Volume 6 Part 10 (2/2)
The loss of Constantinople restored a momentary vigor to the Greeks.
From their palaces, the princes and n.o.bles were driven into the field; and the fragments of the falling monarchy were grasped by the hands of the most vigorous or the most skilful candidates. In the long and barren pages of the Byzantine annals, [1] it would not be an easy task to equal the two characters of Theodore Lascaris and John Ducas Vataces, [2]
who replanted and upheld the Roman standard at Nice in Bithynia. The difference of their virtues was happily suited to the diversity of their situation. In his first efforts, the fugitive Lascaris commanded only three cities and two thousand soldiers: his reign was the season of generous and active despair: in every military operation he staked his life and crown; and his enemies of the h.e.l.lespont and the Maeander, were surprised by his celerity and subdued by his boldness. A victorious reign of eighteen years expanded the princ.i.p.ality of Nice to the magnitude of an empire. The throne of his successor and son-in-law Vataces was founded on a more solid basis, a larger scope, and more plentiful resources; and it was the temper, as well as the interest, of Vataces to calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure the success, of his ambitious designs. In the decline of the Latins, I have briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks; the prudent and gradual advances of a conqueror, who, in a reign of thirty-three years, rescued the provinces from national and foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all sides the Imperial city, a leafless and sapless trunk, which must full at the first stroke of the axe. But his interior and peaceful administration is still more deserving of notice and praise. [3] The calamities of the times had wasted the numbers and the substance of the Greeks; the motives and the means of agriculture were extirpated; and the most fertile lands were left without cultivation or inhabitants.
A portion of this vacant property was occupied and improved by the command, and for the benefit, of the emperor: a powerful hand and a vigilant eye supplied and surpa.s.sed, by a skilful management, the minute diligence of a private farmer: the royal domain became the garden and granary of Asia; and without impoveris.h.i.+ng the people, the sovereign acquired a fund of innocent and productive wealth. According to the nature of the soil, his lands were sown with corn or planted with vines; the pastures were filled with horses and oxen, with sheep and hogs; and when Vataces presented to the empress a crown of diamonds and pearls, he informed her, with a smile, that this precious ornament arose from the sale of the eggs of his innumerable poultry. The produce of his domain was applied to the maintenance of his palace and hospitals, the calls of dignity and benevolence: the lesson was still more useful than the revenue: the plough was restored to its ancient security and honor; and the n.o.bles were taught to seek a sure and independent revenue from their estates, instead of adorning their splendid beggary by the oppression of the people, or (what is almost the same) by the favors of the court. The superfluous stock of corn and cattle was eagerly purchased by the Turks, with whom Vataces preserved a strict and sincere alliance; but he discouraged the importation of foreign manufactures, the costly silks of the East, and the curious labors of the Italian looms. ”The demands of nature and necessity,” was he accustomed to say, ”are indispensable; but the influence of fas.h.i.+on may rise and sink at the breath of a monarch;”
and both his precept and example recommended simplicity of manners and the use of domestic industry. The education of youth and the revival of learning were the most serious objects of his care; and, without deciding the precedency, he p.r.o.nounced with truth, that a prince and a philosopher [4] are the two most eminent characters of human society. His first wife was Irene, the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more ill.u.s.trious by her personal merit, the milder virtues of her s.e.x, than by the blood of the Angeli and Comneni that flowed in her veins, and transmitted the inheritance of the empire. After her death he was contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural daughter of the emperor Frederic [499] the Second; but as the bride had not attained the years of p.u.b.erty, Vataces placed in his solitary bed an Italian damsel of her train; and his amorous weakness bestowed on the concubine the honors, though not the t.i.tle, of a lawful empress. His frailty was censured as a flagitious and d.a.m.nable sin by the monks; and their rude invectives exercised and displayed the patience of the royal lover. A philosophic age may excuse a single vice, which was redeemed by a crowd of virtues; and in the review of his faults, and the more intemperate pa.s.sions of Lascaris, the judgment of their contemporaries was softened by grat.i.tude to the second founders of the empire. [5] The slaves of the Latins, without law or peace, applauded the happiness of their brethren who had resumed their national freedom; and Vataces employed the laudable policy of convincing the Greeks of every dominion that it was their interest to be enrolled in the number of his subjects.
[Footnote 1: For the reigns of the Nicene emperors, more especially of John Vataces and his son, their minister, George Acropolita, is the only genuine contemporary; but George Pachymer returned to Constantinople with the Greeks at the age of nineteen, (Hanckius de Script. Byzant. c.
33, 34, p. 564--578. Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 448--460.) Yet the history of Nicephorus Gregoras, though of the xivth century, is a valuable narrative from the taking of Constantinople by the Latins.]
[Footnote 2: Nicephorus Gregoras (l. ii. c. 1) distinguishes between the oxeia ormh of Lascaris, and the eustaqeia of Vataces. The two portraits are in a very good style.]
[Footnote 3: Pachymer, l. i. c. 23, 24. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6. The reader of the Byzantines must observe how rarely we are indulged with such precious details.]
[Footnote 4: Monoi gar apantwn anqrwpwn onomastotatoi basileuV kai jilosojoV, (Greg. Acropol. c. 32.) The emperor, in a familiar conversation, examined and encouraged the studies of his future logothete.]
[Footnote 499: Sister of Manfred, afterwards king of Naples. Nic. Greg. p.
45.--M.]
[Footnote 5: Compare Acropolita, (c. 18, 52,) and the two first books of Nicephorus Gregoras.]
A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between John Vataces and his son Theodore; between the founder who sustained the weight, and the heir who enjoyed the splendor, of the Imperial crown. [6] Yet the character of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had been educated in the school of his father, in the exercise of war and hunting; Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three years of a short reign, he thrice led his armies into the heart of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a choleric and suspicious temper: the first of these may be ascribed to the ignorance of control; and the second might naturally arise from a dark and imperfect view of the corruption of mankind. On a march in Bulgaria, he consulted on a question of policy his princ.i.p.al ministers; and the Greek logothete, George Acropolita, presumed to offend him by the declaration of a free and honest opinion. The emperor half unsheathed his cimeter; but his more deliberate rage reserved Acropolita for a baser punishment. One of the first officers of the empire was ordered to dismount, stripped of his robes, and extended on the ground in the presence of the prince and army. In this posture he was chastised with so many and such heavy blows from the clubs of two guards or executioners, that when Theodore commanded them to cease, the great logothete was scarcely able to rise and crawl away to his tent. After a seclusion of some days, he was recalled by a peremptory mandate to his seat in council; and so dead were the Greeks to the sense of honor and shame, that it is from the narrative of the sufferer himself that we acquire the knowledge of his disgrace. [7] The cruelty of the emperor was exasperated by the pangs of sickness, the approach of a premature end, and the suspicion of poison and magic. The lives and fortunes, the eyes and limbs, of his kinsmen and n.o.bles, were sacrificed to each sally of pa.s.sion; and before he died, the son of Vataces might deserve from the people, or at least from the court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron of the family of the Palaeologi had provoked his anger by refusing to bestow her beauteous daughter on the vile plebeian who was recommended by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or age, her body, as high as the neck, was enclosed in a sack with several cats, who were p.r.i.c.ked with pins to irritate their fury against their unfortunate fellow-captive. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish to forgive and be forgiven, a just anxiety for the fate of John his son and successor, who, at the age of eight years, was condemned to the dangers of a long minority. His last choice intrusted the office of guardian to the sanct.i.ty of the patriarch a.r.s.enius, and to the courage of George Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by the royal favor and the public hatred. Since their connection with the Latins, the names and privileges of hereditary rank had insinuated themselves into the Greek monarchy; and the n.o.ble families [8] were provoked by the elevation of a worthless favorite, to whose influence they imputed the errors and calamities of the late reign. In the first council, after the emperor's death, Muzalon, from a lofty throne, p.r.o.nounced a labored apology of his conduct and intentions: his modesty was subdued by a unanimous a.s.surance of esteem and fidelity; and his most inveterate enemies were the loudest to salute him as the guardian and savior of the Romans. Eight days were sufficient to prepare the execution of the conspiracy. On the ninth, the obsequies of the deceased monarch were solemnized in the cathedral of Magnesia, [9] an Asiatic city, where he expired, on the banks of the Hermus, and at the foot of Mount Sipylus.
The holy rites were interrupted by a sedition of the guards; Muzalon, his brothers, and his adherents, were ma.s.sacred at the foot of the altar; and the absent patriarch was a.s.sociated with a new colleague, with Michael Palaeologus, the most ill.u.s.trious, in birth and merit, of the Greek n.o.bles. [10]
[Footnote 6: A Persian saying, that Cyrus was the _father_ and Darius the _master_, of his subjects, was applied to Vataces and his son.
But Pachymer (l. i. c. 23) has mistaken the mild Darius for the cruel Cambyses, despot or tyrant of his people. By the inst.i.tution of taxes, Darius had incurred the less odious, but more contemptible, name of KaphloV, merchant or broker, (Herodotus, iii. 89.)]
[Footnote 7: Acropolita (c. 63) seems to admire his own firmness in sustaining a beating, and not returning to council till he was called.
He relates the exploits of Theodore, and his own services, from c. 53 to c. 74 of his history. See the third book of Nicephorus Gregoras.]
[Footnote 8: Pachymer (l. i. c. 21) names and discriminates fifteen or twenty Greek families, kai osoi alloi, oiV h megalogenhV seira kai crush sugkekrothto. Does he mean, by this decoration, a figurative or a real golden chain? Perhaps, both.]
[Footnote 9: The old geographers, with Cellarius and D'Anville, and our travellers, particularly Poc.o.c.k and Chandler, will teach us to distinguish the two Magnesias of Asia Minor, of the Maeander and of Sipylus. The latter, our present object, is still flouris.h.i.+ng for a Turkish city, and lies eight hours, or leagues, to the north-east of Smyrna, (Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xxii. p.
365--370. Chandler's Travels into Asia Minor, p. 267.)]
[Footnote 10: See Acropolita, (c. 75, 76, &c.,) who lived too near the times; Pachymer, (l. i. c. 13--25,) Gregoras, (l. iii. c. 3, 4, 5.)]
Of those who are proud of their ancestors, the far greater part must be content with local or domestic renown; and few there are who dare trust the memorials of their family to the public annals of their country.
As early as the middle of the eleventh century, the n.o.ble race of the Palaeologi [11] stands high and conspicuous in the Byzantine history: it was the valiant George Palaeologus who placed the father of the Comneni on the throne; and his kinsmen or descendants continue, in each generation, to lead the armies and councils of the state. The purple was not dishonored by their alliance, and had the law of succession, and female succession, been strictly observed, the wife of Theodore Lascaris must have yielded to her elder sister, the mother of Michael Palaeologus, who afterwards raised his family to the throne. In his person, the splendor of birth was dignified by the merit of the soldier and statesman: in his early youth he was promoted to the office of _constable_ or commander of the French mercenaries; the private expense of a day never exceeded three pieces of gold; but his ambition was rapacious and profuse; and his gifts were doubled by the graces of his conversation and manners. The love of the soldiers and people excited the jealousy of the court, and Michael thrice escaped from the dangers in which he was involved by his own imprudence or that of his friends.
I. Under the reign of Justice and Vataces, a dispute arose [12]
between two officers, one of whom accused the other of maintaining the hereditary right of the Palaeologi The cause was decided, according to the new jurisprudence of the Latins, by single combat; the defendant was overthrown; but he persisted in declaring that himself alone was guilty; and that he had uttered these rash or treasonable speeches without the approbation or knowledge of his patron Yet a cloud of suspicion hung over the innocence of the constable; he was still pursued by the whispers of malevolence; and a subtle courtier, the archbishop of Philadelphia, urged him to accept the judgment of G.o.d in the fiery proof of the ordeal. [13] Three days before the trial, the patient's arm was enclosed in a bag, and secured by the royal signet; and it was inc.u.mbent on him to bear a red-hot ball of iron three times from the altar to the rails of the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury. Palaeologus eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. ”I am a soldier,” said he, ”and will boldly enter the lists with my accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with the gift of miracles. _Your_ piety, most holy prelate, may deserve the interposition of Heaven, and from your hands I will receive the fiery globe, the pledge of my innocence.” The archbishop started; the emperor smiled; and the absolution or pardon of Michael was approved by new rewards and new services. II. In the succeeding reign, as he held the government of Nice, he was secretly informed, that the mind of the absent prince was poisoned with jealousy; and that death, or blindness, would be his final reward. Instead of awaiting the return and sentence of Theodore, the constable, with some followers, escaped from the city and the empire; and though he was plundered by the Turkmans of the desert, he found a hospitable refuge in the court of the sultan. In the ambiguous state of an exile, Michael reconciled the duties of grat.i.tude and loyalty: drawing his sword against the Tartars; admonis.h.i.+ng the garrisons of the Roman limit; and promoting, by his influence, the restoration of peace, in which his pardon and recall were honorably included. III. While he guarded the West against the despot of Epirus, Michael was again suspected and condemned in the palace; and such was his loyalty or weakness, that he submitted to be led in chains above six hundred miles from Durazzo to Nice. The civility of the messenger alleviated his disgrace; the emperor's sickness dispelled his danger; and the last breath of Theodore, which recommended his infant son, at once acknowledged the innocence and the power of Palaeologus.
[Footnote 11: The pedigree of Palaeologus is explained by Ducange, (Famil. Byzant. p. 230, &c.:) the events of his private life are related by Pachymer (l. i. c. 7--12) and Gregoras (l. ii. 8, l. iii. 2, 4, l.
iv. 1) with visible favor to the father of the reigning dynasty.]
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