THE TRIUMPH OF CLOVIS
(AT THE PANTHEON, PARIS)
The people on both sides, who understood little of the points contested by the clergy, adopted the simple rule, that it was their duty to hate the members of the other church; and the Greeks, having their nationality condensed in their ecclesiastical establishment, far exceeded the Western nations in ecclesiastical bigotry, for the people in the western nations of Europe were often not very friendly to papal pretensions. The extreme bigotry of the Greeks soon tended to make the people of the Byzantine Empire averse to all intercourse with the Latins, as equals, and they assumed a superiority over nations rapidly advancing in activity, wealth, power, and intelligence, merely because they deemed them heretics. The separation of the two churches proved, consequently, more injurious to the Greeks, in their stationary condition of society, than to the Western Christians, who were eagerly pressing forward in many paths of social improvement.
[1053-1056 A.D.]
The empress Zoe died in the year 1050, at the age of seventy. Constantine X survived to the year 1054. When the emperor felt his end approaching, he ordered himself, according to the superstitious fashion of the time, to be transported to the monastery of Mangana, which he had constructed. His ministers, and especially his prime-minister, Joannes the logothetes, and president of the senate, urged him to name Nicephorus Bryennius, who commanded the Macedonian troops, his successor. The forms of the imperial constitution rendered it necessary that the sovereign should be crowned in Constantinople, and a courier was despatched to summon Bryennius to the capital. But as soon as Theodora heard of this attempt of her brother-in-law to deprive her of the throne she had been compelled to cede to him, she hastened to the imperial palace, convoked the senate, ordered the guards to be drawn out, and, presenting herself as the lawful empress, was proclaimed sovereign of the empire with universal acclamations. The news of this event embittered the last moments of the dying voluptuary, who hated Theodora for the respect her conduct inspired.[e]
In her name, and by the influence of four eunuchs, the Eastern world was peaceably governed about nineteen months; and as they wished to prolong their dominion, they persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor Michael VI. The surname of Stratioticus declares his military profession; but the crazy and decrepit veteran could only see with the eyes and execute with the hands of his ministers. Whilst he ascended the throne, Theodora sank into the grave—the last of the Macedonian or Basilian dynasty. We have hastily reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females.
THE COMNENI
From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of spirit, begins to emerge; the Greeks either preserved or revived the use of surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary virtue; and we now discern the rise, succession, and alliance, of the last dynasties of Constantinople and Trebizond. The Comneni, who upheld for a while the fate of the sinking empire, assumed the honour of a Roman origin; but the family had long since been transported from Italy to Asia. Their patrimonial estate was situate in the district of Castamona, in the neighbourhood of the Euxine; and one of their chiefs, who had already entered the paths of ambition, revisited with affection, perhaps with regret, the modest though honourable dwelling of his fathers.