The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (8 page)

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Even then, a few heroic communities continued to resist. Taormina, thanks to its superbly defensible position, managed to hold out till 901.

Nothing that we know of Michael the Amorian leads us to suppose that he would have bothered his head unduly with theological speculation. Insofar as he gave any thought to the question at all, he was an iconoclast; as he himself pointed out, he had never in his life worshipped a holy image, and he was furthermore resolved to leave the Church as he found it. But he possessed none of the fanaticism of his iconoclast predecessors, or even of his own son Theophilus. Already at the time of his accession he had freed or recalled all those whom his predecessor had condemned to imprisonment or exile - including of course Theodore of the Studium, who had immediately renewed his campaign for the general restitution of the images; and though Michael was to remain firm on basic principles, he was perfectly prepared - even more than Leo V had been - to allow his subjects to practise whatever form of worship they liked, so long as they did so in private and refrained from preaching or proselytizing one way or the other. Nor did he ever make any sustained effort to enforce iconoclast doctrines outside the capital. Even in Leo's reign, professional icon-painters or fervent image-worshippers had been able to retire to Greece, or to the coast and islands of Asia Minor, with a reasonable chance of being left to pursue their chosen activities undisturbed; under Michael their prospects were better still. What he mistrusted above all about the iconodules was not so much their religious habits as their insistence on the ultimate supremacy of the Pope in matters of dogma; and when one of his own subjects, an Orthodox monk named Methodius, returned from Rome with a letter from Paschal I calling upon him to restore the True Faith, he became almost apoplectic with anger: Methodius was first scourged and then imprisoned in a tomb on the tiny island of St Andreas in the Gulf of Nicomedia, where he was to remain for nearly nine years.

Michael's reaction to Paschal's letter did not however prevent his considering the dispatch of a reply, describing the excesses to which the cult of images had led its more enthusiastic adherents and urging the Pope to withdraw his active support; but before doing so he decided to seek the advice of the Western Emperor Lewis the Pious, to whom he rehearsed the principal arguments:

Lights were set in front of the images and incense burnt, and they were held in the same honour as the life-giving Cross. Prayers were addressed to them, and their intercession was sought. There were even those who would cover them with cloths and appoint them godparents at the baptisms of their children. Some priests would scrape the paint from the pictures and mix it in the bread

and wine which they dispensed at Holy Communion; others would place the body of the Lord in the hands of the images, from whom the communicants would receive it.

His letter was carried to Lewis by a mixed delegation of priests and laymen, who were received with elaborate courtesy at the imperial court in Rouen. Then they passed on to Rome, only to find that Paschal was dead, and that he had been succeeded by Eugenius II in the chair of St Peter. How they fared with the new Pope is not recorded; all we know is that Eugenius gave his permission for Lewis to summon a synod of Frankish bishops, which met in Paris in 825. This body ruled, with admirable common sense, that images should be displayed in churches as ornaments or memorials, but that they should not be worshipped; unfortunately it could claim no ecumenical status, and the Byzantines simply ignored it.

All in all, if we except the hostility of a few extremists, Michael's moderation in matters of doctrine won him general popularity in ecclesiastical circles. His only serious differences with the Church concerned not the worship of icons but his own remarriage, probably in 824, after the death of his beloved first wife Thecla. Among theologians of the strictest Orthodoxy second marriages, especially by Emperors, were to be deplored; what made things still more difficult on this occasion was the fact that the lady concerned - Euphrosyne, daughter of Constantine VI and granddaughter of the unspeakable Irene - had been for many years a nun in an island convent in the Marmara. By precisely what means Michael managed to obtain her release from her vows we shall never know; but he did so at last, and this second marriage proved, so far as we know, as happy as the first had been - Euphrosyne keeping vigil at her husband's bedside throughout his last illness (a disease of the kidneys) and, in October 829, finally closing his eyes in death. He was the first Emperor for half a century to expire, while still a reigning monarch, in his bed; the first, too, to leave a strong and healthy son, still in the prime of life, to succeed him.

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Theophilus

[829-42]

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,

More miracle than bird or handiwork,

Planted on the star-lit golden bough,

Can like the cocks of Hades crow

Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud

In glory of changeless metal

Common bird or petal

And all complexities of mire or blood.

W. B. Yeats,
Byzantium

At the time of his father's death, Theophilus had already been co-Emperor for eight years,' during which time the chroniclers barely mention him. There is one brief and tantalizing moment in 821, at the very beginning of the joint reign, when we are given a glimpse of the seventeen-year-old prince, bearing the Empire's most precious relics -the fragments
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of the True Cross and the robe of the Virgin Mary - in solemn procession along the land walls while the army of Thomas the Slav was encamped below; but in general he seems to have been content to remain in his father's shadow, performing various ceremonial functions as necessary but otherwise avoiding the limelight. Now, with his assumption of the effective power at the age of twenty-five, he comes into his own - and at last reveals himself as being magnificently qualified to take on the responsibilities of Empire.

In marked contrast to the barely literate Michael, Theophilus was an intellectual, with all the characteristically Byzantine passion for theology; but he had also acquired a thorough military training, so that even if he

1 Fragments only: the main body of the Cross, after two periods in Constantinople and fourteen years in Persian hands, having been personally returned to Jerusalem by the Emperor Heraclius in 619. The Virgin'
s robe had been discovered in 62
9 in a coffin at Blacbernae.

could never be described as an inspired leader in the field he was at least a highly competent one. Finally, he was an aesthete and a patron of the arts, with a particular love and understanding - despite almost continual warfare with the Caliphate throughout his reign - for the culture of the Islamic world. Far more than any Christian Emperor, he took as his exemplar an Abbasid Caliph: the great Harun al-Rashid, who had died in 809 when Theophilus was five years old. Like Harun, he early adopted the habit of dressing as a poor man and wandering incognito through the streets and markets of Constantinople, listening to the grievances and grumbles of the people and endlessly investigating prices - especially of food. Once a week, too, he would ride from the Great Palace to the Church of the Virgin (Theotokos) at Blachernae - a journey that would take him on a long diagonal from one end of the city to the other, in the course of which he encouraged any of his subjects with complaints of unfair treatment to lay their case before him. On one occasion, we read, he was approached by an elderly widow who claimed that the Emperor's own brother-in-law, his wife's brother Petronas, was enlarging his palace in such a way as to block out all the light from her own house nearby. Theophilus ordered an immediate inquiry, and on learning that the old lady was justified in her accusation, had the offending buildings torn down and his brother-in-law publicly flogged.

The story, it must be admitted, lacks the ring of absolute truth; yet there is no quality in a ruler more certain than a passion for justice to earn him the love and respect of his subjects, and the fact that this and many other similar tales enjoyed such wide currency during his reign is a clear indication that Theophilus became something of a legend in his own lifetime - in a way, perhaps, that none of his predecessors had done since the days of Heraclius, two centuries before. It suggests, too, that he made a genuine effort to communicate directly with his people: a rare phenomenon indeed in an Empire whose sovereign, Equal of the Apostles and standing half-way to heaven, was set on so lofty a pedestal and imprisoned in so tight a cocoon of protocol and ceremonial as to be normally inaccessible to all but his family and a few close advisers.

And yet, for all his love of justice and his comparative approachability, Theophilus had his own firmly-held ideas of Empire. However often he might attempt to descend from his pedestal, he never doubted that that pedestal must be of the finest gold. Here again he modelled himself on Harun: in a love of opulence and splendour for which we have to go back still further into the past to find an equal — as far, indeed, as Justinian himself. Already in 830, after only a few months on the throne, he sent a diplomatic mission to Baghdad, led by John the Grammarian. Its ostensible object was to give the Caliph Mamun formal intimation of his succession, but the Emperor seems to have been above all determined to impress his Arab neighbours by bis wealth and generosity. John took with him, as presents to Mamun, works of art as sumptuous as any ever wrought by the jewellers and craftsmen of Constantinople. In his own baggage he carried two huge salvers of solid gold, encrusted with precious stones; one of these, in the course of a banquet, he deliberately arranged to have 'stolen'. His Arab guests, horrified at this apparent breach of the laws of hospitality, were all the more astonished when John showed no concern but simply called for an identical replacement, which was immediately brought in. Apart from such treasures, he had also been given 36,000 gold pieces to distribute as he liked, which he is said to have scattered 'like the sand of the sea'.

Where all this wealth came from remains a mystery. The reign of Michael II had seen a serious depletion of the imperial coffers: Thomas's insurrection and the constant — if largely ineffectual - campaigns against the Saracens of Crete and Sicily had all taken their toll. True, Michael hated spending money and always practised a rigid economy; but he could never have saved a quarter of the amount that his son dispensed with such largesse. What makes the enigma more baffling still is the fact that Theophilus did not spend beyond his means, still less run into debt; on the contrary, he was to leave his treasury a good deal fuller than he found it. It follows, therefore, that some time towards the end of Michael's reign the Empire must suddenly have had access to a new and seemingly inexhaustible source of wealth. One recent historian
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attributes this to the opening or reopening of certain gold mines, probably in Armenia - adducing in support of this theory some evidence which suggests that the economy at this time suffered an acute bout of inflation. In the absence of any explanation by our contemporary chroniclers and of any other more likely hypothesis, we may assume him to be right; but we shall never know.

In any case, the new
basileus
was fortunate: he enjoyed both expensive tastes and the means by which to indulge them. At once he initiated a huge construction programme in the capital, understandably concentrating on the Great Palace. This was not so much one large

1 Romilly Jenkins,
Byzantium: The Imperial Centuries,
p. 147.

building as a collection of small ones - much as is the Ottoman Palace of Topkapi today - standing together in a vast enclosure to the south-east of the Hippodrome and extending all the way down to the Marmara shore. Originally established by Constantine the Great at the time of his foundation of the city, it had been largely rebuilt by Justinian; but that was nearly three hundred years before, and Theophilus was probably well justified in deciding that alterations and improvements were long overdue. Few other Emperors, however, would have tackled the programme with such panache.

His principal creation was the Triconchos, or Triple Shell, whose three apses, supported on pillars of porphyry and revetted with immense slabs of polychrome marble, gave the building a distinctively Oriental appearance. To the west, silver doors opened into a semi-circular hall, known as the Sigma and also lined with marble, while to the north rose the Hall of the Pearl - its white marble floor richly ornamented with mosaic, its roof resting on eight rose-pink marble columns. Off the main space was a smaller bedchamber, where the Emperor slept during the hot summer months. Opposite this lay the Karianos, designed for his daughters and so called for the broad staircase of milk-white Carian marble that led up to it; while a short distance to the south stood the Kamiles, in which six columns of green Thessalian marble led the eye up to a field of mosaics depicting a fruit harvest and on to a roof glittering with gold.

To the north-east of the Great Palace, next to the Church of St Sophia, was the Palace of The Magnaura, another of Constantine's foundations; it was here that Theophilus installed his most celebrated mechanical toy. An ambassador received here in audience would be astonished to find the imperial throne overshadowed by a golden plane tree, its branches full of jewelled birds - some of which appeared to have hopped off the tree and on to the throne itself. Around the trunk were lions and gryphons couchant, also of gold. Still greater would be the visitor's wonderment when, at a given signal, the animals would rise up, the lions would roar and all the birds would burst simultaneously into song. After a while the chorus would be interrupted by a peal of music from a golden organ, after which there would be silence to permit the Emperor and his guest to talk. Then, the moment the ambassador rose to leave, the whole chorus would start up again and continue till he had left the chamber.

This barely credible contrivance seems to have been inspired by a
similar marvel in the possession of the Caliph - as was the splendid palace that Theophilus built for himself in the Oriental style at Bryas, on the Bithynian coast across the Marmara. It is only fair to add, however, that he also spent much time and money on the strengthening of the defences of Constantinople. The land walls needed little attention; but those along the shore of the Golden Horn had given rise to some anxiety during Thomas's siege, when it was realized that they might well prove insufficiently high to hold back a determined enemy. An ambitious plan to heighten them along their entire length, though initiated by Michael II, was almost wholly carried out by Theophilus, whose name appears more frequently on inscriptions along the walls and towers than does that of any other Emperor. Extravagant and self-indulgent he may have been; but he was well aware of his responsibilities too, and he never shirked them.

It was a sad stroke of irony - felt, we may be sure, by no one more than Theophilus himself - that decreed that this most instinctively pro-Arab of all the Emperors of Byzantium should have had to pass almost the whole of his reign in warfare against the forces of Islam. For the past sixteen years the eastern frontier had been quiet. There had been no formal treaty of peace; but the Caliphate, struggling for its life against a widespread insurrection on the part of a sect known as the Hurramites, had been obliged to call a halt to the annual invasions that had previously been the norm. Then, in 829, hostilities flared up again. To some extent this seems to have been the fault of Theophilus. He would infinitely have preferred to maintain friendly relations with his Arab neighbours, with plenty of cultural and intellectual exchange; but when, soon after his accession, an army of Hurramites crossed into the territory of the Empire and demanded to enlist under the imperial standards he decided that the opportunity was too good to mi
ss and settl
ed them on his north-eastern border, in a newly-established Theme which he called Chaldia. This was seen by the Caliph Mamun as a hostile act, and within a matter of months a Saracen army was again on the march.

In the first campaigns fortune favoured Theophilus. He led a successful expedition into enemy territory in 830, sacking the city of Zapetra, and in the following year took the initiative by invading Muslim-held Cilicia - with such gratifying results that, on returning with his victorious army to Constantinople, he awarded himself a triumph. The celebrations were impressive enough for the chroniclers to have left us detailed descriptions.

We read how the Empress Theodora, accompanied by the chief ministers and members of the Senate, sailed across the Bosphorus to welcome her husband at the Palace of Hieria, and how the party remained in Asia another ten days until the arrival of a sufficient quantity of prisoners to swell the procession to a proper size. Only when all were present and the necessary preparations had been made did the Emperor cross the straits and continue up the Golden Horn to Blachernae. Thence, after a short pause, he rode through the open country outside the walls to a point some few hundred yards west of the Golden Gate, where a brilliantly-coloured pavilion had been set up for his reception.

From this pavilion the triumphal procession started off towards the city. It was led by the seemingly endless train of prisoners, together with the principal trophies and spoils of war. These were followed by the Emperor himself, mounted on a white charger with jewelled harness. The diadem was on his head, in his hand the imperial sceptre. Over his breastplate he wore a loose gold tunic, embroidered with a design of roses and clusters of grapes. Beside him - also riding a white horse and wearing golden armour — was his adopted son-in-law the Caesar Alexius, whom he had recently married to his daughter Maria.
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When the two reached the gate, they dismounted and bowed three times towards the east; the three senior civic officers - praepositus, magister and prefect — then advanced to meet the Emperor and presented him with a crown of gold. Having thus ceremonially resumed authority in the capital he continued his procession down the broad central thoroughfare, the Mese, to St Sophia.

Constantinople, we are told, had been 'decked like a bridal chamber'. Carpets hung from the windows, the streets were adorned with festoons of purple and silver, the Mese strewn with flowers. On reaching the Great Church, the Emperor attended a brief service of thanksgiving; then he walked across the Augusteum to the Bronze Gate of the Imperial Palace, the Chalke, where a golden throne had been set up. On one side of it was a cross, also of gold, and on the other the great golden organ - one of several that he had ordered for the city, since he could never resist ingenious machinery — which was known as the
protothauma,

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After a run of five daughters Theodora had finally borne her husband a son, Constantine, who had however died in infancy. The Emperor had consequently chosen Alexius as his successor. The Caesar was to remain as heir apparent until the unexpected birth in 840, after twenty years of marriage, of the future Michael III.