The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (21 page)

Admittedly, he had a case. His mistake was to allow his resentment to blind him to all other considerations. Had he been content with his victory, directing his still considerable energies towards reconciliation with the Ignatians and permitting Euthymius to return quietly to the monastery that he should never have left, he might with time and patience have healed the controversy and reunited the Church. Instead he brought it, in a way that no Patriarch had ever brought it before, to the point of open mutiny. Euthymius was arraigned before a tribunal in the Palace of The Magnaura, whose proceedings are reported in detail by his contemporary biographer, who was quite possibly an eye-witness. Nicholas opened the cross-examination:

'Tell me, thou most witless of men, interpreter of the libidinous dreams of the deceased sovereign Leo, why, while yet I was among the living, didst thou take to wife the Church that was wedded to me, defiling her while driving me out?'

Replied Euthymius: 'Thou it was who broughtest her into defilement, and drovest thyself out, not once but thrice tendering thy resignation. And if thou askest me, I will tell thee the nature of thy defilement, and the cause of thine expulsion. For I am able, if God gives me the strength, to convict thee arid set thine injustices before thy face.'

Struck dumb by these words and boiling with anger at the liberty with which the other spoke, the Patriarch ordered him to be publicly and shamefully stripped of his robes, and declared him fallen from his holy office.

Then was there a sight to be seen more pitiful than any before. Dragging off his bishop's scarf, they trampled upon it, not sparing even the figure of the Cross; similarly, they tore off all his sacred vestments and trampled upon them too, even his monk's cowl. And when the servants saw their master rejoicing and delighting in these things, they laid hands on his beard and pulled it, and pushed him with such violence that he fell on his back to the ground, and there they kicked him where he lay, spitting upon him, beating him with their fists and striking him in the face. Then the Patriarch ordered him to be set on his feet again, that the interrogation might be continued. But one of his henchmen, a giant of huge physical strength, stood looking on until, at a nod from his master, he struck him two blows, knocking out two of his teeth, and continued to pummel him at the back of the neck until he had no breath left, nor speech, and was on the point of falling down the staircase. Had not a nobleman named Petronas caught hold of him with three others, he would quickly have died a martyr's death.
1

1
The above is an edited and slightly shortened version of the translation by P. Karlin-Hayter,
Byzantium
,
Vols, xxv-xxvii
(19)5-7).
According to the Continuator of Theophanes, the man who pulled Euthymius's beard returned home to find his house burnt down and his daughter struck dumb and paralysed, in which state she lived on until the reign of Nicephorus.

Having banished Euthymius to the monastery of Agathon, and having persuaded the Emperor to remove his name and that of the Pope from the diptychs
1
(thereby breaking off all communion with Rome) the Patriarch now initiated a major purge of the entire hierarchy, aimed at nothing less than the elimination of all bishops and clergy with Ignatian — or, more properly, Euthymian - sympathies. How he expected the Church to function after such drastic surgery - where the episcopal bench alone was concerned, the Euthymians represented some two-thirds of the total - was never explained, but the problem was ultimately solved in another way: those dismissed flatly refused to go. The opposition, predictably, was led by Nicholas's arch-enemy Arethas of Caesarea, who made a public statement to the effect that he would leave his see only when the Emperor sent armed troops to remove him by force. Till then, he proposed to remain where he was and to carry out his duties as usual. Many others followed his example; meanwhile several Photian bishops who had tried to get rid of their Euthymian clergy found themselves besieged in their palaces by their mutinous flocks, and in one or two cities the disturbances led to serious rioting. Too late, the Patriarch realized that he had stirred up a hornets' nest. Back-pedalling desperately, he countermanded all his former orders; his voluminous correspondence from this time forth advocates a degree of tolerance and understanding far removed indeed from th
e spirit of his earlier fulmina
tions. When the dust eventually settled, although several bishops had been transferred to other, equivalent, sees, only four had been dismissed absolutely. Arethas, we may not be surprised to learn, was not among them.

By this time, however, the Emperor Alexand
er was dead. The Continu
ator claims that he died as a result of a stroke, brought on by an ill-advised game of polo played in the heat of the day after a heavy lunch. More reliable sources, however, claim that his collapse followed immediately after various pagan sacrifices that he was making to the statues in the Hippodrome - including, presumably, the boar - in the hope of curing his impotence. It hardly matters: the important thing was his death, which occurred two days later, on Sunday, 6 June 913. His mosaic portrait in the north gallery of St Sophia must unquestionably

1 The tablets on which were inscribed the names of those, living and dead, who were to be specifically remembered duri
ng the service of the Eucharist
date from his reign. After his death, his subjects wished only to forget him.

The moment that she heard that the Emperor was dying, his sister-in-law Zoe had forced her way back into the Palace, desperately worried for the future of her son. Some months before, she knew, Alexander had proposed to castrate him, thus rendering him permanently ineligible for the throne; he had been persuaded to reconsider only by the argument that such a step would provoke a potentially dangerous outcry, and that the boy was so weak and sickly that he could not be expected to live very long in any case. Now that it appeared that the Patriarch was to be the most powerful figure in the State, her anxieties were multiplied. Nicholas had never accepted the dispensation given by his enemy Euthymius that had recognized her marriage and her son's legitimacy; she had no doubt that he would do everything in his power to keep young Constantine from the throne, and she was determined to frustrate his efforts.

Her suspicions were well founded: the Patriarch did indeed have an alternative candidate. It was Constantine Ducas, Domestic of the Schools,
1
son of that Andronicus with whom Nicholas had been accused of maintaining treasonable contacts six years before: a man who felt no greater loyalty to the Macedonian house than his father had before him. He could probably rely on the support of much of the army, and had connections of one kind or another with most of the leading aristocratic families of the Empire; if he were to attempt a
coup
his chances of success would be high, and once on the throne his natural gratitude to Nicholas would ensure the final victory of the Patriarchate over its enemies. For some time already he and the Patriarch had been in secret correspondence; when the moment came, their plans would be already laid.

Zoe was still battling to regain her old position when the dying Emperor recovered sufficient consciousness to nominate his successor — which, to her relief, was indeed her son Constantine. She must, however, have been a good deal less pleased when he went on to appoint the necessary Council of Regency. Its president was to be Patriarch Nicholas; she herself was not included. She protested vigorously: never in the history of Byzantium had the mother of an Emperor and a crowned

1
I.e. Commander-in-chief of the land forces of the Empire.

Augusta
1
been denied a place on such a council. But Nicholas knew that he could take no chances. Zoe was the virtual embodiment of the Euthymian party — more so even than the old abbot himself — beholden to it for both her own crown and that of her son, and thus the Patriarch's most implacable enemy. One of his first actions as Regent was to have her arrested, shorn of her hair and dispatched to the distant convent of St Euphemia in Petrium. Even her name was no longer her own: henceforth she would be known as Sister Anna, and nothing more.

For the moment at least, her seven-year-old son was sole Emperor; but, with a Regent who denied him any legal right to the throne, how long could he be expected to survive? The first threat to his position -and probably to his life - came within days of his accession, with the attempted
coup
of Constantine Ducas. Marching eastward from his Thracian camp, Ducas entered the city by night with only a handful of men - few enough to suggest that he expected the Palace gates to be opened to him from within. If so, it was he who was taken by surprise. The
magister
John Eladas, one of the Regency Council, had been forewarned and was waiting for him with a hastily assembled company of militia. Several of Ducas's men, including his son Gregory, were killed in the fighting; and just as he was trying to escape his own horse slipped on the wet pavement. He fell heavily to the ground, where one of the defenders severed his head from his body with a single stroke.

The Patriarch, it need hardly be said, disclaimed any association with the plot and, as if to emphasize his innocence, instituted a reign of terror against all those whose complicity was known or even suspected. Whole companies were massacred, their bodies impaled along the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus; others were flogged or blinded. Those who had sought sanctuary in St Sophia were dragged out, tonsured and driven into monasteries. Ducas's widow was exiled to the family's distant estates in Paphlagonia; his younger son, who had played no part in the affair, was castrated. Only when the Regency Council itself began to protest at the relendess bloodshed did Nicholas reluctantly call a halt.

He did so just in time; for less than two months after the Ducas fiasco, Symeon of Bulgaria appeared before Constantinople at the head

1
It should be remembered that an Augusta was not simply an Emperor's wife; she was the holder of a recognized rank, which carried considerable power and for which a special coronation was necessary. Once crowned, she had a court of her own and absolute control over her own immense revenues; and she played an indispensable part in many of the chief ceremonies of the Empire. Sec Diehl,
Figures Byzantine
s,
I, i.

of an army so immense that its camp occupied the entire four-mile stretch of the land walls between the Marmara and the upper reaches of the Golden Horn. Once there, however, he discovered what so many would-be conquerors of the Empire - including his own great-great
-
grandfather Krum - had discovered before him: that the fortifications of the city were impregnable. But he made no move to retire. By the threat of a land blockade, combined with the systematic devastation of the surrounding countryside, he could still make a considerable nuisance of himself and, with any luck, obtain favourable terms without the loss of any of his men. From the Palace of the Hebdomon he sent messengers to the Regency Council, announcing that he was ready to negodate a settlement.

Nicholas was only too pleased to agree. To preserve peace with Symeon he was prepared to make almost any sacrifice, for war would be virtually certain to lead to the breaking away of the Bulgarian Church -which was at present still part of his Patriarchate - and, even worse, might even drive it back into the arms of Rome. He invited Symeon's two sons into the city and entertained them at a lavish banquet, in the presence of the boy Emperor, at Blachernae; and a day or two later himself secretly visited Symeon at the Hebdomon, where he was much gratified by
the respect with which he was r
eceived. In the surprisingly friendly discussions that followed, the Bufgar King predictably insisted on being paid the arrears of tribute, and seems also to have demanded that Constantine should take one of his daughters to wife. Then, loaded with gifts, he returned to his homeland.

At first reading, we may be astonished at Symeon's moderation. Why, having brought this vast army to the very gates of the city, did he not drive a harder bargain? Simply because his policy had changed. His ambitions where Byzantium was concerned were greater than ever, being by now focused on nothing less than the crown itself
1
- which, once he had made himself the Emperor's father-in-law, would be within his grasp.
2
But his examination of the walls had convinced him that this was a prize that could be won only by diplomacy, while his discussions with Nicholas had revealed to him a hitherto unsuspected ally. Not only