Part 26
We have already mentioned the incidents of her childhood. Anna never forgave her brother John for supplanting her, and this disappointment of her tender years largely influenced the course of her later life. She was devoted to Maria, the mother of her first betrothed, and no doubt imbibed from her much of the ambition and hatred which were the marked characteristics of her career in politics. Her empress-mother, Irene, also exhibited a marked partiality for her eldest daughter, to the disparagement of her son, whom Alexius had destined for the throne. Irene was a beautiful and intriguing princess of much natural ability, and stood in awe of the greater learning of her daughter. The two became companions in intrigue and diplomacy, and worked together for the promotion of their own interests, against the schemes of Alexius and John. Anna was married at a tender age to Nicephorus Bryennius. He was the representative of one of the most aristocratic and powerful families of Constantinople, and exhibited much ability both in authorship and statecraft, but he seems mediocre and colorless by the side of his spouse.
Walter Scott laid the scene of his Count Robert of Paris in the Constantinople of this period, and he presents an interesting picture of Anna as a devotee of the Muses, and of the principal heroes and heroines who figure in the intrigues of the court at this time:
"It was an apartment of the palace of the Blaquemal, dedicated to the especial service of the beloved daughter of the Emperor Alexius, the Princess Anna Comnena, known to our times by her literary talents, which record the history of her father's reign. She was seated, the queen and sovereign of a literary circle, such as the imperial princess, Porphyrogenita (or born in the sacred purple chamber itself), could assemble in those days, and a glance round will enable us to form an idea of her guests or companions.
"The literary princess herself had the bright eyes, straight features and comely and pleasing manners which all would have allowed to the emperor's daughter, even if she could not have been, with severe truth, said to have possessed them. She was placed upon a small bench, or sofa, the fair sex here not being permitted to recline, as was the fashion of the Roman ladies. A table before her was loaded with books, plants, herbs, and drawings. She sat on a slight elevation, and those who enjoyed the intimacy of the princess, or to whom she wished to speak in particular, were allowed during such sublime colloquy to rest their knees on the little dais or elevated place where her chair found its station, in a posture half standing, half kneeling. Three other seats, of different heights, were placed on the dais, and under the same canopy of state which overshadowed that of Princess Anna.
"The first, which strictly resembled her own chair in size and convenience, was one designed for her husband, Nicephorus Bryennius. He was said to entertain or affect the greatest respect for his wife's erudition, though the courtiers were of the opinion that he would have liked to absent himself from her evening parties more frequently than was particularly agreeable to the Princess Anna and her imperial parents. This was partly explained by the private tattle of the court, which averred that the Princess Anna Comnena had been more beautiful when she was less learned; and that, though still a fine woman, she had somewhat lost the charms of her person as she became enriched in her mind.
"To atone for the lowly fashion of the seat of Nicephorus Bryennius, it was placed as near to his princess as it could possibly be edged by the ushers, so that she might not lose one look of her handsome spouse, nor he the least particle of wisdom which might drop from the lips of his erudite consort.
"Two other seats of honor or, rather, thrones--for they had footstools placed for the support of the feet, rests for the arms, and embroidered pillows for the comfort of the back, not to mention the glories of the outspreading canopy--were destined for the imperial couple, who frequently attended their daughter's studies, which she prosecuted in public in the way we have intimated. On such occasions, the Empress Irene enjoyed the triumph peculiar to the mother of an accomplished daughter, while Alexius, as it might happen, sometimes listened with complacence to the rehearsal of his own exploits in the inflated language of the princess, and sometimes mildly nodded over her dialogues upon the mysteries of philosophy, with the Patriarch Zosimus, and other sages."
Scott's description gives a graphic presentation of the Princess Anna and of her relations with the various members of her family; and if we add the heir to the throne, her younger brother John, for whom she had profound contempt in spite of his many virtues, we have the group about whom revolve the narrative of her history and the chief events of her life.
It is not necessary for us to enter into the story of the First Crusade, and of the incidents of the intercourse of Franks and Greeks, which Anna tells so graphically in her history; but before calling attention to the literary qualities and historical value of her work, we must note those events which unfolded her character and, in her later years, brought about her exclusive devotion to literature.
Owing to his duplicity and lack of confidence in men, Alexius made his wife and his learned daughter his confidantes and his advisers in many of the affairs of State, and frequently utilized their services in gaining his ends. Both the imperial ladies were apt pupils in the school of political intrigue, and, in the last years of the emperor, endeavored to utilize their influence over him to the detriment of the heir-apparent and the elevation of Anna and her husband, the Cæsar Nicephorus. They accordingly formed a plot, during Alexius's last illness, to dispossess the eldest son John, that the three might share the government among them.
The empress introduced soldiers into the palace, and in the closing hours of the emperor's life sought to prevail on him to pronounce the words which would bring about the change in the succession. But the astute emperor realized his son's eminent fitness to wear the crown, and was not in sympathy with the ambitions of his learned but unscrupulous daughter. To all the entreaties of the empress he but cast his eyes heavenward and remarked on the vanities of human greatness. Despairing and enraged, the empress at last hastily left the room with a parting thrust at her imperial consort, which might fitly have been inscribed as an epitaph on his tomb: "You die as you lived--a hypocrite!" Meanwhile, during her absence, John entered the room, and, with the tacit consent of his dying father, removed from his finger the signet which gave him command of all the forces of the palace; and crushing, in their inception, the plots of the empress and her daughter, he was solemnly crowned the moment his father breathed his last.
John proved to be the most amiable character that ever occupied the Byzantine throne. But all his virtues did not suffice to quell the malice and disappointed ambition of his imperial sister. In spite of the failure of the first conspiracy, the Princess Anna, "whose philosophy would not have refused the weight of a diadem," entered into another plot to dispossess her brother--already secure in the confidence of courtiers and subjects--and to elevate her husband, whom she felt sure of ruling. As John was already on the throne, however, the only way by which he could be disposed of was to have his eyes put out or to resort to the still worse crime of secret assassination. When her mild and gentle husband recoiled at the thought of such cruelty, Anna made to him the memorable response that Nature had mistaken the two sexes and had endowed him with the soul of a woman, contemptuously contrasting what she termed his feminine weakness with her own manly inhumanity.
This conspiracy, however, was also revealed before it had made any serious headway, and John deemed it necessary to confiscate his sister's wealth in order to make further intrigues impossible. He caused the Princess Anna to retire to a convent and bestowed her luxuriously furnished palace on his favorite minister, Axouchus. But the noble nature of Axouchus recoiled at being benefited by the princess's fall, and thought more of turning the situation to the emperor's advantage than of enriching himself. Accordingly, he suggested to the emperor that it would be better policy to ward off the malice of his enemies by restoring the palace to Anna, and seeming to ignore her futile plots. John felt the prudence of the advice, and impressed by the unselfish devotion of his friend,--a quality most rare in late Byzantine times,--replied in like spirit: "I should, indeed, be unworthy to reign if I could not forget my anger as readily as you forget your interest." Anna was reinstated in her palace.
But little is known of the rest of Anna Comnena's life. Tiring finally of the vanities of court life, disappointed in all her intrigues for absolute power, and becoming ever more absorbed in her literary undertakings, she seems to have voluntarily sought the life of the cloister and to have spent the last decades of her career in peaceful retirement, engaged on her monumental work. She survived her brother John, who died in 1143, and was still at work on her history in 1145. The date of her death is unknown.
The great work of Anna Comnena is entitled the _Alexiad_, and is one of the most important works in the voluminous collection of the Byzantine historians. In fifteen books, it narrates the history of Alexius Comnenus; and is a completion and continuation of a work in four books, left by her husband, Nicephorus Bryennius. The first two books of Anna's work treat of the rise into power of the Comneni house, and of the early life of Alexius; the remaining thirteen are devoted to the events of his reign.
The work of Anna, as a contribution to historical literature, has very decided deficiencies. In spite of her professed love of truth, her filial vanity tempts her at all times to put her father and her family in the best light. The very title, _Alexiad_ suggests rather an _epos_--a poem in prose--than a serious historical work, and emphasizes its epideictic tendency. As a woman, she is impressed with the concrete rather than the abstract, and describes brilliant state functions, church festivals, imposing audiences and the like with much more familiarity and enthusiasm than she displays in her treatment of the underlying causes and inner connections of events. But with all their faults, these memoirs are an authoritative account of a brilliant and important epoch, and of a ruler who for his military sagacity and political shrewdness ranks among the great personages of the Middle Ages.
The human traits of the author reveal themselves in every chapter of her work. Anna possessed a womanly weakness for gossip and slander, and mingles her praise of the other prominent women of her time with a tincture of disparagement that must often be attributed to feminine jealousy. She possessed considerable wit and irony, but was intensely vain of her rank, her Greek origin and especially of her literary attainments. Nor must we fail to note the vaulting ambition of this otherwise attractive woman, an ambition which made her untrue to her brother and a conspirator against his throne and his life.
Anna Comnena realized that the chief censure of her work at the hands of contemporaries and of posterity would be the charge of partiality, and against this she seeks to defend herself in a striking passage:
"I must still once more repel the reproach which some may bring against me, as if my history were composed merely according to the dictates of the natural love for parents which is engraved on the hearts of children. In truth, it is not the effect of that affection which I bear to mine, but it is the evidence of matters of fact, which obliges me to speak as I have done. Is it not possible that one can have at the same time an affection for the memory of a father and for truth? For myself, I have never directed my attempt to write history otherwise than for the ascertainment of the matter of fact. With this purpose I have taken for my subject the history of a worthy man. Is it just, then, by the single accident of his being the author of my birth, his quality of my father ought to form a prejudice against me, which would ruin my credit with my readers? I have given, upon other occasions, proofs sufficiently strong of the ardor which I had for the defence of my father's interests, which those that know me can never doubt; but, on the present, I have been limited by the inviolable fidelity with which I respect the truth, which I should have felt conscious to have veiled, under pretence of serving the renown of my father."
The authoress felt assured that a number of disturbances of nature and mysterious occurrences as interpreted by the soothsayers, foreboded the death of Alexius; thus she claimed for her father the indications of consequence, which were regarded by the ancients as necessary intimations of the sympathy of nature with the removal of great characters--from the world. During his latter days, the emperor was afflicted with the gout. Weakened in body, and gradually losing his native energy, he once responded to the empress, when she spoke of how his deeds would be handed down in history: "The passages of my unhappy life call rather for tears and lamentations than for the praises you speak of." Finally asthma came to the assistance of the gout, and the prayers of monks and clergy, as well as the lavish distribution of alms, failed to stay the progress of the disease. At length passed away the Emperor Alexius, who, with all his faults, was one of the best sovereigns of the Eastern Empire.
His learned daughter, in the greatness of her grief, threw aside the reserve of literary eminence, and burst into tears and shrieks, tearing her hair, and defacing her countenance, while the Empress Irene cut off her hair, changed her purple buskins for black mourning shoes, and, casting from her her princely robes, put on a robe of black. "Even at the moment when she put it on," adds Anna, "the emperor gave up the ghost, and in that moment the sun of my life set."
Anna continues to express her lamentations at her loss, and upbraids herself that she survived her father, "that light of the world"; Irene, "the delight alike of the East and of the West"; and, also, her husband, Nicephorus. "I am indignant," she adds, "that my soul, suffering under such torrents of misfortune, should still deign to animate my body. Have I not been more hard and unfeeling than the rocks themselves; and is it not just that one who could survive such a father and a mother and such a husband should be subjected to the influence of so much calamity? But let me finish this history, rather than any longer fatigue my readers with my unavailing and tragical lamentation!" The history then closes with the following couplet:
"The learned Comnena lays her pen aside, What time her subject and her father died."
Taking it all in all, the best appreciation of the _Alexiad_ is that of Gibbon, who thus characterizes the qualities of the work:
"The life of the Emperor Alexius has been delineated by a favorite daughter, who was inspired by a tender regard for his person and a laudable zeal to perpetuate his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicion of her readers, Anna Comnena repeatedly protests that, besides her personal knowledge, she has searched the discourse and writings of the most respectable veterans; that after an interval of thirty years, forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the naked perfect truth, was more dear and sacred than the memory of her parent. Yet instead of the simplicity of style and narrative which wins our belief, an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays, in every page, the vanity of the female author.
"The genuine character of Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric and apology awakens our jealousy to question the veracity of the historian and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her judicious and important remark that the disorders of the times were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that every calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated in his reign by the justice of heaven and the vices of his predecessors.... The reader may possibly smile at the lavish praise which his daughter so often bestows on a flying hero; the weakness or prudence of his situation might be mistaken for a want of personal courage; and his political arts are branded by the Latins with the names of deceit and dissimulation...."
The story of the remaining princesses of the Comneni family is merely the mirroring of feminine beauty and frailty; and its sad chronicle goes to show that the Empire was deservedly hastening to its doom because the stamina sufficient to keep it alive was lacking.
John Comnenus was succeeded by his younger son Manuel, a renowned warrior about whose name have gathered many of the romances of chivalry. He was twice married, first to the virtuous Bertha of Germany, and, after her decease, to the beautiful Maria, a French or Latin princess of Antioch. Bertha had a daughter, who was destined for Bela, a Hungarian prince educated at Constantinople under the name of Alexius and looked upon as the heir-apparent. But his rights were set aside when Maria had a son named Alexius, who was in the direct line of male succession. Notwithstanding the virtues of his queens, Manuel, who was so valiant in war, showed himself in peace a licentious voluptuary. "No sooner did he return to Constantinople than he resigned himself to the arts and pleasures of a life of luxury: the expense of his dress, his table and his palace, surpassed the measure of his predecessors, and whole summer days were idly wasted in the delicious isles of the Propontis in the incestuous love of his niece, Theodora."
Manuel had a cousin, Andronicus, who was even more of a voluptuary than he--one whose career as a soldier of fortune and as a heartless roué marks him as the Byzantine Alcibiades. He indulged his favorite passions, love and war, without any regard to divine or human law. His lofty stature, manly strength and beauty, and dare-devil manner were so seductive that three ladies of royal birth fell victims to his charms. His mistresses shared his company with his lawful wife, and divided his affections with a crowd of actresses and dancing girls. He was a partaker of the pleasures, as well as of the perils, of Manuel; and while the emperor lived in public incest with his niece Theodora, Andronicus enjoyed the favors of her sister Eudocia. So enamored was she of her handsome lover, and so shameless in her conduct, that she gloried in the title of his mistress, and accompanied him to his military command in Cilicia. Upon his return, her brothers sought to expiate her infamy in the blood of Andronicus, but, through Eudocia's aid, he eluded his enemy. Proving treacherous, however, to the emperor, he was imprisoned for a long period in a tower of the palace at Constantinople, where his faithful wife shared his imprisonment and assisted him in making his escape.
Andronicus was later given a second command on the Cilician frontier. While here, he made a conquest of the beautiful Philippa, sister of the Empress Maria, and daughter of Raymond of Poitou, the Latin Prince of Antioch. For her sake, he deserted his station and wasted his time in balls and tournaments; and to his love the frail princess sacrificed her innocence, her reputation, and the offer of an advantageous marriage. The Emperor Manuel, however, urged on by his consort, resented this violation of the family honor, and recalled Andronicus from his infamous liaison. The indiscreet princess was left to weep and repent of her folly; and Andronicus, deprived of his post, gathered together a band of adventurers of like spirit and undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. With bold effrontery, he declared himself a champion of the Cross; and his beauty, gallantry, and professions of piety captivated both king and clergy. The Latin King of Jerusalem invested the Byzantine prince with the lordship of Berytus, on the coast of Phoenicia. In his neighborhood there dwelt the young and handsome queen, Theodora,--the daughter of his cousin Isaac, and great-grand-daughter of the Emperor Alexius,--who was widow of Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem. Because of her beauty, her talents, and her prudence, Theodora enjoyed the respect and admiration of all the Latin nobles. Andronicus became deeply enamored of his fair cousin, and she, returning his passion with equal ardor, became the third royal victim of his lust. So debased was the state of society among the Latin Christians--which was the case at Constantinople also--that the cousins carried on their amours with little affectation of secrecy. The Emperor Manuel being again enraged by the disgrace to the family name through the moral fall of another Comneni princess, Andronicus had to flee for his life, and Theodora accompanied him in his flight. She and her two illegitimate children were later captured and sent to Constantinople. Andronicus finally sought forgiveness from the emperor, and such was his charm that he was pardoned; he returned to Constantinople, and soon began the career of intrigue which eventually placed him on the throne.
Upon the death of Manuel, the Empress Maria acted as regent for her son Alexius II., a lad of thirteen. Her prime minister was Alexius Comnenus, a grandson of John II. Maria's beauty and charm of manner gave her considerable power over the young nobility. In the conflicts of the nobles she warmly espoused the cause of her prime minister, and it was believed that a criminal attachment existed between them. The young emperor's sister Maria, with the Cæsar, her husband, attempted to drive the prime minister from power by a popular uprising. In the turmoil and chaos that followed, all eyes turned toward Andronicus. The voluptuary and adventurer responded to the call, and entered the city to be enthroned, alleging that it was his purpose to deliver the young emperor from evil counsellors. Cruelty was now added to his other serious crimes. The Princess Maria and her husband, the Cæsar, were poisoned; the Empress Maria, on a charge of treason, was condemned to death, and strangled; and Alexius II., the legitimate heir to the throne, was deposed and subjected to the same form of death as his unfortunate mother. The tyrant kicked the body of the innocent youth as it lay before him, and addressed it with a sneer: "Thy father was a knave, thy mother a whore, and thyself a fool!"
Owing to debauchery and crime, the family of the Comneni had degenerated. Through the nobility and greatness of its women in an earlier period, it had risen to the height of power; and through the debasement and weakness of its women, it finally fell. Andronicus was the last of the line--the most heinous monster that ever sat on the Byzantine throne. But his career in crime was cut short. The people rose up against the author of so many assassinations. Isaac Angelus, a nobleman, accused of treason, resisted arrest, and fled to Saint Sophia. A mob gathered and took his side against the mercenaries of Andronicus. The tyrant himself was seized and torn to pieces, and the Angeli succeeded the Comneni on the throne of Constantinople.