Constantinople: A Sketch of its History from its Foundation to its Conquest by the Turks in 1453/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
THE ISAURIANS.
EO the Isaurian was a soldier of fortune and of comparatively humble origin, his birthplace being a small city of the Lesser Armenia, near the borders of Syria. When the place was taken by the Saracens, his parents migrated to Thrace. It was prophesied to the boy by two strangers that he should one day become emperor of the East. They conjured him, in that event, to put an end to the idolatry of the empire. This he promised to do, upon which they informed him that they were Jews, and disappeared. So far the miracle-mongers. When Leo ascended the throne, they go on to relate, he remembered his promise, put down the idols, but went on persecuting the Jews. The bearing of this legend will presently appear.
It was under Anastasius II. that Leo was raised to a command—that of the Anatolian Province. It would appear as if he was pushing his way to distinction at the most unfortunate time possible. The state was torn by the conflicting factions of usurpers. In twenty-one years six emperors had been dethroned: military revolts overthrew every army that was raised to meet the Saracens. Constantinople was threatened by the Bulgarians, who ravaged and plundered under its very walls, while the Saracens invested the city on the opposite shore of the Bosporus. The Saracens, indeed, had now reached their broadest limits. They held Spain in the west, Cashgar and Scinde in the east. To the Caliph Suleiman it seemed a small thing to order his brother, Moslemah, to complete the conquest of this decayed empire, which consisted of little more than a single city ruled by one pretender after another, each after a year or two making way by murder, mutilation, or deposition, for the next.
Moslemah ordered his officers to sit down before the town of Amorium. Leo was the Byzantine general to whom as governor of the Anatolian Province it fell to raise the siege if possible. He wanted time. He gained that time by one of the most singular and most daring feats on record. He visited the Saracen general who commanded the siege of Amorium with an escort of 500 horse only. He invited him to suspend further operations until the decision of Moslemah on certain points could be ascertained, and he contrived a secret meeting with the bishop of Amorium, in which he exhorted him to continue the defence. Then he proposed that they should take him to Moslemah, with whom he would treat in person. The Saracen, willing to present himself with so valuable a prisoner as the governor of the Anatolian Province, acceded. They reached a narrow defile from which a cross road led to the advanced posts of his own army. Arrived there, this wonderful Greek, as daring as treacherous, drew his sword, cut his way with his five hundred, and reached his own camp in safety. What soldiers can withstand the charm of personal courage? Leo's could not. They forced the Saracens to raise the siege of Amorium, and then, following that evil fashion of the time which Leo and his successors were to change, they proclaimed their general emperor of the East.
He accepted the position; he marched upon the capital; he defeated the son of Theodosius III.; he placed the fallen sovereign in a monastery; he made a triumphant entry into the capital; and he was crowned by the patriarch in the church of St. Sophia.
The siege of Amorium was raised and the successful general was on the throne, but the caliph could not believe that the city of Constantinople was any stronger. His brother Moslemah proceeded to attempt that final conquest which should enable the Moslems to attack Europe simultaneously at the east and the west—from Spain and from the Golden Horn. He got together 1,800 vessels of all kinds. He divided his fleet into two portions, of which one was designed to intercept supplies from the Archipelago, and the other from the cities of Cherson and Trebizond. Mean time he passed 180,000 men across the straits, and so prepared to invest Leo by land and sea. Very few details of this siege have been preserved, but it would appear as if the defence was so skilful and so successful that it gave a glory to the name of the Isaurian, which lasted for four generations at least. What is certain is that the Saracens in an attempt to carry the place by assault were hopelessly repulsed by the Byzantine skill in machines and engines; that the attempt of Moslemah to prevent the passage of provisions into the city failed; and that the Saracens' ships were destroyed by fire. Leo, on the other hand, well provided with food and supplies of all kinds, waited with patience within the walls, the spirit of the people rising with every small advantage. The caliph died; the winter proved severe. The Saracen soldiers, unused to the piercing frost, died in multitudes. Their provisions ran short; and when reinforcements arrived in the shape of 800 ships from Alexandria and from Africa, they were manned in great part by Christians, who, dismayed by the wretched plight of the army, deserted in thousands to the Greeks, and informed the emperor of the enemy's weakness. Leo took advantage of this information, and by the aid of his ships succeeded in destroying a great part of the Saracens' naval force. A year and a half after the commencement Moslemah raised the siege. Part of the troops were embarked on board the ships, but the fleet fell in with a tempest and was dispersed. Then the islanders went out after them. In the end five only out of the original 2,600 vessels are said to have reached the shores of Syria—a destruction unparalleled in history. The rest of the army made a a peaceable and safe journey across Asia Minor to Damascus.
Finlay compares this check to the Saracenic arms with that given them by Charles Martel at Poitiers. He sees in the latter a trifling success over a plundering expedition, and in the former a lesson that the limits of Mohammedan rule must at least be those of the narrow seas. Perhaps he is right. And yet the effect in the one case was permanent, while in the other the lessons had to be renewed again and again. But it is quite true that, as he says, "a soldier of fortune, just seated on the imperial throne, defeated the long-planned schemes of conquest of the Caliphs Wezid and Suleiman, and it is unfortunate that we have no Isaurian literature." It is well to mark that the success of 718 was followed up by later triumphs, which completed the destruction of the Saracenic terror until the caliphate passed into the hands of the Abassides. So much therefore must be credited to Leo. There were two enemies to the empire, the Slavonians of the West and the Saracens of the East. Either of these might, during the rule of one of his predecessors, have destroyed the empire. He effectually broke the power of one, and struck terror into the other.
This extraordinary man, however, was not only a victorious soldier, but also a reformer, civil and ecclesiastical. Like Napoleon, he brought common sense to bear upon an intricate and obsolete code of laws. The old Roman code, owing to the interruption of communication and other causes, had been here and there supplemented by local usages. Leo was the first emperor strong enough to prepare and issue a new manual of law, to modify and infuse new energy into the military system, and to control the administration of finance. It was by the changes and reforms of Leo that the empire was enabled, for centuries to come, to withstand and drive back the Moslems.
But the character of Leo has been blackened by his enemies, the priests. He was an iconoclast.
The worship of pictures and images had become among the common people, and especially among the ignorant monks and the lower classes of the capital, not a superstition grafted on to religion, but the whole of religion. If we imagine what London would be were all her clergy ritualists and all her laity under their control, we may realise what Constantinople was in the time of Leo. Holy pictures to be revered and kissed were hung in all the churches; every house had its saint or its picture. There was no longer any Christ or any God in the minds of Christians, but only for each his favourite saint or his favourite picture. It was not so with those who had travelled among, fought with, or learned the customs of the Saracens. These, chiefly soldiers like Leo, saw with shame the purity of the monotheistic Moslems contrasted with their own paganized Christianity. And one of the earliest reforms of this strong man was the abolition of idolatry. He first ordered the pictures to be raised so high on the walls that they could not be kissed. The islanders of the Archipelago rebelled and sent a fleet with a newly-appointed emperor of their own to attack Constantinople. Leo met these ships with his own and completely destroyed them. He then called a council, which declared against images. The pope excommunicated all iconoclasts. Leo disregarded the excommunication and went on his own way. Rome never afterwards applied to Constantinople for confirmation of a papal election, and the schism was begun which widened every year. The friends of the images were not slow to point out that the wrath of Heaven against the iconoclasts was shown by a fearful volcanic eruption and an earthquake which destroyed part of the walls of Constantinople and overthrew many monasteries (which had been the storehouses of images) and churches where the saints loved to have their pictures hung. So that if the earthquake was sent by the offended saints, their wrath was blind and their curses recoiled upon themselves.
The next emperor, Constantine V., was an iconoclast as determined as his father. It is curious to compare the portrait drawn by monks and priests with that which a critical reader of history has been able to deduce from facts. The fearful crimes which are imputed to him resolve themselves into these: that he drove the ignorant and swinish monks from the monasteries where they lived in idleness; that he denied that any man could be a saint; that he rejected the belief in the intercession of the Virgin; that he refused to believe in the transference of merit. In other words, he had been brought up to reason in matters of religion as well as in matters of politics. He who reasons, regarded from a priestly standpoint, is lost.
The reign began with a rebellion, in which Constantine's brother-in-law, Artavasdes, assumed the crown, seized Constantinople, and was acknowledged emperor by the pope. Constantine waited a year, while he collected his troops and made his preparations. In the battle he routed the troops of his adversary, who fled to the capital. He then invested and besieged the city by sea and land. The people began to starve. Constantine is said to have received refugees into his own camp. The city was taken by a general assault. The usurper fled by sea: he was captured with his two sons; their eyes were put out; they were then immured in a monastery, adding three more to the emperors of the East who have worn out their sightless days in these abodes of sorrow.
The external events of the empire were the long wars with Bulgarians and Saracens, the repression of brigandage, and the improvement of the Slavonian colonies. The internal history of this reign presents a steady progress along the lines marked out by Leo. A general council condemned image worship, ordered the destruction of all holy pictures, and proscribed "the godless art of painting." Again the saints showed their displeasure; once by darkening the sun for five days; once by an earthquake in Syria; once by a winter of great severity; and once by the great pestilence which raged over the whole world.
The successor of Constantine, Leo IV., died in five years after his accession, and was succeeded by a boy, Constantine VI., ten years old, who was ruled by his mother Irene. Then the iconoclasts were persecuted in their turn. Irene called a general council at Nicæa, which entirely revoked the doctrines of that held under Leo. Irene deposed her son, put out his eyes, and crowned herself empress. There was more than the average amount of blindings and mutilations under this woman, who, like most women in power, showed herself callous to human suffering and implacable in her revenge.
The Saracenic wars assumed the character of annual incursions into Christian territory for the purpose chiefly of capturing slaves. Haroun Al Raschid himself, on one occasion, marched across the whole of Asia Minor, and gazed upon Constantinople from Scutari. Irene bought him off by the promise of an annual tribute.
The end of Irene appears like an act of justice. She was dethroned by the grand treasurer, and sent to end her days in poverty on one of the islands. The new emperor, Nicephorus, was not a soldier, but he possessed very great financial capacity, and understood that his surest means of preserving the crown was by the maintenance of numerous and well-disciplined armies. What concerned the citizens of Constantinople most was that he taxed Church as well as civil property, a step which was naturally resented by the ecclesiastics. Nicephorus, too, exasperated the priests and monks by his tolerance in religious matters. He was defeated and slain in an invasion of the Bulgarian kingdom.
In the next emperor, Michael, the son-in-law of Nicephorus, the monks had a man after their own heart. He lavished the imperial treasures on monasteries; he ascribed any success to the intervention of some saint; he decorated their tombs with silver; and when his army was defeated by the Bulgarians, he confessed it was a judgment of Heaven for taking the throne of his brother-in-law. He, too, went to end his ignoble days in a monastery.
Leo, the Armenian, who was elected in his place, had barely time to get himself crowned, before Crumn, the Bulgarian king, appeared before the walls of the city. His army was not strong enough to risk an assault along the whole wall, and he therefore set his soldiers to the work of plunder, in hope of obtaining speedy and favourable terms of peace. A conference was appointed, at which Leo endeavoured to assassinate the king. He failed in the attempt, owing, says a Christian and priestly biographer, to the multitude of his people's sins. Crumn retaliated by destroying the suburbs, and marched away with an innumerable number of slaves. Leo succeeded the following year, by a night surprise, in annihilating their formidable army. The Bulgarian peril thus averted, Leo was able to attend to home matters, which at this period were ecclesiastical. Just as the iconoclasts went to the extreme of attacking even the art of painting, so their opponents went to the extreme of claiming for images the power of working miracles, revealing the existence of treasures, prophesying the future, and raising their possessor to high rank. The soldiers were all, as in the days of Leo the Isaurian, iconoclasts. They destroyed whenever they dared to move. Then another general council was held which abolished image-worship for a second time, and Leo had the moderation and good sense to make no one a martyr. He was murdered in his private chapel on the morning of Christmas Day, and Michael of Amorium, who was lying in the dungeon, awaiting execution, was proclaimed emperor. He, like Justin, was a soldier born in the lowest rank, and it was by his personal influence that Leo had been proclaimed. It is not clear what were the motives which influenced the conspirators in raising him to the throne. He was popular with the soldiers, but among other classes he was known to be lax on Church matters. Thomas of Gazouria, in Pontus, one of the generals, headed a formidable rebellion against the newly-proclaimed emperor. He overran Asia Minor, and, crossing the Bosporus, closely invested Constantinople by sea and land. The siege lasted about eight months. Michael had laid in abundant provisions, and there was no suffering. Two general assaults were repulsed with bravery and success. The fleets of Thomas were destroyed by others raised for Michael, and the pretender had at last to fall back upon Arcadiopolis, where he was presently taken, and, after his limbs had been struck off, was hanged.
Michael endeavoured to conciliate the monks while he despised their beliefs. But by marrying a nun, and, not only that, but by contracting a second marriage at all, he provoked their enmity.
The story of the reign of Theophilus, his son, is a remarkable collection of anecdotes. He ruled like a sultan. The stories about him are like those which are told of Haroun Al Raschid. Unlike the previous emperors, he had been carefully educated. He was a bigoted iconoclast, and he was resolute in his endeavours to purify the administration of justice. He rode once a week to the church of St. Mary at Blachern, in order to afford his people the opportunity of presenting petitions: he ordered striking examples of the punishment of unjust judges. He strengthened the walls, built a hospital, erected splendid palaces. He was an enthusiastic admirer of music, and he cultivated art as he understood art. In his campaigns he was unfortunate, though his valour and military skill were never impugned; but he was unlucky. His last act when he found himself dying was a crime singularly out of keeping with the tenour of his life. To preserve the safe succession of his son he beheaded his best friend and brother-in-law, Theophobus. When the head was brought to him, the dying emperor moaned, "Thou art no longer Theophobus, and I am no more Theophilus."
This son was only three years old. Theodora, his mother, was appointed regent. In this reign the city witnessed another general council which re-established image-worship, and undid all that had been done before. Like the act of Irene, it was the work of a woman, the regent. Theodora appeared before the council, and offered them her support, provided they would pass an act declaring that her late husband's sins were forgiven. If they did not see their way to that daring statement, she feared that her influence must be thrown into the opposite scale. A way was found, and the sins of Theophilus declared to have been forgiven. Image-worship was brought back into the Greek Church, and there it still prevails. A few years ago we should have laughed at the superstition. Now all is changed. The same danger threatens this realm of England as was averted for a time by Leo the Isaurian. History repeats itself. The dangers of pictures, shrines, and images are always the same; and there are never wanting those who willingly give up the personal responsibilities of the Christian life, and accept in exchange the promises of men who, with images and pictures, bell and book, incense and vestments, assert for themselves supernatural powers, and claim to guard the gate of heaven.
The Paulicians were a kind of Byzantine Quakers, except that they were not meek. They would have no images. If they had priests at all, these did not form a special order of society; they refused to acknowledge the authority of a hierarchy. They came from Samosata, where their founder, one Constantine, had derived his simple system from the New Testament itself. They were driven by persecution to seek among the Saracens the toleration which the Christians would not concede. When Theodora had martyred ten thousand of this inoffensive people, they rose in revolt, joined the Moslems, and finally settled in a secluded country, difficult of access, where they maintained their independence.
A time of persecution for creed is not generally a time conspicuous for elevation of moral tone. This was a period in which all society seemed abandoned to the grossest vices. It would be only a vain repetition to tell of the murders, the mutilations, the tortures, of this reign. Theodora abandoned her son's education to her brother, Bardas, who gave his nephew opportunity for indulging his vices, encouraged him to order the execution of Theoktistus, his financial minister, forced Theodora and her daughters into a monastery, and joined the young emperor in his most shameless orgies. Among the favourite amusements of this most Christian prince was the public burlesque of the ceremonies of the Church. Michael the Drunkard lacked none of the ability of his forefathers: he was successful in his military enterprises, and was popular among the lower classes, who probably knew little enough of court life and its infamies. His reign is remarkable in many ways. First, the dispute between Photius the patriarch and Pope Nicholas. The latter claimed to be absolute master of the whole Christian Church; the former declared that the patriarchs of Constantinople were equal in rank to the popes of Rome. Then, were the newly converted Bulgarian Christians to belong to the jurisdiction of Rome? Secondly, the reign is remarkable for the first appearance of the Russians. Two or three years before they made their first attack, Rurik, a Scandinavian, arrived at Novgorod, and speedily reduced to submission the surrounding tribes. No one knows what motives induced the Russians to threaten Constantinople. Probably on spreading southwards and gaining access to the Dnieper vague rumours reached them of the city's wealth. They suddenly appeared with a fleet of some two hundred small vessels, which might have carried 6,000 men or so, at the mouth of the Black River in the Propontis. They ravaged the country, burned the monasteries of the Prince's Islands, and slaughtered holy monks just as if they had been common people. The emperor, who was on the Asiatic side, and about to commence a campaign against the Saracens, hurried back and speedily put them to flight. The descent was like one of those contemporaneous Danish invasions, in which the invaders came in light ships, prepared to carry off what they could, and escape when their enemy was too strong. It was not an attack or a siege, as it has been foolishly called; it was a foray. And so successful a foray was it, that the Russians were tempted to repeat it a second, a third, and a fourth time. Lastly, this reign is signalized by the rise and early fortunes of Basil the Macedonian.
Basil was the son of a herdsman of Macedonia. He was carried away as a boy by the Bulgarians, among whom he grew up, living on their wild fare, sharing in their wild sports, becoming as handsome as David and as strong as Samson; fearless and skilled in all the arts which fighting races love. He either escaped, or was allowed to return, or fought his way to freedom, and went to Constantinople, where he entered the service of the emperor's cousin, whom he accompanied to the Peloponnes. There, a Greek matron looked on the comely stripling with eyes of love. She gave him money, horses, and servants, so that from a mere stable-boy young Basil found himself able to maintain a certain appearance at his patron's little court. Perhaps it was then, perhaps later, that he discovered and announced the fact of his royal descent. He was, he said, of the blood of the Arsacidæ, the kings of Parthia. Perhaps he believed in his own descent. There are still, we are told, families in the Greek mountains, which claim hereditary descent from officers of the court of Alexander the Great, and believe their own claims. Returning to Constantinople, Basil attracted the attention of the emperor by his dexterity and strength in wrestling, his address in taming a vicious horse, his skill as a sportsman, and his admirable gifts as a boon companion. Michael attached the young countryman to his own person, promoted him rapidly, and gave him the highest court offices. Then Bardas began to grow apprehensive. He was becoming old. He would no longer please the emperor as he had been wont to please; he was not young enough to share as a guest the imperial orgies. And while he looked on Basil's rise with jealousy, he knew that his enemies regarded it as the beginning of his own fall. That event, indeed, happened very soon. Basil and Symbatios, another and a rival favourite, together accused Bardas of plotting against the emperor's life. Michael took no immediate steps; but shortly afterwards, while Bardas in the imperial tent was urging on the emperor to lose no time in the prosecution of an expedition against Crete, Basil and Symbatios fell upon him and murdered him under his nephew's eyes. The Cretan expedition was abandoned, and on his return to the capital the emperor was greeted by a voice from the crowd which cried, "Hail, emperor! You return covered with blood, but it is your own!"
Basil was now rewarded by being proclaimed the colleague of Michael, with the title of emperor. Symbatios got nothing. In revenge he crossed over to Asia Minor, persuaded Peganes, who commanded the army of the Opsikian Province. Their revolt was unsuccessful. Peganes, who was first captured, had his eyes put out; Symbatios, whose turn came immediately afterwards, had his right hand cut off and his right eye put out. They were then placed before the gates of the palace of Lausus, with a platter on their knees, as common beggars. It is from the miserable end of these two illustrious generals—blind, begging their bread—that the touching story of the last day of Belisarius is probably derived.
While Basil reigned with Michael, the emperors broke open the tomb of Constantine V. the Iconoclast, dragged out the body, which had lain there for ninety years, and burned the remains in the place used for the execution of malefactors. Then Michael, whose drunkenness was bringing on delirium tremens, placed a third colleague, one Basiliskios, on the throne.
After this, it became a mere chance which should be the first to murder the other two. The coolest head, of course, triumphed. Basil it was who murdered the other two while they were asleep after a drinking bout.
This murder ended the Isaurian, and transferred the crown to the Macedonian, dynasty.