Charlemagne’s single-minded drive for empire did breed a certain ruthlessness. He had few qualms about dealing with rivals, even among his own family. His nephews mysteriously disappeared when they fell into his hands; he deposed his cousin in order to conquer Bavaria; and when his hunchback son Pepin rebelled in 792, he put down the revolt with brutal force. Having secured the pope’s approval for his conquest of Italy by promising to increase papal territory, Charlemagne reneged on the deal, keeping Lombardy for himself. When the Saxons rebelled, after accepting his sovereignty and converting to Christianity, Charlemagne was merciless. He considered their rebellion apostasy as well as treason, and he put it down with a level of violence rare even in his own violent era: on one occasion he executed 4000 Saxons in a single day. Yet in general he respected the rights and traditions of the lands he conquered.
Finally, Charlemange became a man of mystical myth: he corresponded with the caliph of the Abbasid empire, Haroun, who allowed him to protect the Christians of Jerusalem, where he built a small Christian quarter. The rumor spread that the emperor had secretly visited Jerusalem, inspiring the crusaders and French leaders up into the 20th century. Indeed Christians came to believe Charlemange might be the last emperor before the Last Judgment.
When Charlemagne felt the shadow of death upon him in 813, he crowned his son Louis, king of Aquitaine, as emperor. He died a few months later. Louis succeeded his father—but on his own death he divided his territories between his sons. Charlemagne’s empire did not last long.
HAROUN AL-RASHID
763/6–809
A goodly place, a goodly time,
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Recollections of the Arabian Nights” (1830)
Renowned for his luxury, hedonism, generosity and piety, Haroun al-Rashid was the remarkable caliph who reigned over the Abbasid Arab empire during its golden age. A lover of poetry, music and learning, Haroun’s fabulous court has been immortalized, and fictionalized, in The Arabian Nights.
Haroun appears in many of The Arabian Nights’ tales as a man devoted to pleasure and sensuality, a ruler who only abandons his magnificent court when he sneaks out incognito into the city at night for amorous encounters. The real Haroun was actually a capable military commander and autocrat. His piety was of the rational sort. He encouraged singing, believing the Koran’s ban on music did not extend to the human voice. A keen horseman, he built race courses and is said to have introduced polo to the Arabs. Feast days and hunting expeditions became occasions of unparalleled splendor.
Haroun’s empire extended from the borders of India to Spain, affording him the pursuit of pleasure on a scale that no other kingdom could match. Occasionally he checked himself, murmuring: “I ask pardon of God, I have spent too much money.” But his largesse was widely distributed: every morning Haroun donated at least 1000 dirhams to the poor, setting an example that his wealthy subjects emulated, and giving rise to rumors that Baghdad’s streets were paved with gold.
The Abbasids had seized the throne of the Islamic empire in 750, moving their court from Damascus to a new capital called Baghdad in Iraq. The court of the Abbasid caliphs was the marvel of the world. Ambassadors from other lands rubbed their eyes as they were shown elephants and lions decked out in brocade and satin, and gasped as they stood under the shade of a tree made of gold and silver, festooned with jeweled fruits. Proceeding through scores of courtyards, miles of marble arcades, innumerable chambers dripping with almost unimaginable wealth, they finally reached the caliph’s presence. Here they were dazzled by the ebony throne and jewels so bright they seemed to eclipse the sun.
The caliphs embraced excess with abandon. When Haroun’s son Mam’un married, the bride was showered with a thousand pearls. Haroun’s 2000 singing and servant girls, twenty-four concubines and five wives seem moderate compared with the 4000 concubines of one of his descendants, who, in a reign lasting only a thousand nights, managed to sleep with every single one of them. Less successful was Mam’un’s wedding night: the newly married couple found the scent of the precious ambergris candles irritating and ordered them to be removed from the bedroom. Mam’un himself subsequently withdrew when it became apparent that the bride’s menstruation precluded consummation.
Legends of the harem abounded, and death awaited any man other than the caliph who gained entry to this shadowy, voluptuous kingdom. Fragranced with saffron and rosewater, each of the seven slave girls who attended Haroun at his daily siesta knew that sensuality could garner unimaginable rewards—Haroun’s mother Khaizuran herself had risen from slave girl to powerful wife of the caliph.
Poets and musicians flocked to the court, which became the cultural center of the Islamic world. Praising their ruler in language as lavish as his surroundings, the poets earned themselves considerable rewards. Musicians, hidden behind velvet curtains, provided the backdrop to long evenings of drinking and feasting. But death could come suddenly amid the hedonism, for intrigues abounded in the shadows.
Haroun made Baghdad the hub of civilization, earning it the name “Bride of the World.” Believing that “It is a disgrace for a ruler not to be learned,” he was on a constant quest for knowledge, and also promoted learning and the arts among his own people. He endowed scholarships, invited wise men from every kingdom to visit Baghdad and encouraged his formerly introspective scholars to profit from their knowledge. Haroun initiated an age of translation of Greek and other Christian classics of philosophy, and mathematics, medicine, astronomy and engineering all flourished.
Haroun’s great love was poetry. No mean poet himself, his knowledge of verse was unparalleled even by learned men—he frequently corrected them on a slipped word. Poets filled his courts and were handsomely rewarded. Poetry was such a consuming passion for Haroun that he gave it up when on pilgrimage as an act of self-denial.
Haroun’s strength as a ruler lay in the personal loyalty he commanded. When he became the fifth Abbasid caliph in 786 at the age of twenty-two, Baghdad’s populace spontaneously crowded the streets to rejoice. He has been criticized for leaving a clan of administrators, the Barmakids, to govern in the early years of his reign, and for being too influenced by his redoubtable mother, Khaizuran. Open and instinctively trusting, Haroun was content to accept the advice of his viziers and theologians. Leaving his administration in capable hands, Haroun preferred instead to undertake extensive tours of inspection across his vast territories, making himself personally known to his subjects. His forays through the streets of Baghdad were in fact more paternalistic than amorous; he was said to roam his capital in disguise to check on his people’s welfare.
Haroun was hot-tempered but quick to feel remorse and rarely vengeful. His most ruthless act was his removal of the Barmakids from power. Yahya al-Barmaki had been Haroun’s boyhood tutor, his first vizier, and the man he called father. After seventeen years of service in which Yahya and his family established a monopoly over the government of the caliphate, Haroun, in a lightning coup d’état, executed or imprisoned the entire clan and its clients. Romance has it that this was revenge for an affair between his vizier at that time, Jafar al-Barmaki, and Haroun’s sister. When Haroun eventually decided to move against the Barmakid clan, he ordered his grand vizier Jafar to spend the night feasting; while thus occupied he received a stream of gifts from the caliph until the arrival of a messenger bearing Haroun’s only request: the head of Jafar. More characteristic of Haroun was his subsequent pilgrimage to Mecca. The last of nine, this time he made the thousand-mile journey barefoot as penance for his acts against a family to whom he owed so much.
Haroun was one of the most respected rulers of his age, acknowledged by both of Europe’s emperors. Charlemagne reportedly sent him gifts, receiving an elephant and the keys of the Christian quarter of Jerusalem in return. The tribute of Byzantium’s emperors, however, was secured by military force rather than goodwill: Haroun defeated the Byzantines several time
s. After Nicephorus I became Byzantine emperor, he tried to renege on the tribute owed to the caliphs and furthermore demanded reimbursement for the tributes made by his predecessor, Empress Irene. Haroun’s response was simple: “You will hear my reply before you read it.” The former civil servant Nicephorus was no match for the military skill of the caliph. After Haroun and his 135,000-strong army laid waste to Asia Minor and a parallel naval force overwhelmed Cyprus, the emperor capitulated and agreed to pay a yearly tribute of 30,000 gold pieces, each stamped with the head of the caliph and his three sons.
Haroun’s death at the age of forty-seven cut short the reign of one of the most admired of the caliphs.
MAROZIA AND THE PAPAL PORNOCRACY
c. 890–932
… this monster without one single virtue to atone for his many vices.
The verdict of the bishops convened by Otto to try Pope John XII, 963
Beautiful, sinister and canny, Marozia was a political harlot and powerful noblewoman who became senatrix and patrician of Rome, queen of Italy and the mistress, murderess, mother and grandmother of popes. Hers was an astonishing career of depravity, greed, murder and ruthlessness that dominated the papacy for decades.
Marozia was born in 890, the daughter of Count Theophylact of Tusculum and his courtesan, Theodora, called a “shameless whore” and “sole monarch of Rome” by her enemies. Indeed both mother and her two daughters Marozia and another Theodora were infamous. As the English historian Edward Gibbon wrote:
The influence of two prostitutes Marozia and Theodora was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre and their reign may have suggested to darker ages the fable of a female pope. The bastard son, the grand-son and great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated in the Chair of St. Peter.
At fifteen Marozia became Pope Sergius III’s mistress, producing a bastard son, later Pope John XI. In 909 she married Alberic, marquess of Spoleto, producing another son, Alberic II. The senatrix of Rome was now the most powerful of a dominant aristocracy. After Alberic I was killed, she became mistress of the reigning Pope John X, a tough and intelligent man, who resisted her control. (He had been a lover of her mother’s too.) He defeated the Saracens but Marozia came to hate him: she turned against him, marrying his enemy Guy of Tuscany. Together they conquered Rome, imprisoning the pope. Marozia had John X (914–928) strangled in the Castel Sant’Angelo and then seized power for herself, ruling through her puppet popes Leo VI and Stephen VIII before raising her own papal bastard to the throne of St. Peter as John XI, at age twenty-one, in 931. Widowed again, Marozia married Hugh of Arles, king of Italy, with whom she ruled. (Hugh was already married; his wife conveniently died, another victim of Marozia no doubt.) The couple were overthrown by her son Duke Alberic II, who imprisoned his mother until her death. Alberic ruled Rome through four popes. When the fourth resisted him, he was tortured to death. Alberic, on his own deathbed, demanded that his bastard son Octavian be made pope.
Reigning 955–964, Octavian, known as Pope John XII, grandson of Marozia, was the most shameful pontiff to lead the Christian Church, the antithesis of Christian virtues. He lived a private life of brazen immorality, turning the Vatican into a brothel. His behavior was duplicitous, cruel and foolish—he and his grandmother personified the papal “pornocracy” of the first half of the tenth century. Fittingly, he finally brought about his own downfall through his insatiable depravity.
On December 16, 955, Octavian became the highest authority in the Christian Church, both the spiritual and temporal ruler of Rome at only eighteen years old, renaming himself John XII.
Through his mother Alda of Vienne he was a descendant of Charlemagne, but he showed none of the virtues expected of a pope. His private life was a litany of sin. Disdaining the celibacy his position required, he was a rampant adulterer, fornicating with literally hundreds of women, including his father’s concubine Stephna. The sacred Lateran Palace, once the abode of saints, became a whorehouse, in which lounged hundreds of prostitutes, ready to serve his sexual whims. John had incestuous relations with two of his sisters.
Throughout his reign, John’s fortunes were interwoven with those of the German King Otto I the Great, a friend of the Church to whom John appealed for help after suffering defeat in a war against Duke Pandulf of Capua, and then losing the Papal States to King Berengarius of Italy. Otto arrived in Italy with his powerful army, forcing Berengarius to back down. On reaching Rome in late January 962, Otto took an oath of allegiance to recognize John’s authority, and on February 2, 962 John crowned Otto Holy Roman Emperor, along with his wife, Queen Adelaide, whom he made empress.
This powerful alliance was of benefit to both John and Otto but each immediately set about struggling to dominate the other. Shortly after Otto was crowned emperor, he issued his “Ottonian Privilege,” a treaty that promised to recognize the Pope’s claim to the bulk of central Italy in exchange for a pledge that all future popes would only be consecrated after they had sworn allegiance to the holy Roman emperor. However, when Otto left Rome on February 14, 962 to continue his war against King Berengarius, John—fearful of Otto’s strength—began secret negotiations with Berengarius’ son Adalbert to rise up against him, and sent letters to other European rulers, encouraging them to do the same. However German troops intercepted these letters, the plot was laid bare, and if John had any hopes of placating the furious Otto, these soon ended. After John received Adalbert in Rome with great ceremony, bishops and nobles sympathetic to the German king rebelled. On November 2, 963, John was forced to flee Rome as Otto re-entered the city.
While John hid in the mountains of Campania, Otto convened a panel of fifty bishops in St. Peter’s Basilica, who compiled a list of political and personal charges against him. These ranged from sacrilege (swearing oaths and toasting the devil with wine) to adultery, perjury and even murder (he was accused of blinding his confessor, Benedict, leading to his death, and of castrating and murdering his cardinal subdeacon). The excesses of his private life had also led him into flagrant abuses of his office, including simony—bestowing bishoprics and other ecclesiastical titles in return for payments—in order to pay his extensive gambling debts.
On December 4, 963, the synod found John guilty and deposed him, replacing him with Pope Leo VIII. However, the new appointment was made without following proper canonical procedure and few regarded Leo as a legitimate replacement. As Otto and Adalbert clashed on the battlefield again, a new revolt broke out in Rome, restoring John to the papacy, while Leo fled. Those who had betrayed John now suffered horrible vengeance. Cardinal Deacon John had his right hand cut off by the merciless pope while Bishop Otgar of Speyer was scourged; another official lost his nose and ears, many more were excommunicated. On February 26, 964, John repealed Otto’s decrees in a special synod and re-established his own authority as pope.
John’s position was still precarious and when Otto finally defeated Berengarius on the battlefield and started back for Rome, it seemed highly likely he would be deposed again. However, on May 16, 964, lustful to the last, John collapsed and died eight days after being caught in the act of adultery. Some say he was beaten up by the jealous husband; others that he was murdered; others again that the devil had claimed him as his own. Most believed he had been struck down by divine intervention or carnal exhaustion.
Pope John XII was a stain on the name of the Christian Church. It is said that monks prayed day and night for his death. “You are charged with such obscenities as would make us blush if you were a stage player,” was Emperor Otto’s verdict, writing to him after convening a council of bishops to depose him, “It would require a whole day to enumerate them all.”
BASIL THE BULGAR SLAYER
957/8–1025
The emperor did not relent, but every year marched into Bulgaria and laid waste and ravaged all before him … The emperor blinded the Bulgarian captives—around 15,000 they
say—and he ordered every hundred to be led back … by a one-eyed man.
John Skylitzes, late 11th-century Byzantine historian
Basil II was one of the most powerful, effective and brilliant—if merciless—rulers of the Byzantine empire, the ultimate hero-monster. A remarkably successful statesman and soldier, perennially engaged in warfare, Basil—who never married or fathered children—reigned for fifty years, expanding his empire to its greatest extent. He converted the Russians to Christianity, defeated the Bulgars, conquered the Caucasus and patronized the arts.
Accounts of Basil’s appearance tally well with his brutal persona. Athletic in build, with a round face, bushy mustache and piercing blue eyes, he had a habit of twirling his whiskers between his fingers whenever he was angry or agitated—a frequent occurrence given his explosive temper. Reportedly he chose his words sparingly, barking rather than speaking them, in accordance with his generally abrupt manner. Never one to relax, he was always on guard for enemies, his right hand invariably poised to reach for his sword. He scorned jewelry, dressing in armor and eating the same rations as his troops, promising to look after their children if they died in battle for him.
Basil was the grandson of Constantine VII and the son of Romanos II. But Byzantine power politics were treacherous and the early years of Basil’s life were marked by intrigue and rebellion. Romanos II had died in 963, leaving five-year-old Basil and his younger brother Constantine as the joint emperors; although Constantine would succeed Basil in 1025 and rule in his own right for three years, he did not play an active part in Basil’s reign, accepting his brother’s supremacy and preferring to watch the chariot racing at the Constantinople Hippodrome.
Titans of History Page 11
