church, and the people despised him

for his treachery and his failures in war. He fell in 811 in battle

against the Bulgarians. In six months his son, Stauricius, followed

him to the tomb. Michael Rhangabe, who had married Procopia, the

daughter of Nicephorus, then reigned for two years, but his weakness

caused his deposition, and the people of Constantinople found a new

sovereign, Leo the Armenian, forced upon them by the army. During his

reign the imperial city was again besieged. Hadrianople was lost, and

but for the death of the Bulgarian king it seems unlikely that Leo

would have been able to drive back the forces which overran the

peninsula. Yet Leo, conqueror though he was, was able to hold the

crown but little longer than his predecessors. In 820 a conspiracy of

his generals, which his own generosity had made possible, attacked him

as he sang matins on Christmas Day, and slew him at the foot of the

altar in the chapel. He did not reign without leaving a memorial of

his rule which lasts to this day. The wall of Heraclius was not

thought fully to defend the quarter of Blachernae. Leo determined to

build another wall and dig a broad moat in front of the Heraclian

wall. "The wall of Leo," says Professor Van Millingen, "stands 77 feet

to the west of the wall of Heraclius, running parallel to it for some

260 feet, after which it turns to join the walls along the Golden

Horn." It is a strong fortification, and the number of attacks

afterwards delivered on that quarter show how necessary it was that it

should be strong. "Its parapet-walk was supported upon arches, which

served at the same time to buttress the wall itself, a comparatively

slight structure about 8 feet thick. With a view of increasing the

wall's capacity for defence, it was flanked by four small towers,

while its lower portion was pierced by numerous loopholes. Two of the

towers were on the side facing the Golden Horn, and the other two

guarded the extremities of the side looking towards the country on the

west. The latter towers projected inwards from the rear of the wall,

and between them was a gateway corresponding to the Heraclian gate of

Blachernae."[15]

Michael II., called the Stammerer, who was then brought from the

dungeon to the throne, and on whose legs,--such was the haste of the

revolution,--the fetters actually remained for some hours after he was

Emperor, was twice besieged in Constantinople by a rival general, but

was relieved by the Bulgarians, and showed to the captured leader,

Thomas the Slavonian, none of the mercy that had been shown to

himself. He died in 829, and his son Theophilus reigned in his stead.

Of his character and reign the most contradictory reports are given;

but it is interesting to recall the scene of his choice of a wife, as

Theophanes tells it. He determined to choose a bride from among the

beauties of Constantinople, and when they were assembled he walked

between two lines of lovely damsels. When he came to the poetess

Kasia, he addressed her in verse:

διὰ γυναικὸς εἰσερρύη τὰ φαῦλα.

She replied, more happily,

ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ γυναικὸς τὰ κρείττονα πηγάζει.

It was in the style of the old Greek poets: the leaders of each

semichorus championing the cause of their sex in the immortal

question: "Through woman evil things entered"; "but also through woman

better things well forth." The lady was too witty to be empress, and

Theodora, who was chosen instead, became not only a happy wife but a

wise regent after the death of Theophilus. He died in 842, and

Theodora was regent for her son Michael till 856. Her husband had been

Iconoclast, and he scourged those who would not receive his edict. His

widow declared that he had repented on his death-bed, and procured his

absolution after death. Before the year of his death was out Theodora

had replaced the images and a synod had reiterated the right and

benefit of image-"worship." But the independence of the Eastern Church

was none the less fully secured; and the indignant protests of Popes

showed that they were becoming, as their own pretensions grew, more

and more estranged from Constantinople.

The wisdom of the mother was not rewarded in the life of her son.

Michael III. was perhaps the most contemptible sovereign who ever sat

on the imperial throne of the East. He gave himself up to pleasure and

in particular to the Circus. He was a drunkard and buffoon, and he

delighted to mock in public processions the most sacred ordinances of

the Christian religion. In 867 he was murdered by one whom he had

raised almost to the purple. The years of his reign were diversified

by sieges--notably the first attack of some hitherto unknown

barbarians from the North-East.

Between the ninth and the eleventh centuries Constantinople was

attacked four times by the Russians. The traders told of the riches of

the city, and the barbarians were eager to carry them away. In June

860 they actually anchored in the Bosphorus and attacked the walls,

but the return of Michael III. drove them off, and they were

afterwards completely defeated. A second attempt is said to have taken

place in 907, when the rough barks of the pirates were drawn over the

isthmus; a third in 941 was as completely defeated; and again in 1048

the Greek fire proved effective.

But these later sieges were still in the far future when Michael, with

the aid, men said, of the Blessed Virgin of the Blachernae, scattered

the invaders, and passed again into the seclusion of his corrupt

court, from whose recesses no news but that of murders and

debaucheries seems ever to have penetrated without. "The state of

society at the Court of Constantinople," says Finlay, "was not

amenable to public opinion, for few knew much of what passed within

the walls of the great palace; but yet the immense machinery of the

imperial administration gave the Emperor's power a solid basis, always

opposed to the temporary vices of the courtiers. The order which

rendered property secure, and enabled the industrious classes to

prosper, through the equitable administration of the Roman law,

nourished the vitality of the Empire, when the madness of a Nero and

the drunkenness of a Michael appeared to threaten political order with

ruin. The people, carefully secluded from public business, and almost

without any knowledge of the proceedings of their government, were in

all probability little better acquainted with the intrigues and crimes

of their day than we are at present. They acted, therefore, only when

some real suffering or imaginary grievance brought oppression directly

home to their interests or their feelings. Court murders were to them

no more than a tragedy or a scene in the amphitheatre, at which they

were not present."[16]

Thus, when Cæsar followed Cæsar, with no change for the city over

which they were supposed to rule, the intrigues and scandals which

disgraced the reign of Michael III. raised scarce a stir among the

people; and when he died by the hands of one who had taken--it was

said--a base part in some of the most degraded of his acts, men hardly

wondered and certainly did not condemn.

Basil the Macedonian, had had a romantic life. As a boy he had

wandered penniless to Constantinople, and slept on the steps of the

church of S. Diomed. The kindness shown to the wayfarer by the abbat

of the monastery attached to the church was rewarded, when Basil

became Emperor, by the erection of a new church and monastery, some

pillars of which still lie neglected upon the beach of the Sea of

Marmora, not far from Yedi Koulé station. His immense strength,

personal beauty, and acute intelligence, soon made their way, and he

completed his ascent to power it is said by marrying a mistress of

Michael III.

As sovereign and the founder of a dynasty, Basil the Macedonian was

amongst the greatest of the Emperors. He was a successful warrior, an

able administrator of finance, a great builder of churches, and a

repairer of the walls. But his greatest glory is that of restorer of

the ancient Roman law. He returned, as has been shown by Professor

Bury,[17] to the principles of Justinian, in the Basilica, which were

the most important reconstruction of Roman law in the Middle Ages, and

the last it received.

We must hurry over these years, in which Constantinople itself

underwent but few changes. Leo VI., the "philosopher," who has been

more happily called a pedant, left no trace on the history of the

city, save his name as a repairer on one of the towers of the

sea-walls by Koum Kapou. His son, Constantine VII., called

Porphyrogenitus, because he was "born in the purple," (_i.e._ not when

his father was Emperor, but because of the porphyry lined chamber

reserved for his mother at his birth), was at first under the charge

of his uncle Alexander and then of his mother Zoe, and lastly of a

successful general Romanus, who surrounded himself with a galaxy of

imperial sons, allowing Constantine VII. also still to retain the

title of Emperor.

"The studious temper and retirement of Constantine," says Gibbon,

"disarmed the jealousy of power; his books and music, his pen and his

pencil, were a constant source of amusement; and, if he could improve

a scanty allowance by the sale of his pictures, if their price was not

enhanced by the name of the artist, he was endowed with a personal

talent which few princes could employ in the hour of adversity."

Constantine was much more than a student. A plot against Romanus and

the other Cæsars enabled him to resume power, which he held with

credit for seventeen years. As a writer he is one of the most

important of all the Byzantine historians.

The chief feature indeed of this age is its literary interest. Two

Emperors ruled whose pride it was to be men of letters. Leo the wise,

and Constantine born in the purple, were both men who wrote of war

and government as they knew them, and left to their successors

remarkable pictures of their times. Leo describes the military forces

which had still a magnificent organisation and a record of victory and

valour but little tarnished. The nobles of Constantinople could fight

as well as intrigue. Rich, brave and popular, the ancient families

which lingered so long after the Mohammedan conquest in the ancient

houses of the Phanar could always be relied upon to furnish gallant

officers for the troops. Constantine wrote of the Themes, of the

Imperial administration, and of the court ceremonial--the last an

extraordinary work describing the dignity and state of the emperors,

and regulating the minutest detail of the pomp with which their daily

life was surrounded.

The Court of the Eastern Empire indeed was by far the most brilliant

of the Middle Ages, and the Empire itself, weak and corrupt though it

may seem, was much the strongest government of the time, and the one

under which life and property were most secure. The commerce of

Constantinople was still greater probably than that of any other city

of the world. East and West poured their treasures into the city.

The reign of Constantine Porphyrogenitus was diversified, like those

of so many of his predecessors, as has already been said, by

revolutions, which placed many Cæsars on at least the steps of the

throne. Romanus and his sons Constantine (called the Eighth) and

Stephen, came to an end in 945, and from that time till his death in

958 Constantine VII. reigned alone. His son, Romanus II., succeeded

him, and to him came a time of war, in which his arms were victorious

over the Mohammedans through the genius of his general, Nicephorus

Phocas. In 963 Romanus died, and Nicephorus, marrying his widow

Theophano, became joint Emperor with the young Basil.

Nicephorus was above all things a warrior. He recovered for the Empire

the lands of Cilicia, North Syria, and Cyprus. His triumph in 966,

celebrated in the Hippodrome and in the great street of the city, was

the prelude to many another great military display; yet not being sole

Emperor, he never entered in triumph through the Golden gate, though

it was at that gate that he was received in 963 when he began his

joint reign.[18] But his life as Emperor was an unhappy one. So

unpopular was he in the city, owing to his opposition to the lavish

generosity of his predecessors and to his debasement of the coinage,

that he was often stoned in the streets and had to fortify the great

Palace; and his portrait has been limned for posterity by his enemies.

Chief among the pictures of mediæval Constantinople is that drawn by

Liudprand, bishop of Cremona, who came on behalf of the Emperor Otto

I. to treat of a marriage between Theophano, the daughter of the

Emperor Romanus, and the future Otto II.

Liudprand had visited Constantinople in 948. Then he spoke of the

great palace to which he was admitted to audience with Constantine

Porphyrogenitus, of its golden tree in which golden birds of divers

kinds sang sweetly, of the golden lions that guarded the throne,

shaking the earth with the beat of their tails, and roaring at the

approach of the envoys--marvellous features of the Eastern Court which

the Emperor had not forgotten to record in his account of the

ceremonial. Then he saw, too, the Emperor recline at dinner after the

ancient fashion, he saw the games of the Hippodrome, and he marvelled

at the size of the fruit and at the extraordinary acrobatic strength

of the boys of the circus. Then he was treated with great distinction.

Now, in 968, his reception was very different. In his letter to the

two Ottos he declared that he even lodged in a roofless house, exposed

to heat and cold, and constantly under guard, and that he suffered

agonies from the resinous Greek wine. First he saw Basil, the

Emperor's brother, and then he was admitted to the presence of

Nicephorus himself, whom he describes as more a monster than a man,

black as an Ethiop, and small as a pigmy. A pretty argument took place

between envoy and Emperor; the Greek refusing the imperial title to

the German Cæsars of the West, while the Western bishop would not

allow any rights of the East to the Italian lands of old Rome. Their

converse was interrupted by the hour of prayer, and Liudprand joined

the procession to S. Sophia. Tradesmen and low-born folk, says the

contemptuous bishop, lined the streets, many of them barefoot, because

of the holiness of the procession. Nicephorus alone wore gold and

jewels.

When they entered the great church the choir sang "Lo there cometh the

morning star. The dawn riseth. He reflects the rays of the sun.

Nicephorus our ruler, the pale death of the Saracens."[19] The famous

phrase, "pallida mors Saracenorum," which Liudprand uses, was to be

terribly avenged; but then it was a triumphant expression of the

safety which the city owed to the wise Emperor. As he went, says

Liudprand, "his lords the Emperors" (Basil and Constantine, the sons

of Romanus) bowed before him. After the Eucharist the bishop dined

with the Emperor, and was again, he says, subject to his taunts. "You

are not Romans but Lombards," was the Eastern mockery of the German

imperialism; and the reply was that to the Westerns there was no name

more contemptible than that of Roman. Such abrupt witticisms naturally

consigned Liudprand again to his "hated dwelling, or more truly,

prison." He wrote to Basil the curopalates (a post of honour second

only to that of Cæsar) and John Tzimisces the Logothete, beseeching

that if his mission was not favourably received, he might return at

once; and then in an interview with Nicephorus, in the presence of

Basil the chamberlain (_parakinomenos_) he pressed the proposal of

Otto for a marriage. The Emperor replied that it was unheard of that a

princess born in the purple, the child of an Emperor born in the

purple, should be given in marriage to a "gentile" or "barbarian." So

day by day the meetings were renewed and the proud Italian thought

that he was treated each time with new indignity, being even set below

a Bulgarian envoy--to whose master the Greeks would even allow the

title of "Vasileus" (βασιλεύς) which they would not give to Otto,

and towards whose people alone it seemed that the Eastern Empire

at this time had any kindly feeling. Theology as well as politics were

often in question, and the Italian bishop was mocked at for the

modernism of his doctrines, as the Greeks mock the Latins to-day. He

was kept, he says, in company with five lions; and the women, as he

passed through the streets, called out in pity at his woe-worn

appearance. Sometimes he visited the Emperor in the camp at Balukli

(εἰς πήγας, he says, in one of his snatches of Greek) and quoted

Plato to him; sometimes he had to listen to homilies of S. John

Chrysostom read aloud; more often he had to hear what seemed to him

the grossest insults of the Germans and the Latins, insults which he

gladly returned in his report to the Ottos upon "the wild ass

Nicephorus," and which he even ventured, he says, to write on the

wall of his prison in verses none too easily to be understood. At

length he was allowed to leave the city, "once most opulent and

flourishing, now half-starved, perjured, lying, cunning, greedy,

rapacious, avaricious, boastful." His report, as we have it, breaks

off in a torrent of denunciations of the Greeks and their ways. His

mission was a failure, but Theophano, refused by Nicephorus, was

afterwards given by John Tzimisces, to be bride to Otto II.

This curious survival of tenth century opinion illustrates the almost

total severance which had now come about between the East and the

West, and shows how natural was the destruction which was soon to come

upon the city of the Cæsars. The West had ceased to feel for the

Eastern survival of empire anything of brotherhood or Christian

fellowship. First it would seek to conquer the bulwark of Christendom

for itself; then it would let it fall before the conquering infidels.

Nicephorus did not long retain the throne he had so well defended.

John Tzimisces (or Tchemchkik), an Armenian, who won the favour of the

Empress Theophano, joined in a plot to overthrow his benefactor, and

Nicephorus was murdered in the palace. John Tzimisces reigned in his

stead. He made treaty with the patriarch Polyeuctus, by which he gave

up the claim that Nicephorus had asserted, that all episcopal

nominations should only be valid by the Emperor's consent. He gave

high promotion to the dignified and imposing Basil, the chamberlain

whom Psellus the historian describes as so impressive a person. He

banished the wicked Empress Theophano to the Princes' islands. Then he

reigned as joint Emperor with the young Emperors Basil and

Constantine, whose rights he was scrupulous to preserve.

John Tzimisces was famous as a gallant defender of the empire. The

people of Constantinople knew him chiefly for the imposing ceremonies

of his accession, of his second marriage with Theodora, daughter of

Constantine VII., and of his departure for war against the barbarian

invaders, when the clergy led him in pomp to his embarkation on the

Golden Horn, and blessed his ships, and the citizens watched a naval

sham fight from the walls. Domestic rebellions--those of Bardas,

Sclerus, and of the family of Phocas--as well as the dangerous Russian

invasions--distracted his reign: but Tzimisces was a successful

general, and by his conquest over the Russians under Swiatoslaf he

preserved the Empire, and began that association of teaching and

Christian influence which is returned to-day by the orthodox Russians

to the Church of Constantinople, which is their mother, and which now,

in her time-honoured conservatism, weak though she is, she is inclined

rather to resent than to welcome. From his conquest John Tzimisces

returned in triumph to Constantinople through the Golden gate,

followed by his soldiers and his captives, greeted by the Church and

by the officers of his court, and watched by the vast population of

the imperial city. It was one of the greatest of the triumphs, as it

was one of the last. The ancient usages were retained in all their

pomp. The senate met the Emperor at the gate with the conqueror's

chaplet and with the golden chariot drawn by four white horses, in

which they besought him to drive through the streets. Dramatically he

showed his sympathy with the religious feeling of his people; the

chariot should carry the Ikon of the Blessed Virgin which he had taken

in Bulgaria and to which he attributed his victories: he would ride

behind, clothed as an emperor and a general, and would offer in S.

Sophia the crown of the conquered Bulgarian kings. Then in the palace

the young Bulgarian chieftain Boris, who had followed his triumph on

foot, was despoiled of the insignia of sovereignty, yet ranked among

the officers of the imperial court.

It was not the last of the victories of John Tzimisces. He returned

more than once a conqueror from Armenia and Mesopotamia. He died in

976, in the midst of his victories; and since the young Emperors whom

he had guarded were now grown to man's estate, men spoke of his death

as mysterious and as probably due to poison.

In Basil II. the Empire again had a warrior Emperor, but one who added

to the delights of war the devotion of an almost monastic religion.

While his brother, Constantine IX., confined himself to the court and

its pleasures, Basil in many hard-won fights achieved the title of

Bulgaroktonos, the slayer of the Bulgarians. For thirty-four years he

fought the great King Samuel, who had built up a power in the Balkans,

till at last he utterly broke up the Slavs, captured all their

fortresses, and extended the frontier of the Empire to Belgrade, and

so down the Danube to the Black Sea. It was, as Gibbon says, "since

the time of Belisarius, the most important triumph of the Roman arms."

Victories also he won in the East, but they served only to break down

the kingdom of Armenia, and thus to destroy what might have been a

bulwark against the infidel. Basil, who reigned from 963 to 1025, when

he died at the age of sixty-eight, and who for more than fifty years

was practically the sole ruler of the Empire, was a stern, vigorous

man, sharp in speech, often cruel in victory, serious and restrained

in life, but fond of mirth in his moments of ease. He was a complete

contrast to his idle brother, who lived it seemed only for the

Hippodrome and the society of the ladies of his court. Basil was never

married. Constantine, who survived him three years, left three

daughters.[20] During his long reign Basil had swept away all rivals

from his path: the great chamberlain Basil had early been banished,

and there was no dynasty to compete with the Macedonians in the last

days of their power.

Basil taught the people that the Emperor could rule without the

intervention of courtiers, and thus when he died the imperial city

looked for a man to be at its head. If they had feared rather than

loved the great conqueror of the Bulgarians, they respected him

because he had kept up the power of the Church and had patronised the

learning which still had its home in the East. He left to his

successors the alliance of the patriarchal See and a school of

literature founded on classic models, which, with all its

affectations, gave to the eleventh century an important group of

historical writers. In no age, too, was Byzantine art, the art of

working in ivory, of miniature, of mosaic, more vigorous. With the

death of Basil, however long it might be disguised, the decay began.

When Constantine died his three daughters survived him, Eudocia who

preferred a convent to a throne, and Zoe and Theodora, ladies of more

ambitious temper. Zoe before her father died was wedded--she was

forty-eight--to Romanus Argyrus, an elderly noble already married,

whose wife was banished to a convent. Romanus III. was for six years

(1028-1034) the nominal ruler of the Empire. He thought himself a

philosopher and a warrior; but, says Psellus, "he thought he knew far

more than he did." Some of his acts were useful--as his repair of the

walls after the earthquakes of 1032 and 1033, commemorated by an

inscription on the fourth tower from the Sea of Marmora, shows. But

the historian mocks at his long drawn-out building of the monastery of

S. Mary Peribleptos and says that a "whole mountain was excavated" to

supply the stones. It was his most enduring memorial, and, several

times rebuilt, it still survives in the possession of the Armenians as

the monastery of S. George, not far from the Psamatia station.

But the Emperor's dreams of war, philosophy and building, were rudely

disturbed by the intrigue of his wife with a young Paphlagonian

soldier, Michael. He professed to disbelieve it, though it was

notorious to the court. His complaisance perhaps allowed him to die in

peace, though some said he was killed by a slow poison. On the very

day of his death Zoe elevated Michael to the throne, and before the

burial of Romanus the senate kissed the right hand of his successor.

Michael appears before us in the pages of the rhetorical Psellus as

almost a hero and a saint. He reclaimed sinners after the manner of

Justinian, he reformed the administration, he daily worshipped God in

the services of the Church, and nightly walked the streets to watch

and to prevent crime. One of the strangest pictures of mediæval

Constantinople is that which Psellus gives us of the unwearied

Emperor, disguised in monkish dress, passing swiftly "like lightning"

through the streets at night, watching that his people might be

preserved from crime. Yet with all his virtues he was a drunkard, and

the epileptic fits to which he became more and more subject were

probably due to his vices. So terribly did his affliction increase

upon him that when he gave audience it was necessary to surround him

with curtains which could in a moment be drawn to hide his paroxysms,

and when he rode his guards formed a circle about him. His greedy

relations surrounded him and urged him to provide for them, and when

he had signalised his reign by a heroic defence of the Empire against

a rising of the Bulgarians he returned in triumph only to retire to a

monastery and to die.

Zoe emerged from the seclusion in which she had passed the last years

of her young husband's life, and was induced by her family to make his

nephew, Michael Kalaphates Emperor. Raised to the throne by his family

he set himself at once to reduce it to the lowest depths. "The names

of kinship, the common tie of kindred blood, appeared to him mere

childishness, and it would have been nothing to him if one wave had

engulfed all his kin." The same measure he meted to the nobles and the

officials; but he courted popularity with the traders and the populace

more than any of his predecessors had done, and when he showed himself

in the streets silk carpets were strewn before him and he was greeted

as the noblest of the Cæsars. Yet he relied too much upon the fickle

mob. When the senate consented to his banishment of Zoe, shorn as a

nun, to Prince's Island, he proclaimed his act in the forum of

Constantine for the acceptance of the people.

But Constantinople again showed that, favoured as it had been like a

petted child, it could show its power. The people assembled in knots

at street corners and protested against the banishment of the heiress

of the Macedonian warrior. The conclaves became a riot and the riot a

revolution. Women ran through the streets tearing their hair and

beating their breasts. Officers of State joined the mob, and they

rushed to destroy the houses of the Emperor's family. Zoe was hastily

recalled from Prinkipo, and shown in purple robes to the people in the

Hippodrome. But it was too late. The mob broke open the monastery of

the Petrion (by the Phanar) where her sister Theodora had long lived

in retirement, and forced her to go with them to S. Sophia and there

the patriarch Alexius and the vast crowd hailed her as Empress. The

Emperor and his uncle took refuge in the church of the Studium. They

were dragged from the altar and their eyes were put out; and Zoe and

Theodora, who hated each other, became joint Empresses.

Their rule was extravagant and reckless; and while the State was

advancing rapidly towards bankruptcy, the aged Zoe took a third

husband, after two attempts at choice, wedding Constantine Monomachus,

who reigned from 1042 to 1054 as Constantine X. The old Empress and

her young husband gave themselves entirely to pleasure, to luxury and

buffoonery. The Emperor, generous in giving and knowing how to confer

benefits after the manner of an Emperor, beautified the city by the

building of the magnificent monastery of S. George at the Mangana

(near Deirmen Kapou on the Mamora), and amused the citizens by showing

them an elephant and a camelopard. The court which Constantine and Zoe

gathered round them was a strange assembly; its chief personage was

the Emperor's mistress Skleraina, whom the Empress treated as a

friend. The people resented the conjunction and cried "we will not

have Skleraina to reign over us, nor on her account shall our

purple-born mothers, Zoe and Theodora, die." The aged Zoe herself

appeased them. It was an extraordinary state of society, reminding us

of the eighteenth century in France: the intrigues that Psellus tells

are indeed hardly credible. But the social corruption coexisted with a

real revival of learning. Constantinople became the centre of a new

study of literature, which had decayed since the iconoclastic emperors

set themselves to destroy culture and Leo III. abolished the

University. Constantine refounded the University, endowing two

chairs--philosophy and law--which were held by Psellus and his

friend, John Xiphilinos. A revival of the study of the classics

followed this institution: Psellus considered himself a Platonist, and

he thought himself worthy to represent as well as to revive the best

traditions of Greek literature. In the hands of Anna Comnena and her

contemporaries, the purism which the writers affected became little

more than an Attic euphuism.

While the Emperor and his friends were thus busy with trifles, and the

government was in the hands sometimes of wise ministers such as

Leichudes, sometimes of mere thieves, the throne was constantly

threatened by revolts (of which the most famous was that of George

Maniakes) and by direct attacks on the city, such as that of the

Russians, and in 1047 of Leo Tornikos. This latter was nearly

successful. Many of the citizens were ready to join him, and but for

the military skill shown by Constantine (if we rightly read the

rhetorical description of Psellus) Leo would probably have entered and

found himself welcomed as Emperor.

In 1054 Constantine X. died, and the aged Theodora, the last survivor

of the Macedonian house, came forth again from her convent and reigned

with the aid of ministers who were at least capable and honest. On her

death, after two years as sole ruler, the throne passed, by her wish,

to an able but aged soldier, Michael Stratioticus.

Psellus shows that the accession of this sovereign marked a crisis in

the history of the Empire. Constantine X. had reformed the Senate,

opening it to all men of merit apart from their birth. Michael VI.

thought he could rely entirely on the civil functionaries, but the

army was still strong enough to dictate to the Emperor, and his unwise

acts led to an alliance between the generals and the energetic

patriarch Michael Cerularius. Michael attempted to negotiate with

Isaac Comnenus, whom the army had chosen as their leader, and who was

encamped at Nicæa (Isnik); but before the envoys, among whom was

Psellus, had completed their mission, a rising in the city, led by

some discontented senators, had dethroned and slain Michael, and the

whole city was waiting to welcome Isaac as Emperor.

Constantinople in this revolution decisively chose her own Emperor.

The Senate and the chiefs of certain "clubs" (the successors of the

factions of the Circus so prominent four centuries before) guided, as

seems probable, by the patriarch, carried the city with them. Isaac

they summoned from Skutari: Michael departed to a monastery with the

patriarch's kiss of peace.

The scene when Isaac was about to cross the Bosphorus to receive his

crown was a dramatic one. He called Psellus, the envoy of his deposed

rival, to him, and said, when the philosopher spoke of the enthusiasm

of the people, "I liked thy tongue better when it reviled me than now

when it speaks smooth words." But he began his reign by an amnesty,

for he made Psellus president of the Senate, and Michael the

patriarch--however much he may have distrusted him--he treated with

the fullest confidence and honour.

While these political and dynastic changes had supplied the Empire

with a new ruler almost every year, the growing alienation between

East and West had been marked decisively by the separation of the

Churches. Two great names embody in the East the final protest against

Roman assumption. The Church of Constantinople had never abandoned its

claim to equality with that of Rome, though it allowed to the ancient

city the primacy of honour. Photius, who became patriarch in 858, and

died in 891, owed his throne to an election which was not canonical,

and though a council in 861 at Constantinople, at which papal legates

were present, confirmed him in his office, Pope Nicholas I. declared

that its decisions were illegal, and that Photius was deposed and

excommunicated, while the Emperor himself was attacked in language of

peculiar vehemence. The papal claim to decide between two claimants to

the patriarchate was fiercely resented. Photius declared the equality

of his see with that of Rome. To the Roman claim of jurisdiction,

complicated also by assertions of supremacy over the Bulgarian Church,

were added points of theological contention which the churches debated

with as much eagerness, and it would seem, as little desire, to arrive

at a reasonable solution. The addition of the words _Filioque_ to the

Nicene Creed, asserting the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the

Father and the Son, was, and is, resented by the Greeks as an addition

to "the faith once for all delivered to the Saints." The use of

unleavened bread in the Holy Eucharist was regarded in the East as an

heretical innovation. There were, and are, other points of dispute;

but none, it is probable, but for the strong national feeling of Italy

and of Greece, would have caused a final breach.

The position which Photius defended with skill and vigour in the ninth

century was reasserted by Michael Cerularius in the eleventh. He

regarded the teaching of the West on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity,

says Psellus, as an intolerable heresy; and he was prompt to reassert

jurisdiction over the churches of Apulia, now conquered by the Normans

and made subject to Rome. The final breach came from Rome itself. On

July 16, 1054, two legates of the Pope laid on the altar of S. Sophia

the act of excommunication which severed the patriarch from the

communion of the West, and condemned what were asserted to be seven

deadly heresies of the Eastern Church.

But to return to the imperial revolution.

Isaac Comnenus, who was called to the throne in 1057, had been brought

up in the palace, but he was none the less a warrior and a man of

determination, who had served the Empire well. He reigned only for two

years, and then retired to end his days in religion, in the famous and

beautiful monastery of the Studium, which looks from a slight

elevation over the Sea of Marmora, some half mile away, and whose half

ruined walls are to-day among the most striking of the memorials of

the past that Constantinople can show.

With the beginning of the dynasty of the Comneni the causes which

brought about the fall of the Empire can clearly be traced. The

imperial power, concentrated more and more in the imperial household,

and finally in the Emperor himself, had come to be devoted chiefly, in

the hands of feeble or self-indulgent emperors, to the maintenance of

imperial dignity and pride in the city itself. The magnificent

administration which had presented a coherent and effective government

while the rest of Europe was in "the dark ages," was beginning to sink

into a mere machine for the support of a luxurious Court. The Empire

was neglected. The aristocracy of Byzantium was treated with severity

or contempt. The officials of the State were the mere nominees of the

Emperor. For their interest and for the pursuit of popularity among

the people it was that government seemed to exist. Every year, as the

defences of the Empire grew weaker, the shows of the Hippodrome, the

festivals of the Church, the entertainments of the palace, grew more

splendid. When the other States of Europe were yet in their cradle,

when England as a Power had hardly begun to exist, the long history

of the Empire was verging irresistibly towards decay.

"The domestics of the Basilian dynasty carried on the work of

political change," says Finlay,[21] "by filling the public offices

with their own creatures, and thereby destroying the power of that

body of State officials, whose admirable organisation had repeatedly

saved the Empire from falling into anarchy under tyrants or from being

ruined by peculation under aristocratic influence. In this manner the

scientific fabric of the imperial power, founded by Augustus, was at

last ruined in the East as it had been destroyed in the West. The

Emperors broke the government to pieces before strangers destroyed the

Empire.

"The revolution which undermined the systematic administration was

already consummated before the rebellion of the aristocracy placed the

imperial crown on the head of Isaac Comnenus. No organised body of

trained officials any longer existed to resist the egoistical

pretensions of the new intruders into ministerial authority. The

Emperor could now make his household steward prime minister, and the

governor of a province could appoint his butler prefect of the police.

The Church and the law alone preserved some degree of systematic

organisation and independent character. It was not in the power of an

emperor to make a man a lawyer or a priest with the same ease with

which he could appoint him a chamberlain or a minister of State."

The decay of which the general causes are thus sketched can clearly be

traced in the series of historians who give us the records of the

years from the accession of John Comnenus to the conquest of

Constantinople by the Crusaders, from the year 1057, that is, to the

year 1204. Psellus, monk, secretary of State, philosopher, statesman,

gives, as we have already seen, a close account of the intrigues of

the court. Michael Altaleiates records the years 1034-1079. Nicephorus

Bryennius and his wife, Anna Comnena, wrote from within the story of

the politics of Alexius Comnenus, the former to some extent, the

latter very greatly, influenced by the classic revival, and

endeavouring to form their work on classic models. John Cinnamus,

Nicetas Acominatos, John Scylitzes, John Zonaras, are all chroniclers

who have special sources of information; and the result is that for

the century of decay which culminated in the collapse of the Empire

before the Latins, we have information almost complete.

The Emperor Isaac was assisted at the first by the able patriarch

Michael Cerularius, who put into exercise all the claims of his

predecessors to power and independence, to equality with Rome, and to

superiority over the churches related to the patriarchate. Strife soon

broke out between Emperor and patriarch. Michael appeared in the red

boots which marked the imperial dignity, declaring that he was the

equal of the Emperor; and of the Emperor himself he said, in what

seems to have been a popular proverb, "Oven, I built you, and I can

knock you down." He was seized and banished to Proconnesus.

After the retirement of Isaac, Constantine Ducas, like the Comneni a

Cappadocian, and a friend of their own, reigned for eight years,

1059-1067, and left the reputation of a man anxious only to save

money, and thus unable to protect the frontiers of the Empire. Under

him we learn the importance of the Emperor's personal guard of

Varangians--a body of barbarian warriors founded early in the eleventh

century, and consisting at first of Russians, whom the wars of

Nicephorus Phocas, John Tzimisces and Basil Bulgaroktonos had taught

the Empire to respect; and of Scandinavians, and later of Danes, and

after the Norman Conquest of fugitive Englishmen, who, rather than

serve the foreign conquerors of their own land, gladly came to win

fame and wealth as the guardians of the Cæsar's throne. Constantine

XI. paid the Varangians while he neglected the rest of his army. The

Empire paid the penalty in the ravaging of Armenia by the Seljuk

Turks, and of Bulgaria by the Tartars. When he died in 1067, already

the name of Alp-Arslan, the Sultan of the Seljuks, struck terror into

the Asiatic provinces of the Empire, and the sceptre of the Cæsars

fell to Michael VII., a child who could not protect what his father

had not cared to defend. The mother of the young Emperor, Eudocia,

married a gallant general, Romanus Diogenes, who, with the title of

joint Emperor, won but little power in the palace, but was readily

allowed to lead the armies in the field. Of his campaigns it is only

needful to say that, while for a time he held back the Seljuks, in

1071, at Manzikert, on the Armenian frontier, his troops were

scattered by the overwhelming hordes of the barbarians, and when night

fell Alp-Arslan placed his foot upon the neck of the prostrate Cæsar,

his captive.

In Constantinople a new revolution followed the news of the Emperor's

defeat. John Ducas, brother of Constantine XI., for a time held the

post of Regent for his nephew. When Romanus was released from

captivity he was seized and his eyes were put out, a crime which

resulted in his death. The scenes of blood and treachery which marked

these years, when the Court still kept up its splendours in the

presence of pestilence, famine, and decay, are almost incredible; but

the vengeance that was surely coming shows the weakness that resulted

from the reign of corruption and crime. Michael VII. was called

Parapinakes, "the peck-stealer," a name "given him because in a year

of famine he sold the measure of wheat to his subjects a fourth short

of its proper contents." He was overthrown by an adventurer named

Nicephorus Botoniates, whose reign of three years was a period of vice

and waste which brought the Empire rapidly nearer to its fall. Michael

VII. retired, like Romanus, to the Monastery of the Studium, where as

titular bishop of Ephesus, he passed the last years of his life in

peace. Three years exhausted the patience of the nobles with the aged

and debauched Nicephorus. Maria, once wife of Michael VII. and now

wife of his successor, formed a plot against him, and from a number of

conspirators, Alexius Comnenus, son of the Emperor Isaac, was chosen

to lead the troops who determined to give a new Cæsar to the exhausted

Empire. In 1081 the friends of the conspirators escaped through the

gate of Blachernae with horses they had stolen from the Imperial

stables. They returned with an army: the German guards who held the

gate of Charisius (Edirnè Kapou) were bribed, and the adherents of

Comnenus poured into the heart of the city. A battle at first seemed

certain, for the Varangians stood boldly across the forum of

Constantine to defend the approaches to the great palace. But when

George Palaeologus, a gallant officer connected by marriage with the

Comneni, secured the fleet, the heart of the aged Nicephorus failed

him, and he fled to S. Sophia, whence he was removed like so many of

his predecessors to a monastery.

Alexius Comnenus was not strong enough to restrain the motley rabble

who had entered in his train. The city was given over to pillage. The

very palaces and monasteries were spoiled by the barbarians from the

Balkans. It was from this date that the ruin of the city began. If the

churches still maintained their relics and their jewels, the

commercial prosperity, which all through these years of imperial

corruption and weakness it had struggled to maintain, now began to

slip from its grasp. It was clear that property was no more safe than

life; and as the Italian cities began to secure the commerce of the

Levant, the merchants of Constantinople fell behind in the race for

wealth, and saw the trade that had been theirs taken by the Venetians,

the Pisans and the Genoese, who now settled at their very gates.

Alexius Comnenus was at first not sole Emperor. Constantine Ducas, the

son of Michael VII., was also called Emperor, but he soon died.

Alexius then reigned alone, but not without many plots against him.

Within, the city managed to suppress the conspirators; without, he

suffered defeat from the Normans at Durazzo, and preserved with

difficulty the Thessalian province. He won fame among his people as a

persecutor of Paulicians and Bogomils; and Basil, a monk, was

entrapped by Alexius into a confession of his heretical opinions and

then burnt as a heretic in the Hippodrome, to the delight of the

people of Constantinople. He kept off the Turks, though they were now

(1092) settled so near as to have Smyrna for their capital. But his

chief danger came from the Crusades.

In spite of the breach between the Churches it was impossible for the

Eastern Emperor openly to do otherwise than welcome the hosts who in

response to the preaching of Peter the Hermit and the call of Urban

II. marched through Hungary and Bulgaria and arrived outside the land

walls in a ragged and disordered condition. Hugh of Vermandois had

landed near Durazzo, but had been treated almost as a foreigner, and

having been made to do homage to Alexius, awaited in the imperial

city the arrival of the rest of the hosts. His treatment was resented

by Godfrey of Bouillon; but the skill and tact of Alexius triumphed.

In the palace of the Blachernae, while the hosts were encamped outside

the walls, the Emperor received the leaders, among them Godfrey,

Bohemond, and Peter the Hermit himself, and by cajoling some, bribing

others, threatening those who seemed weakest, he procured that they

all should do him homage and promise to convey to him all of his

Empire that they should recover from the Turks.

To the people of Constantinople the warriors of the West seemed like

ignorant and half-brutal children, ever gabbling, boasting, and

changeable. The warlike garb of the Latin priests and bishops

disgusted the Greeks and widened the breach between the Churches. The

climax seemed to come on the day when the chiefs did homage to the

Emperor. Thus the story is told by Anna Comnena, who was herself then

fourteen years old, and may not improbably have witnessed the scene.

"As soon as they approached the great city, they occupied the place

appointed for them by the Emperor, near to the monastery of the

Cosmidion.[22] But this multitude was not, like the Hellenic one of

old, to be restrained and governed by the loud voices of nine heralds.

They required the constant superintendence of chosen and valiant

soldiers to keep them from violating the commands of the Emperor. He,

meantime, laboured to obtain from the other leaders that

acknowledgment of his supreme authority which had already been drawn

from Godfrey himself. But notwithstanding the willingness of some to

accede to this proposal, and their assistance in working on the minds

of their associates, the Emperor's endeavours had little success, as

the majority were looking for the arrival of Bohemond, in whom they

placed their chief confidence, and resorted to every art with the view

of gaining time. The Emperor, whom it was not easy to deceive,

penetrated their motives; and by granting to one powerful person

demands which had been supposed out of all bounds of expectation, and

by resorting to a variety of other devices, he at length prevailed,

and won general assent to the following of the example of Godfrey, who

also was sent for in person to assist in this business.

"All, therefore, being assembled, and Godfrey among them, the oath was

taken; but when all was finished, a certain noble among these counts

had the audacity to seat himself on the throne of the Emperor. The

Emperor restrained himself and said nothing, for he was well

acquainted of old with the nature of the Latins.

"But the Count Baldwin stepping forth, and seizing him by the hand,

dragged him thence, and with many reproaches said, 'It becomes thee

not to do such things here, especially after having taken the oath of

fealty. It is not the custom of the Roman Emperors to permit any of

their inferiors to sit beside them, not even of such as are born

subjects of their empire; and it is necessary to respect the customs

of the country.' But he, answering nothing to Baldwin, stared yet more

fixedly upon the Emperor, and muttered to himself something in his own

dialect, which, being interpreted, was to this effect--'Behold, what

rustic fellow is this, to be seated alone while such leaders stand

around him!' The movement of his lips did not escape the Emperor, who

called to him one that understood the Latin dialect, and inquired what

words the man had spoken. When he heard them the Emperor said nothing

to the other Latins, but kept the thing to himself. When, however, the

business was all over, he called near to him by himself that swelling

and shameless Latin, and asked of him, who he was, of what lineage,

and from what region he had come. 'I am a Frank,' said he, 'of pure

blood, of the nobles. One thing I know, that where three roads meet in

the place from which I came, there is an ancient church, in which

whosoever has the desire to measure himself against another in single

combat, prays God to help him therein, and afterwards abides the

coming of one willing to encounter him. At that spot a long time did I

remain, but the man bold enough to stand against me I found not.'

Hearing these words the Emperor said, 'If hitherto thou hast sought

battles in vain the time is at hand which will furnish thee with

abundance of them. And I advise thee to place thyself neither before

the phalanx, nor in its rear, but to stand fast in the midst of thy

fellow-soldiers; for of old time I am well acquainted with the warfare

of the Turks.' With such advice he dismissed not only this man, but

the rest of those who were about to depart on that expedition."

A scene such as this made the Greeks regard the Westerns simply as

barbarians, and they rejoiced when the host at last passed over the

Bosphorus to fight the Turks. For the first year Alexius remained with

the army; but as they became divided among themselves, and refused to

give up to him the territory they conquered in the East, he returned

to Constantinople, satisfied with the conquest which had driven back

the Turks in Asia for more than 200 miles.

While the Empire gained by its most dangerous enemy being thus driven

back, it lost seriously in other ways. "Between 1098 and 1099 a

continual stream of armed pilgrims traversed the Byzantine Empire,"

everywhere bringing ruin and devastation with them. One detachment of

Lombards actually attempted to storm the Blachernae quarter and were

only with great difficulty taken over to Asia, where they slaughtered

Christians as readily as Turks. Open war broke out between Bohemond

and Alexius, and it was the last success of Alexius that he was able

to beat off the attacks of the Christians of the West. He died in

1118, his last hours disturbed by a plot in which his wife Irene and

his daughter Anna were engaged to compel his son John to yield the

Empire to Anna's husband, Nicephorus Bryennius.

Alexius may have seemed to leave the Empire stronger than he found it;

but in truth, though its military power was greater, its commercial

greatness was passing away. The development of trade in the Levant

through the establishment of Christian kingdoms in the East by the

Crusaders reduced the trade of Constantinople, it has been estimated,

by "a third or even a half in the fifty years that followed the first

crusade." A system of financial extortion and a debased coinage

brought the merchants of the city still nearer to ruin, and that ruin

seemed consummated when they found the Genoese and Pisans settled with

special privileges in their midst. But the new Emperor at least kept

up appearances. He was a conqueror, and he was popular among his

subjects, called at first Maurojoannes (Black John), from his dark

complexion, he soon became called Kalojoannes, for his goodness rather

than his beauty. At the first he was met by conspiracy. His sister

Anna was ready to have him murdered that she and her husband might

ascend the throne. He discovered the plot, and after a few weeks

restored her to all her possessions. His brother Isaac fled from

Constantinople to the Turks, and though he returned, his son

afterwards became a Mohammedan. For chief minister the Emperor had a

Turkish slave who had been captured by his father at Nicaea and

brought up with him. These instances show how closely the Empire, in

spite of its Christianity, was drawing nigh to the Turks, a state of

affairs paralleled by the relations between Christians and Moors in

Spain in the days of El Cid Campeador, and which made the conquest,

when it came, less abrupt and terrible than it seems to-day.

The reign of John Comnenus (1118-1143) was perhaps the brightest in

the later years of the Empire. "Feared by his nobles, beloved by his

people," says Gibbon, "he was never reduced to the painful necessity

of punishing, or even of pardoning, his enemies. During his government

of twenty-five years[23] the penalty of death was abolished in the

Roman Empire, a law of mercy most delightful to the human theorist,

but of which the practice, in a large and vicious community, is seldom

consistent with the public safety. Severe to himself, indulgent to

others, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained the artless

virtues of his successor, derived from his heart and not borrowed from

the schools. He despised and moderated the stately magnificence of the

Byzantine Court, so oppressive to the people, so contemptible to the

eye of reason. Under such a prince innocence had nothing to fear and

merit had everything to hope; and without assuming the tyrannic office

of a censor he introduced a gradual though visible reformation in the

public and private manners of Constantinople."

Manuel I., his youngest son, whom he chose for his military daring in

preference to his brother Isaac, was "a mere knight errant, who loved

fighting for fighting's sake, and allowed his passion for excitement

and adventure to be his only guide." It is said that he made a special

payment to secure the good will of the clergy on his accession; but he

was vicious as well as passionate, and the crimes of his court

received a licence from his own acts. Buffoonery as well as vice seems

to have marked the life of Constantinople, for the popular minister,

John Kameratos, was renowned as the greatest drinker of his time, as

being able to swallow a vast quantity of raw beans and drink "the

water contained in an immense porphyry vase at two draughts," and he

was favoured by the Emperor chiefly for his powers as a singer and

dancer. Manuel himself was skilled in surgery and was a theologian as

well as a warrior, but his abilities were of no service to the Empire.

The citizens saw the Italians encroaching upon them at every point.

Heavy taxation was continued, but the army and navy alike decayed in

his time. Only the public games were kept up, and outwardly

Constantinople was as gay and wealthy as ever. Benjamin of Tudela, a

Jew who visited the city in 1161, wrote of the magnificence that he

saw everywhere, and the riches of the traders and nobles, and in the

Hippodrome he said that "lions, bears and leopards were shown, and all

nations of the world were represented, together with surprising feats

of jugglery." With all this, and especially after the war with Venice,

which was ended in 1174, the city was really becoming poor, and it

might almost seem defenceless. Manuel did much for the defences; a

large part of the land walls, defending the palace of Blachernae, was

added by him; an inscription on the tower close to Narli Kapoussi

records his repair of part of the sea wall; and he built many other

gates and additional fortifications. It was indeed time.

The eleventh century saw the position of the Empire and the safety of

the imperial city continually threatened not only by active attacks

but by internal dissensions; dissensions which, it has been well said,

would have settled themselves a century before, but which now both

weakened the city and made its weakness apparent to the world.

How weak the city was, was seen in 1146, when a Norman fleet sailed up

the Hellespont, and the admiral robbed the imperial gardens of fruit.

Bulgars, Serbians, Turks, had all at different times threatened the

city, and without success, but its internal weakness was made the more

evident as the century went on by the division which was arising

between the Emperor and his people. Manuel I. was believed to be at

heart a Latin; his campaigns of the West, his marriages to Western

wives, his neglect of the fleet, his encouragement of foreign settlers

in the capital, all increased his unpopularity. Matters were not

improved under the boy, Alexius II., when the struggle between his

mother and the minister she favoured, and his sister, took place in

the streets of the city, and in S. Sophia itself. The dynastic dispute

was complicated, like all the disputes in Constantinople, by

ecclesiastical interests, and the return of a patriarch who had been

driven out was one of those picturesque scenes in which the people

delighted, which showed their independence of the government, but

revealed also, only too plainly, that there was now no union in Church

or State.

A few words may suffice to explain and date the events of the latter

part of the twelfth century.

Manuel up to his death in 1180 retained all the appearance of a

victorious Emperor, though he suffered a severe defeat in 1176, at

Myriokephalon in Phrygia, from the Seljukian Turks. Crusading princes,

the Turkish Sultan Kilidji Arslan, and the Christian King, Amaury of

Jerusalem, visited him at Constantinople, and were received with

ostentatious splendour. Alexius II., his son and successor, was a boy

of thirteen, and in two years the streets of the imperial city

witnessed a desperate encounter between his supporters and those of

his sister Maria, which swept up to the walls of S. Sophia. Then

Andronicus, the cousin of the Emperor Manuel, was recalled from

banishment, and he signalised his acquisition of power by a massacre

of the Latins in the city. From this he proceeded to slay every one

who stood in his way, till, in 1183, having murdered the young

Alexius, he seated himself on the throne. For two years he continued a

course of crimes greater than those that any sovereign ever committed,

till a popular insurrection crowned a descendant of the great Alexius.

Andronicus, though the vilest of men, had made a serious effort to

reform the administration and reduce the influence of the nobles. His

fall left the Empire to its fate.

The miserable end of the wickedest of the Emperors, as it is told by a

recent writer from the pages of Nicetas, may well serve to illustrate

the horrors with which the Empire in its fall was only too familiar.

He was confined in the prison called after the Cretan Anemas, who was

first imprisoned there by Alexius Comnenus. "He quitted it only to die

at the hands of his infuriated subjects. On the eve of his execution

he was bound with chains about the neck and feet, like some wild

animal, and dragged into the presence of his successor, Isaac Angelus,

to be subjected to every indignity. He was reviled, beaten, struck on

the mouth; he had his hair and beard plucked, his teeth knocked out,

his right hand struck off with an axe, and then was sent back to his

cell, and left there without food or water or attention of any kind

for several days. When brought forth for execution, he was dressed

like a slave, blinded of one eye, mounted upon a mangy camel, and led

in mock triumph through the streets of the city to the Hippodrome,

amidst a storm of hatred and insult, seldom, if ever, witnessed under

similar circumstances in a civilised community. At the Hippodrome he

was hung by the feet on the architrave of two short columns which

stood beside the figures of a wolf and a hyena, his natural

associates. But neither his pitiable condition, nor his quiet

endurance of pain, nor his pathetic cry, "Kyrie eleison, why dost Thou

break the bruised reed?" excited the slightest commiseration.

Additional and indescribable insults were heaped upon the fallen

tyrant, until his agony was brought to an end by three men who plunged

their swords into his body, to exhibit their dexterity in the use of

arms."[24]

Isaac Angelus was little more worthy of his position than the man whom

he displaced. He gave himself to enjoyment, to building, to luxury of

every kind. He lost Bulgaria and Cyprus, and when his own general,

Alexis Branas, turned against him and led his troops to besiege

Constantinople, it was saved only by Conrad of Montferrat, the husband

of the Emperor's sister Theodora, who was then in the city on his way

to the East.

The troops of Branas assembled outside the walls and attacked, but

were driven back from the gate of Charisius (Edirnè Kapoussi): the

famous icon of the Blessed Virgin, believed to have been painted by S.

Luke, was carried round the walls: then a sortie led by Conrad

scattered the rebels and brought the revolt to an end. But Isaac was

incapable of ruling. He retained his throne with difficulty for ten

years. At length in 1195, when he was on the way to the Bulgarian

war, he was betrayed by his brother Alexius. He was not, as would have

happened two centuries before, made a monk: he was imprisoned in a

monastery, blinded, and left to die in peace. No one foresaw his

restoration.

Alexius III., called also Angelus Comnenus, was no wit better than his

brother, but he had a clever wife, Euphrosyne, in whom the worst

characteristics of the Eastern Empresses were reproduced. Her

profligacy and extravagance completed the ruin of the Empire, and when

the fourth crusade turned its arms against the city it fell an easy

prey.

It has been well said of the rule of the early Byzantines--during the

period, that is, that extended from the foundation of the city by

Constantine down to the death of Michael VI. and the end of the

Macedonian dynasty--that no other government has ever existed in

Europe which has secured for so long a time the same advantages to the

people. There was a general security for life and property; there was

a magnificent system of law; there was a genuine and commanding

influence of religion; and municipal government was, for the age, well

developed. But this can only be accepted with considerable

qualifications. If the government itself did not change, the dynasties

often did; if there was a good code of laws, there were terrible and

barbarous punishments, and there were often periods of mob-rule; if

there was a sound system of municipal government, it was far from a

complete check on the excesses of imperial power.

But the most striking characteristic of these centuries, when all

deductions have been made, is the stability of the government. As the

city and the Empire were ruled under Isaac Comnenus, so, save for

changes more superficial than real, had it been ruled under

Justinian. The new families of merchant princes that had grown up and

lined the Bosphorus with their houses, were as much in touch with the

old system as the old families had been. Trading interests had become

stronger and stronger with each century, and trading interests are in

the main conservative. But the century and a half that followed the

accession of the Comneni told inevitably in favour of further changes.

First there was the slow and terrible advance of the Turks, cutting

away strip by strip the outskirts of the Empire. Then there was the

exhaustion proceeding from the constant passage through the Empire of

crusaders, often pillaging, always contending, a continual drain upon

the material resources of the land. More important still was the great

and rapid increase of dynastic contentions. As ever, internal

dissension was the real cause of the self-betrayal which gave up

Constantinople in 1204 to the robbers of the West.

The condition of Constantinople at the beginning of the thirteenth

century has been the subject of more than one exhaustive examination.

We must briefly summarise what is known of the capital at this period

of its greatest riches, and perhaps its greatest weakness. First and

most prominently, it was a great commercial centre. Subordinate to its

commerce were its art, rich and wonderful though that was, its

military power, even its popular and all-embracing religious spirit.

Commerce influenced all these. It gathered together all the nations of

the earth, and it inspired them with greed for its treasures.

Constantinople was, as it still is to some extent, in spite of the

revolutions wrought by railways and by steamships, the most important

outlet of commerce in the world. All the traffic of Asia naturally

came that way; the great caravans of Central Asia, the trade of

Palestine, Asia Minor, Persia, even Egypt, journeyed naturally to the

New Rome. So naturally was Constantinople the centre of trade that she

acted as a sort of universal banker. Her coins were in use in India

and in distant England.

And the merchants who made their living in Constantinople had, like

those of the Hansa in London, their own permanent settlements. You may

see to-day the great khans or caravanserais where the merchants and

pilgrims congregate, the walls strong to resist attacks, the gates

closed at nightfall, the arrangements for common meals and common

ablutions; and as you pass by you see the dark figures clustering in

the doorways, or sitting on the marble steps, in their picturesque

colours, and with that strange far-away look on their faces that you

learn to know so well in the land where there is never any more

pressing need than repose, or any delight more sweet. The custom of

these great common lodgings, and very often the buildings themselves,

go back far into the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century they held

great colonies of merchants strong for mutual combination and defence.

Many of them were near to the wharves, as close within the walls as

might be, and some without. No visitor to-day can fail to be struck by

the great khan hard by the Mosque of Validè Sultan, which he passes

when he has crossed the Galata Bridge on his way to S. Sophia.