CHAPTER II. GREEK EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE UNDER THE SECT. I.-MICHAEL VIII., A.D. 1261-1282. CONSERVATIVE SPIRIT IN WHICH THE EASTERN EMPIRE WAS RESTORED MICHAEL'S ENTRY INTO CONSTANTINOPLE-DECLINE OF CONSTANTINOPLE -ADMINISTRATION OF MICHAEL VIII.—ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GENOESE IN THE GREEK EMPIRE-TREATIES WITH VENICE-DEPOSITION OF JOHN IV.-EXCOMMUNICATION OF MICHAEL - POPULAR DISCONTENT-DECLINE OF THE GREEK POPULATION-FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE OTHOMAN TURKS -RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF GREEK INFLUENCE IN THE PELOPONNESUS TREATY OF VITERBO-WAR IN THESSALY-TREATY OF ORVIETTO - AFFAIRS OF BULGARIA-STATE OF THE GREEK CHURCH UNION OF THE GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES-DEATH OF MICHAEL VIII. THE conquest of Constantinople restored the Greeks to a dominant position in the East; but the national character of the people, the political constitution of the imperial government, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the orthodox church, were all equally destitute of the enlightened theory and energetic practice necessary for advancing in a career of improvement. The Greek nation made no use of this favourable crisis in its history for developing its material resources, augmenting its moral influence, and increasing its wealth and population. The first idea of the emperor, of the people, of the government, and of the clergy, was to constitute the new Greek empire of Constantinople on the old standard of that Roman legislation and political ortho BOOK IV. doxy which had perished when the Crusaders destroyed CH. 11. § 1. the Byzantine empire. This vain attempt to inspire dead forms with life, impressed on the Greek empire of Constantinople the marks of premature decrepitude. The Emperor Michael, the imperial court, the orthodox church, and the Greek nation, suddenly assume the characteristics of a torpid and stubborn old age; and the history of the empire takes the monotonous type which it retained for nearly two centuries, until the Othoman Turks put an end to its existence. There is little interest, but there is much instruction, in the records of this torpid society, which, while it was visibly declining to the eyes of others, boasted that its wisdom and experience had brought its political government, its civil laws, and its ecclesiastical dogmas, to a state of perfection. Conservatism is constantly deluding the minds of political philosophers with the hope of giving a permanent duration to some cherished virtue in society. It becomes frequently a disease of statesmen in long-established despotisms. The condition of mankind in China and Hindostan has been influenced for many centuries by this delusion of the human mind; and in the first page of this work it was observed that the institutions of imperial Rome displayed the same tendency to fix society in immutable forms and classes by legislative enactments. The same idea now per vaded not only the government and the church of the Greek empire, but was also transfused into the national mind. History offers no other example of a people possessing a rich and noble literature, imbued with sentiments of liberty and truth, turning a deaf ear to the voice of reason, sacrificing all independence of thought, and all desire of improvement, to the maintenance of national pride. The causes of this strange phenomenon appear to have been partly religious bigotry, and partly a wish to maintain political union among the Greek race. The Greeks hated the Catholics with a fervour which obscured their intellectual vision; and they were justly alarmed at the danger which their nation incurred, both from its geographical location and from the power of its enemies, of being broken up into a number of dependent and insignificant states. The opinion that this evil could be averted by the principle of conservatism was generally embraced; and every existing relic of a state of things which had long passed away was carefully preserved. The Greeks gloried in the name of Romans; they clung to the forms of the imperial government without its military power; they retained the Roman code without the systematic administration of justice, and prided themselves on the orthodoxy of a church in which the clergy were deprived of all ecclesiastical independence, and lived in a state of vassalage to the imperial court. Such a society could only wither, though it might wither slowly. On the other hand, it may perhaps be doubtful whether the state of society would have enabled the Greek nation to revive its national energy, and secure to itself a dominant position in the East, by reforming its central administration according to the actual exigencies of the present, instead of modelling it on theories of the past. The progress of the people required that the system of municipal institutions should be ameliorated and extended, in order to avert the tendency of local interests to produce political separation. But, above all things, it was necessary that the Greeks should voluntarily concede to their own countrymen that religious liberty which the Genoese and the Turks were compelled, by the force of circumstances, to grant to strangers, and allow the Greek Catholics to worship according to their own forms, and to build churches for themselves. To increase the national wealth, it was necessary that com A. D. 1261-1282. CH. II. § 1. BOOK IV. mercial freedom should be secured to native merchants, and that the imperial government and the city of Constantinople should be deprived of the power of selling monopolies, or granting exclusive privileges of trade to the Italian republics, in order to purchase political and military assistance. To do all this would have been extremely difficult, for many interests and prejudices would have opposed the necessary reforms. Michael Paleologos was encamped at Meteorion with the troops he had assembled to form the siege of Constantinople, when a report reached him in the dead of night that the city was taken. At daybreak a courier arrived from Strategopoulos, bringing the ensigns of the imperial dignity, which Baldwin had abandoned in his precipitate retreat.1 Michael now felt that he was really emperor of the Greeks, and he marched to take possession of the ancient capital of the Christian world with no ordinary hopes; but Byzantine formalism and Greek vanity required so much preparation for every court ceremony that the emperor's entrance into Constantinople did not take place until the 15th of August. The Archbishop of Cyzicus, bearing one of the pictures of the Virgin said to have been painted by St Luke, of which the orthodox pretend to possess several originals, passed first through the Golden Gate. emperor followed, clad in a simple dress, and followed by a long procession on foot. After visiting the monastery of Studium, the train proceeded to the palace of Bukoleon, for that of Blachern had been left by the Franks in such a state of filth and dilapidation as to be scarcely habitable. At the great palace the emperor mounted his horse and rode in the usual state to the Church of St Sophia, to perform his devotions in that venerated temple of the Greeks. Alexis Strategopoulos The 1 Acropolita, 101, says that Michael VIII. had marched as far as Achyraos before he received the regalia of Baldwin. was subsequently permitted to make a triumphal procession through the city, like a Roman conqueror of old; and Michael determined to repeat the ceremony of his own coronation in the capital of what was still called the Roman Empire, at the central shrine of orthodox piety. The Patriarch Arsenios had been removed from office for opposing his usurpation. His successor soon died, and he was now replaced at the head of the church, for his deposition was generally regarded as illegal, and Michael VIII. feared to commence his reign in Constantinople by creating a schism in the Greek church. The well-intentioned but weak-minded Arsenios was persuaded to repeat the ceremony of Michael's coronation in the Church of St Sophia, while the lawful emperor, John IV., was left forgotten and neglected at Nicæa. Constantinople had fallen greatly in wealth and splendour under the feudal government of the Latins ; and it was not destined to recover its former population and rank as the empress of Christian cities under the sway of the family of Paleologos. The capital of the Greek empire was a very different city from the capital of the Byzantine empire. The Crusaders and Venetians had destroyed as well as plundered the ancient Constantinople; and the Greek city of the Paleologoi declined so much that it could hardly bear comparison with Genoa and Venice.1 Before its conquest by the Crusaders, Constantinople had astonished strangers by the splendour of its numerous palaces, monasteries, churches, and hospitals, which had been constructed 1 Ducange, Hist. de Constantinople, 161. See the description which Nicephorus Gregoras gives of the destruction of buildings caused by selling marble and architectural ornaments to the Genoese. Livre xxxvii., Texte Gre complet, donné pour la première fois, traduction Français; Notes philologiques et historiques, par V. Parisot : Paris, 1851, page 28. Phrantzes describes Venice, on the authority of the Despot Demetrios Paleologos, as a richly adorned city, and a second land of promise, of which the Psalmist must have spoken in the words, "The Lord hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods."-Page 185, ed. Bonn. 2 E VOL. II. A. D. 1261-1282. |