court to receive the homage of the ladies of rank. Seated on a
golden throne, attended by her eunuchs and dames of honor, the
empress was robed in imperial garments of silk damask in diaper
pattern adorned with pearls and rubies. On her head was the diadem
with the triple rows of pearl pendants; in her hand a jewelled
sceptre. Nicephorus sought to assuage the fire that consumed him
with the sight of the radiant happiness of his queen; nor would he
suffer her day of glory to be clouded by any report of the affront
that had been inflicted on himself. With a bitter heart and a
gnawing sense of all the humiliations and sacrifices to which his
love was too certain to expose him, he suffered himself to be taken
through all the ceremonies of the occasion, and the day was ended by
a gorgeous banquet of two hundred and forty guests in the famous
triclinion, or hall of the nineteen couches. There Augustus and
Augusta sat in state beneath the mosaic dome that covered the
accubiton, or raised dais of state. Even there, Nicephorus had
ordered them to serve him his accustomed supper of oatmeal-cake,
rice, and herbs. "Taste this, if you love me," whispered Theophano,
bending to her husband with a look that pierced his senses to the
very bone, and she pressed on him a rich dish of savory meat.
"Pledge me in a cup of Chian wine on this day of our wedlock," she
whispered again, as the golden goblet was handed by the imperial
cup-bearer. "In token of our love," she murmured. That night
Nicephorus ate flesh and drank wine, neither of which he had tasted
for many a long year. It was the first step of a new life, the
prelude to many another thing. That night he violated all his oaths,
and he knew it: for in spite of himself he heard the words ringing in
his ears--"The woman gave me to eat, and I did eat."
The woman gave him many more things of which he had small desire and
no experience. Theophano insisted on having the new reign
inaugurated with an endless succession of festivals, games, shows,
gifts, and court ceremonials. Basil, the prime-minister, and Leo,
the curopalates, pressed on the emperor in council the need of
gratifying the people and nobles by brilliant displays, in order to
allay the irritation already arising from the rigid economy in the
finances of the empire. On this Nicephorus had insisted with a view
to maintaining the vast drain of his eastern army. He toiled day and
night with his military staff and his expert officials in organizing
the armies of east and west, and in restoring the fleets and arsenals
of the Mediterranean, while he suffered the empress and the state
functionaries to arrange a series of public festivities.
Day after day the Hippodrome was the scene of shows, each surpassing
the last in novelty and splendor. The familiar and furious
chariot-races were followed by marvellous displays of acrobats,
wrestlers, jugglers, and dancers from India, Nubia, Arabia, or Syria,
clad in many-colored robes of Oriental fantasy, with lithe
contortionists, rope-dancers, pole-climbers, and various exotic
performances which held the people spellbound. Then would be
produced displays of horsemanship, first by Cossacks and then by
Bedouins, feats of polo, archery, and the Arab game of jerid. Next
advanced troops of Russian mimes in shaggy furs, drawn in on native
sleighs with characteristic sham fights and uncouth weapons. On
another day wild beasts from Asia or Africa were shown to the
wondering populace, Bactrian camels, leopards held by chains,
giraffes, gazelles, zebras, and even an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a
crocodile. At all these shows the new Basileus was forced to preside
in state, in costume of ceremony, and seated aloft in the cathisma,
whence he solemnly waved his blessing to the people, gave the signal
for the race to begin, or awarded the prizes to the charioteers amid
the everlasting shouts of the factions: "God bless and give long life
to our august Basileus."
The religious ceremonies were assuredly not forgotten; and these
Nicephorus performed with far greater willingness and interest. In
solemn procession, attended by his palace officers and escorted by
bands of priests, choristers, and acolytes, the Basileus visited the
great temples of the city, mounted on his milk-white charger in
gorgeous caparison of state, riding side by side with the patriarch,
mounted on his less martial mule--symbol of the union of State and
Church. He made pilgrimage in turn to the cathedral of the Holy
Wisdom, to the church of the Apostles, the old burial-place of the
emperors, to such famous convents as the Stoudion, or the Pegee, or
to the venerated shrines having pictures "not made with hands," and
images that were counted to effect miraculous cures. Or, again, he
performed, with a faith that his predecessors had too often lacked,
some antique function of the imperial ritual, at the season of the
birth of Christ, or that of the crucifixion, or such as the
ceremonial bath in the holy water of Blachernæ, at the north-western
extremity of the capital. But no ceremony, no care of state, no toil
of his office, could turn Nicephorus from the Theophano whom he had
won for his own by such sacrifices and so many desperate struggles.
He lavished on her all she asked--jewels, tapestries, palaces,
villas, and domains--imperial splendor and boundless wealth.
The influence of the empress over her husband, and the change of life
that was visible in Nicephorus, who from an armed anchorite seemed to
be fast adopting the habits of a Byzantine autocrat, caused much
searching of heart in the venerable patriarch. On her side,
Theophano could never forget, nor suffer her husband to forgive, the
deadly stigma which the Church had inflicted on her second marriage.
Polyeuctus and the Basilissa were now open enemies. But a more
terrible struggle was at hand. The marriage festivities were still
in progress when the court chaplain, Stylianos, hurried to Polyeuctus
to inform him that Nicephorus had acted as godfather at the private
baptism of the infant son of Romanus and Theophano, at which the
chaplain had officiated. The patriarch bounded with exultation. "It
is within the prohibited degrees," said the fanatic monk, "for the
godfather to marry the mother of his child-in-God." "It is
incestuous by the canon of our sixth council, held in the time of
Constantine V.," said the patriarch. Polyeuctus hastened to the
palace and insisted on an immediate audience with the Basileus. Once
admitted, he bearded the king with all the passion of his fanatical
faith.
"It is my solemn duty to inform your Majesty that Holy Church
declares to be incestuous the marriage you have attempted to contract
with the mother of your child-in-God, the infant Basileus.
Constantine," said the patriarch, firmly, "thou must put her away
forthwith and forever, and do penance for the incestuous union that
has been begun in the ignorance of the true facts that the Church had
not time to repair."
"Put away her to whom I have been joined by thy own act, by the
solemn words--till death do us part? Put away my wife, dost say,
venerable patriarch?"
"The canon of the sixth council is precise and conclusive," said
Polyeuctus.
"And if I refuse to accept this fantastic rule of spiritual
affinity?" asked the Basileus.
"It will be my painful duty towards God to pronounce on your Majesty
the most terrible sentence of excommunication known to Holy Church,
to forbid you all access to the house of God, to the altar of Christ,
to the shrine of His Mother--to deprive you of every rite or
privilege of Christian man. Basileus of the Romans, I warn thee,
thou wilt be in worse case than the Hagarene and the pagan, who at
least have something they believe to be divine that they can adore."
Nicephorus was himself so deeply saturated with reverence for the
mysteries, and had so long been accustomed to bow down before the
piety of the patriarch, that he mastered his emotion on hearing this
tremendous sentence, and desired time to reflect.
"Venerable patriarch of the Mother Church of our empire, withdraw
from our presence. We will take counsel on this matter," said the
Basileus, with stern dignity and wonderful self-control.
He took no counsel but of his own heart in the storm of passion which
shook his soul hour after hour, upon this cruel shock to his pride,
his love, and his fear of God. Long he paced the chamber, foaming
with rage, like a caged lion. As night fell, he summoned a trusty
cubicular and bade him tell the patriarch that the emperor would not
part from the empress while breath was in his body. Then he hurried
to the harem of the great palace and flung himself into the arms of
his beloved wife--that paradise for which he was willing to brave
eternal damnation.
The cubicular returned with the formal message from the patriarch
that excommunication would be pronounced in full conclave on the
following day.
Nicephorus was not the man to give his enemy time to attack. By
daybreak he had summoned a council of all the prelates of the distant
provinces who had come up to the capital to do homage to the new
sovereign, and to them he added leading members of the senate and
nobles. The Basileus himself presided; and he demanded a formal
response to his question if his marriage, solemnized in church by the
patriarch and his chapter, were not an indissoluble union by the laws
of God and man, overriding any figment of spiritual affinity
contracted by a mere ritual form.
The council, overshadowed as it was by the authority of the autocrat,
discussed the question at great length and with prodigious learning.
The senators and officials urged the assembly to pronounce in favor
of the Basileus; but not a few of the bishops clung to the sacred
authority of a formal canon of a general council. This seemed to
them imperative, and incapable of any dispensation or avoidance.
Nicephorus with difficulty suppressed his impatience, fearing that by
the delay the patriarch might anticipate him by a formal sentence.
But here a highly ingenious prelate, the bishop of Cæsarea, a
compatriot and devoted supporter of the family of Phocas, arose and
said:
"August Basileus and venerable prelates of our holy Church, lords,
senators, and ministers of state, methinks we are forgetting the date
and origin of this canon which is appealed to in order to annul the
solemn consecration of marriage between our gracious autocrat and the
Augusta. The canon in question was formally promulgated in the reign
and by the authority of the ill-omened usurper and enemy of the
Church, Constantine, of evil name and infamous memory, as part and
parcel of his abominable tyranny and persecution. The canon was
decreed as binding on the Church by those heretics and miscreants who
attempted to suppress the use of holy images in our worship. Now, it
is known to all men that the acts of the iconoclasts, whether
sovereigns or patriarchs, have been formally pronounced by Church and
by State to be null and void and of no authority or effect. This
canon, even if well and lawfully approved by the Church, has never
been promulgated by any but a sacrilegious and heretical usurper of
the throne of the Romans. And I call on you, reverend fathers in
God, and honored lords, to declare that the canon is no bar to the
lawful and most religious marriage contracted by their Majesties at
the altar of God and in presence of the reverend patriarch himself."
This speech was received with such a tumult of approval and relief by
the imperial party in the council, that Nicephorus abruptly declared
the proposal of the bishop of Cæsarea to be adopted, and he took care
to have it instantly conveyed as a judgment to the patriarch.
Polyeuctus was not the man tamely to submit to such an evasion, and
he fiercely inveighed against an attempt to set aside a canon which,
for two hundred years, had never been directly impugned or set aside.
In this contention he was supported by his own chapter of the Holy
Wisdom, and a state of indescribable excitement arose in the Church
and in the city, as a conflict seemed imminent between the
metropolitan, supported by his clergy, and the emperor, supported by
the senate and provincial prelates. For a whole day the storm raged
round Church and palace, and men feared that the horrible scandals
were about to be renewed as in the old days of the image-breakers,
when the Church and all those, both clerical and lay, who clung to
the patriarch, defied the iconoclast emperors and their court, and
endured cruel persecution in defence of their holy and
ever-to-be-venerated ikons.
In the midst of this confusion the court chaplain, Stylianos,
unwilling to suffer disgrace and exile, and hopeful, perhaps, of
future promotion, bethought him that in the ceremony of baptism,
which had been hurriedly and privately performed owing to the
precarious health of the new-born infant, Nicephorus had simply been
present as representing his aged father, Bardas, who was the true
sponsor of the infant prince. Nicephorus remembered that such had
been the intention, but what passed in the haste of the impromptu
ceremony had escaped his memory. And Bardas, when appealed to,
called to mind that Romanus, the autocrat, had sent him a summons to
attend the ceremony, which his age and infirmities had prevented him
from doing at the time. Polyeuctus was persuaded by the
prime-minister Basil, by Stylianos the chaplain, and even by the monk
Athanasius, to accept this solution of the imbroglio, on condition
that Nicephorus himself should swear on the relics of St. Theodore
that he had attended the ceremony of baptism as his father's proctor,
and that Bardas also should swear on the relics that he had been
summoned as real sponsor of the prince. This was done in presence of
the patriarch, who, thereupon admitting on sworn testimony that no
spiritual affinity, in fact, existed between Nicephorus and
Theophano, consented to withhold his terrible ban. With a mind full
of foreboding, he recognized the imperial marriage as valid, though
nothing could induce his stern and devout nature to relieve the
emperor from the penance of being forbidden to enter the holy place
of the temple till a year had passed after contracting a second
marriage with one who had so lately been the wife of another.
The storm passed, and the open breach between empire and Church was
avoided, or, at best, postponed. But Nicephorus to his dying day
remembered the public stigma which had been passed on the marriage
for which he had sacrificed so much; and the patriarch, with gloomy
misgivings, looked forward in pain to the issues of a reign which he
had done so much to promote, but which had opened with such sinister
omens in the house of God and in the eyes of Holy Church.
XIX
The Saracen Peril
The emperor now applied his whole mind to affairs of state with all
the burning energy of his nature; and he sat day by day with his
chosen officers in secret council, dictating orders to his
proto-secretis. Though he submitted with the best grace he could
command to the public ceremonials and pilgrimages which policy and
the traditions of his office required him to perform in person, his
absorbing task was the organization of his army, the navy, the
finances, and the imperial administration. And, though the wound so
ostentatiously inflicted at once on his pride and his love by the
fanaticism of the patriarch lay deep in his mind as an open sore, he
remained unshaken in his devotion to Holy Church, and in profound
regard for the hermit of Mount Athos.
The very day after this fierce struggle, Nicephorus was closeted with
Digenes, and was imparting to him his great schemes for the
restoration of the Roman name.
"From the time of our mighty predecessor, Heraclius," said he, "for
more than three hundred years, the children of the False Prophet have
been gaining, step by step, upon the children of Christ. A few
generations more and they will have blotted out the Church of God and
His Mother. The prophet of the Lord may well say to the Hagarene,
'Hast thou killed and also hast thou taken possession?'"
"Nay," interrupted the ardent young warden, "such victories as those
of thy father Bardas, of thy grandfathers and kinsmen of Armenia,
and, above all, thy own most glorious achievements in Crete and in
Syria, in Cilicia and Aleppo, bear witness that Christ will not
forsake His people forever, and that the days of glory of the Prophet
are no more."
"We beat them back time and again, and the tide has turned on our
side within the last indiction. But as I look back over these
centuries stained with all the savage tyranny of the image-breakers,
and the follies of our Isaurians, Amorians, Arabians, and Khazars on
the throne, Michael 'the Monk,' Michael 'the Stammerer,' and Michael
'the Drunkard,' I see that the Crescent is steadily driving back the
Cross. One or other will assuredly perish in the long combat at
last."
"At what point will you strike them first?" asked Digenes, abruptly.
"The power of the great Asian caliphate has been weakened by
rivalries, rebellions, and divisions, but it is by no means broken.
The accursed Chamdas snake is scotched, but not killed. The
Hamdanite family is still as active and fierce as ever. Aleppo,
Antioch, Edessa, obey their victorious emirs, and persecute our
believers. While Syria, with all its cities and resources, is a
stronghold of the Hagarene dynasty, our eastern themes are ever open
to their cruel raids and devastating incursions. I tell thee, my
son, my first and greatest task is to crush the Chamdas, who seems to
rise ever stronger after every defeat."
"Seif Eddauleh! a hero worthy even of your sword," said the warden.
"Hero it may be, but a deadly enemy of Christ and His people," said
Nicephorus. "He or I must fall in this death-grapple. My officers
are now mustering upon the Anatolian frontier the most numerous army,
and the best equipped, that Rome has sent forth since the time of
Heraclius. The moment it is ready, I shall put myself at its head
and march upon Syria, into which we shall pour as we did when we
swept back the Chamdas into his rock-bound citadel as a hunted lion
is driven to his pathless lair."
"Will it be Aleppo, Antioch, or Edessa, that you strike first?" asked
Digenes, eagerly.
"God in heaven knows, my son," replied the general, solemnly, with a
touch of irony in his voice, "and we shall all know in His good time."
"But you will not leave to the Prophet the Holy Land of Abraham, of
David, and Christ Himself? Have you no care for Damascus, Beyruth,
and Jerusalem?--the tombs of the holy ones and the scene of the birth
and death of the Lord Himself?"
"Be not too eager, my son. How are we to reach these holy places,
lost to Christ all these hundreds of years, until we have driven the
Hagarene swarms from the passes of the Amanus and the Libanon?
Assuredly Jerusalem and Bethlehem are our ultimate goal which the
Cross shall one day enter, though it is a sight that I shall never
live to see; no, nor your son's son. But there is that which to a
soldier, if not to a priest, is more sacred than the manger of
Bethlehem or the hill of Calvary, and that is the rescuing from the
dungeons, and harems, and slave-markets of the infidel the men and
women, girls and children, of our Christian people. There is a care
more urgent on an emperor of Rome than the recovery of any relic or
any place of pilgrimage, and that is the safety and enlargement of
the Roman realm."
"There are victorious realms of Islam to the south: in Africa, in
Egypt, and in Tunis," said the warden, sadly; "and these last are
pressing even to death and slavery the last remnant of the Christian
defenders of Sicily, to say nothing of Spain, where you sent me of
late to the splendid kingdom of the caliph of the west."
"Yes, our brethren in Sicily are in great danger of destruction, and
I am preparing another great army and another fleet to relieve and
succor them. This indeed will be despatched before another moon, and
will take precedence even of my own campaign."
"And will the Catholic sovereigns of Alemaine, who have annexed so
much of the Italian dominions, do nothing to save their
fellow-Christians in Sicily in the hour of their distress?" asked
Digenes.
"Nothing," said the emperor, fiercely, "nay, worse than nothing.
These Saxon barbarians beyond the Danube aim at the destruction of
our holy Roman empire, of which they usurp the titles, and copy the
practices and institutions. It will be a black day for the city and
throne of Constantine when Frank and Latin marauders shall dare to
assail them in force. They talk still of alliances, exchange of
courtesies, and even of intermarriage; but they mean in their hearts
rivalry, treachery, and war. They are biding their time till they
can blot out the Byzantine name and Church."
"And the bishop of old Rome on the Tiber, who calls himself Pope, and
supreme head of Christ's Church, will not he intercede for the
suffering remnant of the Christians of Sicily?" asked Digenes.
"What, he!" broke forth Nicephorus, passionately. "The son of the
old harlot, the bandit, the assassin, the catamite, who pollutes that
Vatican cloister which is now a brothel and a gamester's hell! The
Catholic Church is the deadly rival and foe of our Orthodox Church.
It is ever plotting our ruin and inciting its royal patrons to
destroy us. It is more deadly than either Saracen or Saxon. They
indeed may end in working our ruin. But the Catholic Church, while
ever working to our ruin, is ever bearing false witness to vilify,
calumniate, and ridicule all we have and all we do in Church or in
State, in war or in peace. We stand on the Bosphorus between two
sleepless enemies--fierce unbelievers on the east, and traitors to
Christ in the west. And we who have defended the Roman name and the
Christian faith for three hundred years against the onslaught of
Islam, we, the bulwark of Christ and the Mother of God, we are ever
being assailed by the masters of the Latin provinces; and forever we
are being maligned by the degraded prelacy which has usurped the tomb
and see of St. Peter. No, my son, the Romans of the east had better
invoke the aid of Satan, Moloch, or Beelzebub, the father of lies,
before they trust the words of a Latin priest."
"But on the north we have dangerous enemies as well, and even more
near to us--Bulgarians, Slavs, Huns, Patzinaks, and Russ. They have
ere now swept down on Byzantium like a winter snow-storm from the
Euxine, and they may sweep down again. Have you given thought to
them, sir?" asked Digenes.
"Much thought, my son," replied the emperor, "but though they are
nearer than Saracen or Latin, they are quite disunited, and full of
fierce rivalries, jealousies, and ambitions. If one is our enemy, it
makes the rest our friends. When the Bulgarian becomes dangerous, we
will hire the Turk or the Russ to fall upon his back. The whole
Balkan peninsula is a den of savage beasts, who are ever snarling at
each other, and waiting to spring on each other unawares. If they
could only agree for an hour, they would join in a combined attack
upon us; and their vast hordes and limitless cavalry might make them
a formidable foe to beat. But we will take them one by one and
swallow them at leisure, as one eats the leaves of an artichoke.
Before the Bulgarian can move, we will take care to have the Russ
upon his back. I can hear in my day-dreams the roar of our people in
the Hippodrome on the day when a Basileus of New Rome shall be hailed
on his victories over the northern realm of Crumn and of Symeon as
'the victorious lord,' 'the slaughterer of the Bulgarians,'" said the
emperor, with prophetic fervor deepening his voice.
"And the Russ of Kiev and the coasts of the Euxine and the
Chersonesus?" asked Digenes, "are they not within your plans?"
"The Russ and Patzinaks who swarm along the northern rivers which
flow into the Euxine are too far off us, too restless and nomad, and
altogether too loosely organized as settled nations to endanger the
Roman empire," said Nicephorus, proudly. "The Russ make fine
guardsmen for us, and are willing to do our service for proper reward
at any time. We will civilize and Christianize them and teach them
to keep Bulgarians and Turks in order. Ah," he went on, musing with
something of prophetic strain, "Byzantium may fall before the
infidels of the east--nay, even before the schismatic Latins of the
west--but before the northern barbarians never! If they strove for a
thousand years these Varangians shall never seat their czars upon the
Golden Horn."
"Then wherein lie the great dangers of the empire?" asked the lord
warden.