Part 1

Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_

THE BYZANTINES

OTHER BOOKS ABOUT

MAJOR CULTURES OF THE WORLD

THE SUN KINGDOM OF THE AZTECS by Victor W. von Hagen

THE ARABS by Harry B. Ellis

THE BYZANTINES

BY THOMAS CALDECOT CHUBB

ILLUSTRATED BY _Richard M. Powers_

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY

CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK

_Published by_ The World Publishing Company 2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio

_Published simultaneously in Canada by_ Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.

_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-5919_

COWP

Copyright © 1959 by Thomas Caldecot Chubb

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper or magazine. Printed in the United States of America.

For Rosamond Caldecot Chubb

CONTENTS

A Crusade That Went Astray 13

Byzantium, Crossroads of the World 22

The Roman Empire and Constantinople 39

The Holy Augustus 46

A Roman Army on Horseback 58

One Religion, One Church 68

Golden Bezants 81

The Byzantine Way of Life 93

Last Days of the Empire 107

CHRONOLOGICAL CHART OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE AND WORLD EVENTS 117

BOOKS FOR FURTHER READING 123

INDEX AND GLOSSARY 124

_Pronunciations for unfamiliar words are given in the Index_

THE BYZANTINES

A CRUSADE THAT WENT ASTRAY

More than 750 years ago—the exact date was May 24, 1203—a mighty and crowded armada sailed away from the beautiful island of Corfu just off the northwest corner of Greece.

It headed southward toward a brilliant blue sea.

The weather was balmy. The myrtle was in bloom. The leaves on the twisted gray olive trees flashed silver. The sky was fine and clear. The wind was gentle and favorable. Indeed, it barely ruffled the water. But it filled hundreds and hundreds of sails of every possible color. Red sails. Golden sails. Lavender sails. Green sails. Orange sails. And sails of a wonderful bright yellow. Even Geoffrey of Villehardouin, a bold French baron and famous historian who was one of the passengers, could not say how many they were. But he did know that they took his breath away.

“I, Geoffrey,” he scratched out slowly, “to my knowledge have not ever lied by one word, and I bear witness that never was yet seen so fair a sight. As far as the eye could reach, there was no space without sails, and ships, and vessels.”

Certainly there were enough ships to cover miles of ocean. Flat, broad-beamed palanders, built especially to carry troops and horses—the 4,500 knights with their fiery steeds, the 9,000 esquires, and the 20,000 foot soldiers who made up the expedition.

Swift galleys to protect the mighty convoy. These galleys had oars as well as sails, and they lashed the waters to foam as they hurried about their tasks. There were even some fat, slow merchant vessels. Just as it is today, business was business in the Middle Ages, even when you went to war.

But business or no business, the men crowding the rails were carried forward by another, nobler purpose. And before each of them had left his drafty castle in Normandy or France or Italy, he had sworn this solemn oath: “I will put on the cross, and march to redeem the land where Jesus lived, and where He died for us.”

Once before it had been redeemed by Godfrey of Bouillon and the other saints and heroes of the First Crusade. But then the famous Arab leader Saladin had won it back, and not even Richard the Lion-Hearted, the knightly king of England, could defeat Saladin.

“We will succeed where Richard failed. _Deus vult!_ God wills it!”

The crusaders had a plan. Instead of landing on the enemy-held beaches of Palestine, they would sail to Egypt and fight their way across the desert and up through the famous Gaza strip, about which we read even today, to Jerusalem. The back door would be easier than the front door. They could not fail.

Their hearts, therefore, were high as they sailed along the rugged coast with its deep inlets and its violet mountains—past rocky Ithaca, the legendary home of the wily Ulysses; past yellow beaches where the ancient Greeks drew up their craft before they sailed to rescue Helen of Troy; finally, past the southernmost tip of Greece where the storms were supposed to meet. Then suddenly something happened. Instead of continuing toward the Holy Land, the mighty fleet altered its course and turned north. What possibly could be the reason? The leaders knew, but most of the fighting men were puzzled.

Soon a whisper ran from lip to lip. There was a new destination. Constantinople the Golden—the fabled Byzantium! The capital of the Greek, or Eastern Roman, Empire! The legendary El Dorado city with its glitter and its glory which was set on the Bosporus, a narrow little body of water that divides Europe from Asia, separating the West from the East.

It was the tough old doge of Venice who had changed the crusaders’ minds for them. Henry Dandolo was eighty years old and blind, but he knew that ducats did not grow on trees, and he was just as eager to get back the money he had loaned them as any Venetian merchant over whom he ruled. The crusaders had promised to give the Venetians four silver marks for each man and two silver marks for each horse that they transported to the East, but now after months of borrowing and begging and promising instead of paying, they still owed them 34,000 marks. What could be done about it?

Facing the knights and barons in the great, glittering church of Saint Mark, the old doge stroked his white beard and had an answer. “You are fighting men. Pay us back with fighting. The king of Hungary has taken Zara from us. Take it back again and give it to us.”

They did, but even then the Venetians were not satisfied.

“There is a richer prize ahead. Win us Constantinople. Capture _it_ for us, and we will really call quits.”

The leaders agreed. The Holy Land would have to wait a while to be redeemed.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the excitement of the crusaders when they heard the magic name of Constantinople. For they all knew about the fabulous city. Minstrels told about it in the long sagas they sang before huge crackling fires on winter nights. They spoke of its shining metal towers and called it Micklegarth, or Bigtown.

Its fame was also spread throughout the West by Russian traders. In those days, the Russians were like the vikings who roved the oceans from America to the Greek Sea. They had enslaved the backward Slavic tribes of Kiev and Moscow and once a year, when the ice melted, these snub-nosed, green-eyed marauders made their vassals cut down huge trees and hollow them into boats. Aboard these, they floated down the great rivers, and then sailed across the foggy Black Sea and up the Bosporus until they reached the enormous city, the biggest they had ever seen. There they traded honey and marten skins and dried fish and even caviar for pepper and brocades and carved ivory and delicate enamels. These Russians, too, were dazzled by Constantinople and had their own name for it. They called it Tsargrad, or Caesar City.

But long before there were Russians or any other kind of vikings, the city had amazed our ancestors. “I see before my eyes something I had often heard about but would never believe!” exclaimed Athanaric, a guttural-speaking king from the forests of Germany. “Look at the walls. Look at the buildings, look at the harbor filled with ships! Look at the men of every nation crowding the alleys and bazaars. Look at the disciplined soldiers! Surely God himself must be the emperor!” said Athanaric.

The mighty Charlemagne, who had been crowned emperor of the West, once sent an embassy to Constantinople to discuss the possibility of marrying the Byzantine empress Irene. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, a learned Spanish Jew, was astonished at its splendor. It was richer, he said, than any other city in the world. Why, the ordinary merchant wore garments of silk ornamented with gold and precious stones! He rode about his business on horseback as a prince does!

It was the city of Justinian, the great lawgiver, whose book of laws was still studied in the crusaders’ own cities of Paris and Bologna 700 years after his reign.

Only the wisest of them knew that he was much more than a lawgiver. A tall towheaded country boy from what is modern Yugoslavia, he was more than just one of the great Byzantine emperors. He was one of the great rulers of all time. It was his generals who reconquered Africa, Italy, and parts of Spain, and almost restored the ancient Roman Empire. It was he who ordered the most famous architects of the time to build the church of Santa Sophia. Most of the finest Byzantine mosaics were done during his reign, and the Orthodox Christian Church was first firmly established then. The Age of Justinian was the first great age of the Byzantine Empire when its power affected the whole Mediterranean world.

It was the city of great soldiers like the cruel Basil the Bulgar Slayer, who had cold-bloodedly blinded 15,000 of his Bulgarian enemies, but who had permanently broken the power of these wild raiders; like John Kercuas, an Asia Minor Napoleon; and like Nicephorus Phocas, who had rolled back the Arabs, the deadliest foes of the Byzantines, whether they fought on camel back or on a warship at sea.

It was the city of foxy Alexius Comnenus, and his dark-eyed daughter, Anna, who wrote even better histories than Villehardouin.

The crusaders knew about _him_! By his quick thinking and crafty talking this same Alexius, Emperor Alexius I, had not only persuaded their grandsires and great-grandsires of an earlier crusade to stay out of Constantinople, but he had also talked them into fighting the Turks for him. He had even talked some of them into becoming his vassals. He had received the leaders in the Sacred Palace, however, and they told the other barons what they saw there. From then on Constantinople was a city of marvels to the men of the Middle Ages. They also began to covet its wealth.

To be sure, not all the crusaders were happy at the thought of attacking another Christian city, especially when they remembered how angry the Pope had been at the taking of Zara, also a Christian city. But the doge of Venice had an answer for every objection.

The Byzantines, the people of Constantinople, were not really true Christians at all, he said. They were heretics.

The crusaders were not conquering Constantinople; they were restoring it to its rightful ruler. On board was the young Alexius, who ought to sit on the throne as Alexius IV. Alexius was a worthless young man, but his father had been emperor until he was deposed and blinded by his own brother.

Besides that, how could the crusaders pay back Venice all they owed her if they did not take Constantinople?

The young Alexius not only promised that he would settle all their debts if they took the city for him, but that he would give them enough money to go on to their destination. He said that he would ride with them at the head of a Byzantine army of 10,000 soldiers. He promised that as long as he lived he would equip and maintain out of his own treasury 500 of their knights.

A majority of the brave knights were convinced by these arguments and by the thought of all the fighting men and gold. Among them was Geoffrey of Villehardouin who tells us most of what we know about the Fourth Crusade.

It took almost a month to make the voyage. After the crusaders rounded the tip of Greece, they sailed past the remains of ancient Sparta, past Athens, and at the island of Andros they stopped for water. A little later, they drifted past the site of the ancient town of Troy. Finally, they touched at Abydos on the historic Dardanelles, where they raided the countryside and filled their holds with grain. “Great was the need thereof!” muttered Geoffrey.

On June 23, 1203, they dropped anchor within sight of Constantinople. The snow-covered Thracian mountains lay to the west, and grape-colored Asia Minor to starboard. “And be it known to you,” scratched out Villehardouin, his pulses beating, “that no man among us was so hardy that he did not tremble.” For in every direction, there was nothing but high walls and towers and rich palaces and mighty churches.

The next morning banners and pennants were flown from the castles of every ship. The coverings were taken from the shields. The bulwarks were made ready for action. Then the sailors weighed anchor and spread sails to the wind.

“Thus we passed before Constantinople and so near that we shot at their vessels. There were so many people on the walls and towers that it seemed as if there could be no more people in the world.”

Four weeks later the city was in their hands, and although Geoffrey and his fellow crusaders did not realize it, this event marked a turning point in history. For 900 years Constantinople had stood proudly and safe, ruling her empire and giving orders like a queen. But from now on she would be at the mercy of others.

That is not what Geoffrey and his companions were thinking about as they rode into the fabled streets, however. They were remembering all they had heard about the magic city. They were wondering if even half of it was true.

BYZANTIUM,

CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD

They found that it was true indeed.

On that hot July day when the crusaders and Venetians at last forced their way with young Alexius into Constantinople, it was neither as rich nor as powerful as it had been when the earlier Alexius let the leaders of the First Crusade cool their heels outside its gates more than a hundred years before.

But if you wanted to find a more fabulous city, you would have had to go all the way across Asia to distant Cathay. There, of course, was Khansa (modern Hangchow), which was so enormous that it took one medieval traveler three days merely to cross from one side of it to the other. There, too, was Khan Baliq (modern Peking) where “twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round” just to make a playground for the Chinese Son of Heaven, or emperor. But since Marco Polo would not even be born for another fifty years, most of the crusaders knew very little about Cathay, that is, if they had even heard of it at all!

Their idea of a big city was London with its gloomy smoke-blackened houses, and in those days London was really a little town. Even Westminster Abbey was a mile in the country and surrounded by green fields. Or Paris with its streets so narrow that you could hardly see the sky between overhanging gables, and with the great Cathedral of Notre Dame not yet finished. Paris hardly extended a mile in any direction. Or Bruges with its bent and wizened wool merchants and the damp smell of its canals. Even Rome, the most famous city in the West, could not have had much more than 30,000 inhabitants. Most of these were ruffians and bandits who robbed pilgrims, fought each other, and even battled the Pope from castles made of marble stolen from the ancient monuments.

But Constantinople, at the crossroads of the world, gleamed in the sun and was proud and mighty. Even then it had a population of at least 800,000. Possibly a million people lived there.

They were of every kind and race, for like modern New York, the Byzantine city was a melting pot.

Swarthy Armenians looking for the fortune that had enabled more than one of their number to mount the Byzantine throne.

Intellectual Greek scholars moving toward the lecture room with a precious copy of Plato or Aristotle under their arms.

Blond-haired Anglo-Saxons, described by one who saw them to be “tall as palm trees.” Ever since William the Conqueror had ruled in England, they had come in growing numbers to join the famous Varangians, or imperial bodyguard.

Russian traders bursting out of their own Saint Mamas quarter in the city to drink the unfamiliar Greek wine which made them quarrel and brawl.

Strikingly handsome Asbagians from Colchis, the land of the legendary Golden Fleece, and probably of rich placer gold mines almost like the ones in California.

Jewish merchants from the Pera quarter, on the other side of the Golden Horn. They were not allowed to live in the city itself which they had to reach by water, and they were often oppressed and persecuted; but they were rich, benevolent, and pious.

Unwashed, but shaven Bulgarians, who wore an iron chain for a belt.

Wild, half-Mongol Patzinaks, and somewhat more civilized Khazars from the Ukraine and the Caucasus.

Dark-eyed Asiatics with pointed beards and black hair, and usually wearing turbans, who had come by camel caravan from Syria or even Baghdad.

Iranians. Spaniards. Copts from ancient Egypt. Ethiopians from fabled Axum. Franks and Lombards. In the old days, there might also have been Indians and men from China, but no longer. Bankers and sea captains from Amalfi, Pisa, and Genoa. The latter in particular looked about them nervously. They could not help wondering what their fate would be now that their archenemy and rival, Venice, had taken over.

Finally, there were the Byzantines themselves. Proud and haughty noblemen with strange titles you could hardly pronounce. These noblemen moved through the streets arrogantly and did not seem to know that their great days were over. Sometimes a slave walked beside them, carrying a bright-colored umbrella or parasol. Lovely ladies, beautifully dressed, jeweled and painted, and probably with a smile for the tall, fair-haired northerners. Byzantine families, the wife on a donkey, the husband and children on foot. Fierce-eyed monks, of whom there were more than 30,000, and priests who swarmed everywhere, led by their hegumens and archimandrites. And, of course, the famous Byzantine peddlers with their purposely ragged clothes, gesticulating hands, and whining cries. The place was still a happy hunting ground for hucksters.

“The city guarded by God”—the name given by the Byzantines to Constantinople—was big enough to hold all of them and splendid enough to make them glad that it could.

A medieval traveler said that the circumference of its walls was eighteen miles, and although he was probably just as good at telling tall stories as present-day travelers are, he may have been right. At least if you included such flourishing suburbs as Galata (once called Sycae, or Figtrees) and Scutari (formerly Chrysopolis, or Gold City). Galata (like Pera) and Scutari were separated from Constantinople by the Golden Horn and the Bosporus, respectively, which were narrow bodies of water, not as wide as the Hudson River or the East River at New York City.

Constantinople itself was large enough. Like old Rome, New Rome (for that was its official name; Constantinople, or Constantine’s City, was only a nickname which had stuck) sprawled over seven rolling hills and down to every body of water it could find.

That was what a visitor remembered most about Constantinople: One was never far from the water. It was shaped like a hitchhiker’s thumb pointed toward the shore of Asia Minor, and it was bounded by sea on every side except where the thumb joined the hand. On the north was the famous Golden Horn—an arm of the Bosporus—which is still a wonderful harbor. It is so deep that ships can moor with their prows against the warehouses ashore and still be comfortably afloat. On the north and northeast was the narrow Bosporus with its twisting channel and its dangerous currents. Jason and his Argonauts had supposedly sailed through the Bosporus. On the southeast and south was the Sea of Marmara. On the Marmara shore there were many small man-made harbors, at least one of which was reserved for the emperor. Through the Sea of Marmara, one could reach to the Dardanelles, the Aegean Sea, and finally the Mediterranean; and then on to Egypt, the Red Sea, and India in one direction, and to Spain and even England in the other.

Guarded by these seas and by the great walls which protected it from the west, some of which still stand, was an _Arabian Nights’_ fantasy of lovely vales and gardens, glittering roofs and towers, and, of course, resplendent buildings that were beyond anything that the adventurers from the cold and foggy north could even imagine.

Among the crusaders was another knight who could write as well as fight. His name was Robert of Clari.

“I do not think,” said Robert, “that in the forty richest cities of the world there is as much treasure. In fact, the Greeks said that two-thirds of all the wealth there is, is in Constantinople. The rest is scattered elsewhere.”

Then he went into details.

Most glittering of all, he noted, was the Palace of Bukoleon. “Within it,” he said, “there were fully five hundred halls, all connected with one another and all made with gold mosaic. In it, there were fully thirty chapels. One of them was called the Holy Chapel, which was so rich and noble that there was not a hinge or band or any part such as is usually made of iron that was not all of silver. And there was no column that was not of jasper or of porphyry or some other precious stone.”

The Palace of Bukoleon had got its name from a statue showing a fight between a bull and a lion. It had been the Great, or Sacred, Palace of the earlier emperors. It covered 25 or 30 acres and was really a collection of buildings, for a Byzantine palace was never a single edifice.

There were too many buildings in the Great Palace to tell you about all of them. Among them was the Daphne Palace. It was the oldest one, having been built by Constantine the Great when he founded the city. There was the Building of the Nineteen Beds where the emperor could hold a state dinner for 218 important people. Another building was the Chalké where the emperor received his parade troops. It was 650 feet long, and in the old days it was guarded by Khazars with drawn bows. It got its name because its roof was a huge sheet of polished copper. A fourth building was the Magnaura, or Fresh Breeze, Palace where the empress went in stately procession to take her ceremonial baths.

It was at the Magnaura Palace that an Italian visitor discovered what the Byzantines would do to impress strangers. Liutprand, the bishop of Cremona, was led before the emperor, whom he found seated upon a golden throne. There he was told to bow himself three times, each time with his face to the ground.

He did so; then he looked up. No emperor.

By a clever device, the latter had been lifted to the ceiling, and now clad in entirely new clothes, he looked down upon the bishop. In the meantime, gilded mechanical birds began to sing, and gilded bronze lions beat the ground with their tails and roared terribly with open mouth and quivering tongues.