Constantinople: A Sketch of its History from its Foundation to its Conquest by the Turks in 1453/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CITY AND ITS PEOPLE.
O those who read in history of the murders, mutilations, and depositions of emperors in quick succession, it would seem as if any man destined to be emperor at Constantinople might write himself beforehand the most wretched. But the position was so splendid, the power so boundless, that there never was wanting an ambitious man, when the chance came, ready to stake his life on a single effort—he never had more than one chance—to get the crown, and having won, to wear it, in spite of all risks and anxieties. Once on the throne, indeed, a man would easily persuade himself that he was in perfect safety, notwithstanding history and all its warnings. The acclamations of a mob might mean nothing, except to a weak and vain prince. The solid strength of the crown, however, lay, or seemed to lie, on a stronger basis than mob favour. There was the fidelity of the Imperial Guard, composed as it was, not of fickle Greeks, but of Englishmen and Danes, a stalwart and loyal troop; there was the strength of the imperial palace, which was like a fortress; there were the walls, and the strong position of the city; there was the unwarlike character of the citizens, which rendered a civic tumult rare and easily repressed; there was every day present a swarm of courtiers eager to profess loyalty; there were the vast revenues, which enabled a prodigal emperor to purchase the fidelity of thousands; and there was that unbounded magnificence of the court, which because it was so splendid seemed so safe from danger. Perhaps, too, the thoughts of the despot would turn with satisfaction to the vast armies which in Europe and Asia guarded his frontiers. These constituted, it is true, his chief danger. When an emperor failed in war, when the soldiers of Europe or Asia conceived a prejudice against his orthodoxy, his parsimony, or his weakness, there were plenty of precedents for the proclamation of their own general as emperor, and for a march, quite likely to be successful, on the capital.
First, as to the revenue of the empire. So great was it, that Theodora saved for her son the sum of 109,000 pounds weight of gold, and 300,000 pounds weight of silver; while Basil II., who maintained and paid enormous armies, accumulated no less than 200,000 pounds of gold. And Benjamin of Tudela declares that Constantinople alone brought in a revenue derived from custom duties of 20,000 pieces of gold every day. It must be remembered that everything went directly into the imperial treasury, that from every province, every city of the empire, a perennial rivulet of gold and silver flowed into those rapacious coffers; and though this revenue did not increase, as in a prosperous empire it should have done, though the powers of destruction were greater than those of recovery, yet it did not for many centuries sensibly decrease. The people who occupied the provinces of Basil or Alexius were widely different from those who held them under Constantine; but they still were subjects of the emperor, and paid him tribute. Bulgarians, Slavonians, Russians, occupied the provinces of the Greek; but the lands were tilled, and the revenue maintained.
As for the imperial palace, it was a miracle of splendour. Situated between the hippodrome, the church of St. Sophia, and the gardens, it gradually grew in extent and magnificence during eleven centuries. Every emperor who was a builder, added something or replaced something to show his taste; the long suite of chambers was decorated with paintings, statues, and mosaics of precious stones and marbles. The palace contained five churches; it was crowned with three domes, the roof, of gilt brass, rested on pillars of Italian marble, and the walls were encrusted with marbles of different colours. The costumes of those who walked in the courts and corridors were as splendid and as various as the rooms themselves of the palace. The emperor himself wore a tiara like that of the Persians, consisting of a high cap of cloth or silk covered with a profusion of pearls and jewels. The cap itself was within a horizontal circle of gold, over which rose two vertical arches: at the summit was a cross or globe, and two lappets of pearl hung down at either side. He was distinguished by purple buskins, the outward sign of rank. The costume, or rather the privileges in costume of those who stood next to him, were carefully regulated. The officers of the court, as well as the private citizens, vied with each other in magnificence of dress. Embroidery, silk, cloth of gold, entered largely into their adornment. We read of maces, battle-axes, and spears, which were gilded or covered with silver. There were gilded helmets, gilded armour, horses covered with trappings of gold and silver. There were artificial trees, with leaves of gold and jewelled automatic birds. There were purple canopies, golden thrones, everything in gold, silver, or rich silken stuff. No Oriental court, no Peruvian court, no court, modern or ancient, ever reached the splendour of Constantinople.
The emperor was, besides, encompassed with court ceremonials of a minute and tedious kind, which can now be paralleled only at St. Petersburg. The theory was, of course, to make difficulty of access heighten the idea of his grandeur. Between him and the court stood, first, the Cæsar, then the Sebastos, in later years, the Sebastocrator, the Panhypersebastos, and the Protosebastos. Then came the chief officers of the state, the Curopalata, the Protovestiaire, the Logothete, the Dragoman, the Great Domestic, the Protostrator, the Stratopedarch, the Great Duke, the Constable, the Acolyth, and the Emir, who were accommodated in palaces belonging to the emperor. But all, whether officers or plain civilians, had to approach the emperor in adoration, falling prostrate on the ground and kissing his feet. When the sovereign rode through the streets they were first cleared and purified; heralds went before, and proclaimed his coming; the people strewed flowers; every house on the line of march was hung with its most costly draperies; the factions, now no longer anxious for each other's blood, sang responsive chants on either side of the street in praise of the emperor; at the church doors he was solemnly received by the patriarch and the clergy.
As for Constantinople itself, it was in the tenth century a city which struck with astonishment the Westerns, who were accustomed to the narrow and dark streets of Paris or the winding lanes of London. There were wide open spaces, or places, stately churches, with ornate services, long crowded quays, splendid houses of the nobles, and a vast imperial palace. A population exceeding that of any dozen cities of France taken together, swarmed in the streets within the city and overflowed into the suburbs. They were of every nationality and wore every dress. The tall thin Copt from Egypt, the Venetian merchant with purse and inkhorn, the Pisan his rival, the Greek sailor from the islands, the mountaineer of Albania, the uncouth Russian, the stalwart Varangian guardsman, the Persian, the Armenian, the Moslem, the strange wild soldier enlisted in the Armenian highlands, and perhaps destined one day, should fortune prove evil, to seize the empire for himself, the almond-eyed Syrian, whom some, scowling, declared to be a Jew, or even, as some whispered, a Samaritan—all were there on business or for pleasure. And then there were thousands of lazzaroni, creatures born in the streets, living in the streets, and dying in the streets, whose daily bread was the imperial dole, whose whole business in life was to watch the criminals being scourged, blinded, deprived of tongue, hand, nose, or foot, beheaded, and hanged; to bawl at the circus, to gaze upon the processions of state, to kiss the holy pictures, and to kneel before the holy images. In times of ardent controversy, too, they discussed theology. Then there were the great palaces of the nobles—later on Venice and Pisa could show their own—and the monasteries and the multitudinous churches, each with its holy pictures, its images, and its precious relics. In the port the navy of the empire was reckoned by hundreds of war-ships, and there were the countless masts of the vessels which came and went laden with the trade of East and West. As for a middle class, that gradually disappeared. What contributed mainly to its decay was the destruction of the organized civil service. When everything began to be given to favourites, when the favourites filled up the subordinate posts with their protégés, the organization of the civil departments was destroyed, and with it one important element of the middle class. Then again the connection of the citizens with the army was altogether cut off by religious fanaticism. When one of the emperors asked the patriarch to declare that those who died in the frontier wars, died in a holy cause, this patriot replied that, so far from making any such declaration, he would exclude from the sacraments of the Church for three years every man who had chosen the life of a soldier. With such teaching from the churches, it cannot be a matter of surprise that the citizens learned to look on the profession of arms with contempt. Here was another outlet for a middle class destroyed.
Other causes were the accumulation of private property, which made the aristocracy rich out of all proportion, the transference of trade to foreign merchants, the intermittent successes and defeats of the empire, which were naturally felt first by the middle class, and the growth of a servile spirit among a poor and lazy population. The great families were, it is true, presently ruined, but the mischief was by this time done, and the Greek natives of the city were plunged into the lowest depths.
Yet there were always among them artificers more skilful, engineers more ingenious, scholars more learned, artists more dexterous, than in any other country of the world. Constantinople, even in its lowest stage of decay, was far in advance of the west of Europe.
The Church decayed with the people—perhaps more rapidly. It is difficult to believe that there was a vital force left at all in this great branch of the Christian Church, and it seems indeed to have become eight hundred years ago what it seems to be now—a Church of the merest formalism. There were endless ceremonies, fasts, feasts, services, worship of saints, relics, and images: to conform to all these was to ensure heaven. There were monasteries in plenty, into which it was the fashion of the aged—Isaac Comnenus retired into one—to retreat, there to pass the remainder of their days in repose and meditation. These monasteries got endowments; the endowments grew to be used for the support of the cadets of noble families in luxury. Even private houses, with all their inmates, were turned into monasteries. We have seen how many emperors, generals, and rebels were sent to repent in monastic cloisters. The church ritual was very splendid; patriarchs, bishops, and clergy vied with each other in producing the most magnificent musical services.
Such, very briefly sketched, was the Constantinople of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. An emperor first, made sacred by every form of ceremony and state; the emperor's immediate connections, dignified by grand names, but possessing no power and having no control over affairs except that gained by personal influence; the chief officers of the state, mere private secretaries appointed at will; the strongest emperors baffled by their inability to compass the control over everything; no trained body of departmental servants; an army composed entirely of rustics and foreigners; generals suspected after every successful enterprize; a capital crowded with an unwarlike and cowardly mob, living on imperial doles, eager for the games of the circus, without interest or care for the state; and a splendid city, the most splendid city of the earth, abounding with treasures of every kind, and occupying the finest site that the world has to show.