The Empresses of Constantinople

by Joseph McCabe

The chief personæ of the romance, apart from the Empress, are the ambitious intriguers we have previously seen about the sickbed of Andronicus: the courtly and cultivated Cantacuzenus, the meaner though less hypocritical financier, Apocaucus, and the mother of Cantacuzenus. Theodora Paleologina was, as her name implies, herself a member of the Paleologi family. She was a descendant of Martha, the sister and counsellor of Michael Paleologus, the virile lady who had been put in a sack with cats by Theodore Lascaris: a strong and able and ambitious woman, although, since her husband’s death, she had worn the robe of a nun. There was a complete understanding between her and her less resolute son. Apocaucus, on the other hand, an active, restless, unscrupulous little man, who slept little at nights, was prepared to ally himself with either Anna or the Cantacuzeni, as seemed most profitable.

We have no reason to doubt the statement of Cantacuzenus that, when Andronicus lay dying, Apocaucus urged him, directly and through his mother, to seize the crown, and that he refused. He was not in the habit of acting so promptly. He went to the palace in which Anna wept with her boys, assured her that he would protect them, and placed five hundred guards about the palace. It may have occurred to Anna that there was no one, except himself, from whom they needed to be protected. Andronicus died on the following day, and she went (as Cantacuzenus would have foreseen) to spend the customary nine days in mourning by the remains of her husband. What Cantacuzenus might have done while she kept her dreary vigil in the monastery we cannot say, for his plans were interrupted. On the fourth day Anna surprised him by breaking the sacred custom and returning to the palace. It argues some strength of character in her that she should take this step, though it was not an original inspiration. Apocaucus had changed sides, and had gone to warn Anna that his rival aimed at the throne and she must return to watch him. But Cantacuzenus was even more surprised and baffled when the patriarch now came forward with the will of the late Emperor, and read from it that he, the patriarch, was to be guardian of the young princes and their Empire.

The maze of intrigue that followed can very well be imagined, and is fairly described in the chronicles. In fact, Gregoras and Cantacuzenus profess to give verbatim reports of the very lengthy speeches which, it seems, took the place of conversation in those days. The three aspirants to power besieged the chamber of Anna in turns, and each spent many hours in assuring her of his loyalty, and of the disloyalty of all the others. Though the strain made the Empress ill, she seems to have acted almost throughout with good judgment. The patriarch was her safest supporter, since each of the other two really aimed at the throne, and to the patriarch she clung, only tempering his advice by a fear of angering the two nobles and driving them to a coalition, which would be fatal to her. The patriarch urged her to crown her elder boy John at once; it would be an effective step, but when Cantacuzenus and Apocaucus protested that it could not be done in a time of mourning, she thought it best to refrain. At last some kind of settlement was reached. Cantacuzenus was to be the Magnus Domesticus (or “major-domo” on an imperial scale), and to lead out the troops to check the advancing Bulgarians and Turks in Thrace.

Apocaucus was dissatisfied, and, as soon as his rival had departed, he made a bold attempt to seize power. He had on the fringe of the city, by the seashore, a strongly fortified house, or castle, in which he could withstand an attack even of troops. It was impregnable, except to a large force, on the land side, and a galley waited always at its private wharf on the other side to convey him by sea in case of need. His plan was to carry off John to this castle and then dictate his terms to the Empress. Anna, however, was warned in time. The young prince was actually in the hands of the schemer, when her servants were sent to the rescue and Apocaucus fled to his fortress and barred the doors. Cantacuzenus returned in haste to the city, and set a troop of soldiers to watch the castle, but the Empress, on the advice of the patriarch, refused to take extreme measures. As long as the two deadly rivals were poised against each other, her position was more secure. We must not, of course, attribute this prudent policy entirely, or mainly, to the inexperienced young Empress. The patriarch was its chief author; and, though the patriarch was by no means disinterested, he could not aspire to the throne. There can be no doubt that, ill and weary as she was, Anna acted with good judgment.

Thwarted and exasperated, Cantacuzenus in his turn now meditated a coup, and it was only the singular irresolution or hypocrisy of his nature and the boldness of the patriarch that prevented it from being successful. One day, while he was discussing the situation with Anna, they heard a tumultuous rush and angry voices in the hall without. Anna asked the cause, and Cantacuzenus, professing that he did not know and going to learn, lightly reported that a crowd of soldiers and young nobles had penetrated the palace and were hectoring the patriarch. They insisted, he said, that Cantacuzenus should be allowed to enter the palace on horseback (an imperial prerogative) when he called, and the patriarch opposed them. He had, he told the Empress, scolded the patriarch for even listening to the young fools, and had driven them from the palace, and he advised the Empress to admonish or punish them. It seems quite clear that in this case a rather weak, but deliberate, plot on the part of Cantacuzenus had been foiled by the patriarch. The Magnus Domesticus then returned to the field, leaving his mother to watch the Empress, and threatening that he would punish any man who gave her anxiety in his absence. Gregoras says that he took with him an enormous sum of money, and we may conclude that he went with a fairly clear intention to raise the provinces.

As soon as he had removed his troops to Thrace his rivals set to work in deadly earnest. Apocaucus was pardoned, at the instance of the patriarch, and promoted to the dignity of Grand Duke and Prefect of Constantinople. So far the policy was sound enough, but it was, no doubt, impossible for the ailing young Empress to maintain the equilibrium any longer in face of their passion and the perfidy of their opponent, and they plunged into civil war. Cantacuzenus was declared to be deposed, and it was even understood in the city that the patriarch promised the open gate of heaven to any man who would assassinate him. His friends and relatives were alarmed and fled to the deserted meadows beyond the walls, where they passed the night; and, as they learned in the morning that their property had been confiscated, they hurried to the camp at Didymoteichus with loud cries of “Cantacuzenus Emperor!” After a becoming parade of real or feigned reluctance, the commander of the troops consented to accept the purple and prepared for civil war. An imperial outfit was hastily made at Didymoteichus—so hastily that, as the vain Cantacuzenus complains, the tunic was far too short, while the mantle hung about him like a sack—and the coronation took place. The ceremony gives us another Empress of a not uninteresting character. Cantacuzenus was married to Irene, daughter of a Court official of the former royal family of Bulgaria; her mother had been Irene Paleologina, daughter of Michael Paleologus and Theodora. She remained, tearful and anxious, at Didymoteichus while her husband led out his troops, but she would afterwards take a vigorous part in the struggle.

Irene’s mother-in-law was the first victim of her own and her son’s ambition, and of the hatred of his enemies. Cantacuzenus, who always speaks with respect, if not generosity, of Anna, tells us that the Empress was not responsible for the barbarous treatment and death of his mother. She was imprisoned in one of the palace cells as soon as the trouble began, and from her dreary room she could hear the rabble of Constantinople shouting their customary obscene abuse of her and her son, and acclaiming Anna and John V. The young prince had been crowned at once by the patriarch. It was the early winter, and the aged Theodora was treated with studied insult and severity by her jailers. Her health soon broke, and she died in the palace dungeon. Cantacuzenus relates that a royal nun who had assisted and, consoled his mother went to reprove Anna for the brutality to which she had been exposed, but he adds that Anna was ignorant of it and blameless. The close of the career of Theodora Paleologina is one of the many reminders that to the end the Byzantine Empire did not lack strong men and women; what it lacked was sound moral and patriotic feeling. The stock was not “outworn” and “enfeebled,” as historical writers are apt to say of decaying civilizations. Its strength was tainted and misdirected. The royal nun, I may add, who had visited Theodora in her cell was Theodora, daughter of Andronicus the elder, and widow of Michael of Bulgaria, who here is seen for the last time.

The course of the long civil war need not be followed here. It opened disastrously for Cantacuzenus. Anna, Cantacuzenus tells us, longed for peace, and proposed that he should hold the chief power in the Empire, though not wear the purple, and that his daughter Helena should marry her son, the Emperor John. It would have been the best settlement, but it did not suit the ambition of Apocaucus and the patriarch. Apocaucus urged the patriarch to live in the palace and bribed Anna’s servants to watch her day and night, in order to prevent her from communicating with Cantacuzenus. Later Cantacuzenus visited the famous monks of Mount Athos, and induced them to send a few of their community to plead with Anna to arrest this shedding of Christian blood. But the monks were intercepted by the patriarch, and converted to his view of the situation, before they reached the Empress.

After three years of indecisive warfare Apocaucus was assassinated. He had at the beginning of the war filled the palace dungeons with prisoners, and he augmented their number continually with nobles or officials who ventured to dissent from his plans. In the summer of 1345 he was building a new and formidable prison in the palace grounds, and the prisoners looked with concern on the frowning edifice and readily believed that he was going to inflict all kinds of atrocities on them. One afternoon he went, without his usual company of guards, to see how the work progressed, and imprudently entered the yard where the prisoners were. One of them snatched a heavy piece of wood and felled him, and the others, seizing the axes and tools that lay about, ended his life and exhibited his head to the guards on the other side of the wall. Anna was alarmed and perplexed, and allowed the wife of the dead minister to take a fearful vengeance. The rowers of the fleet were armed and discharged upon the prisoners, and it is said that about two hundred of them were butchered.

Cantacuzenus now sent fresh proposals of peace, which were approved by the patriarch, and Anna made the grave and somewhat obscure blunder of rejecting them. Gregoras says that she was jealous of Irene, but Gregoras, for theological reasons which will appear presently, is not generous to the Empress. It is possible that Cantacuzenus insisted on retaining his crown. However that may be, the war continued for another year, and began to turn in favour of Cantacuzenus, who now detached a large body of Turks from the service of the Empress. Anna’s conduct, in fact, now becomes weak and blundering. She quarrelled with the patriarch, and allowed herself to be influenced by the meaner monks and bishops who opposed him. Apocaucus had so completely relieved her of the work of administration that she paid little attention to it after his death, and, as a new heresy now entered Constantinople and won her favour, she became absorbed in a theological quarrel, while her enemy crept nearer to Constantinople.