Download PDF | Head, Constance - Imperial twilight the Palaiologos dynasty and the decline of Byzantium, Chicago : Nelson-Hall, 1977.
245 Pages
Introduction
This is the story of a family, the House of Palaiologos, the longest-lived and last of the reigning dynasties of imperial Byzantium. The Palaiologoi ruled for almost two hundred years, from 1259 to 1453. Their empire, though a land of great and ancient traditions, was throughout these last two centuries of its existence a nation struggling for survival, surrounded by enemies outside and torn by factionalism within.
The generations between the crafty, terrible Michael VIII, founder of the family, and Constantine XI, the last heroic defender of the dying empire, present a wide gallery of personalities. Beneath the strange hemispherical crown of Byzantium adorned with cascading strings of jewels, the ten Palaiologan emperors are distinctive individuals, men whose plans and ambitions, for good or ill, would mold forever the future of their country.
The Byzantine Empire, the great medieval continuator of the ancient Roman state, still remains an unfamiliar land to many readers of history. The medieval Byzantines were Greek-speakers (Palaiologos, incidentally, is a Greek name meaning “ancient word”). The imperial tradition, however, goes back to Rome and to Constantine the Great, the fourth-century Roman emperor who established the city of Constantinople and made it his capital in A.D. 330. Out of that move the Roman Empire of the East—the Byzantine Empire—was born. Through the centuries, long after the city of Rome had passed into other hands, the Byzantines would continue to speak of themselves as "Romans." And even when their territories were confined to scattered sections of Asia Minor, Greece, and the Balkans—indeed, even when at the last there was nothing left but Constantinople itself—their sovereign was officially titled Emperor—Basileus and Autokrator—of the Romans. l
The Palaiologoi proudly displayed the device of the “Roman” eagle, though in fact this symbol bore little resemblance to its prototype, the eagles of the ancient Roman legions. The later Byzantine version was a creature with two heads, that it might “look East and West,” and with the Greek letters IAAI (for Palaiologos) often emblazoned on its breast in a curious design. It was the same sort of logic that saw in this fabulous creature a Roman eagle that could view Constantinople itself as “New Rome.”
The Byzantines loved Constantinople with a mighty passion; it was the “city of all cities.” Once, long before the Palaiologoi ruled, it had been the largest city of the Christian world, and if time and misfortune had robbed it of much of its former beauty and wealth, it was even in the last centuries of the empire the hub upon which all else depended.
The Palaiologoi and their subjects could not forget how in former centuries Byzantium had ranked among the most important world powers. In the early Middle Ages, in fact, the empire was indisputably the strongest, wealthiest, and most cultured state in Christendom. But that was long ago, before the nomadic Turks came riding out of the steppes of central Asia to carve out a homeland for themselves in territories that had once been Byzantium's finest provinces. It was in the eleventh century that the first Turkish tribes came into Asia Minor in great numbers. Two hundred years later, when Michael, the first of the Palaiologan emperors, was born, the Turks were still there, fervent followers of Islam and perennial enemies of the Orthodox Christian Byzantines.
But if the Turks were a foe to be feared, so also were the “Latin” Christians of Western Europe. While storytellers of the West chronicled the glorious deeds of the Crusaders, Byzantines looked back to the successive waves of these “soldiers of God” as marking a terrible time in their history. “Crusaders” who apparently believed Greek Orthodox Christians were no better than infidels, who slaughtered and plundered indiscriminately, and who at length in 1204 captured Constantinople itself—these were a worse foe than the Turks had ever been! Many a Byzantine held this opinion, and with ample justification.
For more than half a century after the terrible year 1204, a line of “Latin” emperors {really Belgians, but the Byzantines described everyone from Western Europe as “Latins”) ruled in Constantinople, their shaky throne heavily supported by the merchant republic of Venice. As an aftermath of the "crusade," semi-independent Latin principalities were established in various parts of the Greek world. Meanwhile the Byzantine imperial court moved across the Straits of the Bosphoros to Nicaea, about forty miles from the old imperial capital.
At the outset, Nicaea's position as headquarters for the "empire-in-exile" was anything but secure. Not only was a large part of the old Byzantine Empire in the hands of the Venetians and other "Latins," but there emerged also a rival Greek state, the Despotate of Epiros on the Adriatic coast that refused to recognize Nicaea's claim. In spite of these problems, the emperors of the Laskaris-Vatatzes dynasty in Nicaea never ceased to believe that their location there was a ‘temporary’ move or to abandon hope of dislodging the crusader emperors and their Venetian allies from Constantinople. Fifty-seven years were to pass before this goal was accomplished, but at last in 1261, the deed was done; the imperial city returned to Byzantine hands, and the Palaiologos dynasty in the person of Michael VIII ascended the ancient throne of the emperors in Constantinople.
How the shattered Empire of Byzantium came to regain the lost capital and to experience a new lease on lite in the late thirteenth century is, however, only the beginning of the Palaiologan story. Subsequent generations witnessed the gradual fading of this reborn empire, as Michael VIII's descendants faced new problems both from outside their borders and within their midst, and the tide of history rolled inevitably on toward the final fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
Though there are a number of excellent, highly specialized monographs on various facets of the Palaiologan epoch, there is still relatively little available in the way of general studies of the period as a whole beyond the summary treatments included in larger Byzantine histories. I present this volume with the object of partially filling the need for such introductory material, and it is my hope that through this series of personal glimpses of the Palaiologan emperors and the time in which they lived, the intelligent layman or student of history will come to sense more vividly the nature of the long-vanished Byzantine world in its last tragic yet glorious years of imperial twilight.
Prelude to Power
His subjects called him John the Merciful. By the midthirteenth century, when he had already reigned for thirty years and more, he was an institution in the Empire of Nicaea: a frail, dark, aging little man whose blood connection with earlier Byzantine royalty was remote to say the least, but whose abilities both as a militarist and as an administrator amply justified his claim to rule. John Doukas Vatatzes was a benevolent and much-loved emperor; under his guidance the Byzantine "government in exile" had been transformed from an insecure string of fortresses in Asia Minor into a strong bloc of reconquered territories on both the European and Asiatic sides of the Bosphoros. True, the crusader lords and their Venetian collaborators still held Constantinople, the old Byzantine capital, and had resisted all of Vatatzes efforts to dislodge them. The emperor, now growing old and increasingly disabled by severe attacks of epilepsy, must have realized that the glory of regaining the capital city—if ever such glory came about— would belong to another.
He must have realized, too, that however popular he was with the common folk who lived under his rule, his own court was a hotbed of intrigue—plots that loomed the more dangerous because his heir, his only son, Theodore, was an unhealthy, neurotic, ill-tempered young man, a veritable magnet for trouble. There were sure to be others, closer kin to the old imperial line who had ruled in the centuries of Byzantium’s glory, who would imagine themselves better qualified than Theodore for the crown.
Such a man was Michael Doukas Angelos Komnenos Palaiologos: a bold and dashing young military officer whose very name proclaimed openly his kinship with three of the great imperial families of Byzantium's past. Michael's mother claimed direct descent from several of the earlier emperors, including the great Alexios Komnenos, to whom practically every aspirant to the Byzantine crown for generations traced his family tree. Michael's father, the Grand Domestic Andronikos Palaiologos, was slightly less nobly born, but the Palaiologoi were an ancient and famous family. They boasted descent from Alexios Komnenos' brother-in-law George Palaiologos, a famous general and military hero of the late eleventh century. Perhaps young Michael had always resented the fact that he who could claim descent from such a host of distinguished ancestors had to serve an upstart with practically no imperial background. Though the Emperor John Doukas Vatatzes professed intense pride in the name of Doukas, his kinship with the emperors of that dynasty — if authentic at all—was extremely remote.! John Vatatzes wore the Byzantine crown because in his youth he had married the heiress to the throne, Princess Irene Laskaris. It was as simple at that: without Irene, who was by now long dead, Vatatzes would have been a nobody.
There were some who whispered, too, that the imperial aspirations supposedly harbored by Michael Palaiologos might at least in part be traced back to his early childhood. When he was a mere baby, it was said, his older sister, Eulogia, often rocked him to sleep with a lullaby which promised he would someday become the basileus and would “enter Constantinople through the Golden Gate,” the gate reserved for imperial triumphal processions.? Michael's mother, it seems, died young, and the boy was reared by Eulogia and another older sister, Martha.? Whether or not the two girls really filled the mind of their little brother with imperial dreams is impossible to say, but in any event, Eulogia’s lullaby in time was to prove singularly prophetic.
As befitted a nobly born youth, when he was still a young boy, Michael was sent to live at the palace of the Emperor John Vatatzes. The court of the Byzantine Empire-in-exile was a center of learning and scholarly activity, and Michael received an excellent education, perhaps together with John Vatatzes’ son, the heir to the throne, Prince Theodore, who was almost exactly his age. Years later, Michael wrote that the Emperor Vatatzes treated him as if he were his own son,? but significantly in the few scattered autobiographical notes he left behind him, Michael tends to ignore the unpleasant reality of Theodore’s existence almost altogether. The young men were clearly not friends. Theodore was bookish; he wrote theological treatises and incomprehensible discourses, while Michael, strong and athletic, seemed born to be a soldier.
Because of his noble connections, Michael obtained a commission as a matter of course. By the time he was in his midtwenties, it was generally agreed that he was an extremely useful if potentially dangerous young officer, as gifted in the fine art of intrigue as in actual combat.
Against this background, in the autumn of 1253, confused and disturbing reports began to reach the ears of the old Emperor Vatatzes. Michael, who was by this time the military governor of the Thracian towns of Melnik and Serres, was plotting something most unsavory—perhaps against the emperor's life. Vatatzes evidently believed him guilty and decided his fate (with a severity most unusual for “John the Merciful”). Let the accused be put to trial: not according to the ancient practices of Roman law, cherished by the Byzantines through the centuries, but by the new method lately introduced by the Latin crusaders from Western Europe, the ordeal of the red-hot iron. The venerable Bishop Phokas of the town of Philadelphia in Asia Minor was sent to conduct the proceedings. To prove his innocence, Michael would have to pick up a piece of iron, heated red hot for this purpose. If he could do so without burning his hand, it would be deemed a miracle—and a sign he was not guilty.
It was a tense moment. Before a large crowd of witnesses, most of whom were apparently sympathetic to the accused, Michael Palaiologos turned calmly to face Bishop Phokas. “I am not such a one as to perform miracles,” he said. “If a red-hot iron should fall upon the hand of a living man, I do not doubt that it would burn him.” But, he added, if the bishop would care to lift the hot iron himself and hand it to him, he would accept it.5
The crowd gasped—and Bishop Phokas declined Michael's suggestion. The young man's cool mockery of the barbaric custom broke up the trial, and Phokas had no option but to send a report of his failure to John Doukas Vatatzes.
Fortunately for Michael (if unfortunately for Vatatzes' descendants), the old emperor seems to have found the entire incident highly amusing. Michael Palaiologos, clever, quick-witted, and fearless, was entirely too valuable a man to destroy, regardless of what he might have done in the past. The charges were dropped, and Michael was instead rewarded with an imperial bride, Vatatzes’ grandniece, Theodora Doukaina. The marriage would be a stormy one, with much infidelity on Michael's part, and at least once in the years to come he would threaten to divorce her for a more advantageous alliance. Theodora, however, proved devoted to her difficult husband. Contrary to the usual custom which dictated that Byzantine ladies should retain their own surnames, she promptly adopted her husband’s name in its feminine form, and henceforth was known as Theodora Doukaina Palaiologina. It was a precedent that many Byzantine women would follow in the years to come.
Newly married to his aristocratic bride, Michael had a future which seemed secure. Just about a year later, however, in 1254, the Emperor John Doukas Vatatzes suffered a fatal epileptic seizure while strolling in his garden. His son Theodore, by the custom of hereditary succession, was unquestionably heir to the throne. However unsuited he may have been for the position of rulership, he succeeded without incident as the Emperor Theodore II.
Incidentally, much to the confusion of modern readers, Theodore had chosen to be called by his mother's surname, Laskaris, rather than his father's; this was a perfectly acceptable though infrequent practice in the Byzantine world, and implied no slur whatsoever on Vatatzes memory. The reasons for Theodore's preference are not clear. Perhaps he simply felt that "Laskaris" carried with it an imperial aura that was lacking in “Vatatzes,” since the latter was derived from a Greek word meaning "bramble bush" and was the subject of numerous puns.
But if Theodore had refused to take his father's name, he had in him nonetheless one undeniable heritage from John Vatatzes: he was an epileptic. While the old Emperor John had for years ruled ably in spite of his handicap, Theodore, who may well have had the disease in a more severe form, was in any event more inclined to dwell morbidly on his affliction. Moody and suspicious, Theodore Laskaris was a difficult master to serve.
Michael Palaiologos, who was after all almost certainly guilty of imperial aspirations, must have felt himself caught in a hopeless situation. The vengetul new emperor, he confessed to a close friend, the historian George Akropolites, seemed much inclined to have him arrested and possibly blinded.” This horrible practice, it must be noted, was all too common in the medieval world; the Byzantines were probably no more prone than either their Latin or their Turkish neighbors to inflict the penalty of blinding upon offenders. It was simply accepted as a stern but necessary reality of life by men of those times. Michael, of course, had no inclination to risk the loss of his own eyesight, and thus decided to put himself beyond Theodore’s reach. With a few devoted and equally daring companions, he crossed the Turkish frontier and volunteered for service in the Turkish army. The Seljuk sultan, informed of the acquisition of this most unlikely recruit, promptly placed thirty-year-old Michael in command of a troop of Christian mercenaries.
It is not difficult to imagine the wrath of the Emperor Theodore when he learned where Michael had gone, though perhaps too he felt a certain measure of relief at being rid of an ambitious rival. In any event, for almost three years, Michael Palaiologos fought for the Turks in campaigns against their enemies farther to the east, the Mongols.
Meanwhile in the Byzantine realm, Theodore’s physical maladies grew progressively worse. “The suffering I experience is insupportable,” he wrote. “The doctors do nothing and prate only nonsense.”® The severity of his illness did not improve Theodore’s disposition. He was morbidly suspicious that unknown enemies were working magic against him, a fear that made the lives of those around him constantly insecure.?
Yet strangely enough, Theodore Laskaris was a capable soldier. As if determined to defy the limitations of his frail body, he assumed personal command of his troops and endured the hardships of rigorous campaigning and forced marches through wretched winter weather with remarkable stamina. The Byzantines of Nicaea faced new threats to the security of their empire-in-exile now that Vatatzes was dead, and Theodore’s short reign, as it turned out, would be spent in an almost constant series of struggles against these foes.
In spite of the long and diligent attempts of Vatatzes to bring all the Greek-speaking inhabitants of the former imperial territories under his sway, there were still areas which refused to acknowledge the Nicaean government. The most formidable of these was the Despotate of Epiros along the Adriatic coast northwest of Greece, which stubbornly maintained itself as an independent principality with a line of princes of its own. From time to time, the despotate warred against the Byzantines of Nicaea. It was against these Epirote Greeks that Theodore Laskaris would direct most of his military efforts.
Meanwhile the Seljuk Turks, who had long been considered among the Byzantines’ deadliest enemies and who had given refuge to the fugitive Michael, were being increasingly hard pressed by the Mongols of Central Asia. In desperation, the Seljuk sultan opened negotiations for an alliance with Theodore; with the provision that Michael Palaiologos be returned to his own people, Theodore agreed. Thus after nearly three years as an officer in the Turkish army, Michael was compelled to return to the court of Nicaea. He must have had grave qualms concerning his future, and according to some accounts, he appeared before the Emperor Theodore clad in penitential sackcloth and ashes.
Theodore at first seemed inclined to forgive and forget. Michael agreed to swear an oath of eternal loyalty to the Laskaris family. In return he was restored to his previous rank in the Byzantine army, immediately assigned command of a small force which included some Turkish mercenaries, and dispatched to Thessaloniki to assist in the struggle against Epiros.
Those who served Theodore Laskaris soon realized, however, how rapidly one’s fortunes might change with the whim of the unpredictable emperor. Not long after his official pardon, Michael was summoned to return to the imperial court and without benefit of trial was thrown into prison on the suspicion of disloyalty. Then, a few weeks later, he was informed that he might once again have his freedom if he would renew his oath of eternal loyalty to the house of Laskaris: Theodore and his little son John.” Michael swore readily and, we may suppose, with enthusiasm; he was always an excellent actor. A loyalty oath was completely meaningless to him. Once again he was reinstated in his military command.
Not long thereafter, in August 1258, Theodore Laskaris died and was buried in the monastery of Sosandra beside his father, John Doukas Vatatzes. The new basileus, Theodore’s only son, John IV, was about eight or nine years old. The child’s mother, Helen Asen, had died several years earlier, and so according to the terms of Theodore’s will, the regency was bestowed upon George Muzalon, who held the rank of protovestarios and who had been the late emperor's best friend. It was not a wise appointment. Muzalon was sadly lacking in the two attributes that might have won him the support of his contemporaries: noble birth and military prestige.
The period of mourning for the dead Theodore was not even over when a group of malcontents, almost certainly at the instigation of Michael Palaiologos, contrived a plot to send the new regent to join his late friend and sovereign.” The conspirators chose to act while Muzalon was attending a memorial service for Theodore at Sosandra. A large crowd of civilian rabble and soldiers, including a considerable number of Latin mercenaries, surrounded the monastery where the service was being held, brandishing weapons and shouting for the little Emperor John to appear. The boy was brought out before his subjects; his guards, who apparently were party to the plot, instructed him to make a signal for quiet. The frightened child waved his hands energetically at the mob, not realizing that the soldiers were determined to interpret his "signal"-as an appeal for action. Unrestrained they burst into the monastery. The liturgy stopped abruptly and a scuffle followed. George Muzalon and his brother scurried for hiding places, while a conspirator stabbed one of Muzalon's aides in the back, professing to have mistaken him for the Regent George. The noble ladies present were screaming and crying; and George Muzalon’s wife ran to Michael Palaiologos, who was her uncle, and pleaded with him to do something. Michael's reply indicated only too clearly the depth of his involvement. “Be quiet, woman, or you may be next!” he warned in eftect.'?
Meanwhile the regent and his brother were dragged from their hiding places; one was behind a door, the other under the altar. George, indisputably identified by the green shoes that were the sign of his rank, pleaded for mercy and offered to pay a large ransom, but the conspirators were merciless. The Muzalon brothers were slain on the spot. In gross violation of the ancient laws of sanctuary, the nine-day regency of George Muzalon had ended. The reign of Michael Doukas Angelos Komnenos Palaiologos—the Emperor Michael VIlI—was about to begin.
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