Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (53 page)

The death of Alexius Apocaucus was, for all his faults, a serious blow to the regency; but it was by no means the end. For John Cantacuzenus there was still plenty of work to be done before he could enter Constantinople in triumph. Besides, he had a new problem on his hands: Stephen Dushan had turned against him. Determined to conquer all Macedonia, the Serbian ruler was even now laying siege to Serres; John was thus being forced to fight two enemies on two fronts simultaneously. There had also been a major disappointment at Thessalonica where the titular Governor John Apoc
aucus, determined to assert his
authority, had had the leader of the Zealots murdered, taken control of the government and, on hearing of his father's death, had publicly announced his support for Cantacuzenus, to whom he had offered to surrender the city. Unfortunately his enemies had moved too fast: long before John or his son Manuel - who was commanding in Berrhoea (now Verria) - could reach the city, Apocaucus and a hundred or more of his followers had been seized. One after another they were thrown from the walls of the citadel and hacked to pieces by the mob below, who then went rampaging through the streets, beating to death every noble they could find. Soon the Zealots were as firmly in control of Thessalonica as ever they had been.

Once again, John was in desperate need of an ally. Stephen Dushan had betrayed him; the Emir Umur, whose loyalty remained unshaken, had suffered a serious disaster in 1344 when the Pope's long-delayed League had finally sailed against him, captured his harbour at Smyrna and destroyed his fleet. Somehow, the following year, he had managed a brief campaign in Thrace on behalf of his old friend; but his support could no longer be what it had been in the past. His neighbour the Emir of Saruchan, now settled in Lydia, was admittedly well-disposed; he had provided troops before and would probably do so again. But John Cantacuzenus, if he were to fight his way back to the capital, needed help on a larger scale than this; and in the first weeks of 1345 he made contact with Orhan himself.

Although from the political and religious point of view John deplored the Turks as much as did the rest of his countrymen, on the personal level he had always got on with them remarkably well. We have it on his own authority that he had studied Turkish; and the results, however halting, would certainly have given them pleasure - particularly as few noble Greeks of the period would have condescended even to try. With Orhan he quickly established a friendship as close as that he had enjoyed with Umur — even closer perhaps, since the Emir soon fell besottedly in love with Theodora, the second of John's three daughters. All three, Enver records, were lovely as houris; while Gregoras claims that in return for Theodora's hand Orhan promised to serve her father faithfully as a vassal, with his entire army. He and Theodora were married in 1346 at Selymbria. The bride was permitted to keep her Christian faith, and was later to work indefatigably on behalf of the Christian residents, both free and enslaved, of her husband's emirate.

But that same year was marked by other, more sinister, developments. On Easter Sunday, in the Cathedral
of Skoplje, Stephen Dushan was
crowned by the Serbian Archbishop - whom he had recently raised to the rank of Patriarch - with the title of Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks. He could hardly have made his ambitions clearer; and it was almost certainly as a deliberate response to this act of bravado that, at Adrianople only five weeks later on
21
May, the Feast of SS. Constantine and Helena, John had imperial crowns — hastily manufactured by a local goldsmith - laid on his own head and that of his wife by the Patriarch Lazarus of Jerusalem. His investiture and proclamation of five years before were now confirmed. He refused, however, all suggestions that his eldest son Matthew should be crowned co-Emperor; that position was reserved for John Palaeologus, now fourteen years old and still, so far as he was concerned, the senior legitimate monarch.

Just two days before Cantacuzenus's coronation, on
19
May, a tragedy had occurred in Constantinople: part of the east end of St Sophia, having stood for a little over eight hundred years, had suddenly collapsed into a pile of rubble. To the Byzantines, superstitious as always, it was the most dreadful of omens; God Himself was now forsaking them. The popularity of the Patriarch - which had never been high - sank lower than ever, and by the end of the year it would have been hard to find anybody in Constantinople, the Empress alone excepted, who was not praying for the return of John Cantacuzenus.

At last John was ready, and his accomplices within the city had their plans prepared. The date chosen for his arrival was
1
February
1347;
even now, however, the operation almost ended in failure. For his march on the capital - he was coming from Selymbria with a thousand picked men — he had deliberately selected a devious and obscure route in order not to attract attention; the journey consequently took longer than he had expected, with the result that he eventually arrived outside the walls twenty-four hours later than had been arranged. In his
History,
he himself confesses to appalling anxiety that his friends might not be there; by a singular stroke of luck, however, they too had been prevented from reaching the gate on the previous evening and had consequently suffered a similar delay. And so it was that, late at night on
2
February, the Emperor John Cantacuzenus slipped through a narrow gap in the bricked-up Golden Gate and entered Constantinople for the first time in five and a half years, his thousand men behind him.

Early the following morning he drew up his troops before the Palace of Blachernae and, with the courtesy that he had never failed to show her, requested an audience with the Empress. The request was refused.

*

Anne of Savoy knew that she was beaten and had hastily done all she could to ingratiate herself with her conqueror; on the previous day she had even succeeded, with the help of a synod of bishops, in deposing the Patriarch. But five years of daily brainwashing by Apocaucus had convinced her that Cantacuzenus was determined to kill her and her four children, and she obstinately refused to allow him admission to the palace. Only after certain of his followers, many of whom had suffered imprisonment and torture under the regency, finally lost patience and laid storm to the building did the guard - who, whatever fate might befall their Empress, had no wish to share it - dare to disobey her orders and open the gates.

Five days later, on 8 February, agreement was reached between the parties. For the next ten years the two Emperors would reign jointly, with John Cantacuzenus occupying the senior position. After that time they would enjoy equal status. All political prisoners were to be released. There were to be no reprisals on either side, and the possessions of each were to be as they had been before the civil war. The whole compact, in short, was eminently reasonable - so reasonable that one wonders why it could not have been agreed half a dozen years before.

There was only one exception to the general amnesty. The ex-Patriarch John Calecas, the senior Emperor's bitterest surviving enemy, who had excommunicated him in 1341, continued to reject all his attempts at reconciliation. It was not only that he had been Regent for John Palaeologus, and thus titular head of the defeated regime; his pride had been further wounded by his deposition on the eve of John Cantacuzenus's return. This was, however, no fault of the latter; nor had the reasons for it been entirely, or perhaps even primarily, political. Rather were they the direct result of the Patriarch's continued opposition to the monk Gregory Palamas, and the disputed doctrine of hesychasm.

For, despite the council in St Sophia, the argument still raged. Almost as soon as Barlaam had disappeared from the scene in 1341, a new figure had entered the lists: the monk Gregory Acindynus, who was deeply versed in Western scholasticism and now
replaced the discredited Calab
rian as the chief scourge of the hesychasts. So eloquent was he, and so persuasive, that within two months of the first council in 1341 it had been found necessary to hold a second — again presided over by John Cantacuzenus — which had reached the same conclusion as its predecessor, vindicating Palamas for the
second time while Acindynus
was condemned once more. This second council had however been held in August, at precisely the time when the Patriarch was intriguing for the regency; and he had firmly refused to uphold the findings of a council chaired by his arch-rival. Instead he had made common cause with Acindynus and others, and had had little difficulty in bringing the Empress herself over to his side.

From this moment onwards, the twists and turns of the hesychast controversy provide a typically Byzantine counterpoint to those of the civil war. Because John Cantacuzenus favours the hesychasts, John Calecas opposes them; because Gregory Palamas supports Cantacuzenus as Regent, Gregory Acindynus champions the Patriarc
h. While the regency in Constanti
nople is still relatively secure, the hesychasts are under constant attack; in
1343
Palamas is arrested and imprisoned, in
1344
he is excommunicated. Then, when the victory of Cantacuzenus begins to seem imminent, the religious pendulum also swings: Palamas is released, the Patriarch becomes a liability and is deposed. Such an analysis is inevitably over-simplified: Nicephorus Gregoras for example, though politically a Cantacuzenist, was violently - even fanatically -opposed to hesychasm, and there were doubtless many pro-hesychasts among those whose political loyalties re
sted exclusively with the Palae
ologi. Yet the general lines of the dispute remain clear enough, providing the perfect illustration of the manner in which, in Byzantine history, political and religious issues never run parallel but are always inextricably entangled.

It was of course this very tendency that had enabled the Patriarch to manipulate the hesychast issue for his own political ends. With his own downfall and the arrival of John Cantacuzenus, however, he could do so no longer, and so the end of his story can be quickly told. A synod, at which Cantacuzenus and the Empress jointly presided towards the end of February - and which Calecas predictably refused to attend - confirmed his deposition
in absentia
and upheld the orthodoxy of Gregory Palamas. As for Acindynus, he was obliged to flee from Constantinople and died shortly afterwards in exile. The new Patriarch Isidore Boucharis, who had himself been a hesychast monk, appointed his old friend Palamas Archbishop of Thessalonica (though the city was still in the hands of the Zealots), formally lifted the sentence of excommunication on John Cantacuzenus and finally - on
21
May
1347,
precisely a year after his first coronation at Adrianople — officiated at his second coronation in the church of the Virgin at Blachernae. A week later the Princess Helena, the youngest of John's beautiful daughters, was married in the same church to his co-Emperor, the fifteen-year-old John V.
1

Co
ronati
ons and marriages should be joyful occasions; about these two ceremonies, however, there was more than a touch of sadness. By tradition they should have been held at St Sophia; but, after its collapse in the previous year, the Great Church was no longer usable. They should also have made use of the Byzantine crown jewels; but these, thanks to the Dowager Empress, were now in pawn. Those present noted to their sorrow that the replacements were made of glass, while at the banquets that followed the wine was served in pewter vessels and the food from plates of cheap earthenware. All the gold and silver that had so dazzled the eyes of visitors in former times was gone - sold to finance a civil war that need never have occurred.

1
There has in the past been some confusion over the numeration, but it is nowadays customary to describe John Palaeologus and John Cantacuzenus as John V and VI respectively. While John VI remained the senior Emperor, he always insisted that John V, as a Palaeologus, should take precedence over him.

19

The Reluctant Emperor

[1347-54]

For we are fallen into so lamentable a weakness, that far from being able to impose the yoke on others, we are hard put to avoid it ourselves . . . Let us therefore earn once again the esteem of our friends, and the fear of our enemies. If on the other hand we fall through despair into a contemptible idleness, we shall soon be reduced to servitude. There is no middle way. Either we save the Empire, by keeping our ancient virtues; or we lose it, and live under the domination of our conquerors. Take, therefore, a noble resolution, and act in the interests of your glory, your security, your liberty and your lives.

John Cantacuzenus, appealing to his subjects for funds,
1
347

'If,' wrote Nicephorus Gregoras, 'John Cantacuzenus had not lapsed into the heresy of Palamas, he would have been one of the greatest of Byzantine Emperors.' Nicephorus may have been wrong about the heresy; none the less, one can see what he means. John VI was a man of integrity, courage, high intelligence and a rare degree of political vision. Had he firmly asserted his claim to the throne on the death of Andronicus III in 1341, he might well have checked the Empire's decline and even put it back on the road to prosperity; but six years later too much damage had been done for any real recovery to be possible. It was John's misfortune to inherit a divided and bankrupt Empire, deeply demoralized and under attack from every side; and when at last he found himself in undisputed possession of the supreme power, although he had thought long and hard about the Empire's political and economic collapse and was fully aware of the steps necessary to launch its recovery, he seems to have lacked that last ounce of steel necessary to impose his will.