Chapter XXVIII: Basileus in Council

Nicephorus was seated in his privy cabinet of the palace at Constantinople with his judges and officers of the law, for he felt the internal state of the empire to be as vital as was the defeat of its enemies on the frontier. He was in council with Simon, patrician and chief secretary of state, Eustathius Romanus, another patrician, chief-justice, and two professors from the Faculty of Law.

"My learned lords," said the Basileus, "I hope that we may now finally pass the new law that we have in draft on 'Gifts to monasteries, hospitals, and infirmaries in the Roman empire.' We have called you to advise if the 'Novel,' as we propose to issue it, will fully carry out our imperial design. We find the whole realm to be undermined by the inordinate extent to which monastic institutions have swollen. Multitudes who ought to serve God and this kingdom in arms and in useful service drone away their lives in monkish indolence. The very existence of this Christian land is in peril, surrounded as it is by enemies of Christ, Hagarenes, heathens, heretics, and barbarians, while day by day our people crowd into the sloth of convents, hermitages, and hospitals for old and infirm. And the wealth that should go into the exchequer of our state is locked up in these unprofitable houses of refuge for the cowards and the idlers of our people. My lords, I am resolved to mend it--or to end it."

"Sire," said Lord Simon, the secretary of state, "the 'Novel' that we now submit to your imperial wisdom, to be added to the code of your predecessors on the throne, has been carefully drafted so as to prohibit the foundation of any new monastic or charitable corporation, while fully guaranteeing the maintenance of all foundations already existing. We conceive it to be no part of the purpose of your Majesty to suppress the pious foundations of the past or to confiscate the estates which have been dedicated in law to any religious uses."

"God forbid that I should lay sacrilegious hands on that which is dedicated to God and to the saints. Would that I could recall some of the follies and the errors of past years; but we will curb this disease in the future. Monkery is becoming the dry-rot of our Rome. Stout fellows who should bear arms in the ranks flock into these refuges for the ne'er-do-weels, and half the land of our empire is withdrawn from its due cultivation and its due quota of taxation."

"It will be no part of your imperial will to restrict the alienation in mortmain of estates for the support of old-established religious houses?" said Simon, the protosecretis.

"This must be strictly limited to the restoration of houses which have fallen into decay," replied the Basileus.

"And will this apply to pious gifts to the use of bishoprics and metropolitan sees?" asked the chief-justice.

"Assuredly," replied Nicephorus, with decision; "there are already too many. They are too rich, too luxurious, and too useless. Our realm gets no good from them. There shall be no more founded while I bear rule in Rome."

"And as to the cells and hermitages of solitary recluses, your Majesty will not interfere with them?" asked Simon, with some anxiety.

"Not with true and genuine cells," said Nicephorus, somewhat doubting, "not if the man honestly seeks to live a godly life in prayer--alone, and forever. The prayers of such avail us much. The blessed Elijah went into the wilderness, and when he lay down to die under a juniper-tree he was visited by an angel and was fed by ravens. And so John, the forerunner of Christ, went into the wilderness, and his meat was locusts and wild honey. And Christ Himself withdrew into the desert, fasting forty days and forty nights. Such a life is holy, and may purge the dross out of our people. Would that I, too, myself had been suffered to end my days in such wise. No, my lords, we approve of a true and sincere hermitage, of these cells and lauras, as they name them, so that they be solitary and in desert places, in rocks and mountains, far from men. So that no cell be set up anew on habitable and cultivated ground--this we sanction and approve with our imperial blessing."

And now Basil, the prime-minister, craved an audience, and was admitted to the council.

"Sire," he began, "we shall have very serious opposition to meet from the churchmen, especially from the regular orders, in all forms. There is already within the palace a body of monks and prelates, led by the great abbot of the Stoudion, who have got tidings of the new imperial 'Novel,' and loudly demand to be heard. We shall have trouble, indeed, if we have this tribe against us."

"Bring them in," said Nicephorus, proudly; "we will meet them face to face. The Basileus will not be driven from his purpose by a whole army of these men of God."

Presently the deputation of the monasteries was ushered in, and Anthony, the syncellus of St. George of the Stoudion, spoke in their name in no measured terms.

He said that the whole world of those holy men who wear the mitre and the cowl were alarmed at rumors of the new legislation proposed. They could not believe that their most pious and devout Basileus designed to discourage the religious life of the capital and the realm. Nor could he be purposed to annul the gifts of good men and good women, who sought to save their souls by devoting their substance to God.

"Most venerable abbot, and you, right reverend prelates and fathers in the Lord," said Nicephorus, with a quiet smile, "it will not be believed by any man of sense that we, the Basileus Augustus, by the grace of God, intend aught of wrong against Holy Church and its consecrated ministers. It is known to all men how, after the recovery of Crete from the children of Hagar, we ourselves dedicated a large share of the gold spoil to pious uses. Have we not vastly added to the venerable monastery of Mount Athos, and made it the central sanctuary of our realm? Have we not adorned its church with trophies of bronze and of marble? Have we not presented it with those priceless and adorable relics--a fragment of the Cross of Calvary and the head of St. Basil, of miraculous power?"

"It is known to all men, sire," said the abbot, pertinaciously, "and it will be counted to your Majesty at the judgment-seat of God. But the report runs that, forsaking such excellent examples in the past, your council have prepared an edict whereby those pious men and women who have been blessed by the Almighty with the wealth of this world are to be restrained from dedicating it to His service for the salvation of their souls, even in the hour of their death."

"Let them dedicate themselves to His service in life," said Nicephorus, passionately, "and not withdraw their estates from the service of the state when they can enjoy them no more. We intend not to hurt or to restrain any existing house of religion or of charity. On the contrary, we provide for the restoration and repair of those which are decayed. But we will suffer none to be founded anew. There are enough of them as it stands--monasteries, hospitals, chapelries, and bishoprics. They are rich enough and free enough in all conscience."

"Sire, there can never be enough of man's substance reserved to God and His blessed ones above," broke in the abbot, solemnly and even rudely; "there can never be enough of holy men and holy women whose lives are passed in prayer and praise."

"Prayer and praise, I warrant," the Basileus broke out, as if he were in his camp--"prayer for alms and praise of good eating, perhaps! The streets of our capital swarm with these befrocked and shaven idlers. Every village is beset with them. Every hill-side is honeycombed with their chantries and their retreats. We want men, not drones. We want men who can fight as well as pray, or one day these temples of our God may be turned into the mosques of the False Prophet."

"We come to implore your grace to put no bonds upon those who offer their gifts to God," said the abbot, stoutly.

"These monasteries and infirmaries, these hermitages and convents, are surfeited with wealth," the Basileus retorted, with passion. "Has not the Word of God warned us that a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven? Know ye not that Scripture--'Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on! Behold the fowls of the air. Consider the lilies of the field.' And, when Christ sent forth His blessed apostles, did He not charge them 'to take no thought for the morrow and to provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in their purses, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staves.' And now, the successors of the apostles fare sumptuously every day, and are clothed in purple and fine linen."

And now Nicephorus, giving rein to his indignation and wrath, poured out a vehement homily, as if he were himself an ascetic preacher in church. "It is sheer lunacy--this lust of good things; this insatiable craving is madness; as the Psalmist saith, 'They are altogether lighter than vanity'! They add field to field, grand mansions, stables full of horses, cattle, camels, mules, and beasts without number. These monks, these hermits, and servants of the Most High give all their care to these worldly things in defiance of the plain Word of God. The blessed apostle labored with his hands, and those with him, and doth he not say, 'We wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you.' Was not this also the way of life of the blessed fathers of the Church, and of those who first taught the Gospel in Palestine and in Egypt, and in many places of the earth? They were shining and burning lights to witness to the faith, living lives so free from earth's dross that they seemed to be of the substance of angels more than of men. Hath not our blessed Lord said, 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it'? And on all sides to-day we see crowds of these men of God who enter in at the broad gate that leadeth to destruction. But ye of the monasteries which cover our realm, 'ye lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth. Where your treasure is, there is your heart also'!"

The crowd of portly prelates, obsequious monks, and mendicant hermits retired abashed and cringing before this tempest of imperial disdain. But the stern abbot of the Stoudion made a haughty obeisance and retired with a bitter scowl. He knew himself to have authority with the people, now at least equal to that of the Basileus; and he was in close alliance with the faction of the Basilissa and in secret conspiracy with Theophano herself.

The politic prime-minister had listened to the outburst of Nicephorus with no small anxiety and surprise. He took occasion to warn his master of the power of the monastic orders and their ill-will towards any repressive legislation. And he had fully tracked their machinations with the superstitious populace and their concert with the empress and her friends at the court and in the capital. He implored the sovereign to moderate the new edict. He pressed him to remember how the people and the Church had defied and overborne the greatest of the Iconoclast emperors in times gone by.

"Ay, well I know that they will bear me ill-will, and bitterly resent my act. Do I seek to please men or to please God? as the blessed St. Paul saith. I am the servant of Christ. And of this I am sure, that, whatever may be said by these pampered men of the cloister, the wise and righteous will acknowledge that our purpose is most salutary to all true servants of the Lord as well as to the well-being of this our realm. No more of this. My Lord Simon, you are charged to publish this edict forthwith, to bear title as the 'First Novel of our Reign."

Thereupon Nicephorus turned to consider draughts of the other new edicts, referring to the tenure of fiefs by soldiers and by feudal chiefs. His whole mind was bent on founding a great and standing military order, which should hold lands in perpetuity under condition of service in arms. Basil, as Chancellor of Requests and Petitions, was charged with this "Novel," whereby it was forbidden to a rich proprietor to purchase a military fief, and by a third it was decreed that a military fief, abandoned for three years by its tenant, should revert to the general body of military tenures, and not fall into private hands. By a fourth "Novel" it was ordered that the estates of great proprietors should not be broken up, but remain in perpetuity estates of magnates. And, similarly, small farms could be acquired only by yeomen. The whole legislative scheme was a rude and ineffectual effort to erect a system of graduated feudal tenures, and to found a permanent order of settled warriors holding lands of the empire on the tenure of defending it in arms.

And now Nicephorus turned to a scheme which he had even more at heart, but where no imperial edict without the sanction of the Church could avail. The dearest wish of his heart had long been to obtain from the patriarch the right to promise the honor of martyrdom for Christian soldiers who might fall in the holy war with the infidel. Polyeuctus was now the enemy rather than the friend or the counsellor of Nicephorus, and the emperor had solicited the help of Athanasius of Mount Athos to achieve his end. The council and the legists were dismissed and the monk was admitted in private audience.

"Venerable father in God," said the Basileus, humbly saluting his spiritual director as if he were nothing but a penitent in confession, "you who have known Nicephorus all these years as a simple soldier of Christ, you who have so often seen his whole heart and soul laid bare to your sight as to that of God himself--you know how real is my reverence for Holy Church and its true sons, how deep is my resolve to defend the faith to the end. It is menaced with ruin, and, in spite of all our efforts to save it, the cross will one day fall before the False Prophet if we cannot find some new spirit to fire the hearts of our Roman soldiers in the fight. They are brave enough, stouter men than these Hagarenes, and their hearts are in the cause; but there is one thing they lack--one thing that these sons of Ishmael have--one thing which makes them men impossible to beat. These infidels glory in their death. To them to die in battle is to triumph and to be blessed for evermore. The false promises of the False Prophet so delude them that they rejoice with their last gasp that they are passing into paradise, and with their dying eyes they see the houris of their foul dreams waiting to escort them to the presence of God. I tell you, my father, I have seen these unbelievers on a hundred battle-fields die smiling with joy, as men smile who have won the prize in the chariot-race, or as martyrs smile when they see Christ in the sky above the scaffold, saying to them, 'Come, ye blessed of the Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.' Our men will face death, but they do not glory in death, seek for death, long for death as a priceless glory and certain heaven. If Holy Church awarded them the palm of martyrdom, they would be consumed with such fire that they would sweep the Hagarenes back into their desert. Verily, they are martyrs--they witness to the eternal Word of Christ."

"Sire," replied the monk, his worn and cadaverous form in strange contrast with the massive frame of the Basileus, "I have held long interviews with the venerable Patriarch, and I find him inexorable and in bitter opposition to your schemes of reform, and especially to this."

"Go back to his holiness and press him to consider the imminent peril of our empire and our faith."

"He will never yield. He has made it a matter of faith, of respect for the sacred ordinances of our Church. The canons of St. Basil exclude from the sacraments during three years those who have shed blood."

"What! those who die fighting for Christ in defence of His people and of His consecrated altars and fanes!"

"It is the law of the Church, which neither sovereign nor prelate can rescind; and the law of God's Church in council pronounced is the law of God," said the monk, sadly, but with invincible tenacity.

"But this is to sacrifice the people of God to the decrees of men. Truly, as the apostle saith, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive.' The patriarch has entered into the conspiracy against me; and I know that it is fomented even within this very palace. My enemies and traitors are here. But I will not suffer them to make it the secret haunt of their designs. The prime mover of these deeds is about to be removed."

"My son, what dost thou mean? Hast thou committed thyself to any attempt against the life or the liberty of the Basilissa? Beware, O King; it is a terrible path thou art about to tread!"

"My father, at midnight this day Theophano will be taken in her chamber and silently removed to the royal villa at Prote. No harm or indignity will befall her. She will be attended as a Basilissa in retreat, with ample retinue--but a sure guard. She will no longer countermine my government nor plot against my honor and my life. She or I must succumb in this long strife. I am necessary yet awhile to Rome and this cause, or I would rejoice to be her victim. Her victim I may yet be. I will not be her plaything or her tool. No! nor shall she be my dishonor!"

"Nicephorus, my son in God," said the monk, sternly, "thou art treading the path that leadeth to destruction. It was foul sin when thou didst defy the ordinances of Holy Church to wed the relict of our late Basileus. Thy abominable sin hath found thee out, and now thou art rushing into fresh sin in seeking to put her away. What cause hath she given thee, what that thou didst not know--or shouldst have known--when thou hadst her to wife?"

"Father, I say to thee, even as David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned against the Lord.' But the woman has been seeking to seduce my best comrades and officers, and tempting them to betray me and to dishonor me."

"Has all this been proved before competent judges? Would his holiness the patriarch hold any communion with her if he was certain of her guilt? What proof have you of her offences and, especially, of the sin of infidelity to her husband?"

"I can obtain no such proof as would convince the patriarch, who still holds her undefiled, and even seeks her aid in resisting my ordinances as to the Church and my soldiers."

"Whom has she seduced?" said the monk, imperatively.

"She seized and then tempted my best-beloved friend and comrade whom I now mourn as my brother, and then she sought to cast her spell on my chief general, with whom I suspect she is plotting against my throne--ay, and I suspect against my life."

"Is this more than suspicion and the fear which ever haunts this palace? Is not this more truly, my son of sorrow, a sinful love turning into suspicious hate? What proof hast thou of open crime?"

"Speak not of hate, my father, for all her offences and treacheries have not yet utterly burned out my love. For the sake of Rome and of this cause, and the people of Christ, I must live and rule, and to live and to rule I must put her away. But it is agony even now, my father, to part from her. I would die rather than do harm to a single hair of her head. But she must depart from out this house, from out this city, lest she ruin more men whom this empire needs in the present sore straits."

"She must not depart from this place, nor be cast out from your throne. Part from the bed that it was sin and folly to have entered; but touch not her imperial rights. Rome has ever suffered when the house of its rulers has been rent in twain. Remember the dark history of this palace and its dynasties, and all the deeds of shame and horror which were done of old when husband drove out wife, and wife conspired against husband, when mother deposed her son, and son rose against father, and brother murdered brother. Remember what was done by an Irene, a Eudocia, a Theodora, a Michael, a Justin, and a Theophilus. Begin not a new tragedy in this house, of which the very walls bear witness to deeds of cruelty, passion, and sin. To throw into prison the widow of Romanus would divide this realm into factions, and would renew the household feuds and horrors which have ceased now for fifty years. And these children, the young Basilei, who must in a few years reign here, how shall they be reared while their mother is a prisoner?--how will they bear with him who cast her into prison?"

"I am the victim of a cruel alternative, my father, but I am ready to die for this cause. If she has her way, she will ruin it, and, most assuredly, she will work that ruin by my death."

"Then die, if it be the will of God, but sin not--or sin no more. Add not cruelty, revenge, and oppression to lust and folly. Leave to this woman her undoubted rights as empress, as mother of our emperors, as your own wife. Live your own life apart from her as you choose; but, if you make her your prisoner, the object of your enmity and anger, the whole force of Mother Church shall be directed to restrain your violence and to defend your victim."

"And the Church condemns me to death and makes me the victim," said Nicephorus, sadly and with resignation.

"If you do not yield to its summons," replied the monk, with imperious tone, "the Church will expel you from its offices, refuse you its absolution, and abandon you to the spirits of evil to die unforgiven in your sins. Choose, Nicephorus, between your passion and the safety of your soul."

With this terrible word, which was cruel enough to break every spirit of that age, the inexorable confessor left the presence.

And hour after hour the Basileus, with groans and prayers, looked down into the black gulf on the edge of which he felt that he stood.