These words were to echo down the centuries, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Pascal and Hegel, and the assembly listened to them with passionate attention. Everyone felt that something even more important was to come, perhaps something terrible. There was an atmosphere of dread. Now Alexis spoke of Helen, Philocrates, Isidore, the great forest of Balkh, and the memory of Hadrian. For more than half a century, he said, he had been surrounded by great minds and great souls to whom he owed everything. Many had died helping him. Mankind as a whole lives forever, with the gods’ help, in the continuity of empires and institutions; but the individual lives only to die. The Empire extended over the world, yet the Emperor, too, was just a man alone facing death. And now he, Alexis, wanted to devote all his thoughts to the death that had for so long spared him. He renounced supreme authority over all the peoples of the Empire and the world. He was ceasing to be Emperor in order to try to be a man. Not to learn to live—it was too late for that—but to learn to die.
There was an amazed and terrified silence. Everyone looked at his neighbors, whispered, wondered if he had heard aright. Then suddenly the Emperor raised a hand for silence. His decision was irrevocable, he said, and he had taken all necessary steps to ensure peace and the continuity of the Empire. Then each one knew his fate was about to be pronounced. Once again uproar was succeeded by silence, and Alexis announced that he was handing over the world Empire to Khubilai and the archpatriarch. To Balamir’s son went land and sea, the armies, the navies, trade, the treasury, and the title of Emperor; to the archpatriarch went nothing but the peoples’ souls and whatever there might be of the divine in the justice of men. And the pontiff, without power, without wealth of his own, without soldiers, and without a palace, was given supremacy over the master of the Empire—the archpatriarch, chosen by the priests and seers, stripped of all worldly wealth, would nominate the Emperor from among the families of the Porphyries and the princes of the Oïghurs. He would crown the Emperor, he would remove him from office if he proved unworthy, he would act as the sacred link between men and the gods. Thus for the second time, by laws and texts instead of fire and sword, was founded the vast community of peoples known to historians and to tradition as the Holy Altaic Roman Empire,[18] or the Holy Mediterranean and Asiatic Roman Empire,[19] which was to fill the centuries with the clamor of its renown and of its decay.
It is here, on the morning of the last day of the assembly of the Empire that the modest task of the Emperor’s historian ends. Some words must be added about the man and what happened after his death, but that great convocation marked the close of the public career and the political and military achievements of the Emperor. Of course, great men survive in the influence of their work, the institutions they created, the historical or intellectual movements they set in motion. Alexis is much more than just Alexis. Still hardly a week goes by without our being reminded by some piece of research or sociological survey, or even in the newspapers or on television, of the New Alliance, the sack of Rome, the conversion of Bruince, the assembly of the City, the Holy Mediterranean and Asiatic Roman Empire, and their consequences through the ages. To follow the legend of Alexis in the minds of men would merely be to write world history over again from a slightly different angle, an onerous task that we shall leave to younger pens. All we need say here is that the Empire could not resist time: it disintegrated, it fell. This was the City’s second decline, and this time it was irremediable. Constantinople had already been captured twice, once in 1204 by the Crusaders and once in 1453 by the Turks, America had been discovered, Protestantism had been born, and still the City persisted in its rites and memories, continuing to crown, in what had become a pitiful and poignant farce, the degenerate princes of the line of Alexis and Balamir. These were the famous Porphyrogenetes, descendants of the Porphyries, of whom the last, Constantine, was to die at dawn one morning toward the end of the summer of 1925, dead drunk, outrageously made up, with a bullet through his head and a woman’s boa around his neck, among the moth-eaten palm trees of Monte Carlo, a victim of trente-et-quarante or chemin de fer.
Thus empires are born, and shine forth, and die. When Alexis ceased speaking, after determining the history of three continents for hundreds of years, and when the tumult had somewhat died away, a voice broken with age was heard in the assembly. It was Valerius. The old poet suggested the Emperor be given the title of Alexis the Great. Even before he had finished, a storm of cheering drowned his words. Then the Emperor arose once more and asked for silence. He seemed to have aged twenty years in the few moments since he last spoke. The man, worn by suffering and life, by time and by power, was beginning to emerge from the demigod. He said how moved he was by the homage of all the nations of the Empire. But he declined to accept it. He wanted history to speak of him only as the Father of the Peoples, the title that had given him most happiness. Some had to renounce and retire, others had to fight and go on fighting. He turned to Bruince and Khubilai. He said again he was entrusting the Empire to them, which was nothing, and its peoples, which was everything. He went over to them and embraced them. All three, standing, wept. As for himself, he no longer believed in the crowns bestowed by men and was setting out for an unknown realm “where neither friends nor treasure nor thrones are of any avail.”[20] Tears ran down the rough faces burned by the sun and winds, by dreams, by the dust of the steppes and the salt of the sea. Logophilus said, of course, that there had never been such pride. But Justus Dion, without actually contradicting him, presents the matter differently, more moderately, and probably more justly. He writes that the rejection of glory and the rejection of the Empire only added more luster to both the glory of Alexis and the glory of the Empire.
XXIII
LOSER TAKE ALL, OR THE OTHER LIFE
THE EMPEROR WAS NO LONGER EMPEROR. HE HAD BECOME Alexis again. But it was impossible to escape immediately. Every province and city in the Empire pleaded for a visit and everywhere he was met with enthusiasm. There are many vivid accounts of all the celebrations in Alexis’s honor, but history has preserved above all the memory of the welcome given to him by the Eternal City. The Triumph of Alexis was the theme of the fine series of twelve Flemish tapestries commissioned in Bruges by Leo X for his Chamber of the Sibyls in the Borgia apartments, beneath the Raphael rooms; and now in the Vatican Museum. The fifteenth-century idea of the Age of Alexis and of his apotheosis on the Capitol is illustrated in naïve detail by the miniatures in the Très Riches Heures de l’Empereur Alexis, a very rare work of collaboration by the then elderly Jean Fouquet and the still young Attavante degli Attavanti, a gift from Mathias Corvin to Louis XI, preserved in the château of Chantilly. Reading contemporary accounts, it is easy to see why artists were tempted by the appeal to the sensuous imagination contained in this incredible display of color and pomp. Although Alexis had already laid power aside, he still appeared, in the words of Justus Dion, “the most powerful man in followers, lands, and treasures who ever lived, from the time of Adam until today.”[1]
It was autumn. For nearly five moons the sun had shone down on the Eternal City and on all of Italy out of a clear sky. It was as if the protecting planet also wanted to render a last homage to the intractable son who may have betrayed him but had also done so much for his worship, and been inspired by him to impose on the world the idea of a single law and one universal good. The whole population of Rome had gathered round the sacred hill where once the messenger from Asia had interrupted another ceremony.
Entering the square the Emperor was confronted with an astonishing spectacle. One hundred twenty elephants of state or war had been brought to Rome, and the moment Alexis appeared on the Capitol “they all knelt and bowed their heads before him, trumpeting as if in homage.”[2] Every region and city in the Empire had sent six men and a woman to represent them. Some wore long red or blue robes, others togas or cuirasses, others hides or furs, others again colored trousers caught in around the ankles, or dalmatics of silk and purple and sparkling with precious stones. Some carr
ied birds of prey on their wrists, or led bears or leopards, giraffes or ostriches. Treasures from temples and palaces had been escorted to the Capitol by archers and men-at-arms: the sun glinted on jewels out of Persian and Indian legend, sprays of emeralds, diadems of diamonds, fans of ivory and gold, staffs and parasols of precious wood inlaid with tortoise shell and silver, carved and jeweled weapons, rare ornaments that teams of craftsmen had spent years embellishing. All around this splendor was the brute force that protected it from ambush and envy. Every troop in the Empire had sent twelve soldiers for the Emperor’s last guard of honor.
All the great dignitaries of the Empire who had taken part in the Great Assembly of the City were also there on the Capitol, come once again, one last time, to bow down before Alexis. Children sang, flowers rained down on all sides, bulls and horses were slain by the priests, blood streamed over the ground and was drunk up by the thirsty earth through the cracks the heat had made between the flagstones. The souls of the people all merged into one in the golden light, as if to tell Alexis that the dream of a whole lifetime was at last fulfilled. Just as the sun sank below the horizon, twelve imperial eagles were released into the pink and purple sky, and a great roar rose up on the hill. Then the Emperor bade farewell to his people of Rome as he had bidden farewell to his peoples of Asia and Africa, of the City and Samarkand, of Toledo and Pomposa. Alexis had decreed there should be no speeches. Words no longer meant anything; it was a celebration of silence. The Emperor just went over to an old captain of the Twelve Thousand who, many years earlier, had been one of the first to join Isidore’s Conspiracy and now could not hold back his tears. Alexis put his arms around him, and it was all the peoples of the Empire that he clasped to his heart. When he went back and seated himself for the last time on his throne among the dignitaries of the Empire, he heard Logophilus murmur:
“The real sacrifice would have been to stay.”
Without looking at him Alexis replied: “There is something higher than power.”
“But how is one to be sure it is not oneself?”
Alexis turned toward Logophilus. The grammarian had suddenly reminded him of the very words with which Helen had once reproached him, just before the confrontation with Balamir and Simeon, when he was already thinking of relinquishing power and putting his love of meditation and repose before the good of the people and the peace of the Empire. He looked around him. Rome lay at his feet in the falling dusk. Lights were coming on one by one in the darkness. In the distance one could still just distinguish the river, the hills heavy with memories and hopes, the palaces and temples rebuilt by Hadrian, some obelisk or triumphal arch which had miraculously escaped disaster and the tre notti dolenti, hundreds, thousands of humble dwellings. Farther away still, beyond the horizon and the eye’s reach, lay the roads of the Empire, the navies, the ports, the countless cities, the armies and merchants, villages perched on mountains or hidden among trees, all the force, all the heady murmurs of life. He was renouncing not merely power, but this whole teeming world, so rich and inexhaustible. All around him he could hear the crowd chanting his name, still hoping to dissuade him; “Alexis! Alexis!” The motionless troops only waited for one word from him to march to the ends of the earth again. One word, and Khubilai would do him homage. One word, and Logophilus would make over to him all the complicated machinery on which the destiny of the world depended. But what was the good? It was all the same—all alike and all a matter of indifference. He did not even care, as Logophilus imagined, about his own salvation.
Many writers have, of course, pointed out what a strange combination is made by Alexis’s charismatic gift and this passion for silence and humility which the most famous contemporary psycho-analyst has called “the irresistible need to disappear.”[3] The ceremonies on the Capitol and the second disappearance only repeat in a different key the feasts in Alexandria and the first disappearance. It is hard to avoid talking, in both cases, of a “life neurosis.” This is not the place to enter into the subtle details of the various interpretations that have been put forward, historical, metaphysical, psychological, materialist, and religious. Some see here an interiorization, perhaps pathological, of the problem of time; others the presence of God; others again the interaction of social and economic forces of which Alexis was merely the plaything. Some see the phenomenon as a plain manifestation of a kind of sexual behavior dominated by withdrawal, interruption, and flight.[4] How is one to choose among so many theories? All we have attempted here is a modest essay in historical phenomenology. All it allows us to do is observe the emperor’s wish to relinquish power. We can also discern the ostensible causes of his decision: his personality, the year he spent in Asia in his youth, the influence of Hadrian, the deaths of Manfred and Theodora. But the search for the underlying causes lies outside the scope of this book, which aims simply at an objective exposition of events and facts. We may just remark in passing, however, with Sir Allan Carter-Bennett, that the entire public career of the Emperor is like a brilliant interlude between two withdrawals—the first exile, and the last great rejection.
At the end of the assembly of the City Valerius had proposed in vain that the Emperor be given the title of Alexis the Great. At the very close of the ceremony on the Capitol, Bruince, Khubilai, Logophilus, and the other dignitaries of the Empire came to Alexis and implored him one last time to remain at the head of the Empire. It was then that he made his famous reply, sometimes ascribed to Saint Gregory the Great:
“I am the servant of the servants of the Empire, the humblest of the humble, of all the despicable the most to be despised.”
The Emperor had had brought up to the Capitol a blind deaf-mute, a leper, a man condemned to death for parricide, a lame prostitute with goiter, an epileptic visionary, and a Jewish beggar called Ahasuerus, who had known every humiliation and outrage and whose travels through the world were to make him famous.[5] Alexis now gathered them around him, knelt before them, and washed their feet.[6]
Coming down from the hill after nightfall, Logophilus begged Alexis to let him at least have monuments put up in memory of the Father of the Peoples. But Alexis refused again. He remembered his son, and, apart from the masterpieces that had been dedicated to him here and there and which it was not in his power to destroy or deny, he wished for no temple, palace, marble inscription, or statue, and for no poems to his glory besides those already written by Valerius, Menalchas, and Polyphilus. This is why evidence about the Emperor is now so rare and precious. The cameo at Dresden, the three great statues in the Louvre, and the sculptures in Munich and the Metropolitan Museum in New York are almost unique.[7] But Bruince and Logophilus did not entirely give way over this. They had a fine equestrian statue of gilded bronze put up on the Capitoline Hill, a work which later inspired Donatello’s monument in the Piazza del Santo in Padua to the Venetian condottiere Erasmo di Narni, better known as Gattamelata, and Verrocchio’s statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, in the Campo dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. Alexis’s statue now stands on a plinth after Michelangelo, between the Senator’s Palace, the Capitoline Museum, the Curators’ Palace, and the huge figures of the Dioscuri, at the top of a great ramp also designed by Michelangelo and ornamented with black granite tigers. But the statue of the Father of the Peoples has undergone many changes and vicissitudes. Perhaps because the collective unconscious secretly obeyed the Emperor’s wish and concealed from itself the origin and meaning of the work, it was taken to be a statue of Constantine throughout the Middle Ages, and then, more recently, regarded as a representation of Marcus Aurelius. In several books the same thesis is still maintained, but there can no longer be any doubt. The grave countenance full of inner peace clearly recalls all the known likenesses of Alexis, and unmistakably expresses all we know of him. If further proof were needed, it is supplied by Valerius’s last work, The Ceremonies on the Capitol, left unfinished at the poet’s death and often quoted by Justus Dion. It contains an indirect but clear enough allusion to the equestrian statue on the Capi
tol, and its failure to respect the Emperor’s last wishes. The content and tone of the passages in which Justus Dion refers to Valerius’s poem contribute greatly to solving two of the historical riddles linked to the life of Alexis and the subject of much discussion: the statue on the Capitol, and the identity of Justus Dion. For the historian not only testifies to the erection of an equestrian statue of the Emperor, but also condemns it angrily, which might not have been surprising in Alexis himself, the author of the prohibition, but is so in the chronicler and apologist, who like Valerius, Bruince, and Logophilus, might have been expected to regard disobedience in this matter as a pious tribute and a pardonable offense. Like the evening walk in the gardens on the Palatine Hill,[8] Justus Dion’s vehemence on the subject of the statue on the Capitol has always been used as an argument by those who see the shape of Alexis himself lurking in the shade of Justus Dion.
Alexis left Rome two days after the apotheosis on the Capitol. He had taken leave of Bruince, Khubilai, Logophilus, and the rest. He passed for the last time by Hadrian’s mausoleum—an enormous building, at the same time round and square, that lay by the river, opposite a bridge lined with ornamental statues; above it shone a golden sun, with a key of bronze and marble and a stake of silver. Alexis halted his little procession to meditate for a moment on what he had called “the Empire’s most sacred monument.” Many years later the city was visited by a dreadful plague. The pope, Saint Gregory the Great, organized prayers and other ceremonies of intercession. He himself was crossing the bridge that Alexis had ridden over when suddenly there appeared on top of the mausoleum an angel putting a flaming sword back in its scabbard. At the same moment the pontiff heard a thunderous yet kind voice saying, “Be not afraid, Gregory. I am Alexis.” This vision foreshadowed the end of the plague, and the people of Rome, in their enthusiasm, renamed Hadrian’s mausoleum the Castel Sant’Angelo Alessio.
The Glory of the Empire Page 44