Sailing from Byzantium

by Colin Wells

The Byzantine world was changing fast now. Byzantium's power collapsed dramatically in the latter half of the eleventh century. By the accession of Alexius I Comnenus in 1081, it was once again hard pressed by new enemies on three fronts. Pushed closer by their defeat at the hands of Yaroslav, the Petchenegs harried the empire from the north, while the Normans in southern Italy threatened from the west, and the Turks pressed into Asia Minor from the east after their victory at Manzikert in 1071.

  Though the empire managed to recover under its three brilliant Comnenan emperors—Alexius I, John II, and Manuel I—their successes were those of nimble goalkeepers. And goalkeepers, however miraculous their parrying and deflecting, can only do so much. On Manuel's death, Byzantium was left with an open goal and no shortage of onrushing attackers.

  Meanwhile, in Russia, in 1108 Vladimir Monomakh's son Yuri Dolgoruky—“Yuri of the long arm,” so called for his notorious territorial acquisitiveness—founded a new fortified outpost on the Klyazma River in the far northeastern forests, which he named for his father. The town of Vladimir grew in importance, and a half century later Yuri's son and heir, grand prince Andrei Bogolyubsky, moved the capital there from Kiev. He also went on a building spree in and around Vladimir, erecting several exquisitely beautiful churches, built from the area's distinctive white stone, which no traveler's itinerary should overlook. In addition to being the seat of the grand prince, the principality of Vladimir soon also controlled the prosperous nearby cities of Rostov and Suzdal.

  Around the same time, in 1147, we see mentioned for the first time in the sources the small outpost of Moscow, which lay just west of Vladimir on the Moscow River. In 1156, the year before he moved the capital to Vladimir, Andrei Bogolyubsky built the first fortifications around Moscow's center, a ring of earthenwork ramparts known as the Kremlin. Moscow would grow in prosperity, eventually succeeding Vladimir as the seat of the principality.

  Relations between Byzantium and the fractious Russian principalities suffered as a new group of Turkic nomads, the Cumans, moved into the steppes during the twelfth century∗ The southern principalities of Kiev and Galicia both temporarily broke with Byzantium, allying themselves with Hungary, at that time Byzantium's deadly foe. During these and other tribulations, Byzantine historians noted the steadfast loyalty of the principality of Vladimir. Later, a similarly close relationship would prevail between Byzantium and Vladimir's successor, Moscow.

  Crusaders and Mongols: The Disastrous Thirteenth Century

  In the following century, the Orthodox Christian world of the Byzantine Commonwealth suffered two grievous blows. The first came in 1204, when Constantinople fell to the Western soldiers of the Fourth Crusade. Then, less than two decades later, in 1223, a combined Cuman and Russian army was defeated by the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan at the battle of Kalka. In the winter of 1237-38, his grandson Batu Khan returned to finish the job with a massive invasion of northeastern Russia, starting with the sacks of Riazan in December, Moscow in January, and Vladimir in March.

  One by one the Mongols proceeded to pick off the disunited principalities, pillaging and looting as they went, their sophisticated siege techniques easily overpowering the Russian defenses. Kiev fell after a two-week siege in December 1240. Only in 1242 did the Mongols stop their westward advance. Having reached Poland and Hungary, they withdrew inexplicably—for they remained undefeated—to hold the conquered lands of the Central Asian steppe. Their empire now stretched from China to the lower Danube. Batu built his capital of Sarai on the lower Volga. It was to Sarai that the Russian princes would come, humbled and subjugated for two long centuries, bearing their tribute, and serving at the pleasure of the Mongol khan, whom they called tsar.

  These two disasters dealt a seemingly fatal blow to the Byzantine world. Only in one institution did the Byzantine idea survive intact: the Byzantine Orthodox Church, as headed by the patriarch of Constantinople. This fact had momentous political consequences as the disastrous thirteenth century unfolded, and would continue to do so as Byzantium—empire and commonwealth—recovered somewhat during the fourteenth. If the emperor's power was increasingly symbolic, the patriarch's was entirely real, in that he controlled the administration of the Orthodox churches that remained under his jurisdiction. He also, of course, retained great spiritual authority over the others.

  Of the several Byzantine successor states that vied to win back Constantinople after 1204, the one that ultimately succeeded, the so-called empire of Nicaea, was the one that early on received the blessing of the patriarch of Constantinople. Patriarchal support gave the Nicaean emperors an aura of legitimacy that their rivals lacked, and it was a Nicaean emperor, Michael VIII Paleologos, whose forces retook Constantinople from the Latins in 1261.

  Similarly, among the competing Russian principalities that jostled with each other under the Mongol yoke, the Orthodox church provided the only institution whose prestige (not to mention its official administrative structure) transcended all borders. Headed by the metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, who was appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople, the church in Russia was controlled from Byzantium. For 150 years, until near the end of the fourteenth century, the patriarchate's unofficial but remarkably consistent policy was to take turns regarding the metropolitan's nationality, alternating a Russian-born metropolitan with a Byzantine-born one.

  By the time of Russia's subjection to the Golden Horde, however, in political terms Kiev was no longer the leading principality. So far, no other had emerged to replace it.

  The Mongols preferred that no one did. Their grip was firmest in the northeast principalities, where political leadership went with the grand principality of Vladimir. The khan bestowed this honorific on whatever prince won his temporary favor, switching the grand principality of Vladimir back and forth so that no one local dynasty might become strong enough to pose a threat. For the first quarter of the fourteenth century, the honor was held by the prince of Tver, Moscow's rival. But Byzantium also had much to say about the focal point of Russian political prestige. Once the patriarchal decision was taken to move the metropolitan's seat from Kiev, the choice of where to relocate it became a political question of the highest importance. And as with the Byzantine successor states, the principality that ended up with the prize, Moscow, also reaped the immeasurable reward of political legitimacy and ultimately came out on top.

  By the early fourteenth century, a three-way entente had arisen among the Byzantines, the Golden Horde, and the Genoese, whose maritime empire now dominated the Black Sea trade. From the Byzantine point of view, one benefit of the Mongol invasion was that it shattered the power of the Seljuk Turks, who had been the biggest threat to Byzantium. For that reason, and then also because the Mongols never impinged directly on Byzantine territory or disrupted the business of the church in Russia, the Byzantines accepted the Golden Horde's presence without hostility. In time, close relations developed between the two governments, which actively cooperated in settling political (Golden Horde) and eccelesiastical (Byzantium) matters in Russia.

  The Byzantine-Mongol rapprochement over Russia was one element in the status quo that had developed by the beginning of the fourteenth century. Another was the Byzantine government's frequent dependence upon Genoa, a major maritime power that—as Venice's rival—had assisted Michael VIII in recovering the capital from the Venetian-run Latin government. Genoa often called the shots in Constantinople under the early Paleologan emperors, though Venice (which dominated eastern Mediterranean trade) was always on the lookout for a pretender to support or some other form of leverage over the perennially shaky Byzantine ruling house. Finally, Genoa was also in bed with the Mongols, and out of that alliance got rights to rich Black Sea trading ports such as Kaffa in the Crimean peninsula.

  This comfortable status quo had two big fault lines.

  Byzantine and Mongol interests ultimately diverged when it came to the question of Russian unity. The church in Russia was by its very nature a unifying force both institutionally a
nd spiritually, and it stood to benefit if Russians looked to a single power center. In contrast, the Mongols had much to gain from Russian disunity and everything to lose if a single center arose to take the lead in Russian affairs. Genoa, anxious to protect its trade, fell in with the Mongols on this issue.

  In addition, the Orthodox church in Russia took in more territory than answered to the Golden Horde. To the west, Lithuania was a major power (much larger than today's nation ofthat name), with large numbers of Orthodox Russians under an ethnic Lithuanian ruling house. In the far north, wealthy Lord Novgorod—that's how this feisty merchant republic styled itself—looked back on a proud tradition of independence but increasingly fell under the sway of either Moscow, Tver, or Lithuania. Both Lithuania and Novgorod looked nervously over their shoulders at the Germans of the Teutonic Order, who were fond of launching Catholic Crusades into Orthodox territory.

  Thus things stood in the middle decades of the fourteenth century, when the Hesychast movement took over the resurgent Byzantine religious establishment.

  *The Cumans (also called the Kipchaks, and in Russian the Polovtsy) were a loose confederation of nomadic tribes that replaced the Petchenegs in the southern steppes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Rise of Moscow

  n September 8, 1380, a rebellious Russian army commanded by grand prince Dimitri II of Moscow met and defeated a large Mongol force at a meadow called Kulikovo on the upper Don, about two hundred miles south of Moscow. The battle was long and bloody, with terrible losses on both sides. And in political terms, its significance was slight. The Mongols would return with a vengeance two years later, looting and burning Moscow and bringing the city once again under the “Tatar yoke.”

  But the battle of Kulikovo immediately took on great symbolic significance. For the first time in a century and a half, a Russian army had stood up to and repulsed a concerted attack by the Mongol tsar. Dimitri himself would be accorded the status of a national hero, known forever after as Dimitri Donskoi (“of the Don”) in commemoration of the victory.

  The prestige of Kulikovo cemented Moscow's claim to leadership of Russia's competing principalities. This is ironic because the city had risen to prominence earlier in the fourteenth century largely through opportunistic toadying to the Mongols. Dimitri's rebellion represented an about-face in this long-standing policy.

  Despite its vengeance on Moscow two years after the battle, the Golden Horde never achieved quite the same degree of control over the Russians as before, though at first that was due more to the Mongols’ internal problems than to Russian assertiveness. Within another fifty years or so Russia would finally shake off the Tatar yoke forever, again under Muscovite leadership. Moscow would then take its place as Russia's capital, the heir to Kievan greatness—and soon after that, to Byzantine greatness as well. So Kulikovo, even if lacking in immediate consequences, is still viewed as a major turning point in Russian history.

  The Russian chroniclers who recorded the battle play up the religious angle, portraying the devout Dimitri as a defender of the Orthodox faith against the Muslim Mongols, whose khan Mamai they malign as an “accursed, godless, impious, and dastardly eater of uncooked flesh.” St. Sergius of Radonezh, who revived and expanded Russian monasticism in this period, is prominently associated with the victory: he is portrayed as exhorting Dimitri before the battle, thereby assuming the role of Russia's saint protector, for which he is still venerated.

  Some accounts also claim that before the battle Dimitri was advised by Cyprian, metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, the Byzantine-appointed head of the Orthodox church in Russia, enshrining him, too, as a national liberator in popular memory. This is interesting, since historians believe that Cyprian was nowhere near Moscow or Kulikovo at the time of the battle. In fact, until very shortly before it, he was in Constantinople, defending his claim to the metropolitanate. In the years leading up to Kulikovo, Cyprian had been embroiled in a bitter struggle with Dimitri, who had opposed his accession as metropolitan and had tried to have his own candidate installed instead. Yet, shortly after the battle, Dimitri abruptly reversed himself and welcomed Cyprian to Moscow, fêting him with a celebratory banquet in the prince's palace and according him all honor and respect as metropolitan.

  Behind this puzzling turn of events lies a tale of cynical intrigue, political backstabbing, and, on Cyprian's part, a gritty determination that survived years of adversity before its final vindication. That story begins around the middle of the century, with the rise of Hesychasm.

  Hesychast Politics and Russia

  While for Byzantium's humanists the Hesychast victory felt like a tragedy, for the Hesychasts’ many supporters in the Byzantine mainstream it was a glorious affirmation of divine truth. The most immediate result of the Hesychasts’ victory was to give them and the monastic establishment they led control of the patriarchate and the invigorated official church structure.

  The remarkable John VI Cantacuzenos—Byzantine statesman, regent turned emperor, bookworm, theological speculator, and finally historian and monk—was the main exponent of what can be described as the Hesychast political program. Among other things, that entailed opposition to Genoa, which supported the pro-Western empress Anne of Savoy against Cantacuzenos in the civil war that brought him to the throne.∗ Instead, Cantacuzenos allied himself with the nascent Asian power of the Ottoman Turks, whose soldiers helped Cantacuzenos against Anne and the Genoese. The Ottomans were not yet the threat they soon—partly because of Cantacuzenos’ policy—came to be.

  Since the patriarchate was now the most potent means of projecting Byzantine power abroad, Cantacuzenos relied on his patriarchs to implement the foreign policy side of the Hesychast program. He had begun developing the basic principles of this foreign policy as early as 1328, when as a young man he helped engineer the succession of his friend Andro-nicus III, after which he served as Andronicus’ prime minister.

  When it came to Russia, the watchword was unity. Cantacuzenos’ highest priority was to preserve the unity of the Russian metropolitanate, which essentially meant opposing any princes or grand princes who wished to establish a separate metropolitan for their own territory. Another aim was to preserve Byzantine control of the metropolitanate, which would be much easier if there was only one metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia. Other aspects of the policy included suspicion of Lithuania, whose imperialist rulers showed signs of both Western sympathies and Russian territorial ambition, and cooperation with the Golden Horde, at least for the time being.

  Cantacuzenos’ Hesychast foreign policy was based on more than lofty abstract principles. Russia was big, rich, and populous, far more so now than the struggling Byzantine empire. Trade was no longer dominated by the Byzantines, but generous donations flowed through ecclesiastical channels in a steady stream to Constantinople, and there was always the hope of military help as well. Byzantines also found a reassuring ideological loyalty and solidarity in the rising Slavic world, and especially in Russia, during an otherwise frightening time.

  In practice Hesychast policy in Russia translated into support for Moscow, which reciprocated by proving the most consistently loyal of all the Russian principalities. The relationship started almost by accident. In 1326 the metropolitan Peter, a Russian from Galicia, settled in Moscow, where he was buried after dying later that year. Despite the precedent of close Byzantine relations with Moscow's predecessor, Vladimir, Peter seems to have favored Moscow for the simple reason that the prince of Tver, Moscow's rival, had opposed Peter's nomination to the metropolitanate. But Peter's Greek successor Theognostos, appointed after Cantacuzenos’ government took over in 1328, upheld Peter's policy of support for Moscow, which in that year helped the Mongols sack rebellious Tver, no doubt with Byzantine approval. Theognostos’ long and successful metropolitanate (which lasted from 1328 to 1353) helped to cement Cantacuzenos’ policy in place.

  The Challenge to Unity

  During that time, under the patronage of both Constantinop
le and Sarai, Moscow grew in what we might call its “borrowed” prestige: ecclesiastical prestige as the seat of the metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, political prestige as the seat of the grand prince of Vladimir. It grew in size and power, too. Perched on a bend in the placid Moscow River, the city resembles the cross-section of a tree, with concentric circles that can be counted inward from newest to oldest. Today, the outermost circles are ring roads that buzz with automobile traffic. But the inner rings were once fortifications—wooden palisades, stone walls, and earthen ramparts, arranged target-like to protect the traders and merchandise within. The original central stockade was the log fortress or kremlin erected by Yuri Dolgoruky. In the early fourteenth century, grand prince Ivan I, called Kalita (“Moneybags”), replaced its relatively flimsy pine walls with thick oaken timbers—a privilege granted him by his master, the Mongol tsar.

  Genoa had concerns about Moscow's growing power, and problems for the Hesychast unity policy arose when Cantacuzenos was forced to abdicate in 1354. With Genoese assistance, John V Paleologos resumed the throne as sole emperor. Cantacuzenos’ patriarch, Philotheos, was deposed, and the new government installed his rival, Callistos.∗

  The new Genoese-controlled government in Constantinople now swung toward Olgerd, the powerful grand prince of Lithuania, as a counter to Moscow. Callistos offered Olgerd his own “metropolitan of the Lithuanians,” for which position the Lithuanian ruler nominated a Russian from Tver named Roman. The patriarchal archives record Byzantine impressions of Olgerd's motive: “to find a means, with Roman's help, of ruling Great Russia,” as the northeastern principalities were now called. Since he already ruled “Little Russia,” including Kiev, it was clear that Olgerd was making a bid to take over all of Russia.

  In keeping with Olgerd's ambitions, Roman soon began styling himself metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, moving his residence to Kiev and ignoring Callistos’ injunctions that he respect the claims of Alexis, the rightful metropolitan, whom Philotheos had installed before Cantacuzenos’ resignation, and who resided in Moscow. But Roman died in 1362, and Callistos—perhaps under Cantacuzenos’ renewed influence behind the scenes—reunified the Russian metropolitanate under Alexis.