Byzantium
Lord Norwich knows how to write for a popular audience: Although he denies any claim to academic rigor, one must note that after two well-received books on the Normans in Sicily, studies of Mount Athos and Venice, and the first volume of this projected trilogy, he is well-acquainted with the primary sources and the scholarly studies of Byzantine history.
The Byzantine Empire was under great pressure in 800, the year Charlemagne was crowned in Rome as
(Holy) Roman Emperor. The empress, Irene, faced a dangerous rival in the Bulgarian monarch and the Arab
Caliph, and her unhappy subjects hated her reverence for icons. Moreover, as a woman, she could not be
envisioned as a military leader no matter how brutally she treated her enemies and even her own family.
When Nicephorus came to the throne in 802, he chose to reduce the number of enemies by accepting
Charlemagne as an equal ruler, but his subsequent successes against the Bulgars ended in military disaster in
811.
The following decades were filled with invasions, plots, and coups. These were nevertheless great years for
the Greek Church: The Patriarch Photius warded off the threatened papal domination, while the missionaries
Cyril and Methodius spread Christianity into the Slavic lands to the north. When Boris II (“the
Bulgar-killer”) became emperor in 976, the tide turned; the flawless organization of Boris’ army and his
skillful diplomacy made Byzantium once again the dominant power of the near east.
Unfortunately, the long-frustrated sexual passion of Boris’ heir, Zoe, brought to the throne a series of men so
hopelessly incompetent that one still has to marvel that the state survived: One of their consistent policies was
to rule through a bureaucracy of intellectuals who hated and disdained the army.
In 1054 the Great Schism occurred. Henceforth until 1966 Rome and Constantinople considered one
another’s beliefs suspect, if not actually heretical. When the empire’s decline became apparent to everyone,
the jackals attacked on every flank. Now that an effective army was needed, it could not be re-created
instantly. In 1071 the Byzantines suffered a devastating defeat at Manzikert at the hands of the Seljuk Turks.
Although the Byzantines were given two years to reestablish themselves in their central provinces, now the
heart of modern Turkey, they did not. After seventeen decades of successful struggle, Byzantium had a failure
of will. The new emperor, giving up hope, called for rescue from the West. The crusaders were soon on their
way.
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