in his camp--"prayer for alms and praise of good eating, perhaps!
The streets of our capital swarm with these befrocked and shaven
idlers. Every village is beset with them. Every hill-side is
honeycombed with their chantries and their retreats. We want men,
not drones. We want men who can fight as well as pray, or one day
these temples of our God may be turned into the mosques of the False
Prophet."
"We come to implore your grace to put no bonds upon those who offer
their gifts to God," said the abbot, stoutly.
"These monasteries and infirmaries, these hermitages and convents,
are surfeited with wealth," the Basileus retorted, with passion.
"Has not the Word of God warned us that a rich man shall hardly enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven? Know ye not that Scripture--'Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor
yet for your body what ye shall put on! Behold the fowls of the air.
Consider the lilies of the field.' And, when Christ sent forth His
blessed apostles, did He not charge them 'to take no thought for the
morrow and to provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in their
purses, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staves.' And now, the
successors of the apostles fare sumptuously every day, and are
clothed in purple and fine linen."
And now Nicephorus, giving rein to his indignation and wrath, poured
out a vehement homily, as if he were himself an ascetic preacher in
church. "It is sheer lunacy--this lust of good things; this
insatiable craving is madness; as the Psalmist saith, 'They are
altogether lighter than vanity'! They add field to field, grand
mansions, stables full of horses, cattle, camels, mules, and beasts
without number. These monks, these hermits, and servants of the Most
High give all their care to these worldly things in defiance of the
plain Word of God. The blessed apostle labored with his hands, and
those with him, and doth he not say, 'We wrought with labor and
travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of
you.' Was not this also the way of life of the blessed fathers of
the Church, and of those who first taught the Gospel in Palestine and
in Egypt, and in many places of the earth? They were shining and
burning lights to witness to the faith, living lives so free from
earth's dross that they seemed to be of the substance of angels more
than of men. Hath not our blessed Lord said, 'Strait is the gate and
narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find
it'? And on all sides to-day we see crowds of these men of God who
enter in at the broad gate that leadeth to destruction. But ye of
the monasteries which cover our realm, 'ye lay up for yourselves
treasures upon earth. Where your treasure is, there is your heart
also'!"
The crowd of portly prelates, obsequious monks, and mendicant hermits
retired abashed and cringing before this tempest of imperial disdain.
But the stern abbot of the Stoudion made a haughty obeisance and
retired with a bitter scowl. He knew himself to have authority with
the people, now at least equal to that of the Basileus; and he was in
close alliance with the faction of the Basilissa and in secret
conspiracy with Theophano herself.
The politic prime-minister had listened to the outburst of Nicephorus
with no small anxiety and surprise. He took occasion to warn his
master of the power of the monastic orders and their ill-will towards
any repressive legislation. And he had fully tracked their
machinations with the superstitious populace and their concert with
the empress and her friends at the court and in the capital. He
implored the sovereign to moderate the new edict. He pressed him to
remember how the people and the Church had defied and overborne the
greatest of the Iconoclast emperors in times gone by.
"Ay, well I know that they will bear me ill-will, and bitterly resent
my act. Do I seek to please men or to please God? as the blessed St.
Paul saith. I am the servant of Christ. And of this I am sure,
that, whatever may be said by these pampered men of the cloister, the
wise and righteous will acknowledge that our purpose is most salutary
to all true servants of the Lord as well as to the well-being of this
our realm. No more of this. My Lord Simon, you are charged to
publish this edict forthwith, to bear title as the 'First Novel of
our Reign."
Thereupon Nicephorus turned to consider draughts of the other new
edicts, referring to the tenure of fiefs by soldiers and by feudal
chiefs. His whole mind was bent on founding a great and standing
military order, which should hold lands in perpetuity under condition
of service in arms. Basil, as Chancellor of Requests and Petitions,
was charged with this "Novel," whereby it was forbidden to a rich
proprietor to purchase a military fief, and by a third it was decreed
that a military fief, abandoned for three years by its tenant, should
revert to the general body of military tenures, and not fall into
private hands. By a fourth "Novel" it was ordered that the estates
of great proprietors should not be broken up, but remain in
perpetuity estates of magnates. And, similarly, small farms could be
acquired only by yeomen. The whole legislative scheme was a rude and
ineffectual effort to erect a system of graduated feudal tenures, and
to found a permanent order of settled warriors holding lands of the
empire on the tenure of defending it in arms.
And now Nicephorus turned to a scheme which he had even more at
heart, but where no imperial edict without the sanction of the Church
could avail. The dearest wish of his heart had long been to obtain
from the patriarch the right to promise the honor of martyrdom for
Christian soldiers who might fall in the holy war with the infidel.
Polyeuctus was now the enemy rather than the friend or the counsellor
of Nicephorus, and the emperor had solicited the help of Athanasius
of Mount Athos to achieve his end. The council and the legists were
dismissed and the monk was admitted in private audience.
"Venerable father in God," said the Basileus, humbly saluting his
spiritual director as if he were nothing but a penitent in
confession, "you who have known Nicephorus all these years as a
simple soldier of Christ, you who have so often seen his whole heart
and soul laid bare to your sight as to that of God himself--you know
how real is my reverence for Holy Church and its true sons, how deep
is my resolve to defend the faith to the end. It is menaced with
ruin, and, in spite of all our efforts to save it, the cross will one
day fall before the False Prophet if we cannot find some new spirit
to fire the hearts of our Roman soldiers in the fight. They are
brave enough, stouter men than these Hagarenes, and their hearts are
in the cause; but there is one thing they lack--one thing that these
sons of Ishmael have--one thing which makes them men impossible to
beat. These infidels glory in their death. To them to die in battle
is to triumph and to be blessed for evermore. The false promises of
the False Prophet so delude them that they rejoice with their last
gasp that they are passing into paradise, and with their dying eyes
they see the houris of their foul dreams waiting to escort them to
the presence of God. I tell you, my father, I have seen these
unbelievers on a hundred battle-fields die smiling with joy, as men
smile who have won the prize in the chariot-race, or as martyrs smile
when they see Christ in the sky above the scaffold, saying to them,
'Come, ye blessed of the Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world.' Our men will face death, but they
do not glory in death, seek for death, long for death as a priceless
glory and certain heaven. If Holy Church awarded them the palm of
martyrdom, they would be consumed with such fire that they would
sweep the Hagarenes back into their desert. Verily, they are
martyrs--they witness to the eternal Word of Christ."
"Sire," replied the monk, his worn and cadaverous form in strange
contrast with the massive frame of the Basileus, "I have held long
interviews with the venerable Patriarch, and I find him inexorable
and in bitter opposition to your schemes of reform, and especially to
this."
"Go back to his holiness and press him to consider the imminent peril
of our empire and our faith."
"He will never yield. He has made it a matter of faith, of respect
for the sacred ordinances of our Church. The canons of St. Basil
exclude from the sacraments during three years those who have shed
blood."
"What! those who die fighting for Christ in defence of His people and
of His consecrated altars and fanes!"
"It is the law of the Church, which neither sovereign nor prelate can
rescind; and the law of God's Church in council pronounced is the law
of God," said the monk, sadly, but with invincible tenacity.
"But this is to sacrifice the people of God to the decrees of men.
Truly, as the apostle saith, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit
maketh alive.' The patriarch has entered into the conspiracy against
me; and I know that it is fomented even within this very palace. My
enemies and traitors are here. But I will not suffer them to make it
the secret haunt of their designs. The prime mover of these deeds is
about to be removed."
"My son, what dost thou mean? Hast thou committed thyself to any
attempt against the life or the liberty of the Basilissa? Beware, O
King; it is a terrible path thou art about to tread!"
"My father, at midnight this day Theophano will be taken in her
chamber and silently removed to the royal villa at Prote. No harm or
indignity will befall her. She will be attended as a Basilissa in
retreat, with ample retinue--but a sure guard. She will no longer
countermine my government nor plot against my honor and my life. She
or I must succumb in this long strife. I am necessary yet awhile to
Rome and this cause, or I would rejoice to be her victim. Her victim
I may yet be. I will not be her plaything or her tool. No! nor
shall she be my dishonor!"
"Nicephorus, my son in God," said the monk, sternly, "thou art
treading the path that leadeth to destruction. It was foul sin when
thou didst defy the ordinances of Holy Church to wed the relict of
our late Basileus. Thy abominable sin hath found thee out, and now
thou art rushing into fresh sin in seeking to put her away. What
cause hath she given thee, what that thou didst not know--or shouldst
have known--when thou hadst her to wife?"
"Father, I say to thee, even as David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned
against the Lord.' But the woman has been seeking to seduce my best
comrades and officers, and tempting them to betray me and to dishonor
me."
"Has all this been proved before competent judges? Would his
holiness the patriarch hold any communion with her if he was certain
of her guilt? What proof have you of her offences and, especially,
of the sin of infidelity to her husband?"
"I can obtain no such proof as would convince the patriarch, who
still holds her undefiled, and even seeks her aid in resisting my
ordinances as to the Church and my soldiers."
"Whom has she seduced?" said the monk, imperatively.
"She seized and then tempted my best-beloved friend and comrade whom
I now mourn as my brother, and then she sought to cast her spell on
my chief general, with whom I suspect she is plotting against my
throne--ay, and I suspect against my life."
"Is this more than suspicion and the fear which ever haunts this
palace? Is not this more truly, my son of sorrow, a sinful love
turning into suspicious hate? What proof hast thou of open crime?"
"Speak not of hate, my father, for all her offences and treacheries
have not yet utterly burned out my love. For the sake of Rome and of
this cause, and the people of Christ, I must live and rule, and to
live and to rule I must put her away. But it is agony even now, my
father, to part from her. I would die rather than do harm to a
single hair of her head. But she must depart from out this house,
from out this city, lest she ruin more men whom this empire needs in
the present sore straits."
"She must not depart from this place, nor be cast out from your
throne. Part from the bed that it was sin and folly to have entered;
but touch not her imperial rights. Rome has ever suffered when the
house of its rulers has been rent in twain. Remember the dark
history of this palace and its dynasties, and all the deeds of shame
and horror which were done of old when husband drove out wife, and
wife conspired against husband, when mother deposed her son, and son
rose against father, and brother murdered brother. Remember what was
done by an Irene, a Eudocia, a Theodora, a Michael, a Justin, and a
Theophilus. Begin not a new tragedy in this house, of which the very
walls bear witness to deeds of cruelty, passion, and sin. To throw
into prison the widow of Romanus would divide this realm into
factions, and would renew the household feuds and horrors which have
ceased now for fifty years. And these children, the young Basilei,
who must in a few years reign here, how shall they be reared while
their mother is a prisoner?--how will they bear with him who cast her
into prison?"
"I am the victim of a cruel alternative, my father, but I am ready to
die for this cause. If she has her way, she will ruin it, and, most
assuredly, she will work that ruin by my death."
"Then die, if it be the will of God, but sin not--or sin no more.
Add not cruelty, revenge, and oppression to lust and folly. Leave to
this woman her undoubted rights as empress, as mother of our
emperors, as your own wife. Live your own life apart from her as you
choose; but, if you make her your prisoner, the object of your enmity
and anger, the whole force of Mother Church shall be directed to
restrain your violence and to defend your victim."
"And the Church condemns me to death and makes me the victim," said
Nicephorus, sadly and with resignation.
"If you do not yield to its summons," replied the monk, with
imperious tone, "the Church will expel you from its offices, refuse
you its absolution, and abandon you to the spirits of evil to die
unforgiven in your sins. Choose, Nicephorus, between your passion
and the safety of your soul."
With this terrible word, which was cruel enough to break every spirit
of that age, the inexorable confessor left the presence.
And hour after hour the Basileus, with groans and prayers, looked
down into the black gulf on the edge of which he felt that he stood.
XXIX
The Rising Storm
Nicephorus, in proud trust in his own mission from on high, and
conscious of his own rectitude and devotion to the cause of God's
realm on earth, would brook no interference with his will from his
ministers, his people, or the priests. He yielded only to the
venerated abbot of Mount Athos, his own beloved friend and confessor,
Athanasius, in the matter of the empress, Theophano. He abstained
from carrying out his purpose to remove her from the city and place
her in honorary restraint. And his submission to the saintly hermit
was not a little aided by some lingering, if unconscious, touches of
tenderness for the woman whom he once had loved so passionately, and
so humbly, so blindly, so devoutly had adored. He was again striving
every nerve to reorganize a vast expedition for a third Asian
campaign, wherein he was finally to crush the dynasty of Chamdas and
secure the Syrian gates of Lebanon so as to open the way of triumph
to the Holy Land itself.
The enormous cost of these levies of men, drawn from all parts of the
empire--from the coast of Italy, across Greece and Asia, as far as
the sources of the Euphrates--of the countless stores, arms, and
equipments they required, strained to the utmost the finances of the
state. Nicephorus knew nothing of fiscal resources and of ways and
means. He despised all uses of money unless it were treated as the
sinews of war. He left to his ministers the duty of devising the
methods of taxation. All that he insisted on was the perpetual
replenishment of his war-chests--_rem quocunque modo, rem_. He
ordered the exchequer to exact the taxes to the most rigid point. He
allowed bishoprics, abbeys, and eleemosynary foundations to remain
vacant, while the revenues were collected by the state. He withheld
the customary doles to the senators and high officers of the empire,
in the name of public economy and the needs of the war against the
infidel. Leo, his brother, and Sisinnios, the prefect, were loudly
accused of regrating corn during time of scarcity. And, worse than
all, they obtained from the ignorance of the emperor a decree to coin
a new _nomisma_, or gold bezant, which was said to be alloyed as to
one-fourth with baser metal, and was henceforth known as a
_tetrateron_, a "quarter-piece."
The popular discontent grew day by day, fanned by disappointed
nobles, voluble demagogues, and fanatical monks. All day long angry
crowds gathered in the streets, markets, and courts of the churches.
They were roughly handled by the city police or savagely dispersed by
the foreign guardsmen. The great Armenian soldier himself, his whole
soul aflame with the thought of the holy war, despised equally the
effeminate nobility, the noisy mob, and the lazy monks. But his
martial eye perceived the defenceless condition of the Sacred Palace,
and he saw the necessity of securing the seat of government.
Accordingly, he undertook a vast defensive work--a wall with towers,
battlements, and gates which cut off the city from the palace. It
was something like the later rampart we see to-day that stretches
from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmora, and separates the old
Seraglio and its dependencies from the rest of Stamboul. And, not
content with this vast domestic defence, Nicephorus proceeded to
enlarge and fortify the palace of Boucoleon on the edge of the port,
which henceforth became the imperial abode and "keep," as the Normans
would have named it. It was the real "Bastile."
Crowds would gather round the works, as thousands of laborers,
imported mainly from the Thessalonican Theme and the Greek islands,
toiled over the long lines of masonry. Here a voluble street orator,
one Simeon, a cobbler by trade, got a number of loafers to listen to
his eloquence. "What is to become of us, my friends, if everything
in Rome is to be sacrificed to paying soldiers and building
fortresses? We used to believe this city, with its walls, was safe
enough against all enemies east or west, barbarians or infidels,
whether they came in ships or over the mountains of Thrace. Are we
the barbarians or the infidels against whom the Basilei must be
protected by walls and towers? I can remember, my lads, the days of
Constantine, the good, dear old man, who hated war and gave us lovely
shows, and then young Romanus, with his free hand and kind smile,
whom somebody made an end of, they do tell me. Will fighting in
Syria bring us bread or make trade brisk? In old days, the court
took care to sell us poor folks corn at a cheap rate in bad times;
but now it doubles the price, while the poll-tax keeps it company at
the same rate. And nobody gets work but these blacklegs of Hellenes
or the leather-sellers on the Strymon, where they make the troopers'
boots." But here a detachment of Macedonian spearmen, marching to
relieve the guard, broke in upon the crowd, roughly forcing their way
with the flat of their swords and many a broken head, as they dashed
the citizens aside with their round bucklers. Amid shrieks, yells,
and curses, the terrified mob took to their heels.
The next day it was Easter Eve, and the city was filled with crowds
which poured in from all the country round to attend the celebrations
of Holy Week, and the myriad churches, chapels, and chantries rang
night and day with "Kyrie eleison," litanies, and wild sermons,
interspersed with hardly veiled attacks on the imperial government
and even person. In the great court-yard of the Stoudion monastery,
an eloquent brother, Elias, was holding forth to an excited crowd:
"You have heard, my brethren, how they are about to confiscate the
lands and properties dedicated of old by the pious to the Prince of
Peace and to the uses of his poorest servants in order to devote them
to war. They pretend that it is a holy war, a crusade against the
Hagarene, to rescue our brethren from the False Prophet. Was the war
against our Christian neighbors, the Bulgars, a holy war? Was the
war with the Catholic princes of Italy and the German Cæsar a crusade
for the faith? Are there not false prophets--ay, and cruel
tyrants--among the rulers of a Christian state? It is a strange way
to drive out the unbelievers to make a dead set at our Mother Church
and seize its poor alms whereby it supports the servants of Christ
and keeps alive the starving and needy children of God. We have to
feed them, we have to live ourselves, we humble brothers of the
destitute and the sick. Do my brethren here in these cold cells--do
I?--look like one who is pampered with good things and clothed in
rich garments? No, my brothers, we are the Lazarus of whom our
Blessed Lord spake; and the rich man of His proverb lords it behind
those golden gates. Verily, I tell them that we, the poor and the
humble, will be in the bosom of Father Abraham above, and thence we
shall see those who have robbed us cast into hell, being in torment
amid the flames, crying to the Lord to allay their pains."
The crowd broke up with great excitement and gathered in knots at the
street corners and markets. At one group, a farmer, who had come in
from a neighboring village, was pouring out his griefs to
sympathizing citizens. "A company of savage fellows from Mount
Rhodope, professing to be new levies for the Macedonian shieldmen,
had plundered his homestead, killed his goats, carried off his best
horse, robbed his chest, and outraged his daughters." "Had he
brought his plaint to the city magistrates?" "He had, and the
sergeant of the company got five big ruffians to swear it was false."
"The civil courts can do nothing in the way of justice on a soldier!"
another cried. "In my case," said another in the crowd, "I had my
plaint laid before a member of the emperor's own staff. All that I
got for reply was that the holy war had in fact begun, and the
autocrator could listen to nothing but to military crimes." "Oh, as
to that," whined a shrunken and tattered fellow in the crowd, "I know
that he can be pitiless enough. I was charged with being asleep on
sentry-go, and got my nose slit, as you see, my masters, and four
dozen rods broken on my bare back. I was a ruined man from that day,
and have had to beg in the streets ever since. Even the monks will
not take me with these scars, for I served in the Bulgar war, and am
cut off from the sacraments of the Church. Masters, I tell you, the
Basileus is drunk with war, mad with war. To smash the Prophet, he
is ready to sacrifice the people of Christ wholesale."
All this time frequent conferences were being held within the palace
itself, in the apartments of the Basilissa, with her connivance, and
even in her presence from time to time, which constituted a sort of
palace opposition to the imperial policy and decrees. The patriarch
would often attend. Two magistroi, and three other patricians, and
the abbot of the Stoudion, joined the conclave. Day after day the
patriarch would denounce the informal, schismatic, and uncanonical
synod wherein the Basileus had obtained the right to choose for
bishoprics and abbeys those who were presented to his choice by the
Church. It was the eternal quarrel of the "investitures," between
Church and sovereign, which so often and so long shook the west.
"This man of war, this unlearned and unregenerate soldier,"
Polyeuctus would argue, "can thus put into the sees throughout the
empire creatures of his own; and if we refuse to present churchmen
whom he favors, he can keep the holy office vacant while his fisc
absorbs the revenues to lavish them on the troops."
The fanatical abbot of the Stoudion now broke in. "He has even dared
to tamper with the dues that are levied by our holy abbey according
to ancient constitutions of the pious sovereigns who succeeded the
sacrilegious race of Iconoclasts. His officers even ventured to
impound the tribute of oil that belongs of right to the monks of
Mount Athos."
"Father Athanasius," interposed Theophano, "will bring him to reason
there. He is the one man in Church or in State to whom my lord and
master will listen."
"There is still one woman to whom he gives way," fawned the patrician
Theodore.