Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

by Judith Herrin

  The Dialogue is a contrived text, not a straightforward account of poverty in Byzantium. But the aggrieved complaints put into the mouth of the Poor, just like the justification and contempt of the Rich, must have resonated with contemporaries. Many who joined the Zealots and other anti-aristocratic forces to oppose the extremes of wealth accumulated by families like the Kantakouzenos would have reacted like the Poor against such a vast divide between the haves and have-nots. What remains exceptional is the lasting impact of the Zealot revolt, which removed Thessalonike from imperial control for seven years when traditional control broke down.

  Eventually, however, the council of twelve divided over how to deal with the apparent resolution of the civil war. In February 1347, John Kantakouzenos gained entry to Constantinople and forced Empress Anna to agree to a compromise, which included the resignation of Patriarch Kalekas and the marriage of Helena Kantakouzene (John VI’s daughter) to young John V Palaiologos. The two rival families were thus united, even if some supporters of the Kantakouzenos faction were disappointed that the emperor did not establish his own dynasty. Faced with this change, the Zealots displayed their hostility by the public burning of all orders from the capital. They proposed to invite Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, who was already calling himself Emperor of the Serbs and the Greeks, to become their leader, calculating that their own independence would be less compromised by accepting Serbian overlordship than by recognizing John VI Kantakouzenos as their ruler. Stefan Dušan was only too delighted to intervene in the squabble and sent forces to take control of the city.

  But this invitation provoked a split among the Zealots that pushed Alexios Metochites into action against Andreas Palaiologos. He defeated the seamen’s guild, announced his support for Kantakouzenos and refused to let the Serbs into the city. At this news, John VI set sail from the capital with his young co-emperor, sending his son Matthew with an army reinforced by Turkish auxiliaries. With the help of a dissatisfied Serbian military officer and Turkish naval forces, he gained entrance to Thessalonike in 1350, forcing Andreas Palaiologos to seek refuge on Mount Athos. The remaining Zealots were arrested, exiled or sent to Constantinople to be tried. John V Palaiologos, whom the Zealots had supported, was hailed as emperor, and Gregory Palamas was duly installed as metropolitan of the city. In one of his first sermons, he condemned the rebels as wild beasts, but called for peace and harmony under the rule of the Palaiologos family.

  When John VI Kantakouzenos was forced to retire from public life by another demonstration of popular disapproval of his policy of alliance with the Turks, he adopted the monastic name Joasaph and wrote his Memoirs. In an attempt to justify his own role in the civil war, he accused the Zealots of excessive violence and presented their rebellion as a widespread movement:

  it spread like a malignant and horrible disease, producing the same forms of excess even in those who before had been moderate and sensible men… All the cities joined in this rebellion against the aristocracy and those that were late in doing so made up for their lost time by excelling the example set them by others. They perpetuated all manner of inhumanity and even massacres. Senseless impulse was glorified with the name of valour and lack of fellow feeling or human sympathy was called loyalty to the Emperor.

  He also characterized the aristocrats as an elite picked on for their good birth by the poor seeking revenge, and claimed that those of the middling sort were compelled to support the rebels. This denunciation of the violence of the urban mob is corroborated by a Constantinopolitan official, Theodore Metochites, who lost nearly all his property when his palace in the capital was attacked in 1328, long before the events in Thessalonike. Later he would re-found and decorate the monastic church of the Saviour (Chora), in which he is shown as the patron wearing his court costume (plates 26 and 33). Clearly the Zealots could call on popular and aggressive antagonism to men considered super-rich in Byzantium. But just as predictably, the wealthiest could also restore their fortunes.

  In the subsequent history of Thessalonike, John V Palaiologos’ mother Anna of Savoy reinstated rule by the elite. From 1351 to her death in about 1365, she governed the city as if it belonged to her. When she had been short of money in Constantinople during the civil war, she had pawned the crown jewels to the Venetians for a loan of 30,000 ducats, which was never repaid. Later governors of the city included the young Manuel II (emperor from 1391 to 1425), who was forced to flee in 1387, and his son Andronikos, who handed over its defence to Venice in 1422. By then, Thessalonike was under an almost continual blockade by the Turks, and Venetian officials were no more successful than Byzantines in preventing the final capitulation in 1430. The Zealot experience was not repeated, but their seven-year experiment with a more communal and popular form of government represented the trend of the future: several Italian cities had already embraced largely republican forms, and major centres in the West, as distant as Barcelona and Gdańsk, were following in their train. Thessalonike’s commercial activity and the guild of seamen facilitated the overthrow of the natural order, when the rich ruled the poor, and the Zealots proved that Byzantium could also generate rebels who discarded traditional government and took account of social disadvantages.

  At almost the same time as the rebels took over Thessalonike, a spectacular Frankish castle perched above ancient Sparta emerged as a new centre of Byzantine culture. From 1348 to 1460, Mistras was the capital of the Morea, ruled by sons of the emperors of Constantinople who were titled despots (despotes, lord or master). William II Villehardouin, the fourth Prince of Achaia, had founded this castle in 1247 atop Mount Taygetos overlooking medieval Lakedaimonia. During the next forty years it changed hands several times. Following the common practice of calling on outside forces to sustain the crusading states, William made an alliance with Charles of Anjou, ruler of Naples and Sicily, who inherited the principality after William’s death in 1278. To counter the serious threat posed by this French development, Michael VIII Palaiologos arranged various European alliances, which led ultimately to the massacre of French troops in 1282 in Sicily. These intrigues, which provided Verdi with a splendid libretto for his famous opera The Sicilian Vespers (1855), also generated competition between the West and Byzantium for control over the Morea. But Mistras remained a Byzantine possession.

  From the late thirteenth century onwards, the inhabitants of medieval Lakedaimonia moved up the hillside to settle closer to the fortifications of Mistras, creating a new town below the castle. This settlement was dominated by the governor’s palace, probably built on Frankish foundations, and churches, including the cathedral dedicated to St Demetrios, to which later churchmen made additions. Constantinople maintained a governor (strategos, also called kephale, literally, ‘head’), and the city gradually expanded. One of these governors was a member of the Kantakouzenos family and the father of John VI. Monasteries flourished under local patrons, some commemorated in portraits and others by inscriptions. At the complex of the Brontocheion monastery with its two churches built between 1290 and 1310, the variety of architectural designs and fresco decoration suggests a considerable range of skilled craftsmen, and painted copies of imperial chrysobulls preserve a list of its privileges.

  Cut off from the capital by the Frankish duchies of Athens and Thebes, which continued to occupy central Greece, and constantly threatened by other westerners – the Catalan and Aragonese Companies (mercenary bands), the Italian families of Acciajuoli and Tocco, and the titular princes of Achaia – the Peloponnese gradually became a distinctive Byzantine region. In 1349, John VI Kantakouzenos nominated his son Manuel as despotes of this autonomous province. It thus became known as the Despotate of the Morea, and was usually ruled by a younger member of either the Kantakouzenos or Palaiologos dynasty. Manuel’s long rule as despot from 1349 to 1380 brought greater stability and prosperity. He was probably responsible for the main part of the palace, a two-storeyed residence with spacious rooms on the upper floor above a central courtyard and looking out over the plain of Sparta. H
e also built the local church of Hagia Sophia, which may have functioned as the palace church. It was later incorporated into a monastery. In 1361 his father, the ex-emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, now the monk Joasaph, fled from Mount Athos when it was afflicted by an outbreak of plague and sought refuge in Mistras. On Manuel’s death in 1380, John V Palaiologos appointed his son Theodore as despot, and Mistras remained an appanage of the ruling dynasty for the next eighty years.

  Like every part of the Byzantine world in the fourteenth century, however, Mistras was not free from the fear of Ottoman attacks. The first invasion of the Peloponnese occurred in 1388, and further raids in the 1390s seem to have included a siege of Mistras itself. Against Turkish military threats, the despots sought alliances with western powers, drawing Latin forces into the defence of the despotate. They married noble and wealthy ladies such as Isabelle of Lusignan, Bartolomea Acciajuoli, Kleopa Malatesta, Maddalena-Theodora Tocco and Caterina Zaccaria, and then found they also had to contend with a series of ambitious fathers-in-law. Yet by 1430, the despotate had put paid to Tocco and Zaccaria claims and had incorporated the principality of Achaia and the Venetian city of Patras perched on the northwest corner of the Peloponnese. Thus extended and strengthened, Mistras was also appreciated as a peaceful refuge. Manuel II left his wife and children in the Peloponnese when he went on his long embassy to the West. When an epidemic broke out in Constantinople in 1417/18, it was also used as a safe haven, and five years later, when Andronikos Palaiologos, the last Byzantine governor of Thessalonike, was forced to give up the city to the Venetians, he retired to Mistras. The apparently impregnable fortress of the despotate seemed to guarantee safety, even amid the devastation caused by the intense rivalries of competing forces.

  Although it never developed into a major urban centre, being confined by its geographical setting to a small area of the slopes of Mount Taygetos, Mistras became rich and cosmopolitan. This small walled area resembled an ancient city-state and took inspiration from its proximity to Sparta. The population lived off a prosperous agricultural territory where vines, olive groves and mulberries flourished. There was an established Jewish community engaged in weaving and carpet-making, cloth and silk production, and many foreign merchants were attracted to the area – Genoese, Venetians, Spaniards and Florentines. Via the River Evrotas and the sea, communication with the West was easier than with Constantinople, and many embassies from the capital travelled via Mistras. The city characterizes the exceptional vitality of Byzantium, even in the empire’s most fragmented state.

  In earlier centuries, Byzantium had reserved the term Hellene (ellenes) to designate pagans, but in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries it had been transformed into a Greek way of claiming cultural superiority over the Latins. The literati at the imperial court in Nicaea incorporated ancient Hellenic wisdom, especially philosophy, into their Byzantine identity; John III Vatatzes spoke of his ‘Hellenic’ descent. Of course, all scholars of Byzantium felt this affinity with the ancient world and even monks like Isidore (later Bishop of Kiev and Roman cardinal), Bessarion, Bishop of Nicaea (and also later cardinal) and George Scholarios, later patriarch, who lived for some time at Mistras, saw no difficulty in combining it with their Christian upbringing. During the late Byzantine period, schoolteachers in Constantinople, Trebizond and Thessalonike perpetuated and deepened awareness of it. But at Mistras this strand of the Greek inheritance became more striking and obvious, in such close connection with one very particular aspect of the ancient world: the civilization of Sparta. Demetrios Kydones wrote to an otherwise unknown philosopher named George: ‘In your excessive love of Hellenism you imagined that the very soil of Sparta would enable you to see Lycurgus’ (the lawgiver of ancient Sparta).

  This was the context into which George Gemistos, also known as Plethon, stepped in about 1410 when he was exiled by Emperor Manuel II from Constantinople to Mistras for heresy. His family name was Gemistos; Plethon was his pseudonym, under which he wrote his greatest work of philosophy, On the Differences of Aristotle from Plato. Both names mean ‘full’ but the second suggested a connection to the ancient philosopher Plato, with whom Gemistos was so closely connected. While his enemies retorted that ‘he called himself Plethon as if insinuating a link with the soul of Plato’, his supporters regularly described him as ‘a second Plato’, or ‘second only to Plato’. The court of the despots at Mistras had already attracted scholars and artists, who created a vibrant centre of Byzantine and Hellenic culture. Having been a teacher in the capital, Plethon brought this expertise to the Peloponnese. More than other philosophers, he cherished the notion that fifteenth-century Greek scholars embodied ancient Hellenic wisdom and that it could serve a practical purpose. At Mistras, he constantly made radical proposals for administrative and political developments, while serving as a judge. The despots rewarded him with grants of land and his advice was solicited by rulers in Mistras and Constantinople alike.

  To Manuel Palaiologos, Plethon recommended drastic changes which echo the aims of the Zealots: ‘all the land should be the common property of all its inhabitants… the produce of the labour of all… should be divided into three parts’, which would be distributed to the labourers, the farmers and the exchequer. He thought that the military should be exempt from taxes and should be maintained by the state and the services of one tax-paying labourer, called a helot:

  Each infantry soldier should have one helot assigned to him, and each mounted man should have two; and thus each soldier… will be in a position to serve in the army with proper equipment and to remain permanently with the standards.

  He also wished to reform the currency: ‘It is the height of folly to use these foreign – and bad – bronze coins which we now use: it only brings profit to others and much ridicule on ourselves.’ With additional recommendations for the control of trade, to encourage self-sufficiency, Plethon hoped to see the creation of an effective citizen army and the provision of a well-organized tax base, which would ensure better government and military success. As in other regions which aimed at independence, in Mistras Plethon saw the need to make government more responsive, and to incorporate popular demands for greater equality in local administration.

  In association with these suggestions for a Spartan-style society, Plethon proposed a revival of ancient Greek social values and religion. His Book of Laws must have contained a complete liturgy for the worship of Zeus. Only 16 of the 100 chapters in three books, and some only in parts, survive. But the chapter headings reflect the broad concerns of this work devoted to theology, ethics, politics, ceremonies and natural science, which include a prayer to the gods of learning:

  Come to us, O gods of learning, whoever and however many ye be; ye who are guardians of scientific knowledge and true belief; ye who distribute them to whomsoever you wish, in accordance with the dictates of the great father of all things, Zeus the King… Grant that this book may have all success, to be set as a possession forever before those of mankind who wish to pass their lives, both in private and in public established in the best and noblest fashion.

  Zeus is understood to be the absolute good; he is ungenerated, everlasting, the father of himself, the father and pre-eminent creator of all other things. The Olympian gods are few and supracelestial; they have no bodies and exist outside space. The lower, lesser gods are more numerous, as are the terrestrial daemons.

  While many of the chapters must have been devoted to matters of religious observance (prayers for morning, afternoon and evening), priestly functions and the names of the gods, sections are also devoted to metaphysics (abstract questions concerning the eternity of the universe), ethics (against incest and polygamy) and practical matters of government (administrative, judicial, economic). Plethon had distinct proposals for improving late Byzantine society, notably that indecent sexual behaviour could be curbed by the threat of death by burning. Women convicted of adultery were to have their heads shaved and should be forced to live as prostitutes. Rape, homosexual an
d bestial acts would be punished by burning in a special place, beyond the public cemetery, where distinct areas for the graves of priests, ordinary citizens and criminals were to be kept apart. In his final appendix to the Book of Laws, Plethon invoked the powers of the gods, and the doctrines taught by Pythagoras, Plato, Kouretes and Zoroaster, as superior to any other. He dismissed the teaching of certain sophists, who misled people by promising greater happiness through a genuine immortality (a reference to Christian teachers), pointing out that their idea of eternity was only a future one. In contrast, he believed the philosophy outlined in his Book offered the soul an absolute eternity, both past and future – a reference to the doctrine of continued and repeated reincarnation of souls.

  When the negotiations for church union were initiated in 1438, Plethon travelled to Ferrara and on to Florence, where he made contact with Italian scholars. His interest in Christian theology may not have been profound, but he could settle an argument with a logical tour de force when necessary. With one brilliant intervention, he proved that a Latin document, supposedly issued by the Seventh Oecumenical Council of 787, which recorded the creed with the filioque clause, could not be authentic. For if it was, he pointed out, and everyone both Greek and Latin had accepted it then, there would be no problem. But there was no evidence that the additional filioque had been cited in 787. On the contrary, Popes Hadrian I and Leo III, who welcomed the ending of iconoclasm, both recited the creed without it. It was only in the course of the eleventh century that the papacy had accepted what had become standard practice in the rest of Europe, namely reciting the creed with the clause.