The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (49 page)

She endeared herself to the two Empresses by giving them everything that they most enjoyed. To Zoe she would make presents of gold, not to keep for herself but to give away, which was always the old lady's greatest pleasure. She would also provide her with sweet herbs and spices from the Indies, scented woods and unguents, tiny olives and sprigs of white laurel - in a word, all the ingredients necessary for her favourite pastime, the concoction of perfumes. To Theodora, on the other hand, she would present ancient coins and medals, of which that Empress possessed a large collection kept in specially-made cabinets of bronze.

Sadly, however, the warm feelings of the two old women towards their enchanting young benefactress were not shared by the people of Constantinople. Shocked and scandalized by the shamelessness of the affair, they soon made clear their displeasure. Scylitzes - though not Psellus - records how on 9 March 1044 an imperial procession in honour of the Holy Martyrs was interrupted by catcalls from the assembled crowd. 'Down with the Sclerina!' they shouted. 'Long live our beloved mothers,
1
Zoe and Theodora, whose very lives she threatens!' For a moment it appeared that the Emperor's own life was in danger; only after his wife and sister-in-law had shown themselves at the Palace windows did the mob disperse. The procession, meanwhile, was abandoned. Thenceforth Constantine seldom ventured out in public alone, being almost invariably accompanied by his wife on his right, his mistress on his left.

The accusation was certainly baseless. As the reader will by now be aware, there were many potential murderers at the Byzantine court, but the Sclerina was not one of them. Nor, so far as we can tell, was Constantine Monomachus. Weak, irresponsible and pleasure-loving he may have been, but there was no real evil in him. If, as was rumoured, he did indeed consider the possibility of somehow raising his mistress to the throne - and she was, after all, effectively there already - he could probably have done so by adopting her as his daughter and then simply declaring her co-Empress; Zoe's death would not have been necessary, Theodora's even less so. But the question is academic: it was not the Empresses who died, but the Sclerina herself. The date of her death is not recorded. All we are told is that she was attacked by some pulmonary disease, that she was unable to breathe and that the doctors were powerless to help her. The Emperor wept like a child, and buried her in the magnificent convent of St George at Manganes

1
In Greek, the familiar and affectionate
(Mamai),
liter
ally 'Mums'; cf. 'the Queen Mum’
in our own day.

(which he had had built next to her house, in order - it was said - to have an excuse for visiting her) alongside the grave that he had reserved for himself.

It is impossible not to feel sympathy for the Sclerina. She was clearly a woman of rare qualities, and her love for Constantine Monomachus was deep and true. But - although she herself cannot be blamed for it - her association with the Emperor had one disastrous consequence, which was to have a profound effect on the whole future of Byzantine Italy.

George Maniakes had, as we have seen, returned to the peninsula in April 1042. Since his recall to Constantinople two years before, the situation there had gone from bad to worse. In Sicily, Messina was the only city now remaining in Byzantine hands; on the mainland, the previous year had seen three major defeats at the hands of the Lombards and the Normans, who now possessed impregnable fortresses at Aversa and Melfi and were rapidly mopping up the whole of south Italy. The
catapan
landed with his army to find that, with the single exception of Trani, all Apulia north of a line drawn from Taranto to Brindisi was in open revolt. He wasted no time. The horrors of that summer were long remembered in the province - by those of its inhabitants who survived. Inexorably, pitilessly, Maniakes - assisted by a regiment of Varangians and the legendary Scandinavian warrior king Harald Hardrada — smashed his way from one insurgent town to the next in a fury of destruction, leaving a trail of smoking ruins and mutilated corpses in his wake. Men and women, monks and nuns, the aged and the children - none was spared: some were hanged, some beheaded; many (particularly the children) were buried alive. The rebels fought back, and for a while the two sides seemed fairly evenly matched; but then came the disaster. For the second time in two years, George Maniakes fell victim to palace intrigue.

His enemy on this occasion was the Sclerina's brother. The Anatolian estates of Romanus Sclerus bordered his own, and for eleven years already relations between the two had been poisoned by territorial disputes. Maniakes, as we already know, was a dangerous man to cross: some years before, in the course of a particularly violent altercation, he had laid hands on his neighbour and very nearly killed him. Romanus had sworn revenge; and now, finding himself through his sister a member of the Emperor's intimate circle and seeing his chance to even
the score, he had litde difficulty in persuading Constantine to recall Maniakes from Italy. Meanwhile, profiting by the latter's absence, he looted his house, laid waste his estate and as a final insult seduced his wife.

Maniakes received his letter of recall at the same time as the news of his other misfortunes. His rage was terrible to behold. When in September his successor arrived at Otranto he seized him, stuffed his ears, nose and mouth with horse dung and tortured him to death. The Patrician Tubakis, who had accompanied the luckless man from Constantinople, suffered a similar fate a week or two later. Maniakes, his anger still unabated, then had himself proclaimed Emperor by his men (who worshipped him) and led them back across the Adriatic - whose storms, according to an Apulian chronicler, he first tried to assuage by human sacrifice - with the intention of advancing along the Via Egnatia to Constantinople, gathering additional forces as he went. Marching on Thessalonica, he met and defeated an imperial army sent to intercept him at Ostrovo in Bulgaria but fell, mortally wounded, at the very moment of victory. His head was carried back to the capital and presented to the Emperor, who had it impaled on a spear and exhibited on the highest terrace of the Hippodrome. Later Monomachus staged a full-scale triumph, in which the rebel army - which had disintegrated on the death of its leader - was paraded round the arena, its men riding backwards on donkeys, their heads shaved and covered with ordure; but not even this humiliating display could conceal the fact that, but for a single well-aimed lance, Constantinople might well have fallen to Maniakes and found itself in the power of - if not necessarily the greatest - by far the most terrifying ruler in all its history.

George Maniakes was not the only threat to the throne of Constantine IX - nor even the greatest. An immense Russian fleet which appeared in the Bosphorus in the summer of 1043 was repulsed - thanks as always to Greek fire - without too much trouble; but four years later, in September 1047, there came a far more serious emergency. Once again, it took the form of a military uprising, this time on the part of the army in Thrace and Macedonia which had its headquarters at Adrianople. Its leader was the Emperor's second cousin, an aristocratic Armenian named Leo Tornices who had lived for a long time in the region and, says Psellus, 'reeked of Macedonian arrogance'. Constantine had long suspected him of subversion, and was additionally irritated by Leo's close friendship with his — Constantine's - younger sister Euprepia, who was perpetually singing the Armenian's praises and comparing him favourably with the Emperor himself. He therefore took every opportunity to abuse and humiliate the young man, at one moment having him forcibly tonsured and reduced to rags.

At last Tornices could bear it no longer. One night he slipped out of the city with a party of Macedonian supporters and made straight for Adrianople, delaying any pursuers by killing, at every stage of their journey, all the imperial post-horses. On arrival he deliberately started a rumour that the Emperor was dead, that Theodora was now mistress of the Empire and that she had chosen Leo as her co-ruler. The story spread like wildfire through the army. Leo was raised on a shield, robed in purple and proclaimed
basileus;
then, followed by several thousand cheering troops, he marched on Constantinople, the number of his fol
lowers constantl
y increasing as he approached the capital. On Friday,
z
j September he pitched his camp beneath the walls and prepared for a siege.

He could hardly have arrived at a more opportune moment. For some years already the army had been suffering a rapid decline. The civil government, in its detestation of the military aristocracy, had systematically reduced the strength of the armed forces, encouraging those of the peasant rank and file who had not already fallen victim to the great landowners to buy their exemption from military service for an agreed payment in cash. At the same time they had removed the day-to-day government of each Theme from its
strategos
and entrusted it instead to a civil magistrate, destroying at a stroke much of the army's power and prestige. Apart from a handful of mercenaries on largely ceremonial duties, there were few soldiers in Constantinople or anywhere near it, while the army of the East - such as it was - was far away on the Iberian frontier, repelling invasions by the local barbarian tribes.

Nor was Constantine himself the man he had once been. At the time of his accession he was a regular winner of the pentathlon at the Games; now his feet were so swollen that he could hardly walk. His hands, too, which in his youth had been capable of crushing the hardest nuts - 'an arm gripped by him', writes Psellus, 'was painful for days' - had become misshapen and dislocated. He was in fact already far advanced in the arthritis which was to progress relentlessly for the next eight years until his death. Had he possessed the courage of Michael IV, it is possible that he might have taken a more active part in the defence of his capital; but
heroism had never been part of his nature. All he could do was to prove to his enemies that, contrary to what they had been led to believe, he was still alive and in control. On 26 September he had himself carried to the Palace of Blachernae, at the northern extremity of the land walls; and there, in full imperial regalia, he installed himself at a high window looking out across the ramparts, the two old Empresses at his side. This inevitably exposed him to taunts and abuse from the besiegers - and before long to the attentions of a mounted archer, whose arrow missed him by an inch and struck one of his lieutenants. The others present hurriedly removed him from the window; but he was back there the following morning as if nothing had happened.

That day - it was Sunday, 27 September - Leo Tornices had Constantinople at his mercy. It is difficult to piece together exactly what occurred: it appears that under cover of darkness a corps of engineers had constructed and fortified an advance position outside the walls opposite Blachernae, from which they had hoped to inflict severe damage on Leo's men. They had, however, underestimated their opponents. The rebels did not hesitate. 'Like a swarm of hornets' they fell on this pathetic fortification, destroying it in a matter of minutes. Most of the unfortunate troops who manned it were cut down; few indeed managed to return alive. But this catastrophe was only the beginning. Seeing the massacre, those charged with the defence of the walls -mostly Saracen mercenaries, supplemented by a number of able-bodied civilians and convicts released from prison for the purpose - were seized by a sudden panic, deserted their posts and fled into the city, leaving (we are told) the gates open to the enemy.

What held Leo Tornices back from almost certain victory? For some of the chroniclers it was a miracle: Constantinople was always known to enjoy divine protection, and nothing else could have been expected. For others - Psellus included - it was simply a m
iscalculation. 'He was confidentl
y awaiting our invitation to assume the throne: he assumed he would be led up to the Palace preceded by flaming torches, in a procession worthy of a sovereign.' Perhaps, too, he wanted to spare a city that he believed so soon to be his from the pillage which would certainly have followed. At all events he ordered his men to stay where they were, to shed no more blood and to pitch their tents for the night.

The mistake proved his undoing. The anticipated civic delegation never came. The people of Constantinople might not have been deeply enamoured of their Emperor, but they had no wish to see him overthrown by force, least of all by a Macedonian-Armenian of whom they knew nothing and suspected a good deal. They had had enough of rioting and violence. Within hours the panic had subsided, the gates were secured, the defenders were back at their posts. The city was saved. Disappointed and bewildered, Leo Tornices marched his prisoners to a point immediately below Blachernae. He had rehearsed them well:

They begged the people not to treat with contempt men of their own race and their own family, nor to be forced to watch while they themselves were pitiably hacked to pieces before their eyes, like victims at a sacrifice. They warned us not to tempt Providence by underestimating a sovereign such as the world had never before seen, as they knew from their own experience
...
Then, by way of contrast, they expatiated on the misdeeds of our own Emperor, describing how at the beginning of his reign he had raised high the hopes of the city, only to bring us down from the clouds to the edge of a precipice.

They were answered by a hail of projectiles, one of which narrowly missed Tornices himself. Then, and only then, did he realize that he had failed. The people did not want him after all. Encouraged by secret bribes from Constantine, his men began to desert him. In the first days of October he struck camp and moved away to the West. He was not immediately pursued: manpower in the capital was too short. Only when the army of the East, urgently summoned from distant Iberia, arrived in the city did Constantine give the order for his capture. By the time he was run to earth he had lost all his adherents save one - an old companion-in-arms named John Vatatzes. The two were brought back to Constantinople and, predictably, blinded.