by David Jacobs
The effects of Leo III’s order were felt beyond Constantinople. Several provinces revolted, and in Rome, Pope Gregory II protested and ordered his subjects not to obey the edict; he then broke off relations with Constantinople. (It was at this point that the rift between the Roman and Orthodox churches became deep and permanent.) Dissident monks and priests left the empire to settle in Gregory’s realm.
But Leo III never relented, and his successor, Constantine V, continued his policy with even greater vigor. Not only did he destroy images where he found them, but the new emperor, who assumed the throne in A.D. 741, also declared that anyone who resisted or so much as disagreed with the iconoclasts was behaving like a heretic. The greatest center of resistance had been the monasteries, but Constantine took over most of them, murdering many of the brothers, drafting others into the army, and forcing others to marry nuns.
Leo IV, emperor from A.D. 775-780, did not change the unpopular policy. When he died, his son, Constantine VI, was still a young boy, and his widow, the vicious and ambitious Irene, ruled the empire. When Constantine VI came of age and attempted to assume the throne, his mother hired troops to overthrow him. They captured, blinded, and exiled him.
Irene encouraged the abandonment of the iconoclasts’ policies. A pragmatic Athenian, she knew that the controversy bred dissent, and dissent made effective ruling and the assumption of power too difficult. But in A.D. 802, her brother-in-law Nicephorus captured and banished the despotic empress forever, assuming the throne for himself.
Thereafter the empire, and Constantinople in particular, endured a series of brief reigns and bloody revolts under a succession of iconoclastic or anti-iconoclastic ruling families of varying degrees of ability. Fortunately, potential rivals in both East and West were too busy at home to create problems. In Europe, Charlemagne re-established an independent Western empire, and in the East, the Muslims concentrated for a time on erecting in Baghdad an appropriately splendid capital for their young empire.
Just before midcentury, iconoclasm died - but not before its last advocate had caused a wave of terror in Constantinople.
Emperor Theophilus took control in A.D. 829. A fanatic iconoclast, he sent for two famous Palestinian brothers, Theodore and Theophanes, who were celebrated pilgrims devoted to icons and who had many followers. The emperor tried to bribe the brothers into denouncing the worship of images. When they refused, he gave orders to have them whipped, imprisoned, and then exiled. Later he tried kindness and gentle persuasion without success. Theophilus then ordered the brothers to be beaten and have twelve insulting verses branded on their foreheads. The emperor also sent for a celebrated icon-painter known as Lazarus. Like the Palestinians, when the artist would not relent, Theophilus gave orders to have the artist’s hands burned to a crisp.
Still the manufacture of icons continued. A year after Theophilus’s death in A.D. 843, a council met in Constantinople and revoked the doctrine of the iconoclasts. Images again returned to the city.
But the reign of the iconoclasts had been costly. The Roman Church no longer was under the control of Constantinople. Charlemagne’s Europe was about to challenge Byzantium for supremacy in the Christian world. The Muslims in the East were young and strong. In spite of all this, Constantinople, surrounded and challenged, was about to become the “Paris of the Middle Ages.”
In A.D. 813, King Krum of the Bulgars attacked Thrace and marched all the way to the walls of Constantinople, which he unsuccessfully besieged. Retracing his path along the Thracian peninsula, he destroyed the countryside and overran the city of Adrianople, in the province of Macedonia. He took 10,000 prisoners - men, women, and children - and carried them across the Balkans to the Danube. There, in a colony not far from the land of the Hungarians, Krum resettled the captives.
Almost twenty-five years later, during the reign of Emperor Theophilus, a squadron of Byzantine soldiers made its way north along the Danube in an attempt to subdue the troublesome Bulgars. It reached the colony of forcibly transported Macedonians and offered to escort them back to Constantinople. The Macedonians promptly rebelled against their Bulgar overlords and overpowered their troops in only four days. Then they boarded the Byzantine ships awaiting them in the river and sailed victoriously back to the capital, where the emperor thanked them and arranged for their return to Macedonia.
One of the liberated prisoners was a young man of apparently humble origins called Basil. After his return to Macedonia, he became a leader in the provincial army. Although it is not known why he received a promotion, it might have been because he distinguished himself during the rebellion in Bulgaria. Whatever the reason, he soon proved his skill at both military and diplomatic matters.
During the reign of Emperor Michael III, Basil was fortunate to be in Constantinople during a festival. The events of the celebration included an athletic competition. Because the envoys from Bulgaria had irritated the emperor by constantly boasting of the achievements of Bulgar athletes, Michael III was anxious that his empire be represented by a worthy combatant. His choice was Basil, who fought a Bulgar in the competition and won easily.
Powerful, handsome, and intelligent, Basil became and remained a favorite of the court and was especially close to the emperor. After they fought together in Michael’s successful Asia Minor campaign of A.D. 859, the two men were practically inseparable. In A.D. 865, to help Michael III out of a difficult situation, the Macedonian even married the emperor’s mistress, Eudocia Ingerina.
Basil was not, however, second-in-command of the empire. A popular soldier-statesman named Bardas held that position, and the emperor had given him the ancient title of caesar. In the early spring of A.D. 866, when Bardas began a campaign to recapture Crete from the Arabs, Basil feared that a successful campaign would further solidify the caesar’s popularity and strengthen his position as Michael III’s obvious successor. The Macedonian, who was with the emperor in Constantinople while Bardas was assembling his troops far from the capital, convinced Michael that Bardas was preparing to seize the crown. On April 21, with the emperor’s knowledge and probably with his approval, Basil ambushed and murdered the caesar. As a reward, he received the title of basileus and became co-emperor.
Bardas had created a number of suspicious programs, and he had reshuffled personnel without authorization. But it appears he was loyal to the emperor and mistrustful of Basil. Knowing how close Michael and the Macedonian were, he had had to operate secretly. The covert nature of Bardas’s acts had given Basil an opportunity to distort them to the emperor and to make them appear potentially treasonous.
But it did not take long for the emperor to begin to suspect that Basil had deceived him. The assassination caused shock, genuine mourning, and anger among the citizens of Constantinople, and many officers and senators expressed their suspicions to the emperor. A revolt in Asia Minor in A.D. 867, though nominally aimed at Michael III, actually was an expression of resentment toward Basil. Relations between the emperor and his friend began to cool. Eventually, the emperor realized that he would have to take action against his friend.
Yet it was Basil who acted first. On September 24, the emperor was dining at St. Mamas, an imperial residence in a suburb across the Golden Horn. Michael III was a hearty drinker and retired to his room after dinner, groggy from drinking too much wine. After he fell asleep, a band of Armenians led by Basil broke into the emperor’s apartment. Michael III unfortunately awoke just in time to see swords thrust toward him. As a final indignity to his former benefactor, Basil would not allow a funeral for the emperor. In fact, Emperor Michael III didn’t receive the rites of his faith until after Basil died eleven years later.
Although he gained control of the throne in a dishonorable way, Emperor Basil I, the Macedonian, was a great leader. Most of his military campaigns were successful. He restored the dwindling treasury and handled finances wisely and well. He built and rebuilt the churches and walls of the city. Most importantly, he resurrected, revised, and reapplied the long-neglected
Justinian Code as the law of the land. The Macedonian dynasty that he established ruled the empire with authority and competence for almost two centuries.
Under the Macedonians, the Byzantine Empire reached a new high point. The lands did not extend quite so far east and west as they had under Constantine, but there were more realistically defined borders. The city of Constantinople enjoyed a renaissance of art and literature. With iconoclasm abandoned, the colorful, Orient-influenced Byzantine art appeared again on restored architecture. A reorganized and enlarged University of Constantinople drew intellectuals to the city from all parts of the Middle East. The prestige of the empire and international respect for its power reached a peak, and the court at Constantinople was the most brilliant of the Middle Ages. Commerce flourished, and the city retained its international flavor.
The Macedonians themselves were colorful, often brilliant men, and they set the tone of life in the city. Constantine VII, who officially sat on the throne between A.D. 913 and 959, did not really rule the whole time. An infant when his father, Leo VI, died, his uncle Alexander and his mother, Zoe, were the actual rulers. Alexander died within a year, however, and in A.D. 920, a successful general named Romanus displaced Zoe. Romanus I and his sons then took over the administration of the empire but allowed the sensitive and likable Constantine VII to retain the throne in name.
Such a decision on the part of Romanus is testament to the extraordinary nature of Constantine VII. The historian Edward Gibbon asserted that he “disarmed the jealousy of power.” He was an avid reader, a musician, a writer, and a competent artist. He left his successors with remarkably lucid descriptions of life in his time and with suggestive analyses of the character and procedures of the imperial court. His sons overthrew Romanus in the rebellion of A.D. 944. In A.D. 945, Constantine VII took power and finally became emperor in fact as well as in name. He ruled competently and compassionately.
Constantine VII’s son, Emperor Romanus II, ruled for just four years before he died. His general married his widow and became Emperor Nicephorus II. A poor administrator and a less than brilliant handler of funds, Nicephorus II was not a popular leader. In fact, his ineptness at financial matters led to a devaluation of the currency. They had to fortify the palace against an assault by the people, and more than once the angry citizens stoned him in the streets. He allowed the city to fall into disrepair, and his occasional diplomatic tactlessness vastly broadened the already wide gap between the churches of East and West.
Nevertheless, Nicephorus II was in many ways a great Byzantine emperor. A brilliant military strategist with a knack for delegating responsibility to equally capable field generals, he strengthened the empire wherever he dispatched his troops. He restored northern Syria, Sicily, and Cyprus to the empire; humbled Arabs in the East and Bulgars in the West; and recaptured and returned to Christianity the city of Antioch, the seat of an Orthodox Patriarchate. The loss of the city three centuries earlier had been one of Eastern Christianity’s saddest events.
The winning of Antioch late in A.D. 969 was probably the most notable achievement of the reign of Nicephorus II, whose name meant “victorious.” Within six weeks, however, he was dead. John Tzimisces, a young Armenian nobleman who had been the emperor’s commander in the East, murdered the triumphant ruler. He did this by joining forces with Empress Theophano and a number of courtiers who had been concerned about financial troubles during Nicephorus II’s reign. Despite the emperor’s lack of popularity, most of the citizens disapproved of the assassination. A contemporary poet, noting the empress’s role in the conspiracy, composed an appropriate epitaph: O Nicephorus, well-named indeed, since thou wast Conqueror of all thine enemies, except thy wife.
John Tzimisces became Emperor John I and ruled until A.D. 976. Immediately, a faction led by Basil, the son of Romanus II, challenged him from within his capital. The new emperor worked tirelessly to continue Nicephorus II’s good policies and to limit the damage caused by his unwise decisions. After subduing the rebels at home, he marched into Bulgaria, where his predecessor had been waging a war against the Russians. Under the leadership of Prince Igor of Kiev and his son Svyatoslav, the Russians had become a persistent threat to the power of the Byzantines in the West. In A.D. 941, Igor had led a fleet to Constantinople and attacked the city, but the Byzantines had driven his ships away with the dreaded “Greek fire” - flames shot from a primitive flamethrower. Three years later, the Russians had planned a land invasion, but the armies and diplomats of Byzantium had met them at the Danube with tribute payment, thereby pacifying the would-be invaders. By the time of John I’s rise to power, the Russians under Svyatoslav had occupied Bulgaria and Thrace. The year A.D. 971 was marked by a series of exceedingly fierce battles, a majority of which were won by John I. By summer’s end, the Russians were ready for peace and evacuated Bulgaria.
With the western frontiers of the empire no longer threatened, John I attempted to restore the damaged relationship between Constantinople and Rome. He did not establish détente, but he did manage to avoid further deterioration of the relationship. Finally, he turned eastward to continue his predecessor’s efforts to secure the borders of the empire against the thriving Arabs. John I generally achieved what he tried to do, and he developed into a great emperor. He died after only eight years on the throne, probably a victim of poisoning.
His stern, autocratic, sometimes cruel but often benevolent successor was Basil II, who became emperor in A.D. 976 and reigned for nearly fifty years. During his reign, the empire extended from the Danube to Crete and from southern Italy to Syria. The treasury was so well-stocked that workers had to build new vaults in Constantinople to contain all the gold and tribute from abroad. But after his death in 1025, there was no strong leader to take over. The aristocracy, military, and bureaucracy struggled to control the succession of weak emperors who sat on the throne. The unity of the empire dissolved as civil disorder became commonplace in Constantinople and anarchy prevailed in the provinces.
In 1081, the Byzantine throne was under bitter contention. The city’s dissident elements quarreled and undermined one another. But this domestic friction ceased when an enemy suddenly appeared across the Bosporus. There, at the tip of Anatolia, an army was pitching tents. It was the Seljuk Turks.
The Seljuks were descendants of several Mongolian tribes that had been wandering on the edge of Persian civilization for centuries. Originally, they had been nature-worshipers but had embraced Islam earlier in the tenth century when they had come in contact with Arabs. According to an old legend, Mohammed himself had told his followers: “Learn the language of the Turks, for they are destined to rule long.”
In 1071, the Seljuks had advanced into Anatolia after they had noticed there weren’t many Byzantine forces at the eastern outposts of the empire. (Many of the troops had been needed to deal with disorders in Constantinople or in other provinces.) Emperor Romanus IV had led a force against them, but the Seljuks had defeated him. During the following decade, the Turks had continued to go deeper into the peninsula until they arrived at the tip in 1081.
The crisis brought to the throne in Constantinople the warrior Alexius I, a descendant of the House of Comneni, a powerful feudal family. Gathering all the forces at his command, Alexius I surprised the Turks and drove them deep into Anatolia. He could not continue the campaign, however, because at the same time, a large Norman force attacked the empire in the West. The emperor restored some of the western regions and dealt with a Patzinak siege of Constantinople in 1091. (The Patzinaks were a tribe of nomads who plundered the Russian steppes and the Balkans in the eleventh century.) Then he prepared to resume his thrust into Anatolia.
However, advance elements of the First Crusade derailed the emperor’s plans when they crossed Thrace and paused at the gates of Constantinople. Some years earlier, when the emperor had asked the West for help, he was unsuccessful. But when the city of Jerusalem fell into Muslim hands in 1077, Pope Urban II convinced the rulers of Europe to answer Al
exius I’s plea. Crying “God wills it!” the Europeans launched the Crusades and became defenders of Christianity.
In 1096, a contingent of Crusaders reached Constantinople, but they were not allowed to enter. Alexius I met with their leaders and offered to support them, provided that they restore to him all the Byzantine lands that they recovered. Although they agreed, as soon as they landed in Anatolia, they began brutalizing, butchering, and looting without regard to race, creed, or political conviction. The Greek Christian peasants in the Anatolian villages were the first victims. When the Crusaders finally did engage the Turks, the Seljuks had little trouble driving them back to the Sea of Marmara and killing most of them. The city of Constantinople offered sanctuary to the survivors. But they caused so much trouble that the emperor permitted them to remain only after they surrendered their weapons.
When more Crusaders arrived in December, Alexius I demanded that their leader, Godfrey of Bouillon, swear allegiance only to him. At first Godfrey refused, and Alexius would not let him or his men into Constantinople. When the French duke ordered his troops to camp outside the city, Alexius I stopped their supply of food. At one point, Godfrey ordered his men to attack the city, but the Byzantines stopped them at the walls. Finally, after Godfrey and most of his allies agreed to swear allegiance to Alexius I, they were able to pass through Constantinople and across the Bosporus. Still more Crusaders arrived and joined their brethren in Anatolia. With Byzantine help, they cleared most of Asia Minor of Turks and drove them back all the way to Antioch, and then to Jerusalem. But they were not victorious in the important central plain. In 1099, they were finally successful in restoring the Holy City to Christian rule. East and West had achieved the triumph together, but their relations had not improved. Indeed, the schism grew in the years to come.
