Chapter XVIII: Emperor and Patriarch

The first act of the new emperor was to hold a council, at which he made a series of appointments to fill the offices of the empire. He dispensed with the elaborate code of etiquette which for centuries had surrounded every act of the Augustus. He took his seat at the council-board as if he were still general holding a council of war among his officers rather than as a ceremonial successor of Justinian and Theophilus. He did not fill up the appointment of parakeimomenos, or grand chamberlain, the office which had made Bringas the real master of the empire; but he created Basil, son of Lecapenus, president of the senate, and practically invested him with chief power. Bardas, his venerable father, whose life had been saved in the revolution, was now created Cæsar, a title revived from an earlier age of the Roman empire. John Tzimisces was confirmed in his office of domestic, or grand marshal of the east. Leo, the brother, was created a magistros and curopalates, or grand marshal of the palace--_i.e._, practically, commander of the imperial body-guard. Bringas was deported to a distant monastery in Asia, where he lived in obscurity for years; but he was not otherwise punished, and was not confined in an actual prison.

Nicephorus then ordered his own household. He refused to use the sacred koitôn, or bedchamber of the emperors. He had his camp-bed placed in a small and simple cabinet adjoining his private office. He bore in public the imperial robes, but beneath them he had the hair-shirt of a penitent. Ever since the tragic death of one as dear to him as life, he had sworn off the use of meat and of wine. His private table was still served as before with the food and drink of a hermit; for he felt himself in his own eyes a monk upon the throne, a humble follower of St. Theodore, one of the soldier-martyrs of the faith. On the first day of his reign he had admitted to audience the prelate Antony, syncellus (or abbot) of the great monastery of St. George of the Stoudion, who came in the name of the patriarch and of the chapter of the Holy Wisdom.

"Most august Basileus," he said, after the formal compliments and statement of his mission, "the venerable patriarch, the abbot Anastasius of Mount Athos, and myself of the Stoudion, have earnestly, but faithfully in our duty to God, resisted your desire to enter our ranks as a monk, for we hold that the safety of this realm requires you to act as its commander in war and as its ruler in peace. The duties of a monk are one; the duties of a sovereign are other. It is impossible to be both monk and king. This palace has been for ages the scene of royal festivities and pomps. The citizens will not endure to be deprived of such holidays and shows; and government of the realm could not be carried on if these things were suddenly suppressed. We churchmen are the first to honor the pious purpose of your Majesty, to show an example of temperance, chastity, and godliness in halls which have long been the scene of frivolity and vice. But the austerities of a hermit do not become a king and are prone to be a subject of mockery and malice. It is ill wearing a hair-shirt beneath the mantle of a Basileus in the golden throne-room. And it is in vain to eat dry bread and drink plain water at a state banquet in the hall of the nineteen couches. Eat, live, sleep with temperance, not with austerity--as a soldier, not as a monk. This magnificent palace has for centuries been the court of an Augusta as well as of an Augustus. It is to be feared that scandals may arise if it be given up entirely to men, to courtiers, to soldiers, and their followers and lackeys."

"Dost thou, indeed, counsel me, holy father, to take to myself the late regent?" asked Nicephorus, with an eagerness that was almost fierce.

"God forbid!" replied the monk, sternly. "She it is whom we fear. It is but five months since she became a widow. And did not her widowhood now forbid such an alliance, her youth and her career make it impious to harbor such a thought. Most august sovereign, we have not offered to your Majesty a suggestion so unworthy of your inviolable name."

"What, then, is your meaning, my father?" asked the Basileus, sternly.

"That the ex-empress, the widow of the late Basileus, must cease to reside in the palace of the unwedded emperor, to whom she is not wife nor sister nor kinswoman."

"And if I choose that she shall remain--being mother to the infant Basileis," asked Nicephorus, proudly, "who will say me nay?"

"The people, who will say that their hero has taken to himself not a queen--but a mistress; the nobles, who will hold that Nicephorus rebelled against his lawful sovereign in order to lie with his wife; and the Church, which will forbid you the holy things as one who sets an example of evil living on the throne of Rome."

And with that the monk left the presence of the sovereign, who stifled his rage, perplexity, and bitterness.

Nicephorus controlled himself sufficiently to commission the monk to repeat the decision of the Church to Theophano in person. He did not dare to brave the chance of such a scandal. Nor did it suit Theophano to risk such an issue. She formally withdrew from the Sacred Palace with all her retinue and officials, and was duly installed in the monastery of Petrion, at the upper end of the Golden Horn, in the quarter now known as that of the Phanar, which was almost a suburb of the capital.

Her widowhood and seclusion did not last long. There had been a passionate scene when the monk had insisted on her leaving the palace, and Theophano rushed to Nicephorus and plied him with tears, blandishments, and entreaties. She fell on his neck and adjured him not to consign her to a life of the cloister. She had saved his life, she had placed him on the throne, she had loved him for years. Her dying husband, she swore, had named his beloved general to be his successor on his throne and in his bed, and to be the guardian of his infant children. As a stranger to the family of Basil, Nicephorus would be tempted and even counselled to put the children away. As their step-father, and husband of their mother, he would be their natural guardian. Finally, in a torrent of tears and passionate appeals, she refused to quit the palace unless Nicephorus swore that he would make her his wife at the earliest time that was possible.

The earliest time came very soon; and the patriarch, however loath, was obliged to perform the ceremony in person. The customary rites were gone through, but somewhat abridged, first, by the dislike of Nicephorus for all forms of display, and then by the fact that Theophano had already been crowned as Augusta, and was only to be formally restored to the high place she had occupied so brilliantly for years. But the litanies and the chants, the blessings of the vestments, the homage of the lords and ladies of the court were by no means curtailed. When the ceremony was complete, Nicephorus advanced as of right and custom to the bema, and was about to pass through the iconostasis, or screen, to prostrate himself before the high altar within the chancel. Such was the right of the emperor alone of laymen--a right which no man could value more profoundly than the imperial hermit himself.

As the emperor attempted to enter within the Holy of Holies there confronted him the patriarch Polyeuctus, with all his clergy, clad in vestments of high office and bearing the sacred emblems of their worship. The venerable patriarch boldly thrust back his sovereign and barred his progress within. Stretching out his right arm, in a voice that rang through the domes of the gorgeous church crowded with courtiers and officials, Polyeuctus cried: "Basileus, whom God has crowned, thou shalt not come within this holy place. If thou dost force a way to the altar, thou wilt incur the greater excommunication from all sacred things. Thou knowest well the canon which imposes a year of penance upon those who enter into a second marriage. To that state of penance thou hast condemned thyself by the act of to-day in marrying the widow of our late king. Not till a year and a day have passed can I suffer thee to enter here or to touch with thy lips the altar of Christ!"

A profound silence fell on the crowded church as the courtiers heard the prelate defy the sovereign in the hour of his pride and glory. Amazement, awe, wrath stirred the assembly. For a full minute the Basileus glared at the priest who had dared to inflict on him a rebuff such as the proud soldier had never in his whole life had to endure. For a short space Nicephorus was speechless. But with a great effort he smothered his wrath and concealed his astonishment. "Priest," he said, firmly, as he stood his ground, "the king, chosen by the Romans, and crowned by God, has the right by virtue of his office to approach the altar. Stand back, I charge thee, ere I order thy arrest as a traitor!"

"Basileus," replied the patriarch, with a shrill but clear-cut voice, as his meagre form seemed to be lighted up with a divine fire within, "there is no king within this holy place but God, whose servant and messenger I am. Advance one step nearer to God's holy altar, and I pronounce against thee full sentence of excommunication from all rites of the Church."

The congregation stood aghast, struck dumb, as courtier faced priest, soldier confronted monk--as loyalty to the hero-king struggled against profound veneration of the sacred rites. But in that age, and with a ruler so deeply imbued with that reverence in its severest form, the issue could not be doubtful. The emperor mastered his passion and submitted with majestic self-control. He slowly took his way back to the palace with a bitterness in his soul that had made him a new man.

While this was going on in the church, Theophano was holding a high court to receive the homage of the ladies of rank. Seated on a golden throne, attended by her eunuchs and dames of honor, the empress was robed in imperial garments of silk damask in diaper pattern adorned with pearls and rubies. On her head was the diadem with the triple rows of pearl pendants; in her hand a jewelled sceptre. Nicephorus sought to assuage the fire that consumed him with the sight of the radiant happiness of his queen; nor would he suffer her day of glory to be clouded by any report of the affront that had been inflicted on himself. With a bitter heart and a gnawing sense of all the humiliations and sacrifices to which his love was too certain to expose him, he suffered himself to be taken through all the ceremonies of the occasion, and the day was ended by a gorgeous banquet of two hundred and forty guests in the famous triclinion, or hall of the nineteen couches. There Augustus and Augusta sat in state beneath the mosaic dome that covered the accubiton, or raised dais of state. Even there, Nicephorus had ordered them to serve him his accustomed supper of oatmeal-cake, rice, and herbs. "Taste this, if you love me," whispered Theophano, bending to her husband with a look that pierced his senses to the very bone, and she pressed on him a rich dish of savory meat. "Pledge me in a cup of Chian wine on this day of our wedlock," she whispered again, as the golden goblet was handed by the imperial cup-bearer. "In token of our love," she murmured. That night Nicephorus ate flesh and drank wine, neither of which he had tasted for many a long year. It was the first step of a new life, the prelude to many another thing. That night he violated all his oaths, and he knew it: for in spite of himself he heard the words ringing in his ears--"The woman gave me to eat, and I did eat."

The woman gave him many more things of which he had small desire and no experience. Theophano insisted on having the new reign inaugurated with an endless succession of festivals, games, shows, gifts, and court ceremonials. Basil, the prime-minister, and Leo, the curopalates, pressed on the emperor in council the need of gratifying the people and nobles by brilliant displays, in order to allay the irritation already arising from the rigid economy in the finances of the empire. On this Nicephorus had insisted with a view to maintaining the vast drain of his eastern army. He toiled day and night with his military staff and his expert officials in organizing the armies of east and west, and in restoring the fleets and arsenals of the Mediterranean, while he suffered the empress and the state functionaries to arrange a series of public festivities.

Day after day the Hippodrome was the scene of shows, each surpassing the last in novelty and splendor. The familiar and furious chariot-races were followed by marvellous displays of acrobats, wrestlers, jugglers, and dancers from India, Nubia, Arabia, or Syria, clad in many-colored robes of Oriental fantasy, with lithe contortionists, rope-dancers, pole-climbers, and various exotic performances which held the people spellbound. Then would be produced displays of horsemanship, first by Cossacks and then by Bedouins, feats of polo, archery, and the Arab game of jerid. Next advanced troops of Russian mimes in shaggy furs, drawn in on native sleighs with characteristic sham fights and uncouth weapons. On another day wild beasts from Asia or Africa were shown to the wondering populace, Bactrian camels, leopards held by chains, giraffes, gazelles, zebras, and even an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a crocodile. At all these shows the new Basileus was forced to preside in state, in costume of ceremony, and seated aloft in the cathisma, whence he solemnly waved his blessing to the people, gave the signal for the race to begin, or awarded the prizes to the charioteers amid the everlasting shouts of the factions: "God bless and give long life to our august Basileus."

The religious ceremonies were assuredly not forgotten; and these Nicephorus performed with far greater willingness and interest. In solemn procession, attended by his palace officers and escorted by bands of priests, choristers, and acolytes, the Basileus visited the great temples of the city, mounted on his milk-white charger in gorgeous caparison of state, riding side by side with the patriarch, mounted on his less martial mule--symbol of the union of State and Church. He made pilgrimage in turn to the cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, to the church of the Apostles, the old burial-place of the emperors, to such famous convents as the Stoudion, or the Pegee, or to the venerated shrines having pictures "not made with hands," and images that were counted to effect miraculous cures. Or, again, he performed, with a faith that his predecessors had too often lacked, some antique function of the imperial ritual, at the season of the birth of Christ, or that of the crucifixion, or such as the ceremonial bath in the holy water of Blachernæ, at the north-western extremity of the capital. But no ceremony, no care of state, no toil of his office, could turn Nicephorus from the Theophano whom he had won for his own by such sacrifices and so many desperate struggles. He lavished on her all she asked--jewels, tapestries, palaces, villas, and domains--imperial splendor and boundless wealth.

The influence of the empress over her husband, and the change of life that was visible in Nicephorus, who from an armed anchorite seemed to be fast adopting the habits of a Byzantine autocrat, caused much searching of heart in the venerable patriarch. On her side, Theophano could never forget, nor suffer her husband to forgive, the deadly stigma which the Church had inflicted on her second marriage.

Polyeuctus and the Basilissa were now open enemies. But a more terrible struggle was at hand. The marriage festivities were still in progress when the court chaplain, Stylianos, hurried to Polyeuctus to inform him that Nicephorus had acted as godfather at the private baptism of the infant son of Romanus and Theophano, at which the chaplain had officiated. The patriarch bounded with exultation. "It is within the prohibited degrees," said the fanatic monk, "for the godfather to marry the mother of his child-in-God." "It is incestuous by the canon of our sixth council, held in the time of Constantine V.," said the patriarch. Polyeuctus hastened to the palace and insisted on an immediate audience with the Basileus. Once admitted, he bearded the king with all the passion of his fanatical faith.

"It is my solemn duty to inform your Majesty that Holy Church declares to be incestuous the marriage you have attempted to contract with the mother of your child-in-God, the infant Basileus. Constantine," said the patriarch, firmly, "thou must put her away forthwith and forever, and do penance for the incestuous union that has been begun in the ignorance of the true facts that the Church had not time to repair."

"Put away her to whom I have been joined by thy own act, by the solemn words--till death do us part? Put away my wife, dost say, venerable patriarch?"

"The canon of the sixth council is precise and conclusive," said Polyeuctus.

"And if I refuse to accept this fantastic rule of spiritual affinity?" asked the Basileus.

"It will be my painful duty towards God to pronounce on your Majesty the most terrible sentence of excommunication known to Holy Church, to forbid you all access to the house of God, to the altar of Christ, to the shrine of His Mother--to deprive you of every rite or privilege of Christian man. Basileus of the Romans, I warn thee, thou wilt be in worse case than the Hagarene and the pagan, who at least have something they believe to be divine that they can adore."

Nicephorus was himself so deeply saturated with reverence for the mysteries, and had so long been accustomed to bow down before the piety of the patriarch, that he mastered his emotion on hearing this tremendous sentence, and desired time to reflect.

"Venerable patriarch of the Mother Church of our empire, withdraw from our presence. We will take counsel on this matter," said the Basileus, with stern dignity and wonderful self-control.

He took no counsel but of his own heart in the storm of passion which shook his soul hour after hour, upon this cruel shock to his pride, his love, and his fear of God. Long he paced the chamber, foaming with rage, like a caged lion. As night fell, he summoned a trusty cubicular and bade him tell the patriarch that the emperor would not part from the empress while breath was in his body. Then he hurried to the harem of the great palace and flung himself into the arms of his beloved wife--that paradise for which he was willing to brave eternal damnation.

The cubicular returned with the formal message from the patriarch that excommunication would be pronounced in full conclave on the following day.

Nicephorus was not the man to give his enemy time to attack. By daybreak he had summoned a council of all the prelates of the distant provinces who had come up to the capital to do homage to the new sovereign, and to them he added leading members of the senate and nobles. The Basileus himself presided; and he demanded a formal response to his question if his marriage, solemnized in church by the patriarch and his chapter, were not an indissoluble union by the laws of God and man, overriding any figment of spiritual affinity contracted by a mere ritual form.

The council, overshadowed as it was by the authority of the autocrat, discussed the question at great length and with prodigious learning. The senators and officials urged the assembly to pronounce in favor of the Basileus; but not a few of the bishops clung to the sacred authority of a formal canon of a general council. This seemed to them imperative, and incapable of any dispensation or avoidance. Nicephorus with difficulty suppressed his impatience, fearing that by the delay the patriarch might anticipate him by a formal sentence. But here a highly ingenious prelate, the bishop of Cæsarea, a compatriot and devoted supporter of the family of Phocas, arose and said:

"August Basileus and venerable prelates of our holy Church, lords, senators, and ministers of state, methinks we are forgetting the date and origin of this canon which is appealed to in order to annul the solemn consecration of marriage between our gracious autocrat and the Augusta. The canon in question was formally promulgated in the reign and by the authority of the ill-omened usurper and enemy of the Church, Constantine, of evil name and infamous memory, as part and parcel of his abominable tyranny and persecution. The canon was decreed as binding on the Church by those heretics and miscreants who attempted to suppress the use of holy images in our worship. Now, it is known to all men that the acts of the iconoclasts, whether sovereigns or patriarchs, have been formally pronounced by Church and by State to be null and void and of no authority or effect. This canon, even if well and lawfully approved by the Church, has never been promulgated by any but a sacrilegious and heretical usurper of the throne of the Romans. And I call on you, reverend fathers in God, and honored lords, to declare that the canon is no bar to the lawful and most religious marriage contracted by their Majesties at the altar of God and in presence of the reverend patriarch himself."

This speech was received with such a tumult of approval and relief by the imperial party in the council, that Nicephorus abruptly declared the proposal of the bishop of Cæsarea to be adopted, and he took care to have it instantly conveyed as a judgment to the patriarch. Polyeuctus was not the man tamely to submit to such an evasion, and he fiercely inveighed against an attempt to set aside a canon which, for two hundred years, had never been directly impugned or set aside. In this contention he was supported by his own chapter of the Holy Wisdom, and a state of indescribable excitement arose in the Church and in the city, as a conflict seemed imminent between the metropolitan, supported by his clergy, and the emperor, supported by the senate and provincial prelates. For a whole day the storm raged round Church and palace, and men feared that the horrible scandals were about to be renewed as in the old days of the image-breakers, when the Church and all those, both clerical and lay, who clung to the patriarch, defied the iconoclast emperors and their court, and endured cruel persecution in defence of their holy and ever-to-be-venerated ikons.

In the midst of this confusion the court chaplain, Stylianos, unwilling to suffer disgrace and exile, and hopeful, perhaps, of future promotion, bethought him that in the ceremony of baptism, which had been hurriedly and privately performed owing to the precarious health of the new-born infant, Nicephorus had simply been present as representing his aged father, Bardas, who was the true sponsor of the infant prince. Nicephorus remembered that such had been the intention, but what passed in the haste of the impromptu ceremony had escaped his memory. And Bardas, when appealed to, called to mind that Romanus, the autocrat, had sent him a summons to attend the ceremony, which his age and infirmities had prevented him from doing at the time. Polyeuctus was persuaded by the prime-minister Basil, by Stylianos the chaplain, and even by the monk Athanasius, to accept this solution of the imbroglio, on condition that Nicephorus himself should swear on the relics of St. Theodore that he had attended the ceremony of baptism as his father's proctor, and that Bardas also should swear on the relics that he had been summoned as real sponsor of the prince. This was done in presence of the patriarch, who, thereupon admitting on sworn testimony that no spiritual affinity, in fact, existed between Nicephorus and Theophano, consented to withhold his terrible ban. With a mind full of foreboding, he recognized the imperial marriage as valid, though nothing could induce his stern and devout nature to relieve the emperor from the penance of being forbidden to enter the holy place of the temple till a year had passed after contracting a second marriage with one who had so lately been the wife of another.

The storm passed, and the open breach between empire and Church was avoided, or, at best, postponed. But Nicephorus to his dying day remembered the public stigma which had been passed on the marriage for which he had sacrificed so much; and the patriarch, with gloomy misgivings, looked forward in pain to the issues of a reign which he had done so much to promote, but which had opened with such sinister omens in the house of God and in the eyes of Holy Church.