Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (11 page)

Given the huge expenditure necessary for adequate imperial defence, it is understandable that Alexius's fiscal policy should have been harsh and, at times, none too scrupulous. He never repeated his action of early
1082,
when he — or, more accurately, his brother Isaac - had seized the treasures of the Church to pay for the campaign against Bohemund; but the aristocracy (excepting, of course, members of his own family and other close adherents), the senatorial f
amilies (whom he hated) and the
richer monasteries suffered greatly from his extortions. With the economy in such confusion it was easy to claim that previous payments had been insufficient or paid in the wrong coin - or even that they had not been paid at all - and then to impose swingeing surcharges.

For the Emperor's more humble subjects, too, times were hard. This had been one of the themes of the Patriarch of Antioch in
1091;
twenty years later, the situation was very little better. Archbishop Theophylact of Ochrid - whose remarks about the imperial tax collectors, quoted at the head of this chapter, will arouse the instant sympathy of all those who have ever been subjected to a wealth tax - writes to the Emperor's nephew, Duke John of Durazzo, of the conditions in one of his dioceses that had been trampled over time and time again by Normans and Greeks, Pechenegs and Crusaders:

I could not hold back my tears. In the church the people no longer sing, the candles remain unlit; the bishop and clergy have been forced to flee, and the townsfolk have left their houses to live hidden in the woods and forests. And in addition to all these evils, which are the results of war, the peasants have had their land seized by the great landowners, both lay and ecclesiastical, and are as heavily oppressed by the demands of military service as by taxation.

True, the Archbishop was writing only of one particular diocese; but the conditions he described could have been found throughout the European provinces of the Empire. He was right, too, about the compulsory military service, which was bitterly resented wherever it was enforced. The peasantry, even more than the dwellers in cities and towns, lived under constant dread of the imperial recruiting sergeants, who were for ever scouring the Empire for able-bodied young men. Their fears were well justified — and not only because they desperately needed the labour in their efforts to restore their ravaged fields; there was also the very real danger that those same young men, when their period of service was over, would settle in Constantinople or elsewhere and never return to their old homes.
1
It was all very well to say - as Alexius himself would have said - that any sensible family would prefer to provide a soldier for the Empire than to have its house destroyed, its sons slaughtered and its daughters violated by foreign invaders; hungry and frightened peasants are little impressed by such logical

1
In the Theme of Pe
lagonia, writes the Archbishop, the population has declined to such a point that the Theme ought to be renamed Mykonos - in his day (though not in ours) one of the smallest, poorest and emptiest of the Cyclades.

arguments. The truth was that the Emperor, held responsible for all these tribulations, was hated by the vast majority of his people. And he knew it.

What steps, if any, did Alexius Comnenus take to brighten his image in the eyes of his subjects? From the outset of his reign he had struggled hard to win, if not their love, then at least their respect. In the fifty-six years between the death of Basil II in
1025
and his own accession in
1081,
the Empire had acknowledged no fewer than thirteen rulers; his first task, therefore, had been to show that he had no intention of being just such another. His message was clear. His pathetic predecessors had been the products of a system that was rotten through and through: depraved, decadent and corrupt. He would reform that system, and restore the Empire to its former greatness.

Before it could be restored, however, it must be cleansed and purified. While his mother tackled the alleged Augean stables of the
gynaeceum
in the imperial palace,
1
he himself launched a campaign to free the Empire of heresy. His first victim, a pupil of Michael Psellus named John Italus, whom he believed had gone too far in his advocacy of the works of Plato and Aristotle at the expense of those of the early Christian Fathers, was found guilty at an elaborate show trial and condemned to lifelong seclusion in a monastery. Similar investigations continued throughout his reign, including one which took place in its very last year and which resulted in the principal representative of the Bogomils - known to us only by his Christian name of Basil - being burnt at the stake in the Hippodrome: a penalty hitherto almost unknown in Constantinople.

Although all these proceedings obviously contained a strong element of propaganda, there can be no doubt of Alexius's profound religious faith. However involved he might be with other, more immediately urgent preoccupations - on campaign against Robert Guiscard or Bohemund, defending the Empire against the Pechenegs, or striving to control the flood tide of the Crusading armies as it swept across his frontiers - he never for a moment forgot his religious responsibilities as
basileus,
Equal of the Apostles. Nor were these confined to questions of

1
'The women's quarters in the palace had been the scene of utter depravity eve
r since the infamous Constantine
Monomachus had ascended the throne
...
but Anna [Dalasse
na] effected a reformation; a commendable decorum was restored and the palace now enjoyed a most praiseworthy discipline. She instituted set times for the singing of sacred hymns, and fixed hours for breakfast
...
the palace assumed the appearance rather of a monastery'
(
The Alexiad,
III, viii). There must, one feels, have been many around the place who dreamed nostalgically of the good old days.

doctrine; he was also deeply concerned with Church affairs, and early in his reign instituted a radical reform in the long-established practice of what was known as
charisticum,
by which the administration of monasteries and monastic property was handed over to lay patrons. This practice, which had increased dramatically during the eleventh century, was aimed principally at the economic development of such properties and usually worked well enough; but the inevitable element of secularization had its dangers. The patron could introduce lay brothers, who lived off the monastery while making no contribution to its spiritual life; he could put pressure on the abbot - and even on the monks — to involve themselves in business; he might even, if he chose, milk the monastery dry.

As the founder of several generously-endowed monasteries himself, Alexius was determined to prevent such abuses. He did not abolish the system, which he had found extremely useful during his first months on the throne when he had wished to recompense his supporters and endow members of his family. He decreed, however, that all transactions in monastic property must be registered with the appropriate patriarchate, thereby increasing the degree of patriarchal control over the monasteries and monastic life. In
1107
he went still further, with a general reform of the clergy and, in particular, the foundation of a special order of preachers, each of them working within his own 'parish' and serving also as a one-man vice squad and guardian of public morals. How effective these preachers proved in practice is uncertain: later chroniclers scarcely mention them. A good deal more effective was the vast 'orphanage' - really more of a hospital and refuge - which he established next to the church of St Paul on the acropolis of Constantinople, on the site of the present Topkapi Palace. His daughter describes it as 'a city within a city':

All around it in a circle were innumerable buildings, houses for the poor and -even greater proof of his humanity - dwellings for the disabled. Seeing it full of those who were maimed or completely incapacitated, you would have said it was Solomon's Porch. The buildings were in a double circle and were two-storeyed
...
So large was the circle that if you wished to visit these people and started early in the morning, it would be evening before you were done. They had no land or vineyards, but each lived in his appointed house and all their needs of food and clothing were provided by the Emperor's generosity . . . The number of persons catered for in this way was incalculable.
1

1
TheAlexiad,
XV, vii.

Alexius's motives were not, however,
entirely altruistic. One of the
symptoms of the breakdown of morale under his predecessors was the enormous number of professional beggars in the city. Any minister or senior civil servant, on promotion to higher rank or office, was expected to make generous dispensations to the poor and would on occasion find himself literally besieged in his house by those laying claim to his generosity; and the almost incredible number of promotions with which Nicephorus Botaneiates had sought to boost his waning popularity had still further increased the number of claimants. Strangely enough, they were not always unpopular with those whom they pestered; social standing in Constantinople at this time was largely governed not only by rank but also by patronage and charitable donations, and many a rich man asked nothing better than to be given the opportunity of publicly demonstrating the extent of his largesse. Certainly, the opening of St Paul's enabled Alexius to control the beggars of the city; but it also tended to diminish the prestige of his senior officials, thereby correspondingly increasing his own.

Consummate diplomatist that he was, it would have been surprising indeed if the Emperor had not worked hard during his reign to heal the breach between the Eastern and Western Churches. Unfortunately, he was too devoutly - some might say narrowly - Orthodox in his beliefs to show much flexibility in negotiations: when in
1089
Pope Urban sent the Abbot of Grottaferrata to Constantinople with an urgent appeal to permit services in the Latin rite, Alexius's only reply had been to suggest a joint council to discuss matters. The findings of this assembly have not come down to us; it seems however to have had at least a measure of success, since at its conclusion the Pope is known to have lifted the ban of excommunication that lay over the Empire of the East. Only two years later, though the breach was by no means entirely healed, relations were friendly enough for Alexius to have appealed to him for help against the Pechenegs. Further talks were held at intervals: in
1108
a papal legate was present to witness the signing of the Treaty of Devol, and in
1112
— if we are to believe the Chronicle of Monte Cassino - Alexius went so far as to suggest the union of the two Churches in exchange for the crown of the Western Empire, actually planning a visit to Rome in the summer of that year.

The accuracy of this report has been challenged, and probably with good reason. First of all, the Western Empire was not for sale. The Emperor Henry V was admittedly a bitter enemy of Pope Paschal -whom he had actually imprisoned, with sixteen of his cardinals, for two months in
1111
. But Paschal had bought his freedom by performing
Henry's coronation on
13
April, and he could hardly crown a rival Emperor little more than a year later. What is a good deal more probable is that Alexius had his eye on South Italy, which had been without a master since the deaths of Bohemund and his half-brother Roger Borsa within a week of each other in that same year of
1111
and which he would have dearly loved to regain for Byzantium. Even so, though his position was by now a good deal more secure than it had been in the past, it is unlikely that in the circumstances then prevailing he could ever have contemplated so long an absence from Constantinople.

Such plans that he might have had would anyway have been in vain, for in the summer of
1112
Alexius fell gravely ill and seems to have been incapacitated for several weeks. Correspondence with Rome continued intermittently; but the Pope insisted as firmly as ever on his supremacy, Byzantium refused to compromise its independence and nothing was settled. In any case, the Emperor soon found his attention taken up with other, more immediate problems.

The peace that had begun at the end of
1108
with the Treaty of Devol continued for three years; then, in
1111,
the wars began again and continued for the rest of the reign. That autumn, indeed, Alexius narrowly avoided having to fight simultaneously on two fronts, when a new outbreak of hostilities against the Turks coincided with the arrival of a fleet of Genoese and Pisan ships which threatened to ravage the Ionian coast. Fortunately he was able to buy them off by concluding a treaty with the Pisans, by which he undertook not to impede them in their Crusading activities, to make an annual present of gold and silk to their cathedral and - most important of all - to allow them to maintain a permanent trading colony in Constantinople, the most prominent members of which would enjoy reserved seats both for services in St Sophia and for games in the Hippodrome.
1

The Turks were less easily dealt with. Fortunately for Alexius, they were not yet out for conquest; they still had more than enough territory to absorb and consolidate in Asia Minor. Their invasions across the imperial border were more in the nature of carefully planned raids than anything else: they avoided pitched battles wherever possible, attacking

1
This was not the first treaty between the Empire and the Italian trading republics: Basil II had concluded one with Venice as early as
992.
(See
Byzantium: The Apogee,
p.
257.)
Strangely, perhaps, the Genoese did not insist on similar privileges - which they were not to receive until
115
5
, from Manuel I.

on a wide front at several points simultaneously - thus obliging the Byzantines to spread their forces - and then making a quick getaway with as much plunder and as many prisoners as they could. In
1111
they had crossed the Hellespont into Thrace, where Anna reports that her father was campaigning against them early the following year. In
111
3
another Turkish army, estimated this time at fifty-four thousand, laid siege to Nicaea; but it failed in its attempt, was surprised by Alexius near Dorylaeum and soundly defeated. The next year saw the
basil
eus
back in Thrace to defend the northern frontier against a new invasion by the Cumans; and scarcely had they been successfully repulsed than, in
111
5,
the Turks were once again on the march, this time beneath the banners of Malik-Shah, Seljuk Sultan of Iconium.

But the Emperor was slowing down. By now nearly sixty - sixty-eight if we are to believe Zonaras
1
- and already prey to the disease that was to destroy him, he delayed his reaction until the following year: only in the autumn of
111
6
did he set off with his army to attack the Sultan in his own Anatolian heartland. He advan
ced as far as the city of Philo
melion, meeting with little of the resistance that he had expected; his progress was, however, appreciably delayed by the appearance at every halt of vast numbers of homeless Greeks - families who had fled the Turkish invaders and who now emerged from their various places of refuge, attaching themselves to the army for protection. At this point, for reasons unclear, he decided to retire; and it was only after he had started on his homeward road that Malik-Shah decided to attack. This, according to Anna,
2
proved a serious mistake. The Sultan's army was, she reports, so destroyed by the Byzantines that he was forced to sue for peace, abandoning his recent conquests and recognizing the imperial frontiers that had existed immediately before Manzikert, in the reign of Romanus Diogenes.

Here, she continues, was a historic victory indeed. Alas, she seems to have been indulging in more of her
favourite wishful thinking. Ro
manus's old frontiers stretched eastward to Armenia - which, quite apart from other considerations, were not the Sultan's to restore. Subsequent events, in any case, strongly suggest that no such surrender of territory was made. Malik-Shah may well have closed down his advance outposts in western Anatolia; but he remained in Iconium and it is unlikely that the Emperor returned wi
th any major territorial concessions.

1
Seep
4,
note
3.

2
The Alexiad.XV.vi.

Thanks to the hopeless confusion of Anna's account - as well as her obvious bias - and to the paucity of our other sources,
1
we shall never know the truth about Philomelion; all that can be said is that, whether the Emperor's victory was decisive or negligible, it was his last. He returned to the capital a sick man, to find himself in the centre of bitter domestic strife.

Admittedly this was no new experience for him. Ever since his accession, his family had been divided. In the early days the fault had been very largely his own; we have seen how much power he gave to his mother, Anna Dalassena, and how he had rejected his fifteen-year-old wife Irene Ducas - even trying to prevent her coronation - in his infatuation with Mary of Alania. Mary, it is true, had soon faded out of the picture and Irene had returned to her husband's side; but Anna had continued for several years as the principal power behind the throne - more formidable even than her second son, the
sebastocrator
Isaac, with whom she theoretically shared the regency while Alexius was away on his numerous campaigns. She thus became more and more unpopular in Constantinople, to the point where the Emperor began to see her as a serious liability. Some time around
1090,
therefore, she had retired — ostensibly of her own accord — to the monastery of the Pantepoptes where she had died, not altogether in disgrace, a few years later.

With the disappearance of Anna Dalassena, the Empress Irene finally comes into her own. Her daughter Anna - in whom the virtue of filial respect almost becomes a vice — describes her thus:

Her natural inclination would have been to shun public life altogether. Most of her time was devoted to household duties and her own pursuits - reading the books of the saints, or turning her mind to good works and acts of charity .
..
Whenever she was obliged to appear as Empress at some important ceremony, she was overcome with shyness and blushes. The story is told of how when the woman philosopher Theano
2
once inadvertently bared her elbow, someone lightly remarked 'What a beautiful elbow!' 'But not,' Theano replied, 'for public show.' Thus it was with the Empress my mother
...
So far from being pleased to reveal to the common gaze an elbow or her eyes, she was unwilling that even her voice should be heard by strangers
..
. But since not even the gods, as the poet says, fight against necessity, she was forced to accompany the

1
Our only other valuable authority is Zonaras, who attaches no particular importance to the campaign.

2
The pupil, and possibly the wife, of Pythagoras.

Emperor on his frequent expeditions. Her innate modesty would have kept her inside the palace; on the other hand, her devotion to him and burning love for him compelled her, however unwillingly, to leave her home
..
. The disease which attacked his feet required the most careful attention; he suffered excruciating pain from gout, and my mother's touch was what he most valued, for she understood him perfectly and by gentle massage could relieve him to some extent of his agony.
1

Now all this may be perfectly true so far as it goes; but it seems likely that there was another consideration, apart from his gout, which caused Alexius to insist so firmly on Irene's accompanying him on campaign. He did not trust her an inch. It was not for his own safety that he feared; but he knew that she and her daughter had conceived a bitter hatred for her eldest son John Comnenus, heir apparent to the throne, and were for ever intriguing to disgrace or eliminate him so that Anna's husband, the Caesar Nicephorus Bryennius, might succeed instead. Gradually these two scheming women had become the focus for a number of other malcontents, among them the Emperor's second son Andronicus.

Irene never let slip an opportunity to blacken John in his father's eyes, representing him as a drunkard and debauchee hopelessly unfit to govern. Alexius, however, always refused to listen. He loved and trusted John, and - rightly, as it turned out - retained complete confidence in his abilities. Besides, he was determined to found a dynasty. One of the chief causes of Byzantine decline in the previous century had, he believed, been the fundamental instability of the throne itself, either passing to one or another of the Empress Zoe's feckless husbands or being looked upon as little more than a toy, to be shuttled backwards and forwards between the richest and most powerful families of the Empire. He himself had acquired it in just this way; but he would be the last to do so. If his own considerable achievements were to endure, the crown must be handed down in orderly succession to his first-born son and, God willing, to his son after him.

After his return to Constantinople his health steadily declined, until by the summer of
1118
it was clear that death could not be far away. By this time he was in constant pain and suffering serious respiratory difficulties; soon he was obliged to sit upright in order to breathe at all. Then his stomach and feet began to swell, while his mouth, tongue and throat became so inflamed that he could no longer swallow. Irene had him carried to her own palace of the Mangana, spending hours a day by