the third fourth, and fifth books of the compilation of Ducange:
but of the Greek conquests he has dropped many circumstances,
which may be recovered from the larger history of George
Acropolita, and the three first books of Nicephorus, Gregoras,
two writers of the Byzantine series, who have had the good
fortune to meet with learned editors Leo Allatius at Rome, and
John Boivin in the Academy of Inscriptions of Paris.]
56 (return) [ George Acropolita, c. 78, p. 89, 90. edit. Paris.]
57 (return) [ The Greeks, ashamed of any foreign aid, disguise
the alliance and succor of the Genoese: but the fact is proved by
the testimony of J Villani (Chron. l. vi. c. 71, in Muratori,
Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xiii. p. 202, 203) and William de
Nangis, (Annales de St. Louis, p. 248 in the Louvre Joinville,)
two impartial foreigners; and Urban IV threatened to deprive
Genoa of her archbishop.]
Intent on his great object, the emperor Michael visited in person
and strengthened the troops and fortifications of Thrace. The
remains of the Latins were driven from their last possessions: he
assaulted without success the suburb of Galata; and corresponded
with a perfidious baron, who proved unwilling, or unable, to open
the gates of the metropolis. The next spring, his favorite
general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he had decorated with the
title of Cæsar, passed the Hellespont with eight hundred horse
and some infantry, 58 on a secret expedition. His instructions
enjoined him to approach, to listen, to watch, but not to risk
any doubtful or dangerous enterprise against the city. The
adjacent territory between the Propontis and the Black Sea was
cultivated by a hardy race of peasants and outlaws, exercised in
arms, uncertain in their allegiance, but inclined by language,
religion, and present advantage, to the party of the Greeks. They
were styled the _volunteers_; 59 and by their free service the
army of Alexius, with the regulars of Thrace and the Coman
auxiliaries, 60 was augmented to the number of five-and-twenty
thousand men. By the ardor of the volunteers, and by his own
ambition, the Cæsar was stimulated to disobey the precise orders
of his master, in the just confidence that success would plead
his pardon and reward. The weakness of Constantinople, and the
distress and terror of the Latins, were familiar to the
observation of the volunteers; and they represented the present
moment as the most propitious to surprise and conquest. A rash
youth, the new governor of the Venetian colony, had sailed away
with thirty galleys, and the best of the French knights, on a
wild expedition to Daphnusia, a town on the Black Sea, at the
distance of forty leagues; 601 and the remaining Latins were
without strength or suspicion. They were informed that Alexius
had passed the Hellespont; but their apprehensions were lulled by
the smallness of his original numbers; and their imprudence had
not watched the subsequent increase of his army. If he left his
main body to second and support his operations, he might advance
unperceived in the night with a chosen detachment. While some
applied scaling-ladders to the lowest part of the walls, they
were secure of an old Greek, who would introduce their companions
through a subterraneous passage into his house; they could soon
on the inside break an entrance through the golden gate, which
had been long obstructed; and the conqueror would be in the heart
of the city before the Latins were conscious of their danger.
After some debate, the Cæsar resigned himself to the faith of the
volunteers; they were trusty, bold, and successful; and in
describing the plan, I have already related the execution and
success. 61 But no sooner had Alexius passed the threshold of the
golden gate, than he trembled at his own rashness; he paused, he
deliberated; till the desperate volunteers urged him forwards, by
the assurance that in retreat lay the greatest and most
inevitable danger. Whilst the Cæsar kept his regulars in firm
array, the Comans dispersed themselves on all sides; an alarm was
sounded, and the threats of fire and pillage compelled the
citizens to a decisive resolution. The Greeks of Constantinople
remembered their native sovereigns; the Genoese merchants their
recent alliance and Venetian foes; every quarter was in arms; and
the air resounded with a general acclamation of “Long life and
victory to Michael and John, the august emperors of the Romans!”
Their rival, Baldwin, was awakened by the sound; but the most
pressing danger could not prompt him to draw his sword in the
defence of a city which he deserted, perhaps, with more pleasure
than regret: he fled from the palace to the seashore, where he
descried the welcome sails of the fleet returning from the vain
and fruitless attempt on Daphnusia. Constantinople was
irrecoverably lost; but the Latin emperor and the principal
families embarked on board the Venetian galleys, and steered for
the Isle of Euba, and afterwards for Italy, where the royal
fugitive was entertained by the pope and Sicilian king with a
mixture of contempt and pity. From the loss of Constantinople to
his death, he consumed thirteen years, soliciting the Catholic
powers to join in his restoration: the lesson had been familiar
to his youth; nor was his last exile more indigent or shameful
than his three former pilgrimages to the courts of Europe. His
son Philip was the heir of an ideal empire; and the pretensions
of his daughter Catherine were transported by her marriage to
Charles of Valois, the brother of Philip the Fair, king of
France. The house of Courtenay was represented in the female line
by successive alliances, till the title of emperor of
Constantinople, too bulky and sonorous for a private name,
modestly expired in silence and oblivion. 62
58 (return) [ Some precautions must be used in reconciling the
discordant numbers; the 800 soldiers of Nicetas, the 25,000 of
Spandugino, (apud Ducange, l. v. c. 24;) the Greeks and Scythians
of Acropolita; and the numerous army of Michael, in the Epistles
of Pope Urban IV. (i. 129.)]
59 (return) [ Qelhmatarioi. They are described and named by
Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 14.)]
60 (return) [ It is needless to seek these Comans in the deserts
of Tartary, or even of Moldavia. A part of the horde had
submitted to John Vataces, and was probably settled as a nursery
of soldiers on some waste lands of Thrace, (Cantacuzen. l. i. c.
2.)]
601 (return) [ According to several authorities, particularly
Abulfaradj. Chron. Arab. p. 336, this was a stratagem on the part
of the Greeks to weaken the garrison of Constantinople. The Greek
commander offered to surrender the town on the appearance of the
Venetians.—M.]
61 (return) [ The loss of Constantinople is briefly told by the
Latins: the conquest is described with more satisfaction by the
Greeks; by Acropolita, (c. 85,) Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 26, 27,)
Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. iv. c. 1, 2) See Ducange, Hist. de C. P.
l. v. c. 19—27.]
62 (return) [ See the three last books (l. v.—viii.) and the
genealogical tables of Ducange. In the year 1382, the titular
emperor of Constantinople was James de Baux, duke of Andria in
the kingdom of Naples, the son of Margaret, daughter of Catherine
de Valois, daughter of Catharine, daughter of Philip, son of
Baldwin II., (Ducange, l. viii. c. 37, 38.) It is uncertain
whether he left any posterity.]
After this narrative of the expeditions of the Latins to
Palestine and Constantinople, I cannot dismiss the subject
without resolving the general consequences on the countries that
were the scene, and on the nations that were the actors, of these
memorable crusades. 63 As soon as the arms of the Franks were
withdrawn, the impression, though not the memory, was erased in
the Mahometan realms of Egypt and Syria. The faithful disciples
of the prophet were never tempted by a profane desire to study
the laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the simplicity of
their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration from
their intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of
the West. The Greeks, who thought themselves proud, but who were
only vain, showed a disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the
efforts for the recovery of their empire, they emulated the
valor, discipline, and tactics of their antagonists. The modern
literature of the West they might justly despise; but its free
spirit would instruct them in the rights of man; and some
institutions of public and private life were adopted from the
French. The correspondence of Constantinople and Italy diffused
the knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of the fathers and
classics were at length honored with a Greek version. 64 But the
national and religious prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed
by persecution, and the reign of the Latins confirmed the
separation of the two churches.
63 (return) [ Abulfeda, who saw the conclusion of the crusades,
speaks of the kingdoms of the Franks, and those of the Negroes,
as equally unknown, (Prolegom. ad Geograph.) Had he not disdained
the Latin language, how easily might the Syrian prince have found
books and interpreters!]
64 (return) [ A short and superficial account of these versions
from Latin into Greek is given by Huet, (de Interpretatione et de
claris Interpretibus p. 131—135.) Maximus Planudes, a monk of
Constantinople, (A.D. 1327—1353) has translated Cæsar’s
Commentaries, the Somnium Scipionis, the Metamorphoses and
Heroides of Ovid, &c., (Fabric. Bib. Græc. tom. x. p. 533.)]
If we compare the æra of the crusades, the Latins of Europe with
the Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge,
industry, and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the
third rank in the scale of nations. Their successive improvement
and present superiority may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of
character, to an active and imitative spirit, unknown to their
more polished rivals, who at that time were in a stationary or
retrograde state. With such a disposition, the Latins should have
derived the most early and essential benefits from a series of
events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world, and
introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the more
cultivated regions of the East. The first and most obvious
progress was in trade and manufactures, in the arts which are
strongly prompted by the thirst of wealth, the calls of
necessity, and the gratification of the sense or vanity. Among
the crowd of unthinking fanatics, a captive or a pilgrim might
sometimes observe the superior refinements of Cairo and
Constantinople: the first importer of windmills 65 was the
benefactor of nations; and if such blessings are enjoyed without
any grateful remembrance, history has condescended to notice the
more apparent luxuries of silk and sugar, which were transported
into Italy from Greece and Egypt. But the intellectual wants of
the Latins were more slowly felt and supplied; the ardor of
studious curiosity was awakened in Europe by different causes and
more recent events; and, in the age of the crusades, they viewed
with careless indifference the literature of the Greeks and
Arabians. Some rudiments of mathematical and medicinal knowledge
might be imparted in practice and in figures; necessity might
produce some interpreters for the grosser business of merchants
and soldiers; but the commerce of the Orientals had not diffused
the study and knowledge of their languages in the schools of
Europe. 66 If a similar principle of religion repulsed the idiom
of the Koran, it should have excited their patience and curiosity
to understand the original text of the gospel; and the same
grammar would have unfolded the sense of Plato and the beauties
of Homer. Yet in a reign of sixty years, the Latins of
Constantinople disdained the speech and learning of their
subjects; and the manuscripts were the only treasures which the
natives might enjoy without rapine or envy. Aristotle was indeed
the oracle of the Western universities, but it was a barbarous
Aristotle; and, instead of ascending to the fountain head, his
Latin votaries humbly accepted a corrupt and remote version, from
the Jews and Moors of Andalusia. The principle of the crusades
was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were
analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with
his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; 67 and
each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and
visions. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new
legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the
establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks
and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress
of idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war.
The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their
reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were
the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age
of absurdity and fable.
65 (return) [ Windmills, first invented in the dry country of
Asia Minor, were used in Normandy as early as the year 1105, (Vie
privée des François, tom. i. p. 42, 43. Ducange, Gloss. Latin.
tom. iv. p. 474.)]
66 (return) [ See the complaints of Roger Bacon, (Biographia
Britannica, vol. i. p. 418, Kippis’s edition.) If Bacon himself,
or Gerbert, understood _some_Greek, they were prodigies, and owed
nothing to the commerce of the East.]
67 (return) [ Such was the opinion of the great Leibnitz, (uvres
de Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 458,) a master of the history of the
middle ages. I shall only instance the pedigree of the
Carmelites, and the flight of the house of Loretto, which were
both derived from Palestine.]
Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And
Venetians.—Part IV.
In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a
fertile land, the northern conquerors of the Roman empire
insensibly mingled with the provincials, and rekindled the embers
of the arts of antiquity. Their settlements about the age of
Charlemagne had acquired some degree of order and stability, when
they were overwhelmed by new swarms of invaders, the Normans,
Saracens, 68 and Hungarians, who replunged the western countries
of Europe into their former state of anarchy and barbarism. About
the eleventh century, the second tempest had subsided by the
expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the tide
of civilization, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a
steady and accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was opened
to the hopes and efforts of the rising generations. Great was the
increase, and rapid the progress, during the two hundred years of
the crusades; and some philosophers have applauded the propitious
influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to have checked
rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe. 69 The lives and
labors of millions, which were buried in the East, would have
been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native
country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have
overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have
been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly
correspondence with the climates of the East. In one respect I
can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the crusades, not
so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger
portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil,
without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of
ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small,
alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive
system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of
the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker
ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction
of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the
poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and
order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord
of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and
every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron
weight of the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that
undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be
allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were
dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these
costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from
their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters
of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the
artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the
most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration
which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air
and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants
of the soil. 691
68 (return) [ If I rank the Saracens with the Barbarians, it is
only relative to their wars, or rather inroads, in Italy and
France, where their sole purpose was to plunder and destroy.]
69 (return) [ On this interesting subject, the progress of
society in Europe, a strong ray of philosophical light has broke
from Scotland in our own times; and it is with private, as well
as public regard, that I repeat the names of Hume, Robertson, and
Adam Smith.]
691 (return) [ On the consequences of the crusades, compare the
valuable Essay of Heeren, that of M. Choiseul d’Aillecourt, and a
chapter of Mr. Forster’s “Mahometanism Unveiled.” I may admire
this gentleman’s learning and industry, without pledging myself
to his wild theory of prophets interpretation.—M.]
_Digression On The Family Of Courtenay._
The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at Constantinople,
will authorize or excuse a digression on the origin and singular
fortunes of the house of Courtenay, 70 in the three principal
branches: I. Of Edessa; II. Of France; and III. Of England; of
which the last only has survived the revolutions of eight hundred
years.
70 (return) [ I have applied, but not confined, myself to _A
genealogical History of the noble and illustrious Family of
Courtenay, by Ezra Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir William Courtenay,
and Rector of Honiton; Exon. 1735, in folio._ The first part is
extracted from William of Tyre; the second from Bouchet’s French
history; and the third from various memorials, public,
provincial, and private, of the Courtenays of Devonshire The
rector of Honiton has more gratitude than industry, and more
industry than criticism.]
I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and
of knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the prerogative of birth
is most strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age,
the laws and manners of the Germans have discriminated the ranks
of society; the dukes and counts, who shared the empire of
Charlemagne, converted their office to an inheritance; and to his
children, each feudal lord bequeathed his honor and his sword.
The proudest families are content to lose, in the darkness of the
middle ages, the tree of their pedigree, which, however deep and
lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian root; and their
historians must descend ten centuries below the Christian æra,
before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence
of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first
rays of light, 71 we discern the nobility and opulence of Atho, a
French knight; his nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless
father; his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of
Courtenay in the district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to
the south of Paris. From the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh
Capet, the barons of Courtenay are conspicuous among the
immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin, the grandson of
Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes of the first
crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters)
attached him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second
count of Edessa; a princely fief, which he was worthy to receive,
and able to maintain, announces the number of his martial
followers; and after the departure of his cousin, Joscelin
himself was invested with the county of Edessa on both sides of
the Euphrates. By economy in peace, his territories were
replenished with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with
corn, wine, and oil; his castles with gold and silver, with arms
and horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years, he was alternately
a conqueror and a captive: but he died like a soldier, in a horse
litter at the head of his troops; and his last glance beheld the
flight of the Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and
infirmities. His son and successor, of the same name, was less
deficient in valor than in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot
that dominion is acquired and maintained by the same arms. He
challenged the hostility of the Turks, without securing the
friendship of the prince of Antioch; and, amidst the peaceful
luxury of Turbessel, in Syria, 72 Joscelin neglected the defence
of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence,
Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his
capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and
disloyal crowd of Orientals: the Franks were oppressed in a bold
attempt for its recovery, and Courtenay ended his days in the
prison of Aleppo. He still left a fair and ample patrimony But
the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides the weakness of a
widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual pension,
they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending, and
the shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The
countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two
children; the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a
king; the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of
seneschal, the first of the kingdom, and held his new estates in
Palestine by the service of fifty knights. His name appears with
honor in the transactions of peace and war; but he finally
vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and the name of Courtenay, in
this branch of Edessa, was lost by the marriage of his two
daughters with a French and German baron. 73
71 (return) [ The primitive record of the family is a passage of
the continuator of Aimoin, a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the
xiith century. See his Chronicle, in the Historians of France,
(tom. xi. p. 276.)]
72 (return) [ Turbessel, or, as it is now styled, Telbesher, is
fixed by D’Anville four-and-twenty miles from the great passage
over the Euphrates at Zeugma.]
73 (return) [ His possessions are distinguished in the Assises of
Jerusalem (c. B26) among the feudal tenures of the kingdom, which
must therefore have been collected between the years 1153 and
1187. His pedigree may be found in the Lignages d’Outremer, c.
16.]
II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder
brother Milo, the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued,
near the Seine, to possess the castle of their fathers, which was
at length inherited by Rainaud, or Reginald, the youngest of his
three sons. Examples of genius or virtue must be rare in the
annals of the oldest families; and, in a remote age their pride
will embrace a deed of rapine and violence; such, however, as
could not be perpetrated without some superiority of courage, or,
at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay may
blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several
merchants, after they had satisfied the king’s duties at Sens and
Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the bold offender
could not be compelled to obedience and restitution, till the
regent and the count of Champagne prepared to march against him
at the head of an army. 74 Reginald bestowed his estates on his
eldest daughter, and his daughter on the seventh son of King
Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned with a numerous
offspring. We might expect that a private should have merged in a
royal name; and that the descendants of Peter of France and
Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors
of princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim was long
neglected, and finally denied; and the causes of their disgrace
will represent the story of this second branch. _1._ Of all the
families now extant, the most ancient, doubtless, and the most
illustrious, is the house of France, which has occupied the same
throne above eight hundred years, and descends, in a clear and
lineal series of males, from the middle of the ninth century. 75
In the age of the crusades, it was already revered both in the
East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage of Peter, no
more than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and so
precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as a necessary
precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their
fathers. The peers of France have long maintained their
precedency before the younger branches of the royal line, nor had
the princes of the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that
hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the most remote
candidates for the succession. _2._ The barons of Courtenay must
have stood high in their own estimation, and in that of the
world, since they could impose on the son of a king the
obligation of adopting for himself and all his descendants the
name and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of
an heiress with her inferior or her equal, such exchange was
often required and allowed: but as they continued to diverge from
the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly
confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new Courtenays
might deserve to forfeit the honors of their birth, which a
motive of interest had tempted them to renounce. _3._ The shame
was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary blaze was
followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials,
Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the
sister of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of
Constantinople: he rashly accepted the invitation of the barons
of Romania; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin, successively held
and lost the remains of the Latin empire in the East, and the
granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with
the blood of France and of Valois. To support the expenses of a
troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates were
mortgaged or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople
depended on the annual charity of Rome and Naples.
74 (return) [ The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de
Courtenay, are preposterously arranged in the Epistles of the
abbot and regent Suger, (cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials of the
age, (Duchesne, Scriptores Hist. Franc. tom. iv. p. 530.)]
75 (return) [ In the beginning of the xith century, after naming
the father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk Glaber is
obliged to add, cujus genus valde in-ante reperitur obscurum. Yet
we are assured that the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was
Robert the Strong count of Anjou, (A.D. 863—873,) a noble Frank
of Neustria, Neustricus... generosæ stirpis, who was slain in the
defence of his country against the Normans, dum patriæ fines
tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture or fable. It is a
probable conjecture, that the third race descended from the
second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. It is an
absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by the
marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St.
Arnoul, with Blitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin
of the house of France is an ancient but incredible opinion. See
a judicious memoir of M. de Foncemagne, (Mémoires de l’Académie
des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 548—579.) He had promised to
declare his own opinion in a second memoir, which has never
appeared.]
While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic
adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a
plebeian owner, the younger branches of that adopted name were
propagated and multiplied. But their splendor was clouded by
poverty and time: after the decease of Robert, great butler of
France, they descended from princes to barons; the next
generations were confounded with the simple gentry; the
descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural
lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more adventurous
embraced without dishonor the profession of a soldier: the least
active and opulent might sink, like their cousins of the branch
of Dreux, into the condition of peasants. Their royal descent, in
a dark period of four hundred years, became each day more
obsolete and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead of being
enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully searched
by the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was not
till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a
family almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit of
the Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility
provoked them to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They
appealed to the justice and compassion of Henry the Fourth;
obtained a favorable opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and
Germany, and modestly compared themselves to the descendants of
King David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of
ages or the trade of a carpenter. 76 But every ear was deaf, and
every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful claims. The
Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois; the
princes of the blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the
alliance of his humble kindred: the parliament, without denying
their proofs, eluded a dangerous precedent by an arbitrary
distinction, and established St. Louis as the first father of the
royal line. 77 A repetition of complaints and protests was
repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless pursuit was terminated
in the present century by the death of the last male of the
family. 78 Their painful and anxious situation was alleviated by
the pride of conscious virtue: they sternly rejected the
temptations of fortune and favor; and a dying Courtenay would
have sacrificed his son, if the youth could have renounced, for
any temporal interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince
of the blood of France. 79
76 (return) [ Of the various petitions, apologies, &c., published
by the princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three following, all
in octavo: 1. De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita
sunt Responsa celeberrimorum Europæ Jurisconsultorum; Paris,
1607. 2. Representation du Procedé tenû a l’instance faicte
devant le Roi, par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conservation
de l’Honneur et Dignité de leur Maison, branche de la royalle
Maison de France; à Paris, 1613. 3. Representation du subject qui
a porté Messieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison de
Courtenay, à se retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide,
for which the Courtenays expected to be pardoned, or tried, as
princes of the blood.]
77 (return) [ The sense of the parliaments is thus expressed by
Thuanus Principis nomen nusquam in Galliâ tributum, nisi iis qui
per mares e regibus nostris originem repetunt; qui nunc tantum a
Ludovico none beatæ memoriæ numerantur; nam _Cortini_ et
Drocenses, a Ludovico crasso genus ducentes, hodie inter eos
minime recensentur. A distinction of expediency rather than
justice. The sanctity of Louis IX. could not invest him with any
special prerogative, and all the descendants of Hugh Capet must
be included in his original compact with the French nation.]
78 (return) [ The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger,
who died in the year 1730, without leaving any sons. The last
female was Helene de Courtenay, who married Louis de Beaufremont.
Her title of Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed
(February 7th, 1737) by an _arrêt_ of the parliament of Paris.]
79 (return) [ The singular anecdote to which I allude is related
in the Recueil des Pieces interessantes et peu connues,
(Maestricht, 1786, in 4 vols. 12mo.;) and the unknown editor
quotes his author, who had received it from Helene de Courtenay,
marquise de Beaufremont.]
III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays
of Devonshire are descended from Prince _Florus_, the second son
of Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat. 80 This fable of the
grateful or venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our
antiquaries, Cambden 81 and Dugdale: 82 but it is so clearly
repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the
family now refuses to accept this imaginary founder. Their most
faithful historians believe, that, after giving his daughter to
the king’s son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned his possessions
in France, and obtained from the English monarch a second wife
and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry the
Second distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the
name and arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine
race, of the Courtenays of France. The right of wardship enabled
a feudal lord to reward his vassal with the marriage and estate
of a noble heiress; and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair
establishment in Devonshire, where his posterity has been seated
above six hundred years. 83 From a Norman baron, Baldwin de
Brioniis, who had been invested by the Conqueror, Hawise, the
wife of Reginald, derived the honor of Okehampton, which was held
by the service of ninety-three knights; and a female might claim
the manly offices of hereditary viscount or sheriff, and of
captain of the royal castle of Exeter. Their son Robert married
the sister of the earl of Devon: at the end of a century, on the
failure of the family of Rivers, 84 his great-grandson, Hugh the
Second, succeeded to a title which was still considered as a
territorial dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire, of the name
of Courtenay, have flourished in a period of two hundred and
twenty years. They were ranked among the chief of the barons of
the realm; nor was it till after a strenuous dispute, that they
yielded to the fief of Arundel the first place in the parliament
of England: their alliances were contracted with the noblest
families, the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns, and
even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with John of
Lancaster, a Courtenay, bishop of London, and afterwards
archbishop of Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence
in the strength and number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of
Devon resided in their numerous castles and manors of the west;
their ample revenue was appropriated to devotion and hospitality;
and the epitaph of Edward, surnamed from his misfortune, the
_blind_, from his virtues, the _good_, earl, inculcates with much
ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by
thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration of the
fifty-five years of union and happiness which he enjoyed with
Mabe his wife, the good earl thus speaks from the tomb:—
“What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What we left, we
lost.” 85
But their _losses_, in this sense, were far superior to their
gifts and expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were
the objects of their paternal care. The sums which they paid for
livery and seizin attest the greatness of their possessions; and
several estates have remained in their family since the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In war, the Courtenays of
England fulfilled the duties, and deserved the honors, of
chivalry. They were often intrusted to levy and command the
militia of Devonshire and Cornwall; they often attended their
supreme lord to the borders of Scotland; and in foreign service,
for a stipulated price, they sometimes maintained fourscore
men-at-arms and as many archers. By sea and land they fought
under the standard of the Edwards and Henries: their names are
conspicuous in battles, in tournaments, and in the original list
of the Order of the Garter; three brothers shared the Spanish
victory of the Black Prince; and in the lapse of six generations,
the English Courtenays had learned to despise the nation and
country from which they derived their origin. In the quarrel of
the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered to the house of
Lancaster; and three brothers successively died either in the
field or on the scaffold. Their honors and estates were restored
by Henry the Seventh; a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not
disgraced by the nuptials of a Courtenay; their son, who was
created Marquis of Exeter, enjoyed the favor of his cousin Henry
the Eighth; and in the camp of Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance
against the French monarch. But the favor of Henry was the
prelude of disgrace; his disgrace was the signal of death; and of
the victims of the jealous tyrant, the marquis of Exeter is one
of the most noble and guiltless. His son Edward lived a prisoner
in the Tower, and died in exile at Padua; and the secret love of
Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the princess Elizabeth,
has shed a romantic color on the story of this beautiful youth.
The relics of his patrimony were conveyed into strange families
by the marriages of his four aunts; and his personal honors, as
if they had been legally extinct, were revived by the patents of
succeeding princes. But there still survived a lineal descendant
of Hugh, the first earl of Devon, a younger branch of the
Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham Castle above four
hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to the present
hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and
improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently
restored to the honors of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still
retain the plaintive motto, which asserts the innocence, and
deplores the fall, of their ancient house. 86 While they sigh for
past greatness, they are doubtless sensible of present blessings:
in the long series of the Courtenay annals, the most splendid æra
is likewise the most unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of
Britain be inclined to envy the emperors of Constantinople, who
wandered over Europe to solicit alms for the support of their
dignity and the defence of their capital.
80 (return) [ Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 786. Yet
this fable must have been invented before the reign of Edward
III. The profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford
Abbey was followed by oppression on one side and ingratitude on
the other; and in the sixth generation, the monks ceased to
register the births, actions, and deaths of their patrons.]
81 (return) [ In his Britannia, in the list of the earls of
Devonshire. His expression, e regio sanguine ortos, credunt,
betrays, however, some doubt or suspicion.]
82 (return) [ In his Baronage, P. i. p. 634, he refers to his own
Monasticon. Should he not have corrected the register of Ford
Abbey, and annihilated the phantom Florus, by the unquestionable
evidence of the French historians?]
83 (return) [ Besides the third and most valuable book of
Cleaveland’s History, I have consulted Dugdale, the father of our
genealogical science, (Baronage, P. i. p. 634—643.)]
84 (return) [ This great family, de Ripuariis, de Redvers, de
Rivers, ended, in Edward the Fifth’s time, in Isabella de
Fortibus, a famous and potent dowager, who long survived her
brother and husband, (Dugdale, Baronage, P i. p. 254—257.)]
85 (return) [ Cleaveland p. 142. By some it is assigned to a
Rivers earl of Devon; but the English denotes the xvth, rather
than the xiiith century.]
86 (return) [ _Ubi lapsus! Quid feci?_ a motto which was probably
adopted by the Powderham branch, after the loss of the earldom of
Devonshire, &c. The primitive arms of the Courtenays were, _Or_,
_three torteaux_, _Gules_, which seem to denote their affinity
with Godfrey of Bouillon, and the ancient counts of Boulogne.]
Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part I.
The Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Elevation And Reign
Of Michael Palæologus.—His False Union With The Pope And The Latin
Church.—Hostile Designs Of Charles Of Anjou.—Revolt Of Sicily.—War
Of The Catalans In Asia And Greece.—Revolutions And Present State
Of Athens.
The loss of Constantinople restored a momentary vigor to the
Greeks. From their palaces, the princes and nobles were driven
into the field; and the fragments of the falling monarchy were
grasped by the hands of the most vigorous or the most skilful
candidates. In the long and barren pages of the Byzantine annals,
1 it would not be an easy task to equal the two characters of
Theodore Lascaris and John Ducas Vataces, 2 who replanted and
upheld the Roman standard at Nice in Bithynia. The difference of
their virtues was happily suited to the diversity of their
situation. In his first efforts, the fugitive Lascaris commanded
only three cities and two thousand soldiers: his reign was the
season of generous and active despair: in every military
operation he staked his life and crown; and his enemies of the
Hellespont and the Mæander, were surprised by his celerity and
subdued by his boldness. A victorious reign of eighteen years
expanded the principality of Nice to the magnitude of an empire.
The throne of his successor and son-in-law Vataces was founded on
a more solid basis, a larger scope, and more plentiful resources;
and it was the temper, as well as the interest, of Vataces to
calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure the
success, of his ambitious designs. In the decline of the Latins,
I have briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks; the prudent
and gradual advances of a conqueror, who, in a reign of
thirty-three years, rescued the provinces from national and
foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all sides the Imperial city,
a leafless and sapless trunk, which must full at the first stroke
of the axe. But his interior and peaceful administration is still
more deserving of notice and praise. 3 The calamities of the
times had wasted the numbers and the substance of the Greeks; the
motives and the means of agriculture were extirpated; and the
most fertile lands were left without cultivation or inhabitants.
A portion of this vacant property was occupied and improved by
the command, and for the benefit, of the emperor: a powerful hand
and a vigilant eye supplied and surpassed, by a skilful
management, the minute diligence of a private farmer: the royal
domain became the garden and granary of Asia; and without
impoverishing the people, the sovereign acquired a fund of
innocent and productive wealth. According to the nature of the
soil, his lands were sown with corn or planted with vines; the
pastures were filled with horses and oxen, with sheep and hogs;
and when Vataces presented to the empress a crown of diamonds and
pearls, he informed her, with a smile, that this precious
ornament arose from the sale of the eggs of his innumerable
poultry. The produce of his domain was applied to the maintenance
of his palace and hospitals, the calls of dignity and
benevolence: the lesson was still more useful than the revenue:
the plough was restored to its ancient security and honor; and
the nobles were taught to seek a sure and independent revenue
from their estates, instead of adorning their splendid beggary by
the oppression of the people, or (what is almost the same) by the
favors of the court. The superfluous stock of corn and cattle was
eagerly purchased by the Turks, with whom Vataces preserved a
strict and sincere alliance; but he discouraged the importation
of foreign manufactures, the costly silks of the East, and the
curious labors of the Italian looms. “The demands of nature and
necessity,” was he accustomed to say, “are indispensable; but the
influence of fashion may rise and sink at the breath of a
monarch;” and both his precept and example recommended simplicity
of manners and the use of domestic industry. The education of
youth and the revival of learning were the most serious objects
of his care; and, without deciding the precedency, he pronounced
with truth, that a prince and a philosopher 4 are the two most
eminent characters of human society. His first wife was Irene,
the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more illustrious by
her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex, than by the
blood of the Angeli and Comneni that flowed in her veins, and
transmitted the inheritance of the empire. After her death he was
contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural daughter of the
emperor Frederic 499 the Second; but as the bride had not
attained the years of puberty, Vataces placed in his solitary bed
an Italian damsel of her train; and his amorous weakness bestowed
on the concubine the honors, though not the title, of a lawful
empress. His frailty was censured as a flagitious and damnable
sin by the monks; and their rude invectives exercised and
displayed the patience of the royal lover. A philosophic age may
excuse a single vice, which was redeemed by a crowd of virtues;
and in the review of his faults, and the more intemperate
passions of Lascaris, the judgment of their contemporaries was
softened by gratitude to the second founders of the empire. 5 The
slaves of the Latins, without law or peace, applauded the
happiness of their brethren who had resumed their national
freedom; and Vataces employed the laudable policy of convincing
the Greeks of every dominion that it was their interest to be
enrolled in the number of his subjects.
1 (return) [ For the reigns of the Nicene emperors, more
especially of John Vataces and his son, their minister, George
Acropolita, is the only genuine contemporary; but George Pachymer
returned to Constantinople with the Greeks at the age of
nineteen, (Hanckius de Script. Byzant. c. 33, 34, p. 564—578.
Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 448—460.) Yet the history of
Nicephorus Gregoras, though of the xivth century, is a valuable
narrative from the taking of Constantinople by the Latins.]
2 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras (l. ii. c. 1) distinguishes
between the oxeia ormh of Lascaris, and the eustaqeia of Vataces.
The two portraits are in a very good style.]
3 (return) [ Pachymer, l. i. c. 23, 24. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6.
The reader of the Byzantines must observe how rarely we are
indulged with such precious details.]
4 (return) [ Monoi gar apantwn anqrwpwn onomastotatoi basileuV
kai jilosojoV, (Greg. Acropol. c. 32.) The emperor, in a familiar
conversation, examined and encouraged the studies of his future
logothete.]
499 (return) [ Sister of Manfred, afterwards king of Naples. Nic.
Greg. p. 45.—M.]
5 (return) [ Compare Acropolita, (c. 18, 52,) and the two first
books of Nicephorus Gregoras.]
A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between John Vataces and
his son Theodore; between the founder who sustained the weight,
and the heir who enjoyed the splendor, of the Imperial crown. 6
Yet the character of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had
been educated in the school of his father, in the exercise of war
and hunting; Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three
years of a short reign, he thrice led his armies into the heart
of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a choleric and
suspicious temper: the first of these may be ascribed to the
ignorance of control; and the second might naturally arise from a
dark and imperfect view of the corruption of mankind. On a march
in Bulgaria, he consulted on a question of policy his principal
ministers; and the Greek logothete, George Acropolita, presumed
to offend him by the declaration of a free and honest opinion.
The emperor half unsheathed his cimeter; but his more deliberate
rage reserved Acropolita for a baser punishment. One of the first
officers of the empire was ordered to dismount, stripped of his
robes, and extended on the ground in the presence of the prince
and army. In this posture he was chastised with so many and such
heavy blows from the clubs of two guards or executioners, that
when Theodore commanded them to cease, the great logothete was
scarcely able to rise and crawl away to his tent. After a
seclusion of some days, he was recalled by a peremptory mandate
to his seat in council; and so dead were the Greeks to the sense
of honor and shame, that it is from the narrative of the sufferer
himself that we acquire the knowledge of his disgrace. 7 The
cruelty of the emperor was exasperated by the pangs of sickness,
the approach of a premature end, and the suspicion of poison and
magic. The lives and fortunes, the eyes and limbs, of his kinsmen
and nobles, were sacrificed to each sally of passion; and before
he died, the son of Vataces might deserve from the people, or at
least from the court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron of the
family of the Palæologi had provoked his anger by refusing to
bestow her beauteous daughter on the vile plebeian who was
recommended by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or age,
her body, as high as the neck, was enclosed in a sack with
several cats, who were pricked with pins to irritate their fury
against their unfortunate fellow-captive. In his last hours the
emperor testified a wish to forgive and be forgiven, a just
anxiety for the fate of John his son and successor, who, at the
age of eight years, was condemned to the dangers of a long
minority. His last choice intrusted the office of guardian to the
sanctity of the patriarch Arsenius, and to the courage of George
Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by the
royal favor and the public hatred. Since their connection with
the Latins, the names and privileges of hereditary rank had
insinuated themselves into the Greek monarchy; and the noble
families 8 were provoked by the elevation of a worthless
favorite, to whose influence they imputed the errors and
calamities of the late reign. In the first council, after the
emperor’s death, Muzalon, from a lofty throne, pronounced a
labored apology of his conduct and intentions: his modesty was
subdued by a unanimous assurance of esteem and fidelity; and his
most inveterate enemies were the loudest to salute him as the
guardian and savior of the Romans. Eight days were sufficient to
prepare the execution of the conspiracy. On the ninth, the
obsequies of the deceased monarch were solemnized in the
cathedral of Magnesia, 9 an Asiatic city, where he expired, on
the banks of the Hermus, and at the foot of Mount Sipylus. The
holy rites were interrupted by a sedition of the guards; Muzalon,
his brothers, and his adherents, were massacred at the foot of
the altar; and the absent patriarch was associated with a new
colleague, with Michael Palæologus, the most illustrious, in
birth and merit, of the Greek nobles. 10
6 (return) [ A Persian saying, that Cyrus was the _father_ and
Darius the _master_, of his subjects, was applied to Vataces and
his son. But Pachymer (l. i. c. 23) has mistaken the mild Darius
for the cruel Cambyses, despot or tyrant of his people. By the
institution of taxes, Darius had incurred the less odious, but
more contemptible, name of KaphloV, merchant or broker,
(Herodotus, iii. 89.)]
7 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 63) seems to admire his own firmness
in sustaining a beating, and not returning to council till he was
called. He relates the exploits of Theodore, and his own
services, from c. 53 to c. 74 of his history. See the third book
of Nicephorus Gregoras.]
8 (return) [ Pachymer (l. i. c. 21) names and discriminates
fifteen or twenty Greek families, kai osoi alloi, oiV h
megalogenhV seira kai crush sugkekrothto. Does he mean, by this
decoration, a figurative or a real golden chain? Perhaps, both.]
9 (return) [ The old geographers, with Cellarius and D’Anville,
and our travellers, particularly Pocock and Chandler, will teach
us to distinguish the two Magnesias of Asia Minor, of the Mæander
and of Sipylus. The latter, our present object, is still
flourishing for a Turkish city, and lies eight hours, or leagues,
to the north-east of Smyrna, (Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, tom.
iii. lettre xxii. p. 365—370. Chandler’s Travels into Asia Minor,
p. 267.)]
10 (return) [ See Acropolita, (c. 75, 76, &c.,) who lived too
near the times; Pachymer, (l. i. c. 13—25,) Gregoras, (l. iii. c.
3, 4, 5.)]
Of those who are proud of their ancestors, the far greater part
must be content with local or domestic renown; and few there are
who dare trust the memorials of their family to the public annals
of their country. As early as the middle of the eleventh century,
the noble race of the Palæologi 11 stands high and conspicuous in
the Byzantine history: it was the valiant George Palæologus who
placed the father of the Comneni on the throne; and his kinsmen
or descendants continue, in each generation, to lead the armies
and councils of the state. The purple was not dishonored by their
alliance, and had the law of succession, and female succession,
been strictly observed, the wife of Theodore Lascaris must have
yielded to her elder sister, the mother of Michael Palæologus,
who afterwards raised his family to the throne. In his person,
the splendor of birth was dignified by the merit of the soldier
and statesman: in his early youth he was promoted to the office
of _constable_ or commander of the French mercenaries; the
private expense of a day never exceeded three pieces of gold; but
his ambition was rapacious and profuse; and his gifts were
doubled by the graces of his conversation and manners. The love
of the soldiers and people excited the jealousy of the court, and
Michael thrice escaped from the dangers in which he was involved
by his own imprudence or that of his friends. I. Under the reign
of Justice and Vataces, a dispute arose 12 between two officers,
one of whom accused the other of maintaining the hereditary right
of the Palæologi The cause was decided, according to the new
jurisprudence of the Latins, by single combat; the defendant was
overthrown; but he persisted in declaring that himself alone was
guilty; and that he had uttered these rash or treasonable
speeches without the approbation or knowledge of his patron. Yet
a cloud of suspicion hung over the innocence of the constable; he
was still pursued by the whispers of malevolence; and a subtle
courtier, the archbishop of Philadelphia, urged him to accept the
judgment of God in the fiery proof of the ordeal. 13 Three days
before the trial, the patient’s arm was enclosed in a bag, and
secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear
a red-hot ball of iron three times from the altar to the rails of
the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury. Palæologus
eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. “I am
a soldier,” said he, “and will boldly enter the lists with my
accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with
the gift of miracles. _Your_ piety, most holy prelate, may
deserve the interposition of Heaven, and from your hands I will
receive the fiery globe, the pledge of my innocence.” The
archbishop started; the emperor smiled; and the absolution or
pardon of Michael was approved by new rewards and new services.
II. In the succeeding reign, as he held the government of Nice,
he was secretly informed, that the mind of the absent prince was
poisoned with jealousy; and that death, or blindness, would be
his final reward. Instead of awaiting the return and sentence of
Theodore, the constable, with some followers, escaped from the
city and the empire; and though he was plundered by the Turkmans
of the desert, he found a hospitable refuge in the court of the
sultan. In the ambiguous state of an exile, Michael reconciled
the duties of gratitude and loyalty: drawing his sword against
the Tartars; admonishing the garrisons of the Roman limit; and
promoting, by his influence, the restoration of peace, in which
his pardon and recall were honorably included. III. While he
guarded the West against the despot of Epirus, Michael was again
suspected and condemned in the palace; and such was his loyalty
or weakness, that he submitted to be led in chains above six
hundred miles from Durazzo to Nice. The civility of the messenger
alleviated his disgrace; the emperor’s sickness dispelled his
danger; and the last breath of Theodore, which recommended his
infant son, at once acknowledged the innocence and the power of
Palæologus.
11 (return) [ The pedigree of Palæologus is explained by Ducange,
(Famil. Byzant. p. 230, &c.:) the events of his private life are
related by Pachymer (l. i. c. 7—12) and Gregoras (l. ii. 8, l.
iii. 2, 4, l. iv. 1) with visible favor to the father of the
reigning dynasty.]
12 (return) [ Acropolita (c. 50) relates the circumstances of
this curious adventure, which seem to have escaped the more
recent writers.]
13 (return) [ Pachymer, (l. i. c. 12,) who speaks with proper
contempt of this barbarous trial, affirms, that he had seen in
his youth many person who had sustained, without injury, the
fiery ordeal. As a Greek, he is credulous; but the ingenuity of
the Greeks might furnish some remedies of art or fraud against
their own superstition, or that of their tyrant.]
But his innocence had been too unworthily treated, and his power
was too strongly felt, to curb an aspiring subject in the fair
field that was opened to his ambition. 14 In the council, after
the death of Theodore, he was the first to pronounce, and the
first to violate, the oath of allegiance to Muzalon; and so
dexterous was his conduct, that he reaped the benefit, without
incurring the guilt, or at least the reproach, of the subsequent
massacre. In the choice of a regent, he balanced the interests
and passions of the candidates; turned their envy and hatred from
himself against each other, and forced every competitor to own,
that after his own claims, those of Palæologus were best entitled
to the preference. Under the title of great duke, he accepted or
assumed, during a long minority, the active powers of government;
the patriarch was a venerable name; and the factious nobles were
seduced, or oppressed, by the ascendant of his genius. The fruits
of the economy of Vataces were deposited in a strong castle on
the banks of the Hermus, in the custody of the faithful
Varangians: the constable retained his command or influence over
the foreign troops; he employed the guards to possess the
treasure, and the treasure to corrupt the guards; and whatsoever
might be the abuse of the public money, his character was above
the suspicion of private avarice. By himself, or by his
emissaries, he strove to persuade every rank of subjects, that
their own prosperity would rise in just proportion to the
establishment of his authority. The weight of taxes was
suspended, the perpetual theme of popular complaint; and he
prohibited the trials by the ordeal and judicial combat. These
Barbaric institutions were already abolished or undermined in
France 15 and England; 16 and the appeal to the sword offended
the sense of a civilized, 17 and the temper of an unwarlike,
people. For the future maintenance of their wives and children,
the veterans were grateful: the priests and the philosophers
applauded his ardent zeal for the advancement of religion and
learning; and his vague promise of rewarding merit was applied by
every candidate to his own hopes. Conscious of the influence of
the clergy, Michael successfully labored to secure the suffrage
of that powerful order. Their expensive journey from Nice to
Magnesia, afforded a decent and ample pretence: the leading
prelates were tempted by the liberality of his nocturnal visits;
and the incorruptible patriarch was flattered by the homage of
his new colleague, who led his mule by the bridle into the town,
and removed to a respectful distance the importunity of the
crowd. Without renouncing his title by royal descent, Palæologus
encouraged a free discussion into the advantages of elective
monarchy; and his adherents asked, with the insolence of triumph,
what patient would trust his health, or what merchant would
abandon his vessel, to the _hereditary_ skill of a physician or a
pilot? The youth of the emperor, and the impending dangers of a
minority, required the support of a mature and experienced
guardian; of an associate raised above the envy of his equals,
and invested with the name and prerogatives of royalty. For the
interest of the prince and people, without any selfish views for
himself or his family, the great duke consented to guard and
instruct the son of Theodore; but he sighed for the happy moment
when he might restore to his firmer hands the administration of
his patrimony, and enjoy the blessings of a private station. He
was first invested with the title and prerogatives of _despot_,
which bestowed the purple ornaments and the second place in the
Roman monarchy. It was afterwards agreed that John and Michael
should be proclaimed as joint emperors, and raised on the
buckler, but that the preeminence should be reserved for the
birthright of the former. A mutual league of amity was pledged
between the royal partners; and in case of a rupture, the
subjects were bound, by their oath of allegiance, to declare
themselves against the aggressor; an ambiguous name, the seed of
discord and civil war. Palæologus was content; but, on the day of
the coronation, and in the cathedral of Nice, his zealous
adherents most vehemently urged the just priority of his age and
merit. The unseasonable dispute was eluded by postponing to a
more convenient opportunity the coronation of John Lascaris; and
he walked with a slight diadem in the train of his guardian, who
alone received the Imperial crown from the hands of the
patriarch. It was not without extreme reluctance that Arsenius
abandoned the cause of his pupil; out the Varangians brandished
their battle-axes; a sign of assent was extorted from the
trembling youth; and some voices were heard, that the life of a
child should no longer impede the settlement of the nation. A
full harvest of honors and employments was distributed among his
friends by the grateful Palæologus. In his own family he created
a despot and two sebastocrators; Alexius Strategopulus was
decorated with the title of Cæsar; and that veteran commander
soon repaid the obligation, by restoring Constantinople to the
Greek emperor.
14 (return) [ Without comparing Pachymer to Thucydides or
Tacitus, I will praise his narrative, (l. i. c. 13—32, l. ii. c.
1—9,) which pursues the ascent of Palæologus with eloquence,
perspicuity, and tolerable freedom. Acropolita is more cautious,
and Gregoras more concise.]
15 (return) [ The judicial combat was abolished by St. Louis in
his own territories; and his example and authority were at length
prevalent in France, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 29.)]
16 (return) [ In civil cases Henry II. gave an option to the
defendant: Glanville prefers the proof by evidence; and that by
judicial combat is reprobated in the Fleta. Yet the trial by
battle has never been abrogated in the English law, and it was
ordered by the judges as late as the beginning of the last
century. * Note : And even demanded in the present.—M.]
17 (return) [ Yet an ingenious friend has urged to me in
mitigation of this practice, 1. _That_ in nations emerging from
barbarism, it moderates the license of private war and arbitrary
revenge. 2. _That_ it is less absurd than the trials by the
ordeal, or boiling water, or the cross, which it has contributed
to abolish. 3. _That_ it served at least as a test of personal
courage; a quality so seldom united with a base disposition, that
the danger of a trial might be some check to a malicious
prosecutor, and a useful barrier against injustice supported by
power. The gallant and unfortunate earl of Surrey might probably
have escaped his unmerited fate, had not his demand of the combat
against his accuser been overruled.]
It was in the second year of his reign, while he resided in the
palace and gardens of Nymphæum, 18 near Smyrna, that the first
messenger arrived at the dead of night; and the stupendous
intelligence was imparted to Michael, after he had been gently
waked by the tender precaution of his sister Eulogia. The man was
unknown or obscure; he produced no letters from the victorious
Cæsar; nor could it easily be credited, after the defeat of
Vataces and the recent failure of Palæologus himself, that the
capital had been surprised by a detachment of eight hundred
soldiers. As a hostage, the doubtful author was confined, with
the assurance of death or an ample recompense; and the court was
left some hours in the anxiety of hope and fear, till the
messengers of Alexius arrived with the authentic intelligence,
and displayed the trophies of the conquest, the sword and
sceptre, 19 the buskins and bonnet, 20 of the usurper Baldwin,
which he had dropped in his precipitate flight. A general
assembly of the bishops, senators, and nobles, was immediately
convened, and never perhaps was an event received with more
heartfelt and universal joy. In a studied oration, the new
sovereign of Constantinople congratulated his own and the public
fortune. “There was a time,” said he, “a far distant time, when
the Roman empire extended to the Adriatic, the Tigris, and the
confines of Æthiopia. After the loss of the provinces, our
capital itself, in these last and calamitous days, has been
wrested from our hands by the Barbarians of the West. From the
lowest ebb, the tide of prosperity has again returned in our
favor; but our prosperity was that of fugitives and exiles: and
when we were asked, which was the country of the Romans, we
indicated with a blush the climate of the globe, and the quarter
of the heavens. The divine Providence has now restored to our
arms the city of Constantine, the sacred seat of religion and
empire; and it will depend on our valor and conduct to render
this important acquisition the pledge and omen of future
victories.” So eager was the impatience of the prince and people,
that Michael made his triumphal entry into Constantinople only
twenty days after the expulsion of the Latins. The golden gate
was thrown open at his approach; the devout conqueror dismounted
from his horse; and a miraculous image of Mary the Conductress
was borne before him, that the divine Virgin in person might
appear to conduct him to the temple of her Son, the cathedral of
St. Sophia. But after the first transport of devotion and pride,
he sighed at the dreary prospect of solitude and ruin. The palace
was defiled with smoke and dirt, and the gross intemperance of
the Franks; whole streets had been consumed by fire, or were
decayed by the injuries of time; the sacred and profane edifices
were stripped of their ornaments: and, as if they were conscious
of their approaching exile, the industry of the Latins had been
confined to the work of pillage and destruction. Trade had
expired under the pressure of anarchy and distress, and the
numbers of inhabitants had decreased with the opulence of the
city. It was the first care of the Greek monarch to reinstate the
nobles in the palaces of their fathers; and the houses or the
ground which they occupied were restored to the families that
could exhibit a legal right of inheritance. But the far greater
part was extinct or lost; the vacant property had devolved to the
lord; he repeopled Constantinople by a liberal invitation to the
provinces; and the brave _volunteers_ were seated in the capital
which had been recovered by their arms. The French barons and the
principal families had retired with their emperor; but the
patient and humble crowd of Latins was attached to the country,
and indifferent to the change of masters. Instead of banishing
the factories of the Pisans, Venetians, and Genoese, the prudent
conqueror accepted their oaths of allegiance, encouraged their
industry, confirmed their privileges, and allowed them to live
under the jurisdiction of their proper magistrates. Of these
nations, the Pisans and Venetians preserved their respective
quarters in the city; but the services and power of the Genoese
deserved at the same time the gratitude and the jealousy of the
Greeks. Their independent colony was first planted at the seaport
town of Heraclea in Thrace. They were speedily recalled, and
settled in the exclusive possession of the suburb of Galata, an
advantageous post, in which they revived the commerce, and
insulted the majesty, of the Byzantine empire. 21
18 (return) [ The site of Nymphæum is not clearly defined in
ancient or modern geography. But from the last hours of Vataces,
(Acropolita, c. 52,) it is evident the palace and gardens of his
favorite residence were in the neighborhood of Smyrna. Nymphæum
might be loosely placed in Lydia, (Gregoras, l. vi. 6.)]
19 (return) [ This sceptre, the emblem of justice and power, was
a long staff, such as was used by the heroes in Homer. By the
latter Greeks it was named _Dicanice_, and the Imperial sceptre
was distinguished as usual by the red or purple color.]
20 (return) [ Acropolita affirms (c. 87,) that this “Onnet” was
after the French fashion; but from the ruby at the point or
summit, Ducange (Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 28, 29) believes that it
was the high-crowned hat of the Greeks. Could Acropolita mistake
the dress of his own court?]
21 (return) [ See Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 28—33,) Acropolita, (c.
88,) Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. iv. 7,) and for the treatment of
the subject Latins, Ducange, (l. v. c. 30, 31.)]
The recovery of Constantinople was celebrated as the æra of a new
empire: the conqueror, alone, and by the right of the sword,
renewed his coronation in the church of St. Sophia; and the name
and honors of John Lascaris, his pupil and lawful sovereign, were
insensibly abolished. But his claims still lived in the minds of
the people; and the royal youth must speedily attain the years of
manhood and ambition. By fear or conscience, Palæologus was
restrained from dipping his hands in innocent and royal blood;
but the anxiety of a usurper and a parent urged him to secure his
throne by one of those imperfect crimes so familiar to the modern
Greeks. The loss of sight incapacitated the young prince for the
active business of the world; instead of the brutal violence of
tearing out his eyes, the visual nerve was destroyed by the
intense glare of a red-hot basin, 22 and John Lascaris was
removed to a distant castle, where he spent many years in privacy
and oblivion. Such cool and deliberate guilt may seem
incompatible with remorse; but if Michael could trust the mercy
of Heaven, he was not inaccessible to the reproaches and
vengeance of mankind, which he had provoked by cruelty and
treason. His cruelty imposed on a servile court the duties of
applause or silence; but the clergy had a right to speak in the
name of their invisible Master; and their holy legions were led
by a prelate, whose character was above the temptations of hope
or fear. After a short abdication of his dignity, Arsenius 23 had
consented to ascend the ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople,
and to preside in the restoration of the church. His pious
simplicity was long deceived by the arts of Palæologus; and his
patience and submission might soothe the usurper, and protect the
safety of the young prince. On the news of his inhuman treatment,
the patriarch unsheathed the spiritual sword; and superstition,
on this occasion, was enlisted in the cause of humanity and
justice. In a synod of bishops, who were stimulated by the
example of his zeal, the patriarch pronounced a sentence of
excommunication; though his prudence still repeated the name of
Michael in the public prayers. The Eastern prelates had not
adopted the dangerous maxims of ancient Rome; nor did they
presume to enforce their censures, by deposing princes, or
absolving nations from their oaths of allegiance. But the
Christian, who had been separated from God and the church, became
an object of horror; and, in a turbulent and fanatic capital,
that horror might arm the hand of an assassin, or inflame a
sedition of the people. Palæologus felt his danger, confessed his
guilt, and deprecated his judge: the act was irretrievable; the
prize was obtained; and the most rigorous penance, which he
solicited, would have raised the sinner to the reputation of a
saint. The unrelenting patriarch refused to announce any means of
atonement or any hopes of mercy; and condescended only to
pronounce, that for so great a crime, great indeed must be the
satisfaction. “Do you require,” said Michael, “that I should
abdicate the empire?” and at these words, he offered, or seemed
to offer, the sword of state. Arsenius eagerly grasped this
pledge of sovereignty; but when he perceived that the emperor was
unwilling to purchase absolution at so dear a rate, he
indignantly escaped to his cell, and left the royal sinner
kneeling and weeping before the door. 24
22 (return) [ This milder invention for extinguishing the sight
was tried by the philosopher Democritus on himself, when he
sought to withdraw his mind from the visible world: a foolish
story! The word _abacinare_, in Latin and Italian, has furnished
Ducange (Gloss. Lat.) with an opportunity to review the various
modes of blinding: the more violent were scooping, burning with
an iron, or hot vinegar, and binding the head with a strong cord
till the eyes burst from their sockets. Ingenious tyrants!]
23 (return) [ See the first retreat and restoration of Arsenius,
in Pachymer (l. ii. c. 15, l. iii. c. 1, 2) and Nicephorus
Gregoras, (l. iii. c. 1, l. iv. c. 1.) Posterity justly accused
the ajeleia and raqumia of Arsenius the virtues of a hermit, the
vices of a minister, (l. xii. c. 2.)]
24 (return) [ The crime and excommunication of Michael are fairly
told by Pachymer (l. iii. c. 10, 14, 19, &c.) and Gregoras, (l.
iv. c. 4.) His confession and penance restored their freedom.]
Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part II.
The danger and scandal of this excommunication subsisted above
three years, till the popular clamor was assuaged by time and
repentance; till the brethren of Arsenius condemned his
inflexible spirit, so repugnant to the unbounded forgiveness of
the gospel. The emperor had artfully insinuated, that, if he were
still rejected at home, he might seek, in the Roman pontiff, a
more indulgent judge; but it was far more easy and effectual to
find or to place that judge at the head of the Byzantine church.
Arsenius was involved in a vague rumor of conspiracy and
disaffection; 248 some irregular steps in his ordination and
government were liable to censure; a synod deposed him from the
episcopal office; and he was transported under a guard of
soldiers to a small island of the Propontis. Before his exile, he
sullenly requested that a strict account might be taken of the
treasures of the church; boasted, that his sole riches, three
pieces of gold, had been earned by transcribing the psalms;
continued to assert the freedom of his mind; and denied, with his
last breath, the pardon which was implored by the royal sinner.
25 After some delay, Gregory, 259 bishop of Adrianople, was
translated to the Byzantine throne; but his authority was found
insufficient to support the absolution of the emperor; and
Joseph, a reverend monk, was substituted to that important
function. This edifying scene was represented in the presence of
the senate and the people; at the end of six years the humble
penitent was restored to the communion of the faithful; and
humanity will rejoice, that a milder treatment of the captive
Lascaris was stipulated as a proof of his remorse. But the spirit
of Arsenius still survived in a powerful faction of the monks and
clergy, who persevered about forty-eight years in an obstinate
schism. Their scruples were treated with tenderness and respect
by Michael and his son; and the reconciliation of the Arsenites
was the serious labor of the church and state. In the confidence
of fanaticism, they had proposed to try their cause by a miracle;
and when the two papers, that contained their own and the adverse
cause, were cast into a fiery brazier, they expected that the
Catholic verity would be respected by the flames. Alas! the two
papers were indiscriminately consumed, and this unforeseen
accident produced the union of a day, and renewed the quarrel of
an age. 26 The final treaty displayed the victory of the
Arsenites: the clergy abstained during forty days from all
ecclesiastical functions; a slight penance was imposed on the
laity; the body of Arsenius was deposited in the sanctuary; and,
in the name of the departed saint, the prince and people were
released from the sins of their fathers. 27
248 (return) [ Except the omission of a prayer for the emperor,
the charges against Arsenius were of different nature: he was
accused of having allowed the sultan of Iconium to bathe in
vessels signed with the cross, and to have admitted him to the
church, though unbaptized, during the service. It was pleaded, in
favor of Arsenius, among other proofs of the sultan’s
Christianity, that he had offered to eat ham. Pachymer, l. iv. c.
4, p. 265. It was after his exile that he was involved in a
charge of conspiracy.—M.]
25 (return) [ Pachymer relates the exile of Arsenius, (l. iv. c.
1—16:) he was one of the commissaries who visited him in the
desert island. The last testament of the unforgiving patriarch is
still extant, (Dupin, Bibliothèque Ecclésiastique, tom. x. p.
95.)]
259 (return) [ Pachymer calls him Germanus.—M.]
26 (return) [ Pachymer (l. vii. c. 22) relates this miraculous
trial like a philosopher, and treats with similar contempt a plot
of the Arsenites, to hide a revelation in the coffin of some old
saint, (l. vii. c. 13.) He compensates this incredulity by an
image that weeps, another that bleeds, (l. vii. c. 30,) and the
miraculous cures of a deaf and a mute patient, (l. xi. c. 32.)]
27 (return) [ The story of the Arsenites is spread through the
thirteen books of Pachymer. Their union and triumph are reserved
for Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. vii. c. 9,) who neither loves nor
esteems these sectaries.]
The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the
pretence, of the crime of Palæologus; and he was impatient to
confirm the succession, by sharing with his eldest son the honors
of the purple. Andronicus, afterwards surnamed the Elder, was
proclaimed and crowned emperor of the Romans, in the fifteenth
year of his age; and, from the first æra of a prolix and
inglorious reign, he held that august title nine years as the
colleague, and fifty as the successor, of his father. Michael
himself, had he died in a private station, would have been
thought more worthy of the empire; and the assaults of his
temporal and spiritual enemies left him few moments to labor for
his own fame or the happiness of his subjects. He wrested from
the Franks several of the noblest islands of the Archipelago,
Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes: his brother Constantine was sent to
command in Malvasia and Sparta; and the eastern side of the
Morea, from Argos and Napoli to Cape Thinners, was repossessed by
the Greeks. This effusion of Christian blood was loudly condemned
by the patriarch; and the insolent priest presumed to interpose
his fears and scruples between the arms of princes. But in the
prosecution of these western conquests, the countries beyond the
Hellespont were left naked to the Turks; and their depredations
verified the prophecy of a dying senator, that the recovery of
Constantinople would be the ruin of Asia. The victories of
Michael were achieved by his lieutenants; his sword rusted in the
palace; and, in the transactions of the emperor with the popes
and the king of Naples, his political acts were stained with
cruelty and fraud. 28
28 (return) [ Of the xiii books of Pachymer, the first six (as
the ivth and vth of Nicephorus Gregoras) contain the reign of
Michael, at the time of whose death he was forty years of age.
Instead of breaking, like his editor the Père Poussin, his
history into two parts, I follow Ducange and Cousin, who number
the xiii. books in one series.]
I. The Vatican was the most natural refuge of a Latin emperor,
who had been driven from his throne; and Pope Urban the Fourth
appeared to pity the misfortunes, and vindicate the cause, of the
fugitive Baldwin. A crusade, with plenary indulgence, was
preached by his command against the schismatic Greeks: he
excommunicated their allies and adherents; solicited Louis the
Ninth in favor of his kinsman; and demanded a tenth of the
ecclesiastical revenues of France and England for the service of
the holy war. 29 The subtle Greek, who watched the rising tempest
of the West, attempted to suspend or soothe the hostility of the
pope, by suppliant embassies and respectful letters; but he
insinuated that the establishment of peace must prepare the
reconciliation and obedience of the Eastern church. The Roman
court could not be deceived by so gross an artifice; and Michael
was admonished, that the repentance of the son should precede the
forgiveness of the father; and that _faith_ (an ambiguous word)
was the only basis of friendship and alliance. After a long and
affected delay, the approach of danger, and the importunity of
Gregory the Tenth, compelled him to enter on a more serious
negotiation: he alleged the example of the great Vataces; and the
Greek clergy, who understood the intentions of their prince, were
not alarmed by the first steps of reconciliation and respect. But
when he pressed the conclusion of the treaty, they strenuously
declared, that the Latins, though not in name, were heretics in
fact, and that they despised those strangers as the vilest and
most despicable portion of the human race. 30 It was the task of
the emperor to persuade, to corrupt, to intimidate the most
popular ecclesiastics, to gain the vote of each individual, and
alternately to urge the arguments of Christian charity and the
public welfare. The texts of the fathers and the arms of the
Franks were balanced in the theological and political scale; and
without approving the addition to the Nicene creed, the most
moderate were taught to confess, that the two hostile
propositions of proceeding from the Father by the Son, and of
proceeding from the Father and the Son, might be reduced to a
safe and Catholic sense. 31 The supremacy of the pope was a
doctrine more easy to conceive, but more painful to acknowledge:
yet Michael represented to his monks and prelates, that they
might submit to name the Roman bishop as the first of the
patriarchs; and that their distance and discretion would guard
the liberties of the Eastern church from the mischievous
consequences of the right of appeal. He protested that he would
sacrifice his life and empire rather than yield the smallest
point of orthodox faith or national independence; and this
declaration was sealed and ratified by a golden bull. The
patriarch Joseph withdrew to a monastery, to resign or resume his
throne, according to the event of the treaty: the letters of
union and obedience were subscribed by the emperor, his son
Andronicus, and thirty-five archbishops and metropolitans, with
their respective synods; and the episcopal list was multiplied by
many dioceses which were annihilated under the yoke of the
infidels. An embassy was composed of some trusty ministers and
prelates: they embarked for Italy, with rich ornaments and rare
perfumes for the altar of St. Peter; and their secret orders
authorized and recommended a boundless compliance. They were
received in the general council of Lyons, by Pope Gregory the
Tenth, at the head of five hundred bishops. 32 He embraced with
tears his long-lost and repentant children; accepted the oath of
the ambassadors, who abjured the schism in the name of the two
emperors; adorned the prelates with the ring and mitre; chanted
in Greek and Latin the Nicene creed with the addition of
_filioque_; and rejoiced in the union of the East and West, which
had been reserved for his reign. To consummate this pious work,
the Byzantine deputies were speedily followed by the pope’s
nuncios; and their instruction discloses the policy of the
Vatican, which could not be satisfied with the vain title of
supremacy. After viewing the temper of the prince and people,
they were enjoined to absolve the schismatic clergy, who should
subscribe and swear their abjuration and obedience; to establish
in all the churches the use of the perfect creed; to prepare the
entrance of a cardinal legate, with the full powers and dignity
of his office; and to instruct the emperor in the advantages
which he might derive from the temporal protection of the Roman
pontiff. 33
29 (return) [ Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 33, &c., from the
Epistles of Urban IV.]
30 (return) [ From their mercantile intercourse with the
Venetians and Genoese, they branded the Latins as kaphloi and
banausoi, (Pachymer, l. v. c. 10.) “Some are heretics in name;
others, like the Latins, in fact,” said the learned Veccus, (l.
v. c. 12,) who soon afterwards became a convert (c. 15, 16) and a
patriarch, (c. 24.)]
31 (return) [ In this class we may place Pachymer himself, whose
copious and candid narrative occupies the vth and vith books of
his history. Yet the Greek is silent on the council of Lyons, and
seems to believe that the popes always resided in Rome and Italy,
(l. v. c. 17, 21.)]
32 (return) [ See the acts of the council of Lyons in the year
1274. Fleury, Hist. Ecclésiastique, tom. xviii. p. 181—199.
Dupin, Bibliot. Ecclés. tom. x. p. 135.]
33 (return) [ This curious instruction, which has been drawn with
more or less honesty by Wading and Leo Allatius from the archives
of the Vatican, is given in an abstract or version by Fleury,
(tom. xviii. p. 252—258.)]
But they found a country without a friend, a nation in which the
names of Rome and Union were pronounced with abhorrence. The
patriarch Joseph was indeed removed: his place was filled by
Veccus, an ecclesiastic of learning and moderation; and the
emperor was still urged by the same motives, to persevere in the
same professions. But in his private language Palæologus affected
to deplore the pride, and to blame the innovations, of the
Latins; and while he debased his character by this double
hypocrisy, he justified and punished the opposition of his
subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient Rome,
a sentence of excommunication was pronounced against the
obstinate schismatics; the censures of the church were executed
by the sword of Michael; on the failure of persuasion, he tried
the arguments of prison and exile, of whipping and mutilation;
those touchstones, says an historian, of cowards and the brave.
Two Greeks still reigned in Ætolia, Epirus, and Thessaly, with
the appellation of despots: they had yielded to the sovereign of
Constantinople, but they rejected the chains of the Roman
pontiff, and supported their refusal by successful arms. Under
their protection, the fugitive monks and bishops assembled in
hostile synods; and retorted the name of heretic with the galling
addition of apostate: the prince of Trebizond was tempted to
assume the forfeit title of emperor; 339 and even the Latins of
Negropont, Thebes, Athens, and the Morea, forgot the merits of
the convert, to join, with open or clandestine aid, the enemies
of Palæologus. His favorite generals, of his own blood, and
family, successively deserted, or betrayed, the sacrilegious
trust. His sister Eulogia, a niece, and two female cousins,
conspired against him; another niece, Mary queen of Bulgaria,
negotiated his ruin with the sultan of Egypt; and, in the public
eye, their treason was consecrated as the most sublime virtue. 34
To the pope’s nuncios, who urged the consummation of the work,
Palæologus exposed a naked recital of all that he had done and
suffered for their sake. They were assured that the guilty
sectaries, of both sexes and every rank, had been deprived of
their honors, their fortunes, and their liberty; a spreading list
of confiscation and punishment, which involved many persons, the
dearest to the emperor, or the best deserving of his favor. They
were conducted to the prison, to behold four princes of the royal
blood chained in the four corners, and shaking their fetters in
an agony of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards
released; the one by submission, the other by death: but the
obstinacy of their two companions was chastised by the loss of
their eyes; and the Greeks, the least adverse to the union,
deplored that cruel and inauspicious tragedy. 35 Persecutors must
expect the hatred of those whom they oppress; but they commonly
find some consolation in the testimony of their conscience, the
applause of their party, and, perhaps, the success of their
undertaking. But the hypocrisy of Michael, which was prompted
only by political motives, must have forced him to hate himself,
to despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel
champions by whom he was detested and despised. While his
violence was abhorred at Constantinople, at Rome his slowness was
arraigned, and his sincerity suspected; till at length Pope
Martin the Fourth excluded the Greek emperor from the pale of a
church, into which he was striving to reduce a schismatic people.
No sooner had the tyrant expired, than the union was dissolved,
and abjured by unanimous consent; the churches were purified; the
penitents were reconciled; and his son Andronicus, after weeping
the sins and errors of his youth most piously denied his father
the burial of a prince and a Christian. 36
339 (return) [ According to Fallmarayer he had always maintained
this title.—M.]
34 (return) [ This frank and authentic confession of Michael’s
distress is exhibited in barbarous Latin by Ogerius, who signs
himself Protonotarius Interpretum, and transcribed by Wading from
the MSS. of the Vatican, (A.D. 1278, No. 3.) His annals of the
Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in folio,
(Rome, 1741,) I have now accidentally seen among the waste paper
of a bookseller.]
35 (return) [ See the vith book of Pachymer, particularly the
chapters 1, 11, 16, 18, 24—27. He is the more credible, as he
speaks of this persecution with less anger than sorrow.]
36 (return) [ Pachymer, l. vii. c. 1—ii. 17. The speech of
Andronicus the Elder (lib. xii. c. 2) is a curious record, which
proves that if the Greeks were the slaves of the emperor, the
emperor was not less the slave of superstition and the clergy.]
II. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers of
Constantinople had fallen to decay: they were restored and
fortified by the policy of Michael, who deposited a plenteous
store of corn and salt provisions, to sustain the siege which he
might hourly expect from the resentment of the Western powers. Of
these, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies was the most formidable
neighbor: but as long as they were possessed by Mainfroy, the
bastard of Frederic the Second, his monarchy was the bulwark,
rather than the annoyance, of the Eastern empire. The usurper,
though a brave and active prince, was sufficiently employed in
the defence of his throne: his proscription by successive popes
had separated Mainfroy from the common cause of the Latins; and
the forces that might have besieged Constantinople were detained
in a crusade against the domestic enemy of Rome. The prize of her
avenger, the crown of the Two Sicilies, was won and worn by the
brother of St Louis, by Charles count of Anjou and Provence, who
led the chivalry of France on this holy expedition. 37 The
disaffection of his Christian subjects compelled Mainfroy to
enlist a colony of Saracens whom his father had planted in
Apulia; and this odious succor will explain the defiance of the
Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation. “Bear
this message,” said Charles, “to the sultan of Nocera, that God
and the sword are umpire between us; and that he shall either
send me to paradise, or I will send him to the pit of hell.” The
armies met: and though I am ignorant of Mainfroy’s doom in the
other world, in this he lost his friends, his kingdom, and his
life, in the bloody battle of Benevento. Naples and Sicily were
immediately peopled with a warlike race of French nobles; and
their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of Africa,
Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his
first arms against the Byzantine empire; and Palæologus,
diffident of his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the
ambition of Charles to the humanity of St. Louis, who still
preserved a just ascendant over the mind of his ferocious
brother. For a while the attention of that brother was confined
at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir to the
imperial house of Swabia; but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal
conflict; and his execution on a public scaffold taught the
rivals of Charles to tremble for their heads as well as their
dominions. A second respite was obtained by the last crusade of
St. Louis to the African coast; and the double motive of interest
and duty urged the king of Naples to assist, with his powers and
his presence, the holy enterprise. The death of St. Louis
released him from the importunity of a virtuous censor: the king
of Tunis confessed himself the tributary and vassal of the crown
of Sicily; and the boldest of the French knights were free to
enlist under his banner against the Greek empire. A treaty and a
marriage united his interest with the house of Courtenay; his
daughter Beatrice was promised to Philip, son and heir of the
emperor Baldwin; a pension of six hundred ounces of gold was
allowed for his maintenance; and his generous father distributed
among his aliens the kingdoms and provinces of the East,
reserving only Constantinople, and one day’s journey round the
city for the imperial domain. 38 In this perilous moment,
Palæologus was the most eager to subscribe the creed, and implore
the protection, of the Roman pontiff, who assumed, with propriety
and weight, the character of an angel of peace, the common father
of the Christians. By his voice, the sword of Charles was chained
in the scabbard; and the Greek ambassadors beheld him, in the
pope’s antechamber, biting his ivory sceptre in a transport of
fury, and deeply resenting the refusal to enfranchise and
consecrate his arms. He appears to have respected the
disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth; but Charles was
insensibly disgusted by the pride and partiality of Nicholas the
Third; and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family,
alienated the most strenuous champion from the service of the
church. The hostile league against the Greeks, of Philip the
Latin emperor, the king of the Two Sicilies, and the republic of
Venice, was ripened into execution; and the election of Martin
the Fourth, a French pope, gave a sanction to the cause. Of the
allies, Philip supplied his name; Martin, a bull of
excommunication; the Venetians, a squadron of forty galleys; and
the formidable powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten
thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a fleet of
more than three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was
appointed for assembling this mighty force in the harbor of
Brindisi; and a previous attempt was risked with a detachment of
three hundred knights, who invaded Albania, and besieged the
fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the
vanity of Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael,
despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy;
on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring 39 of
the Sicilian tyrant.
37 (return) [ The best accounts, the nearest the time, the most
full and entertaining, of the conquest of Naples by Charles of
Anjou, may be found in the Florentine Chronicles of Ricordano
Malespina, (c. 175—193,) and Giovanni Villani, (l. vii. c. 1—10,
25—30,) which are published by Muratori in the viiith and xiiith
volumes of the Historians of Italy. In his Annals (tom. xi. p.
56—72) he has abridged these great events which are likewise
described in the Istoria Civile of Giannone. tom. l. xix. tom.
iii. l. xx.]
38 (return) [ Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 49—56, l. vi. c.
1—13. See Pachymer, l. iv. c. 29, l. v. c. 7—10, 25 l. vi. c. 30,
32, 33, and Nicephorus Gregoras, l. iv. 5, l. v. 1, 6.]
39 (return) [ The reader of Herodotus will recollect how
miraculously the Assyrian host of Sennacherib was disarmed and
destroyed, (l. ii. c. 141.)]
Among the proscribed adherents of the house of Swabia, John of
Procida forfeited a small island of that name in the Bay of
Naples. His birth was noble, but his education was learned; and
in the poverty of exile, he was relieved by the practice of
physic, which he had studied in the school of Salerno. Fortune
had left him nothing to lose, except life; and to despise life is
the first qualification of a rebel. Procida was endowed with the
art of negotiation, to enforce his reasons and disguise his
motives; and in his various transactions with nations and men, he
could persuade each party that he labored solely for _their_
interest. The new kingdoms of Charles were afflicted by every
species of fiscal and military oppression; 40 and the lives and
fortunes of his Italian subjects were sacrificed to the greatness
of their master and the licentiousness of his followers. The
hatred of Naples was repressed by his presence; but the looser
government of his vicegerents excited the contempt, as well as
the aversion, of the Sicilians: the island was roused to a sense
of freedom by the eloquence of Procida; and he displayed to every
baron his private interest in the common cause. In the confidence
of foreign aid, he successively visited the courts of the Greek
emperor, and of Peter king of Arragon, 41 who possessed the
maritime countries of Valentia and Catalonia. To the ambitious
Peter a crown was presented, which he might justly claim by his
marriage with the sister 419 of Mainfroy, and by the dying voice
of Conradin, who from the scaffold had cast a ring to his heir
and avenger. Palæologus was easily persuaded to divert his enemy
from a foreign war by a rebellion at home; and a Greek subsidy of
twenty-five thousand ounces of gold was most profitably applied
to arm a Catalan fleet, which sailed under a holy banner to the
specious attack of the Saracens of Africa. In the disguise of a
monk or beggar, the indefatigable missionary of revolt flew from
Constantinople to Rome, and from Sicily to Saragossa: the treaty
was sealed with the signet of Pope Nicholas himself, the enemy of
Charles; and his deed of gift transferred the fiefs of St. Peter
from the house of Anjou to that of Arragon. So widely diffused
and so freely circulated, the secret was preserved above two
years with impenetrable discretion; and each of the conspirators
imbibed the maxim of Peter, who declared that he would cut off
his left hand if it were conscious of the intentions of his
right. The mine was prepared with deep and dangerous artifice;
but it may be questioned, whether the instant explosion of
Palermo were the effect of accident or design.
40 (return) [ According to Sabas Malaspina, (Hist. Sicula, l.
iii. c. 16, in Muratori, tom. viii. p. 832,) a zealous Guelph,
the subjects of Charles, who had reviled Mainfroy as a wolf,
began to regret him as a lamb; and he justifies their discontent
by the oppressions of the French government, (l. vi. c. 2, 7.)
See the Sicilian manifesto in Nicholas Specialis, (l. i. c. 11,
in Muratori, tom. x. p. 930.)]
41 (return) [ See the character and counsels of Peter, king of
Arragon, in Mariana, (Hist. Hispan. l. xiv. c. 6, tom. ii. p.
133.) The reader for gives the Jesuit’s defects, in favor, always
of his style, and often of his sense.]
419 (return) [ Daughter. See Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. i. p.
517.—M.]
On the vigil of Easter, a procession of the disarmed citizens
visited a church without the walls; and a noble damsel was rudely
insulted by a French soldier. 42 The ravisher was instantly
punished with death; and if the people was at first scattered by
a military force, their numbers and fury prevailed: the
conspirators seized the opportunity; the flame spread over the
island; and eight thousand French were exterminated in a
promiscuous massacre, which has obtained the name of the Sicilian
Vespers. 43 From every city the banners of freedom and the church
were displayed: the revolt was inspired by the presence or the
soul of Procida and Peter of Arragon, who sailed from the African
coast to Palermo, was saluted as the king and savior of the isle.
By the rebellion of a people on whom he had so long trampled with
impunity, Charles was astonished and confounded; and in the first
agony of grief and devotion, he was heard to exclaim, “O God! if
thou hast decreed to humble me, grant me at least a gentle and
gradual descent from the pinnacle of greatness!” His fleet and
army, which already filled the seaports of Italy, were hastily
recalled from the service of the Grecian war; and the situation
of Messina exposed that town to the first storm of his revenge.
Feeble in themselves, and yet hopeless of foreign succor, the
citizens would have repented, and submitted on the assurance of
full pardon and their ancient privileges. But the pride of the
monarch was already rekindled; and the most fervent entreaties of
the legate could extort no more than a promise, that he would
forgive the remainder, after a chosen list of eight hundred
rebels had been yielded to his discretion. The despair of the
Messinese renewed their courage: Peter of Arragon approached to
their relief; 44 and his rival was driven back by the failure of
provision and the terrors of the equinox to the Calabrian shore.
At the same moment, the Catalan admiral, the famous Roger de
Loria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron: the French
fleet, more numerous in transports than in galleys, was either
burnt or destroyed; and the same blow assured the independence of
Sicily and the safety of the Greek empire. A few days before his
death, the emperor Michael rejoiced in the fall of an enemy whom
he hated and esteemed; and perhaps he might be content with the
popular judgment, that had they not been matched with each other,
Constantinople and Italy must speedily have obeyed the same
master. 45 From this disastrous moment, the life of Charles was a
series of misfortunes: his capital was insulted, his son was made
prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without recovering the Isle
of Sicily, which, after a war of twenty years, was finally
severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred, as an
independent kingdom, to a younger branch of the house of Arragon.
46
42 (return) [ After enumerating the sufferings of his country,
Nicholas Specialis adds, in the true spirit of Italian jealousy,
Quæ omnia et graviora quidem, ut arbitror, patienti animo Siculi
tolerassent, nisi (quod primum cunctis dominantibus cavendum est)
alienas fminas invasissent, (l. i. c. 2, p. 924.)]
43 (return) [ The French were long taught to remember this bloody
lesson: “If I am provoked, (said Henry the Fourth,) I will
breakfast at Milan, and dine at Naples.” “Your majesty (replied
the Spanish ambassador) may perhaps arrive in Sicily for
vespers.”]
44 (return) [ This revolt, with the subsequent victory, are
related by two national writers, Bartholemy à Neocastro (in
Muratori, tom. xiii.,) and Nicholas Specialis (in Muratori, tom.
x.,) the one a contemporary, the other of the next century. The
patriot Specialis disclaims the name of rebellion, and all
previous correspondence with Peter of Arragon, (nullo communicato
consilio,) who _happened_ to be with a fleet and army on the
African coast, (l. i. c. 4, 9.)]
45 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras (l. v. c. 6) admires the wisdom
of Providence in this equal balance of states and princes. For
the honor of Palæologus, I had rather this balance had been
observed by an Italian writer.]
46 (return) [ See the Chronicle of Villani, the xith volume of
the Annali d’Italia of Muratori, and the xxth and xxist books of
the Istoria Civile of Giannone.]
Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part
III.
I shall not, I trust, be accused of superstition; but I must
remark that, even in this world, the natural order of events will
sometimes afford the strong appearances of moral retribution. The
first Palæologus had saved his empire by involving the kingdoms
of the West in rebellion and blood; and from these scenes of
discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and
endangered the empire of his son. In modern times our debts and
taxes are the secret poison which still corrodes the bosom of
peace: but in the weak and disorderly government of the middle
ages, it was agitated by the present evil of the disbanded
armies. Too idle to work, too proud to beg, the mercenaries were
accustomed to a life of rapine: they could rob with more dignity
and effect under a banner and a chief; and the sovereign, to whom
their service was useless, and their presence importunate,
endeavored to discharge the torrent on some neighboring
countries. After the peace of Sicily, many thousands of Genoese,
_Catalans_, 47 &c., who had fought, by sea and land, under the
standard of Anjou or Arragon, were blended into one nation by the
resemblance of their manners and interest. They heard that the
Greek provinces of Asia were invaded by the Turks: they resolved
to share the harvest of pay and plunder: and Frederic king of
Sicily most liberally contributed the means of their departure.
In a warfare of twenty years, a ship, or a camp, was become their
country; arms were their sole profession and property; valor was
the only virtue which they knew; their women had imbibed the
fearless temper of their lovers and husbands: it was reported,
that, with a stroke of their broadsword, the Catalans could
cleave a horseman and a horse; and the report itself was a
powerful weapon. Roger de Flor 477 was the most popular of their
chiefs; and his personal merit overshadowed the dignity of his
prouder rivals of Arragon. The offspring of a marriage between a
German gentleman of the court of Frederic the Second and a damsel
of Brindisi, Roger was successively a templar, an apostate, a
pirate, and at length the richest and most powerful admiral of
the Mediterranean. He sailed from Messina to Constantinople, with
eighteen galleys, four great ships, and eight thousand
adventurers; 478 and his previous treaty was faithfully
accomplished by Andronicus the elder, who accepted with joy and
terror this formidable succor. A palace was allotted for his
reception, and a niece of the emperor was given in marriage to
the valiant stranger, who was immediately created great duke or
admiral of Romania. After a decent repose, he transported his
troops over the Propontis, and boldly led them against the Turks:
in two bloody battles thirty thousand of the Moslems were slain:
he raised the siege of Philadelphia, and deserved the name of the
deliverer of Asia. But after a short season of prosperity, the
cloud of slavery and ruin again burst on that unhappy province.
The inhabitants escaped (says a Greek historian) from the smoke
into the flames; and the hostility of the Turks was less
pernicious than the friendship of the Catalans. 479 The lives and
fortunes which they had rescued they considered as their own: the
willing or reluctant maid was saved from the race of circumcision
for the embraces of a Christian soldier: the exaction of fines
and supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and arbitrary
executions; and, on the resistance of Magnesia, the great duke
besieged a city of the Roman empire. 48 These disorders he
excused by the wrongs and passions of a victorious army; nor
would his own authority or person have been safe, had he dared to
punish his faithful followers, who were defrauded of the just and
covenanted price of their services. The threats and complaints of
Andronicus disclosed the nakedness of the empire. His golden bull
had invited no more than five hundred horse and a thousand foot
soldiers; yet the crowds of volunteers, who migrated to the East,
had been enlisted and fed by his spontaneous bounty. While his
bravest allies were content with three byzants or pieces of gold,
for their monthly pay, an ounce, or even two ounces, of gold were
assigned to the Catalans, whose annual pension would thus amount
to near a hundred pounds sterling: one of their chiefs had
modestly rated at three hundred thousand crowns the value of his
_future_ merits; and above a million had been issued from the
treasury for the maintenance of these costly mercenaries. A cruel
tax had been imposed on the corn of the husbandman: one third was
retrenched from the salaries of the public officers; and the
standard of the coin was so shamefully debased, that of the
four-and-twenty parts only five were of pure gold. 49 At the
summons of the emperor, Roger evacuated a province which no
longer supplied the materials of rapine; 496 but he refused to
disperse his troops; and while his style was respectful, his
conduct was independent and hostile. He protested, that if the
emperor should march against him, he would advance forty paces to
kiss the ground before him; but in rising from this prostrate
attitude Roger had a life and sword at the service of his
friends. The great duke of Romania condescended to accept the
title and ornaments of Cæsar; but he rejected the new proposal of
the government of Asia with a subsidy of corn and money, 497 on
condition that he should reduce his troops to the harmless number
of three thousand men. Assassination is the last resource of
cowards. The Cæsar was tempted to visit the royal residence of
Adrianople; in the apartment, and before the eyes, of the empress
he was stabbed by the Alani guards; and though the deed was
imputed to their private revenge, 498 his countrymen, who dwelt
at Constantinople in the security of peace, were involved in the
same proscription by the prince or people. The loss of their
leader intimidated the crowd of adventurers, who hoisted the
sails of flight, and were soon scattered round the coasts of the
Mediterranean. But a veteran band of fifteen hundred Catalans, or
French, stood firm in the strong fortress of Gallipoli on the
Hellespont, displayed the banners of Arragon, and offered to
revenge and justify their chief, by an equal combat of ten or a
hundred warriors. Instead of accepting this bold defiance, the
emperor Michael, the son and colleague of Andronicus, resolved to
oppress them with the weight of multitudes: every nerve was
strained to form an army of thirteen thousand horse and thirty
thousand foot; and the Propontis was covered with the ships of
the Greeks and Genoese. In two battles by sea and land, these
mighty forces were encountered and overthrown by the despair and
discipline of the Catalans: the young emperor fled to the palace;
and an insufficient guard of light-horse was left for the
protection of the open country. Victory renewed the hopes and
numbers of the adventures: every nation was blended under the
name and standard of the _great company_; and three thousand
Turkish proselytes deserted from the Imperial service to join
this military association. In the possession of Gallipoli, 509
the Catalans intercepted the trade of Constantinople and the
Black Sea, while they spread their devastation on either side of
the Hellespont over the confines of Europe and Asia. To prevent
their approach, the greatest part of the Byzantine territory was
laid waste by the Greeks themselves: the peasants and their
cattle retired into the city; and myriads of sheep and oxen, for
which neither place nor food could be procured, were unprofitably
slaughtered on the same day. Four times the emperor Andronicus
sued for peace, and four times he was inflexibly repulsed, till
the want of provisions, and the discord of the chiefs, compelled
the Catalans to evacuate the banks of the Hellespont and the
neighborhood of the capital. After their separation from the
Turks, the remains of the great company pursued their march
through Macedonia and Thessaly, to seek a new establishment in
the heart of Greece. 50
47 (return) [ In this motley multitude, the Catalans and
Spaniards, the bravest of the soldiery, were styled by themselves
and the Greeks _Amogavares_. Moncada derives their origin from
the Goths, and Pachymer (l. xi. c. 22) from the Arabs; and in
spite of national and religious pride, I am afraid the latter is
in the right.]
477 (return) [ On Roger de Flor and his companions, see an
historical fragment, detailed and interesting, entitled “The
Spaniards of the Fourteenth Century,” and inserted in “L’Espagne
en 1808,” a work translated from the German, vol. ii. p. 167.
This narrative enables us to detect some slight errors which have
crept into that of Gibbon.—G.]
478 (return) [ The troops of Roger de Flor, according to his
companions Ramon de Montaner, were 1500 men at arms, 4000
Almogavares, and 1040 other foot, besides the sailors and
mariners, vol. ii. p. 137.—M.]
479 (return) [ Ramon de Montaner suppresses the cruelties and
oppressions of the Catalans, in which, perhaps, he shared.—M.]
48 (return) [ Some idea may be formed of the population of these
cities, from the 36,000 inhabitants of Tralles, which, in the
preceding reign, was rebuilt by the emperor, and ruined by the
Turks. (Pachymer, l. vi. c. 20, 21.)]
49 (return) [ I have collected these pecuniary circumstances from
Pachymer, (l. xi. c. 21, l. xii. c. 4, 5, 8, 14, 19,) who
describes the progressive degradation of the gold coin. Even in
the prosperous times of John Ducas Vataces, the byzants were
composed in equal proportions of the pure and the baser metal.
The poverty of Michael Palæologus compelled him to strike a new
coin, with nine parts, or carats, of gold, and fifteen of copper
alloy. After his death, the standard rose to ten carats, till in
the public distress it was reduced to the moiety. The prince was
relieved for a moment, while credit and commerce were forever
blasted. In France, the gold coin is of twenty-two carats, (one
twelfth alloy,) and the standard of England and Holland is still
higher.]
496 (return) [ Roger de Flor, according to Ramon de Montaner, was
recalled from Natolia, on account of the war which had arisen on
the death of Asan, king of Bulgaria. Andronicus claimed the
kingdom for his nephew, the sons of Asan by his sister. Roger de
Flor turned the tide of success in favor of the emperor of
Constantinople and made peace.—M.]
497 (return) [ Andronicus paid the Catalans in the debased money,
much to their indignation.—M.]
498 (return) [ According to Ramon de Montaner, he was murdered by
order of Kyr (kurioV) Michael, son of the emperor. p. 170.—M.]
509 (return) [ Ramon de Montaner describes his sojourn at
Gallipoli: Nous etions si riches, que nous ne semions, ni ne
labourions, ni ne faisions enver des vins ni ne cultivions les
vignes: et cependant tous les ans nous recucillions tour ce qu’il
nous fallait, en vin, froment et avoine. p. 193. This lasted for
five merry years. Ramon de Montaner is high authority, for he was
“chancelier et maitre rational de l’armée,” (commissary of
_rations_.) He was left governor; all the scribes of the army
remained with him, and with their aid he kept the books in which
were registered the number of horse and foot employed on each
expedition. According to this book the plunder was shared, of
which he had a fifth for his trouble. p. 197.—M.]
50 (return) [ The Catalan war is most copiously related by
Pachymer, in the xith, xiith, and xiiith books, till he breaks
off in the year 1308. Nicephorus Gregoras (l. vii. 3—6) is more
concise and complete. Ducange, who adopts these adventurers as
French, has hunted their footsteps with his usual diligence,
(Hist. de C. P. l. vi. c. 22—46.) He quotes an Arragonese
history, which I have read with pleasure, and which the Spaniards
extol as a model of style and composition, (Expedicion de los
Catalanes y Arragoneses contra Turcos y Griegos: Barcelona, 1623
in quarto: Madrid, 1777, in octavo.) Don Francisco de Moncada
Conde de Ossona, may imitate Cæsar or Sallust; he may transcribe
the Greek or Italian contemporaries: but he never quotes his
authorities, and I cannot discern any national records of the
exploits of his countrymen. * Note: Ramon de Montaner, one of the
Catalans, who accompanied Roger de Flor, and who was governor of
Gallipoli, has written, in Spanish, the history of this band of
adventurers, to which he belonged, and from which he separated
when it left the Thracian Chersonese to penetrate into Macedonia
and Greece.—G.——The autobiography of Ramon de Montaner has been
published in French by M. Buchon, in the great collection of
Mémoires relatifs à l’Histoire de France. I quote this
edition.—M.]
After some ages of oblivion, Greece was awakened to new
misfortunes by the arms of the Latins. In the two hundred and
fifty years between the first and the last conquest of
Constantinople, that venerable land was disputed by a multitude
of petty tyrants; without the comforts of freedom and genius, her
ancient cities were again plunged in foreign and intestine war;
and, if servitude be preferable to anarchy, they might repose
with joy under the Turkish yoke. I shall not pursue the obscure
and various dynasties, that rose and fell on the continent or in
the isles; but our silence on the fate of Athens 51 would argue a
strange ingratitude to the first and purest school of liberal
science and amusement. In the partition of the empire, the
principality of Athens and Thebes was assigned to Otho de la
Roche, a noble warrior of Burgundy, 52 with the title of great
duke, 53 which the Latins understood in their own sense, and the
Greeks more foolishly derived from the age of Constantine. 54
Otho followed the standard of the marquis of Montferrat: the
ample state which he acquired by a miracle of conduct or fortune,
55 was peaceably inherited by his son and two grandsons, till the
family, though not the nation, was changed, by the marriage of an
heiress into the elder branch of the house of Brienne. The son of
that marriage, Walter de Brienne, succeeded to the duchy of
Athens; and, with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he
invested with fiefs, reduced above thirty castles of the vassal
or neighboring lords. But when he was informed of the approach
and ambition of the great company, he collected a force of seven
hundred knights, six thousand four hundred horse, and eight
thousand foot, and boldly met them on the banks of the River
Cephisus in Botia. The Catalans amounted to no more than three
thousand five hundred horse, and four thousand foot; but the
deficiency of numbers was compensated by stratagem and order.
They formed round their camp an artificial inundation; the duke
and his knights advanced without fear or precaution on the
verdant meadow; their horses plunged into the bog; and he was cut
in pieces, with the greatest part of the French cavalry. His
family and nation were expelled; and his son Walter de Brienne,
the titular duke of Athens, the tyrant of Florence, and the
constable of France, lost his life in the field of Poitiers
Attica and Botia were the rewards of the victorious Catalans;
they married the widows and daughters of the slain; and during
fourteen years, the great company was the terror of the Grecian
states. Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignty
of the house of Arragon; and during the remainder of the
fourteenth century, Athens, as a government or an appanage, was
successively bestowed by the kings of Sicily. After the French
and Catalans, the third dynasty was that of the Accaioli, a
family, plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and sovereign in
Greece. Athens, which they embellished with new buildings, became
the capital of a state, that extended over Thebes, Argos,
Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly; and their reign was
finally determined by Mahomet the Second, who strangled the last
duke, and educated his sons in the discipline and religion of the
seraglio.
51 (return) [ See the laborious history of Ducange, whose
accurate table of the French dynasties recapitulates the
thirty-five passages, in which he mentions the dukes of Athens.]
52 (return) [ He is twice mentioned by Villehardouin with honor,
(No. 151, 235;) and under the first passage, Ducange observes all
that can be known of his person and family.]
53 (return) [ From these Latin princes of the xivth century,
Boccace, Chaucer. and Shakspeare, have borrowed their Theseus
_duke_ of Athens. An ignorant age transfers its own language and
manners to the most distant times.]
54 (return) [ The same Constantine gave to Sicily a king, to
Russia the _magnus dapifer_ of the empire, to Thebes the
_primicerius_; and these absurd fables are properly lashed by
Ducange, (ad Nicephor. Greg. l. vii. c. 5.) By the Latins, the
lord of Thebes was styled, by corruption, the Megas Kurios, or
Grand Sire!]