Kindle Notes & Highlights
During Justin's reign the empire was invaded on the east by the Persians and on the north by the Avars, a central-Asian people who had moved into the Balkans. The onslaught of the invaders caused the unstable Justin to have a complete mental breakdown, from which he never recovered. The chronicler John of Ephesus reports that in his calmer moments Justin's only amusement was to be pulled around the palace in a toy cart while being serenaded by musicians. But then he would explode in violent rages and attempt to bite his attendants, after which he would try to
hurl himself from the palace windows, which had to be fitted with bars for his protection.
Maurice was sceptical by nature, and this led him to investigate the supposed miracle that occurred each year at the shrine of St Euphemia in Chalcedon on the anniversary of her martyrdom. The incident was recorded thus by the chronicler Theophylact: The miracle was most incredible to those who have not witnessed it. For although the body has lain in the tomb for four hundred years or so already, on the aforesaid day [the anniversary of her martyrdom] the leader of the priestly church of those parts draws up with sponges founts of blood from the dead body … and distributes it to the throngs in
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and the tomb guarded by seals, for such was the counsel of bold disbelief. But when the appointed day had arrived, the seal was tested, the mystery examined, the miracles investigated, and through the miracles she became an indisputable witness to her own power: once again rivers of aromatic blood sprang from the tomb, the mystery gushed with the discharges, sponges were enriched with sacred blood, and the martyrdom multiplied the effluences. And so in this way the martyr educated the emperor's disbelief. But the emperor sent, in return for the gushing forth of blood, an inundation of tears,
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A number of incidents in the Life of St Theodore reveal his power of clairvoyance, as in one that occurred early in his career, after he became abbot of a monastery in Galatia. Theodore had decided that his old communion vessel of marble was no longer adequate, and so he ordered one of his monks to buy a new silver chalice in Constantinople. The chalice bore an imperial stamp attesting that it was made of pure silver, but Theodore had reason to believe that the precious metal had in some way been profaned, and so he sent it back to the shop. When he did so the silversmith admitted that the
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The Senate ordered that Heraclonas have his nose cut off to prevent his return to power – the first instance in Byzantine history of the mutilation known as rhinometia
Towards the end of 695 Justinian was deposed and replaced as emperor by the patrician Leontius. Leontius persuaded his supporters to spare Justinian's life, so instead they slit his tongue and cut off his nose. Justinian – who was thenceforth known as Rhinometos, or ‘the man with the cut-off nose’ – was then confined in the monastery of Dalmatou in Psamathion. He was subsequently
Leontius was himself overthrown and replaced by the admiral Apsimar, who succeeded as Tiberius III. Leontius then had his nose cut off, after which he himself was imprisoned in the monastery of Dalmatou.
Justinian was then acclaimed as emperor, regaining the throne that he had lost ten years before. And rhinokopia was no impediment, for the chronicler Agnellus of Ravenna says that Justinian wore an artificial nose of ‘pure gold’ to hide his mutilation.
Leo's reign saw the beginning of the greatest religious controversy in the history of Byzantium, the Iconoclastic Crisis. The crisis began in 726 when Leo sent his imperial guards to remove the large painting of Christ that hung over
the gateway of the Chalke. This was the most prominent religious painting in the city, and Leo thought that its removal would be an appropriate beginning for his campaign to destroy all of the icons in the empire, for he believed that veneration of these was a form of idolatry.
That unholy emperor came, one dark night, with others of his impious religion, and opening the larnax, took the relic [Euphemia's body] with the coffin in which it was enclosed, substituting some dry bones he had brought with him, and departed. He began by placing the relic in one of the chapels of the palace, where his sisters and daughters were able to
come secretly and honour it with perfumes and incense. Hearing of this that abomination [Leo] threw it into the sea … and the next day held an unholy selention [synod], wagging his tongue against the saint, and saying ‘Go and see yourself the error of those who say the relic of Euphemia is preserved whole, and that myrrh flows from it.’ So they went and found no flesh on the dry bones – the bones he had thrown into the larnax – and cried out in their folly that the cures were all deceptions and frauds, and they destroyed the larnax and the altar with it, and made of the church a dwelling for
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He died on 18 June 741, leaving behind him an empire riven by internal turmoil because of his campaign against icons. Leo's policy of iconoclasm was carried on relentlessly by his son and successor, Constantine V – known to Byzantine chroniclers as Copronymous, or ‘called from dung’, because he had
supposedly defecated while being baptized in Haghia Sophia.
St Andrew was an exorcist, and his aid was sought by a woman who
thought she was possessed by a demon. The woman's husband was an alcoholic, and she tried to cure him by hiring a magician. Her husband was cured by the magician, but then she herself began to have alarming dreams, in which she was pursued by Ethiopians and enormous black dogs, and in another nightmare she saw herself in the Hippodrome embracing the nude male statues there, ‘urged by an impure desire of having intercourse with them’. St Andrew exorcized her demon of desire, and she and her sober husband lived happily ever after.
One of the miracles attributed to St Artemius is his curing of a man suffering from a disease of the testicles. He sent the man to a Cilician bronze-worker in the Chalkoprateia. A comical argument ensued, in which the Cilician struck the poor man in the testicles with his hammer and thereby cured him of his disease.
The Book of the Prefect notes that there were two types of tavern: those in which wine was also sold for consumption off the premises, and those that served as inns. Some of the latter had notorious reputations, being frequented by prostitutes, and in the Life of St Andrew they are referred to as ‘inns of fornication’.
The Life of St Andrew of Crete tells of how he travelled to Constantinople to denounce Constantine for his iconoclasm. As soon as Andrew spoke
in public he was arrested and dragged through the streets of the city in derision, whereupon a demented fisherman stabbed him to death.
Eirene also restored the martyrion of St Euphemia, defiled by Leo III, returning to the shrine those fragments of the saint's remains that had been recovered by the devotees of her cult.
Constantine of Teos writes of Euphemia's remains that ‘a few fragments of the head were restored to the larnax, with some other relics … and are kept there to this day’. Constantine VI had now
But Constantine was eventually persuaded to restore his mother as co-emperor. Eirene then decided to take power into her own hands, and on 15 August 797 she had her bodyguards seize Constantine and imprison him in the Great Palace, where later that same day she had her son blinded. She then sent him and his two daughters to
convent that she had founded on Prinkipo, the largest of the Princes' Isles, where he died soon afterwards. Thus Eirene became sole ruler of the empire, although her unnatural crime profoundly shocked Byzantium, as noted by the chronicler Theophanes: ‘And the sun was darkened during seventeen days, and gave not his light, so that the ships ran off course, and all men said and confess that because the emperor was blinded, the sun had put away his rays.
Charlemagne, who had been crowned as emperor of the West by Pope Leo III in 800, sent envoys to Constantinople with an offer of marriage to Eirene, a dynastic union that would have united the empires of East and West. But shortly after their arrival a palace coup overthrew Eirene, and on 31 October 802 she was replaced by the former minister of finance, who took the throne as Nicephorus I. Eirene was then exiled from Constantinople, never to return. Nicephorus
Michael III is known as ‘the Sot’, for from his youth he spent his time carousing with his favourites, while his mother, Theodora, directed affairs of state as regent.
Do you recall that unbearable and bitter hour when the barbarians' boats came sailing down at you, wafting a breath of cruelty, savagery and murder? When the sea spread out its serene and unruffled surface, granting them gentle and agreeable sailing, while, waxing wild, it stirred against us waves of war? When the boats came past the city showing their crews with swords raised, as if threatening the city with death by the sword? When all hope ebbed away from men, and the city was moored only with recourse to the divine?
Basil was actually of Armenian descent, at least on his father's side. The chronicler Simeon
Magister tells the story of how Basil came to Constantinople as a poor peasant youth. He entered the city at dusk one Sunday, and since he had no place to stay he lay down to sleep outside the monastery of St Diomede near the Golden Gate. The abbot noticed him there and gave him supper and a bed for the night. The next day Basil found work in the palace stables, where his strength and good looks brought him to the attention of the emperor Michael. Michael appointed Basil as his grand chamberlain, and then on 26 May 866 he crowned him as co-emperor. Basil bided his time until the night of 23–24
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Alexander ruled for only thirteen months. His short reign was a disgrace to the empire, beginning when he received the Bulgar ambassadors while drunk, dismissing them with insults, leading Tsar Symeon to make immediate preparations for war. Alexander staggered from one alcoholic
orgy to another, putting on pagan processions
in public in mockery of the divine liturgy, until he finally collapsed during a drunken polo match, dying...
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Basil's reign was troubled by two revolts led by Bardas Sclerus, brother-in-law of the late emperor John I Tzimisces, the first in 979 and the second in 986–9, both of which were put down. Basil was aided in the second of these struggles by Prince Vladimir of Kiev, to whom he gave his sister Anna in marriage, thus establishing the first dynastic links between Byzantium and Russia. Vladimir sent a fleet to Constantinople early in 989 with a force of 8,000 Varangarians, Russianized Norsemen who afterwards formed the emperor's bodyguard. The Varangarian guard continued in existence until the late
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Basil blinded all of his captives except for one in each hundred,
that they could lead their comrades home. The long line of mutilated Bulgars finally reached the camp of Samuel, who was so shocked by the sight that he dropped dead of apoplexy. Nevertheless the Bulgars fought on for another four years before they surrendered. Thenceforth Basil was known as Bulgaroctonus, the Bulgar-Slayer.
Soon afterwards Romanus became ill, and when taking a therapeutic swim in the palace baths he drowned,
Psellus similarly mocked the superstitious clergy, but he was fascinated by a saint-fool named Elias, who, according to Michael Angold, ‘seems to have had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Constantinople's low life. He was just as much at home in a brothel as he was in a monastery, by
day giving himself to God and by night sharing himself with Satan. He was quite original, worshipping God and Mammon equally.’
During the last year of Constantine's reign a serious dispute arose between Pope Leo IX and the patriarch Michael Cerularius. The dispute reached its climax in Haghia Sophia during an afternoon service on Saturday 16 July 1054, when Cardinal Humbert, one of three papal legates, strode down the main aisle and placed a scroll on the high altar, a formal bull of excommunication against Cerularius and his supporters. Soon afterwards Cerularius convened a synod which excommunicated the three papal legates, causing a schism between the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches that continues to the
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It seems that Rüstem's enemies had tried to prevent him from marrying the princess by spreading the rumour that he had leprosy. But when the palace doctors examined Rüstem they discovered that he was infested with lice, whereupon they declared that he was not leprous, for accepted medical belief had it that lice never inhabit lepers. Thus Rüstem was allowed to marry Mihrimah, acquiring his nickname from the old Turkish proverb that ‘When
man has his luck in place even a louse can bring him good fortune.’
Meanwhile Süleyman's body was secretly embalmed, after which he was dressed in his imperial robes and set up in the grand vezir's tent as if still alive. Mehmet Pasha forged the imperial signature on the documents that continued to be issued in Süleyman's name
According to Cantemir, during the last months of Murat's life his alcoholism turned him into a homicidal maniac:
