The Apogee - Byzantium 02

by John Julius Norwich

  The Byzantine envoys were warmly received at the imperial court at Ingelheim in June 839, and the talks which were then initiated continued spasmodically for another four years, despite the deaths of both Emperors during that time. Had those talks proved fruitful, the age of the Crusades might have been brought forward by some two and a half centuries; but they came to nothing, and a similar appeal to Venice — one of the first occasions on which we find the young republic being addressed respectfully as an independent state - proved equally abortive. In the event, the Caliph made no immediate attempt to follow up his victory until 842, when a huge fleet sailed against Constantinople from the Syrian ports. Victim of a sudden storm, all but seven of the 400 dromonds1 were smashed to pieces. But Mutasim never heard of this -1 catastrophe. Already on 5 January he had died in Samarra; and just fifteen days later Theophilus followed him to the grave.

  1 There is an old tradition that their headless bodies, when flung into the river, all obstinately refused to sink. Only the corpse of the traitor Boidirzes - who, despite having become a Muslim, had shared their fate - went plummeting to the bottom.

  2 The dromond was the smallest type of Byzantine warship, designed for lightness and speed. It carried a crew of some twenty rowers at a single bank of oars, and was roofed over to protect them from enemy missiles.

  With his known admiration for Arabic art and learning, it is hardly-surprising that Theophilus should have shared the iconoclast convictions of his immediate predecessors; some writers, indeed, have accused him of fanaticism. In fact, his reputation in this regard rests on only a few known instances of ill-treatment, all of them in one way or another special cases. Thus Lazarus, the leading icon-painter of the day, was eventually - after repeated warnings - scourged and branded on the palms of his hands with red-hot nails; but after his release (at the intercession of the Empress) he is known to have completed at least two more important commissions, including a new gigantic figure of Christ to replace the one removed by Leo V from the Chalke, so his injuries cannot have been too severe.

  Lazarus was probably singled out for such punishment because of his prominence in the icon-loving community and his open defiance of the imperial decree; in the circumstances, the Emperor had little choice but to make an example of him. Similar considerations explain his actions in another case, still more fully documented: that of two brothers from Palestine, the writer Theodore and the hymnographer Theophanes, who had together assumed the mantle of Theodore of the Studium, after the latter's death in 826, as principal champions of the iconodules. According to their own account, they were summoned to Constantinople, kept for a week in prison and then brought before the Emperor. When he asked them why they had entered the Empire in the first place, they refused to answer, whereupon they were beaten severely about the head. On the next day they were flogged, but still refused to renounce their views. Four days later still, Theophilus offered them their last chance: if they would consent to take communion just once with the iconoclasts, they would hear no more of the matter. But they only shook their heads. And so, by the imperial command, they were laid across a bench while an abusive lampoon was tattooed across their faces. It was not, Theophilus admitted, a very good lampoon; but it was good enough for them. A free translation, thoughtfully provided by Professor Bury1 — complete with its majestic mixed metaphor in the second line — confirms the Emperor's opinion:

  In that fair town whose sacred streets were trod Once by the pure feet of the Word of God —

  1 'Some admiration,' observes the Professor, 'is due to the dexterity and delicacy of touch of the tormentor who succeeded in branding twelve iambic lines on a human face.'

  The city all men's hearts desire to see -These evil vessels of perversity Were driven forth to this our Qty where, Persisting in their wicked, lawless ways, They are condemned and, branded in the face, As scoundrels, hunted to their native place.

  The tenor of the Emperor's questions - as well as that of this deplorable doggerel - suggests that not the least of the two brothers' offences was the fact that they were foreign immigrants who had, in Theophilus's eyes, entered the Empire deliberately to stir up trouble. They were not, however, returned to Palestine as the last line claims, but were imprisoned in the small Bithynian town of Apamea. Here Theodore died; his brother survived to become, in happier times, Bishop of Nicaea.

  This unedifying story demonstrates clearly enough the cruelty and brutality of which Theophilus was capable when his authority was openly defied; there can be little doubt, on the other hand, that his motives on such occasions were more political than religious. Where he drew the line was at the public profession of the cult of icons in Constantinople. Elsewhere in the Empire, or within the privacy of their own homes in the capital, his subjects might do as they pleased. Even in the Imperial Palace, although he must have been perfectly well aware -for all their transparent subterfuges - that both his pious Paphlagonian wife Theodora and her mother Theoktiste were enthusiastic iconodules, he made no serious attempt to stop them.

  Perhaps he himself subconsciously understood that the forces of iconoclasm were almost spent. The second period of its enforcement had after all been but a pale reflection of the first. Leo the Isaurian and Constantine Copronymus had changed the face of the Empire, subordinating all other issues to the single, simple belief that dictated and dominated their lives; Leo the Armenian, Michael and Theophilus shared their views, but possessed little of their inward fire. The times, too, were changing. The mystical, metaphysical attitude to religion that had originally given birth to iconoclasm was becoming less fashionable every day. Of the eastern lands in which it had first taken root, some had already been lost to the Saracens; and the populations of those that remained, beleaguered and nervous, had developed an instinctive mistrust of a doctrine that bore such obvious affinities with those of Islam. There was a new humanism in the air, a revived awareness of the old classical spirit that stood for reason and clarity, and had no truck with the tortuous, introspective spiritualizings of the Oriental mind. At the same time a naturally artistic people, so long starved of visual beauty, were beginning to crave the old, familiar images that spoke to them of safer and more confident days. And when, on 20 January 842, the Emperor Theophilus died of dysentery at thirty-eight, the age of iconoclasm died with him.

  4

  The Images Restored

  [842-56]

  All worship whatsoever must proceed by symbols, by idols: we may say, all idolatry is comparative, and the worst idolatry is only more idolatrous.

  Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship, IV

  The story is told of how, one day during Theophilus's reign, his wife Theodora was suddenly surprised by Denderis, the court jester, in the act of kissing certain sacred images that she had concealed in her bedchamber. Hiding her confusion as best she could, she told him that she had merely been playing with a few dolls that she had preserved from her childhood. It seems unlikely that Denderis believed her; at all events he reported the conversation to the Emperor, who flew into a towering rage and furiously accused her of idolatry. This time Theodora had another explanation: there were no dolls - Denderis had been deceived by the reflections in a mirror of herself and some of her ladies. Theophilus seems to have accepted the story - mirrors were rarities in the ninth century, and it might then have sounded a litde less far-fetched than it does today - but doubts clearly lingered in his mind, for some time later he asked the jester whether he had noticed any repetition of his wife's strange behaviour. 'Hush,' replied Denderis, putting one hand to his lips and using the other to give himself a resounding slap on the behind, 'hush, Emperor - not a word about the dolls!'

  It is a silly little story, and probably apocryphal to boot; but it illustrates clearly enough why Theodora, finding herself on her husband's death Regent on behalf of her two-year-old son, should have made her first concern the eradication of iconoclasm throughout the Empire. She moved, perforce, with caution: John the Grammarian, a fervent iconoclast, had
for the past five years been firmly ensconced upon the patriarchal throne, and there must have been plenty of old men still living in Constantinople who could remember the fiasco of 786, when the last woman to wield the supreme power had had the same purpose in mind and, by acting prematurely, had nearly started a riot. But Theodora was a good deal more intelligent than Irene had been; moreover she was lucky to have as her chief advisers three men of quite exceptional ability - her uncle Sergius Nicetiates, her brother Bardas and Theoctistus, Logothete of the Course. The first two shared her views: Theoctistus had formerly been a professed iconoclast, but he was above all a statesman and he realized that times had changed: if the new regime did not act decisively over the iconoclast issue, the image-worshippers might well take the law into their own hands. The four laid their plans with care, and then gave notice that a Council would be summoned early in March 843 - fourteen months after the Emperor's death. Meanwhile a commission was set up under the chairmanship of old Methodius — who, having suffered persecution under both Michael II and his son, had finally become reconciled with Theophilus and had been living for some years in quiet retirement in the Imperial Palace - to prepare the agenda and the necessary documentation.

  On the whole, the Council passed off smoothly enough, the only major problem being presented by John the Grammarian, who refused to resign and whom it consequently proved necessary to depose. Even then, according to several normally reliable sources, he could not be induced to leave the Patriarchal Palace and, when Bardas went to reason with him, pulled up his robes and exhibited several unpleasant abdominal wounds which he claimed to be the work of a platoon of soldiers sent to evict him but which were subsequently revealed to have been self-inflicted. Finally however he agreed to go quietly, and retired to his villa on the Bosphorus - where, his enemies whispered, he abandoned himself to necromancy and the black arts. Methodius was elected in his place, and the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council - that which had put an end to the first period of iconoclasm in 787 - were confirmed. At the Empress's insistence, however, her dead husband's name was omitted from the lists of those prominent iconoclasts who were now anathematized as heretics. The story, assiduously circulated, that he had repented on his deathbed and that Theodora had held an icon to his lips as he expired can safely be discounted, and probably gained little enough credence at the time; but it got everybody out of a potentially embarrassing position and no serious objections were raised.

  The victory was won: a victory not of iconodule over iconoclast but of clarity over mysticism, of Greek thought over Oriental metaphysics, ultimately of West over East - a victory every bit as crucial for the cultural life of the Empire as were, for its political development, the triumph over the Persians and the continuing struggle against the Arabs. And, as with so many victories, it almost certainly owed its long-term success to the moderation and magnanimity shown by the victors. On 11 March — which chanced to be the first Sunday in Lent, a day still celebrated by the Eastern Church as the Feast of Orthodoxy - a service of thanksgiving was held in St Sophia, attended by the entire imperial family and by vast crowds of monks from all the neighbouring monasteries.1 Icons by the hundred were carried shoulder-high, and thenceforth gradually reappeared on the walls of the churches; but there was no sudden or uncontrolled proliferation such as might have provoked indignant reaction from the diehards. Even the ever-controversial image of Christ from above the Chalke had to wait some years before its eventual restoration, and it was almost a quarter of a century before the first figurative mosaic was unveiled in the Great Church itself2 - that huge, haunting image of the Virgin and Child enthroned which, after more than eleven centuries, still gazes impassively down on us today.

  Nor, despite his past sufferings, did Patriarch Methodius show any desire for vengeance. Anathematized the iconoclast leaders might be; they were never ill-treated, still less deprived of their liberty. Such expressions of indignation as there were came, on the contrary, from the iconodules - notably the fanatical monks of the Studium, whose vitriolic attacks on the Patriarch when he passed them over for promotion to vacant sees in favour of moderates like himself finally obliged him to excommunicate them en masse. By this time, we are told, they had even tried to force his resignation - by the singularly inept contrivance of bribing a young woman to accuse him of seduction. At the ensuing inquiry Methodius is said to have given visual proof of his innocence by producing for inspection those parts which might have been thought most directly responsible for the alleged offence, explaining the shrivelled remnants of his manhood with a story of how, years before in Rome, a

  Genesius maintains that these included representatives from Mount Athos. If he is right, this is the earliest reference we have to the Mountain as a holy place - though its inhabitants at that period would have been individual hermits rather than members of any organized monastic community. (See Chapter 12.)

  Had there been any such figurative mosaics in Justinian's church, they could not conceivably have survived the iconoclasts; in point of fact, however, it is virtually certain that none ever existed in his day. Sec Byzantium: The Early Centuries, p. 20 j.

  prayer to St Peter for deliverance from lustful thoughts had been answered with distressing efficiency. Not surprisingly, he won his case; the girl confessed that the whole story had been a fabrication. But its instigators suffered no more severe punishment than to join every year, with torches in their hands, the ceremonial procession which passed on the Feast of Orthodoxy from Blachernae to St Sophia, there to hear the sentence of anathema repeated publicly upon them.

  Meanwhile, the iconodule martyrs received their posthumous reward. The bodies of Theodore of the Studium and the Patriarch Nicephorus, both of whom had died in exile, were brought back to Constantinople where, in the presence of the Empress and the entire court, they were ceremonially reinterred in the Church of the Holy Aposdes. A less edifying spectacle was the desecration of the tomb of the arch-iconoclast Constantine V, from whose green marble sarcophagus several slabs were cut away and used to adorn a room in the Great Palace.

  For the defeated image-haters, one small consolation remained. In pre-iconoclast days, and even in the iconodule interval under Irene, her son and successors, religious painting and sculpture had been alike permitted; the Council of 843 had drawn no distinction between them. After this time, however, as if by some tacit agreement, Byzantine art restricted itself to two dimensions. Sculpture - whether in stone or marble, wood or plaster, gold, silver or bronze - was set aside. This should not, perhaps, occasion us too much Astonishment: the second Commandment is after all quite clear enough on the matter, and we might a good deal more reasonably wonder why it has been so universally ignored in Western Europe - were it not for the fact that very little more respect has been shown for most of the other nine. It is, none the less, a very real cause for regret. If Byzantium had gone on to produce sculptors and woodcarvers as talented as its painters and mosaicists, the world would have been enriched indeed.

  Soon after the restoration of the icons, the Logothete Theoctistus succeeded in ousting his two colleagues; and for the next thirteen years he was, with Theodora, the effective ruler of Byzantium. He was that most unusual of combinations, a Patrician and a eunuch; but he was also a man of considerable learning and wide culture, who devoted much time and effort to the improvement of educational standards in the capital — they were already far ahead of anything known in the West — and laid the foundations for the cultural renaissance of the later ninth

  and tenth centuries of which we shall have more to say later. His financial policy in particular yielded excellent results: gold continued to flow into the imperial coffers, just as it had in Theophilus's day - and for no clearer reason.

  In the military sphere, too, Theoctistus was a good deal more successful than was formerly believed. For reasons which will shortly become clear, Michael III and his ministers have been the victims of a campaign of deliberate disparagement on the part both of near-contemporary s
ources and of later chroniclers - above all the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself — who had no hesitation in falsifying the work of their predecessors. Only quite recendy has it been realized how far even modern historians have been deceived. We now know, for example, that the expedition led personally by Theoctistus against the Saracens of Crete, far from collapsing after his own return to Constantinople, in fact resulted in the recovery of the island for a number of years; while a decade later, on 22 May 853 - in what was by far the most daringly aggressive naval or military operation since the beginning of the Muslim invasions - a Byzantine fleet under the command of the High Chamberlain of the Palace, the eunuch Damianus, suddenly appeared off Damietta at the eastern extremity of the Nile Delta, set fire to the city and to all the Saracen vessels lying in the harbour, destroyed a huge store of arms and returned with scores of prisoners. Arab records recently come to light report other operations, by no less than three more fleets numbering 300 vessels in all, around the Aegean and off the Syrian coast.

  Where Theoctistus must stand condemned is in his undeniable association with the Empress in what Professor Bury describes as 'one of the greatest political disasters of the ninth century' - the persecution of the Paulicians. This widespread but fundamentally harmless Christian sect had arisen some 200 years before in Armenia and had existed in peace with the Empire until the days of Michael I, who had yielded - as he always did - to ecclesiastical pressure and ordered the first measures to be taken against them. The reasons were purely doctrinal. It was not that the Paulicians were iconoclasts — though they were; it was that they rejected not only holy images but also the institutions of baptism, marriage and the Eucharist, the sign of the cross, all the Old Testament and quite a lot of the New, and the entire hierarchy of the Church. Espousing as they did the Manichean belief in the two opposing principles of good and evil, they held the material world to be a creation of the devil; it followed that Christ's single nature - for they were also staunch monophysites1 - owed nothing to that world; as for His Mother, she had served merely as a physical vessel for the divine essence, through which it had flowed 'as water through a pipe'.