The Empresses of Constantinople

by Joseph McCabe

When the news of this decision reached Michael, and the crowd stormed angrily at the gates of the palace, he sent an officer on a swift vessel to the Princes’ Islands for Zoe. In the palace she was quickly stripped of her nun’s robe, and clothed in her former garments. It is clear that Michael’s uncle, Constantine, who was not without ability, directed the campaign in the palace. Michael was advised to take Zoe with him into the imperial lodge overlooking the Hippodrome and show the citizens, who had gathered in the enclosure, that all was well. The only reply he got was a shower of stones, arrows and epithets, and, as the chroniclers remark, the young lion became at once a timid hare, and proposed to run for shelter to the monastery at Studion, on the Asiatic side. His uncle prevented him, however, and marshalled the guards in the fore part of the palace. The battle which followed ended in a complete victory for the people. Constantine and Michael fled across the water to Studion, in the early morning of Wednesday in Holy Week, and the new Empress Theodora was conducted into the palace over the corpses of some three thousand of the combatants.

The royal sisters, it will be understood, did not fly into each other’s arms. Theodora had to thank Zoe for eleven years’ confinement, and Zoe herself was very reluctant to share her power with her younger sister. However, a formal reconciliation was arranged by the Senators, and the two Empresses sat side by side to receive the homage of the leading citizens and decide what was to be done with the late Emperor and his uncle. If there were any who wondered in what spirit Theodora would wield her power after a decade of religious life, they were not left long in doubt. Zoe asked what the will of her advisers was in regard to the fugitives, and such cries as “Out with their eyes!” and “Crucify them!” rang furiously through the chamber. Zoe recoiled and pleaded for leniency, but Theodora, a much better speaker than her sister, sternly ordered the prefect to see that their eyes were put out. A great crowd crossed the sea with the officers, and saw Michael, who had hidden under the altar, and his more stoical uncle dragged from the chapel. The same crowd had applauded Michael in his procession hardly a week before; now they stood by with wild delight to see the brutal sentence carried out. It was 21st April: Michael the Caulker had reigned for four months.

For a few weeks the imperial sisters ruled their kingdom in complete harmony and with exemplary zeal. M. Diehl, too lightly following the censorious Psellus, rates the intelligence and character of both at a very low level, but that estimate is hardly supported by the facts. Few Emperors had dared to attack the administrative corruption of the Empire as Zoe and Theodora attacked it in the first freshness of their power, and as we have every reason to believe that they would have continued to attack it. For centuries the State had been the easy prey of ambitious eunuchs at Court and corrupt officials in the provinces. Zoe and Theodora issued decrees to the effect that all injustice must cease and that the law must be administered with equity. They themselves sat on the highest tribunal of the city to hear cases, and the sale of offices was strictly prohibited. The accounts of the late chief minister were examined, and Constantine, eyeless and shaven, was brought from his monastery to explain the enormous deficiency. The power of his family was broken for ever, and the miserable man disclosed that 5300 pounds of gold (nearly a quarter of a million sterling) was hidden in a cistern in his house. Legates and petitions were heard with dignity by the royal sisters, and it must have seemed to many that the Empire had, by this singular adventure, obtained juster and finer rulers than it had known for many a century. We cannot discriminate in the joint public action of the sisters, but it is clear that the strong will and intelligence of Theodora were the chief power of the administration. How drastically the Empire needed such a purification may be gathered from the fact that, when the patriarch Alexis died in the following year, a secret and dishonest hoard of gold, amounting to more than £100,000, was discovered in his palace.

This brilliant example of feminine rule might have been expected to disarm the old Byzantine prejudice against women, but prejudices of that nature are too deeply rooted to be displaced by facts. The cry was raised that an Emperor was needed, and Zoe once more expressed her willingness to marry. The careful chronicler tells us that her conduct was not necessarily inspired by a carnal feeling—she was now sixty-two years old—but that she may have feared that Theodora and her ministers wished to dislodge her. Her age, no less than the remarkable conditions of her third and last marriage, will easily persuade us that the motive was political. There were those who said that, as Theodora had been the chief agent in expelling Michael, the throne belonged to her alone, and Zoe sought an ally. The first noble chosen by her was Constantine Delassenus, who had almost obtained her hand and the throne fourteen years before. But Constantine, when he was invited to the Court for inspection, proved so brusque and independent that he was again dismissed. Her next choice was Constantine Catepano, a handsome officer of the palace, with whom, in spite of her age, the gossips of the Court already connected Zoe somewhat too intimately. Constantine, however, had a wife living, and this lady is said to have poisoned him as soon as she heard of the proposal to divorce her.

If we may believe the gossipy chronicles, Zoe met the disappointment with tranquillity, as she had another lover among the officials of the palace. Constantine Monomachos, a very handsome and distinguished and dissolute noble, had been exiled from Court to Mitylene by Michael IV. on the suspicion of intimacy with Zoe, and had for some years gilded the hours of his distant exile with the enjoyment of letters, the pleasures of the table and the affection of a pretty and devoted cousin. When his second wife had died, he had obeyed the injunction of the Church to refrain from a third marriage and had been content with the free companionship of the beautiful Sclerena, a sister of the distinguished noble Romanus Sclerus—a member, that is to say, of one of the proudest Byzantine families. She had followed her lover to Lesbos, used her fortune to mitigate the harshness of his exile, and was living with him at the time when Zoe recalled him to Court. “Handsome as Achilles,” uniting a prodigious strength with a singular delicacy and elegance of appearance, equally devoted to the robust pleasures of the chase and the enervating delights of love, Constantine Monomachos at once returned to his place in the heart of the ageing Empress, and was invited to wed her. He is said to have stipulated beforehand that the fair Sclerena should be allowed to come to Constantinople, and Zoe genially consented. They were married, and Zoe entered upon the last and strangest part of her strange career.

While the sexless Theodora continued to rule the Empire and put out the eyes of her enemies, while Constantine revelled in the new and more exquisite luxuries of his position, Zoe seems quietly to have enjoyed the secure and restful days which her marriage obtained for her. She still, with her maids, compounded and distilled the perfumes which were almost her one luxury, but she now paid a scrupulous attention to her devotions and burned much incense before the icons. Sclerena at first dwelt apart, and Constantine set about building a magnificent palace for her, thinly veiling his liaison with the pretence of going daily to see the progress of the works. As the citizens smiled at the connexion, and Zoe seemed to be piously indifferent to it, he became bolder and asked Zoe to allow him to bring Sclerena to live in the palace. Again Zoe consented, and the ménage à trois was maintained in the most pleasant harmony. She gave Sclerena the title of Empress, embraced her, when they met, with entire goodwill, and showed her such consideration that she never visited her husband without first ascertaining if he was disengaged. Constantine occupied the central part of the palace, and his wife and mistress had apartments on each side.

Although Zoe now approached her seventieth year, she still retained the freshness of her complexion and had no wrinkles. Psellus says that a stranger would have been sure that she was still a young woman. She shared the pleasures of the gay Court, and made no protest against the frivolous Constantine emptying the treasury on his mistress. If we may believe implicitly all the details given by Psellus, there was little delicacy in the fun which enlivened the gardens or halls—for Zoe disliked the open air—of the sacred domain. Music and skilful dancing were too fine for his appreciation. He liked the broader merriment of mimes, and took especial pleasure in imitations of stammering. His chief entertainers would go so far as to represent, pantomimically, the chaste Theodora lying abed in child-birth, and Theodora herself joined in the loud laughter of Constantine as the man imitated the shrieks which befitted such an occasion. The months passed very merrily, and the treasury emptied.

And as the treasury emptied, and the citizens saw their funds passing into the marvellous palace which Constantine was building for Sclerena, clouds began to gather over the life of the epicure. One day, in the year 1044, as he rode with his guards at the head of a religious procession, a cry broke from the crowd: “We don’t want Sclerena as Empress, nor to see our lawful mistresses, Zoe and Theodora, perish on her account.” The cry was a spark to the spreading discontent, and the small troop of guards were surrounded by a threatening mob. Fortunately for the Emperor, the Empresses were watching the procession from the balcony, and they sent troops to rescue him. Later, a discontented noble led some Macedonian troops against the city, and encamped opposite the Blachernæ gate. Constantine disdainfully ordered a chair to be placed for him outside the gate, in order that he might see, and be seen by, the rebels. For a time they were content to sing comic songs about him—of which there must have been a good supply in the city—then they made a dash and scattered his guards, and could have penetrated into the city, possibly taken it, if they had not foolishly retired. On such slender threads did crowns hang in that singular Empire.

Sclerena relieved the growing discontent by a premature death, apparently about the year 1045, and the superb palace which had been intended for Constantine’s mistress was turned into a monastery. Five years later Zoe closed her long and romantic career, at the age of seventy. Constantine mourned for her as if she had been a beloved child, and even pressed the Church to put her on the list of the canonized; he may have read how St Theodora had won the aureole largely by her freedom from jealousy. When it was found, after a time, that some curious fungi had grown about her monument, he insisted that they were heaven-sent assurances that Zoe had been admitted at once into the company of the saints. The Greek Church, however, was not persuaded to add Zoe to its quaint list of the blessed, and few will reflect on the many events which reveal her personality to us without admitting that, whether or no she was guilty of the positive crimes attributed to her, she had little or no moral feeling.

Constantine found consolation in the charms of a young Alan princess who was detained as a hostage at Constantinople. The milk-white skin and fine eyes of the unknown so fascinated him that he gave her the imperial title and emptied the remainder of the treasury upon her and the relatives who flocked to share her fortune. He was by this time a miserable wreck of his former magnificent person, and could not sit unaided on a horse, but the Court still rang with laughter and buffoonery. His favourite, a man who had been raised from the position of street buffoon to that of Court jester, became so infatuated with his wealth and privileges that he dreamed of possessing the pretty Alan princess and the purple. He was caught in Constantine’s bedroom with a drawn sword. The Emperor asked why he had attempted assassination, and, when the man said that he had an irresistible passion to see himself in the crown and imperial robes, burst into laughter and ordered the attendants to put them on him. He returned to his position, and, to the amusement of Constantine, made more open love than before to the fair Circassian mistress. But the Emperor died in 1054, and his mistress returned to her previous obscurity.