The Byzantine Empire

by Charles Oman

After nine years of reign the Amorian died a natural death, still wearing the crown he had won. It was just fifty years since any ruler of the empire had met such a peaceful end. He was succeeded by his son Theophilus, a vehement Iconoclast, whose persecuting tendencies had been with difficulty restrained in his father's life-time. His accession was [pg 209] the signal for a new campaign against image-worship; he induced the patriarch John the Grammarian, a strong Iconoclast like himself, to excommunicate as idolaters all who differed from him, and began to flog, banish, and imprison their leading men. His persecution would have been almost as vehement as that of [pg 210] Constantine Copronymus, but for the fact that he did not ever inflict the punishment of death; branding and mutilation however he did not disdain.

The Iconodules saw the vengeance of heaven for the misdeeds of Theophilus in the disasters which he suffered in war from the Saracens. He fell out with the Caliph Motassem, and in the first campaign took and burnt the town of Zapetra, for which the Commander of the Faithful had great regard.[24] This roused Motassem to furious wrath; he swore that he would destroy in revenge the town which Theophilus held most dear; he collected the largest Saracen army that had been seen since Moslemah beleaguered Constantinople in 717, and marched out of Tarsus with 130,000 men, each of whom (if legend speaks true) had the word Amorium painted on his shield. For it was Amorium, the birth-place of the Emperor, and the home of his ancestors that Motassem had sworn to sack. While one division of the Caliph's army defeated Theophilus, who had taken the field in person, another headed by Motassem himself marched straight on Amorium, and took it after a brave defence of fifty-five days. Thirty thousand of its inhabitants were massacred, and the town was burnt, but the Caliph then turned home satisfied with his revenge, and the empire suffered nothing more from this most dangerous invasion. The Saracen war dragged on in an indecisive way, but no further disaster was encountered.

There are other things to be recorded of Theophilus beside his persecution of image-worshippers and his [pg 211] war with the Caliph. He was long remembered for his taste for gorgeous display; of all the East-Roman emperors he seems to have delighted the most in gold and silver work, gems and embroidery. His golden plane-tree was the talk of the East, and the golden lions at the foot of his throne, which rose and roared by the means of ingenious machinery within, were remembered for generations.

Nor should the curious tale of his second marriage be left untold. When left a widower he bade the Empress-dowager Euphrosyne assemble at her levée all the most beautiful of the daughters of the East-Roman aristocracy, and came among them to choose a wife, carrying like Paris a golden apple in his hand. His glance was first fixed on the fair Eikasia, but approaching her he found no better topic to commence a conversation than the awkward statement that “most of the evil had come into the world by means of women.” The lady retorted that surely most of the good had also come into the world by their means, a reply which apparently discomposed Theophilus, for he walked on and without a further word gave the golden apple to Theodora, a rival beauty. The choice was hasty and unhappy, for Theodora was a devoted Iconodule, and used all her influence against her husband's religious opinions.

Theophilus died in 842, while still a young man, leaving the throne to his only son Michael, a child of three years, and the regency to the young empress. The moment that her husband's grave was closed Theodora set to work to undo his policy. Amid the applause of the monks and the populace of Constantinople [pg 212] she proclaimed the end of the persecution, sent for the banished image-worshippers from their places of exile, and deposed John the Grammarian, the Iconoclastic patriarch who had served Theophilus. Within thirty days of the commencement of the new reign the images had appeared once more on the walls of all the churches of Constantinople. The Iconoclasts seem to have been taken by surprise, and made no resistance to the revolution: however the empress did not take any measures to persecute them; it was only power and not security for life and limb that they lost. The sole permanent result of the long struggle which they had kept up was a curious compromise in the Eastern Church on the subject of representation of the human figure. Statues were never again erected in places of worship, but only paintings and mosaics. It was apparently believed that the actual image savoured too much of the heathen idol, but that no offence could possibly be given by the picture, which served as a pious remembrance of the holy personage it represented, but could be nothing more. Nevertheless the veneration of the Byzantines for their holy “Eikons” became almost as grotesque as idol-worship, and led to many quaint and curious forms of superstition.

Theodora, engrossed in things religious, handed over the education of her young son to her brother Bardas, who became her co-regent and was afterwards made Caesar. He brought up the young Michael in the most reckless and unconscientious manner, teaching him his own vices of drunkenness and debauchery. Michael was an apt pupil, and ere he [pg 213] reached the age of twenty-one had become a confirmed dipsomaniac. History knows him by the dishonourable nickname of “Michael the Drunkard.” Some years after his majority he grew discontented with his uncle, and slew him, in order that he might reign alone. His profligacy and intemperance became still more unbearable after Bardas was dead, and had it not been for the splendid organization of the Byzantine civil service the administration of the empire must have gone to pieces. Presently Michael grew tired of spending on state affairs any time that he could spare from his orgies, and appointed as Caesar and colleague his boon companion Basil the Macedonian. Basil had reached the position of grand chamberlain purely by the Emperor's favour; he rose from the lowest ranks and is said to have first entered Michael's service in the humble position of a groom. His practical ability, combined with a head hard enough to withstand the effect of even the longest debauch, won Michael's admiration, and so he came to be first chamberlain and then Caesar. Under the mask of a roisterer Basil concealed the most devouring ambition, and when he knew that his drunken benefactor had won the contempt of all the East-Roman world, had the impudence and ingratitude to plan his murder. Michael was stabbed while sleeping off the effects of one of his orgies, and his low-born colleague seized the palace and proclaimed himself emperor.

It might have been expected that the East-Roman world would have refused to receive as its lord a man who owed his elevation to the freak of a drunkard, [pg 214] and had then become the assassin of his benefactor. But strangely enough Basil was destined to found the longest dynasty that ever sat upon the Constantinopolitan throne. He turned out a far better ruler than might have been expected from his disgraceful antecedents, being one of those fortunate men who are able to utilize the work of others when their own powers and knowledge fall short.

Basil is mainly remembered for his codification of the laws of the empire, which superseded the Ecloga of Leo the Isaurian, even as Leo's compilation had superseded the more solid and thorough work of Justinian. The Basilika of Basil with the additions made by his son Leo VI. formed the code of the Byzantine Empire down to its last days, no further rearrangement being ever made.

Basil, being of European birth and not an Asiatic like the preceding emperors, was naturally an orthodox image-worshipper. He showed his bigotry by a fierce persecution of the Paulicians, an Asiatic sect of heretics accused of Manicheanism, whom the Iconoclast emperors had been wont to tolerate. Basil's oppression drove many of them over the Saracen frontier, where they took refuge with the Moslems and maintained themselves by plundering the borders of the empire.

Among the other transactions of his nineteen years of reign [867-886], the only one deserving notice is the final loss of Sicily. The Saracens of Africa, who had held a footing in the island ever since the time of Michael II., now finished their work by storming Syracuse in 878.