Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

by Lars Brownworth

  Theophilus imposed a welcome order on the Great Palace, clearing out cluttered walls and unused rooms and linking its buildings with clean corridors. The polo grounds that had been built by Theodosius II four centuries earlier, when that emperor had imported the royal sport from Persia, were enlarged, and fountains fed by underground cisterns soon adorned graceful walkways and terraced gardens. Creamy white marble steps led up to breezy chambers, forests of rose and porphyry columns supported delicate apses, and silver doors led to rooms filled with glittering mosaics. The true luxury, however, was saved for Theophilus's unparalleled throne room. No other place in the empire--or perhaps the world--dripped so extravagantly in gold or boasted so magnificent a display of wealth. Behind the massive golden throne were trees made of hammered gold and silver, complete with jewel-encrusted mechanical birds that would burst into song at the touch of a lever. Wound around the base of the tree were golden lions and griffins staring menacingly from beside each armrest, looking as if they could spring up at any moment. In what must have been a terrifying experience for unsuspecting ambassadors, the emperor would give a signal and a golden organ would play a deafening tune, the birds would sing, and the lions would twitch their tails and roar. Rare indeed was a visitor who wasn't awed by such a display.

  Nowhere was the growing confidence of the empire more apparent, however, than in the religious realm. There were few things more galling to the Byzantine religious mind-set than the increasingly insistent papal claim that the Bishop of Rome's voice was the only one that really mattered in deciding church policy. The four other patriarchs of the Christian world had traditionally deferred to the successor of Saint Peter, but great questions of faith had always been decided by consensus, in contrast with the growing authoritarianism of the western capital. In the past, the East and the West had managed to mask their increasing divisions beneath polite, distant relations, but a new combative spirit was in the air. When the pope sent Frankish missionaries to convert the Slavs, the patriarch Photius responded by sending his own contingent, the brilliant brother monks Cyril and Methodius.

  The pope's men had a head start, but they alienated the Slavs by insisting that all services be conducted in Latin, even though their new converts didn't understand a word of it. Cyril and Methodius, by contrast, set to work immediately learning Slavic, and when they found it had no written alphabet, Cyril provided one.* Western bishops angrily complained that Hebrew, Greek, and Latin were the only tongues worthy of a sacred liturgy, but Cyril countered by saying that since God's rain fell on all equally, then all tongues were fit to praise him.+ The Bulgarian khan, impressed by the new freedoms promised by Photius (and in any case unwilling to subordinate himself to Rome), traveled to Constantinople to be baptized in the Hagia Sophia, and Bulgaria entered the Byzantine cultural orbit, in which it remains to this day. By allowing Byzantine culture to be separated from the Greek language, Photius had spread the empire's influence far beyond its borders and immeasurably strengthened the bonds that held the diverse Byzantine world together. It would be more than six centuries before Latin was similarly dethroned in the West.

  Adding the Slavs to the imperial cultural orbit had increased imperial prestige, but it had also sounded an ominous note. By openly contesting with Rome for the Balkans, Constantinople had brought tensions between the East and the West to the surface, and relations with the pope were always easier to rupture than repair. Memories were long on both sides of the cultural divide, and when the mutual suspicions and hatreds eventually bore fruit, it would be a bitter harvest indeed.

  That, however, lay centuries in the future. The empire was newly confident and seemingly poised for a spectacular recovery. The only thing missing was an effective emperor. The men who sat on the throne in the ninth century, though they led colorful lives, were largely militarily incompetent.* Despite their cultural and religious accomplishments, they could never quite lift the empire out of its military slump. As unlikely as it seemed, the first stumbling steps toward recovery were taken under the auspices of an emperor named Michael the Drunkard.

  As his name implies, Michael was hardly an inspiring figure, but he had the great advantage of having a visionary uncle. While the emperor absorbed himself in earning his nickname in the taverns of the capital, his uncle Bardas led the empire to its first significant victories against the armies of Islam. Under his leadership, a Byzantine army crossed the Euphrates for the first time since the seventh century, and the navy conducted a daring raid on Egypt. When the emirs of Mesopotamia and Armenia responded by invading imperial territory, Bardas ambushed them, killing the emirs and most of their men.

  The victories gave a welcome boost to Bardas's reputation, and since there was no telling how long the royal liver would hold out, most assumed that when Michael eventually expired, his capable uncle would succeed him. There was still, of course, the outside chance that the emperor would nominate another man as his successor, but though Michael had many favorites, most of them were chosen for their conviviality, not their governing abilities. Bardas, meanwhile, was perfectly happy to let his pathetic nephew have his fun, content to rule the empire in fact if not in name.

  The trouble with weak emperors, however, is that they're swayed by every passing breeze, and Michael the Drunkard was soon under the spell of a rough Armenian peasant named Basil the Macedonian.* Basil had originally attracted the emperor's attention with an especially impressive display of strength in a wrestling match, and since this was as good a reason for advancement as any other in Michael's eyes, the young Armenian had been taken into the imperial service. For the capricious emperor, it was a terrible mistake. Basil was intelligent and ambitious with a terrifying ruthless streak. Bardas warned his nephew that Basil was a "lion who would devour them all," but the emperor paid him no heed. Within a year, Basil had personally assassinated Bardas, and Michael, flush with the excitement of being free from his powerful uncle, rewarded his brutal favorite with the title of coemperor. A few months later, Michael was dead as well, viciously murdered after his usual long night of drinking. After throwing a horse blanket over the emperor's body to conceal the spreading blood, Basil raced to the Great Palace, hoping to capture it before anyone could object. He need hardly have worried. Michael the Drunkard had long ago squandered whatever dignity he possessed, and not a single voice was raised against his murderer. When the sun rose the next morning over the quiet capital, it found a former peasant as the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. As unlikely as it seemed, a golden age had begun.

  *The emperor Nicephorus I's body was identified by its purple boots and dragged to Krum's tent, where the khan gleefully had the head cut off and impaled as a testament to his victory. After several days of public ridicule, he had the rotting skull lined with silver. In true barbaric fashion, he used it as a drinking cup and would force visiting Byzantine diplomats to drink from it.

  *In addition to the honor of being the origin city of the current dynasty, Amorium was famous as the birthplace of the Greek fable writer Aesop.

  *An event that is still commemorated each year by the Eastern Church as the "Sunday of Orthodoxy."

  +It can still be seen today--the haunting image of the Virgin Mary with the child Christ, seated on the throne of heaven and gazing sadly down toward where the great altar once stood.

  *The rigorous Byzantine curriculum remained virtually unchanged from the fifth century to the fifteenth. It usually included rhetoric, mathematical studies, and philosophy, and it wasn't uncommon for advanced students to commit the entire Iliad to memory.

  +When his troops proved ineffective, Theophilus sent an ambassador to scatter thousands of gold coins among the citizens of Baghdad in an attempt to impress the caliph. Unfortunately, the emperor's gold was as unsuccessful as his armies.

  ++ Of course, the gesture was spoiled somewhat since the factions were carefully instructed to let him win.

  *This passion for justice made Theophilus a legend in his own lifetime, and numerous apocryphal stori
es (possibly including this one) were soon being circulated. Three hundred years later, his reputation was still such that the Byzantine writer of the satirical Timarton portrayed him as one of the judges of the underworld.

  +There were few things that Theophilus didn't do extravagantly. When it came time for him to choose a wife, he held a huge bride show, presenting the winner with a typically elaborate golden apple in a scene meant to be reminiscent of the judgment of Paris.

  ++Not surprisingly, the last emperor to significantly enlarge the palace had been Justinian. A glimpse of this original work still remains today in the remnants of a vast floor mosaic that was uncovered early in the twentieth century. Filled with a strange mix of pagan and Christian symbols, violent hunting scenes, and whimsical vignettes, the mosaic remains one of the finest surviving works of art from the ancient world.

  *The buildings covered more than four and a half acres.

  *The Cyrillic alphabet used by most of the Slavic world today was named so in his honor.

  +Pope Adrian II got the point and allowed the brothers to work unmolested, requesting only that the Mass be read in Latin first and the vernacular second.

  *On Christmas Eve of 820, the emperor Leo V condemned the pretender Michael II to death by the rather bizarre method of having him tied to an ape and thrown into the furnaces that heated the imperial baths. Before the execution could take place, Michael's supporters dressed up as monks and crept into the imperial palace to attack the emperor. Leo reportedly defended himself for more than an hour armed with nothing but a heavy metal cross that he swung around wildly before succumbing to the blades of his assailants. In what was surely the most undignified coronation in Byzantine history. Michael II was hastily brought up from the dungeons and crowned with the chains of his captivity still around his legs.

  *Despite his name, Basil (or anyone in his family for that matter) never--as far as we know--set so much as a foot inside Macedonia. Captured as a young man by the Bulgarian king, Krum, he had been relocated to an area filled with "Macedonian" prisoners, thus acquiring his nickname. For this and many other reasons, the dynasty he founded had no business calling itself Macedonian.

  16

  THE GLORIOUS HOUSE OF MACEDON

  Having come to the throne with enough blood on his hands to make Macbeth blush, Basil seemed destined to have an insecure reign. The murderous swath he had cut to the crown was flagrantly illegal, and it proved to be a source of considerable embarrassment to future members of his dynasty. But the medieval world was a remarkably volatile place, and most Byzantines were quite willing to forgive a questionable path to power if it resulted in effective rule. Great good, after all, can sometimes come from evil men. Michael had disgraced the office and would have drunk himself to an early death if Basil hadn't intervened. By contrast, the new emperor--murderer though he might be--would prove to be a beacon of good stewardship. Almost two centuries later, a member of his family was still sitting on the imperial throne.

  Basil was uneducated by eastern standards, but he was astute enough to recognize the possibilities of a Byzantine recovery. Byzantium was no longer the sprawling empire of antiquity, but what had emerged from the wreckage of the Arab conquests was a vastly smaller, compact state with considerably more defensible borders. Its deep foundations had seen it through the years of turmoil, and now it had emerged from the darkness with its internal strength intact. While there was no need--or desire--to return to the vast territory of Justinian, Basil wanted to reclaim the empire's place in the sun. Clearly, nothing could be achieved without a strong military, but while the army was sturdy enough, the fleet was in an appalling condition--a fact made obvious a few months after he took power, when Arab raiders easily brushed it aside and captured the island of Malta. As a Mediterranean power, the empire's strength depended on a strong navy, and leaving it in such a decrepit state was an invitation to disaster. Opening up the treasury, Basil poured money into rebuilding the fleet from the ground up, constructing top-of-the-line ships and scouring the empire to find men to fill their crews.

  The refurbished sea power was to be the tip of the spear for Basil's grand offensive. The past century had seen only sporadic campaigns against the Muslims, and the time was ripe for a concerted attack. After years of aggressive expansion, the caliphate was divided and crumbling, unable to keep up the pressure against Byzantium. Now was the time for a campaign. The Arabs were on their heels, and such an opportunity wasn't to be missed. Sailing proudly out into the Saronic Gulf, the new navy proved its worth immediately when it got word that Cretan pirates were raiding in the Gulf of Corinth. Not wanting to waste his time sailing around the Peloponnese, the ingenious Byzantine admiral Nicetas Ooryphas dragged his ships across the four-mile width of the isthmus, dropping them safely into the gulf in time to send the pirates to the bottom.

  Flushed with victory, Basil launched his great offensive. The fleet swept toward Cyprus, soon reconquering the island for the empire, and the imperial armies battered their way into northern Mesopotamia, annihilating the hapless Arab army that wandered into their path. The next year, Basil turned west, clearing the Muslims out of Dalmatia and capturing the Italian city of Bari. By 876, he had extended Byzantine influence into Lombardy, laying the groundwork for the recovery of all of southern Italy.

  While his armies marched from one victory to the next, Basil turned his prodigious energies to the domestic front. In his mind, there was no greater testament to the decline of Byzantium than the lack of building in the capital. Old churches had fallen into shameful disrepair, and public monuments were beginning to have a distinct atmosphere of decay. Sending his workmen throughout the capital, he began a massive program to refurbish the queen of cities. Timber roofs were replaced by stone, walls were patched, and glittering mosaics restored numerous churches to their former glory. The most effort of all, however, was saved for his personal residence in the imperial palace. Heavily carved columns of green marble with rich veins of yellow supported a ceiling covered in gold, and huge portraits of the emperor and his family were arrayed in sumptuous mosaics. Massive imperial eagles decorated the floor, and glass tesserae filled with gold sparkled above them. Just to the east of these apartments rose his magnificent new church, officially dedicated to four saints but more commonly known by the rather uninspired name of Nea Ekklesia--"new church." Not since Justinian had finished construction on the Hagia Sophia had such a bold new church graced the imperial skyline. Countless angels and archangels looked down from its cascading domes, and priceless jewels studded its interior. This was to be Basil's supreme architectural triumph, a perpetual reminder of the splendor of the house of Macedon. So intent was the emperor on finishing it that when he heard the Arabs were besieging Syracuse--the last major Byzantine stronghold in Sicily--he refused to dispatch the fleet to help, preferring to use the navy to transport marble for his church instead. Syracuse fell, but the Nea was completed.*

  Byzantium had clearly found its footing again, and in addition to a resurgence of power and prestige, the empire now entered a startling cultural renaissance. It started with the brilliant patriarch Photius, who virtually single-handedly reawoke a love of classical Roman and Greek literature in the empire.+ A flurry of intellectual activity followed, and Basil began an ambitious new project to translate Justinian's law codes into Greek. It would have been a remarkable achievement for an emperor whose own education was lacking, but he never had the chance to complete the project. His beloved eldest son Constantine, who had been groomed for the throne, suddenly died, and Basil was thrown into a deep depression from which he never recovered.

  Basil's melancholy was made much worse by the fact that the death left his second son, Leo VI, as the heir apparent. Thanks to a rather complicated arrangement, Basil had married his predecessor's mistress, and Leo was widely believed (especially by Basil, who presumably would have known) to be the child of Michael the Drunkard. The thought that this boy would soon inherit the throne that should have gone to Constanti
ne nearly pushed Basil over the edge. When the emperor discovered that the fifteen-year-old Leo had taken a mistress named Zoe, he beat the boy severely with his own hands, restricting the prince to a wing of the palace and marrying off Zoe to someone else. This failed to stop the affair, however, and the moment Leo was released, he resumed relations with Zoe. The enraged emperor threw Leo into prison and, in a scene that shocked his courtiers, threatened to put out the boy's eyes.

  Zoe's father finally managed to talk the emperor into releasing Leo by pointing out that since he was in his mid-seventies, keeping the heir to the throne disgraced was an invitation to all the horrors of a disputed succession. Reluctantly, Basil relented and the two were reconciled, but few believed it would last for long. The emperor was increasingly unpredictable, burdened down by the weight of his depression and frequently subject to bouts of insanity. He had never shown even the remotest scruple about murder, and Leo was perfectly aware that the odds were against his continued survival if the emperor lasted much longer. Basil, however, had always been renowned for his physical prowess, and at seventy-four didn't show many signs of slowing down. Perhaps nature needed to be nudged along.