In 610 when Heraclius came from Carthage to take the
throne of the Byzantine empire, Sergius became the
patriarch of the Constantinople
church.
The empire had been overrun by Slavs and Avars
in the
Balkans and by Persians in Asia Minor.
Heraclius was so discouraged
that he planned to move his
capital to Carthage; but Sergius energetically
opposed
this plan and aroused the people.
According to the laudatory
poet George of Pisidia,
Heraclius proclaimed that power
must shine
more in love than in terror.
In 611 the Persians had been pushed
out of Caesarea;
but they invaded Syria, taking Antioch in 613
and Damascus,
and the next year they captured Jerusalem after
a 20-day siege.
They pillaged the city, destroyed churches, and
took the relic
of the cross back to Ctesiphon.
Many prisoners
including Jerusalem patriarch Zacharias
were also taken to Persia.
Also in 614 the Slavs destroyed
Dalmatia's administrative city
Salona.
Only Constantinople, Thessalonica, and cities on the
Adriatic coast remained under Byzantine authority
during this Slavic migration.
The Persians approached Constantinople from the east
as the Avars
and Slavs pushed down from the north.
Heraclius was nearly killed
by the Avar Khan
at Heraclea in 617.
The Persians invaded Egypt
and conquered Alexandria in 619;
they now controlled Byzantium's
main
grain supply and most of the Near East.
Heraclius responded by organizing the eastern provinces
as
military themes named after the regiments that were given
land
and obligated to serve in the army according to the
pattern already
established in Carthage and Ravenna.
This plan established strong
free-holding farms and relieved
the treasury by requiring the
oldest son to serve in the army
with his own arms for a small
salary.
Emperor Heraclius made a treaty with Avars by offering
them
substantial tribute so that he could attack the Persians.
In 619 he also took in the Onogur (Bulgarian) prince Kovrat
and
raised him in his palace; they became life-long friends,
and Kovrat
guarded Byzantine interests in the Bulgarian
region until his
death in 642.
The powerful Byzantine church provided funds,
and
after Easter in 622 Heraclius marched
east gathering his troops.
They pushed the Persian forces
out of Asia Minor and Armenia.
After returning to Constantinople to raise more tribute for
the restless Avars, Heraclius resumed the war with Persia.
His imperial
army attacked the Sasanian religious center at
Ganzak and destroyed
the fire temple in revenge for Jerusalem.
In the West Byzantine
control of Spain was lost to the
conquest of Visigoth king Suinthila
about 624.
While Heraclius was in Lazica, in 626 Constantinople was
once
again under attack by Persians and Avars.
As Sergius urged the
Christians to pray, the Byzantine navy
defeated the Slavonic fleet
at the Golden Horn in August.
This freed the Slavs from Avar domination,
and led by a
Frankish merchant named Samo,
they continued to occupy
the Balkans.
Heraclius used Christianity to restrain northern
invaders;
it was recorded that he got the migrating Croats to
take
binding oaths not to go to war with other countries.
Heraclius
gained a reported 80,000 soldiers from the
Caucasus Khazars as
allies to fight the Persians in Armenia,
and the next year the
imperial forces crushed the
Persian army near the ancient site
of Nineveh.
In 628 Khusrau II was deposed and murdered by his
son
Kavadh-Siroe, who made a treaty and before he died the
next
year even made Heraclius the guardian of his son.
Persia agreed
to return Syria, Palestine,
and Egypt to the Byzantines.
Heraclius
returned to his capital in triumph, and in 630
the cross was returned
to Jerusalem amid rejoicing.
Heraclius ended the use of Latin in government when he
made Greek the official language of the Byzantine empire.
Instead of
being called by the Latin terms Imperator, Caesar,
or Augustus,
he was named Basileus, the Greek word for king
though in this
context it is translated Emperor.
He began the Byzantine practice
of designating his successor
as Co-emperor to give the next Emperor
experience and facilitate the succession.
To try to mollify the
many Monophysites in the Near East,
the patriarch Sergius supported
the teaching that Christ has
a single energy and a single will,
the latter known as the monothelete doctrine.
Sergius died in
638 and was succeeded by Pyrrhus,
an ardent advocate of this doctrine;
but his victory proved
Pyrrhic as the monothelete compromise failed
to satisfy
either the orthodox or the Monophysites.
A powerful new religious force was taking over the Near East
from Arabia in the rapid Islamic conquests following the death
of the prophet Muhammad
in 632.
Both the Persian and Byzantine empires had been weakened
by their war; having suffered persecution from Byzantine
orthodoxy,
the Monophysites and the Persian Magians were
usually willing
to pay tribute for their religious freedom under
the Muslims or
convert, the third choice being to fight.
The Byzantine army led
by Manuel suffered a major defeat
at the Yarmuk River in Palestine
in 636.
Jerusalem patriarch Sophronius surrendered when
Caliph
'Umar came in person the next year.
By 640 the Muslims had conquered
Byzantine Mesopotamia
and most of the remaining Persian empire,
and Egypt had been invaded.
Fabia-Eudocia had given Heraclius
the son Constantine;
but when she died in 612, the Emperor married
his niece
Martina, causing much criticism from Christians
who
considered it incest.
After saving the empire with the military
victories he
personally led, Heraclius suffered miserable health
as the
empire shrunk from the Muslim onslaught,
and he finally
died in February 641.
In his will Heraclius made both 28-year-old Constantine and
Martina's 15-year-old son Heraclonas Co-emperors with
Martina
as empress; but Constantine III died three months
later, and Martina
reinstated the monothelete
Cyrus as Alexandria patriarch.
Cyrus
signed a treaty giving the Arabs Egypt, while in
Constantinople
the Senate, military commanders,
and orthodox priests opposed
the Empress
and the monothelete patriarch Pyrrhus.
Heraclonas
crowned Constantine III's son Co-emperor;
but in September 641
the Senate deposed Martina and
Heraclonas, making sure they would
never rule
by cutting off her tongue and his nose.
As Constans
II (r. 641-668) was only eleven, the Senate
held power for a while
and also served as the supreme court.
The Muslim general 'Amr
entered Alexandria in 642
and by the next year had advanced west
to Tripolis.
When the new caliph 'Uthman recalled 'Amr, a Byzantine
fleet led by Manuel recaptured Alexandria; but 'Amr returned
and
drove the Byzantines permanently out of Egypt in 646.
In North Africa theologian Maximus the Confessor in 646
organized
a synod which condemned the Byzantine doctrine
of monotheletism
as heresy, and the next year Carthage exarch
Gregory proclaimed
himself Emperor with the support of
Moorish tribes; but they were
attacked by the Muslims,
and Gregory was killed as his capital
at Sufetula was sacked.
In 648 Constans tried to end the theological
controversy by
promulgating his Type of Faith, which prohibited
any
discussion of Christ's energy or will with strict penalties.
The next year the new Pope Martin held a council in the
Lateran
Palace attended by 105 bishops who condemned
both the Ecthesis
of Sergius and the Type.
Constans sent Ravenna exarch Olympius
to force the bishops
to sign the Type and to arrest Martin;
but in Rome Olympius
went over to their side and proclaimed himself
Emperor of Italy.
He went to Sicily with his army,
but the rebellion
died with him in 652.
The next year the new exarch Theodore Calliopa
arrested the
ill Martin and sent him to Constantinople, where
he was tried
by the Senate for treason along with Maximus;
they
were banished, and Martin died at Cherson in 656.
Maximus was
tried again in 662
and mutilated before dying in exile.
Meanwhile Syria's Muslim governor Mu'awiya had sent
a force to invade Armenia in 642, and in 647
the Arabs took Caesarea in
Cappadocia.
Muslim raids into Asia Minor became annual events.
Mu'awiya ordered a Muslim navy built, and the Arab fleet
attacked
Cyprus in 649 and took Rhodes in 654.
The fallen Colossus was
sold to a Jewish merchant,
and its metal was taken away on 900
camels.
The Byzantine fleet was defeated the next year off Lycia.
Constans had his eldest son Constantine crowned
Co-emperor in
654 and his two younger sons also in 659.
The next year he got
rid of his brother Theodosius by forcing
him to become a priest
and then executing him for treason.
Embroiled in a civil war with
Caliph 'Ali, Mu'awiya made
a treaty with the Byzantine empire
in 659,
pledging 1,000 gold pieces a day.
The Byzantine army invaded
the Slavs and took many
prisoners to work and fight in Asia Minor.
A Slav division of 5,000 deserted to the Arabs,
who settled them
in Syria in 665.
Constans II decided to move his capital to the west in 662.
He visited Thessalonica and Athens
before arriving at Tarentum
the next year.
He campaigned with his army against the Lombards,
besieging
Beneventum; but he retired to Naples and visited Rome
before establishing his court on Sicily at Syracuse.
His imperial
taxes alienated the people, and Constans was
murdered in his bath
by a chamberlain in 668.
The conspiracy named the Armenian Mezezius
Emperor;
but he and several supporters were killed by the loyal
exarch
of Ravenna, who was supported by Pope Vitalian.
Constans II was succeeded by his son Constantine IV
(r. 668-685),
who had been reigning
for the last few years in Constantinople.
In 663 the Muslims had resumed their annual raids in
Asia Minor, and Mu'awiya's navy captured the island of Chios
and took the peninsula at Cyzicus near the capital in 670.
The Muslim onslaught
on Constantinople began in 674;
but a Greek architect from Syria
named Callinicus brought
a secret invention called "Greek
fire" that apparently combined
petroleum with saltpeter with
explosive results and enabled
the Byzantine navy to be victorious
in the war that may have
saved Europe from Muslim domination.
Finally in 678 the aged Mu'awiya agreed to a thirty years'
peace,
paying an annual tribute of 3,000 gold coins and
evacuating the
islands of Rhodes, Cos, and Cyprus.
The Byzantine empire gained
new respect, as the
Avars and Slavs sent ambassadors to the victorious
Emperor.
In 680 Constantine IV led a Byzantine navy north in the
Black
Sea to the Danube to attack the Bulgars; but they hid
and then
counter-attacked his army as it was crossing the
Danube, and the
Emperor had to agree to a treaty with Bulgar
chief Ansparuch and
pay an annual tribute.
The Bulgars were more politically organized
than the Slavs,
whom they settled around them in Moesia
and along
the Black Sea as a buffer.
Constantine also summoned the sixth
general council at
Constantinople that lasted ten months
and condemned
monotheletism.
That year (681) the Emperor had both his younger
brothers'
noses cut off so that he could call himself sole ruler
(Autocrator); but he died at age 33 in 685 and was
succeeded by
his son Justinian II (r. 685-695 and 705-711).
Constantine IV
had established the military theme of Thrace,
and Justinian formed
the theme of Hellas.
The ambitious Justinian II launched a campaign against
the
Slavs in 688, and his army fought its way to Thessalonica.
So
many Slavs were transported to Bithynia in the Opsikon
theme that
by 692 they produced
30,000 men for a military levy.
In 688 Justinian
had made a treaty with the Muslims that
shared taxation on Cyprus;
but when he removed men from
Cyprus three years later, the Muslims
attacked.
The Byzantine Emperor had also agreed to remove
the Mardaite marauders from Lebanon,
and 12,000 of them were moved
to Anatolia in 689.
Slav troops went over to the Muslims, and
in 692
they defeated the Byzantine army at Sebastopolis in Armenia.
Justinian also tried to strengthen religion by calling another
council at Constantinople in 691 that was attended by
289 bishops
and passed 102 canons, forbidding pagan
festivals and college
students from attending theatrical shows,
though marriage was
allowed to the secular clergy.
Justinian also tried to arrest
Pope Sergius; but sentiment
was so strong that only the Pope's
mercy prevented the
imperial representative from being lynched.
The ambitious building plans of Justinian had caused financial
problems, and he was deposed in 695 by a revolt of Blues,
who
cut off his nose and sent Justinian to Cherson.
When Leontius (r. 695-698) failed to stop the Muslim invasion
of Carthage, the Byzantine navy rebelled and proclaimed
as Emperor
Tiberius II (r. 698-705),
who was supported by the Greens.
He
cut off the nose of Leontius and sent him to a monastery.
Tiberius
did not try to stop the Muslim advance
that proceeded to the Atlantic
coast of Africa.
Justinian proved that cutting off a nose did not prevent one
from ruling by escaping to the Khazars,
where he married the Khan's
daughter.
Chased from there, he left her and went to Bulgar Khan
Tervel,
and in 705 with an army of Slavs and Bulgars,
he approached
Constantinople.
The daring Justinian crawled through a pipe into
the capital,
took power, and ruled for six more years
known as
Rhinometus, referring to his slit nose.
His example seemed to
end this cruel practice of the
7th-century Byzantines, though
unfortunately
it was replaced by blinding.
Justinian shared his
throne with his wife Theodora
and proclaimed Tervel Caesar.
Leontius
and Tiberius were executed.
The bitter Justinian was intent on
revenge, and several
important officers were hanged from the walls;
the patriarch Callinicus had his eyes put out.
The Muslims took
the opportunity to take Tyana
and advance into Cilicia.
Justinian
also sent troops to punish Ravenna for
not liking him and others
for revenge against Cherson.
This stimulated a revolt supported
by the Khazars,
and the Armenian Bardanes was proclaimed Emperor,
as Justinian was deposed and killed in 711,
the last of the Heraclian
dynasty that had ruled for a century.
Justinian was avenged by the Bulgar Khan Tervel,
who attacked
the capital and marched through Thrace.
Bardanes was deposed by
revolting soldiers in 713,
and Anastasius II tried to prepare
the capital for a Muslim invasion.
He was replaced two years later
by the tax collector
Theodosius, who did not even want to be Emperor.
Thus when a strong military leader entered Constantinople
in 717,
he was crowned Emperor as Leo III
and let Theodosius retire as
a monk at Ephesus.
Maximus was born into a Christian family
in Constantinople
about 580.
He served as a secretary in the court of Heraclius;
but he resigned after three years in 613 and joined the
monastery
at Chrysopolis, where he became abbot.
Maximus transferred to
the St. George monastery at Cyzicus
but left there during the
crisis of 626 when the
Avars, Slavs, and Persians were invading.
After visiting Crete he settled in North Africa.
Maximus argued that Christ had both a divine and human will
in a debate with Pyrrhus at Carthage in 645 and persuaded
that
champion of monotheletism to change his view for a while.
Maximus
attended Pope Martin's Lateran council in 649.
He was arrested
and taken to Constantinople,
where he was tried with Martin in
653.
In the account of his trial Maximus argued that he did not
condemn the Emperor but a document
he believed was alien to church
doctrine.
He admitted he was not in communion with the Constantinople
church, because it had rejected the councils.
When he refused
to be silent in exile because he believed that
to do so was to
support the denial of truth, Maximus was
returned to the capital
and examined again in 662.
His tongue was cut out for continuing
to speak of two wills
in Christ, and his hand was cut off
for
refusing to sign a compromising statement.
His two associates
suffered the same punishment,
and they were banished to Lazica,
where Maximus died on August 13, 662.
Influenced by the mysticism of Dionysus the Areopagite and
Gregory Nazianzen,
Maximus wrote several books using
allegorical exegesis, propounding
his theology, and exhorting
Christians to follow the ethics of
love and monks asceticism.
The Ascetic Life by Maximus
is a dialog
between an old monk and a young brother.
The young
bother asks about salvation and the commandments.
The old monk
emphasizes that the commandments
can be summed up in one word—love.
Yet to love God and one's neighbor as oneself one must
renounce such worldly things as food, money, possessions,
acclaim,
relatives, and so on.
If one can get rid of desire for pleasure
and material things,
then even loving one's enemies can be easy.
The young brother asks how he can devote himself to God.
The old
monk replies that one needs the following three virtues:
love
tames anger; self-mastery overcomes desire;
and prayer withdraws
the mind from all thoughts
so that it can be presented alone to
God.
If people will encourage each other by practicing charity
and good works, then salvation is possible.
Probably the most inspiring work of Maximus is found
in his
400 sayings on Christian love (agapé).
He began
by describing love as a good disposition of the soul
by which
one prefers knowing God to any earthly attachments,
which prevent
one from reaching this love.
He argued that if God made all things,
then all those things are inferior to God.
The one who loves God
thus disdains all visible things
and even one's own body.
One
who loves God cannot help but love every person as
oneself even
though one may be displeased with the passionate
who are not yet
purified, though seeing them convert and
amend themselves brings
one unspeakable joy.
Anyone with a trace of hatred in one's heart
toward any
person makes oneself foreign to the love of God, because
the love of God is not compatible with hatred of a person.
Maximus
wrote that the person is blessed
who has learned how to love all
people equally.
Those who love God surely love their neighbors
and so cannot hold on to money but rather give it
in God's way
to those in need.
Maximus wrote,
As the memory of fire does not warm the body,
so faith without love does not bring about the
illumination of knowledge in the soul.
As the light of the sun attracts the healthy eye,
so does the knowledge of God draw the pure
mind to itself naturally through love.
The mind is pure when it is removed from
ignorance and illuminated by divine light.
The soul is pure when it has been freed from
the passions and rejoices unceasingly in divine love.
A blameworthy passion is a movement of the
soul contrary to nature.
Detachment is a peaceful state of the soul
in which it becomes resistant to vice.1
Maximus described the work of love as the deliberate
doing of good to one's neighbor, patience,
and using everything in the
proper way.
Those who do not reject pride, pleasure,
and greed
will not be able to remove occasions for anger
and so will not
be able to attain perfect love.
Giving charity heals the angry
part of the psyche,
and fasting extinguishes the desiring part;
prayer purifies
the mind and prepares it to contemplate reality.
God also granted the commandments
for the abilities of the soul
as well.
Fasting, labor, and vigils keep the desires from growing,
while solitude, contemplation, prayer, and desire for God
decrease
them and make the desires disappear.
Anger is checked by tolerance,
forgetting offenses,
and gentleness, while love, giving charity,
kindness,
and benevolence make anger diminish.
Maximus distinguished
the body's virtues of fasting, vigils,
service, and manual labor
from the soul's virtues of
love, patience, gentleness, self-mastery,
and prayer.
Maximus found five reasons why we are allowed to be
challenged
by demons (negativity).
First, the battle helps us to distinguish
virtue and vice.
Second, we learn how to acquire and hold on to
virtue firmly.
Third, while advancing in virtue
we do not become
proud but learn humility.
Fourth, by experiencing vice we will
hate it.
Fifth and most important, when we become detached,
we
do not forget our own weaknesses
nor the power of the one who
helps us.
Maximus observed that as it is easier to sin in thought
than in action, so the war with thoughts
is more exacting than
struggles with things.
He listed the five reasons for which the
soul will abstain
from sin as fear of people, fear of judgment,
future reward,
love of God, and the prompting of conscience.
Maximus
believed that evil only exists as abuse.
It is not food which is evil but gluttony,
not the begetting of children but fornication,
not possessions but greed,
not reputation but vainglory.
And if this is so, there is nothing evil in creatures
except misuse, which stems from the
mind's negligence in its natural cultivation.2
Maximus discerned that the mind of the one who loves God
does
not battle against things nor their representations
but against
the passions (emotions)
joined to those representations.
He believed
that self-love is the cause
of all passionate thoughts,
especially
the desires of gluttony, greed, and vanity.
From gluttony comes
thoughts of fornication; from greed
comes coveting; and from vanity
comes arrogance.
Anger, resentment, grief, sloth, envy, back-biting,
and the rest
come from these and bind the mind to material things
on earth,
weighing it down like a heavy stone
when it should naturally
rise like fire.
Maximus found that the friends of Christ love
everyone
sincerely but are not loved by everyone, while the friends
of the world do not love everyone
nor are they loved by everyone.
The friends of Christ maintain their love to the end,
but the
friends of the world often clash
with each other over the world's
goods.
He concluded that the one who has love has God,
because
God is love.
John of Damascus was born in that city in the last quarter
of the seventh century, and he probably died in 749.
He was originally
named al-Mansur after his Christian father,
who served Umayyad
Caliph 'Abd al-Malik (r. 685-705)
as a tax collector.
John was
educated by the learned monk Cosmas,
who had been captured in
Sicily
and ransomed by John's father Sergius.
John succeeded his
father as the chief administrator
in Damascus and served under
Caliph al-Walid (r. 705-715).
The latter's restrictions of Christian
treasury officials may have
caused John to retire to the
monastery
of St. Sabbas near Jerusalem.
He practiced asceticism and studied
the church fathers.
John was ordained a priest by Jerusalem patriarch
John V
some time before 726 when Leo III
issued his first edict
against images and icons.
The story that Leo sent a phony letter from John to the Caliph,
who then cut off John's hand, which was miraculously restored
by praying to the Virgin, is most likely a legend concocted
to
make John seem a martyr to the cause he defended.
It is true that
the Byzantine Emperor could not prosecute John,
because he lived
in Muslim territory.
More likely is the story that John was treated
strictly at the
monastery and not allowed to write at first.
In
defending the use of pictorial images, John argued that
Moses
prohibited idolatry but not representations of men
or angels,
since cherubim were depicted.
John believed that the images provided
education for the
illiterate about Christ, the Virgin, and the
saints.
After Constantinople patriarch Germanus resigned in 730,
John, called Chrysorrhoas after a stream near his monastery
or
because of his eloquence, wrote a second defense of the use
of
images against the charges of the iconoclasts, arguing that the
king should not legislate for the church but maintain civil order.
In a third letter John accused
the iconoclasts of serving the
devil.
John of Damascus wrote The Fount of Knowledge,
which
was the first major theological work to combine
Aristotelian philosophy
and Christian theology
in a systematic and comprehensive way.
This work was dedicated to another Cosmas, who had studied
with
him under the old monk of that name, some time after
Cosmas was
made bishop of Maiuma in 743.
John did not claim that his ideas
are new but that they are
based on sound Christian doctrine, much
of which he got
from the Greek fathers Basil,
Gregory of Nyssa,
and his main source, Gregory
Nazianzen.
The first part of The Fount of Knowledge lays
the theological
groundwork by using Aristotelian logic and categories.
The second part describes 103 heresies.
About a hundred are
based on previous Christian writings,
but his treatment of the
Ishmaelite or Saracen heresy is his own.
John calls Muhammad
a false prophet and argued that
no prophet testified to his coming
before
as had been done for the Christ.
He noted that Muhammad
criticized the Christians
for associating the Christ as the son
with God.
To the accusation that they idolized the cross, John
pointed
out that the Muslims worship the black stone at the Ka'ba.
John criticized Muhammad's teaching that they could have
four
wives and an unlimited number of concubines,
that men could divorce
their wives easily, and he was
offended that Muhammad
made Zayd divorce his wife
so that he could marry her.
John also
included the Monothelites as heretics, and his
book also repudiated
the Nestorians and Monophysites,
believing that the divinity of
Christ
was dominant over his human nature.
John branded the Iconoclasts
heretics because
they accused other Christians for venerating
images
of Christ, Mary, angels, and saints.
The third and longest part of The Fount of Knowledge
is
"An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith."
John
believed that the law of God acts on our minds and
draws them
toward God, spurring on our conscience,
which he called the "law
of our mind."
However, the desires and pleasures of the body,
which he called a law in the members of our flesh,
can lead us
into sin if we are not careful.
The conscience rejoices in the
law of God and God's
commandments, but the body may struggle against
this law
of the mind through the softness of pleasure and desire.
John believed that the Christ by taking on the flesh without
sinning
overcame and taught people how to live according to
the Spirit
that strengthens the law of the mind.
Jesus taught us to pray,
and so with prayer and patience
we can observe the commandments
of the Lord.
John also wrote moral works to counter
the traditional
vices with Christian virtues.
He believed that virginity was as
superior to marriage as the
angels are above humans; but he acknowledged
that
marriage is good to prevent unchastity and for propagation.
Leo III (r. 717-741) camped outside of Constantinople
and used
diplomacy with Muslim naval commander Suleiman
and their army
commander Maslama so that they withdrew
for the winter, while
he negotiated with the Senate
and was crowned Byzantine Emperor
by
Constantinople patriarch Germanus.
Yet the following summer
the Muslim army besieged
the walls of the capital, and Suleiman's
1800 ships
sailed into the Marmara.
Leo gained Bulgarian help
in this crucial war to stop
the Muslim expansion from entering
eastern Europe.
Once again Greek fire enabled the Byzantine navy
to destroy the Muslim fleet, though the blockade
lasted a year
until August 718.
That year Sicily general Sergius tried to proclaim
a
new Emperor, and two years later ex-Emperor Anastasius II
escaped
from Thessalonica and tried to reclaim power
withBulgarian support;
but both these efforts failed.
Muslim armies invaded Asia Minor
every year
from 726 to 740, when they were
defeated by Leo's army
at Acroinon.
Leo's son Constantine married a daughter
of the Khazar
Khan in 733.
Having become Emperor after being the
military governor of a powerful theme,
Leo divided the larger themes into two parts.
Western Anatolia became the Thracesion theme.
The maritime Carabisian
theme was divided,
though the large Opsikion theme was still
governed by Leo's son-in-law Artabasdus.
Leo and his son reformed Justinian's Byzantine laws
by promulgating
the Ecloga in Greek.
Only a small portion of this covered
criminal law;
but mutilation of body parts now appeared, though
in most
cases they replaced the death penalty rather than fines.
Social status was no longer a legal factor,
as all individuals
were equal before the law.
Most of the reforms related to family
and property.
The power of the father was limited
as the rights
of wives and children were extended.
Christian influence made
marriage more protected.
The law attempted to do away with corrupting
bribery
by prohibiting gifts to judges and by paying them state
salaries.
Judges were advised to refrain from all human passions
and
decide true justice by using clear reasoning;
they must not
scorn the poor
nor leave the strong unpunished if they are guilty.
In 723 Caliph Yazid II had ordered all icons
removed from Christian
churches in Muslim territory.
Iconoclastic bishops persuaded Leo
III to issue an edict
against images in 726, and he interpreted
an earthquake
as a sign of divine wrath against icons.
In a letter
to Pope Gregory II Leo asserted that
he was not only Emperor but
high priest as well.
A venerated image of Christ in Constantinople
was removed;
but the people, who were mostly women, became so
angry
that the imperial officer removing it was killed.
People
in Greece set up a rival Emperor and sent a fleet
to attack Constantinople;
but their rebellion was suppressed,
though only two leaders were
executed.
Strong criticism came from John of Damascus, who was
outside the empire in Palestine, and Pope Gregory II called
a
synod that condemned the Byzantine iconoclasm.
When Leo convened
an assembly and asked the bishops
to sign his edict in 730, Constantinople
patriarch
Germanus refused and was deposed.
Anastasius was made
patriarch, and the iconoclastic
edict was enforced as icons were
destroyed.
Iconodules were persecuted,
as Leo had the papal legates
imprisoned.
Gregory III became Pope in 731,
and a Roman synod excommunicated
iconoclasts.
Leo sent a fleet, but it was destroyed by a storm
in the Adriatic.
So he imposed heavier taxes on Sicily, Calabria,
and the Illyrian diocese, which was
incorporated under Byzantine
authority.
Ravenna exarch Paul and the Neapolitan duke were murdered.
Paul's successor fled to Venice,
and Ravenna was taken over for
a while by the Lombards.
Leo III was succeeded by his son Constantine V (r. 741-775),
who had been made Co-emperor in 720 at the age of two.
In 742
Artabasdus claimed the throne.
As Armeniakon theme general he
had helped Leo become
Emperor, had been given Leo's daughter in
marriage and had
been made count of the large Opsikion theme.
As commander of this area and supported by those who
opposed iconoclasm,
he now attacked and defeated Leo's
army while it was passing through
his territory to fight the Muslims.
Artabasdus negotiated with
the regent Constantine left in
Constantinople and was crowned
there by Patriarch
Anastasius, who also changed sides.
Artabasdus
made his older son Nicephorus Co-emperor
and his younger son Nicetas
army commander,
sending him to Armeniakon.
The icons were restored
in the capital.
With support from Thrace and most of Asia Minor,
Constantine's forces defeated Artabasdus at Sardis
and
Nicetas
at Modrina before regaining Constantinople, all in 743.
The Emperor
took revenge by blinding Artabasdus and his
two sons while executing
or mutilating others.
Anastasius was led around on a donkey
but
remained patriarch.
Constantine then made the eastern portion
of Opsikion the Bucellarion theme.
A major epidemic of bubonic plague devastated the capital
and
coastal cities from 745 to 747, and often the living
were too
few to bury the dead.
Many Slavs emigrated from Bulgaria to repopulate
the cities.
While the Umayyad
caliphate was falling apart, Constantine V
invaded Syria in
746 and captured fortresses in Armenia and
Mesopotamia the next
year, transporting prisoners to Thrace
on the Bulgarian frontier
he ordered fortified.
The Byzantines lost Ravenna to the Lombards
in 751.
The Bulgarians reacted by invading Byzantine territory
in 756,
and for the next nine years Constantine fought
annual
campaigns against them.
Uprisings of Slavs in Thrace and Macedonia
were put down in 758.
When Teletz came to power in Bulgaria in
762,
many Slavs emigrated to Bithynia,
and the Bulgars suffered
a major defeat the next year.
Teletz was removed but regained
control in 770;
he was defeated yet again by Constantine in 773, but the
Byzantine Emperor died on a Bulgarian campaign in 775.
These wars would cause the Bulgarians to consider
the Byzantines
their enemies for a long time.
Patriarch Anastasius died in 753, and a council was held
in Constantinople the next year that was attended by 338
iconoclastic
bishops but not by eastern patriarchs nor the Pope;
thus opponents
would later call it the headless council.
Constantine himself
appointed a new patriarch
named Constantine of Sylaion.
The council
ordered religious icons destroyed and
excommunicated Germanus
and John of Damascus
while extolling the Emperor as an apostle.
Emperor Constantine was particularly hostile to the 100,000
or
so monks in the empire,
most of whom opposed iconoclasm.
Many
monasteries were closed and turned into barracks,
arsenals, baths,
or public buildings.
Some monks were forced to marry, be blinded,
or banished.
Many went to Italy.
In 765 Stephen, the abbot of
Mt. Auxentius, was murdered
by a mob in Constantinople, and the
next year Constantine V
ordered nineteen important officials executed.
Leo IV (r. 775-780) tried to moderate the iconoclastic
persecutions
of his father, particularly on cults of the
Virgin Mary and the
monasteries; but by the end of his short
reign iconodules were
being publicly whipped and imprisoned.
However, his wife Irene
was from Athens
and was devoted to icon veneration.
When Leo IV
died in 780, his son Constantine VI
was only ten years old,
and
his mother Irene ruled as Co-emperor.
She gradually began to change
the iconoclastic policies.
During her reign Sicily governor Elpidius
went over to the
Muslims in Africa, but in 783 she sent the eunuch
Stauracius
to march on Thessalonica and organize the theme of
Hellas.
She appointed the moderate Tarasius
as Constantinople
patriarch (784-806).
When a church council was called in 786,
iconoclastic
soldiers in the capital entered the church and broke
it up.
Irene sent them to Asia Minor ostensibly to fight the
Muslims but had their officers removed;
then she brought sympathetic troops
from Thrace
to defend Constantinople.
The next year the seventh
ecumenical council met at Nicaea.
The politicians prevailed over
the extremists and received the
iconoclasts back into the Church
if they abjured their heresy.
Iconoclast writings were ordered
destroyed
and the icons restored.
Images were not to be "adored"
but "venerated."
As Constantine VI grew, he was supported by iconoclasts,
and
in 790 soldiers in Armenia and Asia Minor refused to
swear allegiance
to Irene and proclaimed her son sole ruler.
Irene and her eunuchs
left the imperial palace,
but she was allowed back two years later.
Constantine was becoming increasingly unpopular for failing
in
wars against the Bulgarians and the Muslims.
Bulgarian king Telerig
had obtained a list of Byzantine
supporters and then had them
put to death.
Irene persuaded him to have the general who began
his revolt
blinded, which caused Armenian troops to mutiny again.
Irene and Constantine also had various relatives mutilated.
Irene
had married her son Constantine to Mary of Amnia
in 788, but she
failed to produce a son.
In 795 he shocked Christian sensibilities
by divorcing her
to marry lady-in-waiting Theodote,
who bore a
son in October 796.
Tarasius approved the marriage, but extremists
like abbot
Plato and his son Theodore charged the patriarch with
heresy,
believing the marriage was adulterous by Mark 10:11.
Constantine had lost his support,
and in 797 his own mother had
him blinded.
Irene ruled alone 797-802, calling herself Emperor.
The Saracens
invaded Cappadocia in 798 and even
reached Ephesus on the Aegean
Sea, and she had to pay
substantial tribute to the wealthy Harun.
Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans
by Pope Leo III
and offered to
unite the Roman empire by marrying her.
Irene courted
popularity temporarily by greatly reducing taxes;
but the fiscal
irresponsibility resulted in her being overthrown
in 802 by the
finance minister Nicephorus, who was
proclaimed Emperor; Irene
was exiled and died the next year.
Nicephorus I (r. 802-811) ended tribute payments to the
caliphate
and canceled Irene's tax remissions, increasing taxes
on families,
monasteries, and churches; the state also gained
income by monopolizing
the loaning of money,
charging 16.67% interest.
Nicephorus strengthened
the western military forces by
establishing themes in Macedonia
and the Peloponnese.
Slavs in Greece rebelled and attacked
Patras
in 805 but were defeated.
After a civil war caused by the usurpation
of eastern
commander Bardane Turcus, the Muslims led by
Harun
al-Rashid invaded in 806 and took Tyana,
gaining 50,000 gold coins
in ransom.
The Byzantines had to pay tribute again; but strife
in the
caliphate after Harun died in 809
gave the Byzantine empire
a period of rest from war.
Nicephorus married his son Stauricius
to an Athenian relative
of Irene, and in 806 he appointed the
moderate historian,
another Nicephorus, to replace Tarasius as
patriarch.
A synod in 809 declared that the Emperor is above the
law
of the church and excommunicated anyone who disagreed.
Abbot
Plato, the Studion's Theodore, and his brother Joseph,
Archbishop
of Thessalonica, were banished,
and 700 Studion monks were imprisoned
or fled into exile.
Venice was taken by Charlemagne's son Pippin in 809.
After
Charlemagne destroyed Avar power, the Bulgarians
in Pannonia became
independent, and led by Krum they
destroyed the powerful fortress
at Sardica (modern Sofia)
and massacred its garrison in 809.
Nicephorus
rejected peace offers and counter-attacked
two years later, destroying
the Bulgar capital at Pliska.
Pursuing Krum into the mountains,
Nicephorus was surrounded and killed.
His son Stauricius was critically
wounded
but escaped to Adrianople.
As he was dying, he selected
his brother-in-law
Michael Rangabe to succeed himself.
Michael
I (r. 811-813) tried to gain popularity but emptied
the treasury
by distributing gratuities to the army, the court,
and the clergy,
as he was devoted to icons.
Michael recognized Charlemagne
as
an Emperor, regaining Venice.
Krum offered the new Byzantine Emperor
peace, but Studite
abbot Theodore urged Michael to fight the Bulgarians
at Adrianople in 813.
Anatolikon theme commander Leo
the Armenian
held back his troops.
Michael was defeated by Krum and deposed
by Leo.
Leo V (r. 813-820) restored military power and iconoclasm.
Krum had besieged Adrianople and approached the walls
of Constantinople
to negotiate peace
but escaped a treacherous attack.
The angry
Krum then devastated the area, starved
Adrianople into surrender,
and carried off 10,000 prisoners.
In a winter campaign Krum's
Bulgarians
captured another 50,000.
Krum marched against Constantinople
again
but died of a cerebral hemorrhage in April 814.
The Bulgarians'
next strong leader, Omurtag, consolidated
the kingdom and agreed
to a thirty-year peace
with the Byzantine empire.
Patriarch Nicephorus
was also deposed
and was replaced by Theodore Melissenus in 815.
His synod repudiated the Nicaean council of 787
and reverted to
the acta of the iconoclastic council of 754.
However, Leo
V had little support for this iconoclasm,
and while celebrating
Christmas in 820 he was murdered
by a conspiracy and replaced
by the imprisoned Michael the Amorian.
Michael II (r. 820-829) was an uneducated soldier who took
a neutral position but forbade all discussion of the icon issue.
In 821 a Slav soldier from Asia Minor named Thomas led a
revolution
on behalf of the iconodules and the poor.
Of six eastern themes
only Opsikion and Armeniakon
remained loyal to Michael.
Thomas
was crowned Emperor by the Antioch patriarch,
indicating he had
the approval of Muslim authorities.
The rebels besieged Constantinople
for more than a year;
but Bulgar Khan Omurtag's army scattered
the rebels,
and Thomas was eventually captured, tortured,
and
killed in October 823.
African Muslims conquered Crete about 826
and invaded Sicily the next year, taking Palermo in 831.
In contrast to his father, Michael's son and successor
Theophilus
(r. 829-842) was well educated
and sponsored art and learning.
Caliph al-Ma'mun offered him eternal peace and 2,000 pounds
of
gold if Theophilus would send the talented
mathematician-physician
Leo to Baghdad for a visit,
but the Byzantine Emperor refused
to share the philosopher.
He increased the military organization
of the empire with
additional themes, and in 837 he broke the
peace with the
Muslims as his imperial army captured and burned
the fortress
of Zapetra, enabling him to celebrate a triumph.
In response Caliph al-Mu'tasim led a large Muslim army in 838
that occupied Ancyra and attacked the
Anatolikon theme's strongest
fortress at Amorion.
Iconoclast leader John the Grammarian became
patriarch
in 837, and for the last time the iconodules were persecuted;
two Palestinian monks even had their foreheads branded.
Methodius
had been imprisoned seven years for challenging
Emperor Michael
II's authority.
When he was brought before Theophilus for his
past activities,
he challenged the Emperor with the following
statement:
If an image is so worthless in your eyes,
how is it that when you condemn the images
of Christ you do not also condemn the veneration
paid to representations of yourself?
Far from doing so, you are continually
causing them to be multiplied.3
Theophilus died in 842, and the following year
John the Grammarian
was deposed
so that icon veneration could be restored.
Michael III (842-867) was only six years old
when he began
his reign, and so his mother Theodora acted
as regent with a council
dominated by Logothete Theoctistus.
When Patriarch John the Grammarian
refused to preside over
a church council to rehabilitate icon
worship in March 843,
he was replaced by the iconodule Methodius.
The cultured Theoctistus increased imperial gold reserves
and
promoted education.
Studite zealots objected to the
moderate policy
toward the iconoclasts.
A Muslim invasion was resolved by a peace
and an exchange of prisoners.
Patriarch Methodius died in 847,
and the Studites were
mollified by the appointment of Ignatius,
son of Emperor
Michael I; he had been castrated when his father
was deposed and had become a monk.
In the East a Paulician sect
of extreme dualists,
who believed that the material world is evil,
had been persecuted since the reign of Michael I
and now were
migrating into the
Muslim territory of the Melitene emir.
Under
Theodora the most systematic persecution
in Byzantine history
resulted in 100,000 Paulicians
being slaughtered by imperial soldiers,
while others fled to the Saracens.
In 853 a Byzantine fleet attacked and burned
the Damietta stronghold
in Egypt.
As a result the Egyptians began to build up their navy.
In 855 Theodora compelled her son Michael to give up
his mistress
and marry Eudocia Decapolita.
The next year Michael conspired
with his uncle Bardas
to assassinate Theoctistus and take over
the government.
Michael liked to indulge himself in drinking and
other pleasures;
so he designated Bardas Caesar
and allowed him
to run the government.
Bardas organized a university at the Magnaura
palace
and appointed the mathematician Leo as its head;
the erudite
Photius became its greatest teacher.
Bardas was accused of having
an incestuous relationship
with his daughter-in-law and was ex-communicated
by Ignatius.
After a failed attack on Bardas in 858, Theodora
and her
daughters were imprisoned in a nunnery;
but Ignatius refused
to tonsure them
and was deposed for treason.
Photius was quickly ordained and promoted through church
offices
so that he could become Constantinople Patriarch.
The secular
Photius was greatly opposed by the religious
zealots and by Pope
Nicholas I, who asked that the Illyricum
diocese be returned to
papal authority and considered the
appointment uncanonical even
after a council
confirmed Photius in 861.
Nicholas called a Lateran
council two years later
and declared Photius deposed.
As the recognition
of Charlemagne had created an
independent western empire, now
Patriarch Photius
proclaimed that the Byzantine church
was independent
of the Pope.
Melitene emir 'Umar had invaded the Armeniakon theme
and occupied Amisus on the Black Sea, but Bardas' brother
Petronas
won a decisive victory in 863,
which became a turning point in
the Byzantine-Muslim conflict.
From the north Russians as early as 860 had invaded
to the walls
of Constantinople.
The Byzantines renewed their relations with
the Khazars,
and Photius began to send out missionaries to convert
people.
In 860 Constantine of Thessalonica (renamed Cyril) visited
a Khazar tribe on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea
and
founded a Christian church there.
When the Moravian prince Ratislav
requested religious
instruction from Constantinople in 863,
Cyril
and his brother Methodius were able to preach
to the Slavs in
their own language and even translated
the Bible into Slavic with
the glagolithic alphabet
Cyril adapted from Greek script.
Ratislav
also preferred a church independent of
German prelates, and this
greater flexibility in using
local language by the easternchurch
resulted in the
German missionaries leaving Moravia,
because the
western church insisted on using
only Latin for religious documents
and liturgy.
Cyril and Methodius did go to Rome in 868,
and Pope
Adrian II agreed to let them use the
Slavic language and have
an independent
Slavic church though subject to the Pope.
Cyril
died the next year, but Methodius was
consecrated Pannonian archbishop
and returned.
However, the next rulers of Moravia favored the
German-Latin priests, and in the early tenth century
the Slavic
priests were expelled to Bulgaria
as the Slavic liturgy was abolished.
Bulgarian prince Boris had sent an embassy to the Franks;
but
in 864 the Byzantine army persuaded him to be baptized
Michael
in honor of his imperial sponsor.
The Greek clergy proceeded to
organize a Bulgarian church,
and Boris-Michael even beheaded 52
Bulgarian bojars,
who had rebelled against the Christianization
and Slavic tendency of their nation.
Boris-Michael wanted his
church to be independent of
Byzantine authority and sent Pope
Nicholas I a list of
differing customs he wanted accepted;
the
Pope granted most of the Bulgarian requests,
including a doctrine
that came from Spain and spread
to the Franks that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Son
as well as from the Father.
Thus the Pope
accepted the Bulgarians into his fold,
causing Bardas and Michael
to send the Pope an angry
letter affirming their own supremacy
and demanding
that the objection to Photius be withdrawn.
In 867
a Constantinople synod presided over by the
Emperor excommunicated
Pope Nicholas and denounced
Roman doctrines that differed from
Byzantine orthodoxy.
For the first time Photius delineated the
differences in doctrine
between Byzantine Orthodoxy and the Roman
church.
In addition to their objection to the filioque
("and the Son")
clause, the Byzantines allowed their
clergy to marry.
Pope Nicholas was anathematized,
and Louis II
was recognized as Emperor of the Franks.
Meanwhile the physically impressive Basil had become friends
with the Emperor and married Michael's former mistress.
While
preparing for a campaign against Crete in 865,
Basil murdered
Bardas and was crowned
Co-emperor the following year.
The affection
of Michael turned to his boatman Basiliscianus
so much that he
wanted to crown him, and so in 867
Basil had Michael murdered
in his bed.
Michael was referred to as "the Drunkard"
by historians
of the Macedonian dynasty Basil founded;
so it is
difficult to evaluate their negative views of Michael III.
The very next day Emperor Basil I (r. 867-886) sent Photius
into exile as Ignatius was recalled
in Basil's efforts to be reconciled
with Rome.
Nicholas had died and was succeeded by Pope Adrian,
who sent legates to a council at Constantinople
that excommunicated
Photius.
Three days after the session ended,
a Bulgarian embassy
arrived.
The council reconvened and accepted the Bulgarian church
as independent, and Emperor Basil had Ignatius consecrate
an archbishop
and several bishops for the Bulgarian church
that now recognized
the supremacy
of the Constantinople patriarch.
Bulgarian king
Boris even sent his son Symeon
to be educated at Constantinople.
Basil found the treasury empty; but he went after those
involved in malversation and managed to retrieve
about half of what had
been stolen.
He reformed tax collection so that clear records
were kept.
Basil endeavored to select honest and learned judges,
regardless of their social status, and he made sure that
there
were enough judges accessible and that they were
paid well so
that they would be independent.
Basil attempted to purify Byzantine
laws and published
a handbook of legal principles entitled Procheiron
and a second revision in the Epanagoge.
The Emperor and
patriarch were to rule the state and
church in harmony for the
material
and spiritual welfare of humanity.
In the Balkans an independent Serbian kingdom was founded
by
Vlastimir; but when the Muslims besieged Dubrovnik
in 867 for
15 months, they requested help from the Byzantines,
who sent a
navy that forced the Muslims to depart.
Disciples of Methodius
had been expelled from Moravia
but converted many Slavs to
Byzantine
orthodoxy in the Balkans and Greece.
A Byzantine military theme
was established in Dalmatia.
In 872 the Emperor's brother-in-law
Christopher
led an attack on the Paulicians that destroyed Tephrice
and other fortifications in Asia Minor.
Basil's army moved east
and captured Zapetra and
Samosata the next year; but they were
defeated at Melitene.
Armenia became an independent kingdom under
Ashot I
and was eventually recognized by
both the Caliph and the
Byzantine Emperor.
The fall of Syracuse after being starved by
a nine-month
siege in 878 nearly completed the Muslim conquest
of Sicily;
but Basil's forces maintained Byzantine rule
at Taormina
and in south Italy.
The advances led by Christopher and the Slav
general
Andrew Craterus were stopped by a major defeat
from the
Muslims at Tarsus in 883.
Basil I allowed Photius to return to the capital to teach his
sons,
and when Ignatius died in 877, Photius once again became
Patriarch and held a council two years later.
Basil tried to force
the Jews in the empire to accept Christianity.
Basil was devoted
to his oldest son Constantine
by his first wife, and as Co-emperor
he had accompanied
his father on military campaigns and shared
in his triumphs.
Basil was devastated when
Constantine died at
the age of twenty in 879.
His next son Leo by the former mistress
of Michael III
may even have been Michael's son.
Probably feeling
that he was being punished for having
murdered Bardas and Michael,
Basil became mentally deranged.
Leo was accused of treason, imprisoned,
and came close to being blinded.
Photius, who was related to the
Empress Theodora
and her brother Bardas, was accused of plotting
to put a relative of his on the throne.
People rioted over Leo's
imprisonment,
and after three years Basil released him.
Three
days later Basil was mortally wounded while hunting,
though it
is not clear whether
he was killed by Leo's friends as was rumored.
Leo VI (r. 886-912) deposed Photius
and made his own brother
Stephen Patriarch.
Leo's other younger brother Alexander was Co-emperor,
but he was unpopular and not interested in government.
Leo's first
marriage had been arranged,
and he made his mistress Zoe's father
Stylianus Zautzes
his chief advisor or Logothete of the Drome.
Leo was well educated by Photius and was called the Wise
for his
extensive writings on theology and government
that included oracular
predictions about the empire.
In the first half of his reign while
Stylianus was still alive,
Leo oversaw the complete revision of
Byzantine laws from
Justinian on into a unified code called the Basilica that included
canon law and 113 new edicts of
Leo referred to as novels.
The Basilica and commentaries
on it
would be the basis for Byzantine law for centuries.
The
ancient powers of the curia and Senate were revoked
as the Emperor
was authorized to head all branches of the
government through
an elaborate bureaucracy appointed
by him and directly responsible
to him.
Only the church under the Patriarch he selected was
independent,
as the church council could trump the Emperor,
who was only a
layman.
Under Leo the empire was organized in many themes,
each governed
primarily by the military general,
while the Emperor was commander
in chief
and had his own powerful military in the capital.
Economic
activity was controlled by the eparch of
Constantinople, who regulated
prices and wages to benefit the
state and the consumer; imports
from provinces and foreign
countries were encouraged, but exports
were strictly limited.
Most workers were controlled by their guilds
that even
included notaries and money-changers,
though the guilds
were no longer hereditary
but were based on ability.
Leo's laws
made it easier for wealthy landowners
to purchase small farms,
as an aristocracy increased its local
power and moved toward feudal
authority over their serfs.
When Bulgarian king Boris-Michael abdicated in 889 to retire
into a monastery, his son Vladimir tried to return Bulgaria
to
paganism and was killed in 893.
Boris came out of retirement temporarily
to put his younger
son Symeon on the throne before returning
to
the religious life until he died in 907.
Symeon (r. 893-927) challenged
the monopoly on trade
Stylianus had given to two Byzantine merchants,
who removed
the Bulgarian market from Constantinople to Thessalonica.
Major Slav exports were hides, furs, wax, and slaves.
When Symeon's
Bulgarian army invaded in 894,
Byzantine diplomacy appealed to
the Magyars, who then
attacked Bulgaria from the north, while
Byzantine general
Nicephorus Phocas invaded their southern borders,
and Eustathius blockaded the mouth of the Danube
with the Byzantine
navy.
Symeon gained a truce while he called in the Patzinaks from
southern Russia to attack the Magyars, and in 896 Bulgarian
orces
wiped out a Byzantine army and invaded western Hellas;
the empire
had to agree to pay tribute to Bulgaria.
The Magyars led by Arpad
moved west and found their
permanent Hungarian home in the Danube
plain.
Muslims invaded Cilicia, assisted by their navy.
Taormina fell
in 892, giving the Muslims complete control
of Sicily, though
a Byzantine Lombard province
was established in southern Italy.
The empire expanded to the east by founding the province
of Mesopotamia
in 900; later Taron was formed east of that,
and Lycandus east
of Cappadocia.
Azerbaijan's Ostikan Afshin invaded Armenia three
times,
but Armenian king Smbat (890-914) managed to defeat them
and regain hostages in 901 after Afshin died.
Afshin's brother
Yusuf allied with Armenian princes suffering
Smbat's taxation;
Yusuf captured Smbat in 913 and tortured
him for a year before
killing him.
Armenia's Ashot II (r. 915-928) would also face many
struggles with Muslims and a civil war that was stopped
by the
mediation of John the Catholicos.
A Greek named Leo of Tripoli joined with the Muslims,
and they
sacked the empire's second greatest city of
Thessalonica in 904,
enabling Bulgaria to move its southern
border almost that far.
Another aristocrat named Andronicus Ducas rebelled and
went to
Baghdad, where he was compelled
to become a Muslim or die.
His
son Constantine Ducas escaped and became Byzantine
military governor
of Charsianon in Asia Minor;
later he would be killed trying to
take the imperial throne.
The empire fortified Thessalonica and
built up its navy,
enabling Logothete Himerius to defeat the Muslim
fleet
in the Aegean Sea in 908.
Himerius attacked Laodicea two
years later;
but after failing to take Crete in 911 the imperial
navy was
badly beaten off Chios by Muslims led by Leo of Tripoli
and another Greek named Damian.
In 907 the Russian prince Oleg
threatened Constantinople
and gained a commercial treaty that
was ratified four years later.
After his first wife Theaphano died in 897, Leo VI married
his mistress Zoe a few months later;
but she died without a son
in 899.
Leo then married the Phrygian Eudocia Baiana the next
summer even though a third marriage violated the canon laws
Leo
had just codified, and the church complained;
yet in 901 she died
in child-birth, soon followed by the child.
Disliking his brother
Alexander, Leo wanted a son,
and in 905 Zoe Carbonopsina gave
him one.
Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus baptized the boy Constantine
the following January as the
Emperor promised to separate from
Zoe.
Yet three days later in a private ceremony
Leo married Zoe
and proclaimed her Augusta.
The angry Patriarch forbade the Emperor
to enter
a church on Christmas or Epiphany.
So Leo received a
dispensation from Pope Sergius III
and forced Nicholas to resign,
appointing the pliant Euthymius.
In 911 Leo crowned his son Constantine
Co-emperor.
When Leo died of illness the next year, the hated
Alexander became Emperor with the
young Constantine as his colleague.
Alexander (r. 912-913) ruled badly
for only thirteen months
before he died.
He put Zoe in a nunnery and replaced most of Leo's
advisors,
recalling Nicholas Mysticus as Patriarch.
Not only Euthymius,
but all the clergy
he had ordained were to be dismissed.
Some
refused, and bloody riots ensued in the provinces.
Alexander broke
the treaty Leo had made with Bulgaria,
giving the ambitious Symeon
an excuse for going to war.
When Alexander died of a cerebral
hemorrhage
while playing ball drunk, Constantine, called Porphyrogenitus
because he was "born to the purple,"
was still only
seven years old.
So the patriarch Nicholas ignored his religious
duties
to govern the empire as regent.
The chief commander Constantine
Ducas tried to
usurp power, but Nicholas ordered marines
led by
Eladas to stop them, and Ducas was beheaded.
Nicholas ordered
so many executions
that his own council remonstrated.
Symeon's Bulgarian army approached Constantinople's
impregnable
walls, and he entered the city to negotiate.
Symeon's daughter
was to marry Constantine VII,
and Nicholas even crowned Symeon
Emperor of Bulgaria.
Such concessions shocked the Byzantines,
and Zoe returned to the palace to take over the regency,
canceling
the engagement and the coronation.
So the Bulgarians overran Thrace
and captured Adrianople
in 914, plundering the regions around
Dyrrachium and Thessalonica.
Empress Zoe appointed Leo Phocas
commander,
and the navy was led by the Armenian Romanus Lecapenus.
That year a Byzantine army put Armenian king Asho
back on his
throne, and the Lombard province governor,
whom Nicholas had appointed,
defeated the Saracens at Capua.
The imperial army invaded the
Bulgarians along the Black Sea
coast but was badly defeated at
Achelous in 917 by Symeon,
who then invaded northern Greece the
next year.
Romanus Lecapenus seized the government in March 919.
Leo Phocas
opposed him in Bithynia; but the army failed
to support the recently
defeated general, and he was blinded.
Romanus married his daughter
Helena to Constantine VII
in May, and by the end of 919
Romanus
was Co-emperor with his son-in-law.
Bulgarian king Symeon continued
to devastate imperial
territory and captured Adrianople again
in 923.
He made an alliance with Egypt; but Romanus used money
and diplomacy to get the Muslims on his side.
Symeon had to negotiate
again in 924, and the next year
Romanus made an alliance with
the new Croat kingdom
ruled by Tomislav, allowing the first
Croat
king to govern Dalmatia.
The Byzantines also won over the Serbs,
who were then attacked and eventually defeated by
Symeon's Bulgarians;
but Symeon was defeated trying
to invade Croatia, and the Pope
mediated a peace.
When Symeon died in 927, he was succeeded
by
his son Peter (r. 927-969), who made a peace treaty
that lasted
nearly to the end of his long reign.
A sect of dualistic Bogomils
opposed the Bulgarian church
rituals and any outward worship,
as they protested
against rule by the powerful and wealthy.
Their
initiates were required to abstain
from sexual intercourse, meat,
and wine.
Romanus made his son Christopher Co-emperor
and heir to the
throne, but he died in 931.
When Nicholas Mysticus died in 925,
Romanus made
his 16-year-old son Theophylact Patriarch of Constantinople,
and he remained in that position until his death in 956.
Romanus
attempted to remedy the problem of the wealthy
taking over the
land of the poor by issuing new laws in 922
and 934 that gave
relatives and neighbors
precedence in land sales.
Many starving
peasants were easily persuaded to accept
the protection of a wealthy
landlord,
but an agrarian revolt occurred in Bithynia in 932.
After a bad winter and famine the Emperor in 934
censured the
selfishness of the powerful as being more
cruel than the hunger
or pestilence.
All property that was sold for less than half a
fair price
was to be restored without compensation.
The general John Curcuas led Byzantine victories against
the Muslims at Melitene in 931
but had to recapture it three years
later.
The Byzantines found themselves allied with Egypt and the
Baghdad caliphate against the rising Hamdanid dynasty
led by Saif
ad-Daula, who in 938 defeated Curcuas
in the Upper Euphrates region
and then devastated Colonea in 940.
Russians raided the Bithynian
coast in 941,
but Greek fire enabled a smaller Byzantine navy
to destroy the Russians' Viking ships.
When Prince Igor arrived
in 944, Byzantine diplomacy
bought off the Russians with gifts
and a new trade agreement.
Magyar incursions were also stopped
by bribery.
In 943 Curcuas moved east again and took Martyropolis,
Amida, Dar, and Nisibis before capturing at Edessa
the relic believed
to be the burial shroud of Jesus and sending it
to the capital,
where it was received with religious festivities.
In Armenia Abas
(r. 928-951) made peace with the Muslims
and had a cathedral built
at Kars.
When the Abasgian king Ber wanted it consecrated with
Byzantine rites, Abas defeated him twice and had him blinded.
In 944 the Emperor's sons Stephen and
Constantine Lecapeni tried to seize power
before Romanus passed it to Constantine VII.
Romanus was exiled on the island of Prote,
where he died peacefully
four years later.
However, the sons were unable to remove Constantine
VII,
who had them arrested in January 945 and sent into exile.
Though he had been Co-emperor most of his life,
the reclusive
Constantine was now forty years old
and began to rule for the
first time.
He had made wise use of his time,
studying and writing
on government and history.
His Book of Ceremonies is considered
a valuable
encyclopedia of Byzantine customs that revolve
around
the powerful Emperor.
For his son Romanus he wrote a shrewd book
On Imperial Administration that suggested
the proper diplomacy
for various countries.
The greedy and arrogant Patzinaks must
be controlled
annually by tribute, alliance promises, and the
exchange
of hostages in order to keep the Russians, Bulgarians,
and Magyars quiescent.
This valuable book was top secret and never
allowed
to leave the palace, where only high officials could read
it.
In diplomacy the Emperor recommended giving as little
as possible
to get as much as possible in order to enhance
power, and the
loyalty of the navy must be assured.
Constantine also wrote an
important history
of this period and a biography of Basil I.
Constantine VII was also concerned about land ownership,
and
in 947 a law ordered that all land in the Anatolikon and
Thracesion
themes that had been acquired by the powerful
since Constantine's
sole rule began and in the future be
restored immediately without
compensation to the peasants.
Constantine VII excelled at diplomacy
and often met with
dignitaries from a wide variety of countries.
In 946 he negotiated an exchange of
prisoners with Saif ad-Daula.
Magyars agreed to be baptized and concluded a
peace treaty in
949, the same year that
Liudprand of Cremona visited at Christmas.
In 957 Constantine met with the
emir of Diyarbekir and Princess
Olga of Russia.
Byzantine forces tried and failed to take Crete
in 949;
but the army led by John Curcuas captured Germaniceia
and crossed the Euphrates in 952.
However, the next year Saif
ad-Daula reconquered
Germaniceia and invaded Byzantine territory.
Yet after Nicephorus Phocas replaced his father Bardas
Phocas
in 957, the Byzantines took Hadath,
and the next year John Tzimisces
captured Samosata.
Constantine VII was succeeded by his son Romanus II
(r. 959-963),
who on his own had married the beautiful
Theaphano, daughter of
a Laconian tavern-keeper.
To please his wife the Emperor Romanus
removed his
mother Helena and had his five sisters put into convents.
Government affairs he left to the capable but unpopular
eunuch
Joseph Bringas, who in 961 during a famine
imported grain and
sold it for half price
even though he had a reputation for avarice.
In 960 the commander Nicephorus Phocas organized a
massive invasion
of Crete with more than three thousand ships.
After a blockade
of eight months the Byzantine troops stormed
the Muslim stronghold,
killing 200,000 and enslaving as many
according to the Arab chronicler
Nuwairi.
In 962 the imperial army led by Nicephorus invaded Cilicia,
moving past Tarsus but taking 55 walled towns including
Anazarbus,
Germaniceia, Raban, Duluk, and the Hamdanid
capital at Aleppo,
where Saif ad-Daula
surrendered after a siege.
When Romanus II died in March 963, Theaphano as Empress
became
regent for her two boys Basil II and Constantine VIII.
In August
Nicephorus Phocas (r. 963-969) marched into
Constantinople, overcame
the forces of Bringas in
street-fighting, and was crowned Emperor.
He married Theaphano and agreed to protect her two sons.
Bringas
was replaced by an illegitimate son of
Romanus I, a eunuch named
Basil.
John Tzimisces was made commander in the East
and Leo Phocas
commander in the West.
In 964 the Emperor sent his nephew Manuel
Phocas
with a navy to invade Sicily;
but they were defeated, and
Manuel was killed.
However, the next year the Byzantines took
over the
previously shared island of Cyprus.
That year Nicephorus,
his brother Leo, and John Tzimisces
besieged the populous cities
of
Tarsus and Mopsuestia, and both surrendered.
Nicephorus arrogantly
refused to pay the usual tribute
to Bulgaria but foolishly hired
the Russian prince Svjatoslav,
who defeated the Bulgarians in
968.
A Patzinak attack on Kiev made the prince go home;
but the
same summer the Russians returned and captured
Bulgarian king
Boris II,
who had just succeeded his father Peter.
Now the Byzantine
Emperor had to ally with the
Bulgarians to fight the Russians.
Antioch was not taken until 969
when the Emperor was returning
to Constantinople.
The emir of Aleppo was made a Byzantine vassal,
and their non-Christians paid imperial taxes.
A disciplined soldier with ascetic religious tendencies,
Nicephorus
helped his friend Athanasius found the
famous monastery of the
Lavra on Mount Athos.
When Patriarch Polyeuctes refused communion
to the
Emperor for a year because of his marriage to Theaphano,
he opposed the church's accumulation of land and in 964
issued an edict that prohibited any increase in church real estate.
The
legacies usually given to the church now could not include
land,
and no new monasteries could be founded.
As an aristocrat, Nicephorus
resented the laws giving land
back to the peasants, and in 967
in the name of equal justice
he proclaimed a law that protected
the property of the
powerful from being reclaimed by the poor
and that attempted
to keep the lands of the rich, the poor, and
the military separate.
He increased the required land value of
soldiers from
four pounds of gold to twelve, making these soldiers
no longer poor but nobles usually
accompanied by a band of tenants.
The militaristic Nicephorus tried to use the Muslim concept
of holy war (jihad) by urging Patriarch Polyeuctes to canonize
soldiers killed fighting against infidels as Christian martyrs,
but to their credit the Constantinople patriarch and the bishops
refused to sanction such a blasphemy.
Instead they urged the canons
of Saint Basil that prohibited
communion for three years to soldiers
polluted by killing.
The Emperor even issued an edict taking over
control of church
administration, but it was repealed after five
years.
Though most of his wars were victorious, the taxes to support
them were not popular, as the currency was debased.
After poor
harvests in 967 he even exploited the government's
monopoly of
grain, oil, and wine to gain money
from increased prices, causing
riots.
Nicephorus had banished John Tzimisces to his estate at
Chalcedon, and apparently the Empress Theaphano
(who some believe
also poisoned Constantine VII as well as
her husband Romanus II)
helped John's conspiracy that
murdered her husband Nicephorus
while he slept on December 10, 969.
The forthright Patriarch Polyeuctes insisted that
John Tzimisces
(r. 969-976) do penance, expel his mistress
Theaphano, and punish
his accomplices in assassination.
John pled innocence and cooperated
so that he could be
crowned Emperor by the Patriarch, and he revoked
the laws
restricting monastic and church possessions.
He donated
large amounts of his own private wealth to the
poor and abolished
the hated poll tax that
affected everyone but the aristocrats.
John married Theodora, the daughter of Constantine VII
and the
aunt of the young Emperors Basil II and Constantine,
whom he also
pledged to protect.
The eunuch Basil came over to serve
John with
increased influence.
The former Emperor's nephew Bardas Phocas
was
proclaimed Emperor in Casearea, but he was defeated
by John's
brother-in-law Bardas Sclerus, and Leo Phocas
the curopalates
was blinded after his failed attempt
to take power in the capital.
In 970 Bardas Sclerus with 12,000 skilled soldiers overcame
30,000 Russian invaders at Arcadiopolis near Adrianople.
First
Bardas and his brother triumphed in single combat.
After the battle
a few Russians escaped, and according
to a Byzantine historian
only 25 imperial soldiers were killed.
John took up the war against
Bulgaria and stormed their capital
at Great Preslav in 971, restoring
Boris II to his throne and
gaining Bulgarian support against the
Russians, whom he
besieged at Silistria, where Svjatoslav eventually
surrendered
and agreed not to fight the Byzantines again.
Emperor
John then released supplies to the starving Russians
and renewed
their commercial treaty.
Bulgaria was annexed by the Byzantine
empire;
Boris II was taken to Constantinople as a prisoner;
and
the Bulgarian Patriarchate was terminated.
John married his own relative named Theaphano to the
German
Otto II in 972 at Rome, gaining a treaty that
protected Byzantine
territories in Italy from northern invasion.
John continued the
war in the East,
taking Nisibis and Martyropolis.
However, John
was stopped from invading Armenia,
settling for an Armenian contingent,
when King Ashot III (r. 952-977) met him
with an army of 80,000.
Ashot had made peace with his brother Mushel,
who had founded
the separate
kingdom of Venand at Kars in 968.
Ashot had gained
favor from Baghdad by defeating
rebel forces that were causing
turmoil
in Azerbaijan and Mesopotamia.
John's invasion of Syria
began in 974, and the following year
Byzantine forces took Baalbek,
Damascus
(which surrendered and paid tribute), most of Palestine
including Tiberias, Nazareth, Akkon, and Caesarea,
and finally
Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Tripoli.
John Tzimisces returned
to his capital, where he died
probably of typhoid, on January
10, 976.
The eunuch Basil controlled the government for several years
while 18-year-old Basil II (r. 976-1025) and his brother
Constantine,
16, continued to indulge themselves in pleasures.
Basil II soon
became interested in ruling, while Constantine
was content to
let his brother take precedence.
Their great-uncle Basil demoted
eastern commander
Bardas Sclerus to governor of Mesopotamia.
Following
the example of the two previous aristocratic
commanders who took
over the government, in the summer
of 976 Bardas Sclerus was proclaimed
Emperor by his troops,
defeated imperial forces, killing their
commander Peter Phocas,
and marched to Constantinople in 978.
Ironically Basil called on Bardas Phocas, who had been exiled
for an attempted usurpation that had been stopped
by Sclerus for
John Tzimisces.
Phocas gathered forces at his family power center
of Caesarea, forcing Sclerus to turn back from the capital.
Sclerus
won the first battle, but near Amorium in May 979
Phocas defeated
Sclerus in single combat and then his army.
Sclerus fled to the
court of the Caliph.
A Georgian monk named John Tornik recruited
an
army of Georgian cavalry to help defeat Sclerus,
and with his
reward Georgians
built the Iviron monastery at Mt. Athos.
By 985 Basil II wanted to rule on his own, and the eunuch
Basil
was accused of malversation and plotting against him
with Bardas
Phocas and other generals.
The elderly Basil was arrested,
and
his vast wealth was confiscated.
Basil II declared invalid all
edicts of his great-uncle
unless he personally approved them.
A revolt had broken out in the Balkans led by the four sons
of
Macedonia governor Nicholas
and had spread as a war of liberation.
Bulgarian king Boris II and his brother Romanus escaped
from Constantinople;
however, Boris was accidentally
killed by Bulgarian sentries,
and Romanus could not rule
because he had been castrated by the
Byzantines.
After his older brothers died, Nicholas' son Samuel
founded an empire with a capital at Ochrida.
He revived the Bulgarian
Patriarchate and governed
from the Danube to the Balkans
and Macedonia
except for Thessalonica.
Samuel's forces conquered Thessaly in
985.
Basil's army attacked them at Sardica the next year
but was
defeated and had to retreat.
While Samuel consolidated his empire
from the Black Sea
to the Adriatic, Basil II had to return to
fight another civil war.
Bardas Phocas was declared Emperor in 987 by many
aristocrats
including Bardas Sclerus, though Phocas soon
betrayed Sclerus
and had him imprisoned.
With all Asia Minor behind him Bardas
Phocas
marched on the capital early in 988.
The Patriarch forced
the weakened Basil to repeal the
legislation of Nicephorus regarding
monastic properties,
though the Emperor got revenge later
by taxing
church property.
With his own army defeated, Basil II appealed
to Russian prince Vladimir; he sent 6,000 Varangians,
who defeated
the rebels at Chrysopolis and Abydus,
where Bardas Phocas died
in 989.
Basil had three rebel leaders executed.
Bardas Sclerus
revived his claim; but Basil offered him
second position in his
empire and was surprised
to find the elderly general was led in
nearly blind.
The noble Sclerus advised him not to let his generals
become wealthy and that he should keep them
busy with fines and
heavy taxes.
Basil himself never married, apparently taking the
advice
of Sclerus that he should not allow a woman
to have any
influence at court.
Basil had agreed to marry his sister to Vladimir
if the Russian people would convert and be baptized;
but Vladimir
had to invade and occupy Cherson to
make the Byzantine Emperor
keep this agreement.
The Russian church was subordinate to the
Constantinople
patriarch, who sent them Greek metropolitans.
Basil II invaded Macedonia again in 991, beginning a long war
against Samuel and his Balkan empire.
Basil granted Croat ruler
Stjepan Drzislav the government
of Dalmatia and probably gave
Dioclea
to Serbian prince John Vladimir.
In 992 the republic of
Venice was given favorable commercial
terms in exchange for their
policing the Adriatic Sea.
In 994 the Fatimids defeated the Byzantine
commander
of Antioch on the Orontes and besieged Aleppo,
which
Basil went in person to defend.
He would return to Syria again
in 999 after another
Fatimid victory over his Antioch forces.
In 996 Basil II issued a new law abolishing the forty-year
time limit on restoring land to the poor.
Mentioning the wealthy
Phocas and Maleini families,
the Emperor decreed that any property
acquired since the
first land reform law of 922 should be restored
to the poor without compensation.
Although Cappadocian magnate
Eustathius Maleinus
had given him hospitality on his Syrian campaign,
he had so many slaves and such a powerful private army
that Basil
invited him to Constantinople and held him
there while the state
confiscated Maleini property.
Basil also proclaimed a law that
the wealthy must
help their insolvent neighbors with their taxes.
Meanwhile Samuel's forces had invaded Greece.
After visiting
Armenia and Iberia in the Caucasus region,
in 1001 Basil launched
a major campaign to regain the Balkans.
His imperial forces took
Sardica and much of Bulgaria
before invading Macedonia.
They took
the stronghold of Vidin on the Danube
while Samuel plundered Adrianople.
By the river Vardar in 1004 the Byzantines severely defeated
Samuel's
army, capturing Skoplje and Vodena.
The next year Dyrrachium was
betrayed
to the Byzantine Emperor.
The major defeat of the Macedonian
army came in 1014
at the Kleidon mountain passes while Samuel
fled to Prilep.
The ruthless Basil had 14,000 captives blinded,
leaving one eye for every hundred men to guide them back
to Prilep,
where their czar Samuel upon seeing them
collapsed and died two
days later.
Over the next few years Samuel's successors were murdered
while the imperial troops gradually conquered the entire
Balkan
peninsula for the first time since the Slavs
had migrated there
four centuries before.
Basil accepted taxes paid in kind instead
of gold,
and the Ochrida patriarch was reduced to an archbishop
subject to the Emperor rather than
the Constantinople Patriarch.
The entire region was governed as military themes
like the rest
of the Byzantine empire.
Armenia enjoyed an era of peace under Smbat II (r. 977-990)
and Gagik I (r. 990-1020); but after this Bagratid king died,
a civil war broke out in Armenia between
Gagik's sons John Smbat
and Ashot.
Georgian king Georgi and the Catholicos Petros mediated
the conflict by dividing the kingdom between them.
Both brothers
violated the treaty, and John Smbat promised
Basil II his kingdom
after his death.
Vaspurkan and part of Iberia were also annexed.
While the Emperor was at Trebizond on his way to Iberia
in 1022,
a revolt was led by generals Nicephorus Xiphias
and Nicephorus
Phocas in Cappadocia;
but Xiphias ambushed and assassinated Phocas.
Xiphias was eventually captured, tonsured, and banished
as his
estate was confiscated.
Even when he died on December 15, 1025
the ambitious
Basil was planning an invasion of Sicily.
The Byzantine
empire had reached its greatest extent,
and while reducing taxes
on the poor and waging continuous
wars enough plunder had been
gained from the conquered
and the estates of rebel aristocrats
to leave a treasury
that included 15,000,000 gold coins.
Symeon (949-1022) was abbot at Mamas for thirty years,
but
his mysticism challenged the authority and theology
of the Byzantine
court's Archbishop Stephen,
and Symeon was banished in 1009.
He
was criticized for teaching that a
non-ordained monk can forgive
sins.
His discourses emphasize repentance, detachment,
renunciation,
virtues, and charity.
Symeon believed that everyone could experience
the
Holy Spirit directly, and he wrote that to deny that
is to
blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.
The ascetic life is a purification
from vices and passions,
and practicing virtues is a preparation
for contemplation and mystical experience.
Detachment or apatheia
is the door to contemplation
that opens when self-love is silenced.
In addition to his Discourses and Theological Treatises,
Symeon also composed Hymns of Divine Love.
Basil II's brother Constantine VIII (r. 1025-1028) finally
became Emperor and had plenty of money to spend on his
pleasures
at the Hippodrome, banqueting, hunting, and games.
Constantine
was very worried about revolutionary plots,
and he had many people
blinded without trials whether
they had committed crimes or were
merely suspected,
including Constantine Burtzes, Nicephorus Comnenus,
Bardas Phocas, and even the Naupactus metropolitan.
The Emperor
insisted that all taxes be exacted even the
arrears that Basil
had left uncollected.
On his death bed he had his sister Zoe marry
the most
likely successor Romanus Argyrus even though
they had
to send the wife of Romanus to a monastery
and get a divorce first.
Three days after the wedding,
Romanus was proclaimed Emperor.
Zoe was beautiful but nearly fifty; after Romanus
discovered she
could not give him a child,
he put her on an allowance and ignored
her.
Having studied past Roman Emperors, Romanus III
(r. 1028-1034)
dreamed of military glory,
but in his only battle his troops quickly
ran away.
His skilled general George Maniaces succeeded
in Syria
and captured Edessa in 1032.
Romanus released prisoners
and even
paid much of their debts.
He yielded to the wealthy landlords
on taxes,
and the peasants were too poor to pay.
So he revived
the corrupt system of
farming out taxes to greedy and ruthless
men.
The small free-holdings and even lands of soldiers were
quickly bought up by the aristocrats especially during
a series of disasters
that included famine,
plague, locusts, and an earthquake.
Romanus
rapidly depleted the imperial treasury
by sending money as relief
to the sufferers.
He lavished treasure building a church in imitation
of Justinian,
and the writer Michael Psellus wondered how the
pious could
enter an ostentatious church dedicated to the "mother
of God"
that had caused so many evils in its building.
His
most influential advisor, a eunuch named
John Orphanotrophus,
had a young brother
Michael, who appealed to the lonely Zoe.
Michael
became Zoe's lover, and in 1034
Romanus died in his bath, either
poisoned or drowned.
That evening Michael IV (r. 1034-1041) was put on the throne.
He also tired of Zoe and had her kept under guard.
John Orphanotrophus
and the bureaucracy managed
to dominate the aristocratic military
class; but the callous tax
collection that demanded money instead
of payment in kind
provoked a revolt by the Slavs in the Balkans.
When John, the Slav Archbishop of Ochrida, died in 1037,
a Greek
named Leo from St. Sophia was sent to replace him.
In 1040 Peter
Deljan, a grandson of Samuel, was proclaimed
czar in Belgrade,
and John Vladislav's son Alusianus escaped
from Constantinople
and became his co-ruler.
However, the rebels were divided, and
the uprising was
suppressed the next year; but in Zeta (Dioclea)
Stephen Voislav
had been independent since 1035,
and in 1042 he
expanded his domain
by defeating the Byzantine army.
Michael had
ascetic religious tendencies,
and he contributed imperial funds
to monasteries, nunneries,
hospices, and even founded a
retirement
home for former prostitutes.
Zoe was induced to adopt his nephew
Michael.
Finally the Emperor retired to a
monastery and died the
same day.
Michael V Caliphates became Emperor
on December 10, 1041;
but
he ungratefully turned on his uncle John Orphanotrophus
by banishing
him and Zoe to a nunnery;
he even ordered Patriarch Alexius to
withdraw to a monastery.
Michael sent a message to the Senate
accusing the Empress
and the Patriarch of plotting against his
life.
The people in the capital felt more loyalty to Zoe and her
sister
Theodora than to him and tore down the mansions of his
family.
Empress Zoe and John Orphanotrophus returned to the palace
to help Michael; but the crowd went and got Theodore
from her
nunnery and clothed her in a royal robe.
Michael and John fled
to a church for sanctuary while
fighting in the streets killed
about 3,000.
According to Michael Psellus, Michael confessed that
God was just and he was paying a correct penalty;
he and John
Orphanotrophus were taken by the mob,
and the next day Theodora
ordered both Michael V
and John Orphanotrophus blinded.
Zoe allowed
Theodora to share her throne, and the two sisters
ruled for seven
weeks until Zoe married the eminent senator
Constantine Monomachus,
a third marriage for both of them.
On the following day Constantine IX (r. 1042-1055) was
crowned
Emperor, and he soon brought his mistress Sclerina
into the palace;
Zoe was not jealous
and even agreed to call her Augusta.
Constantine
elevated Sclerena's brother Romanus Sclerus,
who from personal
enmity persuaded him to recall the
outstanding general Maniaces
while Sclerus ravaged his
estates and threatened the general's
wife.
Maniacus had been trying to conquer Sicily.
His replacement
was assassinated,
and his troops proclaimed him Emperor.
Crossing
from Italy to Dyrrachium to gain support from
Bogislav's Serbs,
who had defeated an imperial army the
previous year, they marched
on Thessalonica;
but in 1043 they were defeated by the Byzantine
army,
and Maniaces was killed.
Demanding compensation for a brawl
in the capital that
had killed one of their nobleman, 100,000
Russians
invaded in 1043; but once again Greek fire
burned their
ships, and it was reported that
15,000 Russian corpses washed
ashore.
Imperial forces chased the Russians
on land back to the
Black Sea.
To seal the peace a Greek princess
was married to Iaroslav's
son Vsevolod.
On his death-bed Constantine VIII had returned Basil's
agreement
with Armenia to a priest,
who sold the paper back to Michael IV
in 1034.
After John Smbat died in 1040, Armenians led by general
Vahram defeated a Byzantine army, leaving 20,000 dead
and wounded
around the walls of Ani.
Vahram crowned Gagik II (r. 1042-1046),
and an imperial
army sent by Constantine IX was defeated.
The
Emperor invited Gagik to Constantinople to sign
a peace treaty
but then imprisoned him
when he refused to turn over Ani.
The
Catholicos Petros sold the keys of Ani to the Byzantines,
who
then banished and poisoned Armenian princes
and installed a Greek
garrison.
Armenia was made into a Byzantine province
but was attacked
by the Turks led by Tughril-Beg in 1049.
Many people were scandalized by Constantine IX openly
having
a wife and a mistress, and a riot broke out
during a royal procession
in 1044.
Sclerina died not long after that.
He took an Alan princess
as a mistress;
but when Zoe died in 1050,
he did not marry the
Alan out of respect for Theodora.
Emperor Constantine appreciated
learning,
and in 1045 he revived Constantinople's university with
a
curriculum that included the seven liberal arts (grammar,
rhetoric,
dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy)
and a school
of law headed by John Xiphilinus.
Michael Psellus was in charge
of philosophy,
and other teachers included his former teacher
John Mauropus and friends Constantine Leichudes,
Michael Cerularius,
and Nicetas Byzantius.
However, so many disputes occurred that
the Emperor
closed the school after about five years;
Leichudes
and Mauropus were disgraced,
and Xiphilin and Psellus became monks,
though the latter returned to court when Constantine died.
Constantine also had built several hospitals
and refuges for
the poor.
Meanwhile the wealthy aristocrats and the ecclesiastical
estates
were given more privileges exempting them from taxation.
Many were rewarded with grants of land called pronoia
or
a period of time,
though the landcould not be sold nor inherited.
In this feudal system these landlords and tax farmers
developed their own administrations parallel to the state,
while most people
bore increased burdens.
In the provinces the power of the generals
gave way to civil
praetors, and the reduction in local
militias reverted the empire
to the old days of hiring mercenaries,
now usually Russian
and English Varangians and Normans rather
than Goths.
In 1047 a Macedonian revolt was led by the Emperor's cousin
Leo Tornicius, who had been separated
from Constantine's sister
Euprepia.
Leo was proclaimed Emperor at Adrianopolis, and his
army
marched to the walls of Constantinople, where they tried
to win over the population by persuasion.
When this failed, Leo
had missed
his opportunity to storm the gates.
The imperial army
arrived from Armenia, and Leo's forces
were then easily defeated;
Constantine granted all the rebels
amnesty except that Leo with
his most
loyal supporter Vatatzes were blinded.
In 1048 the Patzinaks
crossed the Danube in such large
numbers that they were allowed
to stay and were encouraged
to serve as garrisons, though their
penchant for banditry
resulted in imperial forces being sent.
After several defeats the Byzantines resorted to bestowing gifts,
land grants, and court titles on Patzinak chiefs.
When Patriarch Alexius died in 1043, Constantine had
appointed
his top minister Michael Cerularius,
who had become a monk in
1040 when he was banished
for a conspiracy against Emperor Michael
IV.
In 1052 he ordered all Catholic churches in his diocese
to
conform to orthodox practices;
when they refused, he closed them
down.
Cerularius got the Greek Archbishop Leo of Ochrida to write
a letter denouncing Roman usage that was sent to the
Orthodox
Church's representative in Italy
and was meant for the Pope.
Much
was made of the most trivial issues such as the
orthodox use of
leavened bread or whether the Holy Spirit
proceeded from the Father and the Son.
More significant were the political differences
as the Byzantine
and papal armies had just been defeated by the
Normans.
Emperor Constantine actually wanted closer relations
to keep the empire together; but Pope Leo IX sent a
delegation
headed by the difficult Cardinal Humbert,
who could not get along
with the ambitious Cerularius.
In 1054 Humbert deposited a polemical
tract
in the cathedral of St. Sophia.
Cerularius persuaded Constantine
to call a synod
that excommunicated the Roman legates.
The schism
between the Eastern and Western churches
that had threatened for
so long
now became a fact that still persists.
Constantine IX died in 1055, and for the next twenty months
the elderly Theodora, the last of the Macedonian dynasty
started
by Basil I, ruled in her own name.
As she was dying, she selected
as her successor
a retired official who became Michael VI.
He
was so verbally abusive at a meeting of his top military
leaders
that in June 1057 they proclaimed
Isaac Comnenus Emperor in Paphlagonia.
They defeated the imperial forces sent against them,
and Michael
sent Psellus to negotiate, offering Isaac almost
equal power as
Caesar in a lawful manner to avoid usurpation;
but the opposition
party in the capital rose against Michael.
Patriarch Michael Cerularius also supported the change,
and
after Michael VI abdicated to become a monk,
he crowned Isaac
(r. 1057-1059) on September 1.
Constantine Leichudes headed the
administration,
and Psellus became president of the Senate.
To
gain funds Isaac began confiscating property,
including that of
the Church, causing Cerularius to make him
give up administration
of the St. Sophia cathedral
and pledge not to interfere in ecclesiastical
concerns.
Thus this Patriarch changed the long-standing tradition
of imperial control over the Orthodox Church.
When it was reported
that Cerularius donned purple boots
implying his imperial ambition,
Emperor Isaac waited
until he left the capital to visit a monastery
and had him
arrested and exiled in November 1058.
Cerularius would
not resign, and Isaac had to
summon a synod to depose him.
Cerularius
died while they were meeting, and Constantine
Leichudes became
Patriarch,
as Psellus moved up to prime minister.
A year later
Psellus and the Church persuaded
an ill Isaac to retire into the
Studite monastery.
Psellus and Patriarch Leichudes now made their friend
Constantine
Ducas Emperor as Constantine X (r. 1059-1067).
He not only continued
to farm out taxes, but he even sold
the highest offices in the
finance department.
According to his prime minister Psellus, Constantine
concentrated on giving justice to injured parties,
annulling unjust
contracts, and he vowed to abstain from all
violence, including
corporal punishment.
The army was neglected, and the empire began
to crumble.
Normans led by Robert Guiscard took over South Italy.
Hungarians occupied the Danube fortress at Belgrade in 1064,
and
that autumn Patzinaks and Uzes poured into the Balkans,
plundering
as they went.
Constantine did mobilize an army, but only a severe
epidemic
caused many Uzes to retreat back across the Danube while
others settled down or entered imperial service.
Constantine alienated
Armenians
by persecuting the Christian Monophysites.
The Seljuk
Turks led by Alp Arslan invaded Armenia
taking Ani in 1065; they
devastated Cilicia
and captured Caesarea in 1067.
When Constantine
X died, Empress Eudocia became regent
for her young sons; but
the government was run by Psellus
and the late Emperor's brother
John Ducas as Caesar.
Many called for a revitalized military, and Eudocia was
persuaded
to marry the general Romanus Diogenes
(r. 1068-1071), who became
Emperor
on the first day of the new year.
He gathered an army
of mercenaries that included Patzinaks,
Uzes, Normans, and Franks
while the last Byzantine
stronghold in Italy at Bari was besieged
for three years
by Guiscard's Franks until it fell in April 1071.
In the East initial victories were canceled by a disastrous
defeat north of Lake Van in Armenia at Manzikert in 1071.
The Turkish
Uzes went over to the Muslims;
Armenians and the Franks led by
Roussel deserted;
and the forces under Andronicus Ducas fled in
panic.
The Seljuks led by Alp Arslan captured Emperor Romanus,
and he agreed to pay a ransom and annual tribute,
pledging to
release Turkish prisoners and provide military aid.
In Constantinople
this treaty was rejected,
and Romanus was deposed.
For a few months Empress Eudocia tried to rule with her eldest
son Michael; but on October 24, 1071 Psellus had his former
student
crowned as Michael VII (r. 1071-1078).
When Romanus returned,
a brief civil war ended in his
surrendering for immunity; his
eyes were put out,
and Romanus died the next year.
Since the treaty
was void, the Seljuks continued
their attacks in Asia Minor.
A
desperate Michael VII appealed
to Pope Gregory VII and the West.
The next year at Prizren in Zeta Constantine Bodin was
crowned
czar, and this Balkan insurrection was quelled
with great difficulty
by imperial forces
led by Nicephorus Bryennius.
Croat king Peter
Cresimir (r. 1058-1074) expanded his realm,
and his successor
Demetrius Zvonimir was crowned
by papal legates, as was Michael
of Zeta in 1077.
In the north Michael VII stopped the gifts to the Patzinaks
and Uzes, and so they pillaged the province of Adrianople
and
besieged Constantinople.
At the capital wheat became so expensive
that the Emperor
became known as Michael Parapinaces, because
a nomisma
gold coin was required "for a quarter"
(para pinakion) of a medimnus of wheat.
He
followed the advice of Logothete Nicephoritzes rather than
Psellus
in trying to counter feudal tendencies by re-centralizing
the
bureaucracy and making the wheat trade a state monopoly;
but increased
bread prices sent labor costs up.
A mob razed the storehouse in
Rhaedestus to the ground,
and after Michael fell from power,
the
hated Nicephoritzes was tortured to death.
While Michael was absorbed in rhetorical trials and debates,
military revolts were led by the Norman Roussel of Bailleul,
who
supported Caesar John Ducas for Emperor.
Byzantine power called
on the Turks, who captured Roussel
and ransomed him to the imperial
general Alexius Comnenus.
Soon Alexius was using Roussel to help
fight
against others trying to claim the throne.
Dyrrachium commander
Nicephorus Bryennius was
proclaimed Emperor at Adrianople in 1077
and marched on Constantinople.
In Asia Minor the military governor
of the Anatolikon theme,
Nicephorus Botaneiates, also claimed
to be Emperor in
January 1078 and approached the capital from
the other side.
While he was at Nicaea, a revolt in the capital
supported
by the Church compelled Michael VII
to abdicate and
become a Studite monk.
Nicephorus Botaneiates (r. 1078-1081) was crowned
by the Patriarch
and married Empress Maria
even though her husband was still alive.
The struggles between military commanders continued as
Nicephorus
Melissenus was proclaimed at Nicaea in 1080
and appealed to Suleiman,
as had Botaneiates.
The Turks used these alliances to conquer
Asia Minor
and founded a Roman province for Islam called Rum
in
the homeland of the former Byzantine empire.
At the capital mint
the gold coin respected as the Byzantine
nomisma, which
had rarely fluctuated for centuries,
was now mixed with an alloy.
In 1081 Alexius Comnenus emerged as the most distinguished
general
and married Irene Ducas; he promised Empress Maria
he would be
guardian of her boy Constantine Ducas.
Alexius refused to give
Nicephorus Melissenus what was left
of Asia Minor, but he promised
to make him Caesar.
German troops helped Alexius enter the capital;
after three days of fighting and looting,
Botaneiates abdicated,
and on Easter
Alexius Comnenus (r. 1081-1118)
was crowned Byzantine
Emperor.
After capturing the island of Corfu, Normans led by
Robert
Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, besieged the Byzantine
stronghold at
Dyrrachium in 1081 and invaded Epirus,
Macedonia, and Thessaly
as far as Larissa.
When Byzantines in Italy rose up, Robert returned
there,
leaving his son Bohemund in command.
Alexius made a treaty
with Suleiman at Nicaea
so that his troops would be free to fight
in the West.
The next year the Doge of Venice was given extraordinary
trading privileges including warehouses at Constantinople
to get
the support of his navy in the Adriatic.
The Emperor with an army,
which included Slavs, Turks,
and his English-Varangian bodyguards,
regained Thessaly,
and the Venetians helped bring Dyrrachium
back
into the empire.
After subduing the revolt in Italy, Robert returned
to the fight;
but he died of a plague in 1085.
Constantine Bodin
of Zeta had withdrawn
his support from the Byzantines,
and other
Dalmatian cities sided with the Normans.
Bogomile leaders from
Philippopolis were punished by
Alexius for betraying the imperial
cause, resulting in a
mutiny led by Traulus, who appealed to the
Patzinaks.
In 1086 they were defeated, but the Patzinaks routed
the Byzantine forces at Dristra (Silistria),
nearly capturing
Alexius.
The wars fought with mercenaries were expensive,
and the fiscal
pressure caused revolts on Cyprus and Crete
by two independent
chiefs; but they were quelled by the
Grand Drungarius Ducas, and
these islands continued
to be important Byzantine naval bases.
At the capital regent Anna Dalassena, mother of Alexius,
had confiscated
money from the churches,
outraging public opinion.
Alexius had
to pledge reparations and annual payments.
In 1086 Alexius himself
failed to gain funds from the churches,
and three years later
the Emperor had to assuage the public
by promulgating a new law
forbidding the Emperor
from taking Church property.
For a while
the Patzinaks were busy fighting the Cumans,
who were pushing
them south.
The Patzinaks soon spread to Philippopolis and Adrianople,
and in 1090 they besieged Constantinople by land and sea.
Alexius
gained the Cumans as allies, and in April 1091
they nearly wiped
out the Patzinaks near Mt. Levunion.
Smyrna emir Tzachas, who
had contributed his fleet
to the Patzinak attack and was calling
himself Emperor,
was also defeated.
Alexius next managed to get
the Nicaea emir Abul Kasim
to kill Tzachas and make a treaty with
the Byzantines,
as did his successor Kilij Arslan, son of Suleiman.
In 1092 Alexius felt secure enough to recognize his son John
as heir to the throne, displacing Constantine Ducas.
Several assassination
attempts were made on behalf of the
Ducas family, and in 1094
Alexius had Nicephorus Diogenes,
Cecaumenus Catacalon, and Taronites
arrested;
their property was confiscated, and they were banished.
Later Diogenes and Catacalon were blinded,
but historian Anna
Comnena claimed she did not know
whether her father Alexius had
given his consent or not.
Emperor Alexius moved against Serbs
to stop the raids of Vukan of Rascia in 1094.
The Cumans turned
to plundering the region of Adrianople
and even offered a pretender
to the throne;
but he was captured and blinded, and the disorganized
Cumans were scattered by imperial forces.
During these crises
Alexius had probably asked for help
from the West by writing a
letter to Flanders Count Robert,
but none would come until Pope
Urban II
made his appeal in 1095.
The strong leadership of Alexius
had enabled
the Byzantine empire to regain some stability
just
prior to the epoch-making Crusades.
The epic Barlaam and Ioasaph first became known
to the world in the middle of the 11th century as
by John the Monk of
the St. Sabbas monastery.
Later copyists probably wrongly identified
the author
as John of Damascus (8th century).
The framework of
the story is set in India,
and it clearly contains elements from
stories
of the famous Buddha (6th
century BC).
These stories of the Buddha
and the Bodhisattva tradition
found their way into Muslim culture
as the Arabic
Kitab Bilawhar wa-Yudasaf, which was
current
in Baghdad in the 8th century.
A Christianized adaptation became
the
Georgian Balavariani romance about a century later.
An Abasgian or West Georgian monk named Euthymius,
who was a contemporary
of Symeon and became abbot
of the Iviron monastery at Mount Athos,
converted the story
from the Indian idiom into Greek sometime
before
he was killed while visiting Constantinople in 1028.
There
the final Greek work was translated into Latin in 1048
and soon
became well known as Barlaam and Ioasaph.
Early Manichaean
influences in its philosophy account for its
popularity among
the Albigensians in Medieval Europe.
Translated into many European
languages such as
Old Slavonic, Russian, French, German, Italian,
Norse,
and English, the poem was quite influential in the late
medieval period, affecting French and Italian miracle plays,
dramas
by Lope de Vega and Calderon,
and the casket fable in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.
The author began by noting that the disciple Thomas took
the message of the Christ to India, and many Indians
soon retired
as monks and lived like angels.
However, King Abenner still followed
idolatry
and persecuted the Christians.
His chief satrap was converted
and told the king
to remove Anger and Desire from his court;
but
the king ignored him.
Astrologers prophesied that Abenner's son
Ioasaph
would reign over a great new kingdom.
So his father kept
him from seeing any sign of old age,
illness, poverty, death or
Christian monks
so that his life would be nothing but pleasure.
As a young man Ioasaph grew restless of his royal
imprisonment
and asked his father to release him.
One day the prince saw a
blind man and a maimed man.
Then he saw an old man, and he asked
his tutor about them.
An elderly monk named Barlaam disguised
himself
as a merchant and told the tutor
he had a very precious
and magical gem for the prince.
Admitted to Ioasaph, Barlaam began to tell him pertinent
folk-tales
(probably from India), showing that things
are not always what
they appear to be outwardly.
In between these stories Barlaam
expounds at length
the basic teachings of the Christian religion,
beginning
with God's creation of Adam and his temptation by the
devil,
mentioning the flood, Abraham, and Moses
before
describing the incarnation of Jesus.
Barlaam tells Ioasaph about baptism and the day of judgment.
To
elaborate Barlaam retells several parables of Jesus
and
quotes the prophet Isaiah and other scripture.
He explains
how Ioasaph can be saved
from the doom of sinners.
Ioasaph wants
to be baptized but asks what happens
if he sins after being baptized.
Barlaam explains about penitence and tears that can purge
the
soul, recalling the parables of the prodigal son
and the good
shepherd.
(Mentioning tears indicates a possible influence from
Symeon.)
When Ioasaph asks what he should do, Barlaam tells him
about
hermits and monks, who live ascetically for purification.
Barlaam's
folk-tale describes how a king can send treasure
to a future kingdom
that awaits him after death
by giving charity to the poor.
Jesus
told the rich man to sell all his property and follow him.
Barlaam
explains about free will
which puts virtue in one's own power.
Ioasaph wants to flee the world to find the glory of God.
Barlaam
explains what death is and
how he came to change his monk's clothing.
Ioasaph offers to give alms to Barlaam and his monks,
but Barlaam
assures him they are truly wealthy without
material treasures;
it would be better
for Ioasaph to give to the poor.
After instructing
him in Christian doctrines such as the trinity
and the veneration
of images, Barlaam baptizes Ioasaph.
Barlaam exhorts him to practice
virtue and pray.
After Barlaam leaves, Ioasaph's tutor
Zardan
tells the king about Barlaam's visit.
The king calls on his counselor
Araches to bring back
his son to his native faith, referred to
here as idolatry,
and sends him after Barlaam.
Araches captures
a band of monks and brings them back
to the king, who asks them
about their relics.
The chief monk reproaches the king, who threatens
them
with torture; but they welcome martyrdom,
and all seventeen
are killed.
Unable to find Barlaam, Araches takes the diviner Nachor
and
tells the king he is Barlaam.
The king pleads with his son Ioasaph
to give up his new faith,
but instead the prince tries to convert
his father to Christianity.
So the king decides to sponsor a debate
on religion.
Barachias is the only Christian with the courage
to appear before their persecutor.
Ioasaph persuades Nachor to
defend Christianity well.
Nachor begins the debate by criticizing
the
idolatry
of Chaldean cosmic religion
and of the Greek gods
and goddesses.
He blames the Jews for denying Christ,
but he praises
the Christians as being
the only ones to know and practice the
truth.
Without the other views being presented,
Ioasaph commends
Nachor's triumph
and takes him to his palace,
though he knows
he is not Barlaam.
Nachor confesses his deceit
and is baptized
by a monk in the desert.
Next the magician Theudas promises the king that
his son's
new religion will be defeated.
Fair damsels are used to tempt
Ioasaph;
but he prays and mortifies his flesh with fasts and vigils.
A beautiful princess asks Ioasaph to wed her;
but he says he has
taken a vow of chastity.
After falling asleep and having a heavenly
vision that also
shows him the torment of sinners, Ioasaph lays
in bed.
His father visits him, and Theudas again tries to persuade
the prince; but Ioasaph denounces the idolatry of Theudas
with
its images of human vices.
Theudas says the powerful are on his
side,
while Ioasaph points to the success of Christ's message.
Finally Theudas burns his magic books and is baptized.
Araches advises King Abenner
to give Ioasaph half his kingdom.
The prince has a Christian temple built
and leads his people into
the Christian faith.
Wealth is distributed to the poor,
and Ioasaph's
kingdom thrives.
Outshone, Abenner writes to his son,
who comes
and teaches him Christian doctrine.
King Abenner destroys the
"idols" and is baptized a Christian;
then his kingdom
prospers too.
After his father dies, Ioasaph renounces his kingdom
and appoints the reluctant Barachias king,
telling him to be merciful
to all.
Ioasaph goes into the desert and prays he will find Barlaam.
After facing temptations by the devil,
Ioasaph lives in the desert
for two years.
Then he is guided to Barlaam, who hardly recognizes
him.
After many years together Barlaam passes out of his body.
Ioasaph has a vision of a heavenly city and talks to
the spirit
of Barlaam before he too dies.
King Barachias takes their bodies
to his kingdom,
where the relics of these two saints are venerated.
This story conveys the teachings of the Christian religion
as taught by Jesus and
practiced by monks.
Yet its setting in India and use of the Buddha's
renunciation
of his royal heritage shows a lack of understanding
of the Buddha himself and the very
spiritual religions of India
that pre-date Christianity by many
centuries.
While the Christian teachings are good, the attitude
toward
other religions is rather intolerant and self-righteous.
Thus the story reflects a Christian fantasy
of religious conquest
over an unknown culture in the East.
Digenis Akritas was perhaps
the most popular poem of
its era.
Composed and enhanced over the centuries,
several different
texts exist.
The Grottaferrata version has been well translated
into
English by Denison B. Hull as The Two-Blood Border Lord.
The title could also be translated
The Half-Breed Border Protector.
The legend of this hero named Basil is set in the late ninth
and
early tenth centuries in the region where the Anatolic
theme of
the Byzantine empire meets the Syrian lands
of the Muslims near
the Euphrates River.
The first book is about Basil's parents.
His father is a Muslim emir, who falls in love with the
daughter
of a Christian general from the royal Ducas family.
The emir carries
her off and is pursued by her brothers.
The Saracen challenges
them to single combat and is defeated
by the youngest; but he
refuses to turn her over,
instead asking to marry her and offering
to become a Christian.
After Basil is born, the emir returns to his mother in Syria
before bringing her back as a convert
to settle among the Christians.
Basil is given three years of lessons and shows his great
strength
as a youth by killing bears with his bare hands.
He courts the
carefully guarded daughter of a general
at her window until she
allows him to carry her away.
He kills the soldiers sent after
him; but for her sake
he spares her brothers, and her father agrees
to the marriage, offering a fabulous dowry.
Yet the noble Basil
declines the wealth,
which he gives to her brothers.
The wedding
celebration lasts three months,
and her first brother gives him
ten young eunuchs as slaves.
Basil takes up his duty of guarding the border.
In one episode
Basil finds a bride deserted by her husband;
he saves her from
robbers
and takes pleasure from her by force,
although he feels
ashamed for his sin afterwards.
Basil protects his wife by killing
a dragon,
a lion, and many soldiers.
He defeats in combat three
experienced outlaws,
who appeal to the Amazon Maximo.
She challenges
Basil to single combat, and he defeats her.
They meet alone and
make love;
but after going home to his wife,
he goes back and
kills Maximo.
Basil's father dies,
and five years later his mother
passes on too.
In the last book Basil dies of lumbago at the same
time
as his wife, and he is honored by many for his heroic deeds.
This story reflects the frequent clashes between the
Roman empire
and the Muslims and the Byzantine
desire to see Muslims converted
to their religion,
while offering fantasies of a stupendous warrior.
1. Maximus the Confessor, The Four Hundred Chapters on Love
1:31-36 tr. George C. Berthold.
2. Ibid., 3:4.
3. Butler's Lives of the Saints ed. Michael Walsh, p. 181.
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