Emperor of the Byzantine Empire

“ 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 ”

“ 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 Byzantine Empire was much more than just one half of the old Roman Empire dragging out its days for another thousand years. It was a new Roman Empire based on Christianity. Practically every Byzantine was a Christian, and so it was Christianity that united all the many races and languages into a single people. In spite of all the arguments about this doctrine and that doctrine, practically every Byzantine believed in the official Orthodox faith, and as the emperor was head of this faith, that gave him additional power. ”

“ 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. ”

“ About 622, however, the fortune of the Byzantines was restored by the notable campaigns of the Emperor Heraclius; and in 650 the Saracenic successors of Mohammed conquered the Persian empire. But a decade before that event, they had overthrown the Byzantine armies, and had taken permanent possession of Syria and Egypt. In the meantime the Imperial capital itself had been severely oppressed by the martial activities of the age; and between 625 and 680 had undergone several sieges by Persians, Avars, and Saracens. ”

“ Most unhappily for itself Byzantium lay on the line of division between the eastern provinces, where Pescennius Niger had been proclaimed, and the Illyrian provinces, where Severus had assumed the imperial style. The city was seized by the army of Syria, and strengthened in haste. Presently Severus appeared from the west, after he had made himself master of Rome and Italy, and fell upon the forces of his rival Pescennius. Victory followed the arms of the Illyrian legions, the east was subdued, and the Syrian emperor put to death. ”

“ It was on this throne that the rebel Hypatius was crowned emperor by the mob, with his own wife's necklace for an impromptu diadem. Here also, two centuries later, the Emperor Justinian II. sat in state after his reconquest of Constantinople, with his rivals, Leontius and Apsimarus, bound beneath his footstool, while the populace chanted, in allusion to the names of the vanquished princes, the verse, “Thou shalt trample on the Lion and the Asp.” ”

“ For the first time since Constantinople had become the seat of empire the throne had been won by armed rebellion and the murder of the legitimate ruler. The break in the peaceful and orderly succession which had hitherto prevailed was not only an evil precedent, but an immediate disaster. The new emperor proved a far worse governor than the unfortunate Maurice, who, in spite of his faults and his ill luck, had always been hard-working, moderate, pious, and economical. ”

“ After this fearful disaster Asia Minor was lost; there was no chief to take the place of Romanus, and the Seljouk hordes spread westward almost unopposed. The next ten years were a time of chaos and disaster. While the Seljouks were carving their way deeper and deeper into the vitals of the empire, the wrecks of the Byzantine army were employed not in resisting them, but in carrying on a desperate series of civil wars. After the death of Romanus, every general in the empire seemed to think that the time had come for him to assume the purple buskins and proclaim himself emperor. ”

“ Their settlement within the Empire as traders only paved the way to the time when they aspired to establish themselves as rulers. It was a strange turn to make arbiters of the destiny of the Empire those Venetians who had in former times protected themselves from Western Cæsars by parading their dependence on the Emperor at Constantinople, and whose city bears to this day the abiding impress of Byzantine art. ”

“ They seized on every good harbour and strong sea-fortress, but left the inland alone; commerce rather than annexation was their end. The rest of the empire was parcelled out among the minor leaders of the Crusade; they had first to conquer their fiefs, and were then to do homage for them to the Emperor Baldwin. Most of them never lived to [pg 293] accomplish the scheme. Meanwhile a Venetian prelate was appointed patriarch of Constantinople, and news was sent to the Pope that the union of the Eastern and Western Churches was accomplished, by the forcible extinction of the Greek patriarchate. ”

“ The declining fortunes of the Byzantine Empire, whose sovereign, Michael the Stammerer, found himself unequal to the task of coping with his redoubtable adversary, Al-Mamun, Khalif of Bagdad, induced him, during the second year of the reign of Abd-al-Rahman, to despatch an embassy to Cordova to conclude an alliance with the Sultan of the Ommeyades, the fame of whose dynasty had already reached the extreme limits of the Orient. The envoys of the Emperor of Constantinople were received with every evidence of distinction. ”

“ The new emperor was not a man of capacity, and had been driven into rebellion by his fears rather than his ambition. He held the throne [pg 176] barely three years, amid constant revolts at home and defeats abroad. The Asiatic frontier was ravaged by the armies of Abdalmalik, and at the same time a great disaster befel the western half of the empire. A Saracen army from Egypt forced its way into Africa, where the Romans had still maintained themselves by hard fighting while the emperors of the house of Heraclius reigned. ”

“ In the Byzantine palace, the emperor was the first slave of the ceremonies which he imposed, of the rigid forms which regulated each word and gesture, besieged him in the palace, and violated the leisure of his rural solitude. But the lives and fortunes of millions hung on his arbitrary will; and the firmest minds, superior to the allurements of pomp and luxury, may be seduced by the more active pleasure of commanding their equals. ”

“ The journeys of three emperors were unavailing for their temporal, or perhaps their spiritual, salvation; but they were productive of a beneficial consequence—the revival of the Greek learning in Italy, from whence it was propagated to the last nations of the West and North. In their lowest servitude and depression, the subjects of the Byzantine throne were still possessed of a golden key that could unlock the treasures of antiquity; of a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy. ”

“ Byzantium might be in decadence, her provinces falling away, her glory wasting; the follies of the court and emperors, the best manhood of the empire lost in cloisters and hermitages, the preference of the nobility for intrigue and diplomacy might be all working their deplorable results—nay, the results might be at hand! Still the passion of the people for fetes and holidays remained. Tastes are things of heredity. In nothing is a Byzantine of this day so nearly a classic Greek as in his delicacy and appreciation where permitted to indulge in the beautiful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Because Alexius sacked Constantinople with a following of mongrel Greeks, Slavs, and Bulgarians, he has been called the first Greek emperor, but in reality the pure Greek blood had long since perished. The Byzantine population at the end of the eleventh century was the lees of a multitude of races,—a mixture of Slavs, Armenians, Jews, Thracians, and Greeks; a residuum of the most tenacious organisms, after all that was higher had disappeared. The army was a mixed horde of Huns, Arabs, Italians, Britons, Franks ”

“ 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 later Byzantine Empire was, therefore, essentially a Greek Empire, and as such it appeals most vividly to the national consciousness of the Greek of our own time. The restoration of this empire, with the little kingdom of free Greece as the nucleus, is the vision which inspires the more aggressive and venturesome school of modern Greek politicians. In the twelfth century the bulk of Asia Minor had been wrested from the Byzantine Empire by the Turks, but it was the Crusaders, not the Turks, who overthrew the first empire. ”

“ One reason may have been the fact that since the emperors came from every class and were often changing, the Byzantines were constantly getting new and vigorous blood in their government. But another reason was the wonderful and well-organized body of bureaucrats who helped the emperor govern the empire. When there was a strong emperor, these men carried out his orders. When there was a weak emperor, they did the best they could, until a new, strong emperor mounted the throne. ”

“ The more ancient a nation is, the more liable is it to be overwhelmed by this dreadful evil. The Byzantine empire, during a thousand years of civilisation and opulence, did not produce one work of original thought; five hundred years after the light of Athenian genius had been extinguished, the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. ”

“ Mercenary bands moved about the countryside robbing and stealing, instead of fighting for the emperor. They even moved on Constantinople when they weren’t paid, or thought they were not paid enough.
The Byzantines also had to fight off outside enemies. The Bulgarians renewed their old-time warfare and nibbled away at the shrinking empire. A great Serbian king proclaimed himself Roman emperor as well as Serbian monarch. He almost succeeded. The Byzantines had to fight the Genoese, and sometimes the Venetians, and even the Frank barons, descendants of the crusaders. ”

“ His army was increased by a treaty with the Patzinaks and an alliance with the Hungarians, so that they began to dream of the conquest of Constantinople, and hoped to transfer the empire of the East from the Romans of Byzantium to the Russians. It was fortunate for the Byzantine Empire that it was ruled by a soldier who knew how to profit by its superiority in tactics and discipline. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In all this we have a good example of the Byzantine attitude of that time. There is, first, frank acknowledgement that originally the sees of Southern Italy and Sicily were under the Pope (whether as Patriarch or as Metropolitan) ; but, because he is no longer in the Roman Empire (of the East, the Empire whose capital was Constantinople) , therefore he has lost all his rights. He is in the hands of Lombards, Goths, or Normans, whom the Byzantines pleasantly dismiss as Barbarians. We see also the typically Byzantine idea that politics must settle the whole question of ecclesiastical order. ”