FINLAY'S HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

BOOK FOURTH. CHAPTER II

SECTION I.

MICHAEL VIII., A.D. 1261-1282.

The conquest of Constantinople restored the Greeks to a dominant position in the East; but the national character of the people, the political constitution of the imperial government, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the orthodox church, were all equally destitute of the enlightened theory and energetic practice necessary for advancing in a career of improvement. The Greek nation made no use of this favourable crisis in its history for developing its material resources, augmenting its moral influence, and increasing its wealth and population. The first idea of the emperor, of the people, of the government, and of the clergy, was to constitute the new Greek empire of Constantinople on the old standard of that Roman legislation and political orthodoxy which had perished when the Crusaders destroyed the Byzantine empire. This vain attempt to inspire dead forms with life, impressed on the Greek empire of Constantinople the marks of premature decrepitude. The Emperor Michael, the imperial court, the orthodox church, and the Greek nation, suddenly assume the characteristics of a torpid and stubborn old age; and the history of the empire takes the monotonous type which it retained for nearly two centuries, until the Ottoman Turks put an end to its existence. There is little interest, but there is much instruction, in the records of this torpid society, which, while it was visibly declining to the eyes of others, boasted that its wisdom and experience had brought its political government, its civil laws, and its ecclesiastical dogmas, to a state of perfection. Conservatism is constantly deluding the minds of political philosophers with the hope of giving a permanent duration to some cherished virtue in society. It becomes frequently a disease of statesmen in long-established despotisms. The condition of mankind in China and Hindostan has been influenced for many centuries by this delusion of the human mind; and in the first page of this work it was observed that the institutions of imperial Rome displayed the same tendency to fix society in immutable forms and classes by legislative enactments. The same idea now pervaded not only the government and the church of the Greek empire, but was also transfused into the national mind. History offers no other example of a people possessing a rich and noble literature, imbued with sentiments of liberty and truth, turning a deaf ear to the voice of reason, sacrificing all independence of thought, and all desire of improvement, to the maintenance of national pride. The causes of this strange phenomenon appear to have been partly religious bigotry, and partly a wish to maintain political union among the Greek race. The Greeks hated the Catholics with a fervour which obscured their intellectual vision; and they were justly alarmed at the danger which their nation incurred, both from its geographical location and from the power of its enemies, of being broken up into a number of dependent and insignificant states. The opinion that this evil could be averted by the principle of conservatism was generally embraced; and every existing relic of a state of things which had long passed away was carefully preserved. The Greeks gloried in the name of Romans; they clung to the forms of the imperial government without its military power; they retained the Roman code without the systematic administration of justice, and prided themselves on the orthodoxy of a church in which the clergy were deprived of all ecclesiastical independence, and lived in a state of vassalage to the imperial court. Such a society could only wither, though it might wither slowly.

On the other hand, it may perhaps be doubtful whether the state of society would have enabled the Greek nation to revive its national energy, and secure to itself a dominant position in the East, by reforming its central administration according to the actual exigencies of the present, instead of modelling it on theories of the past. The progress of the people required that the system of municipal institutions should be ameliorated and extended, in order to avert the tendency of local interests to produce political separation. But, above all things, it was necessary that the Greeks should voluntarily concede to their own countrymen that religious liberty which the Genoese and the Turks were compelled, by the force of circumstances, to grant to strangers, and allow the Greek Catholics to worship according to their own forms, and to build churches for themselves. To increase the national wealth, it was necessary that commercial freedom should be secured to native merchants, and that the imperial government and the city of Constantinople should be deprived of the power of selling monopolies, or granting exclusive privileges of trade to the Italian republics, in order to purchase political and military assistance. To do all this would have been extremely difficult, for many interests and prejudices would have opposed the necessary reforms.

Michael Paleologos was encamped at Meteorion with the troops he had assembled to form the siege of Constantinople, when a report reached him in the dead of night that the city was taken. At daybreak a courier arrived from Strategopoulos, bringing the ensigns of the imperial dignity, which Baldwin had abandoned in his precipitate retreat. Michael now felt that he was really emperor of the Greeks, and he marched to take possession of the ancient capital of the Christian world with no ordinary hopes; but Byzantine formalism and Greek vanity required so much preparation for every court ceremony that the emperor’s entrance into Constantinople did not take place until the 15th of August. The Archbishop of Cyzicus, bearing one of the pictures of the Virgin said to have been painted by St Luke, of which the orthodox pretend to possess several originals, passed first through the Golden Gate. The emperor followed, clad in a simple dress, and followed by a long procession on foot. After visiting the monastery of Studium, the train proceeded to the palace of Bukoleon, for that of Blachern had been left by the Franks in such a state of filth and dilapidation as to be scarcely habitable. At the great palace the emperor mounted his horse and rode in the usual state to the Church of St Sophia, to perform his devotions in that venerated temple of the Greeks. Alexis Strategopoulos was subsequently permitted to make a triumphal procession through the city, like a Roman conqueror of old; and Michael determined to repeat the ceremony of his own coronation in the capital of what was still called the Roman Empire, at the central shrine of orthodox piety. The Patriarch Arsenics had been removed from office for opposing his usurpation. His successor soon died, and he was now replaced at the head of the church, for his deposition was generally regarded as illegal, and Michael VIII feared to commence his reign in Constantinople by creating a schism in the Greek church. The well-intentioned but weak-minded Arsenios was persuaded to repeat the ceremony of Michaels coronation in the Church of St Sophia, while the lawful emperor, John IV, was left forgotten and neglected at Nicaea.

Constantinople had fallen greatly in wealth and splendour under the feudal government of the Latins; and it was not destined to recover its former population and rank as the empress of Christian cities under the sway of the family of Paleologos. The capital of the Greek empire was a very different city from the capital of the Byzantine empire. The Crusaders and Venetians had destroyed as well as plundered the ancient Constantinople  and the Greek city of the Paleologoi declined so much that it could hardly bear comparison with Genoa and Venice. Before its conquest by the Crusaders, Constantinople had astonished strangers by the splendour of its numerous palaces, monasteries, churches, and hospitals, which had been constructed and adorned during nine centuries of inviolable supremacy. But now, on regaining its liberty, instead of displaying at every step proofs that it concentrated within its walls the wealth of many provinces—instead of containing the richest commercial port and the most industrious population on the globe—it was everywhere encumbered with the rubbish of repeated conflagrations, disfigured by dilapidated palaces, abandoned monasteries, and ruined churches, and inhabited by a diminished, idle, and impoverished people. The blackened ashes of the last fire, by which the Greeks had expelled the Venetians, had not yet been washed from the walls by a winter’s rain. In all directions the squares and porticoes, which had once been the ornaments of the city, were encumbered with filth; for the Franks were ignorant of the police regulations which the Byzantine government had inherited from the earlier Roman emperors, and which it had not allowed to remain entirely without improvement. The state of the city attested the barbarism of the Western nobles, and the insufficiency of the feudal organization to direct the complicated machine of civil administration in accordance with the exigencies of a civilized and motley population.

Michael VIII was eager to efface the marks of foreign domination from the capital of the empire, and to repair the injuries of time; but his plans were injudicious, and his success extremely limited. He aspired to be the second founder of the city of Constantinople, as well as of the Eastern Roman Empire. The nobility of his dominions were invited to inhabit the capital by the gift of places and pensions; traders were attracted by monopolies and privileges. The wealth that ought to have been expended in restoring communications between the dispersed and dissevered portions of the Greek nation, in repairing roads and bridges, was wasted in building palaces and adorning churches in the capital, where they were no longer required for a diminished and impoverished population. Crowds of imperial princes and princesses, Despots and Caesars, officers of state and courtiers, consumed the revenues which ought to have covered the frontier with impregnable fortresses, and maintained a disciplined standing army and a well-exercised fleet. Yet, while lavishing the public revenues to gratify his pride and acquire popularity, he sacrificed the general interests of the middle classes to a selfish and rapacious fiscal policy. All the property within the walls of Constantinople, whether it belonged to Greeks or Latins, was adjudged to the imperial government by the right of conquest; but their ancient possessions were restored to the great families whose power he feared, and to those individuals whose services he wished to secure. Sites for building were then leased to the citizens for a fixed rent; yet the Greek government was so despotic, and Michael was so arbitrary in his administration, that twelve years later he pretended that the concessions he had granted to private individuals were merely acts of personal favour, and he demanded the payment of the rent for the past twelve years, the collection of which he enforced with much severity. Michael used other frauds to bring the property of his subjects into the public treasury, or to deprive them of a portion of the money justly due to them by the state. Under the pretext of changing the type of the gold coinage, and commemorating the recovery of Constantinople by impressing an image of its walls on the byzants, he debased the standard of the mint, and issued coins containing only fifteen parts of gold and nine of alloy. While on one hand he rendered property insecure and impoverished his subjects, he was striving by other arrangements to increase the Greek population of the capital, in order to counterbalance the wealth and influence of foreign traders. Numbers were drawn from the islands of the Archipelago, and a colony of Tzakonians or Lakonians from Monemvasia and the neighbouring districts was settled in the capital, which supplied the imperial fleet with its best sailors. But war, not commerce, was the object of Michael’s care; and while he was endeavouring to increase the means of recruiting his army and navy, he allowed the Genoese to profit by his political errors, and render themselves masters of the commerce of the Black Sea, and of great part of the carrying trade of the Greek empire. In the meantime, the fortifications of Constantinople were repaired; and when Charles of Anjou threatened to invade the East, a second line of wall was added to the fortifications on the land side, and the defences already existing towards the sea were strengthened. The port of Vlanka, anciently called the Theodosian port, was improved by the addition of two new moles, constructed with immense blocks of stone, and it was deepened with great art.

But it was no longer in the power of Michael, nor in the spirit of Greek society, to restore the vigour of the Roman legal administration, which had long been the bulwark of Byzantine society. Foreign conquest and internal revolutions had broken up the central government. Provincial dislocation and individual independence had in many districts proceeded so far that imperial fiscality was more feared than imperial protection was sought. The Greeks of Trebizond and Epirus, and even of Naxos, Athens, and Achaia enjoyed as great a degree of prosperity, and as much security of property, under their local usages or foreign laws, as the Greeks of Constantinople, who pretended to preserve the judicial system of Rome and the code of the Basilika.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GENOESE.

Michael VIII fulfilled all the stipulations of the treaty he had concluded with the Genoese. The public property of the republic of Venice was confiscated, and the Genoese were put in possession of the palace previously occupied by the Bailly of the Venetians. This building was immediately pulled down, and the marble of which it was composed was transported to Genoa, in order to be employed in the construction of the Church of St George, where it formed a lasting memorial of this triumph of the republic. In the meantime, the war between Venice and Genoa continued to rage with extreme violence, and in this contest Michael’s interests were deeply involved. When he regained possession of Constantinople, he found that a considerable part of the trading population consisted of Venetians established in the East as permanent colonists. These traders readily transferred their allegiance from the Latin to the Greek emperor; and Michael, who knew the value of such subjects, granted them all legal protection in the pursuit of their commercial occupations, as he did also to the Pisans. But the Genoese, who had hastened to the East in great numbers in order to profit by the overthrow of the domination of the Crusaders and Venetians, considered that the emperor ought to expel every Venetian from his dominions. The democratic state of the Genoese republic at this period increased the insolence of individuals. The merchants who owned and the officers who commanded the Genoese galleys that visited the Greek empire, attacked the Venetians who had taken the oath of allegiance to the Emperor Michael, and plundered their property as if they were enemies. The neutrality of the Greek territory was violated, and the streets of the capital were often a scene of bloodshed by the contests of the hostile republicans. The turbulent conduct of his allies had already created dissatisfaction on the mind of Michael, when their defeat by the Venetians before Monemvasia, and the fall of Baccanegra, who had concluded the treaty of Nymphaeum in 1261 by placing a party adverse to the Greek alliance in power, induced him to doubt the fidelity of their services, and he dismissed sixty Genoese galleys which he had taken into his pay. Charles of Anjou soon after effected the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, and the Genoese government became more anxious to cultivate his friendship than that of the Greek emperor.

The character and conduct of Michael VIII typifies the spirit of Greek society from the recovery of Constantinople to the fall of the empire. It displays a strange ignorance of the value of frankness and honesty in public business, a constant suspicion of every friend, restless intrigues to deceive every ally, and a wavering policy to conciliate every powerful enemy. The consequence of this suspicion, plotting, and weakness, was, that very soon no one trusted either the emperor or the Greeks. The invasion of Italy by Charles of Anjou, and the pretensions of the Pope to dispose of crowns, alarmed both Venice and Michael, and induced them to forget all former grounds of hostility, and conclude a closer alliance than the Greek emperor had concluded with Genoa, with which he now declared war. This treaty is dated in June 1265, about a month before Charles of Anjou received the crown of the Two Sicilies from the Pope in the Lateran. The stipulations are remarkable both in a political and commercial light. The emperor engaged to expel the Genoese from Constantinople, and not to conclude peace with them except in concert with the republic. The Venetians engaged to hire their galleys to the emperor to serve even against the Pope, the King of France, and Charles of Anjou, as well as against the republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Ancona, and any prince or community that might attack the Greek empire. It is worthy of observation that when the Genoese concluded their alliance with the Greeks, in 1261, they had so far yielded to the public opinion of the West as to insert a clause in the treaty exempting their galleys in the imperial pay from serving against the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, the kings of France, Castile, England, and Sicily, the Prince of Achaia, and several other kings and princes, and yet they had incurred excommunication. The Venetians now engaged to serve even against the Pope, and his vassal, Charles of Anjou; but his Holiness did not venture to excommunicate Venice as lightly as he excommunicated Genoa, its power on the continent of Italy was so much greater. The republic also bound itself to exact an oath from all Crusaders who embarked in Venetian transports, that they would not invade the dominions of Michael VIII.

 The articles of the treaty which relate to commerce prove that Roman prejudices and Byzantine pride still induced the diplomatists of Constantinople to view trade as a matter beneath the attention of monarchs. The change already visible in European society, which began to place a larger share of wealth, knowledge, and power in the hands of traders, and which had rendered the merchant-nobles of Venice and the trading citizens of Lombardy a match for the chosen mercenaries of Constantinople and the German chivalry of the house of Hohenstauffen, escaped the notice of Michael and his counsellors. The emperor consequently neglected the commercial interests of the Greeks; and while he made great concessions to foreigners, he only stipulated that his own subjects should have free intercourse with Venice on paying the usual duties, and that they might import and export whatever merchandise they pleased. On the other hand, the Venetians obtained a long series of concessions in their favour, and as these concessions formed the basis of all the commercial treaties concluded by the emperors of Constantinople until the Turkish conquest, and exercised some influence in diminishing the trade of the Greeks and weakening the empire, it is important to notice their extent. The Venetians were exempted from the ordinary control of the revenue officers, and allowed to carry on their commerce under especial privileges, for which, as well as to guard against frauds on the imperial revenue, a separate quarter or a single warehouse, as the exigency require, was granted to them, according to the extent of their trade, in most of the principal ports in his dominions. Within these factories the Venetians were governed by the laws of Venice and their own magistrates. They had full liberty to transport their goods by land as well as by sea to any part of the Greek empire without paying any duty, being only required to furnish the imperial collectors of customs with exact statements of the amount, in order that the duty might be levied from the purchaser. They were also allowed to export grain from the empire until the price at Constantinople rose to fifty byzants for one hundred measures. They had, of course, the right to erect Catholic churches within the precincts of their factories.

The close political alliance which this treaty established between the empire and the republic was not of long duration. The intrigues of Charles of Anjou in Tuscany, where he arrayed Florence and Lucca against Sienna and Pisa, affected the interests of Genoa, and enabled the opposition to gain strength, while the victories of the Venetians, and the overtures of peace which were made to them by Pope Clement IV, appear to have awakened some distrust of his new allies in the suspicious mind of Michael VIII. These circumstances induced the emperor and the republic to conclude a new treaty in 1268, which modified the offensive and defensive stipulations of the earlier treaty with regard to Genoa, the island of Euboea, the principality of Achaia and the duchy of the Archipelago.  In the year 1270, a change in the government of Genoa placed the administration in the hands of the families of Doria and Spinola, who were opposed to Charles of Anjou, and a truce was subsequently concluded by the Genoese both with the Byzantine empire and with Venice, while the Greeks and Venetians became engaged in war. Hostilities were nevertheless renewed, until at length, in the year 1275, the Emperor Michael formed a new alliance with the Genoese; but, in order to prevent their making the streets of Constantinople again the scene of their disorders, he obliged them to establish their factory at Heracleia, on the Propontis. Some years later, they were allowed to transfer their settlement to Galata, where they laid the foundation of a colony which soon deprived the Greeks of the greater part of their trade in the Black Sea.

The morbid ambition of Michael Paleologos was not satisfied until he was sole emperor. In defiance, therefore, of the repeated oaths by which he had sworn to respect the rights of his ward, his colleague and his sovereign, he availed himself of the first favourable moment to dethrone the unfortunate boy, who had been left neglected at Nicaea. On Christmas-day, 1261, the agents of Michael deprived John IV of his sight, though he had not attained the age of ten, and he was declared to have forfeited the throne. The cruel and perjured emperor then ordered him to be immured in the fort of Dakybiza, where he remained neglected, and almost forgotten, for eight-and-twenty years, when his solitude was broken in upon by Andronicus, the bigoted son of the hypocritical Michael. The conscience of the bigot was uneasy on account of his father’s crimes, of which  he was enjoying the fruit; so by a few kind words he easily induced his imprisoned victim to make what was falsely termed a voluntary cession of all his rights to the imperial crown. The evil consequences of this crime were deeply felt in the empire; for the clergy, the nobility, and the people, had all participated in the system of corruption and peculation by which Michael VIII had smoothed the way for his usurpation. The violation of every sentiment of honour, patriotism, and virtue, was so iniquitous, that the public character of the Greek nation was degraded by its obsequiousness on this occasion; and the feelings of the people in the provinces of the east, as well as in western Europe, avenged the misfortunes of John. Michael Paleologos had hitherto been regarded as a bold, frank, and generous prince; he henceforward showed himself a timid, hypocritical, and cruel tyrant.

The Patriarch Arsenios, who was one of the guardians of the dethroned emperor, considered himself bound to protest against the injustice and perjury of Michael. He convoked an assembly of the prelates resident in Constantinople, and proposed that the reigning emperor should be excommunicated by the synod; but too many of the clergy had been participators in the intrigues of Michael, and were enjoying the rewards of their subserviency, for such a measure to meet with any support. Arsenios, therefore, on his own authority as Patriarch, interdicted Michael from all religious rites; but he did not venture to pronounce the usual form of words, which deprived him of the prayers of the orthodox. The Greek church, under the Paleologoi, was tainted with the same spirit of half-measures and base tergiversation which marks the imperial administration. The emperor accepted the modified censure of the church as just, and hypocritically requested that his penance might be assigned. By obtaining his dispensation in this manner, he expected that public opinion would render the church an accessary after the fact, while he secured to himself an additional guarantee for the enjoyment of the fruits of his crime. Confident in his power, he punished with cruelty all who ventured to express publicly their compassion for their dethroned emperor.

 Though the family of Vatatzes had been unpopular among the nobility, it was beloved by the Asiatic Greeks, and especially by the mountaineers of Bithynia. The people in the vicinity of Nicaea took up arms to avenge John IV, and their insurrection was suppressed with great difficulty. A blind boy, who was found wandering in the neighbourhood, was supposed to be their legitimate sovereign, the victim of Michael’s treachery. The warlike peasantry flew to arms, and rendered themselves masters of the forts and mountain passes. The advance of the imperial troops sent to suppress the revolt was impeded by those famous archers who had previously formed one of the most effective bodies in the emperor’s army. Every ravine was contested, and every advantage dearly purchased. The imperial troops at last subdued the country by adopting the policy by which the Turks extended their conquests. The habitations were destroyed, and the forests were burned down, so that the native population had no means of obtaining subsistence, while the soldiers of Michael became masters of the country, under the cover of their widespread conflagrations. The province was pacified by gaining over the chiefs, pardoning the people, and proving that John IV was a prisoner in Dakybiza. The poor blind boy was then conveyed  into the Turkish territory, and no cause of war existed. Many of the mountaineers, whose property was destroyed, still resisted, and, when taken, they were treated with the greatest cruelty. The municipal organization and the privileges of the mountaineers of Bithynia were abolished, and mercenary troops were quartered on the inhabitants. The resources of this flourishing province were ruined, and its population was so diminished that, when the Ottoman Turks attacked the empire, the renowned archers of Bithynia and the mountain militia had ceased to exist.

 The change which is visible in the condition of the Asiatic provinces of the empire towards the end of the reign of Michael VIII must be attentively observed. When he mounted the throne, the power of the Seljouk empire was so broken by the conquests of the Moguls, and the energy of the Greek population was so great, in consequence of the wise government of John III and Theodore II, that the Greeks under the Turkish dominion seemed on the eve of regaining their independence. Azeddin Kaikous II, sultan of Iconium, was an exile; his brother Rokneddin ruled only a small part of the Seljouk empire of Roum; for Houlagon, the brother of the great khans Mangou and Kublai, possessed the greater part of Asia Minor, and many Turkish tribes lived in a state of independence. The cruelty and rapacity of Michael’s government, and the venality and extortion which he tolerated among the imperial officers and administrators, arrested the progress of the Greek nation, and prepared the way for its rapid decline. The jealousy which Michael showed of all marks of national independence, and the fear he entertained of opposition, are strong characteristics of his policy. His governors in Asia Minor were instructed to weaken the power of the local chiefs, while the fiscal officers were ordered to find pretexts for confiscating the estates of the wealthy. Indeed, all the proprietors of wealth in the mountain districts of Bithynia were deprived of their possessions, and pensioned by the grant of a sum of forty byzants to each, as an annual allowance for subsistence. Both rich and poor, finding that they were plundered with impunity, and that it was vain to seek redress from the emperor, often emigrated with the remains of their property into the Turkish territories. So rapacious was the imperial treasury that the historian Pachymeres, though a courtier, believed that the Emperor Michael systematically weakened the power of the Greek population from his fear of rebellion. The consequence was that the whole country beyond the Sangarius, and the mountains which give rise to the Rhyrdakos and Makestos, was occupied by the Turks, who were often invited by the inhabitants to take possession of the small towns. The communications between Nicaea and Heracleia on the Euxine were interrupted by land; and the cities of Kromna, Amastris, and Tios relapsed into the position of Greek colonies surrounded by a foreign population. Even the valley of the Meander, one of the richest portions of the Greek empire, was invaded; and unfortunately the great possessions of the monasteries and nobles in this fertile district placed it in a similar social condition to that which had facilitated the ravages of the Normans in France under the Carolingians, and in England under the Saxons. Immense wealth invited the invasions of the Turkish nomads, while the population consisted only of monks, or the agents of absent proprietors, and unarmed peasants. When John Paleologos, the emperor’s brother, attempted to expel the Turks from their conquests, he found them already so well fortified in the monasteries of Strobilos and Stradiotrachia that he could not attempt to dislodge them, (a.C. 1266-1268). Perhaps the violent opposition of the monks to Michael’s schemes for uniting the Greek and Latin churches may at last have rendered the emperor indifferent to the fate of the monasteries.

As the reign of Michael VIII advanced, the encroachments of the nomad Turks became more daring. John Paleologos, who had for some time restrained their incursions, was by his brother’s jealousy deprived of all military command; and Andronicus, the emperor’s eldest son, was sent to the frontier as commander-in-chief. In the year 1280 the incapacity of the young prince threw all the imperial provinces open to invasion. Nestongos, who commanded in the city of Nyssa, was defeated and taken prisoner. Nyssa was taken, and the Turks then laid siege to Tralles, which had been recently rebuilt and repeopled. This city contained a population of thirty-six thousand inhabitants, but it was ill supplied both with provisions and water. Yet its inhabitants made a brave defence, and had Andronicus possessed either military talents, activity, or courage, Tralles might have been saved. The Turks at last formed a breach in the walls by sapping, and then carried the city by storm. The inhabitants who escaped the massacre were reduced to slavery.

ADVANCE OF THE TURKS

About the time Michael VIII usurped his place on the throne of the Greek empire, a small Turkish tribe made its first appearance in the Seljouk empire. Othman, who gave his name to this new band of immigrants, is said to have been born in the year 1258, and his father Ertogrul entered the Seljouk empire as the chief of only four hundred famiilies; yet Orkhan the son of Othman laid the foundations of the institutions and power of the Ottoman empire. No nation ever increased so rapidly from such small beginnings, and no government ever constituted itself with greater sagacity than the Ottoman; but no force or prudence could have enabled this small tribe of nomads to rise with such rapidity to power, had it not been that the Emperor Michael and the Greek nation were paralysed by political and moral corruption, and both left behind them descendants equally weak and worthless. When history records that Michael Paleologos recovered possession of Constantinople by accident, it ought also to proclaim that, by his deliberate policy, he prepared the way for the ruin of the Greek race and the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. There is no other instance in history of a nation so numerous, so wealthy, and so civilized, as the Greeks were in the fourteenth century, having been permanently subdued by an enemy so inferior in political and military resources. The circumstance becomes the more disgraceful, as its explanation must be sought in social and moral causes.

The rebellion of his subjects in Asia made Michael anxious to secure peace in Europe. In order to counterbalance the successes of the Despot of Epirus, and dispose him to conclude a treaty, Michael resolved to release the Prince of Achaia, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Pelagonia in 1259. William Villehardoin, prince of Achaia, was freed, by the destruction of the Latin empire of Romania, from those feudal ties which connected him with the throne of Baldwin II. To obtain his liberty, he consented to become a vassal of the Greek empire, and he re-established the imperial power in the Peloponnesus, by delivering up to Michael the fortresses of Monemvasia, Misithra, and Maina. On swearing fidelity to Michael VIII he was released from captivity, after having remained a prisoner for three years. The Pope, however, was so much alarmed at this example of a Catholic prince becoming a vassal of the Greek emperor, that as soon as the Prince of Achaia was firmly settled in his principality, his Holiness absolved him from all his oaths and obligations to the Greek emperor. Pope Urban IV even went so far as to proclaim a crusade against Michael, and to invite St Louis to take the command; but the King of France, who was much more deeply imbued with the Christian spirit than the Pope, declined the office. The crusade ended in a partisan warfare between the Prince of Achaia and the governors Michael had placed in the fortresses of which he had gained possession in the Peloponnesus.

The conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou threatened the Greek empire with a new invasion. Under the auspices of Clement IV a treaty was concluded between the dethroned emperor Baldwin, Charles of Anjou, and William, prince of Achaia, by which Baldwin ceded to Charles the suzerainty of Achaia, and the prince agreed to transfer his allegiance from the titular Emperor to the King of Naples, who had already obtained the absolute sovereignty of Corfu, and of the cities of Epirus, given by the Despot Michael II as dowry to his daughter, who married Manfred, king of Sicily. In return, Charles of Anjou engaged to furnish Baldwin with a force of two thousand knights and their followers, to enable him to invade the Greek empire. This treaty was concluded at Viterbo on the 27th of May 1267. Its stipulations alarmed Michael Paleologos, who had already involved himself in ecclesiastical quarrels with his subjects; and in order to delay an attack on Constantinople, he sent an embassy to Pope Clement IV, proposing measures for effecting a union of the Greek and Latin churches. On this occasion Michael was relieved from fear by Conradin’s invasion of the kingdom of Naples, which enabled him to conclude a truce with the Prince of Achaia. He then neglected his overtures to the Pope, and turned all his attention to fitting out a fleet, which he manned with Gasmouls, Tzakonians, and Greeks of the Archipelago. The insincere negotiations of Michael for a union with the Roman church were often renewed under the pressure of fear of invasion from abroad, and dread of insurrection at home. The weakness caused by the opposition of the Greek clergy and people to his authority, encouraged the enterprises of his foreign enemies, while the entangled web of his diplomacy, taking a new form at every change of his personal interests, at last involved him so inextricably in its meshes that he had no means of concealing his bad faith, cruelty, and hypocrisy.

 In the year 1271 the treachery of Andronikos Tarchaniotes, the emperor’s nephew, reanimated the war in Thessaly. Having invited the Tartars to invade the empire from the north, he abandoned Mount Haemus, of which he was governor, to their ravages, and fled to John Dukas, prince of Vlakia, his father-in-law, whom he persuaded to invade Thessaly. The emperor sent his brother, John Paleologos, with an army of forty thousand men and a fleet of sixty-three galleys, to re-establish the imperial supremacy. John Dukas was besieged in his capital, Neopatras, and the place was reduced to the last extremity, when the prince passed through the hostile camp in the disguise of a groom, to seek assistance from his Latin allies. Leading a horse by the bridle he walked along, crying out that his master had lost another horse, and would reward the finder. When he reached the plain of the Sperchius he mounted his horse, and gained the territory of the Frank Marquess of Boudonitza. The Duke of Athens furnished him with a band of three hundred knights, and he returned to Neopatras with such celerity that he surprised the imperial camp, and completely dispersed the army. John Paleologos escaped to Demetriades (Volo), where his fleet was stationed. A squadron composed of Venetian ships, and galleys of the Duke of Naxos and of the Barons of Negropont, was watching the imperial fleet. On hearing of the total defeat of the army they attacked the admiral Alexios Philanthropenos in the port, and were on the point of carrying the whole Greek fleet by boarding, when John Paleologos reached the scene of action with a part of the fugitive troops. He immediately conveyed a large body of soldiers to the ships, and reanimated the sailors. The Latins were compelled to retire with the loss of some of their own ships, but they succeeded in carrying off* several of the Greek galleys.

In the following year the imperial fleet, under the command of Zacharia, the Genoese signeur of Thasos, defeated the Franks near Oreos in Euboea, and took John de la Roche, duke of Athens, prisoner. But, on the other hand, John Dukas again routed the army in Thessaly, and by his activity and military skill rendered himself the most redoubted enemy of Michael; so that, when the majority of the Greek population declared openly against the emperor’s project for a union with the Latin church, the Prince of Vallachian Thessaly became the champion of the orthodox church, and assembled a synod which excommunicated Michael VIII. (A.D. 1277).

In the year 1278 Charles of Anjou would in all probability have besieged Constantinople, had he not been prevented by the express commands of his suzerain. Pope Nicholas III, who was gained over by Michael’s submission to expect the immediate union of the Greek with the Papal church. But the elevation of Martin IV to the See of Rome changed its policy. The Emperor Michael was excommunicated, and, to render the excommunication more insulting, he was reproached with persecuting the Greeks who consistently abstained from his own delusive compliances. Michael revenged himself by ceasing to pray for the Pope in the Eastern churches. A league was now formed between the Pope, the King of Naples, and the republic of Venice, for the conquest of the Greek empire, and a treaty was signed at Orvietto on the 3d July 1281. The danger was serious. Charles of Anjou promised to furnish eight thousand cavalry, and the Venetians engaged to arm forty galleys, in order to commence operations in the spring of 1283. In the meantime a body of troops, under the command of Solimon Rossi, was despatched to occupy Dyrrachium and assist the Albanians, who had recently revolted against Michael. This expedition proved unsuccessful; Rossi was taken prisoner while besieging Belgrade (Berat), and the Neapolitans and Albanians were completely defeated. But the Greek emperor could only intrigue to avert the great storm with which he was threatened by the treaty of Orvietto, and in the end he was saved by the deeds of others. The Sicilian Vespers delivered the Greeks from all further fear of Charles of Anjou and of a French invasion, and Michael was able to smile at the impotent rage of Martin IV, and despise his excommunications.

AFFAIRS OF BULGARIA

The vicinity of the Bulgarians, joined to their national power and influence over the numbers of their countrymen settled in the Greek empire, gave Michael some uneasiness at the commencement of his reign. Constantine, king of Bulgaria, had married a sister of the dethroned Emperor John IV, and he was induced, by the feelings of his wife, by the intrigues of the fugitive Sultan of Iconium, and by the hopes of assistance from the Mogul emperor, Houlagon, to attack the Greek empire. Michael took the field against the Bulgarians, and in the year 1265 drove them beyond Mount Haemus; but as he was returning to Constantinople he had nearly fallen into the hands of a body of Bulgarian and Tartar cavalry, through the treachery of Kaikous, the fugitive Sultan of Iconium, who had informed the enemy of his movements. Constantine, king of Bulgaria, having lost his wife Irene Lascaris, married Maria, the second daughter of Michael’s sister Eulogia, and the emperor promised to cede Mesembria and Anchialos to Bulgaria as the dowry of his niece. But this promise was given in the year 1272, when the danger of Charles of Anjou invading the empire appeared imminent. As soon, therefore, as the influence of the Pope and the crusade of St Louis to Tunis had secured Michael from all fear, with his usual treachery he found a pretext for declining to fulfill his promise. A treaty which the emperor concluded with a powerful Tartar chief named Nogay, and civil dissension among the Bulgarians, relieved Michael from all serious danger on his northern frontier during the remainder of his reign.

The affairs of Servia, also, gave the emperor very little trouble.

The period of Greek history embraced in the present chapter of this work, extending through the century and a-half during which the empire of Constantinople was ruled with despotic sway by the dynasty of Paleologos, is the most degrading portion of the national annals. Literary taste, political honesty, patriotic feeling, military honour, civil liberty, and judicial purity, seem all to have abandoned the Greek race, and public opinion would, in all probability, have had no existence—it would certainly have found no mode of expression—had not the Greek church placed itself in opposition to the imperial government, and awakened in the breasts of the Greek people a spirit of partisanship on ecclesiastical questions, which prepared the way for the open expression of the popular will, if not for the actual formation of public opinion. The church was converted into an arena where political and social discontent of every kind arrayed their forces under the banners of orthodoxy, heresy, or schism, as accident or passion might determine. In spite of the mental torpidity of the Greeks, during this period, the church is full of heresy and schism. Yet, strange to say, no political, moral, or religious improvements resulted from the innumerable discussions and disputes which formed the principal occupation of the Constantinopolitan Greeks for a hundred and fifty years. The cause of this is evident; the right of exercising private judgment, both in political and ecclesiastical affairs, was denied to the Greeks : they might range them as partisans of Barlaam or Palamas; they might believe that the mind perceived a divine light when the eyes remained long fixed on the stomach; and they might dispute concerning the essence and the active energy of the Divinity, but they dared not introduce common sense and truth to influence the decision of the point at issue. Public discussion being prohibited, no real public opinion could be formed in the nation. Each different section of the people only heard the opinions of its own leaders, and formed its ideas of the doctrines of its opponents from their misrepresentations. Instead of some general convictions, which ought to have been impressed on the mind of every Greek, what appeared to be public opinion was nothing but the temporary expression of the popular will, uttered in moments of excitement and passion.

 Such was the mental condition of the Greeks from the recovery of Constantinople until its conquest by the Ottomans. Justice was dormant in the state; Christianity was torpid in the church. Orthodoxy performed the duties of civil liberty, and the priesthood became the focus of political opposition. Financial oppression was often local; judicial iniquities affected a small number, and national feelings were unconnected with material interests. Ecclesiastical formulas and religious doctrines were the only facts with which the Greek people were generally acquainted, and on which every man felt called upon to pronounce an opinion. The mob of Constantinople had once made the colours of the jockey-clubs of the hippodrome a bond of party union; the Greek nation now made theology a medium for expressing its defiance of the emperor, and its hatred of the imperial administration. This fact sufficiently explains how matters in themselves not very intelligible to ordinary intellects acquired a real political importance, and questions apparently little calculated to excite popular interest drew forth the liveliest expressions of sympathy. We understand why the Greeks, who showed little national energy in defending their political independence against the Crusaders and the Turks, displayed the greatest enthusiasm in defending their church against their own emperors and patriarchs, as well as against the Pope. The social organization of the Greeks has its seat at the family hearth, and the nation has only moved in a body when some individual impulse has animated every rank of society.

The anxiety of the Emperor Michael VIII to be relieved from the ecclesiastical censures pronounced by the Patriarch Arsenios against him, for his treachery to his pupil and sovereign John IV, was the commencement of his disputes with the Greek church, and of his negotiations with the Popes. Michael solicited the Patriarch to impose some penance on him which might expiate his crime, but Arsenios could suggest nothing but reparation. The emperor considered this tantamount to a sentence of dethronement, and he determined to depose Arsenios. The Patriarch was accused before a synod of having omitted a prayer for the emperor in performing the church service, of having allowed the exiled Sultan of Iconium, Kaikous, to join in the celebration of divine service on Easter Sunday, and of allowing the sultan’s children to receive the holy communion from the hands of his chaplain without any proof that they were Christians. To these accusations Arsenios replied, that he only omitted one prayer for the emperor and used another, and that he had treated the sultan and his children as Christians, because he had been assured by the Bishop of Pisidia that they had received baptism. While this synod was pursuing its inquiry, the Emperor Michael attempted to gain his object by one of the diplomatic tricks to which he was strangely attached; but his subterfuge was detected, and he received a rebuke from the Patriarch which inflamed his animosity. When the Patriarch was proceeding to the Church of St Sophia the Emperor joined him, having previously sent forward an order to the clergy to commence high mass the moment the Patriarch should enter. On approaching the door of the cathedral the Emperor laid hold of the Patriarch’s robe, in order to enter the church as if he had received absolution; but Arsenics hastily withdrew his robe from Michael’s hand, and exclaimed, “It was an unbecoming trick; could you expect to deceive God, and obtain pardon by fraud?”. This scene, acted in public, in the vestibule of St Sophia’s, left no further hope of reconciliation. Arsenios was deposed, and exiled to Proconnesus. Germanos, the bishop of Adrianople, a mild and learned prelate, was named his successor.

Even in his banishment Arsenios was considered to be the lawful Patriarch by the majority of the orthodox, and he was visited by thousands who were anxious to hear his words and receive his blessing. The emperor was eager to punish him, but his popularity rendered it dangerous to attempt doing so in an arbitrary way. A conspiracy was discovered against the emperor’s life, and some of the accused, when put to the torture, declared that Arsenios was implicated in the plot. The examination of the affair was remitted to a synod, which gratified the emperor by excommunicating Arsenios without waiting for his conviction. Four deputies were despatched to Proconnesus, to communicate this sentence to the deposed Patriarch, and to examine him on the accusation. Of these the historian Pachymeres, then an ecclesiastical official in the patriarchate, was one. As soon as the deputation entered on business, Arsenios interrupted the speaker with great warmth, saying, “What have I done to the emperor to be thus persecuted? I found him in a private station; I crowned him emperor, and he has rewarded me by driving me from the patriarchal palace to a rock where I live on common charity!” He then spoke of the new Patriarch as a “phratriarc” and glanced at his blessing (eulogia) as being rather temporal than spiritual This was an allusion to the emperor’s sister Eulogia, the protectress of Germanos, to whose influence over her brother Arsenios attributed the cruel treatment of John IV. The deputies then began to read the sentence of excommunication, but Arsenios rose from his seat, covered his ears with his hands, and walked about the room mumbling what we must suppose to have been prayers. The deputies followed, raising their voices as they walked. Arsenios then interrupted them in a passion, calling Heaven to witness that he was treated with injustice; but when the deputies threatened him with the Divine vengeance for despising the deputies of the church, he grew calmer, and said, with more moderation, “It seems I am accused of having made my patriarchal duties the means of conspiring against the emperor's life. The accusation is false. He has left me to die of hunger, but I have never ceased to pray for him.” But his whole discourse was filled with bitterness against Michael, and he made no scruple of condemning his usurpation.

The deputies, having executed their commission, sailed for Constantinople, but a storm overtook them, and they were in danger of shipwreck. They attributed their danger to the circumstance of their having sailed from Proconnesus without asking the blessing of Arsenios, whom all appear to have considered as the true Patriarch. Pachymeres relates that each of the deputies owned afterwards that he was anxious at parting to obtain the blessing of Arsenios, but was afraid of rendering himself an object of suspicion and persecution at court. The report of the deputies induced Germanos to intercede for his predecessor. Arsenios was absolved from the accusation, and a pension of three hundred byzants was allowed him for his subsistence, granted from the privy purse of the empress—for it was believed that Arsenios would accept nothing from the excommunicated emperor.

The courtiers of Michael were as active in their intrigues as the emperor. A party in the church declared that the election of Germanos was invalid, for he had been removed from the See of Adrianople in violation of the canon which prohibits the translation of a bishop from one see to another. The emperor’s confessor, Joseph, pronounced that the new Patriarch could not grant a legal absolution to the emperor, in consequence of this defect in his title to the patriarchal throne. Germanos soon perceived that both Michael and Joseph were encouraging opposition to his authority. He immediately resigned, and Joseph was named his successor. The emperor received his absolution as a matter of course. The ceremony was performed at the gates of St Sophia’s. Michael, kneeling at the Patriarch’s feet, made his confession, and implored pardon. The Patriarch read the form of absolution. This form was repeated by every bishop in succession, and the emperor knelt before each in turn and received his pardon. He was then admitted into the church, and partook of the holy communion. By this idle and pompous ceremony the Greeks believed that their church could pardon perjury and legitimatize usurpation.

 About this time the treaty of Viterbo drew the attention of Michael from the schism of the Arsenites to foreign policy, and his grand object being to detach the Pope from the alliance with Charles of Anjou, he began to form intrigues, by means of which he hoped to delude the Pope into the persuasion that he was anxious and able to establish papal supremacy in the Greek Church; while, on the other hand, he expected to cheat the Eastern clergy into making those concessions which he considered necessary for the success of his plans, on the ground that their compliance was a mere matter of diplomacy. Gregory X knew that it would be easier to effect the union of the Greek and Latin Churches by the instrumentality of a Greek emperor than of a foreign conqueror. He therefore prohibited Charles of Anjou, who held the crown of Naples as his vassal, from invading the empire; but he forced Michael, by fear of invasion, to assemble a synod at Constantinople, in which, by cruelty and violence, the emperor succeeded in obtaining an acknowledgment of the papal supremacy. The severest persecution was necessary to compel the Greeks to sign the articles of union, and many families emigrated to Vallachian Thessaly and to the empire of Trebizond.

The union of the Greek and Latin Churches was completed in the year 1274 at the Council of Lyons. On the 6th of July, at the fourth session of the Council, Germanos, who had resigned the patriarchal throne, George Acropolita the historian, and some other Greek clergy and nobles, presented themselves and repeated the creed in the Latin form, with the addition of the words, “proceeding from the father and the son”. They then swore to conform to the faith of the Roman Church, to pay obedience to its orders, and to recognize the supremacy of the Pope,—Acropolita, as grand logothetes, repeating the oaths in the name of the Emperor Michael. When the news of this submission reached Constantinople there was a general expression of indignation. The Patriarch Joseph, who opposed the union, was deposed, and Vekkos, an ecclesiastic of eminence, who had recently become a convert to the Latin creed, was named in his place. The schisms in the Greek Church were now multiplied, for Joseph, became the head of a new party. Vekkos, however, assembled a synod, and excommunicated those members of the Greek clergy who refused to recognize the Pope as the head of the Church of Christ. Nicephorus, despot of Epirus, and his brother, John Dukas, the prince of Vlakia, protected the orthodox. Both were excommunicated; and the emperor sent an army against John Dukas, whose position in Thessaly threatened the tranquillity of Macedonia; but the imperial officers and troops showed no activity in a cause which they considered treason to their religion, and many of the emperor’s own relations deserted.

By a series of intrigues, tergiversation, meanness, and cruelty, Michael succeeded in gaining his immediate object. Nicholas III, who ascended the papal throne in 1277, formally refused Charles of Anjou permission to invade the Greek empire, and sent four nuncios to Constantinople to complete the union of the churches. The papal instructions are curious as an exposition of the political views of the Court of Rome, and display astute diplomacy, acting at the suggestions of grasping ambition, but blinded by ecclesiastical bigotry. The first object was to induce all the dignitaries of the Greek church to sign the Roman formulary of doctrine, and to persuade them to accept absolution for having lived separate from the Roman communion; the second, to prevail on the emperor to receive a cardinal legate at Constantinople. Before the arrival of the Pope’s ambassadors, the arbitrary conduct of Michael had involved him in a quarrel with his new patriarch, Vekkos, whom he was on the point of deposing. All Michael’s talents for intrigue were called into requisition, to prevent the Greek clergy from breaking out into open rebellion during the stay of the Pope’s ambassadors, and conceal the state of his relations with Vekkos, who stood high at the Court of Rome. Bribes, cajolery, and meanness on his part, and selfishness and subserviency on the part of the Eastern clergy, enabled him to succeed. But the death of Nicholas III in 1280 rendered his intrigues unavailing. Martin IV, a Frenchman, devoted to the interests of Charles of Anjou, became Pope. He openly displayed his hatred of the Greeks, and excommunicated Michael as a hypocrite, who concealed his heresy. While Martin IV openly negotiated the treaty of Orvietto, Michael secretly aided the conspiracy of Procida. The condition of the Greek emperor was almost desperate. He was universally detested for his exactions and persecutions, and a numerous and bigoted party was ready to make any foreign attack the signal for a domestic revolution. The storm was about to burst on Michael’s head, when the fearful tragedy of the Sicilian Vespers broke the power of Charles of Anjou.

Michael then quitted his capital to punish John Dukas, whom he considered almost as a rival; but  death arrested his progress at Pachomion, near Lysimachia in Thrace, on the 11th December 1282, after a reign of twenty-four years. He was a type of the Constantinopolitan Greek nobles and officials in the empire he re-established and transmitted to his descendants. He was selfish, hypocritical, able and accomplished, an in-born liar, vain, meddling, ambitious, cruel, and rapacious. He is renowned in history as the restorer of the Eastern Empire; he ought to be execrated as the corrupter of the Greek race, for his reign affords a signal example of the extent to which a nation may be degraded by the misconduct of its sovereign, when it intrusts him with despotic power.