Europe: A History (66 page)
Feudalism left a profound legacy in Western culture. It moulded speech and manners; it conditioned attitudes to property, to the rule of law, and to relations between the state and the individual. By its emphasis on contract, and on the
balance between rights and obligations, it generated lasting concern for mutual trust and for keeping one’s word. These attitudes held implications far beyond the narrow spheres of military service and land-holding.
The military dispositions of the feudal order were put to the test when the fearsome Magyars rode onto the stage at the end of the ninth century (see p. 296). Though not related to the Huns, the Magyars lived by the same predatory habits, and settled on the same plains of ‘Hungaria’. For sixty years, from 895 to 955, their annual raiding-parties stormed through the former Carolingian empire. They were every bit as murderous as the Vikings, and far fleeter. They were masters of blackmail, exacting vast sums in tribute or in ransom. In 899 they shattered the host of Italy on the River Brenta. In 904 they overwhelmed Moravia, in 907 Bavaria, in 922 Saxony. By the 940s they felt free to roam at will—to Apulia, to Aragon, to Aquitaine. They finally met their match when the princes and nobles of Germany united to challenge the latest invasion of Bavaria in 955. There, on the Lechfeld near Augsburg on 10–12 August, Otto of Saxony led the Germans to a famous victory in three days of slaughter. The Magyars were tamed. The remnants straggled back, and turned to the arts of tending their herds and ploughing the plain,
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For some reason it has been the fashion among some historians to minimize the impact of the Magyars, who ‘were not a creative factor in the West’.
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(All this means is that the Magyars did not reach Cambridge.) They were, indeed, a destructive force. But they furnished the stimulus for developments of profound importance. By destroying Greater Moravia (see p. 321), they recast the ethnic and political patterns of the Danube basin, and determined the future profile of all Central Europe. Their presence was a vital element in the formation not only of Hungary but of Bohemia, of Poland, of Croatia and Serbia, of Austria, and of the German Empire. They created the living barrier which separated the Slavs of the north from the Slavs of the south. They opened the way for German colonists to move down the Danube, and to consolidate their hold on ‘Austria’. They drove the princes of Germany to unite, and to accept the victor of the Lechfeld as their emperor. One account relates how the German troops raised Otto of Saxony on their shields at the end of the battle, and acclaimed him emperor on the spot. This may not have been the Magyars’ intention. But for seven tribes of refugee nomads to have crossed the Carpathians, and within one lifetime to have provoked the rise of six or seven durable fixtures on the map of Europe, was no mean achievement. Only armchair historians, sitting in a backwater of an offshore island, might judge such developments trivial.
Of course, the elevation of Otto I of Saxony (r. 936–73), who was formally crowned Emperor in Rome in 962, cannot be attributed exclusively to his victory on the Lechfeld. His father, Henry the Fowler (r. 919–36), had already turned Saxony into a formidable power. From his palace at Mamleben in the Harz mountains he had initiated the eastern Marches, building walled towns and planting German settlers against the incursions of Danes, Slavs, and Magyars.
Quedlinburg, Meissen, and Merseburg all date from that reign. So Otto was building on firm foundations. The Marches were consolidated with ecclesiastical help. The archbishopric of Magdeburg (968), the bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg, and the new port of Hamburg could now be safely planted. Three campaigns in Italy, in 951–2, 961–5, and 966–72, ensured that the imperial link between Germany and Italy was restored. A series of civil wars, and of judicious matrimonial alliances, saw the wayward duchies of Franconia, Lotharingia, Swabia, and Bavaria reintegrated.
Henceforth the restored Empire was destined to have a continuous existence until its destruction by Napoleon. The leadership of the house of Saxony naturally turned its centre of gravity to the east, although its economic life was still dominated by the Rhineland. Its kingmaking capital stayed in Aachen; and its possession of Lotharingia, the old ‘Middle Kingdom’, gave it a permanent stake in western affairs. The Salian dynasty which followed the Saxons from 1024 to 1125 were of Frankish origin. But they no longer ruled the empire of the Franks. They ruled a creature which would grow into the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation—the launch-pad of ‘Germany’ (see Appendix III, p. 1246).
In 972, at the end of his last campaign in Italy, Otto I took a momentous step. Having conquered the Byzantines’ Italian territories, he offered to return them in exchange for the mutual recognition of titles. He was to defer to the ‘Empire of the Romans’ if they would recognize his own, equal, imperial status. The agreement was sealed by the marriage of Otto’s son to Theophano, daughter of the previous Byzantine Emperor, Romanus II. From then on, there were to be two empires. The dream of one universal empire was lost forever. True enough, Theophano’s son, Otto III (r. 983–1002),
did
entertain visions of a wider realm. He made a pilgrimage to Aachen to open Charlemagne’s tomb, and he paid an official visit to his eastern Polish neighbours. But his ideas attracted support neither in Germany nor in Constantinople, and he left no heirs. His successor, Henry II (r. 1002–24), the last of the Saxon line, was soon grappling with all the problems which became the Empire’s normal burden: civil wars in Germany, frontier wars against the Slavs, expeditions into Italy, sporadic conflict with France.
Otto I had viewed the Papacy with autocratic disdain. He ordered that no pope should be consecrated before swearing allegiance to the Empire. Having hanged the tribunes and Prefect of Rome, he imposed John XIII (965–72) as a prelude to his own coronation. For the time being, the Latin Pope was scarcely more independent than the Greek Patriarch. Generally speaking, the Saxon emperors left the feuding rulers of ‘West Francia’ to their own devices. In the tenth century, the heirs of the Carolingians were locked in a complicated struggle of rivalry and mutual dependence with the descendants of Robert, Count of Paris, notably with Hugues le Grand, ‘Duke of the French’, a habitual kingmaker. In the process they lost their stake in Lotharingia, and hence of the old Frankish heartland. In 987, when the last Carolingian king died without heir, the struggle was resolved in favour of the Duke’s son, Hugues Capet (r. 987–96)—founder of a dynasty that would reign for nearly 400 years.
Henceforth the kingdom of France was destined to have a continuous existence. The leadership of the house of Capet inevitably turned the centre of gravity to the West. Of course, the memory of Charlemagne, and the claims to Lotharingia remained; but the kingdom had lost its essentially Frankish character. Contrary to later assertions, it was not involved in ceaseless warfare with its German neighbours; but its definitive separation from the reconstituted Empire acted as a powerful motor for a new identity. It was the launch-pad of the French nation.
In the period when the Frankish empire waned and the Saxon empire waxed strong, the Byzantine Empire reached its zenith under the Macedonian dynasty. Basil I (r. 867–86), an ex-horsebreaker who took the throne through murder, proved to be an able administrator who initiated ‘an age of recovery and consolidation’. The long reigns of his successors, Leo VI the Wise (r. 886–912) and Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 913–59), both of them scholars, coincided with a marked upsurge in Constantinople’s commercial prosperity. The warrior emperors, John Tzimisces (r. 969–76) and Basil II Bulgaroctone (r. 976–1025), ‘the Bulgar-slayer’, took the offensive on all fronts. The Empress Zoë (c.978–1050) maintained power for half a century through the manipulation of three imperial husbands. Her portrait in mosaic has survived in Hagia Sophia, flanked on one side by Christ and on the other by an emperor whose inscription has been suitably obliterated. Her scheming sister Theodora (r. 1055–6) briefly emerged as sole ruler,
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Under the Macedonians, the Byzantine state was able to assert itself both internally and externally. The Patriarchs were kept in abject subservience. The imperial court presided over a bureaucracy which introduced uniform practices throughout the provinces. The army was reorganized with professional, knightlike cadres. The aristocratic clans were wedded to state service. The state regulated trade and prices whilst maximizing its own income. With a population counted in six figures, Constantinople served as the leading entrepôt between East and West, by far exceeding all other European cities of the age. Byzantium’s territorial power was greatly reinforced. Basil I re-established the Byzantine presence in southern Italy with the recapture of Taranto (880). There were two exarchates, in Calabria and in Langobardia, and a
Catapenatus
at Bari. In the East, annual campaigns throughout the tenth century were rewarded with the recovery of Syria, Cyprus, Crete, Cilicia, part of Mesopotamia. The Arab advance was checked. Armenia, which in the ninth century had been ruled by the native Bagratid dynasty, was returned to Byzantine vassalage. The Bulgars, who in 924 laid siege to Constantinople, spread their hegemony to the west, but were gradually tamed by baptism and the sword.
Political stability set the stage for a cultural renaissance. Basil I and Leo VI, a philosopher, codified the imperial decrees of recent centuries. Byzantine church architecture acquired harmonious homogeneity. Men of letters crowded the court. Photios (
c
.810–93), Patriarch and professor, revived the study of antiquity.
Simeon Metaphrastes (d.
c
.1000) composed the
Menologion
, the standard collection of the lives of the Christian saints. His contemporary, the poet John Geometres, wrote hymns, epigrams, and verse with great humanist sensitivity. Michael Psellos (
c
.1018–81), court philosopher and polymath, published a huge range of historical, theological, and literary works. Critics of the ‘Macedonian Renaissance’ maintain that its achievement was more encyclopedic than creative.
ATHOS
I
N
a chrysobull of 885, the Emperor Basil I formally recognized the ‘Holy I Mountain’ of Athos as a territory reserved for monks and hermits. Henceforth, all civilians and females (human and non-human) were banned from the 360 km
2
of the ‘Garden of the Virgin’ on the easternmost of the three sea-girt promontories of Chalkidikës. The first permanent monastery, the Great Laura, was founded in 936. The basic
typikon
or charter dates from 972. The peninsula of Mount Athos, which rises to 2,033 m., was to be ruled by a protos or primate and by a council of abbots meeting in the central town of Karyes.
1
From the outset, Athonite monasticism had to compromise between the communal and the anchorite traditions. Thirteen of the twenty great monasteries built between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries were purely
coenobitic
, having all activities in common, whilst seven were
idiorhythmic
, allowing monks to eat and work individually. These include the three oldest—the Great Laura, Vatopedi, and the Georgian-founded Iveron. Each of the monasteries is linked to a network of outlying farms, chapels, and anchorite cells. The ultimate sanctuary of the hermits is to be found in the vertigo-defying settlement of Karoulia, at the precipitous end of the peninsula, where the warren of individual huts is approached along a maze of cliff paths, stone steps, and chain ladders.
Over the centuries, Athos came under threat from a succession of invaders, including Arab pirates, Lakh shepherds, and Catalan raiders. In the period of the Latin Empire (1204–61), concerted attempts were made to convert the monks to Catholicism—hence their trenchant opposition to all later movements for East-West union. After that, they found ready patrons in the princes of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Wallachia. When Salonika was captured by the Turks in 1430, the monks secured their privileges from the sultan.
In the eighteenth century, Athos was the centre of an important pan-orthodox movement linked to the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Academy at Vatopedi was a seat of international learning.
In the nineteenth century, Athos was targeted by St Petersburg as an instrument of Russian influence. As many as 5,000 Russian monks took up residence, especially in the
roussikon
of St Panteleimon and in the
skete
of St Andrew. Greek, Serbian, Romanian, and Bulgarian foundations were similarly turned into agencies of their respective national churches. Athos lost its last great benefactor in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Its present constitution was introduced by treaty with Greece in 1926.
After decades of decay, a fresh influx of monks in the 1980s raised total numbers to
c
.1,500, fuelling demands for reform. Monasteries were repaired, commercial forestry exploited, access roads built, and (male) tourists welcomed. Discussions took place about renewed contacts with Rome. A monk of Athos published his complaints for an international audience.
2
‘The Athonites are famous factionists and gossips,’ an observer commented. ‘After all, it is the heart of what remains of the Byzantine world.’
3
Secure and confident beyond the disasters which beset the West, Byzantium cruised along in style. When Liutprand of Cremona, historian of Otto the Great and ambassador of the King of Italy, visited Constantinople in 949 he was overwhelmed with amazement. His reception by Constantine Porphyrogenitus impressed, and offended, him mightily:
‘In front of the emperor’s throne stood a tree of gilded iron, whose branches were filled with birds of various kinds, also made of gilded iron, which gave forth a variety of bird-songs. The throne itself was so cunningly constructed that at one moment it looked low … and a moment later had risen to a great height. It was guarded on either side by huge lions of gilded metal or wood which lashed their tails on the floor and roared aloud with open mouths and moving tongues.
