Istanbul

by David Jacobs

  When the barbarians overran the Western Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, they assumed the fashions and culture of the Romans. They also adopted Christianity. But while Christianity influenced the development of the barbarians’ society, the barbarians’ customs and even pagan beliefs also influenced the shape of Christianity. Barbarians sometimes ordered tribes to become Christian. If anyone expressed doubts or resistance, the barbarians would torture or execute him according to age-old tradition. Sometimes pagan gods became Christian saints. The result in the West was a harsh, repressive kind of Christian civilization, and the era was called the Dark Ages.

  Christian civilization absorbed the traditions of ethics, art, law, and language of Greece and Rome. But it was the Eastern Empire established by Constantine, not the West, that provided the main repository for these traditions. Certainly, barbarians and barbarian influences seeped into Constantinople and particularly into the outer extremes of the Eastern Empire, but the East more than the West retained the riches of Classical culture.

  The chief importance of New Rome was that it was both the capital of the Roman Empire and also of a realm that would become the first Christian empire. In Constantinople, Classical civilization evolved into a Christian civilization.

  Although neither Constantine nor his sons witnessed the flowering of their Christian empire, the evolution of the new civilization centered in Constantinople was remarkably swift. It took only about 200 years for all the divergent elements that migrated to Constantinople to meld into the population that would become the strength of the Byzantine Empire.

  In Constantine’s day, the aristocracy of his capital consisted principally of transplanted Romans and people of good social position. Their arrival with money to spend and their quest for profitable ways to invest it sent land values soaring. As a result, some native Byzantines who owned tracts of land in or near the city were potentially rich men. However, in typical Roman fashion, the administration of Constantinople was soon under the control of a complicated bureaucracy. The local landowners had to be careful to keep their property from becoming heavily taxed or even confiscated and their potential profit lost. The landowners who were shrewd or lucky became the new aristocracy of the city.

  The rich of Constantinople demonstrated their status by maintaining both a townhouse within the walls and a villa in the suburbs - on the Bosporus shores at first and later on Exokionion, the seventh hill of Constantinople, which had been situated outside the city walls. These aristocratic families tended to become very clannish, insulated, and self-protective. Each maintained its own court and retained resident tutors, scholars, priests, and entertainers.

  In the Middle East, men did not highly regard women; in Rome, they patronizingly honored them; but in Constantinople, men carefully protected women and treated them as intellectual equals. Parents kept young girls at home until their marriage and taught them spinning, weaving, sewing, and other conventional feminine skills. They often gave them the same academic training as their brothers, but not university educations. Once married, a woman enjoyed the social and intellectual freedom of men; she was permitted by law to own property - an innovation in that part of the world.

  Like Rome, a coalition of churchmen and property owners dominated Constantinople. There were, however, fundamental differences in the division of power as it developed in the East and West, and these differences produced important variations in the way of life in each empire. The Christianized barbarians were inclined to centralize power. For many years, the pope was the de facto king of an empire, and the bishops were aristocratic landowners who also led troops in battle. On the other hand, the Byzantines made a greater distinction between secular and religious functions. In the East, the Church never considered education to be its responsibility. They highly valued the ancient Greek idea of secular education and prized the Classical-style education, which emphasized Homer, Aristotle, and the great orators; taught science as philosophy; and had only a secondary regard for technology. An elaborate apprenticeship system trained young professional men; it was expected that all physicians, engineers, and architects would train students.

  Constantinople quickly became one of the world’s great commercial cities. Caravans and ships loaded with raw materials, luxury goods, and exotic gems and spices came steadily from every direction. Workers built rows of warehouses along the Golden Horn to contain the goods. Artists, craftsmen, scribes, and manufacturers, including jewelers, cosmeticians, weavers, and tanners, converged on the city, along with wanderers looking for work.

  Commerce not only provided Constantinople with much of its early color, but also reflected how much the customs of the city were blends of East and West. In Western fashion, members of each major profession usually organized into guilds. The government saw the guilds as a stabilizer of the city’s economy and structure, and both encouraged and regulated their growth. In fact, by law, a guild member’s sons had to follow their father’s profession.

  The actual way that commerce was conducted, however, was recognizably Oriental. Merchants and craftsmen dealing in similar goods tended to set up shops in the same area. The major ones - jewelers and dealers or weavers of fine fabrics, for instance – even occupied their own streets. As a rule, the shops surrounded an arcade or forum and were very small, because most businessmen liked to work alone or with an apprentice and one or two child helpers. In warm weather, the commercial area of the city became a cluster of awnings and pavilions - a great colorful bazaar almost continuously crowded and busy. In the Oriental manner, vendors chanted about the quality of their goods, and the air was filled with singsong descriptions of copper candlesticks and fine linens.

  Shoppers also experienced the smells of fresh food being cooked on charcoal fires in the many taverns and outdoor eating places that were situated along the streets. Mixed in among the stalls and shop-front displays were little food stands where shoppers could sample delicacies from Egypt or Spain. On major festival days, the government provided all the restaurants with lambs and fruit and issued free food to everyone. The greatest festival was Easter, when the humblest peasant feasted like an aristocrat in the open forums.

  But all was not colorful and prosperous in Constantinople. The Church, which itself owned slaves, sanctioned slavery, a holdover from pre-Christian times. (But the Church did emphasize the necessity of treating slaves humanely and set up elaborate codes defining the responsibility of master to slave and slave to master.) Although the law protected slaves to some extent - a mistreated slave could seek asylum in the churches – for the most part, slaves remained at the mercy of their owners.

  Because most of the city’s slaves were foreigners captured in wars or kidnapped by slave traders, many were fairly well educated or had some skills. If slaves were manual laborers, servants, or artisans, their owners sometimes permitted them to seek work in their spare time; in this way, many were able to buy their freedom and become citizens. On the whole, their circumstances were often materially better than those of the city’s poor and old.

  Not until the Renaissance would the West become as enlightened toward the problems of the poor as the Byzantine government of the fourth and fifth centuries. By today’s standards, people might not regard the Byzantines as particularly compassionate, but for their time, they did have a remarkable sense of responsibility toward the victims of poverty. The government built a number of homes for the aged and orphaned, several public hospitals, and poorhouses that were not like prisons. The larger churches served free meals daily, and both Church and State felt some obligation to provide jobs for the unemployed. The poor often could find work on government building projects, and sometimes maintenance jobs were available in the churches.

  The emperor in Constantinople generally assumed the responsibility for supplying his subjects with bread. At times, they issued it free to everyone, but almost always they gave it without charge to the city’s poor. Many of the people depended on bread for their very existence, even though
they had to import grains from abroad. Egypt was the major supplier until the seventh century, when several different countries began to provide grains. Occasionally, storms delayed the grain ships, and more than once, the lack of bread led to riots in the streets.

  As in ancient Rome, the Byzantine government assumed the responsibility for providing the people with entertainment. Most popular of all was the circus, which was housed in the Hippodrome, a gigantic arena next to the royal palace. The favorite circus event was the chariot race, and even the emperor and his court would join the 60,000 people in the Hippodrome to encourage their favorite drivers.

  The emperor often had more than a sporting interest in the outcome of the chariot races. As in Rome, there usually were four vehicles in each competition - one red, one green, one blue, and one white. In Constantinople, each chariot represented one of the civic factions called demes, whose leaders (demarchs) were members of the city administration. In an autocratic state, the demes were the nearest thing to a democratic element because their popularity among the people determined the amount of influence they had. Each deme had its own militia that could and often did defend the city, but that also reminded the emperor the people had rights and the means to secure them.

  By the sixth century, the demes were an accepted part of the life of the city of Constantinople. The Reds and the Whites had died out as political forces - although they still entered chariots in the races - and the Blues and the Greens occupied the seats in the Hippodrome next to the emperor. The two factions opposed each other on every issue, and fights in the arena or in the streets were not uncommon. Both parties, however, considered themselves the spokesmen for all the people.

  The members of the Blue and Green parties were arrogant, vain, and flamboyant. They dressed in billowing cloaks and capes and tunics of many bright colors. While most men of the time were clean-shaven and had short hair, these peoples’ spokesmen wore mustaches and beards and let their hair grow very long in back. It was not uncommon for bands of demes to highjack caravans and rob wayfarers, and at times, the people they supposedly represented were afraid to carry valuables when they went on a journey. But for the most part, the colorful demes were the population’s only and quite effective voice in the government.

  On many occasions, the demes and the emperor avoided collisions at the last moment. But unfortunately for the demes, they did collide with Emperor Justinian I.

  Justinian I was about forty-five years old when he became emperor in 527. He was very well prepared for the job. During the nine-year reign of his aged predecessor, his uncle Justin I, he served as chief advisor and essentially was the power behind the throne. The empire that he inherited had come a long way since the days of Constantine XI. It had developed its own character, and it certainly was prospering. But compared to the Roman Empire of five centuries before, it had lost a great deal. Justinian I regarded his empire as Rome’s successor and wanted to regain control of Western Europe. He also worried about the Persians, who still were a serious threat in the East. Moreover, Justinian detected some religious dissatisfaction among his subjects - particularly Syrians and Egyptians - that he was afraid would further weaken the empire from within. Even before he inherited the throne, he decided not to deal with problems when they arose but to prevent them from arising in the first place. He wasn’t satisfied with just keeping the empire from disintegrating; he wanted to enlarge it and restore the power of the ancient Roman Empire. To do this effectively, he would have to be a strong, aggressive emperor.

  Justinian I’s manner and appearance were somewhat deceiving. He looked like an average man of medium height who had a tendency to gain weight easily. (He seems to have been on a perpetual diet; for this reason, he was probably the most temperate wine-drinker to sit on the Byzantine throne during those hard-drinking times.) Soft-spoken, gentle, and always polite, he was also religious and sternly self-disciplined. There is no record of his ever having lost his temper, even under great strain. He was an insomniac, an industrious worker, and insisted on remaining approachable and available to listen to the complaints or praise of both noblemen and beggars.

  But Justinian I was much more than the reserved, easygoing person he appeared to be. He was very stubborn about his carefully calculated decisions. Conventions didn’t limit him; in fact, he was courageous about defying them.

  The Byzantines as a people were very superstitious, and Justinian I shared many of the beliefs of his contemporaries. For example, although they believed in wizards and sorcerers, they regarded astrologers as criminals. If an astrologer dared to come within the city limits, people put him on a camel and drove him away while chasing him and swinging whips at him. The clergy were as superstitious as anyone and retained many of the pagan rituals that were supposed to exorcise demons or cause miraculous cures.

  Justinian I was quite religious, too. Once, when he was ill, he went directly to the ancient church of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian on the Golden Horn and prayed to the icons to be healed. He came away healthy and immediately gave orders for the old church to be restored and beautified; it became a haven for the sick and dying. Another time, the emperor claimed that an oily substance had flowed from an icon and had cured an ailment from which he had been suffering. He had the robe that he had been wearing soaked in the oil and preserved it in the palace as a guaranteed cure for whatever ailed anybody in the court.

  Justinian I’s marriage to Theodora was symbolic of both his willingness to defy conventions and his stubborn courage. One of the most remarkable women of all history, she matched and at times exceeded her husband in wisdom, administrative ability, and determination. Together they capably ruled the empire.

  Even before Justinian I had met her, Theodora had become a well-known personality around Constantinople, but respectable people generally avoided her. Her father probably was the keeper of bears at the Hippodrome, and no one knew who or where her mother was. Having grown up in the coarse environment of the circus and theater, Theodora was adventurous and made a career in the city as an actress and dancer.

  Some accounts acknowledge that she was much better looking than her official portraits indicate. Small, graceful, and very pretty, Theodora also was charming and quick-witted, with the intelligence and the boldness of a man. Long before her twentieth birthday, she had acquired a reputation as a promiscuous woman; the buoyant and open way in which she flaunted her love of life caused endless scandal and gossip.

  One day, probably around the year A.D. 520, Theodora disappeared from Constantinople. Some said that she went to Libya as the mistress of a governor with whom she later quarreled and parted. In any case, she seems to have traveled in Africa on her own, improvising ways to earn money for food and travel, finally winding up in Alexandria, a city filled with Christian holy men. There she apparently reformed and returned to Constantinople, older, more settled, more sensible, and filled with Christian virtue. She lived quietly and managed to meet Justinian, who was then about forty years old and the advisor to his uncle, Emperor Justin.

  Justinian promptly fell in love with Theodora and proposed marriage. She refused because she felt that the impropriety of her past would not be a good fit with his political future. Even though the consul gave her gifts and money, sought her advice on political issues, and raised her to the rank of patrician, she still hesitated. Finally, Theodora agreed on the condition that Emperor Justin approve the match. To her surprise, the old emperor immediately agreed. However, the emperor’s wife absolutely forbid the marriage and forced Justin to back down. As soon as the old empress died, Justinian and Theodora planned a wedding. When he discovered a law forbidding the emperor, senators, or any other high official to marry servants, innkeepers’ daughters, actresses, and courtesans, Justinian simply had the law canceled. They were married and in A.D. 527 assumed the throne together.

  Theodora always had been a beautiful and ceremonious hostess with the ability to make her guests feel important. But as she settled into the routines of life in t
he palace, her intelligence and perceptiveness began to work hand in hand with her natural interest in politics, and she began to assert a more direct influence. Now virtuous and stable, she seemed anxious to spend her time competing with men on their own level. From time to time, she was a bit of a tyrant as she conferred with her husband’s aides, and she used her theatrical talent in combination with her strong will to make her points or enact her programs.

  Soon Theodora was interfering in everything. She filled the palace and the bureaucracy with her relatives and protégés. She dismissed Church officials on whims and hired others impulsively. When she disagreed with the emperor’s orders, she simply replaced them with her own. However, during the twenty-one years of her reign, she saved the throne several times for Justinian I because her political instincts were sounder than his. She was also responsible for several progressive welfare programs. (One such program provided wayward girls with assistance in the form of shelter, money, food, and even pretty dresses. She was determined that no young girl in her empire ever would have to live as she had in her unfortunate youth.)

  Had it not been for Theodora, Justinian I’s regime might well have come to an end during the Nika Rebellion of January A.D. 532. Named for the Greek battle cry nika, nika, or “conquer, conquer,” the rebellion began with a riot of demes and spread to all levels of society.

  During the reign of his uncle, Justinian tended to align with the Blues in the Byzantine government. But when he had become emperor, he had tried not to show partisanship. It was not a particularly good idea. This show of independence did not win over the Greens, and it alienated the Blues. Moreover, the people regarded his withdrawal from the demes as an indication that the emperor did not take seriously their representatives’ role in the conduct of government, and they resented it.