Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (66 page)

This, according to the historian Michael Ducas, was the message that

Mehmet, now undisputed Sultan of Rumelia and Rum,
1
sent to Manuel Palaeologus after his victory. Mehmet was well aware — and freely admitted - that he owed that victory largely to the Emperor, and lost no time in confirming all the concessions made by Suleyman and abrogated by Musa. He knew too that after a decade of civil war the Sultanate desperately needed peace - an opportunity to restore law and order and to re-establish the machinery of government; and that the best way to ensure that peace was to maintain cordial relations, not only with Byzantium but with all the other Christian states, however tenuously constituted they might be, of the Balkan peninsula: Serbia, Bulgaria, Wallachia and Greece. Manuel for his part obviously asked nothing better. He had no delusions about long-term Turkish intentions, but there could be no doubt that the situation was better now than at any moment in the twenty-two years since his accession; moreover, for the first time in history, an Emperor of the Romans had established a close personal relationship with an intelligent and peace-loving Sultan. The future was still in God's hands; but perhaps there might be some hope for Byzantium after all.

Manuel Palaeologus was now sixty-three: an old man by the standards of the time, but still healthy and energetic, and determined to leave to his son John an Empire which, though plainly crumbling, remained as firmly based as he could make it. Its frontiers, admittedly, no longer extended much beyond the suburbs of Constantinople; but there remained Thessalonica and the Morea, at that time in the hands of his sons Andronicus and Theodore respectively. To the preservation of these two outposts of the Empire he had always attached supreme importance, knowing them to represent possible sources of succour for Constantinople in its hour of need and even - at the worst - places of refuge from which, were the capital to fall, the struggle could be continued; and he was anxious to visit them both once again before he died.

Leaving his son John to act as Regent in Constantinople, Manuel set sail for Thessalonica on
25
July
1414
with a fleet consisting of four galleys and two other vessels carrying contingents of infantry and cavalry. The purpose of this force soon became clear when he made an unannounced stop at Thasos, a normally inconsequential island

1
Rumelia was the name normally applied to all the European territory held by the Turks. Rum - i.e. Rome - was that which had
originally been given to the Se
ljuk Sulta
nate after the battle of Manzike
rt, and was still used to describe Turkish Anatolia.

which was then under threat from Giorgio, a bastard son of Francesco Gattilusio of Lesbos. It took Manuel some three months to reassert his authority; only then did he continue his journey to Thessalonica, where he was warmly received by young Andronicus, now about fourteen, and where he spent some time attending to the affairs of Mount Athos. In the spring of
1415,
his work done, he and his escort left by way of Euboea for the Peloponnese, arriving at the little port of Kenchreai - a mile or two from Isthmia on the Saronic Gulf- on Good Friday,
29
March.

The choice of landfall was deliberate, for the primary purpose of the Emperor's visit was not to confer with his son Theodore but to realize a project which had been in his mind ever since his previous visit in
1408:
the creation of a strong defensive fortification running six miles across the Isthmus of Corinth - roughly along the route of the present Corinth Canal. This was in no sense a new idea: the first such bulwark had been erected in
480
bc
, against the Persian Xerxes; and a second had followed in
369
.
In
ad
253
the Roman Emperor Valerian had been responsible for another, and early in the sixth century yet another - far stronger and more impressive than its predecessors, with
15
3
towers and a great fortress at each end - had been built, predictably enough, by Justinian. The task facing Manuel was therefore essentially one of restoration rather than of original construction; nevertheless it says much for his workers — presumably those same soldiers who had accompanied him from Constantinople - that the entire work was completed in twenty-five days.
1
The result was known, from its length, as the Hexamilion, or 'Six-miler'; henceforth, in theory at any rate, the Peloponnese - which was by now largely in Greek hands - would be in effect a huge Byzantine island, impregnable by land and, it was hoped, with its own permanent navy to defend it from the sea. The work was financed by a special tax levied on the local populations, which caused such opposition that many came out in armed rebellion; but once again Manuel was prepared. His little army sprang into action, and the rebels were defeated near Kalamata in July. Then and only then did the Emperor travel on to Mistra, where his son Theodore awaited him. Not until March
1416
did he return to Constantinople.

The Hexamilion had been constructed as a defence against the Turks: a clear indication that, despite his friendship with Mehmet, Manuel

1
The remains can still be seen, to the south-west of the modern canal. Though its course is very roughly parallel, owing to the irregularities of the land the distance between the two varies from some
500
yards to a mile and a half.

remained fully alive to the long-term threat. For the time being, however, the Empire was safe. Mehmet was still restoring order in Anatolia, where he was having trouble with the Emirs of Aydin and Karaman, and in
141
6 he had to face a new crisis: a rebellion in the name of a pretender claiming to be Bayezit's eldest son Mustafa, who had not been seen since his presumed death at the battle of Ancyra. The rising itself was quickly dealt with but the pretender's cause had been taken up - most 111-advisedly - by the Venetians, who engineered his escape to Europe. He eventually reached Thessalonica, where he flung himself upon the mercy of the young Despot Andronicus and was somewhat surprisingly offered refuge. The news was reported to Mehmet, who immediately appealed to the Emperor over so flagrant a breach of his treaty obligations; but Manuel prevaricated. The laws of asylum, he pointed out, did not permit him to surrender Mustafa; he was however perfectly prepared to hold him prisoner for the rest of his natural life, provided only that the Sultan undertook responsibility for his maintenance. To this Mehmet readily agreed, and the pretender was confined on the island of Lemnos. Both sides professing themselves satisfied with this arrangement, relations between Emperor and Sultan were scarcely ruffled; but Manuel had in fact achieved something of a
coup,
and Mehmet knew it. Whether Mustafa were genuine or not — and he almost certainly was not - the Byzantines now had in their hands a claimant to the Ottoman throne. If properly handled, he might prove extremely useful in the future.

Towards the end of the year
1414,
a great council was called in the city of Constance to settle the schism that, for nearly forty years, had racked the Roman Church. It had begun in
1377,
when Pope Gregory XI had brought the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon. Gregory had died a year later, and the ensuing election had been tumultuous in the extreme. The Roman populace was well aware that if the French cardinals and their supporters had their way, they and their successful candidate would return to Avignon, probably for good. In their determination to prevent such a disaster — from which their city might never have recovered -they had invaded the conclave itself. Its terrified members, in fear of their lives, had elected an Italian, Urban VI, who had announced his intention of remaining in Rome; unfortunately, within weeks of his coronation, he had so antagonized the cardinals of both the French and Italian parties that in desperation they had declared his election null and void and had elected a rival Pope, Clement VII, in his place. Urban, firmly entrenched in Rome, had refused t
o yield; and so the dispute had
dragged on, with new Popes being elected on both sides as necessary. It was still as acrimonious as ever when on
19
December
1406
Urban's third successor, an eighty-year-old Venetian named Angelo Correr, assumed the throne of St Peter as Gregory XII.

Less than a week later Gregory wrote to the anti-Pope, Clement's successor Benedict XIII, in Marseille, proposing a meeting. If Benedict would resign, he added, he would be glad to do the same. The cardinals could then proceed to a single, undisputed election. Benedict accepted, and proposed a meeting at Savona. Almost immediately, however, difficulties began to arise. Savona was in French territory, and thus within Benedict's sphere of obedience. The journey there from Rome would be long, costly, and for an octogenarian distinctly dangerous. King Ladislas of Naples, who had reasons of his own for wishing the schism to continue, tried to seize Rome and forcibly prevent the Pope from leaving; though the attempt failed, it persuaded Gregory that the Holy City would not be safe in his absence. Finally, the strains of office were rapidly telling on the old man's strength and, as he drifted towards senility, he grew less and less able to resist pressures from his family - in particular two of his nephews, who were already digging deep into the papal coffers — which was doing everything in its power to prevent his resignation.

For all these reasons, the meeting at Savona never took place. In August
1407
Gregory did at last leave on his journey north, but by
1
November, the day appointed, he had got no further than Siena. The following April, when he had advanced as far as Lucca, his earlier fears were realized: Ladislas marched on Rome. The city, leaderless, impoverished and demoralized, surrendered with scarcely a struggle. The situation was now worse than ever. Both papal contenders were in exile, each was accusing the other of bad faith and, as the stalemate continued, the chances of conciliation seemed to be fast diminishing. Clearly there was nothing further to be hoped from either of the protagonists. On
25
March
1409
a General Council of the Church some five hundred strong met at Pisa, and on
5
June it repudiated both Gregory and Benedict as contumacious heretical and schismatics. Christians throughout the world were absolved from obedience to either, and ordered to observe a universal holiday; the council then went on to elect their single successor. Its choice fell on the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, a certain Peter Philarges who, having started life as an orphaned beggar-boy in Crete, was to end it as Pope Alexander V.

Now, one is tempted to reflect, would have been the time for the two rivals to retire gracefully from the scene. Yet they did not do so, and for that the council itself was largely to blame. It had been summoned by neither of them, and by calling them to appear before it - and declaring them contumacious when they refused - it implied its superiority over the Papacy, a principle which neither could have been expected to endorse. A little more diplomacy, a little more tact and understanding for two old men who, in their very different ways, were both honest and upright and had neither of them asked to occupy their impossible positions, and the schism could have been healed. In the circumstances they had no choice but to declare the council's proceedings uncanonical and fight on. Before long it became clear that the only real effect of the Council of Pisa had been to saddle Christendom with three Popes instead of two. But the cardinals were unrepentant; and when Pope Alexander - the only contender unable, apparently, to stand the strain -died suddenly in May
141
o they lost no time in electing another.

Baldassare Cossa, who now joined the papal throng under the name of John XXIII,
1
was widely believed at the time to have poisoned his predecessor. Whether he actually did so is open to doubt. He had, however, unquestionably begun life as a pirate; and a pirate, essentially, he remained. Able, energetic and utterly without scruple, he owed his meteoric rise through the hierarchy to a genius for intrigue and extortion; morally and spiritually, he reduced the Papacy to a level of depravity unknown since the days of the 'pornocracy' in the tenth century.
2
A contemporary chronicler, Theodoric of Niem, records in shocked amazement the rumour current in Bologna - where Cossa had been Papal Governor - that during the first year of his pontificate he had debauched no fewer than two hundred matrons, widows and virgins, to say nothing of a prodigious number of nuns. His score over the three following years is regrettably not recorded; he seems, however, to have maintained a high average, for on
29
May
1415
he was arraigned before another General Council, which had been in session since the previous November at Constance. As Gibbon summed up: 'The most scandalous charges were suppressed: the Vicar of Christ on earth was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy and incest.' Predictably, he was found guilty on all counts - the council, benefiting from the lesson learnt at Pisa, requiring him to ratify the sentence himself.

1
The circumstances of his election and subsequent deposition have denied him a place on the canonical list of Popes. It was none the less somewh
at surprising that Cardinal Ange
lo Roncalli should have adopted the same name on his election to the Papacy in
1958.