Europe: A History (52 page)

Seen from Constantinople, the Slavs must have raised excitements like the Celtic and Germanic tribes had once raised in Rome. Though less well reported, their crossing of the Danube in 551 must have resembled the earlier surge of the Germanics across the Rhine. The impact was certainly similar. Whole provinces of the Empire—Illyria, Dalmatia, Macedonia, and Thrace—were turned into one vast
Sclavinia
or ‘Slavdom’. They so overwhelmed the Latin-speaking population that only small pockets were left—as Daco-Romans (Romanians) north of the Danube, or as scattered communities of ‘Vlachs’ to the south. They provided the main ethnic component of three later principalities carved out of former imperial territory—Croatia, Serbia, and greater Bulgaria. Sailing on primitive one-log boats, they even penetrated the Greek islands. They reached the walls of Constantinople in 540.

Persia had seen a major revival of its fortunes since the days of Alexander’s successors. Under the Sassanid dynasty, the eastern frontiers of Rome were ceaselessly contested. Under Ardashir I (r. 227–41) and again under the two Khosrus (also known as Chosroes)—Khosru I (r. 531–79) and Khosru II (r. 590–628), Persian resurgence reached the point where the latter could claim possession of the Mediterranean in a ‘ceremony of the sea’ performed near Antioch. They reached the walls in 609–10 and again in 625–6. The Avars made for the Bosporus, having been driven down the Danube by the Franks. They joined the Persians at the walls in 625. The Arabs poured out of the east like a desert sandstorm (see p. 253). They reached the walls in 673, and again in 717. [
TEICHOS
]

Heraclius (575–641) is the best-backed candidate for the title of ‘first of the Byzantines’. He had none of Justinian’s Western interests, and he gave the state a distinctly oriental flavour. He spent most of his reign dealing with one great enemy, only to find another more formidable to hand. In 617 the Persian host of Chosroes II marched to the Hellespont and called on Constantinople to surrender. They had already captured Damascus and Jerusalem (614), where they had seized the True Cross; and by occupying Egypt they had cut off the Empire’s corn dole—another relic of Roman times. It was a confrontation between Europe and Asia worthy of Herodotus:

Chosroes, greatest of Gods, and master of the earth, to Heraclius, his vile and insensate slave. Why do you still… call yourself a king? But I will pardon your faults if you submit … Do not deceive yourself with vain hope in that Christ, who was not able to save himself from the Jews, who killed him by nailing him to a cross. Even if you take refuge in the depths of the sea, I will stretch out my hand and take you…
¹⁰

At which point the Avars rode in to landward and, having ambushed the Emperor before the walls, had to be bought off.

Yet in 622 Heraclius was able to launch a series of masterful campaigns that have been called the ‘first crusade’. A great Christian army marched to Jerusalem. Leaving Constantinople to the Perso-Avar siege, he led his troops into the heart of Persia, plundered the palace of Chosroes at Dastager, near Ctesiphon, and, as the crowning clause of the Peace in 628, recovered the True Cross. He was hailed in Constantinople as ‘the new Scipio’. If he had died then, he would have gone down in history as the greatest Roman general since Caesar.

In fact, Heraclius had softened up both the Roman and the Persian empires for the Muslim onslaught. When the armies of Islam appeared in the 630s, he could do nothing to hold them. Jerusalem, saved from the Persians, fell to the Arabs in 638. Three years later, with Heraclius on his death bed, the Empire’s wealthiest province in Egypt was on the point of falling. The first round in Byzantium’s 800-year war with Islam had been lost. None the less, all the main outlines of Byzantine identity were present. The Empire’s territory was reduced to its Greek heartland. The Greek language was the sole vehicle of culture. And the Patriarch of Constantinople, after the loss of his colleagues in Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, was left as the unchallenged leader of the Greek Church. The initial conflict with the Arabs raged for decades. There were two more great sieges of Constantinople, each broken by the supremacy of the imperial fleet and the ‘Greek fire’. There were numberless skirmishes and rearguard actions in the islands and the provinces. Roman Armenia was lost in 636, Cyprus in 643, Rhodes in 655, Carthage in 698. The Saracen wars of Justinian II (r. 685–95 and 705–11) reflected the general chaos of the age. After one battle, he ordered his guards to slaughter the only unit of his troops who had not deserted, to prevent them from deserting in the next. After the fall of Rhodes, the remains of the fallen Colossus were sold to a Jewish dealer for scrap. It was a sign of the times.

Iconodasm—’image-breaking’—was a movement which gripped the Empire in the eighth and early ninth centuries, and which in some respects was a sympathetic reaction to the puritanical values of Islam. At one level it involved a purely religious controversy over the place of images in Christian worship. The Iconoclasts followed the Muslim example in banning all representational art, accusing their opponents of iconoduly—‘idolatry’. An edict of Leo I the Isaurian in 726 decreed that the crucifix be everywhere replaced by a plain Cross. And in due course the order was given for all images of the saints, and especially of the Virgin Mary, to be whitewashed. At another level, however, a deep social and political struggle was in progress. By attacking iconodulous monasteries and sequestrating their considerable properties, the Iconoclast emperors were
strengthening the hold of the State over the Church. Equally, they could be seen to be asserting Constantinople’s control over wayward provinces, especially in Europe. The chief Iconoclast, Constantine Copronymos (r. 740–75), ‘hammer of the monks’, was confirmed in his position in 754 by the packed Council of Constantinople, which was roundly anathematized by Rome. At one point all the monks and nuns of Thrace were assembled, and given the choice between instant marriage or exile in Cyprus. The Emperor survived open rebellion, engaging himself in victorious campaigns in Mesopotamia and in public works. [
IKON
]

The war of the images, however, was far from finished. Both the Empress Irena (r. 797–802) and Theodora, wife of Theophilus (r. 829–42), were ardent icono-dules. Theodora’s son, Michael III (r. 842–67), among many scandalous acts, exhumed and burned the body of Constantine Copronymos. Iconoclasm was proscribed. Religious peace had to await the murder of Michael, and the emergence of the Macedonian dynasty in 867. By that time, much damage had been done. Iconoclasm must be seen as one of the key factors which disrupted the bond between the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Rome, and which drove the Latin Church into the arms of the Franks.

In that same era, the Bulgars rose to a position of great power in the Balkans. Their ancestral chieftain, Kourat, had been an ally of Heraclius; and some time later they were settied on the Black Sea coast south of the Danube. In 717–18 they helped the Empire repel the Arab siege. They conquered seven Slav tribes of the locality, only to adopt the language and customs of the conquered. In the ninth century the warlike Krum declared war on the Empire and on Christianity. It was he, having slain the Emperor Nicephorus in 811, who toasted his victory in the emperor’s skull. He forced Byzantium to build the ‘Great Fence’—a new Roman
limes
. His successor, Boris, though baptized in Constantinople, was balancing his loyalties between the Greek and the Roman Churches. (See Appendix III, p. 1245.)

Byzantine civilization, as established by the ninth century, possessed several inimitable features which set it apart both from contemporary states in the West and from the earlier Roman Empire. The state and the church were fused into one indivisible whole. The Emperor, the
autokrator
, and the Patriarch were seen as the secular and the ecclesiastical pillars of divine authority. The Empire defended the Orthodox Church, and the Church praised the Empire. This ‘Caesaropapism’ had no equal in the West, where secular rule and papal authority had never been joined, [
TAXIS
]

The imperial court was the hub of a vast centralized administration run by an army of bureaucrats. Heraclius had taken the Persian tide of
Basileus
, and the despotic nature of the state machine was self-evident in its oriental ceremonies. ‘Byzantium’ became a byword for total subservience, secretiveness, and intrigue. The shell of some of the old Roman institutions was retained but was completely subordinated. The senate was an assembly of office-holders, organized in a strict table of ranks. The chief ministers of state under the
eparchos
(prefect),
symponus
(chancellor), and
logothete
(chief justice) were offset by the chief officers of the
court, all eunuchs, under the
Paracomoenus
(high chamberlain). By castrating its leading courtiers, the Empire protected itself neatly from the possibility of hereditary power in the palace, as often happened in the West. Military defence was divided between a central imperial reserve and guard of foreign mercenaries, commanded by the
domestikos
, and a system of
themes
or ‘military regions’, each commanded by its
strategos
.