The Sultan of Byzantium (6 page)

If I had to squeeze history into three words, my formula would be: History = Ambition + Chance - Simple Mistakes.

By the end of my third day the Library Information Specialist and I had drawn closer. We took coffee breaks together and traded Byzantine riddles.

‘Which emperor was crowned after his son was crowned?’

‘Zeno (474-491).’

‘Which emperor are you least sorry about his throat being cut?’

‘Phocas (602-610). He was Byzantium’s ugliest, least talented, and most violence-prone emperor. He fomented an uprising and had all the sons of the emperor Maurice killed before his eyes, including an infant in the cradle, before having the emperor himself torn to pieces. He was so ugly that he had to grow a beard to hide his face.’

‘How did Heraclius (610-641) cross from Europe to Asia as he was going to war with the Persians?’

‘The sight of water frightened him. So they put a line of boats one after the other across the Bosphorus for him to walk on. Walls of potted plants were erected on both sides of the walkway to hide the water. The journey ended in victory.’

‘Who was the most famous astrological Gemini of Byzantium?’

‘The empress Irene (797-802)! So that she could dominate Byzantium she had the eyes of her son Constantine VI plucked out and imprisoned him in the room where he was born. She crowned herself empress. Charlemagne, the founding father of Europe, proposed to marry her in order to create the greatest kingdom of all time. As plans were being made to move the capital from Aachen to Constantinople Irene was dethroned.’

‘Which emperor’s mother was a Caspian Turk?’

‘Leo IV (778-780).’

‘What was the most effective message Byzantium sent to its aggressive neighbors?’

‘It was sent by Basil II (976-1025). He defeated the Bulgarian army in 1014 and sent his prisoners back to their own country. Before sending them off he blinded all but one out of every hundred. Those he left with one eye so that they could guide the others. The Bulgarian king, Samuel, on seeing his 14,000 soldiers in this condition, died of a broken heart within two days.’

Steven Runciman and Cyril Mango were the authors of two of the books I chose for cultural and socio-economic perspectives on Byzantium. What these two scholars had in common was that they had both lived in Istanbul for a long time. As I turned the pages of their books I came to agree with Askaris more and more that Byzantium had brought civilization to her contemporaries and modernism to all humanity. With every paragraph I seemed to rise another step toward the clouds. Meanwhile I continued to pray that I wasn’t the victim of a big bad joke.

Byzantium was a divinely chosen nation, the inheritor of both the Roman and Greek cultures. The Byzantines were not totally wrong to sneer at the Catholics, since it was they who formed the first Christian state and built that most magnificent church, Haghia Sophia. For a Byzantine to be uneducated was almost as great a crime as being unlucky. They survived for eleven centuries because of their legal system, which was founded on written laws, yet lived in chaos because of their governing system, which was without written laws.

I ploughed through books containing pictures of icons, mosaics and frescoes. The everyday clothes of Byzantium citizens, the uniforms of foot soldiers, even the saddles and stirrups of their warhorses flaunted charming designs.

I came across it in the architecture books section, as if it had been waiting just for me on its special stand. In gilded letters on the purple leather binding of the giant book was stamped
Promenade in Byzantium
. This monumental example of the art of the book was number 003 in an edition of 999. It was the work that would be the turning point of my life. But my first job of the morning was to inhale the scent of the copyright page and then wrap the book in a great hug. No matter how often I turned the 333 pages as slowly as I could, I remained as unsatisfied as a child called in early from the playground. The book was a compilation of computerized reconstructions of all of the existing great but run-down Byzantine monuments.

Here were 111 architectural masterpieces, all functional and respectful of space and of an aesthetic reinforced by plain and symmetrical elements! Palaces, churches, city walls, hippodromes, aqueducts, triumphal arches, towers, barracks, schools, hospitals, libraries, cisterns, pools, parks, bridges, stadiums, hotels, bath houses, municipal buildings, fountains, stables … every one of them had an authentic and proud face, and it grieved me to think what a symbolic metropolis Istanbul could have been if only these buildings had survived. Below the image of each building, portrayed from different perspectives, was a description of it in four languages. It was natural for the Great Palace to receive the lion’s share of attention. It was a monumental city in itself, begun by the father of Byzantium, Constantine himself, in the fourth century and continued for another six centuries with one beautiful addition after another. The palace complex began where the Sultanahmet Mosque stands now and continued without interruption to the Marmara shore. This masterpiece for the centuries was turned into a ruin by the crusaders who stopped off at Constantinople, ostensibly to break their journey, on their way to Jerusalem. I used to trace the Arabian Nights-like Great Palace stone by stone and curse that benighted mob the Byzantines put down as ‘Latins’, along with the Pope who manipulated them and the Venetian duke who collaborated with him. I remembered how the Conqueror extended protection to all the Byzantine monuments beginning with the church of Haghia Sophia, which he took over for a mosque. And has Europe, I wonder, shown the crusaders who plundered Constantinople – not excepting its matchless library – one-tenth of its reaction to the Arabs’ destruction of the Alexandrian library?

Emperor Constantine I had no hope for a Rome riddled by polytheism. Converting to Christianity, he founded a new capital for himself. His goal in 330, as he laid the foundations of the new city – first called East Rome and then Constantinople after him – was to make it more magnificent than the original Rome. Most of the emperors who followed him embraced this goal as well. In the end, Constantine’s city lasted nine centuries as the capital city of earth.

I was fascinated by the four-page engraved map in the middle of
Promenade in Byzantium
. I saw the refinement of miniatures reflected in the drawings of the 111 architectural sites. For turning the pages there was a pair of white gloves, and a magnifying glass to examine the engravings. I took the glass in hand, murmured a short prayer for an auspicious beginning, and set off on a journey between the fourth and fifteenth centuries. I heard the curses of the fishermen sailing out to open sea from Eleutherios Harbor; the grumbling of the night watch patrolling the Nike Way; the weary murmur of water flowing through the Valens Aqueduct; the buzz of the crowd ready to explode at the Hippodrome; the quavering prayers rising from the Church of the Pantocrator; the giggling of young women strolling the Mese Boulevard; the aroma of spices diffused by a ship putting into Phosphorion Harbor; the loud voices emanating from a tavern at the Platea Gate; the breeze off the Golden Horn timidly caressing the Fener seawalls; the whisper of mold in the Aegeus cistern; and the sorrowful plaint of an emperor going to bed with a long face. I heard them all.

The residential districts of the city, which boasted 500,000 people by the fifth century, were represented by gray-edged squares. The richer folk had courtyards, but all the other houses at least had bay windows or balconies. I read that the details of urban planning, such as the width of streets and the height of buildings, were all spelled out in written regulations.

I didn’t put down the purple-handled magnifying glass until there was not a single cistern or street left unexplored. The element of mystery in my journeys constantly grew. And the common feature of the emperors I met in the palaces, when it wasn’t desperation, was unreliability.

My education at the Center would be over when I read two more books and watched a six-part documentary on the Palaeologus dynasty and Constantine XI. My tutelary period, which began as instructive, ended as beguiling. If Nomo was watching me they should have been impressed by my opening act.

*

The Imperial Twilight
was a striking title for a book about the last dynastic period and that drew me to it. The book by Constance Head seemed to stumble slightly as I helped it out of its corner on the shelf. The second reason I chose it was that it was 169 pages long and I didn’t want to read a long and tedious tragedy about my ancestors. First I dove into the black-and-white photographs, most of which were reproduced palace engravings now held by public libraries in Europe. There was a hint of slight innuendo in the expression of the contrarian Michael Palaeologus, the founder of the dynasty. In another engraving all nine emperors looked as if they’d got an order to smile timidly. Or were they sending a message of apology? They all had horse-faces, long noses and goat-beards. I wouldn’t have had much difficulty in visualizing my grandparents on a branch just above them on a schematic family tree.

The Palaeologi were Byzantium’s last and longest-lasting dynasty (1261-1453). The eleven emperors of the eleventh dynasty were installed from father to son, older brother to younger brother, or grandfather to grandson. John V Palaeologus shared the throne with his father-in-law John VI Cantacuzenus for some time. The Palaeologus dynasty ended the plunder-and-confiscate period of the Latin Empire (1204-1261). With limited resources they made great efforts to reconstruct the ruined capital and tried to live in peace with European kings, the Vatican, the Seljuks and the Ottomans. Besides Constantinople what remained of the Empire consisted of five islands in the Aegean plus Mistra and its surroundings in the Southern Peloponnesus. On the other hand, the throne-wars, in which the women were also involved, looked like a fight for the captain’s chair of a rusty and soon-to-be-sunk Titanic. Recorded history catches up with Michael for the first time in Nicaea, now Iznik, at the palace of John III Vatatzes (1222-1254), the emperor-in-exile. The emperor regarded the noble Palaeologus as an adopted son. Michael was charismatic, ambitious and a good soldier. While serving as governor of Thrace he came under suspicion for his anti-imperial rhetoric. But he saved himself from serious punishment with his silver tongue and, what’s more, managed to marry Theodora, the daughter of the emperor’s nephew. The following year the emperor died from an asthma attack and his son Theodore II Lascaris (1254-1258) succeeded him. Since Michael understood all too well what the new emperor was thinking where he was concerned, he hid out with the Seljuks and fought alongside them against the aggressive Mongols. Theodore II established good relations with the Seljuks and took Michael back, installing him in his previous position after swearing him to fealty. Michael however seized the first opportunity to be thrown into prison again, and talked his way out of it again as well. The emperor ruled for four years before he became ill and died; the son who replaced him, John IV Lascaris, was only seven. Michael had the new emperor’s mentor killed and became co-emperor, keeping his young partner in the background.

In the winter of 1261 the most delicate method of blinding was used on the unfortunate eleven-year-old emperor: his eyes were exposed to a strong ray of light until they could no longer see. Patriarch Arsenios excommunicated Michael for this cruel act; Michael in turn denounced Arsenios and appointed a new patriarch who would approve him as emperor. There are conflicting reports about how John IV’s story ends: that he was held captive in a castle on the Black Sea or the Marmara coast until his death; that he was imprisoned in a monastery; and that he regained his sight and departed for Sicily.

During the summer of 1261, as Michael VIII Palaeologus was entering Constantinople the Latin army slunk away without a fight. The emperor assigned his army to reconstruct the ‘city of cities’ that lay in ruins and levied special taxes for the work. Once domestic peace was achieved, he conspired with the Genoese against the Venetians and with the Mongols against the Seljuks. This is when the settling of the Genoese in Galata took place. The Sicilian king, Charles, was an in-law of the Latin king, Baldwin II, whom Michael had evicted from Constantinople. He had a revenge attack in mind, for which the Pope gave approval. Michael VIII went to the Pope for help in negotiations with Charles. What he got was the reply that unless the Orthodox church joined the Catholics and thus resolved the ‘religious dilemma’, Byzantium could go to hell.

The emperor promised the desired union, but back home he encountered fierce opposition from the church, the army and the people. Luckily, thanks to certain fortuitous developments, Europe was unable to carry out its planned attack. But when the emperor died of a cold he caught while going to Thrace to suppress a revolt, he was treated like a traitor. Michael VIII Palaeologus, who had worked so hard to save the future of Byzantium, was, with the consent of the church, damned by his widow.

From that time on Byzantium lost much of its attraction for the ambitious kings of Europe, and also much of its power, freeing its emperors to make critical mistakes. Inter-family throne-wars helped speed the sands of time, though they slowed occasionally when an emperor of common sense managed to get hold of the throne. Until Manuel II Palaeologus was crowned, Byzantium was treated like a bankrupt merchant. When his turn as emperor came up, Manuel II – a philosopher diplomat, bibliophile and aesthete – had just turned forty. (I call attention to his habit of keeping a diary.) He had a respectful attitude and enjoyed generally good relationships with both the European powers and the Ottomans. Suffering a stroke at the age of seventy-four, he tried, with the help of Brother Mathias, to become a priest but died in a couple of weeks. He had six sons by the Serbian princess Helena. The eldest of these, John VIII Palaeologus (1425-1448), succeeded him.

John VIII was an aristocrat. A social creature, a music lover and somewhat mysterious, he was also a good soldier and hunter. His heart was on the side of a united Orthodox and Catholic church. He married three times but never had a child. Because of his Catholic sympathies he was refused a proper imperial funeral. Of his three brothers, John trusted only the oldest one, Constantine, and in his will bequeathed the crown to him. Despite this the least talented brother, Demetrius, tried to snatch it; but their alert mother, Helen Dragases, stepped in to prevent it.