Byzantine emperors

“ MEANING OF CHARLES'S CORONATION.—The coronation of Charlemagne made him the successor of Augustus and of Constantine. It was not imagined that the empire had ever ceased to be. The Byzantine emperors had been acknowledged in form as the rulers of the West: not even now was it conceived that the empire was divided. In the imagination and feeling of men, the creation of the Caesars remained an indivisible unity. The new emperor in the West could therefore only be regarded as a rival and usurper by the Byzantine rulers ”

“ Henceforth the Byzantine war-navy was insignificant, and without a war-navy the Paleologi could not drive away the intruders and restore the free navigation of the Levant to their own mercantile marine.
The emperors who succeeded each other on the restored throne of Constantinople were, without exception, men more fitted to lose than to hold together an exhausted and impoverished empire. ”

“ II. The Foundation Of Constantinople. (a.d. 328-330.) When the fall of Byzantium had wrecked the fortunes of Licinius, the Roman world was again united beneath the sceptre of a single master. For thirty-seven years, ever since Diocletian parcelled out the provinces with his colleagues, unity had been unknown, and emperors, whose number had sometimes risen to six and sometimes sunk to two, had administered their realms on different principles and with varying success. ”

“ Another thing the Byzantines did was to insist on education. Even the mighty French emperor Charlemagne had a hard time if he wanted to spell his way through a book and sign his name. Most Byzantine emperors could not only read and write but were thoroughly educated. Theophilus studied everything from Greek to natural history. Leo the Philosopher composed poems, sermons, and a life of his father. Constantine Born-in-the-Purple was famous for his books on the barbarians and on his empire. ”

“ The emperors were either designated by their predecessors or—less frequently—chosen by the high officials and the senate. The regularity of their sequence is all [pg 142] the more astonishing when we realize that only in three cases in the whole period was father succeeded by son. Saving Constantine himself, Theodosius I., and Arcadius, not a single emperor left male issue; yet the hereditary instinct had grown so strong in the empire that nephews, sons-in-law, and brothers-in-law of sovereigns were gladly received as their legitimate heirs. ”

“ As everybody knows, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire resulted from the profligacy and incapacity of the emperors, luxurious living and vice among the people, tyranny of an overbearing soldiery at home, and the attacks of barbarian foes gradually increasing in strength. Rome fell quickly into the hands of the barbarians, and her power was broken. In A.D. 395, was founded the Byzantine Empire, also styled the East Roman, Greek, or Lower Empire, which lasted for more than a thousand years, and took its name from the capital, Byzantium or Constantinople. ”

“ In view of the entrance of this new enemy we may note the extent of the territory belonging at this time to the eastern branch of the old Roman world, the Byzantine Empire, as it is termed (from Byzantium, the ancient name of Constantinople) . The Eastern Emperors had recovered some of their lost ground in Asia, and at the close of the tenth century they held all Asia Minor, Armenia, a part of Syria, a considerable portion of Italy, and all the Balkan Peninsula. ”

“ History has unfortunately preserved very little information concerning the organisation and social condition of the different classes and races which inhabited the dominions of the princes of Epirus. Almost the only facts that have been preserved relate to the wars and alliances of the despots and their families with the Byzantine emperors and the Latin princes. ”

“ In the West, another sword of Damocles was hanging over the emperors of Byzantium. We must remember that the Greeks had been in possession of their capital again only since 1260, and that the heirs of the Frankish emperors still cherished the dream of a Latin re-establishment at Constantinople. In 1305, on the very day Clement V mounted the papal throne, Philippe le Bel of France discussed with Charles de Valois the question of retaking Constantinople. [62] {42} The following year Clement V exhorted the Venetians to co-operate in the conquest of the Byzantine Empire. ”

“ The widowed and childless empress, who had seen the last of her race, the last of the glories of the Byzantine kingdom, then retired to a convent to pass the remainder of her days in prayers for the repose of the souls of her loved ones. Grief soon brought her to a refuge from all earthly sorrows in the grave.
The story of womanhood in the Byzantine Empire of the decadence is an extremely sad one. The times were out of joint; corruption and immorality prevailed; the emperors were almost without exception extremely selfish, cruel, and unprincipled. ”

“ Leo III., the Isaurian, the most remarkable of the Byzantine emperors since the days of the great Justinian, made his long reign from 717 to 740 memorable by his victories over the Saracens and his long and bitter conflict against the image worship and relic worship which had developed rapidly throughout the Empire and had assumed the aspect of fetichism.
The early Christians, owing to their Jewish proclivities, had felt an unconquerable repugnance to the use of images, and their religious worship was uniformly simple and spiritual. ”

“ After Heraclius had repelled the Persian invasion, he was still regarded in a more friendly way by the Copts than had been the case with other Byzantine emperors; and at first he took some pains to cultivate pleasant relations with them. He did not go so far as to refuse to appoint a Melchite patriarch. That would have been to give mortal offence to his Greek subjects all over the empire. But he was careful to select for the office a man whose life and character were in high repute even among the national Christians. ”

“ The Golden Age of Byzantine Art commences about the beginning of the tenth century, and, roughly speaking, coincides with the rule of the great Macedonian dynasty, a period when the warrior emperors, usurpers or otherwise, kept the invading barbarians at bay.
The Byzantine chroniclers expatiate at great length on the unparalleled luxury of the Court and how the “Sacred Palace” was filled with art treasures; and they also tell us that Constantine VII., Porphrygenitus (911-959) , was an enthusiastic amateur, and even employed his “sacred” fingers in carving and painting beautiful objects ”

“ And when, after he had been dethroned, deprived of his nose, and exiled for ten years, he returned to triumph over his enemies, the Greek populace applauded him with Biblical quotations as he sat in the circus with his feet on his rivals’ necks.
The advent of Leo the Isaurian (716) marks an epoch in Byzantine history. Acting as head of the Church, the established function of the eastern emperors, he set himself to check idolatry, first by ordering that the pictures in the churches should be placed high enough to prevent the people from kissing them. ”

“ In race and garb and speech the population grew largely oriental. One striking alteration in the appearance of the city was the conversion of the territory extending from the head of the promontory to within a short distance of St Sophia into a great park, within which the buildings constituting the seraglio of the sultans, like those forming the palace of the Byzantine emperors, were ranged around three courts, distinguished by their respective gates—Bab-i-Humayum, leading into the court of the Janissaries ”

“ Attempts have been made to distinguish Scandinavian elements in the old Russian law and language but with no very definite results, and we must content ourselves with the knowledge that the Vikings were all powerful in Western and Southern Russia during the greater part of two centuries, carrying on an extensive trade with the East, establishing Novgorod, 'the new town,' on the Volga under the name Holmgarðr and founding a dynasty [81] which ruled in Kiev and became a considerable power in eastern Europe negotiating on terms of equality with the Byzantine emperors. ”

“ There was hardly a knight who did not wear rich fur-trimmed robes. There was hardly a common foot soldier or even a jackallike camp follower who did not have a fat purse, and a heavy chain of gold to boot. The proud Byzantines returned to ruined churches and to charred and plundered houses. Fabled Byzantium had become an empty shell.
The Byzantine Empire became an empty shell too. The crusaders captured the new emperor and made him jump from the top of one of the tall marble columns. ”

“ Both the barbarians, with their hard-riding horsemen, and the valiant border lords played an important part in defending the Byzantine Empire from its enemies, but the Byzantines never really trusted either group. A barbarian chieftain was far too likely to ride off with his hordes and found a kingdom of his own as Theodoric had done in Italy. A border lord from Asia Minor was too likely to try to become emperor himself. ”

“ There was an empire, but it was now a Latin empire and no one but the crusaders recognized it. Even they did not leave it all its territory. Venice took over a third of Constantinople and most of the Byzantine islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas. Every knight or baron who wanted it was given a fief or a principality in southern Greece. Besides that, three Byzantine “governments in exile,” each claiming to be the real one, sprang into being. ”

“ The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was written in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the Nile, three thousand years before. When missionaries of the Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity, they went eastward and carried the civilisation of Byzantium into the vast wilderness of Russia.
As for the west, it was left to the mercies of the Barbarians. For twelve generations, murder, war, arson, plundering were the order of the day. ”

“ It met with a sympathetic reception in ever widening circles, until it gradually attained the rank, if not of a feast of obligation, at any rate, of a simple feast of devotion, and, finally, it obtained both ecclesiastical and civil authorisation.
The Byzantine Empire comprised during the whole of the period of which we have been speaking, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. In the eighth century Byzantium was no longer able to retain its hold over the duchy of Rome and the Exarchate of Ravenna ”

“ Their army and their navy with its strategoi and drungariuses (generals and admirals) cost them a lot of money and so did their extravagant ambassadors. The church with its own mighty army of high officials and lesser functionaries was very expensive too.
But as long as the Byzantines were not only able to support emperor, army, navy, diplomats, and the church, but were willing to do so, the Byzantine Empire flourished and was great. It was only after they began to economize, when a lot of Byzantines decided they were spending too much on the army, that their troubles began. ”

“ The average proportion will allow ten years for each emperor, far below the chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton, who, from the experience of more recent and regular monarchies, defined about eighteen or twenty years as the term of an ordinary reign. The Byzantine Empire was most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce [272] in hereditary succession; five dynasties, the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian, and Comnenian families, enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four generations ”

“ So the division into East and West was cancelled: Italy as a province belonged still to the one emperor, who was seated at Byzantium. In theory, the unity of Constantine's time was restored; in fact, Rome and the West were surrendered to Teuton invaders. [16] This was the last stroke: the mighty members of the great mother—Gaul, and Spain, and Britain, and Africa, and Illyricum—had been severed from her. Now, the head, discrowned and impotent, submitted to the rule of Odoacer the Herule. The Byzantine supremacy remained in keeping for future use. ”

“ The usurpation of Michael tempted all the enemies of the Greek Empire to take arms. The Epirot despot allied himself with the Frankish lords of Greece, and their united armies, aided by auxiliaries from Italy, invaded Macedonia; moreover the Latin emperor of Constantinople stirred up the Venetians to ravage his neighbours' borders. But in 1260 the troops of Michael won, over the allied armies of the Franks and Epirots, the last great victory that a Byzantine army was ever destined to achieve. ”

“ The exiled prince besought them to turn aside once more before they sailed to the East, and to rescue his blind father from the dungeon into which he had been cast by his cruel brother Alexius III. If they would drive out the [pg 281] usurper and restore the rightful ruler to his throne, they should have anything that the Byzantine Empire could afford to help them for their Crusade—money in plenty, stores, a war fleet, a force of mercenary troops, and his own presence as a helper in the war with Egypt. ”