Meanwhile, in the spring of the previous year, Cyril had set off on his Moravian mission - accompanied by his brother Methodius, almost as well qualified as himself for the task that lay ahead. During an early career in government service he had been posted to a province with a largely Slav population, and he too had learned their language. Later, deciding on a life of contemplation, he had retired to a monastery on the Bithynian Mount Olympus; but when his brother invited him to share the burden of his new mission he had readily agreed to join him. The pair left Constantinople - as nearly as we can deduce — in the early summer of 864, and remained in Moravia for over three years. According to an ancient tradition, Cyril now invented a new alphabet with which to transcribe the hitherto unwritten Slavonic speech, and then proceeded to translate the Bible and parts of the liturgy. Oddly enough, however, the language he chose was Macedonian Slavonic - only distantly related to the Slovakian dialect spoken by the Moravians, few of whom could have understood a word of it; it therefore seems a good deal more likely that he had devised his alphabet with the Bulgars rather than the Moravians in mind, and that he later simply made his translations into the only Slav language he knew.1
In such circumstances, it comes as no surprise to learn that the Moravian experiment was to have extremely disappointing results. It remains true none the less that by providing the Slav peoples with an alphabet tailor-made, as it were, to the phonetic peculiarities of their various tongues, Cyril laid the foundations for their literary development;
1 It was long believed that the alphabet invented by Cyril was not the modern Cyrillic - as used by the Russians, Serbs, Bulgars and various other races today embraced by the Soviet Union - but another, far more ungainly and long fallen into disuse, known as the Glagolitic. This theory, however, seems no longer tenable. See Appendix IX to Sir Steven Runciman's A History of the First Bulgarian Empire, and the article 'St Cyril Really Knew Hebrew' by E. H. Minns, in Melange publie's en l’homeurr de M. Paul Boyer, Paris, 192;.
and it is perhaps for this benefaction, as much as for his and his brother's achievements in the missionary field, that the two scholar-saints are remembered and revered today.
In August 865 Pope Nicholas received a letter from the Byzantine Emperor. For three years the controversy had hung fire: three years during which Michael's successes in Bulgaria - political, military and religious - had made him more arrogant than ever. The two papal legates, he now pointed out, could consider themselves extremely fortunate to have been permitted even to attend a synod called to settle an internal problem which was no concern of theirs; but they were of no serious importance. The real responsibility for the quarrel lay with slanderers and trouble-makers like Theognostus, who were busy spreading their venom all over Rome. These men must be extradited forthwith and returned to Constantinople. If the Pope were to refuse, the Emperor himself would come to Rome and fetch them.
Nicholas, replying, gave as good as he got. He confined himself to a single major issue - the supremacy of Rome. There could be no question about this, and certainly no alternative: only twenty years before, had not both the Emperors and the Patriarchs of Constantinople been iconoclast heretics? Any council not authorized by the Pope was an illegal council, its actions automatically null and void. As for Theognostus and his friends, they were at liberty to remain at the papal court for as long as they wished. He himself would make one concession, and one only: if the two rival Patriarchs were to come to Rome and present themselves before him he would once more consider their respective claims. That was as far as he would go.
It is unlikely that Michael ever intended to carry out his threat, which was probably little more than a stylistic flourish to lend force to his arguments; but we shall never know for certain, owing to an unexpected development which put an entirely new complexion on the controversy, obliging Photius at least - for the Emperor, by now a hopeless alcoholic, was spending the greater part of the day in a drunken stupor - to take it far more seriously than he had done before. The Bulgar Khan, less than a year after his conversion, was growing dangerously restive. Suddenly he had found his Kingdom overrun with Greek and Armenian priests, more often than not at loggerheads with each other over abstruse points of doctrine incomprehensible to his bewildered subjects, most of whom had been perfectly happy in their former paganism and were far from pleased to discover that they were expected not only to take instruction from these unwelcome and discordant strangers but to feed and lodge them as well. And there was something else. The magnificent ceremony of his own baptism by Photius in St Sophia had impressed him deeply, and he now wished to have similar ceremonies performed among - and by - his own people. He had accordingly written to Constantinople asking for the appointment of a Bulgarian Patriarch.
It was at this point that Photius made perhaps the most disastrous miscalculation of his life. Determined to keep the Bulgarian Church firmly under his own control, he not only refused the request but dismissed it out of hand. Boris - in the interests of clarity he must keep his pagan name - had also mentioned various small points of Orthodox doctrine and social custom which in one way or another conflicted with local traditions, suggesting that if the latter could be permitted to continue much of the popular resistance to the new faith might be overcome; some of his proposals were rejected, the rest were simply ignored. The Khan was furious. He was happy to be the Emperor's godson, but he had no intention of being made his vassal. Fully aware of the state of affairs existing between Rome and Constantinople and the consequent possibility of playing one off against the other, in the summer of 866 he sent a delegation to Pope Nicholas with a list of all the points that Photius had so insultingly dismissed, adding a number of new ones for good measure and requesting the Pope's views on each.
For Nicholas, this was the chance he had been waiting for. At once he dispatched two more bishops - Paul of Populonia and Rodoald's successor Formosus of Porto - to the Bulgarian court as his own personal legates. They carried with them a remarkable document in which he gave thoughtful and meticulous answers to every one of the 106 items in Boris's questionnaire - showing consideration for all local susceptibilities, making all possible concessions that were not actually contrary to canon law and, where these could not be granted, explaining the reasons for his refusal. Trousers, he agreed, could certainly be worn, by men and women alike; turbans too, excepting only in church. When the Byzantines maintained that it was unlawful to wash on Wednesdays and Fridays, they were talking nonsense; nor was there any cause to abstain from milk or cheese during Lent. All pagan superstitions, on the other hand, must be strictly forbidden, as must the accepted Greek practice of divination by the random opening of the Bible. Bigamy, too, was out.
The Bulgars were disappointed about the bigamy, but on the whole more than satisfied with the Pope's answers and - perhaps equally important - by the obvious trouble that he had taken over them. Boris at once swore perpetual allegiance to St Peter and, with every sign of relief, expelled all Orthodox missionaries from his Kingdom; Paul and Formosus settled down to a year of almost constant preaching and baptizing, and were soon joined by a whole supplementary team of bishops and priests, by whom the good work was carried on.
6
Double Murder
[866-7]
I have got rid of the fox; but in his place I have put a lion who will end by devouring us all.
Bardas, after the dismissal of the High Chamberlain Damianus
It has seemed worth telling in some detail the story of what was to become known as the Photian schism, not only for its own inherent interest but for its importance in the history of East-West relations within the Christian Church. Nor is that story altogether finished. The time has come, however, to look briefly at the secular scene during the reign of Michael III and at the men who loomed largest in it -beginning with the Emperor himself.
If Michael has so far appeared a somewhat shadowy figure in this account, it is because he himself was an unusually weak personality who allowed himself
to be dominated first by his mother, then by his uncle Bardas and finally by his intimate friend, murderer and successor Basil the Macedonian. Although it was plain from the start that he would never make the sort of ruler the Empire needed, he was not entirely without qualities: by his early twenties he was already a seasoned campaigner, and his physical courage in the field was never in question. What he lacked above all was strength of will. Content to sit back and enjoy himself while others took on the responsibilities of government, he seemed unable and even unwilling to check his own moral decline: a decline which, in the last five years of his life until his violent death at the age of twenty-seven, finally reduced him to a level of drunkenness and debauchery that fully earned him his later sobriquet of 'the Sot'.
It was fortunate for the Empire that there were others - statesmen, moreover, of quite exceptional ability - ready to take up the reins of power and to govern in his name: first, in the days of his mother's Regency, the eunuch Theoctistus; later, after her downfall, her brother Bardas. Some time around the year 859 Bardas received the dignity of curopalates, a rare distinction normally reserved for members of the imperial family and giving its holder some claim to the succession should the Emperor die without issue; but as his power and influence increased even this was not enough and in April 862, on the Sunday after Easter, he was created Caesar. By this time Michael had long since put away his wife Eudocia Decapolitana, and his chances of legitimate progeny were negligible. Bardas was universally accepted as the next Emperor of Byzantium, and with the present one already far advanced in alcoholism nobody believed that his succession could be long delayed.
Meanwhile he continued to act as basileus in all but name, and did so supremely well. The ten years of his government saw the string of victories over the Saracens in the East and the conversion of the Bulgars, to say nothing of major advances in the long-drawn-out struggle of the Byzantine Church for independence from Rome; he himself followed the example of his brother-in-law Theophilus in the personal and active interest he took in the administration of justice, and that of Theoctistus in his encouragement of learning. The old University of Constantinople, founded early in the fifth century in the reign of Theodosius II, had been allowed to decline until, during the days of the first iconoclasts, it had collapsed completely. Bardas it was who revived it, establishing it this time in the Imperial Palace of The Magnaura under the direction of Leo the Philosopher - or, as he is sometimes called, Leo the Mathematician.
With Photius the Patriarch and Constantine-Cyril the missionary, Leo was one of the three greatest scholars of his time. A cousin of John the Grammarian, he had earned his living as a young man by teaching philosophy and mathematics in Constantinople; but he had become famous only after one of his pupils, captured by the Saracens and taken off to Baghdad, had so impressed the Caliph Mamun by his knowledge that the latter had inquired who his master had been. The Caliph — himself an intellectual and a dedicated patron of the arts and sciences — had then actually written to the Emperor Theophilus, offering 2,000 pounds of gold and a treaty of eternal peace in return for the loan of Leo for a few months; but Theophilus had wisely preferred to set him up as a public teacher in the capital, where he gave regular lectures in the Church of the Forty Martyrs. Later he was appointed Archbishop of Thessalonica, but on the Emperor's death Leo — a fervent iconoclast — was deposed from his see and returned to academic life. Under his direction at Magnaura, Constantine-Cyril had briefly occupied the chair of philosophy, while others of his pupils held those of geometry, astronomy and philology. It is interesting to note that there was no chair of religious studies; the university concerned itself solely with secular learning — which accounted for the implacable hostility with which it was viewed by Ignatius and his followers.
Among the Emperor's many unattractive habits in these latter years was that of surrounding himself with favourites and cronies, who would don obscene fancy dress and accompany him in wild roisterings through the streets of the capital. One of these men, who makes his first appearance in 857 or thereabouts, was a rough and totally uneducated Armenian peasant by the name of Basil. His family, like so many of their countrymen, had been settled in Thrace; but they had subsequently been taken prisoner by Krum and had been transported beyond the Danube to an area known as 'Macedonia' — probably because of the number of Macedonians who had suffered a similar fate. Here Basil had spent much of his childhood, and it is as 'the Macedonian' that he and his dynasty are most misleadingly known, despite the fact that he possessed not one drop of true Macedonian blood, spoke Armenian as his first language and Greek only with a heavy Armenian accent. Devoid of any intellectual accomplishments - he was entirely illiterate, and remained so all his life - he could boast only two obvious assets: Herculean physical strength and a remarkable way with horses. Either of these may have been responsible for his first attracting the Emperor's notice. Genesius tells of how he distinguished himself at a wrestling contest, in which he was pitted against a gigantic Bulgar who had defeated several previous champions. When Basil's turn came, he is said to have picked the fellow up bodily and hurled him across the room. The Continuator of Theophanes gives a similar account, but also tells another story, according to which Michael was presented with a magnificent but totally unmanageable horse. Neither he nor any of his friends could control it, but one of them suggested that his groom might succeed where all the others had failed. Basil - for it was he — approached the horse, took its bridle with one hand and stroked its ear with the other, whispering gently as he did so. Immediately the animal became quiet. So delighted was the Emperor by this performance that he there and then took the young Armenian into his service.
We can accept these trivial anecdotes or reject them; it hardly matters. There is, however, another story of Basil's youth which, although obviously belonging to legend, was sedulously fostered in his later years and proves rather more significant as an indication of his need to justify his later accession to the throne. In Book V of the Continuator - a most flattering biography of Basil now known to be the work of his putative grandson, the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus - we read of how he first arrived in Constantinople one Sunday evening at dusk, and lay down to sleep in the porch of the Church of St Diomed near the Golden Gate. During the night, the abbot of the monastery to which the church belonged was awoken by a mysterious voice, commanding him to go and open the door to the Emperor. He rose, but seeing only a poor traveller in rags huddled on the floor, returned to his bed. A second time the summons came, with the same result; then a third, more insistent still and accompanied, we are told, by a hefty punch in the ribs. 'Rise,' ordered the voice, 'and bring in the man who lies before the door. He is the Emperor.' The abbot obeyed, took the youth into the monastery, fed him, washed him and gave him new clothes, asking only to be considered thenceforth his friend and brother.
We do not know whether this improbable tale came to the ears of the Emperor Michael or, if it did, what effect it had on him; but from the moment of Basil's admission to the imperial court his promotion was swift. He soon became more of a friend than a servant; and when the office of High Chamberlain1 suddenly fell vacant - the eunuch Damianus having been discharged after losing his temper with Bardas - Michael immediately appointed him to the post. Thenceforth Emperor and Chamberlain lived together on terms of close intimacy - so close indeed that some historians have spoken darkly of a homosexual relationship. What makes such a theory improbable, however, is the somewhat unusual arrangement that Michael now made for their future domestic felicity. Basil was obliged to divorce his wife Maria, and to marry instead the Emperor's own first love and long-time mistress Eudocia Ingerina. It was a surprising step to say the least, and one for which there can be only one plausible explanation: it enabled Michael to
1 The Greek word parakoimomemos literally means 'one who sleeps nearby' - i.e. the court dignitary required to sleep in the Emperor's bedchamber. As time went on, the office gradually increased in importance (cf. the
Lord Chamberlain in England) while the duty itself was delegated to junior officials. Traditionally, it was always held by a eunuch - which made Basil's appointment more surprising still.'
introduce the lady into the Palace without provoking the scandal that would have been inevitable had he done so by any other method. This, however, leads us to another still more remarkable conclusion: that he intended her to remain imperial property - in which case the baby boy, Leo, to whom she gave birth on 19 September 866 was in all probability not Basil's child but Michael's, and what we know today as the Macedonian dynasty was in fact simply a continuation of the Amorian.1
Now all this is clearly hypothetical, and several recent historians have been inclined to reject it. There is on the other hand a body of circumstantial evidence which seems difficult to dismiss. First of all, at least one of our sources - Simeon - states categorically that Leo was Michael's son, suggesting indeed that the fact was common knowledge in Constantinople. Second, Basil always hated Leo. The only one of his children, real or pretended, to whom he showed any real affection was Constantine, the son of his first wife Maria - a boy whom he idolized, and whose early death was to plunge him into a depression from which he never recovered. Third and in many ways strangest of all - is the fact that if Eudocia had been living with Basil as his wife it is hardly likely that the Emperor would have gone to the trouble of providing his favourite with another bedfellow, in the unexpected and distinctly matronly shape of his sister Thecla, now in her middle forties, who had recently been freed from the monastic seclusion to which she was clearly unsuited and was now brought in to complete this improbable menage a quatre. Basil's liaison with her, however, was to prove little more than a stop-gap: whether or not he shared Eudocia's bed while Michael was alive, he certainly did after the latter's death - for she was to bear two further sons, Alexander and Stephen, in 870 and 871 respectively.2 As for Thecla, she soon formed an attachment with one of the noblemen at court, John Neatocomites; but this too was ill-fated. When Basil found out, the two were severely chastised; in addition John was tonsured and sent to a monastery while Thecla had all her property confiscated except her house at Blachernae - where she died, bedridden and in poverty, a few years later.
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