The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (26 page)

all, plenty of other work for him to do. He spent the better part of the next year laying waste large areas of Mesopotamia and capturing several dues, including Dara and Ras al-Ain (where he took another thousand prisoners); then he returned to Edessa to wait.

In the spring of 944 the Edessans received their answer. Since there was clearly no other way of saving the city - and, doubtless, many of their own lives - they had their Caliph's authority to surrender the image. With much ceremony it was carried from the town and reverently placed in the hands of Curcuas, who immediately forwarded it, under heavy escort, to Constantinople. Early in August it arrived on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, where it was met by the
parakoimomenos
Theophanes and taken personally by him to the Emperor at Blachernae; only a few days later, on the Feast of the Dormition of the Virgin,
1
did it make its solemn entry into the capital by the Golden Gate. Here it was formally received by the three young co-Emperors still surviving -Christopher having died in 931 and Romanus being too ill to attend — together with the Patriarch; after which it was borne in triumph through the streets to St Sophia. Two embarrassing moments are, however, reported. The first was when Romanus's two sons failed absolutely to distinguish the lineaments of the Saviour on the cloth, though these were perfectly clear to the Porphyrogenitus; the second when a so-called madman amid the cheering crowd suddenly shouted: 'Constantinople, accept the glory and the blessing; and you, Constantine, accept your throne!'

There was, in point of fact, nothing remotely mad about this exhortation, of which the large majority of those who heard it must warmly have approved; for it was by now clear that the days of the house of Lecapenus were numbered. Romanus was no longer the man he had once been. By now well into his seventies, he was going the way that so many of his predecessors had gone before him, spending more of his time with monks than with ministers, gradually losing his grip on affairs of state as he sank deeper and deeper into morbid religiosity. Death, he felt, was approaching, and his conscience was troubled. True, he had been a hard-working Emperor and on the whole a successful one; but the fact remained that he had had no right to the throne, which he had acquired by perjury and deceit, depriving the legitimate Emperor of all but nominal power for a quarter of a century and promoting his own worthless sons to imperial rank.

1
The Dormition, or Falling Asleep, of the Virgin is the equivalent in the Eastern Church of the Assumption, and is celebrated on the same day,
1
5
August.

For worthless they were - or at least two of them. The eldest, Christopher, had showed some degree of promise and might have proved worthy of his father had he lived to succeed him; but the two younger brothers, Stephen and Constantine,
1
were notorious for their immorality and corruption - characteristics which they combined with a disastrous appetite for intrigue. Already in 943 they had moved against John Curcuas — of whose power and popularity they had become quite unreasonably jealous - successfully dissuading their father from marrying his eldest surviving grandson Romanus (the son of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Helena) to Curcuas's daughter Euphrosyne, as he had very much hoped to do. Towards the end of the following year they carried their campaign a step further still, obliging Romanus to recall the most successful general of the century in the middle of a triumphant expedition and to replace him with one of their own relatives, Pantherius - who contrived, within a few months, to get his whole army smashed to pieces.

The readiness with which the old Emperor submitted to his sons' demands is a clear enough indication of his own decline. Superstitious as sailors are and uneducated to boot, he had succeeded by virtue of an immense capacity for hard work, unwavering self-confidence and any amount of good sound common sense. Now, it seemed, all three had deserted him. Terrified of death, he had but a single preoccupation: the salvation of his soul. Encouraged by a host of spiritual counsellors, he resorted to ever more desperate measures to achieve this end. On one occasion he remitted all government rents in Constantinople and cancelled all debts, at appalling cost to the imperial exchequer; on another he decreed the expulsion of every Jew and Armenian who would not immediately embrace the Orthodox faith. Almost his only sensible action of these last sad years was to make a new will, in which he expressly confirmed the seniority of Constantine Porphyrogenitus over his own sons, thus in effect eliminating them from power after his death.

Sensible, that is, insofar as the actual provisions of the will were concerned. In his decision to publicize those provisions, Romanus made one of the great mistakes of his life: for he left his sons in no doubt that, unless they acted quickly and decisively, they were lost. In

1 Gibbon calls him Constantine VIII, but most subsequent historians have deemed him unworthy to rank as an Emperor in his own right and have kept this tide for the brother and co-Emperor of Basil II - who was, as we shall see, very little better.

view of their past record, if Constantine became senior Emperor, what was there for them to hope for? Banishment? Castration? Enforced seclusion in a monastery? Even worse fates were not impossible. There was but one alternative: a
coup d'etat.
And so, five days before Christmas in the year 944, during the midday period when the government offices were closed, the two young Lecapeni and their supporters slipped into the Great Palace and made their way quickly to the chamber where the old Emperor lay on his sick-bed. He offered no resistance when they carried him down to the little harbour of Bucoleon, where a small boat was waiting; and a few minutes later, without any alarm having been raised, Romanus was on his way to Proti - now Kmah - the nearest of the Princes' Islands. There he was tonsured and obliged to take monastic vows — which, one suspects, he was only too happy to do.

By the time his sons returned to the mainland, all Constantinople was agog. Nobody minded much about Romanus; he had not been treated unkindly, and though he was not unpopular the means by which he had seized the throne had never been forgotten. The name now on everyone's lips was that of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Where was he? Before long, angry and suspicious crowds had gathered at the gates of the Palace. Only after Constantine had showed himself at a window, safe and sound if somewhat dishevelled,
1
did they agree to disperse.

Here was something that the conspirators had never suspected, any more, probably, than he had himself: Constantine was loved by his people. He had never set out to win their affection; on the contrary, he had deliberately kept as far in the background as possible, appearing in public only when absolutely obliged by state protocol to do so. But that was not the point. He possessed another virtue, infinitely more important than any other: legitimacy. Son of Leo the Wise, grandson of the great Basil himself, born in the purple, he and he alone was the rightful Emperor of Byzantium. As for the Lecapeni, they were nothing but upstart usurpers. Their so-called subjects had had enough of them.

The brothers now saw that they had fatally miscalculated. They had intended to deal with Constantine in due course, in just the same way as they had dealt with their father; but in the face of public opinion so forcibly expressed, this was no longer a possibility. They therefore took the only course open to them: reluctantly, and with ill grace, they

1
Crines
solutus,
writes Liudprand, 'with his hair unloosed'. Why, one wonders: had there been some sort of a struggle?

formally recognized Constantine as senior Emperor. It was, as may be imagined, an uneasy partnership, with the Porphyrogenitus on the one side and the Lecapeni on the other appointing their own men to as many as possible of the key positions. Left to himself, the gentle, retiring Constantine would probably have allowed the situation to drag on — although, had he done so, it is unlikely that he would have lasted very long. But Helena his wife was made of sterner stuff. For twenty-five years she had loyally defended her husband's interests against her own family, and now she urged him with all her strength to take action while
there was still time. For a littl
e while longer he wavered, but soon he received a warning that could not be ignored: his brothers-in-law were planning to kill him. He hesitated no more. Spurred on as always by Helena, he gave his orders. On 27 January 945 his two co-Emperors were arrested, tonsured in their turn and sent off to Proti to join their father. According to the Greek chroniclers, the old man greeted his sons with a well-chosen quotation from Isaiah:
'I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
n
Liudprand, however - whose stepfather Bishop Sigefred was still in Constantinople as the ambassador from King Hugh of Italy and had, in company with other diplomatic representatives from Rome, Gaeta and Amalfi, strongly supported the cause of Constantine five weeks before - provides us with a rather more spirited version:

When their father Romanus heard of their arrival, he rendered thanks to God and with a glad face came to meet them outside the monastery door. 'O happy hour,' he cried, 'that has compelled Your Majesties to visit my humble estate. That filial affection which drove me from the palace, I suppose, has not allowed you yourselves to remain there any longer. How fortunate that you should have sent me here some time in advance: my brother-monks and fellow soldiers in Christ devote their days to things of the spirit, and would not have known how Emperors should be received had they not had me with them, an expert in imperial protocol. Here is boiled water for you, colder than the Gothic snows; here are soft beans, all manner of greenstuffs, and leeks freshly plucked. You will find none of those delicacies from the fishmongers that cause illness; such maladies as we have here are brought about by our frequent fasts. Our modest abode has no space for a large and extravagant company; but it is just large enough for Your Majesties, who have refused to desert your father in his old age.'
2

1
Isaiah
1:2.

2
Anapodosis
v,

If the old man persisted in this vein, his wretched sons must have been relieved indeed to learn that Proti was to be only a temporary place of exile, while their brother-in-law pondered their long-term future. Wisely, he resolved that they should be separated. Stephen was first sent to Proconnesus in the Marmara, then to Rhodes and finally to Lesbos; his brother, after a brief period on Tenedos, was transferred to Samothrace. Of the remaining Lecapeni, only the Empress Helena .and the Patriarch Theophylact - and, away in Bulgaria, the Tsaritsa Maria-Irene - still occupied positions of power.
1

As for the old Emperor, he lived on in his monastery, passing his days in prayer and penitence. His conscience still allowed him no rest: his fitful sleep was troubled by dreadful nightmares. In one of them he saw himself, accompanied by his son Constantine and the Bishop of Heraclea, being driven down into hell. At the last moment there appeared the Blessed Virgin, who extended her hand and drew him back; for the other two, however, there was no salvation, and a few days later he learned that they had both died on that very night - Constantine in the course of an attempt to escape from his captivity, during which he had first killed his gaoler and had* then been himself cut down by the prison guards. So shattered was Romanus by this vision and its sinister fulfilment that he resolved on a public confession and penance. On Holy Thursday 946 there were assembled no less than 300 monks from all over the Empire - and even, we are told, from Rome itself - who chanted the
Kyrie Eleison
while the old man listed all his sins one by one, asking absolution for each. Finally, in front of the high altar, he was scourged and humiliated by a young novice before returning alone to his cell. The book of his sins was sent to Dermocaetes, a monk of renowned holiness who lived in the monastery on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, together with a gift of money and a request that the entire community there should fast for a fortnight and pray for his soul. The
y did so, after which Dermocaete
s reported having heard a voice from heaven confirming that their prayer had been granted, and sent the book — its pages now miraculously blank - back to Romanus, who ordered that it should be buried with him.

Almost incredibly in the circumstances, a plot was even then being hatched, by his friend the
parakoimomenos
Theophanes and his son the

1
Although some years later Christopher's son Michael was to become
magiste
r
an
d Rector, and Constantine Lecape
nus's son Romanus rose - after castration - to the rank of Patrician.

Patriarch Theophylact,
1
to restore him to the throne. Stranger still, Romanus is said to have given it his support. But this was almost certainly due to weakness rather than strength, and in any case the conspiracy was revealed before any harm was done. The Patriarch was saved by virtue of his office; Theophanes, however, was sent into exile -a sad end to a career during which he served his Emperor loyally, but just a little too long. Romanus lived to see his old friend's disgrace; by this time, however, he was failing fast. He died on 15 June 948. His body was carried back to Constantinople and was buried in the monastery of the Myrelaeum, beside that of his wife.

He had been a good Emperor - perhaps even a great one. Having seized power by duplicity and deceit, he had thereafter wielded it with wisdom and moderation and, in the space of a quarter of a century, had given the Empire new direction. His immediate predecessors had had to cope with two principal problems: the Church, which had poisoned the last years of the unfortunate Leo VI; and Bulgaria, whose repeated victories had brought about the downfall of Zoe. Romanus - it seemed almost effortlessly - had solved them both, and both by the same technique: he had allowed his enemies their head, exhausted them and then made sure that they were not replaced. It had worked with Patriarch Nicholas, whom he had flattered and indulged undl the insufferable old man died, after which he had replaced him with two short-lived nonentities and finally with his own son; and it had worked with the Bulgars, to whom he had been prepared to make a temporary sacrifice of Thrace in the sure knowledge that Constantinople was and would remain inviolate. Once Symeon was out of the way, he had showed himself ready to agree to any number of concessions - including that of his daughter - and so eliminated the problem altogether.

It was in the East that Romanus's quiet diplomacy proved useless. There armed force was the only argument understood, and there - since he had lost not a single fighting man to the Bulgars - he was able to throw the whole weight of his army and navy against his Saracen foes. Luck,

1 Theophylact, having been intended for the Patriarchate since his earliest years, had eventually achieved it in 931, at the age of fourteen. A harmless but essentially frivolous youth, he had given his father no trouble, devoting a good deal more time to his 2,000 horses than to his religious duties, which he would always unhesitatingly interrupt for the
accoucheme
nt
of one of his mare
s. As Sir Steven Runciman reminds us, 'he made one brave attempt to reconcile pleasure with piety by brightening up divine service on the lines of a pantomime; but it met with disapproval, though some of the turns lasted to shock the righteous more than a century later'. He was to enjoy the Patriarchate thoroughly for twenty-five years, dying in 956 as the result of a riding accident.