Whatever his other faults, Bringas was no coward. Seeing his men returning empty-handed and visibly shaken, he leaped on to his horse and rode straight to the Patriarchate, which adjoined St Sophia; then, when Polyeuctus refused to intervene, he himself passed through into the church, pushed his way through the jostling crowd, mounted the ambo and, silencing the priests with an imperious hand, personally addressed the congregation. But once again he misjudged the strength of his opposition. A few words of conciliation might yet have saved the day; instead he blustered, roundly berating those who defied his orders, threatening to cut off all the city's supplies of food and thus, if necessary, to starve them into submission. Then he strode out of the church, pausing only to order the bread-sellers who occupied a permanent pitch outside the west doors to close down their stalls immediately.
It was, of course, an empty threat; Bringas knew it, and so did his listeners. He returned to the Palace as angry as ever, conscious only of the fact that he, the imperial parakoimomenos and chief minister of the Byzantine Empire, had lost the first round and had been made to look a fool. But he was not yet beaten. He waited, fuming, until the crowd began to stream from St Sophia. It was noon; the service was over, and it was time for the midday meal. Sending for the two child-Emperors, he took them firmly by the hand and returned with them to the Great Church, by now almost deserted except for the old general, sitting quietly among the shadows of the sanctuary. Their subsequent conversation is unrecorded — though the presence of the two little boys suggests a possible threat that any further attempt at resistance would be paid for with their lives. All we know is that Bardas allowed himself to be led away.
For the third time the eunuch had underestimated the strength of popular feeling. When the hour of Vespers drew near and St Sophia began once again to fill with people, their first thought was for Bardas; and when they failed to find him their mood became uglier than ever, the force of their anger this time being principally directed against the Patriarch and clergy, who at best had failed to protect their fugitive and at worst had deliberately betrayed him. Polyeuctus, now seriously alarmed, hurried to the Palace, found Bardas sitting sadly in an anteroom, seized him by the arm and returned with him to the church, where his appearance produced an immediate hush; but when Bringas arrived a few minutes later with a platoon of Macedonians and made yet another attempt to lay hands upon him, the people decided that they had had enough. While some took charge of the bewildered old man, carried him back to his house and mounted guard over him, the remainder seized bricks, stones and anything else - even church furniture - that might serve them as a weapon and flung themselves on Bringas's soldiers.
The riot, once started, spread like wildfire through the city. At the outset, in the manner of all riots, it was largely uncontrolled; but as it gathered momentum it also began to reveal a guiding force behind it: that of Basil, the natural son of Romanus Lecapenus. Presumably to protect the interests of his elder, legitimate, sons Romanus had had him castrated in infancy; but from his youth Basil had always shown outstanding intelligence and ability and had long played an important part in affairs of state. As early as 944 Constantine Porphyrogenitus had created him Patrician and appointed him Exarch of the Grand Hetaireia;1 a few months later he was parakoimomenos. In 958 we find him commanding the army of the East, winning a splendid victory over Saif ed-Daula and being granted a triumph on his return to the capital. With the death of Constantine the following year, it was he who had personally laid the
1 The imperial guard, recruited exclusively from the barbarian tribes (including Russians and the redoubtable Varangians, or Northmen), which provided the garrison of the Great Palace and attended the Emperor on campaign.
Emperor's body beside that of his father Leo, in the same sarcophagus. Then, on his promotion to proedrus, he found himself replaced by Joseph Bringas, whom he disliked and mistrusted.
As soon as he heard the first sounds of the insurrection, Basil knew that his opportunity had come. Quickly he gathered together all his servants and retainers - 4,000 of them if the chroniclers are to be believed, a figure which gives some idea of the state maintained by noble Byzantines at this period - and led them down to the Forum, where the crowd was thickest and where he quickly assumed control. His first action was to send men to every corner of the city to proclaim the imminent arrival of the new Emperor; next - one suspects with still more satisfaction - he led the mob to Bringas's private palace, which was first plundered of everything that it possessed of value and was then burnt to the ground. After this the burning and looting became general: what had begun as a legitimate protest rapidly deteriorated into a howling, hysterical rampage. It was three days - by which time half Constantinople lay in ruins - before Basil was able to reassert his authority and impose some semblance of order. Then and only then could he lead his men down to the Golden Horn, take possession of all the vessels that lay at anchor within the harbour and sail the vast flotilla across the Bosphorus to the Hieria, where Nicephorus was still patiently waiting for him.
At last, on Sunday 16 August 963, the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas was ready to enter his capital. With Basil, now reappointed parakoimomenos, at his side he boarded the imperial dromond, seating himself upon a great silver throne beneath a golden canopy supported by gilded caryatids; he was then rowed slowly across the strait and westward along the European shore to the Palace of the Hebdomon, just outside the land walls at their southern end. Here he changed into ceremonial attire, strapped on his golden breastplate and mounted the huge white charger, caparisoned in purple and gold, that was to bear him through the city; and so the great procession began, stopping first at the Abramite monastery of the Acheiropoietus1 to revere the miraculous ('not made with hands') icon of the Virgin, then passing through the Golden Gate and along the Mese to St Sophia where, in the
1 This had been founded in the sixth century by the monk Abraham, who went on to establish the Byzantine monastery on the Mount of Olives and who later still became Bishop of Ephesus. Inevitably, perhaps, in view of its exposed position, it was to be destroyed shortly before the Turkish siege of 145 j - together, presumably, with the miraculous icon.
presence of the two child-Emperors, Patriarch Polyeuctus laid the diadem on his head.
Bishop Liudprand of Cremona never made any effort to conceal his dislike of Nicephorus Phocas, and his description at the head of this chapter can hardly be called unprejudiced; Leo the Deacon, on the other hand, who knew the Emperor well and has no axe to grind, paints a not dissimilar picture: he confirms that Nicephorus was short and squat - an impression strengthened by his broad shoulders and barrel chest - that his complexion was distinctly swarthy, and rendered darker still by his long years of service under the Syrian sun; and that his eyes were indeed small and dark, under heavy brows. (He adds that they seemed thoughtful and somehow sad.) The only point of radical disagreement is on the Emperor's hair: Liudprand's reference to bristles suggests that Nicephorus wore it en brosse, whereas according to Leo it was black with tight curls, and unusually long.1
We have already touched in the previous chapter on the character and way of life of the new Emperor. Neither, it may be repeated, was particularly endearing. His interests were confined to the army and his religion. He was, it is true, a man of normally high moral integrity, intelligent if narrow-minded, serious and sober, utterly incorruptible, impervious to flattery and hard as nails; but he could also be pitiless and cruel, and his meanness and avarice were notorious. Duplicity, too, came easily to him. As for his habits, they may have been in the highest degree praiseworthy but it is difficult to feel much affection for a man who for years had eaten no meat, who abhorred women, who invariably slept in the hair-shirt of his uncle - a monk famed for his holiness named Michael Maleinus - and who spent several hours a day in prayer. But Nicephorus never courted popularity. Though he had now entered his sixth decade his energies were unabated, and he flung himself into the task of government with every appearance of enthusiasm.<
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His first concern was Bringas. He too, when the mob was baying for his blood, had taken refuge in St Sophia, but after the dust had settled he seems to have left it of his own accord. When the time came for him to prostrate himself before his old enemy, knowing already that he was dismissed from his high office and that his home had been destroyed with all his possessions, he must have trembled for his future. The
1 Since this style is quite dearly illustrated in the contemporary coinage, we can safely prefer the evidence of the deacon to that of the bishop.
Emperor, however, was not vindictive: he contented himself by banishing Bringas to his wild Paphlagonian homeland, forbidding him ever to return to Constantinople. Meanwhile there were rewards to be distributed as well as punishment. On old Bardas his father, the Emperor conferred the title of Caesar, in recognition of the courage he had shown during his recent tribulations; his brother Leo became magister and curopalates, or marshal of the imperial court; while John Tzimisces was confirmed as Domestic of the Schools, commander-in-chief of the army in Anatolia.
There remained Theophano: she who had first appealed to Nicephorus to assume the protection of herself and her children, she without whom he would have probably spent the rest of his active life in Syria, at war against the Saracen. The Emperor's first action where she was concerned was, perhaps, somewhat surprising: he expelled her from the Palace to the old fortress of the Petrion, in what is now the Phanar quarter along the upper reaches of the Golden Horn. For a month and four days she was obliged to languish in what was effectively little better than a prison, while Nicephorus, austere and frugal as ever, occupied the imperial apartments; then, on 20 September in the palatine church of the Nea,1 he married her.
It would seem to be beyond reasonable doubt that Theophano's temporary banishment was in fact a measure agreed by both of them in advance, in order to preserve the proprieties and to prevent undesirable gossip - though why she should have been consigned to so uncomfortable a retreat, rather than to any one of the dozen or more palaces in the neighbourhood of the capital, is not immediately clear. A more intriguing question, however, concerns the background to the marriage. It was suggested at the time - though not, it must be said, by any of our more reliable sources — that Nicephorus, dazzled by the Empress's extraordinary beauty, had fallen passionately in love with her; and this theory has been eagerly espoused by a number of later historians. It is not hard to see why: the picture of the rough, unbending old general suddenly losing his head and heart to the loveliest - and most vicious - woman of her day is difficult to resist. But is it likely? Nicephorus was, after all, a natural and deeply religious ascetic, who after the death of his first wife had taken an oath of chastity and who throughout his life had seldom
1 Strictly speaking of course, 'the church of the Nea' is a misnomer - as if one referred to New College, Oxford, as 'the College of "the New'". But since every more accurate translation is in one way or another even more unsatisfactory, 'the Nea' it will have to be.
missed an opportunity for further mortification of the flesh. Would he -other historians have asked - really have proved so susceptible? Was this not, quite simply, a contract agreed between the two of them in those long private conversations after the general's first recall, by the terms of which he would take the Empress and her little co-Emperors under his protection in return for his own third share of the imperial crown?
For her, certainly, it could have been nothing else. We cannot seriously imagine this exquisite and pleasure-loving young Empress, immediately after a happy if short-lived marriage with the outstandingly attractive Romanus, feeling anything but repugnance for a sanctimonious puritan more than twice her age who - however much allowance we may make for the obvious malice of Liudprand's description - still seems to have been unattractive to a point bordering on the grotesque. But as for Nicephorus - well, we cannot be so sure. If we had nothing but the evidence of his character and background to guide us, we should probably agree that his motives were purely political and were based on ambition rather than love. On the other hand, Nicephorus would not have been the first confirmed bachelor to have been swept off his feet when he least expected it, and his subsequent conduct when the legality of the union was called in question strongly suggests that this was for him anything but a manage de conveyance and that he loved his young; wife to distraction.
For there were others a good deal less ready to overcome their scruples than Nicephorus had been, and among them was Polyeuctus the Patriarch. He had, so far as is known, voiced no prior objections to the imperial marriage, or uttered any word of caution; indeed, it was he who had personally led the Emperor by the hand up the nave of the Nea to the iconostasis, in front of which the ceremony was to be performed. But when, towards the end of the service, Nicephorus advanced alone towards the middle door of the screen to implant the traditional kiss upon the high altar which stood behind it, the Patriarch suddenly stepped forward, hand upraised. Was the Emperor unaware, he asked, of the penance imposed by the Church on all who contracted a second marriage? After one full year had passed, he might once again be permitted within the sanctuary; until then it would remain closed to him.
Nicephorus had no choice but to accept the judgement; but he never forgave Polyeuctus for what he considered a public insult. Neither was this the end of his tribulations; for before many days had passed the palace chaplain, one Stylianus, was foolish enough to mention an extremely awkward fact, which all those aware of it had been doing their utmost to forget: that a few years before, on one of his brief visits to Constandnople, the Emperor had stood godfather to one of Theophano's children. By another law of the Orthodox Church, this had created a 'spiritual affinity' between them which put them within the proscribed degrees and would, if upheld, render the enure marriage null and void. When the Patriarch was informed, he did not hesitate. As he had already demonstrated on any number of previous occasions, he had no idea of tact or of diplomacy: for him the law was the law, and he was determined to obey every letter of it. He went straight to the Palace, strode into the Emperor's private apartment and offered him a simple choice: he must either immediately repudiate Theophano or suffer the ban of the Church in perpetuity.
At this point, had he cared nothing for his wife, Nicephorus might well have given in. The very thought of spending the rest of his life debarred from the Eucharist would have been inconceivable to a man of his temperament and beliefs. To have submitted with a good grace to the law of the Church, simultaneously consigning Theophano to a nunnery, would not only have reinstated him in divine favour; it would also have provided him with a perfect excuse to rid himself of a tiresome responsibility. But he did not submit. Accepting neither option, he immediately called a meeting of all the bishops who chanced to be in Constantinople — several of whom had come specifically to seek favours from him and might therefore be not unamenable to persuasion -together with a number of other prominent figures from Church and State, and made it clear that he looked to them to find a solution. It was not long before this distinguished gathering pronounced its decision: the canonical decree which at first sight appeared to cast doubt on the validity of the Emperor's marriage had been promulgated during the reign - and consequently in the name - of Constantine Copronymus, 'a heretic who held in contempt the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, infamous persecutor of their cult, worshipper of devils, vile executioner of monks, impious destroyer of the holy images'. The decree was consequently itself without validity. The marriage stood.
Not, however, in the eyes of the Patriarch. Inflexible as ever, he held with some justification that an ad hoc commission of this kind had no authority to pronounce on such matters, and simply repeated his ultimatum. Meanwhile the Emperor was excommunicate, the breach between Church and State complete. Once again, Nicephorus refused to submit. Even though his very soul were in jeopardy, he refused to leave Theophano. Once again, he began to look desperately for a way out. Finally, he himself hit upon a solution: not, perhaps, a partic
ularly elegant or even honourable one^ but the only one that offered any prospect of success. A few days later Stylianus - the cause of all the trouble — testified before a joint assembly of Church and Senate that he had never made the statement attributed to him or, if he had, that his memory had played him false. At this point old Bardas was brought in, and quaveringly confirmed that neither he nor his son had stood sponsor to any of Theophano's children. Polyeuctus, confronted with what he and everyone else knew were two bare-faced lies one after the other, knew that he was beaten. He might have been able to handle Stylianus alone; but the aged Caesar, who enjoyed not only the reverence due to the father of the Emperor but also that special kind of popularity which is exclusively reserved for those with one foot in the grave, was beyond his reach. He gave in.
Only one other opponent of the marriage remained to be dealt with: Athanasius, whose monastery on Mount Athos was now well on the way to completion. The church was finished but for the domes, and around it the monastic buildings were rising fast - concealing, somewhere in their depths, the small cell which had already been reserved for the Emperor. According to the Vita Athanasii, he had written Nicephorus a letter accusing him of having broken his promises and of having preferred the transitory pleasures of this world to the imperishable joys of the next, had immediately suspended all building operations and had withdrawn in high dudgeon to his old hermitage. The Typicon of the Grand Lavra, on the other hand, assures us that the saint went straight .to Constantinople in person and told the Emperor what he thought of him, adding that after such a betrayal of trust he himself had lost all interest in his monastery and would not be returning. Nicephorus fell on his knees, pleading tearfully that he had had no option but to act as he did. He still cherished his monastic dream: one day, when the situation permitted, he would put away Theophano and join his old friend on the Holy Mountain as he had always promised to do. Meanwhile, he assured him, for all his wife's undoubted attractions he had never had and never would have carnal intercourse with her.1 Pressing into his hand a chrysobul according formal recognition to the new monastery and rendering
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