The Empresses of Constantinople

by Joseph McCabe

The spirited events which followed must here be told briefly. On Sunday morning, 9th August, the advance-guard of Nicephorus’s army appeared on the Asiatic shore in sight of the city, at the point where Scutari now is, and the people began to make their choice in the usual sanguinary way. The services in the great church were desecrated with riot, the battle against the guards who were faithful to Bringas was conducted in the streets, and by midnight the houses of his supporters were in flames. Theophano remained with her children behind the barrier of palace guards, listening, not unwillingly, to the increasing cries for Nicephorus. We may very well assume that she had had her share in the riot. One of the most formidable leaders of those who called for Nicephorus was the bold and ambitious Basil, the natural son of the elder Romanus. Castrated by his father, that he might never aspire to the purple, yet promoted to wealth and high office, he seems to have come to an agreement with Theophano. As soon as the battle began he led three thousand of his servants and followers, armed, into the Augusteum, and they continued all Sunday and throughout the night to hunt the soldiers of Bringas and loot the mansions of his friends.

Nicephorus had meantime reached the Hieria palace on the Asiatic side, and on the following Sunday he made his triumphant entry by the Golden Gate, and along the Mese, to St Sophia, the citizens draping their houses with the scarlet of rejoicing and adorning the way with laurel and myrtle. The patriarch Polyeuctes met him at the cathedral, and Theophano would be present on her golden throne, in her violet mourning robes, when the crown was put on his head.

His next step must have caused a sensation in the city and entirely deceived the clergy. He sent a monk to conduct Theophano from the palace to the fortress, or higher prison, of Petrion on the Golden Horn, and maintained for a few weeks his austere aversion from wine and women. We hardly need the assurance of the chroniclers that this was done by arrangement between the two, and we may regard it as a device of Theophano. Nicephorus was now aflame like a youth. In the middle of September he “threw off the mask,” in the words of the ecclesiastical chronicler, and announced that he was to marry Theophano on 20th September. His monastic advisers, he explained, had concluded that his new position demanded that he should marry. The marriage service was performed by the patriarch himself in a chapel in the grounds of the palace, and, while the Emperor went to kiss the altars at St Sophia, Theophano retired to her familiar apartments, to congratulate herself on the fortunate issue of her difficult manœuvres.

And presently the Emperor returned in terrible rage to tell her that a formidable obstacle had revealed itself. When he had reached the door of the sanctuary, the patriarch Polyeuctes had barred his way and said that he would be excluded from the church for a year for contracting a second marriage. His angry protest had availed nothing; before a vast crowd of his subjects he had had to submit to the austere priest, and he was to remain in the ignominious position of a penitent for a year. Concealing their anger, they concluded the day, as usual, with a banquet to the leading officers and nobles in the gold-roofed triclinon, now restored and magnificently decorated by Constantine, and retired to discuss Polyeuctes.

The patriarch was undoubtedly a stern and conscientious priest, insisting upon a plain law of his Church. We may, however, assume that another feeling mingled with his sense of discipline. Nicephorus had, in the literal meaning, tasted blood at his matrimonial banquet, and he passionately refused to forgo the embraces of Theophano. His pious practices were wholly discarded in a day, and the clergy must have been bitterly disappointed to see him passing from their allegiance to that of the beautiful adventuress. So Polyeuctes had made a bold bid for power; and he had made a serious mistake. From that moment Nicephorus conceived, not merely a personal hatred of the patriarch, but an anti-clerical spirit, and began to restrict the wealth and power of the priests and monks. He clung to his enchanting young bride and sternly faced the clergy. In the discussion that at once filled the palace and the city some careless noble, named Stylianus, had recalled the fact that Nicephorus was godfather to one of the Empress’s children, and the patriarch learned this. He at once pronounced that the marriage was invalid, as the Church regarded this spiritual relationship as an insuperable impediment to marriage, and bade the Emperor dismiss Theophano.

The feelings of Theophano during these days of disappointment and anxiety are left to our imagination. It is enough that her charms held Nicephorus to her in spite of the terrible threats of the patriarch, and it may be that it was she who approached the unfortunate Stylianus and persuaded him to commit perjury. Nicephorus gathered a council of pliant bishops and Senators, and they decided that, as the law invoked by the patriarch had been passed by the heretic Constantine Copronymus, it was not binding. Polyeuctes scorned their decision. Then Stylianus came forward to swear that Nicephorus had not been godfather to any child of Theophano, and the Emperor’s father, Bardas, came forward to swear that he was the godfather. The patriarch knew that they were lying, but his clergy were anxious to escape a formidable struggle and he was forced to yield. To Theophano it was, no doubt, immaterial whether or no she was married to Nicephorus; she had a strong and devoted soldier to protect her and her children. How the pious Nicephorus reconciled himself to the situation is one of the things that “God only knows.” All that we know is that the possession of Theophano dissipated his asceticism as the summer sun disperses the mists, and he eagerly embraced a woman to whom, under the creed of his Church, he was not married.

During the six years’ reign of Nicephorus the Empress had little occasion to assert her wayward personality, but it is significant that the one statement made of her is an accusation of crime. One of the sons of the older Romanus still languished in captivity, and it seemed possible, in view of the growing discontent at Constantinople, that an intrigue would be formed to put him on the throne. “Theophano,” we are curtly informed, “made an end of him.” There is no reason to doubt that messengers were sent to his distant prison with an order that he should be put to death, and it is more probable that the order came from Theophano than from Nicephorus. For the first year or two, however, Nicephorus prudently removed his fiery young bride from the seditious and immoral atmosphere of Constantinople, and she passed her days in unwonted innocence amid the lonely mountains of Cilicia.

The Emperor had spent a few months in an effort, by lavish entertainment, to dispel the suspicion of parsimony and meanness under which he had ascended the throne. The Hippodrome rang daily with the applause and contests of the citizens, and the winter was enlivened with great gaiety. Meantime Nicephorus was gathering an immense army for the more substantial work of driving back the Saracens, and when, in the early spring, the cosmopolitan regiments were assembled along the Asiatic shore, he announced that the Empress would accompany him to the field. He knew Theophano too well to leave her in that world of intriguing eunuchs and ambitious courtiers. A little pot-bellied man, with dark skin and little dark eyes, with short greyish beard betraying his age, and with disproportionately long arms and short legs to his stumpy figure, he felt that he was not likely to grow fonder to the heart of the fascinating Theophano during two or three years’ absence. On the other hand, one must not imagine the sensual young Empress as being inconvenienced by the rough ways of a camp. The rulers of Constantinople carried their luxury even into the camp, on the occasions on which they condescended to take the field in person. Eighty horses were needed for the transport of the kitchen equipment and table silver alone, and thirty were required to convey the imperial wardrobe from town to town; while the whole countryside was laid under contribution to supply delicacies for the table. No doubt these normal glories of an imperial march would be at least doubled in view of the presence of Theophano.

They sailed from the Bucoleon port in the great gold and purple galley of the imperial family, and joined the army at Cæsarea. From that city Theophano accompanied her husband across the hills and plains of Asia Minor until they came to the beginning of the Taurus range. Here the Emperor left Theophano and her sons, in safe charge, while he led his troops into the more dangerous country beyond. At the entrance of the narrow defile which the ancients knew as the “Cilician Gates” was the massive fortress of Drizibion, a solitary and rugged castle in a wild mountainous district. It was in this quiet and cool home, removed from communication with the metropolis, that Theophano and her children spent the summer of the year 964. She would, of course, have an ample retinue of eunuchs and women, and every provision would be made for her comfort, but, whether it was the jealousy or the amorousness of Nicephorus that detained her in this healthy solitude, she would be sure to resent it. At the beginning of the winter he returned to her, with modest laurels, and may have conducted her to Cæsarea, or some other city of the plains, for the enjoyment of the winter. But the early spring called him once more to the field, and it seems that Theophano had to spend another summer in the wilds of Cilicia. It was only in the autumn of 965 that she re-entered Constantinople, to witness the splendid triumph of her husband.

In the following year Nicephorus made another campaign, and from the time of his return in the autumn of 966 the shadow of tragedy began to creep over his life. His vast armies and laborious victories had laid a heavy burden of taxation on the Empire, and, passionately as Constantinople loved to see a herd of captives driven before the royal chariot in the hour of triumph, it was little disposed to pay for remote victories. The clergy also were embittered. Nicephorus, soured by the action of the patriarch, and thus made sensible of the revolting spread of luxurious idleness under the name of monasticism, curtailed the revenues of the clergy, forbade the further conversion of mansions and palaces into monasteries, and claimed the right to appoint bishops. The people became sullen and hostile. When, on Easter Sunday, 967, Nicephorus crossed the Augusteum to go to church, they pelted him with mud and stones so violently that a group of the more sober citizens had to rescue him. It was expected that he would inflict some punishment, and when, a few weeks later, he ordered his guards to descend to the arena in the Hippodrome and begin their military evolutions, either to impress or to entertain the spectators, there was a frantic rush for the gates and many were trodden underfoot.