Women of Early Christianity

by Alfred Brittain; Mitchell Carroll

Some of the conspirators had been concealed in the chamber of Theophano. John Zimisces and his principal companions crossed the Bosporus in a small boat, landed under the palace walls, and in the darkness of night silently ascended a ladder of ropes which was cast down by the handmaidens of the empress. Nicephorus, as was his custom, was sleeping on a bearskin on the floor of his chamber, when he was awakened by the noisy entrance of the conspirators. Their daggers were drawn, and, at the word from John, were plunged into the body of the valiant general, who exclaimed in his death agony: "Oh, God! grant me thy mercy." Though by this base deed John came to the throne, he showed deep contrition for the slaughter of his uncle; and through the connivance of the patriarch and treachery toward his friends, he avoided marriage with the partner of his guilt.

"On the day of his coronation, he was stopped on the threshold of Saint Sophia by the intrepid patriarch, who charged his conscience with the deed of treason and blood, and required as a sign of repentance that he should separate himself from his more criminal associate. This sally of apostolic zeal was not offensive to the prince, since he could neither love nor trust a woman who had violated the most sacred obligation; and Theophano, instead of sharing his imperial throne, was dismissed with ignominy from his bed and palace." Deprived of her place as regent, and repudiated by her sons on whom she had brought shame, Theophano passed the remaining years of her life in a monastery.

Of the two sons of Theophano, Basil II., after a long reign of over half a century,--963-1025,--distinguished by his many victories over the Bulgarians, died childless, and was succeeded by his brother, Constantine IX., who was destined to be the last male of the Macedonian house. After his short reign of three years, the story of the remaining twenty-nine years of the Basilian dynasty gathers itself about the names of his two elderly daughters, Zoe and Theodora, and the series of princes who owed their position on the throne solely to them. It is a period of decadence, and the reader cannot help but pity the two sisters who were endeavoring to uphold a decaying dynasty in the midst of corruption and folly. Zoe constitutes the central figure of the period; but Theodora was vastly her superior, and casts a sort of glamour about the closing years of the house of Basil the Macedonian.

Zoe, however, was notable not so much for her ability to govern as for her extraordinary vanity and love of adulation. Yet, for some reason, she had reached the age of forty-eight before she found a husband. Upon his deathbed, Constantine summoned Romanus Argyrus, an aged nobleman, to the palace and informed him that he had been selected to mount the throne, but that he must divorce his wife and marry one of the imperial princesses. Romanus hesitated, not that he cared not for the throne, but because the conditions were too severe; he loved his wife, and he did not fancy joining his lot with one of the elderly maidens. But he was told that he must either obey or lose his eyesight. To relieve the situation, his wife, with self-sacrificing devotion, took the veil and entered a monastery. Constantine destined Theodora, the younger and more capable of his daughters, for the throne as spouse to Romanus, but through religious compunctions she refused to marry the husband of another woman, and consequently Zoe was chosen as bride and empress at the tender age of forty-eight. Romanus was sixty when he ascended the throne.

Zoe never forgave her sister Theodora the fact that because of her more stable character their father had offered his younger daughter the throne; Romanus had no love for her because she had refused him. Consequently, spies were set over her movements, and every effort was made to connect her with the various plots of courtiers who had designs upon the throne. Finally, accused of being privy to the plans of one of the most hostile of the courtiers, Theodora was driven from her palace and imprisoned in the monastery of Petrion; sometime after, Zoe, upon a visit to the monastery, compelled her sister to assume the monastic habit.

Romanus and Zoe were never an affectionate couple. He devoted himself strictly to affairs of state and looked with indifference upon the many intrigues of his amorous spouse, who, like Queen Elizabeth, believed herself to be the mistress of all hearts. But one of these amours, perhaps, cost him his life.

The royal consorts had turned the management of the palace largely over to eunuchs. One of these, John the Paphlagonian, became very powerful, and, as he was precluded from the imperial title himself, sought to raise a brother to that high honor. This brother, Michael, had begun life as a goldsmith and money changer, but his brother appointed him to a place in the imperial household. Owing to his personal beauty and graceful and dignified manners, he soon became the favorite chamberlain to his royal mistress. Unfortunately, however, he was subject to sudden and violent attacks of epilepsy. This, instead of repelling Zoe, merely aroused her pity, and she fell in love with her handsome servant and carried on an amorous intrigue with him. Romanus was duly informed of his wife's conduct, but remained indifferent to it and probably deemed the accusation untenable because of the epilepsy of Michael. Zonaras, an ancient chronicler, tells the story that in the night the emperor frequently called Michael to rub his feet when he was in bed with Zoe. And he naively adds: "Who can refrain from supposing that the hands of the young valet-de-chambre did not find an opportunity of touching also the feet of the empress?" During the last two years of his life, Romanus was afflicted with a wasting disease and rumor had it that it was due to a slow poison administered either by Zoe, or by the eunuch John, who wished to bring about his brother's elevation. At any rate, in his dying moments, before the breath had left his body, the empress quitted his bedside to take measures with John the Paphlagonian for placing her epileptic paramour on the throne.

The moment Romanus III. ceased to live, Zoe called an assembly of the officers of state in the palace and invested Michael IV. with the diadem and the purple robe. He was straightway proclaimed Emperor of the Romans, and was formally seated beside Zoe on the vacant throne. The patriarch Alexius was filled with disgust at this flagrant display of contempt for decency, but for reasons of state and to avoid greater scandal, he celebrated the marriage between the empress and her paramour. "Thus a single night saw the aged Zoe the wife of two emperors, a widow and a bride, and Michael a menial and a sovereign."

Michael was twenty-eight when he wedded Zoe at the age of fifty-four and ascended the throne. In spite of his humble origin, he showed himself a capable ruler, and succeeded in repelling some of the enemies of the Empire. But his usefulness was hindered by his epileptic fits and by the unfriendly attitude of his subjects who regarded his disease as evidence of the divine wrath because of his ingratitude toward his benefactor, Romanus. He became a hopeless invalid before the age of thirty-six, and, when he felt his end approaching, he renounced the world and all the vanities of imperial station, and retired to the monastery of Saint Anarghyras where he became a monk. He died on December 10, 1041, after a reign of seven years and eight months.

After the death of her second husband, the irrepressible Zoe at first attempted to carry on the Empire alone, with the assistance of the eunuchs of her household, but the prevailing aversion to female sovereignty and her own disinclination to be without companionship of the male sex led her to a realization of the necessity of giving the Empire a male sovereign. The alternative which presented itself was whether she should adopt a son or marry a husband. Having twice experienced matrimonial bliss, but never having tasted the joys of filial devotion, for the sake of a new sensation Zoe adopted the former expedient.