The ceremony reflected the two aspects of Hadrian’s religion: magnificence and humility. Bruince, clad in a pink and green dalmatic interwoven with gold thread and embroidered with sapphires, lapis lazuli, and emeralds, covered his head with ashes and lay in the dust at the feet of the archpatriarch. He vowed to defend the poor, the sick, and the fatherless against the rich and powerful; then he reviewed the archpatriarch’s meager battalions. There were probably not very many of them, but they were mixed with barbarian detachments and imperial troops arrayed in an imposing mass along the river bank. The Emperor was present at the ceremony, thus lending the procurator general the sanction of supreme authority. This was not unnecessary, in view of the hostility shown by the priests of Aquileus and, above all, by Logophilus, who made no attempt to hide his disapproval at seeing the highest person in the Empire, after the Emperor, abandon the traditions of his ancestors. The conversion of Bruince contained the seeds not only of his own tragic end—which Georg Büchner, after many others, dramatized in 1835 in The Death of Bruince—but also of all the future troubles within the Empire, its convulsions, and its decline.
In order to understand the events that are the main concern of this book it was necessary to give an account of the Empire before Alexis. The Empire was to survive for some time after the Emperor, the procurator general, and the proveditor of the treasury, but it is, of course, impossible, within the limits of this brief historical and biographical essay, to do more than allude to the future.[9] But to put it in a nutshell, the new face worn by the Empire after Alexis dates from the conversion of Bruince, which represented yet another step toward the manners, values, and society of our own time. We cannot do more here than express the hope that there will be many studies made in the future of Bruince and his religious and political thought, of Alexis’s successors, and of the later development of the Empire, thus throwing on our own condition the light that only the past can throw upon the present.
Hadrian VII died less than two years after the conversion of the procurator general. His remains were interred in what was known as Hadrian’s Mausoleum, which later, as the result of events we shall deal with in due course, became first the Castel Sant’Angelo and then a fortress. Bruince succeeded Hadrian on the archpatriarchal throne, which he was to occupy for fourteen glorious years, preparing the way for the Peters, Gregorys, Sixtuses, Juliuses, and Leos to whom more than anyone we still owe the image of the world we live in.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Empire, in Samarkand, Bukhara, Karakoram, the Altai mountains, in the steppes, and on the high plateaus, a young man of about twenty, whom the reader may remember, was beginning, in his turn, to have extraordinary adventures. He was the son of Balamir and Zenobia, the Kubla Khan of Coleridge’s poem, later to build his famous capital of Xanadu on the river Alph—the future conqueror of the Chinese, of Peking, of the valley of the Yangtze Kiang, and all the Indochinese peninsula: Khubilai.[10] This is not the place to retrace the stages of his rise, but we may just recall that Zenobia was the daughter of Helen and Roderick, and so Simeon’s sister and Alexis’s sister or half-sister. In Khubilai the Emperor found an echo of his own turbulent youth, a reminder of Manfred, a kind of composite image of all that had gone to make up his own life, from his rides in the northeastern forests with Simeon to his military expeditions at the side of Balamir. Deepest Asia, which had left an indelible mark on Alexis, revived again in the ardent and ambitious youth, then in the violent conqueror so attached to Buddhism that he prized his Buddhist titles of ktuktu (venerable, divine) and chakravartin (universal monarch) above all his innumerable others.[11] Marco Polo, who many centuries later was to exercise his gifts as geographer, historian, and observer as far afield as China, tells that when he became emperor, Khubilai welcomed with great pomp the relics of the Buddha sent to him by the rajah of Ceylon, and that he always had the support of the lamas of Tibet. But Khubilai’s passion for universality, inherited no doubt from Alexis by those mysterious processes which owe less to blood than to kinship of mind and heart, made him sympathetic, despite his preference for Buddhism, to all other religions—to Nestorian pilgrims, to the priests of the Alans, to the clergy of the Greek rite, whose holy books he would kiss when they were sprinkled with incense before him. Like Alexis, Khubilai practiced at one and the same time the fiercest war, religion, the arts, and trade. He exploited the coal mines in north China (“Black stones extracted from a kind of vein in the mountains, which burn like logs and so well that no one burns anything else in all Cathay”[12]); he made the Yangtze Kiang the main artery of the Chinese economy (“There came and went on this river more ships and more rich merchandise than on all the ships and all the rivers of the West. Every year two hundred thousand boats went up the river, not to mention those that went down”[13]); he developed trade guilds worthy even of Pomposa and the City (“There were so many merchants, and they so rich, and they carried on so great a trade, that no man could measure it. And you must know that neither the masters of each trade nor their wives ever soiled their hands, but lived a life so rich and elegant it was fit for a king”[14]); he went further even than Alexis and Bruince, and introduced the general use of paper money (ch’ao), which Marco Polo amusingly called the real philosopher’s stone (“And I assure you everyone willingly took these notes, because wherever anyone went in the lands of the Great Khan they could use it to buy and sell with just as if it were fine gold”[15]). The Arab traveler ibn-Batuta confirms in every detail the marvels remembered by Marco Polo. The genius of Alexis foresaw the genius and achievements of the son of Balamir. The Emperor thought that the first and last duty of those to whom nations were entrusted was to ensure, over and above their own concerns, the prosperity, greatness, and peace of the countries in their charge. “The Emperor,” wrote Justus Dion, “looked around him. He saw Bruince on the throne of Hadrian, burning with a passion for justice, and Khubilai Khan in Asia, panting to make war in order to impose a great peace.” How could Alexis fail to recognize himself in these two men, the old man he had loved for half a century, the other, still almost a child and whom he had scarcely seen, but in whom he saw again his own dreams of universality contained in laws, his own contradictions, his own dual temptation by both tolerance and violence?
The last years of the reign show an Emperor already far away, in whom the spectacle of time passing and never ending has gradually changed anguish and self-torment into a quest for serenity. Few lives in the whole history of the world have been so rich in fulfillment—and even the failures are exemplary. When, toward the end, the Emperor looked back on his past, he felt as if it belonged to someone else. Successes seemed hardly more important than sorrows and weaknesses; the great designs grew dim; everything was reduced to the same level before the mysteries that once enchanted his youth and of which he now sensed the approach and perhaps the solution. He was filled, then, with what Robert Weill-Pichon calls “a metaphysical indifference in which the passion to understand finally gets the better of the thrill of action.” The Empire was at its height; the justice and peace he had promised to the nations reigned from Brittany to Korea, from the forests of Saxony to the deserts of Arabia; the same laws governed everyone; and as far as he could see the conquest of the world was not in danger. But he was not quite sure he did not find it pointless.
He told Justus Dion that history itself seemed to him no more than a tale, a show, the symbol of all vanity. To make history! What was the good? Pomposa had made history, and Pomposa had collapsed beneath Alexis’s blows. The Empire, too, would collapse. The Emperor asked to be told about Khubilai’s ambitions and his first successes. He could already see in his mind’s eye the future conflicts, the peace that follows conflict, prosperity, happiness, and then once more the limits of fate and ruins again and the end of the great dream. He used to say history was an imaginary rock of glory and mud, dragged by torrents of blood to where no shores were. He was no longer quite sure that the way to the universal really lay through history. Perhaps he had
been wrong. He had been torn away from meditation by the sufferings of the Empire, by injustice, by cruelty. And then, crushed by the rock he had tried to topple, he in his turn had been the embodiment of cruelty, injustice, and all the violence in the world. That was what was called history. Men and events formed a great infernal wheel where the only choice was between being victim or victimizer. The best moment in history was when the victim slowly arose and struck down the victimizer. Then he became the victimizer himself, and there was nothing left but to await new victims who would strike him down in their turn. But the Emperor had had enough of conquering and condemning.
In Logophilus’ opinion, the Emperor’s attitude was due simply to age, fatigue, and illness. Contrary to Alexis, the grammarian believed in history alone. It is only fair to add that he did not cultivate history for reasons of vanity or ambition. He believed in an anonymous history in which violence was justified by success, and the march of events brought the reign of happiness and truth nearer every day. More: Truth and happiness were history itself. History was held back by a siege that was too long, a battle that was lost, by regulations that were too mild. It was pushed forward by the entry of troops into exhausted cities, by victorious navies, by roads across the mountains and post stages with fresh horses. Logophilus said history had no conscience, but it knew the way it had to go, and the only mistakes it made were those men made when they tried, in vain, to oppose its course. Many historians have depicted Logophilus as a repulsive character. But he was not even cruel. All he wanted was to see the system work. Massacres did not matter. History must triumph. Logophilus’ three sons were killed, one at the siege of Lindos, one at Adrianople, one at Verona. History is expensive. He believed courage was needed to make it advance, to make it gradually reveal to all its justice and truth, and for them it was but cowardice and treason to refuse to accept passing time and its pitiless demands. Justus Dion had a profound insight when he said that the Emperor and Logophilus happened to collaborate in making the history of their time, but that the Emperor fought against history while Logophilus worshipped it.[16]
In the last book of his Chronicles, Justus Dion tells of a stroll he is supposed to have taken one evening in Rome with the Emperor, through the great garden which then extended over the Palatine Hill. The whole city, risen at last from its ashes, lay stretched before them. Minute in the distance, soldiers could be seen carrying out maneuvers; priests offering sacrifice to the gods; passers-by strolling from one portico to the next; fruiterers, cobblers, weighers of gold, and prostitutes plying their trade—the noise from the streets and the squares rose to the palaces looking out over the hill. The Emperor looked down on it all, and Justus Dion remarked that it was to him that the peoples of the Empire, in Samarkand, Antioch, Pomposa, Toledo, and Tyre, owed the peace and quiet they enjoyed. Alexis answered that he had never made war except to ensure peace and justice. Then after a moment’s silence he said in a changed voice that the time had come for him to hand over to others the burden of the Empire. Justus Dion realized that this time the decision was final. But still he struggled against it. He tried to point out how necessary Alexis was to the Empire, to convince him it was his duty to rule. It was then Alexis made his famous answer, that to force men to do things was never a duty. He repeated what he had always said—that no one had to rule, but that it was impossible to rule without violence. In this sense Logophilus was right. And if one declined to worship history as he did, perhaps one would be led to withdraw forever from government and public affairs. Justus Dion asked if the Emperor had lost all interest in history, if it really seemed just the pointless vanity he spoke of so often. Alexis thought for a moment and then said history was something at once so dreadful and so marvelous that from then on he would try to understand and explain it in the light of humility, like the philosophers, rather than create it as conquerors and legislators do, in the darkness of fame, on battlefields and in assemblies. It is this equivocal passage that has led so many commentators to think that Alexis and Justus Dion were one and the same person, talking to himself.[17]
Enough has been said to throw some inner light on a decision that, coming from the master of the greatest empire in the world, was to provoke, at the time and throughout history, uneasy and sometimes angry amazement. Once he had made up his mind to leave the stage of history—a decision that must, in spite of everything, have been a painful one—Alexis’s first thought was for the future of the Empire. If misfortune had not struck, there is no doubt that the imperial power in its entirety would have passed to Manfred. The only chance for the idea of universality to survive lay in resisting at all costs the forces of dispersion and disintegration. Theodora would probably have been given important responsibilities enabling her to remain for a while by her son’s side and help him with her counsels. But with Theodora and Manfred both gone, we know the Emperor’s first idea was to make Khubilai sole master of the Empire. Logophilus urged this course, but the Emperor hesitated. The youth, the violence, the very ardor of Balamir’s son made Alexis fear for the future. He feared endless war, an oriental despotism intermingled with mysticism and ignorant of the facts in the West and the Mediterranean basin he himself so loved. Alexis spent almost another two years in self-interrogation and consultation. Then he summoned the Great Assembly of the peoples of the Empire to meet in the palace of the City and hear of his decision. The assembly consisted of priests from Aquileus, Rome, Antioch and Alexandria, Edessa and Ctesiphon; army leaders; the chief magistrates and representatives of the guilds and corporations; all the princes of allied or conquered countries; and all the provincial governors, from the Great or Atlantic Ocean to the Land of the Quiet Morning, from the snow-covered forests of the north to the burning deserts of Africa and Arabia. Half a century after the nomads’ assembly at Székesfehérvár, which decided on the invasion of the Empire, the barbarian generals were mingling with the Pomposan nobles, the great landowners of Evcharisto and Parapoli, the priests of Aquileus and the archpatriarchal legates. Among the crowd were Moors, men with fair hair and long mustaches from the bank of the Rhine, slit-eyed Koreans, Indians with shaven heads, voluble Sicilians, Scythians, Lusitanians, Libyans, and Persians. Every possible language was spoken, but, as at Famagusta so long ago, at the time of Basil and King Regis, Greek was predominant and served as a link. The Emperor sat between Bruince and Khubilai. Behind him, the well-informed recognized Admiral Carradine, his beard now almost white; old Valerius, nearly in his dotage; Menalchas; the Polititian; Aziri, now over ninety but still gay and lively after having driven so many young men to despair; and, of course, Logophilus. Isidore, Polyphilus, Philontes, Aristo, and Martian were dead.
The assembly lasted twelve days. There were magnificent celebrations, games, banquets, tournaments, horse races, and theatrical entertainments. These included the first performance—in the great auditorium in the palace (which was to inspire Palladio’s Olympic Theater in Vicenza) of Menalchas’s last tragedy, The Glory of Balamir. The splendor of the Empire was then at its height. Gifts were lavished on the princes and generals; the magnificent buildings, the flowers, the tinkling fountains in courtyards and gardens, the splendid tents erected by the nomad chiefs at the City gates, the silk standards and rare carpets, the rose petals strewn in the streets, the brilliance of the clothes and ornaments, the exotic food and the great dishes of pure gold left lasting traces in the mind, both of those present at the ceremonies and of the millions of men and women who see traces today in dance, folklore, and popular song. The theater of Clara Gazul, the Chinese and Sicilian marionettes, the shadow theater of Karagoz, the songs and dances of Albania, the Japanese kabuki, the Indonesian wajang, the great Georgian epics of Rusthaveli and Chakhrukhadze are all full of allusions to the Great Assembly in the City, the huge meeting of peoples recorded by both Christian and Buddhist tradition and invoked, as they undertook their own great enterprises, by Urban II, Peter the Hermit, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, and al-Malik al-Nāsir Salāh-al-Dīn Yūsuf, whom we call Sal
adin. The assembly heard speeches by Bruince, Logophilus, Carradine, Khubilai, and lastly the Emperor, to whom it renewed its homage and obedience on the evening of the sixth day.
On the morning of the last day of the assembly, the Emperor appeared in public dressed in a long mauve silk robe, without helmet or armor, without any kind of weapon, but scepter in hand and with the crown of iron and oak on his head. His air was grave, and he was accompanied as usual by the archpatriarch and the son of Balamir. In his right hand the pontiff held Hadrian’s key, the symbol of his authority in this world and the next. Khubilai, radiant with youthful beauty in the hides and furs traditional among his people, carried the legendary sword of the Oïghurs. The assembly, risen to its feet in a tense silence, realized at once that something very important was about to happen. Alexis spoke, and thanked all those who had come from the ends of the earth in order to strengthen the rule of peace and justice everywhere. One after the other he addressed in their own language the people of Tyre and Samarkand, Pomposa and Ctesiphon, Granada and Ephesus. He reminded them that they, too, were the Empire. Then he turned to those of the ancient Empire, those from Onessa and Aquileus, Evcharisto and Parapoli, Amphibolus and Mezzopotamo, Gildor and the City, those from the great forests and those from the plains at the foot of the volcanoes. It was with them it had all begun. They had fought against hatred, injustice, servitude, against the lawlessness that put the weak at the mercy of the strong. He called on them not to repeat the sufferings they had known for four centuries, not to inflict on others what they themselves had hated. He asked all of them, from one ocean to the other, from the eternal ice to the desert sands, to look on one another as brothers, to preserve the unity of the Empire as their most sacred possession, and to remain just as well as strong. For force without justice was rightly hated, and justice without force feeble and ridiculous.
The Glory of the Empire Page 43