To be sure, other reasons for the schism existed, some of them resulting from liturgical puzzles (the use of leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist, for example), others arising from the complex constructions at the core of the Christian faith. The confusion over the nature of the man-god Jesus of Nazareth had had a corrosive effect on Orthodoxy's relations with the monophysites; yet another trap lay in the nature of Christianity's Holy Trinity. The best-known example of how the Trinity could be a minefield was Arianism, the early faith of the Visigoths and other Germanic tribes—later deemed a heresy for holding Jesus to be a creation, not an eternal equal, of God the Father. By contrast, the contention between Latin and Orthodox concerned the third person of the Trinity, that is, the Holy Ghost, or the Paraclete.
In a controversy known as the Dual Procession of the Holy Ghost, Latins and Greeks differed on a small but critical matter in the profession of faith. In their credo, the Greeks held that the Holy Ghost proceeded from—emanated from—God the Father alone; the Latins, that the Holy Ghost proceeded from God the Father and the Son—an important distinction effected by the simple addition of a suffix to the Latin: "filioque." This filioque controversy had long envenomed relations between the churches, particularly in the ninth century, when the competition over who would evangelize eastern Europe was at its height. Although the Greeks prevailed and ended up converting the Slavs to Orthodoxy, the filioque matter was never settled. It could be trotted out at any time to inspire exchanges of scalding vitriol between theologians. Such was the case in 1054, only this time the breach proved permanent.
If change had been in the air in the epoch following the arbitrary benchmark year of 1000, by midcentury a strange coincidence of intraconfessional change was enlivening matters further. The Seljuk capture of Baghdad in 1055, prompting as it would the elaboration of sunni orthodoxy under successive Turkish sultans, is often seen as the event that cemented the formerly inchoate rift between shia and sunni in Islam. Doctrinal disagreements would thereafter trump disputes over caliphal genealogy; and thenceforth each tradition would go its own way, later to subdivide further.
That a similar cleavage occurred in Christendom at almost precisely the same time is a remarkable coincidence; the Great Schism of 1054 ensured that Christian unity would be forever out of reach. By the thirteenth century an Orthodox prelate of Athens, giving vent to the animosity bred of the rift, could write that Latin Christians were less likely to understand "the harmony and grace of the Greek language than asses to enjoy the lyre, or dung-beetles to savor perfume." Clearly, as the result of these divisions from the 1050s onward, the Mediterranean would witness encounters between ever more fractious Christianities and Islams.
The Christian schism did nothing to bolster the already precarious Byzantine position in the face of the gathering Seljuk offensive. No grand alliance of Christians would fight the Turks. Moreover, another coincidence conspired to distract the dithering elites of Constantinople from the coming storm. At precisely the same moment as the Turks were bursting into the east, the Normans were doing likewise in the west. A nation of terrifying Norsemen who had supposedly been domesticated by the land grant of a duchy in what is now northwestern France, the Normans refused, famously, to stay put. In 1066 they crossed the Channel from Normandy to take England. In Constantinople, news of that event would have been shrugged off as distant barbarian trivia had not those same Normans suddenly appeared, out of nowhere, in the Mediterranean. In the strife-riven territories of southern Italy disputed among Lombard lords, Byzantine governors, Sicilian Muslim emirs, and agents of the papacy and the Germanic emperors, the Normans came first as mercenaries, then as conquerors, in a curious echo of what the Seljuks were achieving at the same moment on the Iranian plateau.
Yet the Norman movement into Italy differed in one important respect from the Seljuk conquests. It was the work not of a nomadic people migrating en masse but of a handful of freelance knights looking for adventure—and one obscure but supremely belligerent family would outdo all others in audacity. That clan was the Hautevilles, from Normandy's Cotentin peninsula. Its patriarch around the year 1000, Tancred, had had the good fortune in his two marriages to have sired twelve strapping sons (and at least one daughter), but the bad fortune not to have been rich enough to provide for them and keep them out of mischief. The older sons, restless with their pittance of a patrimony and aware of opportunity around the Mediterranean, left the fog of Atlantic Europe to fight for and eventually win principalities for themselves in the sun of southern Italy. The first of many Hautevilles to arrive—William Bras-de-Fer (Iron Arm), Drogo, and Humphrey—would have held pride of place in the family annals of ambition had not the eldest of their half brothers, from Tancred's second marriage, surpassed his siblings to become one of the greatest arrivistes of the Middle Ages. In 1046 thirty-one-year-old Robert Guiscard came to Italy with nothing; by the time he died in 1085, he had humiliated popes and emperors, laid the groundwork for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (the island and the southern half of the Italian peninsula), and made himself a legend of presumption throughout the Mediterranean.
What Guiscard (the name, a distant cousin of wiseacre, means "weasel" or "cunning") achieved through warfare, treachery, and intimidation—even Pope Gregory VII, the ideologue of papal supremacy, was bullied into granting the Norman legitimacy—amounted to nothing less than the extinction of Greek power on the Italian peninsula. As Guiscard, with the the help of his sword-wielding amazon of a wife, Sichelgaita, relentlessly hacked away at their empire, the Byzantines, bereft of the leadership of a Basil II able to counter such a fighter, were mesmerized by his progress. Anna Comnena, the Byzantine princess whose Alexiad is an outstanding memoir of her years at the pinnacle of society in Constantinople, grudgingly admired this ruffian from the wilds. High-born Anna, after pointing out that Guiscard was "of obscure origin, with an overbearing character and a villainous mind," nonetheless could not suppress her fascination for a man "of immense stature, surpassing even the biggest men; he had a ruddy complexion, fair hair, broad shoulders, eyes that all but shot out sparks of fire . . . Homer remarked of Achilles that when he shouted his hearers had the impression of a multitude in uproar, but Robert's bellow, so they say, put tens of thousands to flight."
Robert Guiscard's roar—he would eventually attack the Byzantines on the other side of the Adriatic as well—may well have deafened an already-tottering leadership to the tumult at the gates to Anatolia. The Hautevilles even had a hand in the Great Schism—the disastrous exchange of embassies in 1054 between the pope and Constantine Monomachus originally arose from concern over what to do with the Normans. And yet they were far from being the only troublemakers in the area: the Danubian frontiers of the Byzantine Empire had grown more dangerous in the half-century since Basil's death, as new tribes poured into the Balkans to take up where the blinded Bulgars had left off.
In short, the west was an unedifying spectacle of disintegration, while the east was a disaster unfolding. The Turkomans, with or without Seljuk participation, galloped far into Anatolia, their nomadic warriors spreading fear and mayhem well into Cappadocia and beyond. Turkoman bands looted whatever they found, besieged provincial cities, and lured mercenaries from the tasks assigned them by promises of ever greater booty. Alp Arslan knew that he had to control these wild men if ever he were to fulfill his god-given mission to topple the Fatimid caliphate. A new basileus, Romanus Diogenes, decided on his accession in 1068 that he too would have to bring the situation under control, if ever he were to staunch the bleeding of his great, wounded empire.
If the choice of Romanus Diogenes can be said to represent the empire's coming to its senses at the eleventh hour, his ascension to the throne lacked any semblance of seemly, statesmanlike deliberation from the leadership in Constantinople. A military man of a rich family from Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Romanus had served well as the Byzantine governor of Sofia before being disgraced on suspicion of plotting a coup against the basileus, Const
antine X Ducas.
The failed coup made Constantine, the old basileus, determined that no usurper should wrest power from his family. A Ducas, and thus from one of the most illustrious clans of the empire, Constantine named his brother John as caesar—deputy emperor—and looked to one of his sons to succeed him, thus ensuring the establishment of a dynasty. When Constantine fell fatally ill in 1067, he put the final touches on his plan to exercise influence from beyond the grave. Before an assembled group of senators and notables, he had his wife, Eu-doxia Macrembolitissa, swear never to remarry. Whomever a widowed empress took to bed often endeid up supplanting the male heir of her late husband as the new ruler: thus it was of paramount importance to the expiring Constantine that his wife, whom he had genially ignored for his mistress, not spoil the Ducas chance at perennial power by sleeping with any one of their many enemies.
Eudoxia saw things differently. She was young, of a powerful family herself (her uncle had been the patriarch at the time of the Great Schism)—and she was an empress. That last attribute may have been the most important, for Eudoxia saw that her empire was in mortal danger. The Turkish incursions were becoming impossible to ignore any longer: in the latest in a long string of calamities, the great Cappadocian city of Caesarea (Kayseri, Turkey) had been sacked by a Turkoman brigand called Afsin, whose repeated raids left the unmistakable impression that no one was defending the Byzantine heartland. Even some in the civil party—those responsible for the emasculation of the military—yearned for a warrior to wear the purple. Eudoxia must have agreed.
While the Ducas males, as reliably ineffectual as the late Constantine, prepared to take the helm, Eudoxia unexpectedly let it be known that she was in the mood to marry again. This she could most emphatically not do, unless the patriarch of Constantinople released her from her vow and convinced the senators to do likewise. Such an outcome was unlikely since the patriarch, John Xiphilinus, had long been an ally of the Ducas faction, and, in any event, the Orthodox Church frowned on serial matrimony. But Xiphilinus, powerful and thus predictable, was no stranger to selfishness. When a eunuch in the great lady's entourage intimated that Eudoxia's amorous gaze had fallen on the patriarch's very own brother, Xiphilinus had a sudden change of heart. What greater destiny for any family than to occupy both the patriarchate and the throne? Without giving away his game, Xiphilinus took the senators aside in private interviews and persuaded or bribed each in his turn to declare the widow's vow null and void.
Eudoxia then pulled the rabbit out of her hat. She had never really stated who the object of her affections was—the patriarch had been hoodwinked. Romanus Diogenes was summoned from the provinces and brought before her. As a friend described him, the young aristocrat "not only surpassed others in his good qualities but. . . was also pleasant to look at in all respects. His broad chest and back gave him a fine appearance, and his very breath seemed noble, if not divine. He seemed more handsome than others, and this was enhanced by his bright eyes." Whether Eudoxia fell then and there—the same source implied that she abhorred sexual intercourse—is a secret that went to the grave with her. It is said, however, that on seeing the man, "unrestrained mercy took hold on the Augusta [Eudoxia], and streams of tears fell from her eyes." Romanus certainly presented a physical contrast to the late and unlamented Constantine, and his warrior abilities were what the bloated court of Constantinople needed most. On New Year's Day 1068, Eudoxia and Romanus wed. The Greeks had a new basileus.
However capable a leader, Romanus found himself in a scarcely enviable position. Much of the court hated him, particularly the ever-powerful Ducas party, into whose midst he had married. The patriarch, of course, still smarted from having been so thoroughly outwitted. Romanus did not have a strong enough following to undertake the much-needed purging of all his malevolent in-laws—even the Varangian Guard, the brutal coterie of barbarians assigned to protect and look out for the basileus, sided with the caesar, John Ducas. Psellus, in his memoir, fairly spat out his contempt for the new man on the throne. Romanus, according to Psellus, "completely despised the officers of state, refused advice, and—incurable malady of emperors—relied on no counsel, no guidance but his own, under all circumstances without exception. As for myself, I swear by God, the God whom philosophy reveres, that I tried to turn him from his ambitions."
The campaigning seasons of 1068 and 1069 witnessed an energetic Romanus, at the head of a ragtag but still lethal force of irregularly paid mercenaries, ranging through Anatolia in search of a Turkish quarry to engage. Alp Arslan, after having reined in the Turkoman Afsin, had given the official Seljuk imprimatur to the incursions from the east by capturing several border strongholds. Alp and his men savagely sacked Ani, the capital of Armenia, burned the city's scores of churches to the ground, and massacred all of its inhabitants or carted them off into slavery. Skirmishing over other frontier towns, notably Edessa (Urfa, Turkey), marked these years as well, along with a few minor battles in which Romanus got the best of the Seljuk raiders. The basileus, despite chronic defections from his army, could claim to be making progress.
Opinion in Constantinople was not so indulgent. Guiscard the Norman was rolling up Byzantine Italy, critics pointed out, yet Romanus was looking the other way. His long marches through Anatolia were deemed little more than cat-and-mouse chases, never once closing with the main armies of the enemy. In their telling, he was arrogant, incompetent, and, worse yet, determined to impoverish them all. As Romanus needed great sums of money to pay his hired soldiery, the Church and the aristocracy had been strong-armed into parting with some of the treasure they had amassed under the corrupt practices condoned by successive emperors in the last half-century.
For all of the year 1070 Romanus stayed in Constantinople, preparing a grand offensive and, no doubt, trying to keep his ill-wishers from coalescing into a force that could unseat him. When he was finally ready, in 1071, to make his decisive move against the Turks, he made sure to take a Ducas with him, half-hostage and half-insurance against skulduggery during his absence from the capital. Andronicus Ducas was given command of the rear guard of the army—a position that would put him, fatefully, at the basileus's broad back.
Curiously, this final campaign may have been unnecessary. Tentative peace feelers had been extended between Alp and Romanus, and had they agreed to an acceptable partition of Armenia, both might have felt secure in their borders. Whether the sultan could have kept the Turkomans within them, after they had seen just how weak the Byzantine military was, is another matter. And whether Romanus, surrounded by enemies in his court, could have survived surrendering a part of Armenia—so decisively captured by Basil II and so sedulously despoiled by his successors—is also far from certain. Whatever the case for peace, neither man embraced it.
In March 1071, the basileus ferried a large force of fighters, estimated at between 60,000 and 100,000, across the Bosporus for the trek eastward. They were a motley lot. In addition to the regiments of native soldiers cobbled together from the remnants of the Byzantine regular army, hordes of mercenaries filled the ranks—Franks, Germans, Normans, Armenians, Pechenegs (a Turkic people from the Balkan frontier), and a variety of non-Seljuk Turks with only a notional grasp of loyalty. Added to the untrustworthiness of the troops were the questionable allegiances of Romanus's commanders, some of whom sympathized with the sidelined Ducas family.
Alp Arslan, by contrast, did not have such acute worries. He was planning what promised to be a plunder-rich offensive against the Fatimids of Egypt. After mustering in northern Persia, the Seljuks passed through western Armenia, taking Manzikert and Khilat, an outpost on the northern shore of Lake Van, then pressed farther southwest into upper Mesopotamia. Alp captured or extorted payment from the border towns (Edessa, Aleppo, Antioch) that the Byzantines had garrisoned in earlier campaigns. In short, he was engaged in a preliminary housekeeping operation—shoring up his defenses on a quiet frontier—before heading south with his army to do battle with the shia heretics of Egypt. He appe
ars to have been unaware of the large host lumbering eastward from the Bosporus in the spring of 1071.
Romanus's progress was fitful. His attempts to dragoon further troops as he passed through mountainous central Anatolia met with limited success, and his army began showing ominous signs of truculence, several minor mutinies having broken out during the slow march eastward. More worrying still was the commander's mood. His friend and comrade-in-arms, Michael Attaliates, the memoirist who described Romanus as the acme of male beauty, complained that the basileus had become an unpredictable man, his native self-assurance resembling arrogance and aloofness as he began to "make a stranger of himself to his own army, setting up his own camp, and arranging for more ostentatious accommodations."
At Erzurum, in June or July 1071, a council of war was held. Word arrived of the Turks in difficulty before the distant citadel of Antioch, so the country to the south and east of Erzurum presumably lay open for the taking. Against the advice of at least two of his generals, Nicephorus Bryennius and Joseph Tarchaniotes, Romanus elected to split his army in two. He would march on Manzikert with half of the expeditionary force; Tarchaniotes and Roussel of Bailleul, a Norman adventurer, would take the other half and recapture Khilat, on Lake Van. Subsequently they would meet up for further operations, perhaps deeper into Seljuk territory.
Sea of Faith Page 14
