The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01
Page 18
Op cir.. Vol. I, p. 133, fn.
Sec p. 155.
years, Pope Leo the Great himself finally succeeded in persuading her back into the orthodox fold. She lived on till 460, sad, lonely and embittered, a pathetic shadow of the brilliant, talented girl who had swept the young Emperor off his feet and, fifteen years later, had so dazzled the citizens of Antioch. When at last she died, she was buried in the Church of St Stephen which she had founded - in Constantinople long forgotten and even in Jerusalem, one suspects, feared rather than loved.
We have now followed - sketchily but, in a book primarily concerned with the Byzantine Empire, sufficiently - the career of the young Western Emperor Valentinian III from his childhood in Ravenna and Constantinople to his coronation in Rome and, twelve years later, his marriage to the Princess Eudoxia. He had proved a weak and ineffectual figure, utterly dominated by his formidable mother Placidia, who had continued to govern in his name long after he had reached manhood - indeed, until her own death in 450;' and he need no longer detain us here. As for his sister Honoria, she would not have gained so much as a mention in this book were it not for a single circumstance; but that circumstance must ensure for her at least a footnote in any account of her time. In the whole of history there can, after all, have been few princesses of any age or condition who would, of their own free will, have offered themselves in marriage to Attila the Hun.
Any self-respecting historian must try as best he can to tell his story in his own words. He may permit himself the occasional direct quotation from primary sources, if they add colour or flavour to his narrative; but he should, on the whole, steer clear of secondary ones, unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary. Such a moment now arises: for the Princess Honoria has provided Edward Gibbon with the inspiration for one of his most brilliant and characteristic paragraphs, which it would be unfair to the reader not to quote in full:
The sister of Valentinian was educated in the palace of Ravenna, and as her marriage might be productive of some danger to the state, she was raised, by the title of Augusta, above the hopes of the most presumptuous subject. But the
1 Her Mausoleum at Ravenna is the outstanding monument of the age. Of the three marble sarcophagi that stand beneath the glorious mosaics, that on the left contains all that remains of Constantius, her second husband, and their son Valentinian III; that on the right holds what there is of Honorius; while the central sarcophagus - the largest of all - is that of the Empress herself. In it her body is said to have sat, enthroned in robes of state, for eleven centuries, visible through a small peep-hole at the back; but in 1577, so the story goes, some children thrust a lighted taper through the hole. There was a sudden flash, and within seconds everything - throne, robes and Empress - was a heap of ashes.
fair Honoria had no sooner attained the sixteenth year of her age than she detested the importunate greatness which must for ever exclude her from the comforts of honourable love; in the midst of vain and unsatisfactory pomp Honoria sighed, yielded to the impulse of nature, and threw herself into the arms of her chamberlain Eugenius. Her guilt and shame (such is the absurd language of imperious man) were soon betrayed by the appearances of pregnancy: but the disgrace of the royal family was published to the world by the imprudence of the Empress Placidia, who dismissed her daughter, after a strict and shameful confinement, to a remote exile at Constantinople. The unhappy princess passed twelve or fourteen years in the irksome society of the sisters of Theodosius and their chosen virgins, to whose crown Honoria could no longer aspire, and whose monastic assiduity of prayer, fasting and vigils she reluctantly imitated. Her impatience of long and hopeless celibacy urged her to embrace a strange and desperate resolution. The name of Attila was familiar and formidable at Constantinople, and his frequent embassies entertained a perpetual intercourse between his camp and the imperial palace. In the pursuit of love, or rather of revenge, the daughter of Placidia sacrificed every duty and every prejudice, and offered to deliver her person into the arms of a barbarian of whose language she was ignorant, whose figure was scarcely human, and whose religion and manners she abhorred. By the ministry of a faithful eunuch she transmitted to Attila a ring, the pledge of her affection, and earnestly conjured him to claim her as a lawful spouse to whom he had been secretly betrothed. These indecent advances were received, however, with coldness and disdain; and the king of the Huns continued to multiply the number of his wives till his love was awakened by the more forcible passions of ambition and avarice.
Attila, jointly with his brother Bleda, had succeeded to the throne of the Huns in 434. Since 376, when it had first smashed its way into Europe from the steppes of Central Asia, this most savage of all the barbarian tribes had caused the Empire surprisingly little trouble. Neither an invasion - possibly prompted by Rufinus - of Armenia and Cappadocia in 395 nor a brief incursion into Bulgaria by King Uldin thirteen years later had produced any lasting results, and to increase his sense of security still further Theodosius had started, in about 430, to pay an annual subsidy - some might have called it a tribute - of 350 pounds of gold, the further to encourage his neighbours to keep the peace.
With the appearance of Attila, however - 'the scourge of God' as he was called - this relatively uneventful coexistence was to change. After over half a century's contact with the Romans, his people had become perhaps one degree less bestial than at their first arrival; but the vast majority still lived and slept in the open, disdaining all agriculture and even cooked foods - though they would often soften raw meat by putting it between their thighs and their horses' flanks as they rode. For clothing they favoured tunics made, rather surprisingly, from the skins of field-mice, crudely stitched together; these they wore continuously, without ever removing them, until they dropped off of their own accord. And, as they had always done, they still practically lived on their horses, eating, trading, holding their councils, even sleeping in the saddle. Attila himself was typical of his race: short, swarthy and snub-nosed, with tiny beady eyes set in a head too big for his body and a thin, straggling beard. He was not a great ruler, nor even a particularly able general; but so overmastering were the ambition and avarice with which Gibbon credits him - to say nothing of his pride, in both his person and his race, and his lust for power - that within the space of a few years he made himself feared throughout the length and breadth of Europe: more feared, perhaps, than any other single man - with the possible exception of Napoleon - before or since.
The details of his early campaigns are largely unrecorded; but within seven years of his succession he had built up a vast barbaric dominion of his own, stretching from the Balkans to the Caucasus and beyond. His first attacks on the Eastern Empire began in 441, and for the next six years there was sporadic fighting in Pannonia and along the Danube; but it was not until 447 that he gave Theodosius and his ministers serious cause for alarm. By this time his brother Bleda had died - no contemporary evidence exists to support later allegations that Attila had had him murdered - and he was in sole command of a people estimated at several thousand. His army now advanced in two directions at once: southward into Thessaly as far as Thermopylae, and eastward to Constantinople. The Theodosian Walls had, it seemed, been built just in time: the Huns had not the patience, the skill nor the discipline required for protracted siege warfare and soon turned away in search of more accessible plunder. But they inflicted a crushing defeat on the Byzantine army at Gallipoli, withdrawing only after the Emperor had agreed to treble the annual amount of Hun-money payable - as well as to hand over vast sums of past arrears which Attila claimed (probably rightly) that he had never received.
From this time forward, embassies passed almost constantly between Attila's camp and the court of Theodosius. If the majority came from the Hunnish side this was because Attila, seeing one after another of his ambassadors return from Constantinople weighed down with rich presents, had discovered a most effective means of benefiting those whom he wished to help at no cost to himself. He believed that the Em
peror was now terrified of him, and he was right: what little spirit Theodosius had once possessed had long since evaporated. His only policy now was one of craven appeasement, for which he was perfectly ready not only to exhaust his own treasury but to bleed his subjects white into the bargain. Had Athenais, or even Pulcheria, remained at his side, one is tempted to believe that they might have persuaded him to take a firmer line; but the former was far away in Jerusalem, and the latter had long since lost her brother's ear. The most powerful influence at the court was now that of a eunuch named Chrysaphus; and it was he who in 448 managed to suborn one of Attila's envoys, Edeco, and to involve him, in return for a rich reward, in a plot to assassinate the King of the Huns.
In pursuance of this conspiracy, a more than usually distinguished Byzantine embassy set out later in the same year. It was led by a senior officer of noble lineage (a point to which Attila always attached great significance) named Maximin and his friend Priscus - to neither of whom it was revealed that certain members of their retinue had secret orders from Chrysaphus to murder Attila in the course of their mission. In the event, this hardly mattered. The plot was at once confessed to Attila by Edeco - whose role from the outset may have been that of an agent provocateur - and was dealt with by its intended victim with remarkable adroitness. Meanwhile the embassy, after a few initial embarrassments, was finally received with every show of cordiality by Attila himself.
Its significance to posterity, however, lies not in its more sinister aspect nor yet in its achievements - which were in any case minimal -but in the long and almost unbelievably detailed account of it left by Priscus. Thanks to him we have an unforgettable picture of the Hunnish court, as well as of its King - feasting, carousing, dispensing justice, entertaining the Roman emissaries with his tribesmen, moving alternately between towering, terrifying rages and quieter moods in which he shows his guests courtesy and even glimmerings of charm. They were surprised, too, by the simplicity of his tastes during the banquet that he gave in their honour:
While for the other barbarians and for us there were lavishly prepared dishes served on silver platters, for Attila there was only meat on a wooden plate .. . Gold and silver goblets were handed to the men at the feast, whereas his cup was of wood. His clothing was plain, and differed not at all from that of the rest, except that it was clean. Neither the sword that hung at his side nor the fastenings of his barbarian boots nor his horse's bridle was adorned, like those of the other Scythians, with gold or precious stones or anything else of value.1
1 Trans. R. C. Blockley.
Priscus leaves us with the unmistakable impression that Attila, for all his brutishness, was in fact a remarkably astute diplomatist; and there is no telling how much longer he would have continued to drain away the wealth of the Eastern Empire had not Theodosius been killed, on 28 July 450, by a fall from his horse while hunting. He and Athenais had produced no male heir, but the problem of the succession was solved by Pulcheria. Despite her vow of virginity, she was able to contract a nominal marriage to Marcian, a Thracian senator and ex-soldier, whom she promptly named Augustus and placed, with herself, on the throne - giving out (whether truthfully or not it is hard to say) that he had been nominated by Theodosius on his deathbed.
One of the first acts of the new Emperor was to refuse the King of the Huns his annual tribute. It was a courageous step to take, though possibly not quite so courageous as it seemed: Marcian was almost certainly aware that Attila was at that moment preparing a vast operation against the Western Empire, and doubtless gambled on his unwillingness to delay this by a punitive expedition to the East. Nevertheless, a gamble it was; and there must have been rejoicing in Constantinople when the news arrived that the Hunnish army had started upon its march into Italy and Gaul.
But rejoicing, by its very essence, does not last long. All too soon the exhilaration dies, the problems of daily life reassert themselves. So, as the danger from the Huns began to fade, Marcian found himself obliged to turn his attention to a new threat, internal rather than external, spiritual rather than material, but none the less insistent for that: the ever-deepening split in Byzantine society occasioned by the monophysite heresy.
It was rooted in the same old enigma: the precise relation of the Father and the Son within the Trinity. The story of the Nestorians has already been told, with its grim moral concerning the fate awaiting those who upheld the principle of the two distinct persons in Christ, the human and the divine. That error had been dealt with forcibly enough at Ephesus in 431; since then, however, the pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme, and in 448 an elderly archimandrite named Eutyches was accused of disseminating the equally subversive doctrine that the Incarnate Christ possessed but a single nature, and that that nature was divine. Found guilty, condemned and degraded, Eutyches at once appealed to Pope Leo I (the Great), to the Emperor Theodosius and to the monks of Constantinople; and in doing so he unleashed a storm of scarcely imaginable ferocity. For three years the Church was in uproar, with councils summoned and discredited, bishops unseated and restored; with intrigues and conspiracies, violence and vituperation, curses and anathemas thundering between Rome and Constantinople, Ephesus and Alexandria. At last, in October 451, the fourth Ecumenical Council1 was held in the Church of St Euphemia at Chalcedon to put an end to the chaos. Numbering as it did some five to six hundred bishops, whose views ranged across the whole breadth of the Christological spectrum, it is astonishing that this Council should have reached any decisions at all; in fact, it achieved everything it set out to do and more.2 Eutyches, who had been rehabilitated and reinstated in 449, was once again condemned; and a new statement of faith was drawn up, known as the Chalcedonian Definition, according to which the doctrines of Nestorius and Eutyches were alike repudiated. Christ was established as the possessor of one person with two natures, united 'unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly and inseparably': perfect God and perfect man.
But, successful as the Council of Chalcedon unquestionably was in the short term, it laid up a greater store of future trouble than it knew. Monophysitism, as soon became apparent, was by no means dead. In the years to come, both in Egypt and Syria - the latter once a stronghold of the Nestorians - bishop after bishop was openly to reject the findings of the Council; and when these provinces began their struggle for independence from Byzantine rule, the Single Nature of Christ was to be their rallying-cry.3 With the West also, the seeds of discord were sown -notably in one of the thirty decrees which the delegates went on to promulgate when their main business was over. This decree, known as Canon Twenty-Eight, bestowed on the Bishop of Constantinople the title of Patriarch and reiterated the Theodosian ruling of 381 which had accorded him a pride of place in the Christian hierarchy second only to the Pope of Rome. So much the papal representatives present were
1 The three previous Councils had been those of Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381 and Ephesus in 431.
1 According to an 'Anonymous Englishman' writing in 1190, the two opposing camps, orthodox and monophysite, decided to resolve the dispute by placing their two respective formulas in the coffin of St Euphemia - a local virgin martyred in 303 - and leaving the decision to her. When they opened the coffin a week later they found the orthodox formula on her head and the monophysite under her feet. There was no further argument.
3 The monophysite doctrine still survives today among the Copts and Abyssinians, the Jacobites of Syria and the Armenians.
prepared to allow; what they could not accept was the clear implication that the Pope's supremacy would henceforth be purely titular, and that in every other respect there would be complete equality between the sees of Rome and Constantinople. The eastern provinces in particular - those of Thrace, Pontus and Asia - would be responsible to the Patriarch alone, by whom their metropolitans would in future be ordained. From this moment was born the ecclesiastical rivalry between the Old Rome and the New which was to grow increasingly bitter over the centuries until, just 600 years later, it was to erupt into
schism.
John Malalas - a sixth-century Syrian-Byzantine chronicler whose anecdotes, however apocryphal, are the very essence of the ben trovato -records that the King of the Huns sent envoys, shortly before the death of Theodosius II, to both the Eastern and the Western Emperors, bearing the message: 'Attila, thy master and mine, bids thee prepare a palace for his reception.' Despite the lack of contemporary evidence, there is nothing inherently improbable about this story: Attila had designs on both halves of the Roman Empire, and loved nothing more than to strike terror into the hearts of his enemies. Until now, he had directed his energies principally against the East; but developments among the various barbarian tribes in the Western provinces had recently provided several excellent pretexts for his intervention there. Still more fortunate, from his point of view, was the opportunity unexpectedly afforded by the luckless Princess Honoria, to whose imperial brother he could now forward the ring she had sent him, together with a demand couched in his usual peremptory style: that Valentinian should restore to her forthwith that part of his Empire which was her due, and of which he had so unjustly deprived her.