CHAPTER IX

THE FRANCONIAN, OR SALIAN DYNASTY (1024-1125 A.D.) 630

A national assembly, 631. Conrad II increases his power, 633. Conrad in Italy and Germany, 635. The accession of Henry III, 638. Henry’s efforts for peace, 639. The papacy subordinated to Henry, 640. The truce of God, 644. Sorrows of Henry’s last years, 645. Henry IV, 646. Quarrel between Henry IV and Gregory VII, 648. “Going to Canossa”: a contemporary account, 650. Henry’s struggle to regain power, 653. Henry and Conrad, 654. End of Henry IV, 655. Henry V and the war of investitures, 656.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 660

A SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK

BY JAMES T. SHOTWELL, PH.D.

Of Columbia University

THE TRANSITION TO THE MIDDLE AGES

The fifth century is, in a way, the beginning of the history of Europe. Until the hordes of Goths, Vandals, and Franks came out from the fastnesses beyond the Rhine and Danube and played their part upon the cleared arena of the empire itself, the history of the world was antique. The history of the later empire is still a part of the continuous but shifting history of the Mediterranean peoples. The civilisation which the legions of Constantine protected was not the product of Rome, it was the work of an antiquity which even then stretched farther back, three times farther, than all the distance which separates his time from ours. The empire was all antiquity, fused into a gigantic unit, and protected by the legions drawn from every quarter of the world, from Spain to Syria. As it grew old its roots sank deeper into the past. When it had taken all that Greece had to offer in art and literature, the tongue of Greece gave free access to the philosophy of the orient, and as its pantheon filled with all the gods of the world, its thought became the reflex of that of the Hellenised east. If Rome conquered the ancient world, it was made captive in return. The last pagan god to shine upon the standards of the legions was Mithras, the Sun-god of the Persians, while Isis shared with Jupiter the temple on the Capitol. This world entrenched behind the bulwarks that stretched from Solway to Nineveh, brooding upon its past, was quickened with but one new thought,--and that was an un-Roman one,--the strange, unworldly, Christian faith. The peoples that had become subjects of Rome were now to own a high allegiance to one whom it had condemned as a Jewish criminal; on the verge of its own destruction the empire became Christian. It is the fashion to decry the evil influences of the environment of early Christianity, but it was the best that human history has ever afforded. How would it have fared with Christian doctrine if it had had to do with German barbarians instead of with Greek philosophers, who could fit the new truths into accordance with the teachings of their own antiquity, and Roman administrators who could forge from the molten enthusiasm of the wandering evangelists, the splendid structure of Catholicism. Before the storm burst which was to test the utility of all the antique civilisation, the church was already stronger than its protectors. And so, at the close, the empire stood for two things, antiquity and Christianity.

In structure, too, the government and society were no longer Roman in anything but name. The administration of the empire had become a Persian absolutism, and its society was verging towards oriental caste. If the art, philosophy, and science of the ancients could be preserved only by such conditions, it was well that they should pass away. The empire in ceasing to be Roman had taken up the worst as well as the best of the past, and as it grew respectable under Stoic or Christian teaching, it grew indifferent to the high impulses of patriotism, cold and formal outwardly, wearying inwardly of its burden.

The northern frontiers of this empire did not prove to be an unbroken barrier to the Germans, however, and for two centuries before the sack of Rome, they had been crossing, individually or in tribes, into the peaceful stretches of the civilised world. Their tribal wars at home made all the more alluring the attractions of the empire. For a long time the Roman armies kept these barbarians from anything resembling conquest, but even the vanquished who survived defeat found a home in Roman villas or among the federated troops. The fifth century merely brought to light what had been long preparing, and it took but few invaders to accomplish the final overthrow. The success of these last invasions has imposed an exaggeration of their extent upon historians. They were not true wanderings of nations, but rather incursions of adventurers. The barbarians we call by the name of Goths were a mixture of many nations, while the army of Clovis was hardly more than a single Roman legion. Yet the important fact is that the invasions of the fifth century were successful, and with them the new age begins.

There were two movements which brought about the overthrow of the Roman Empire; one among the barbarians, the other within the empire itself. The Huns were pressing from the east upon the German peoples, whom long civil wars had weakened to such a degree that they must yield or flee. Just as the strength of the Roman frontier was to be tested, whether it could hold back the combined impulsion of Teuton and Hun, the West Goth within the empire struck at its heart. The capture of Rome by Alaric did not end the empire; it does not seem to have created the universal consternation with which we now associate it. Poets and orators still spoke of Rome as the eternal city, and Alaric’s successor, Ataulf, sought the service of that state which he felt unable to destroy. But the sack of Rome was not the worst of the injuries inflicted by Alaric; it was one of the slightest. A disaster had been wrought before he reached the walls of Rome for which all the zeal of Ataulf could not atone. For, so the story runs, Stilicho the last heroic defender of the old empire called in the garrisons from along the frontiers to stay the Gothic advance. The incursions of Alaric within the confines of Italy opened the way to the hesitating but still eager barbarians along the Rhine. The storm bursts at once; the Germans are across the Rhine before Alaric can reach Rome. Instead of their German forests, they have the vineyards of the Moselle and the olive orchards of Aquitaine. The proud nobles in Gaul, unaccustomed to war or peril, can but stand by and watch while their villas lend their plunder to the raiders. After all, the storm,--this one at least,--soon passes. The Suabians and the Vandals cross the Pyrenees and the West Goths come up from Italy, with the varnish of culture upon them, to repress their lawless cousins, and drive them into the fastnesses of Leon or across to Africa. Fifteen years after the invasion, the poet Ausonius is again singing of the vine-clad hills of the Moselle, and their rich vintage. Gaul has been only partly changed. The noble Sidonius Apollinaris dines with the king Theodoric and is genially interested in his Burgundian neighbours who have settled in the eastern part. By the middle of the century, unaided by the shadow emperors in Italy, this mixture of peoples, conscious of the value of their present advantages, unite to defeat the invading Huns at the battle of Châlons. But another and more barbarous people is now taking possession of the North. The Franks are almost as different from the Visigoths as the Iroquois from the Norman Crusaders. Continually recruited from the forests of the lower Rhine, they do not cut themselves off from their ancient home and lose themselves in the midst of civilisation; they first break the Roman state north of the Loire and then crowd down the Visigoths towards Spain. By the year 500 Gaul has become Frankland, and the Franks have become Catholic Christians. Add to these facts the Saxon conquest of England, the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, and the overthrow of the empire in the West, and we have a survey of part of the transformation which the fifth century wrought in Western Europe. With it we enter upon the Middle Ages.

Such is our introduction to the new page of history. Behind us are now the fading glories of old Rome; the antique society is outwardly supplanted by the youthful and untutored vigour of the Teutonic peoples. But the numbers of the invaders is comparatively few and the world they conquered large in extent, and it had been romanising for four hundred years. The antique element still persisted; in the East it retained its sovereignty for another thousand years, in the West it compromised with the Teutonic element in the creation of a Roman Empire on a German basis, which was to last until the day of Napoleon, and in the recognition of the authority of the Roman hierarchy. The Church and the Empire, these two institutions of which we hear most in the Middle Ages, were both of them Roman, but both owed their political exaltation to the German Carolingian kings. It was Boniface the Saxon, that “proconsul of the Papacy,” who bound the Germans to the Roman See; but Pepin lent his strong aid, and Charlemagne doubly sealed the compact.

The coronation of the great king of the Franks as emperor of the Romans forecasts a line of history that was not followed, however, in the way he had in mind. The union of Teuton and Roman, or better, of Teuton and antiquity, was not destined to proceed so simply and so peacefully. Instead of an early revival of the great past, the world went down into the dark age, and was forced to struggle for many centuries slowly upward towards the day when it could again appreciate the antiquity it had forgotten. In other words the Middle Ages intervened to divide the renaissance of Charlemagne from that which culminated in Erasmus. How can we explain this phenomenon? What is its significance? It is essential that we face these questions if we would understand in the slightest the history of Europe. And yet as we examine the phenomenon itself we may find some reconstruction of our own ideas of it will be necessary.

THE MIDDLE AGES

Let us now turn to the Middle Ages. We shall find something of novelty in the act, for in all the world’s history there is no other period which ordinarily excites in us so little interest as this. Looking back across the centuries from the heights of Modern Times, we have been taught to train our eyes upon the far but splendid table-lands of Rome, and to ignore the space that intervenes, as though it were nothing but a dreary blank between the two great epochs of our history. Dark Ages and Middle Ages are to most of us almost synonymous terms,--a thousand years filled with a confusion, with no other sign of life than the clash of battle or the chanting of hymns, a gruesome and unnatural world, dominated by either martial or monastic ideals, and void of almost everything we care for or seek after to-day.

It is strange that such a perspective has persisted so long, when it requires but the slightest analysis of the facts to prove its utter falsity. The merest glance along the centuries reveals the fact that this stretch of a thousand years is no level plain, no monotonous repetition of unprogressive generations, but is varying in character and progressive in all the deeper and more essential elements of civilisation; in short, is as marked by all the signs of evolution as any such sweep of years in all the world’s history. Yet the mistake in perspective was made a long time ago; it is a heritage of the Renaissance. When men looked back from the attainments of the sixteenth century to the ancient world which so fascinated them, they forgot that the very elevation upon which they stood had been built by the patient work of their own ancestors, and that the enlightenment which they had attained, the culture of the Renaissance itself, would have been impossible but for the stern effort of those who had laid the foundations of our society upon Teutonic and Christian basis in the so-called Middle Ages. The error of the men of the Renaissance has passed into history and lived there, clothed with all the rhetoric of the modern literatures, and upheld with all the fire of religious controversy. How could there be anything worth considering in an age that on the one hand was void of a feeling for antique ideas and could not write the periods of Cicero, and on the other hand was dominated by a religious system which has not satisfied all classes of our modern world? But if we condemn the Middle Ages on these grounds, we are turning aside from the up-building of the Europe of to-day, because its æsthetic and religious ideals were not as varied or as radical as ours. And for this we are asked to pass by that brilliant twelfth century which gave us universities, politics, the dawn of science, a high philosophy, civic life, and national consciousness, or the thirteenth century that gave us parliaments. Is there nothing in all this teeming life but the gropings of superstition? It is clear that as we look into it, the error of the Renaissance grows more absurd. Our perspective should rather be that of a long slope of the ascending centuries, rising steadily but slowly from the time of the invasions till the full modern period.

Let us look at the details. The break-up of the Roman world which resulted in the first planting of the modern nations, did not cause that vast calamity which we call the Dark Age. The invasion of the Teutons and the infusion of their vigour into the effete society of southern Europe was not a fatal blow to civilisation. Rude as they were when first they crossed the frontiers of the empire, the German peoples, and especially their leaders, gave promise that almost in their own day whatever was of permanent value in the Roman world should be re-incorporated into the new society. This series of recoveries had to be repeated with every new people, but it finally seemed about to culminate in the wider renaissance of Charlemagne. By the year 800 it looked as though Europe were already on the clear path to modern times. But just as the young Teutonic civilisation reached the light, a second wave of invasion came dashing over it. The Vikings, whom Charlemagne’s aged eyes may have watched stealing past the hills of Calais, not only swept the northern seas, but harried Frankland from the Rhine to the Rhone, until progress was at a standstill and the only thought of the ninth century was that of defence. Then the Hungarians came raiding up the Danube valley, and the Slavs pressed in upon the North. Along the coasts of the Mediterranean the Moorish corsairs were stifling the weak commerce of Italian towns, and landing they attacked such ports as Pisa and even sacked a part of Rome. The nascent civilisation of the Teutons was forced to meet a danger such as would call for all the legions of Augustus. No wonder the weak Caroline kings sank under the burden and the war lords of the different tribes grew stronger as the nerveless state fell defenceless before the second great migration, or maintained but partial safety in the natural strongholds of the land.

In such a situation self-defence became a system. The palisade upon some central hill, the hedge and thicket in the plain, or the ditch in the morass, became the shelter and the centre of life for every neighbourhood that stood in the track of the new barbarians. The owner of the fastness led his neighbours and his tenants to battle; they gave him their labour for his protection, the palisades grew into stone walls and the “little camps” (_castella_) became the feudal castles. Those grim, battlemented towers, that rise up before us out of the dark age, were the signs of hope for the centuries that followed. Society was saved, but it was transformed. The protection of a time of danger became oppression in a time of safety, and the feudal tyranny fastened upon Europe with a strength that cities and kings could only moderate but not destroy.

From the tenth century to the present, however, the history of Europe is that of one continuous evolution, slow, discouraging at times, with many tragedies to record and many humiliations to be lived down. But all in all, no century from that to this has ended without some signal achievement in one line or another, in England, in France, in Italy, or in Germany. By the middle of the tenth century the first unyielding steps had been taken when the Saxon kings of Germany began to build their walled towns along the upper Elbe, and to plant the German colonists along the eastern frontiers, as Rome had long before shielded the northern frontiers of civilisation. By the end of the century the Magyars have settled in the middle Danube, under a king at once Christian and saint, and the greatest king of the Danes is champion of Christendom. In another fifty years the restless Normans are off on their conquests again, but now they carry with them to England and to Italy the invigorating touch of a youthful race who are in the front of their time, and not its enemies.

This new movement of the old Viking stock did good rather than harm in its own day, but it has done immeasurable harm to history. For writers and readers alike have turned at this point from the solid story of progress to follow the banners of these wandering knights, to live in the unreal world of chivalry at the hour when the whole society of Europe was forming itself into the nations of to-day, when the renaissance of commerce was building cities along all the highways of Europe, and the schools were crowded with the students of law and philosophy. From such a broad field of vital interests we are turned aside to follow the trail of some brutal noble who wins useless victories that decide nothing, or besieges cities to no discoverable purpose, and leaves a transient princedom for the spoil of his neighbours. These are the common paths of history through the Middle Ages, and what wonder if they are barren, in the track of such men.

But the age of chivalry was also the age of the universities. Turn from the knight-errant to the wandering scholar if we would find the true key to the age, but still must leave it in the realm of romance. Few have ever guessed that the true Renaissance was not in the Florence of Lorenzo nor the Rome of Nicholas V, but rather in that earlier century when the great jurists of Bologna restored for all future time the code of Justinian. The greatest heritage of Rome was not its literature nor its philosophy, but its law. The best principles that had been evolved in all the ancient world, on justice, the rights of man, and property,--whose security is the basis of all progress,--all these invaluable truths were brought to light again through the revival of the Roman law, and incorporated again by mediæval legists into the structure of society two centuries before the literary Renaissance of the Italian cities. The crowds of students who flocked to Bologna to study law, and who formed their guild or university on so strange a basis, mark the dawn of modern times fully as well as the academy at Florence or the foundation of a Vatican library. Already the science of politics was revived and the problems of government given practical and scientific test.

Then came the gigantic tragedy of the Hundred Years’ War, retarding for more than a century that growth of industry and commerce upon which even the political structure rests. But while English and French alike are laying waste the fairest provinces of France, the University of Paris is able to dictate the policy of the universal church and for a generation to reduce the greatest absolutism of the age, that of the papacy, to the restrictions of parliamentary government. The Council of Constance was in session in the year of the battle of Agincourt. And, meanwhile, there is another development, far more important than the battles of the Black Prince or the marches of Du Guesclin. Commerce thrives along the shores of Italy, and in spite of their countless feuds and petty wars, the cities of Tuscany and Lombardy grow ready for the great artistic awakening. The story of the Middle Ages, like that of our own times, comes less from the camp fire than from the city square. And even there, how much is omitted! The caravans that line the rude bazaar could never reach it but for the suppression of the robbers by the way, largely the work of royalty. The wealth of the people is the opportunity for culture, but without the security of law and order, neither the one nor the other can be attained. In the last analysis, therefore, the protection of society while it developed is the great political theme of the Middle Ages. And now it is time to confess that we have touched upon but one half of that theme. It was not alone feudalism that saved Europe, nor royalty alone that gave it form. Besides the castle there was another asylum of refuge, the church. However loath men have been in recent years to confess it, the mediæval church was a gigantic factor in the preservation and furthering of our civilisation.

The church was the only potent state in Europe for centuries,--an institution vastly different from our idea of it to-day. It was not only the religious monitor and the guardian of the salvation of mankind, it took up the duty of governing when the Roman Empire was gone. It helped to preserve the best things of antiquity; for when the barbarians were led to destroy what was of no use to them, it was the church, as Rashdall says, that widened the sphere of utility. It, more than the sword of Charlemagne tamed the barbarian Germans, and through its codes of penance with punishments almost as severe as the laws of Draco, it curbed the instincts of savagery, and taught our ancestors the ethics of Moses while promising them the salvation of Christ. It assumed much of the administration of justice in a lawless age, gave an inviolate asylum to the persecuted, and took in hand the education of the people. Its monks were not only the pioneer farmers in the fastnesses of the wilderness, but their entertainment of travellers made commerce possible. Its parish church furnished a nursery for democracy in the gatherings at the church door for counsel and deliberation. It opened to the sons of peasants a career that promised equality with the haughtiest seigneur, or even the dictation over kings. There was hardly a detail of daily life which did not come under the cognisance or control of the church,--questions of marriage and legitimacy, wills, oaths, even warfare, came under its surveillance.

But in depicting this wonderful system which so dominated Europe in the early Middle Ages, when kings were but shadows or military dictators over uncertain realms, we must be careful not to give too much of an air of religiosity to the whole Middle Age. The men of the Middle Ages did not all live in a cowl. Symonds in his brilliant history of the Renaissance in Italy likens the whole mediæval attitude to that of St. Bernard, the greatest of its ascetics. St. Bernard would walk by the blue waters of Lake Geneva intent only upon his rosary and prayer. Across the lake gleam the snows of Mont Blanc,--a sight no traveller forgets when once he has seen it; but the saint, with his cowl drawn over his eyes, sees only his own sin and the vision of the last judgment. So, says Symonds, humanity walked along its way, a careful pilgrim unheeding the beauty or delight of the world around. Now this is very striking, but is it true? First of all, the Middle Ages, as ordinarily reckoned, include a stretch of ten centuries. We have already seen how unlike these centuries were, how they differed from each other as much as any centuries before or since. The nineteenth is hardly more different from the eighteenth than the twelfth was different from the eleventh. So much for the universalisation as we go up and down the centuries; it can hardly apply to all. Some gave us the Chansons des Gestes, the _Song of Roland_, the legends of Charlemagne and his paladins. Others gave us the delicious lyrics of the minnesingers and troubadours, of Walter von der Vogelweide and Bertran de Born. And as for their variety, we must again recall that the same century that gave us St. Francis of Assisi--that jongleur of God--and the _Divine Comedy_, gave us also Magna Charta and representative government.

But even if we concede that the monks dominated mediæval society as Symonds paints it, we must not imagine that they were all St. Bernards. Few indeed--the sainted few--were alone able to abstract themselves so completely from this life as to be unconscious of their surroundings. The successive reforms, Clugny, Carthusians, Cistercians, beginning in poverty and ending in wealth and worldly influence, show what sort of men wore the cowl. The monks were not all alike; some were worldly, some were religious, some were scholars, and some were merely indolent. The monastery was a home for the scholar, a refuge for the disconsolate, and an asylum for the disgraced. And a monk might often be a man whose sensibilities, instead of being dull, were more sharply awake than our own to-day. His faith kindled an imagination that brought the next world down into his daily life, and one who is in communion with eternity is an unconscious poet as well as a devotee. Dante’s great poem is just the essence of a thousand years of such visions. Those phases of the Middle Ages farthest removed from our times and our habits of thought are not necessarily sombre. They are gilded with the most alluring light that ever brightened humanity--the hope and vision of immortality.

It has seemed necessary to say this much at least about the ecclesiasticism of the Middle Ages so that we may get a new or at least a more sympathetic point of view as we study its details. Humanity was not in a comatose condition for a thousand years, to wake up one fine day and discover itself again in a Renaissance. Such an idea gives false conceptions of both the Middle Ages and that slow change by which men acquired new interests,--the Renaissance.

What then was the Italian Renaissance? What was its significance and its result? First of all no new birth of the human spirit, as we have been commonly taught, could come after that wonderful twelfth and busy thirteenth centuries. It would sound strange to the wandering jongleur or the vagabond student, whose satirical and jovial songs of the twelfth century we still sing in our student societies, to be told that he had no joy in the world, no insight into its varying moods, no temperament capable of the comprehension of beauty. If any man ever “discovered himself,” surely that keen-witted, freedom-loving scholar, the goliard, was the man, and yet between him and the fall of Constantinople, that commonest date for the Renaissance, there are two hundred years or more. A little study of preceding centuries shows a world brimming with life and great with the promise of modern times. Lawyers were governing in the name of kings; universities were growing in numbers and influence. It has been said, and perhaps it is not far wrong, that there were three great powers in Europe in the Middle Ages--the Church, the Empire, and the University of Paris. And not all the men at the universities of Paris or Oxford or Bologna were busy counting how many angels could dance on the point of a needle, as we are apt to think when we read Lord Bacon’s denunciation of the scholastics. If half of them,--and that is a generous estimate,--were busied over theology, not all that half were examining it for their religious edification. Their interests were scientific. In a way they were scientists,--scientists of the world to come,--not of this transient life. They were analysing theology with about the same attitude of mind as that of the physicist of to-day in spite of all that has been said against their method. When one examines a world which he cannot yet reach, or a providence whose ways are not as the ways of man, he naturally will accept the authority of those whom he believes to be inspired, if he is to make even a little headway into the great unknown. The scholastics stretched the meaning of the word inspired, and accepted authority too easily. But they faced their problem with what seems something like a scientific spirit even if they had not yet attained a scientific method. And I may add in passing that to my mind the greatest tragedy of the human intellect is just here,--in this story of the abused scholastics. Starting out confident that all God’s ways can be comprehended and reduced to definite data, relying in calm security upon the power of the human intellect to comprehend the ways of Divine governance, they were forced point by point, through irreconcilable conclusions and inexplicable points of controversy, to admit that this doctrine and that, this fact and that one, lie outside the realms of reason and must be accepted on faith. Baffled in its vast endeavour to build up a science of things divine the reason of man turned from the task and grappled with the closer problems of the present world. If the work of the scholastics was futile, as so many claim, it was a grand futility that reaches to tragedy. But out of its very futility grew the science of to-day.

And now with all this intellectual activity of which scholasticism is only a part, where did the so-called Renaissance come in? By the year 1300 the problem of the scholastics was finished. In the works of Thomas Aquinas lay codified and systematised the whole positive product of their work. Not until after that was their work empty and frivolous, but when scholasticism turned back upon itself, even the genius of the great Duns Scotus but discovered more and more its futility. Men of culture began to find it distasteful; they did not care to study law,--the other main interest. It was time for a new element in the intellectual realm. The need was no sooner felt than supplied. The study of the antique pagan world afforded scholars and men of leisure the desired change. The discovery of this antique world was not a new process; but the features that had been ignored before, the art and literature of the pagan world, now absorbed all attention. The “humanities” gradually crowded their way into university curricula, especially in Germany and England, and from the sixteenth century to the present day the humanities have been the dominant study at the universities. Looking over the era of the Renaissance, we commonly begin it in the fourteenth century, just where our previous sketch of the other intellectual conditions stopped. The age of Petrarch was its dawn. France and England, where most progress had been made before, were now to be absorbed in the barbarism of international and civil wars; and so the last stage of that long Renaissance which we call the Middle Ages became the task and the glory of Italy.

It may seem at first as if, in exalting the achievements of the Middle Ages, we have undervalued the work of the humanists. It would not be in accord with the attempted scientific judicial attitude which it is now our ambition to attain, if this charge were to be admitted. We must give full credit to the influence of that new knowledge, that new criterion, and especially to that new and healthy criticism which came with the Italian Renaissance. Its work in the world was absolutely necessary if modern society was to take up properly its heritage of all those splendid ages which adorned the Parthenon and made the Forum the centre of the world. All the intellectual energy which had gone into antique society must be made over into our own. But after all, the roots of our society are Teutonic and Christian even more than they are Roman or antique. We must learn to date our modern times not merely from the literary revival which witnessed the recovery of a long-lost pagan past; but from the real and splendid youth of Europe when it grappled with the earnest problems of law and order and put between itself and the Viking days the barriers of the national state,--king and people guarding the highways of the world for the protection of the caravans that made the cities. It is as essential for us to watch those boats that ascended the Rhone and the Rhine, and the merchants whose tents were pitched at the fairs of Champagne, as it is to know who discovered the proper derivation of _agnus_.

BOOK I

THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST

_INTRODUCTION_

THE SCOPE, THE SOURCES, AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF LATER ROMAN HISTORY IN THE EAST

The period upon which we are now entering presents peculiar difficulties for the historian. The body politic under consideration is in some respects unique. Historians are not even agreed as to the name by which it should properly be designated. It is an empire having its capital at Constantinople; an empire not come suddenly into being in the year 395, at which point, for the sake of convenience, we are now taking up this history; but which is in reality nothing more or less than the continuation of that Roman Empire in the East, the affairs of which we left with the death of Theodosius. That emperor, as we have seen, held sway over an undivided Roman commonwealth. On his death the power that he had wielded passed to his two sons, one of whom nominally held sway in the East, the other in the West. The affairs of the Western division of the empire under Honorius and his successors have claimed our attention up to the time of the final overthrow of Rome in the year 476. We are now returning to follow the fortunes of Arcadius, the other heir of Theodosius, and his successors.

But whether this Eastern principality should properly be spoken of as the Later Roman Empire, or as the Eastern, Byzantine, or Greek Empire, is, as has been suggested, a moot point among historians. The difficulty is perhaps met to the best advantage if we disregard the controversial aspects of the question and make free use of each and all of these names; indeed, in so doing, convenience joins hands with logicality. The empire of Arcadius and his immediate successors was certainly entitled to be called the Roman Empire quite as fully as, for example, were the dominions of Diocletian and Constantine. There was no sudden breach of continuity, no thought of entrance upon a new epoch with the accession of Arcadius. It was no new thing that power was divided, and that there should be two capitals, one in the East and one in the West. On the contrary, as we have seen, there had been not merely a twofold but a fourfold division of power most of the time since the day of Diocletian. No contemporary could have predicted that after the death of Theodosius the Roman dominions in the East and in the West would never again be firmly united under a single head. Nor indeed is it quite true that the division was complete and permanent; for, as we shall see, there were to be rulers like Justinian and Zeno who had a dominating influence over the Western territories, and who regarded themselves as masters of the entire Roman domain. And even when the division became complete and permanent, as it scarcely did before the time of Charlemagne, it could still be fairly held that the Roman Empire continued to exist with its sole capital at Constantinople, whither Constantine had transferred the seat of power, regardless of the fact that the Western dominion had been severed from the empire. The fact that this Western dominion included the city of Rome itself, which had given its name to the empire, and hence seemed indissoluble from it, is the chief reason for the seeming incongruity of applying the term Later Roman Empire to the dominion of the East.

It must not be overlooked, however, that there were other reasons for withholding the unqualified title of Roman Empire from the Eastern dominions. The chief of these is that the court of Constantinople departed very radically from the traditions of the West, taking on oriental manners and customs, and, what is most remarkable, gradually relinquishing the Latin speech and substituting for it the language of Greece. We have seen in our studies of earlier Roman history the marked tendency to the Hellenisation of Rome through the introduction of Greek culture from the time when the Roman Republic effected the final overthrow of Greece. It will be recalled that some of the most important histories of Rome, notably those of Polybius and Appian and Dionysius and Dion Cassius, were written in Greek. The emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his _Meditations_ in the same language. But this merely represented the tendency of the learned world. There was no propensity to substitute Greek for Latin as the language of everyday life so long as the seat of empire remained in the West. Now, however, as has been intimated, this strange substitution was effected; the writers of this Later Roman Empire in the East looked exclusively to classical Greece for their models, and in due course the language of court and of common people alike came to be Greek also, somewhat modified from the ancient idiom with the sweep of time, but in its essentials the same language which was spoken at Athens in the time of Pericles. Obviously there is a certain propriety in this use of the term Greek Empire as applied to a principality whose territory included the ancient realms of Athens, and whose customs and habits and speech thus preserved the traditions of ancient Hellas.

The use of the terms Eastern Empire and Byzantine Empire requires no elucidation, having an obvious propriety. As has been said, we shall find it convenient here to employ one or another of the four terms indiscriminately; giving preference perhaps, if a choice must be made, to the simplest and most non-committal form, Eastern Empire.

By whatever name designated, the principality whose fortunes we are to follow will hold our interest throughout a period of more than a thousand years, from the death of Theodosius in 395 to the final overthrow of Constantinople in 1456. This period is almost exactly coincident with the epoch pretty generally designated by historians as the Middle Ages, and usually estimated as a time of intellectual decadence.

As a general proposition this estimate is doubtless just. It must be born in mind, however, that the characterisation applies with far less force to the conditions of the Eastern Empire than to the conditions of Western Europe. The age of Justinian was certainly not a dark age in any proper acceptance of that term. If no subsequent period quite equalled this in brilliancy, yet there were epochs when the Eastern Empire showed something of its old-time vitality. Indeed, there was an almost incessant intellectual output which served at least to sustain reminiscences of ancient culture, though it could not hope to rival the golden ages of the past. In point of fact, the chief defect of the literature of the time was that it did attempt to rival the classical literature. We have just pointed out that the later Byzantine Empire was essentially Greek in language and thought. Unfortunately the writers of the time failed to realise that in a thousand years of normal development the language--always a plastic, mobile thing, never a fixed structure--changes, grows, evolves.

Instead of contenting themselves with the use of the language with which they were familiar in everyday speech as the medium of their written thoughts, they insisted on harking back to the earlier classical period, consciously modelling their phraseology and style upon authors who had lived and died a thousand years earlier. No great art was ever produced by such conscious imitation. Great art is essentially spontaneous, never consciously imitative; the epoch-making works are done in the vernacular by artists whose first thought is to give expression to their spontaneous feelings and emotions, unhampered by tradition. It was thus that Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, and Aristophanes wrote; and if Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy, and Tacitus were more conscious craftsmen, somewhat in the same measure were they less great as artists.

But the Byzantine writers were rather to be compared with the Alexandrians of the age of the Ptolemies. They were far more scientific than their predecessors and proportionately less artistic. As grammarians they analysed and criticised the language, insisting on the retention of those chance forms of speech which the masters of the earlier day had used spontaneously. The critical spirit of the grammarian found its counterpart everywhere in the prevalence of the analytical rather than the synthetic cast of thought. As the masters of the past were the models, so were their stores of knowledge the chief sources on which to draw. What Aristotle had said must be considered the last word as regards physical knowledge. What the classical poets and historians had written must needs be copied, analysed, and praised as the final expression of human thought. Men who under different auspices and in a different atmosphere might perhaps have produced original works of some significance, contented themselves with elaborating anthologies, compiling dictionaries and encyclopædias, and epitomising chronicles of world history from the ancient sources. It is equally characteristic of the time that writers who did attempt creative work found prose romance the most congenial medium for the expression of their ideals. Even this measure of creative enthusiasm chiefly marked the earliest period of the Byzantine era and was stifled by the conservatism of the later epoch.

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE SOURCES

But if the reminiscent culture of the Byzantine Empire failed to produce an Herodotus, a Thucydides, or a Livy, it gave to the world, nevertheless, a line of historians and chronologists of the humbler class, beginning with Procopius the secretary of Justinian’s general, Belisarius, and ending with Ducas, Phrantzes, Laonicus Chalcocondyles, and Critobulus, the depicters of the final overthrow of Constantinople, who have left us a tolerably complete record of almost the entire life of the Eastern Empire. A list of these historians--numbering about half a hundred names--has been given in our general bibliography of Rome in Volume VI.

Here we shall add only a very brief résumé of the subject, naming the more important authors. For the later period of the undivided Roman Empire and the earlier Byzantine epoch we have, among others, the following works: the history of the war with Attila, bringing the story of the empire to the year 474, by Priscus, a Thracian, and the continuation of his history to the year 480 by Malchus of Philadelphia; the important history of Zosimus, which we have had occasion to quote in an earlier volume; and, most important of all, the historical works of Procopius of Cæsarea in Palestine. The last-named author was, as already mentioned, the secretary of Justinian’s famous general, Belisarius. He accompanied that general on many of his campaigns and apparently was associated with him on very intimate terms. This association, together with the character of his writings, has caused Procopius to be spoken of rather generally in later times as the Polybius of the Eastern Empire,--a compliment not altogether unmerited.

His works are by far the most important of the Byzantine histories, partly because of their intrinsic merit and partly because of the character of the epoch with which they deal. The more pretentious of his works has two books on the Persian War, two on the war with the Vandals, and four on the Gothic war. Curiously enough, another work ascribed to Procopius, and now generally admitted to be his, deals with the lives of Justinian and Theodora and to some extent with that of Belisarius himself, in a very different manner from that employed in the other history just mentioned. This so-called secret history was apparently intended for publication after the author’s death; it therefore gives vent to the expression of what are probably the true sentiments of the author, showing up the character of his patrons in a very different and much less complimentary light from that in which they are depicted in the earlier work. As an illustration of the difference between the diplomatic and the candid depiction of events this discrepancy of accounts coming from the same pen is of the highest interest. The moral for the historian--vividly illustrative of Sainte-Beuve’s famous saying that history is a tradition agreed upon--need hardly be emphasised.

Among the later Byzantine historians the names of John Zonaras, of Nicetas Acominatus, of Nicephorus Gregoras, occur as depicters of the events of somewhat comprehensive periods; Agathias, Simocatta, Epiphaneia, Anna Comnena, and George Phrantzes as biographers or writers on more limited epochs. Of these Anna Comnena in particular is noteworthy because her life of her father Alexius I has been spoken of as the only really artistic historical production of the period. It is popularly known as having supplied Sir Walter Scott with the subject and some of the materials for his last romance, _Count Robert of Paris_. But most noteworthy of all is the fact that this is the first important historical production, so far as is known, that ever came from the pen of a female writer.

The list of chronologies or epitomes of world history includes the _Chronicon Paschale_, and the works of Georgius Syncellus, Malalas, Cedrenus, Michael Glycas, and Constantine Manasses. In some respects more important than any of these were the collections of excerpts from ancient authors which were made by Stobæus, by Photius, and by Suidas. These have preserved many fragments of the writings of historians of antiquity that would otherwise have been altogether lost. A very noteworthy collection of excerpts, comprising in the aggregate a comprehensive history of the world made up from the writings of the Greek historians, forms one portion of the encyclopædia which the emperor Constantine (VII) Porphyrogenitus--himself a writer of some distinction--caused to be compiled in the tenth century. This work contained extracts, often very extensive, from the writings of most of the Greek classical historians. It was apparently very popular in the Middle Ages, and has been supposed to be responsible for the loss of many of the works from which it made excerpts. Unfortunately, the encyclopædia itself has come down to us only in fragments; but, even so, it gives us excerpts from such writers as Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus, Nicholas of Damascus, Appian, and Dion Cassius, and of numerous Byzantine histories that are not otherwise preserved.

Taken together, even the extant portions of the Byzantine histories make up a very bulky literature. Being produced in this relatively recent time, a correspondingly large proportion of it has been preserved. Not, indeed, that many of the original manuscripts of the Byzantine historians have come down to us, but they appear to have been copied very extensively by the monks of western Europe, who found in them an interest which the classical writings often failed to arouse. The very fact that so many of these writings epitomise ancient history furnishes, perhaps, the explanation of this popularity. In the day when the reproduction of books was so laborious a process, condensation was naturally a merit that appealed to the bookmaker. Hence, as has been suggested, the epitome was often made to do service for the more elaborate original work, which latter was allowed to drop altogether out of view. But the modern world has not looked upon the Byzantine writings with the same interest. For the most part they had never been translated into modern European languages, and the original texts have been collated, edited, and printed in comparatively recent times.

On the other hand, these writings were almost the first to be subjected to the critical analysis of the historian, working with what we speak of as the modern spirit. Tillemont began the laborious process of reconstructing in detail the chronology of later Roman history, with the aid of these materials, and the work was taken up a little later by Edward Gibbon, and carried to completion in what is incontestably the greatest historical work of modern times,--if not, indeed, the greatest of any age,--_The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. In this work, Gibbon not only set an epochal standard for future historians, but he so exhaustively covered the ground as to leave almost nothing for a successor in the same field. His work is the more remarkable because it was produced at a time when the general tendency was to accept the writings of the ancients in a much less critical spirit than that to which they have been more recently subjected. Gibbon, however, vaulted at once to the critical heights. Indeed, he went a step beyond most critics of more recent generations, in that he insisted on applying to the traditions and superstitions of all ancient nations the same critical standards. Most of Gibbon’s contemporaries and a large proportion of his successors, until very recent times, while looking askance at the traditions of Greece and Rome, have wished to adjudge Hebrew traditions by a different standard. It has been a curious illustration of the illogicality of even critical minds, that the very critics who have inveighed against the credulity of the ages which could accept the myths of Greece and Rome as historical, should have inveighed also against the mind which had the breadth of view to see that all ancient myths and traditions must be weighed in the same historical balance. Only in our own day have considerable numbers of critics attained the plane of historical impartiality which Gibbon had reached a century and a quarter ago, but in most other regards his example found a readier following.

THE CHRONOLOGY OF LATER ROMAN HISTORY IN THE EAST

EARLY DAYS OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE (395-565 A.D.)

The Roman Empire, permanently divided at the death of Theodosius (395) into an eastern and a western section does not, nevertheless, lose its unity as an organisation. The period of disintegration has set in, and the extinction of the western section in 476 is an event in this disintegration rather than the “fall” of an empire. It was not until 800, the year of Charlemagne’s accession, that there were really two empires, and that the term “Eastern Empire” may properly be applied. But for convenience we call the history of Arcadius and his successors that of the Eastern Roman Empire.

395 A.D. =Arcadius=, co-regent, and elder son of Theodosius, continues to reign at Constantinople. The Huns ravage Asia Minor, and the Visigoths, under Alaric, rise in Mœsia and Thrace. At the death of Rufinus, the eunuch Eutropius becomes chief adviser of the emperor, supported by Gainas.

398 Alaric becomes governor of Eastern Illyricum.

399 Death of Eutropius.

401 Death of Gainas. The emperor comes entirely under the influence of his dissolute wife, Eudoxia.

408 =Theodosius II= succeeds his father. He is but seven years of age and is controlled by his sister Pulcheria. Alaric moves upon Rome.

410 Death of Alaric.

421 Theodosius marries Athenais (Eudocia). War breaks out with Persia.

425 Organisation of the University of Constantinople.

438 Publication of the Theodosian Code.

439 Genseric takes Carthage.

441 War with Persia. War with the Huns and Vandals continues.

442 Invasion of Thrace and Macedonia by Attila.

447 Peace of Anatolius made with the Huns.

450 Death of Theodosius. =Marcian= is raised to the throne by Pulcheria, whom he marries. He makes a wise ruler and resists payment of tribute to the Huns.

457 The Theodosian dynasty comes to an end with Marcian. The choice of the emperor rests with the army, and the general Aspar brings about the election of =Leo I=, a native of Thrace.

465 Great fire at Constantinople.

468 With the co-operation of Anthemius, Leo plans a great expedition against Genseric in Africa, but it fails through treachery of Aspar, who is executed, 469.

474 Leo I dies, leaving empire to his grandson =Leo II=. The latter dies the same year and =Zeno=, his father, reigns, but =Basiliscus= at once drives him out and rules for twenty months, when Zeno recovers the throne.

476 With the resignation of Romulus Augustulus the western division is definitely detached from the empire.

478-481 The Ostrogoths invade the Balkan peninsula.

483 Promulgation of the _Henoticon_.

488 Zeno induces Theodoric and the Ostrogoths to leave Illyricum and attack Rome.

491 At death of Zeno, =Anastasius I= is proclaimed emperor, through influence of the empress Ariadne, who marries him.

491-496 The Isaurian War instigated by the supporters of Longinus results favourably for Anastasius.

499 The Bulgarians invade Thrace.

502-505 Unsuccessful war with Persians, who take several provinces.

507 The “Long Wall” of Thrace is built to keep out the Goths.

514 Revolt of Vitalianus.

518 Death of Anastasius; =Justin I=, an illiterate Illyrian peasant, obtains the emperorship through the army. With him the empire enters on a new era. He prepares his nephew Justinian to succeed him..

527 Justinian created augustus.

528 Justin dies; =Justinian I=, “the great,” sole monarch. He is the chief figure of his time. His wife is the empress Theodora. He begins active warfare at once against the Arians, Jews, and pagans. Belisarius appointed commander-in-chief in the East.

529 First edition of the Justinian _Code_ published.

530 Belisarius defeats the Persians at Dara.

531 Chosroes ascends the Persian throne.

532 Peace made with Persia. Insurrections break out in Constantinople. St. Sophia burned. Belisarius quells the riots.

533 Belisarius begins a campaign against the Vandals in Africa. The _Pandects_ published.

534 Belisarius captures the Vandal king Gelimer and destroys his kingdom, and for this is made sole consul.

535-540 Belisarius in Italy and Sicily against the Ostrogoths. He makes himself master of Rome and other cities.

540 Recall of Belisarius. Persian invasion of Syria.

542 Repulse of the Persians. Belisarius degraded by Theodora on his return from the campaign. The great plague.

543 Totila, king of the Goths, captures Naples.

544 Belisarius proceeds to Italy against Totila.

545 Five years’ peace with Persia. Totila besieges Rome. Belisarius has not sufficient forces to resist him.

546 Capture of Rome by Totila.

547 Romans recover Rome.

548 Totila retakes Rome. Belisarius returns to Constantinople. Death of Theodora. Conspiracy against Justinian.

549 The imperial armies occupy the lands of the Lazi.

550 Slavonians and Huns invade the empire.

551 Battle of Sinigaglia. The Goths lose Sicily.

552 The eunuch Narses arrives in Italy as commander-in-chief. Recovers Rome. Defeat and death of Totila.

553 End of the Ostrogothic War.

554-557 Terrible earthquakes visit Constantinople and other cities.

558 Belisarius repels the invading Huns under Zabergan.

562 Fifty years’ peace with Persia. Narses continues his victorious career in Italy.

565 Death of Justinian.

FROM JUSTIN II TO THE DEPOSITION OF JUSTINIAN II (565-695 A.D.)

565 =Justin II= succeeds Justinian I. He determines to change Justinian’s unpopular system and refuses payment to an embassy of Avars, which is the cause of serious depredations in the provinces.

567 The Gepid kingdom overthrown by Lombards and Avars.

568 Lombard invasion of Italy.

571 Birth of Mohammed.

572 War breaks out with the Persians. They make several important conquests, and

574 Justin, realising his inability to govern, makes Tiberius, the captain of the guard, cæsar.

575 Peace with Persia.

576 Battle of Melitene. The Romans reach the Caspian Sea.

578 Justin dies. =Tiberius= emperor.

581 The imperial army led by Maurice defeats the Persians at Constantina.

582 =Maurice= elected emperor. Death of Tiberius.

584 Treaty with the Avars, whose depredations have become very serious.

586 Roman victory at Solachon.

589 Persian victory at Martyropolis. Slavonic colonies begin to settle in the Peloponnesus.

590 Maurice crowns his son Theodosius at Easter. Rebellion of Vaharan of Persia, who deposes Hormisdas or Hormuz.

591 Maurice puts Chosroes II on the Persian throne. He proceeds against the Avar invasion of Thrace.

602 Rebellion in the army. =Phocas=, the centurion, made emperor. Maurice put to death.

603 War with Persia breaks out.

604 Treaty of peace with the Avars.

606-608 Disastrous invasion of Asia Minor by the Persians. They advance to Chalcedon.

609 Revolts in Africa and Alexandria.

610 =Heraclius=, son of the governor of Africa, accomplishes the overthrow and death of Phocas.

614 The Persian War continues. Damascus captured.

615 Jerusalem taken by the Persians.

616 Persian invasion of Egypt.

617 Occupation of Chalcedon by the Persians. Heraclius contemplates moving to Carthage.

620 Peace made with Avars who have attempted to seize the emperor.

622 Heraclius takes command in person of the Persian War.

622-628 The war is vigorously conducted. Campaigns in Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, Cilicia, and Assyria, ending 628 with treaty of peace with Siroes.

629 Heraclius restores the holy cross to Jerusalem.

632 Death of Mohammed.

633 The Mohammedan conquests begin. The imperial cities fall before them in the following order: Bosra (634), Damascus (635), Emesa, Heliopolis, Antioch, Chalcis, Berœa, Edessa (636), Jerusalem (637).

638 Constantine, the king’s son, fails in an attempt to recover Syria. Mesopotamia lost to the Mohammedans.

639 Amru invades Egypt.

641 Death of Heraclius. Death of =Constantine III=, after three months’ reign. Another son of Heraclius, by Martina, =Heracleonas=, whom Heraclius appointed to reign conjointly with Constantine, reigns alone for five months and then is banished. His brother David is appointed emperor under the name of Tiberius. His fate is unknown. =Constans II=, son of Constantine, becomes emperor. Alexandria taken by the Mohammedans.

647 Mohammedans drive the Romans out of Africa.

648 The _Type_ of Constans published.

649 Mohammedans invade Cyprus.

650 They take Aradus.

652 Armenia falls into their hands.

654 They capture Rhodes.

655 They defeat Constans in the great naval battle off Mount Phœnix in Lycia. Pope Martin is banished to the Chersonesus.

658 Campaign of Constans against the Slavs. Peace made with the Mohammedans.

661 Constans leaves Constantinople and spends winter at Athens.

662-663 Great Mohammedan invasion of Asia Minor.

663 Constans in Rome.

668 Mohammedans advance to Chalcedon and hold Amorium for a short time. Assassination of Constans at Syracuse. His son =Constantine (IV) Pogonatus= succeeds.

669 Mohammedans invade Sicily and carry off 180,000 prisoners from Africa.

670 Foundation of Kairwan, near Carthage.

673-677 Mohammedans besiege Constantinople. The Romans use the newly invented Greek fire against them.

678 Peace concluded with the Mohammedans.

679 Bulgarian War and foundation of the Bulgarian kingdom.

681 Constantine deprives his brothers Heraclius and Tiberius of the imperial title. The troops of the Orient had demanded that they, too, should receive the crown, and thus the Trinity in heaven might be represented on earth.

685 =Justinian II= succeeds his father. The caliph and emperor make peace.

687 Transference of the Mardaites from Lebanon to Thrace and Asia Minor.

689-690 Successful expedition of Justinian against the Bulgarians and Slavs. The Greeks are forced to emigrate from Cyprus; two hundred thousand Slavs transported to Asia Minor.

692 Battle of Sebastopolis. Symbatius revolts. Mohammedan subjection of Armenia.

THE TWENTY YEARS’ ANARCHY (695-716 A.D.)

695 In consequence of his cruelties the general Leontius deposes Justinian, cuts off his nose, and banishes him to the Chersonesus. =Leontius= emperor.

697 Revolt of Lazica. Great Mohammedan invasion of Asia Minor. Hassan proceeds against Africa with success. Carthage taken.

698 The Mohammedans retake Carthage. Leontius dethroned. Aspimar becomes emperor as =Tiberius III=. The Mohammedans continue to ravage the empire.

705 =Justinian II=, now named =Rhinotmetus=, from his nasal mutilation, recovers the throne.

709 Tyana falls before the Mohammedans in their ravages on the Bosporus.

710 Great cruelty shown to Ravenna and the Chersonesus by the emperor.

711 Justinian overthrown by Bardanes, who becomes emperor under the name of =Philippicus=. In his reign the Mohammedans invade Spain (711) and the Bulgarians ravage Thrace (712). The Mohammedans take Antioch in Pisidia.

713 Philippicus dethroned and his eyes put out. Artemius his secretary is raised to the emperorship as =Anastasius II=. He tries honestly to bring about reforms, and sends an embassy to Damascus to arrange a peace with the Mohammedans.

715 The army determines to depose Anastasius, and chooses an obscure person, =Theodosius III=, who unwillingly assumes the purple.

716 The Mohammedans again invade Asia Minor and besiege Amorium. =Leo III the Isaurian= relieves the town, makes a truce with the besiegers, and is proclaimed emperor by the army.

THE ISAURIAN DYNASTY AND SUCCEEDING KINGS (716-820 A.D.)

717 Mohammedans besiege Pergamus. They begin the siege of Constantinople, which is raised the following year.

726 The dispute over image-worship arises. Publication of the first iconoclastic decree. The great iconoclastic schism begins, immersing the empire in many calamities and revolts, leading to the final separation of the Greek and Latin churches.

The Mohammedans invade Cappadocia.

727-728 Revolts in Italy and Greece.

734 Mohammedan invasion of Asia Minor.

739 Battle of Acronum.

740 =Constantine (V) Copronymus= succeeds his father.

742 Defeat of the rebel Artavasdes, who has obtained possession of Constantinople.

744-747 The Great Plague devastates the empire.

746 Mohammedan invasion of Cyprus.

750 Fall of the Omayyad dynasty. Two rival Saracen powers are formed. Ravenna taken by the Lombards.

751 Capture of Melitene and Theodosipolis by Constantine.

753 Invasion of Italy by Pepin. Council of Constantinople favours iconoclasm.

755 Invasion of Thrace by the Bulgarians. Pepin continues invasion of Italy.

757 The Bulgarians driven back to their own territory with great slaughter.

760-765 Constantine invades Bulgaria. Victory of Anchialus, 762.

766 Wreck of the Roman fleet at the mouth of the Danube. Edicts against image-worship extended and vigorously enforced.

773-774 Campaigns against the Bulgarians. Victory of Lithosoria. Peace made with the Bulgarian monarch, which Constantine breaks.

775 =Leo IV=, son of Constantine, succeeds him. He is a zealous iconoclast. He marries the empress Irene.

778 Successful campaign against the Bulgarians.

780 Capture of Semaluos by Harun-ar-Rashid. Death of Leo. =Irene= becomes regent for the ten-year-old =Constantine VI=.

781 Revolt of Elpidius in Sicily.

782 The Mohammedans under Harun-ar-Rashid invade Asia Minor.

787 Council of Nicæa sanctions image-worship.

788 The Bulgarians gain a victory at the Strymon.

789 The Arabs invade Rumania.

790 Constantine assumes control of the government. Irene is unwilling to relinquish power and a struggle between the two begins.

791 The emperor conducts a campaign against the Bulgarians.

792 A conspiracy formed against Constantine by his uncles is suppressed and severely punished. Irene’s dignity restored. Second campaign against the Bulgarians.

795 Constantine divorces his wife Maria and marries Theodota.

796 Third Bulgarian campaign of Constantine.

797 Irene, taking advantage of Constantine’s unpopularity on account of his treatment of Maria, imprisons him and has his eyes put out. She now reigns alone. Conspiracy to place one of Constantine V’s sons on the throne.

798 Peace made with the Mohammedans.

800 Revival of the western division of the empire by the coronation of Charlemagne. There are now two distinct empires.

802 Conspiracy against and deposition of Irene. =Nicephorus I=, the treasurer, chosen emperor. He maintains political order but is a hard fiscal oppressor.

803 Death of Irene in exile. Bardanes, the general, proclaims himself emperor, but receiving no support, negotiates for his own pardon. Treaty with Charlemagne, regulating confines of the two empires.

806 Humiliating peace with Harun-ar-Rashid.

808 Unsuccessful attempt of Arsaber to obtain throne.

809 Death of Harun-ar-Rashid reopens the struggle with the Mohammedans.

810 Treaty of peace with Charlemagne, who unsuccessfully tries to make the Venetians and their allies tributary to him.

811 The emperor at war with the Mohammedans and Bulgarians. Death of Nicephorus in an attack by the Bulgarians. His son =Stauracius= succeeds. He is unable to hold out against the unpopularity of his father’s fiscal severity. After two months’ reign, a revolution places =Michael (I) Rhangabe= on the throne. The Mohammedans, owing to civil strife, do not trouble the empire, but the Bulgarians continue their attacks, with such success that

813 Michael is deposed, and the general =Leo (V) the Armenian= is saluted as emperor. Michael retires to a monastery. The Bulgarians approach the walls of Constantinople.

814 Annihilation of the Bulgarian army by Leo, at Mesembria. Thirty years’ truce concluded. Leo pursues a variable policy in regard to image-worship.

820 Leo assassinated in a conspiracy in favour of =Michael (II) the Stammerer=, who takes the throne.

THE AMORIAN DYNASTY (820-867 A.D.)

821 Rebellion of Thomas, a claimant of the throne. He is crowned at Antioch, and lays siege to Constantinople.

822 The Bulgarians, taking advantage of civil discord, invade the empire. Thomas delivered up to Michael, and hanged.

823 The Mohammedans capture Crete.

827 Mohammedan conquest of Sicily begun. It is not completed until 878.

829 =Theophilus= succeeds his father. He is a zealous iconoclast.

831 A Mohammedan invasion of long duration begins.

832 Brilliant victory of Theophilus in Charsiana. The Mohammedans capture Heraclea.

836 Theophilus destroys Zapetra.

838 Mohammedan victory at Dasymon. Amorium is captured.

842 Death of Theophilus, due to chagrin at Mohammedan successes. His son =Michael (III) Porphyrogenitus=, or =the Drunkard=, succeeds at the age of four, with his mother =Theodora= as regent. Image-worship restored at Council of Constantinople. End of the Iconoclastic controversy. Slavonic insurrection in the Peloponnesus suppressed. Failure of an attempt to conquer the Abasges, and to recover Crete. War with the Mohammedans continues.

845 Truce with the Mohammedans.

847 Conversion of the Khazars to Christianity. The Bulgarians follow their example a few years later.

848 Revolt of the Paulicians, who join the Arabs.

854 Theodora retires to private life.

856 Bardas, her brother, becomes cæsar. Photius elected patriarch in place of the deposed Ignatius.

858 A great war with the Arabs begins. Omar lays Pontus waste. Successful campaign of Leo, the commander-in-chief, who is finally captured by the Mohammedans.

860 Michael badly defeated near Melitene.

862 Omar invades Cappadocia, Pontus, and Cilicia.

863 Battle of Amasia. Great victory of Petronas, the emperor’s uncle. Death of Omar. The end of trouble with the Mohammedans for some years.

865 First appearance of the Russians in the empire. They attack Constantinople, but are driven off.

866 Michael kills Bardas with the aid of Basil the Macedonian, who becomes cæsar.

867 Assassination of Michael at the instigation of =Basil=, who takes the throne. Basil removes Photius and restores Ignatius.

THE BASILIAN DYNASTY (867-1057 A.D.)

871 The Paulicians attacked and reduced to obedience.

872 Basil takes the field against the Mohammedans.

875-876 Victories of Basil in Cilicia.

877 Death of Ignatius. Photius regains the patriarchate.

881 Basil plans to drive the Mohammedans out of Sicily and Italy. Cyprus recovered and held for eleven years.

885 Nicephorus Phocas expels the Mohammedans from Italy. They still hold Sicily. Accusation against Leo, the emperor’s son, by Santabaren, in which the former narrowly escapes death.

886 Death of Basil, who is wounded while hunting. His son, =Leo (VI) the Philosopher=, succeeds. He has Santabaren’s eyes put out, and banishes him. Photius deposed.

887-888 Arabs invade Asia Minor, and attempt to regain Italy. They give up the attempt on the latter country in 891.

Stylianus, Leo’s father-in-law and prime minister, by his treatment of Bulgarian merchants, precipitates a war with Bulgaria. This country wins several victories, and

893 Leo makes a treaty of peace.

895 Conspiracy of Samonas against the emperor. Further Arab invasions of Sicily.

904 The Arabs capture Thessalonica with a fleet. The last remains of the senate’s authority destroyed by a constitution of Leo. Second Russian expedition to Constantinople.

911 Mohammedan naval victory off Samos. Death of Leo. His infant son, =Constantine (VII) Porphyrogenitus=, and his brother =Alexander= rule together.

912 Death of Alexander. He nominates, before dying, a regency of six members, exclusive of the patriarch, to act during Constantine’s minority. Attempt of Constantine Ducas to gain the throne suppressed by John Eladas, one of the regents. =Zoe Carbonopsina=, mother of Constantine, admitted to supreme power by the regency.

913-914 Simeon, king of Bulgaria, invades the empire with no positive results.

917 The Patzinaks defeat Leo Phocas at Achelous, which causes Romanus Lecapenus to intrigue for the throne.

919 Constantine marries Romanus’ daughter Helena. =Romanus (I) Lecapenus= crowned emperor as colleague to Constantine.

920 =Christopher=, son of Romanus, is raised to the imperial dignity.

921 The war with the Bulgarians assumes serious proportions; further increased

923 by an alliance between King Simeon of Bulgaria and the Mohammedans.

926 A temporary end is put to the troubles with the Bulgarians and Arabs by an interview between Romanus and Simeon.

927 Peter, Simeon’s successor, enters Byzantine territory, demanding war or the hand of the emperor’s granddaughter. Romanus agrees to the latter alternative.

928 Romanus makes his sons, =Stephanus= and =Constantine VIII=, associate emperors. There are now five emperors.

931 Death of Christopher.

934-940 Period of complete peace in the empire, except for petty warfare with Lombard princes. Constantine VII plans to regain the sole power.

941 A Russian fleet of ten thousand galleys appears before Constantinople. Romans drive them off with small force.

944 Stephanus and Constantine VIII at instigation of Constantine VII banish their father to Prota. Constantine VII then regains full power, and banishes Stephanus and Constantine VIII likewise to Prota, 945.

During the remainder of Constantine’s reign the war with the Mohammedans is prosecuted with great vigour, especially when Nicephorus Phocas succeeds in assembling a large army. Many conspiracies against Constantine by the deposed emperors.

959 Death of Constantine, the result of poison administered by his son =Romanus II=, who becomes emperor.

961 Brilliant conquest of Crete by Nicephorus. The Mohammedans expelled after occupation of 150 years.

962 Nicephorus attacks Aleppo, but is unable to take the citadel.

963 Death of Romanus, which has been attributed to poison administered by the empress Theophano. =Nicephorus (II) Phocas= marries Theophano and obtains the throne. His chief aim is to break the Mohammedan power.

964-965 Conquest of Tarsus by the Byzantines. Nicephorus recalled to Constantinople by troubles with Bulgarians and Hungarians. To repel them he makes alliance with Sviatoslaff, prince of Kieff, which causes a bloody war with the Russians.

965 Embassy of Liutprand to Constantinople. The emperor imprisons him.

968 Nicephorus returns to Asia Minor and recovers Antioch, 328 years in the Mohammedan power. He prepares to attack Baghdad.

969 Joannes Zimisces, the general, and Theophano conspire against Nicephorus, who is assassinated. =Joannes (I) Zimisces= takes the throne. He associates with him the young sons of Romanus II, =Basil II=, and =Constantine IX=, who were nominal rulers during reign of Nicephorus. The brother of Nicephorus, Leo, and his son Bardas Phocas make unsuccessful attempts to invite rebellion and regain the throne. They are banished.

970 Sviatoslaff conquers Bulgaria and invades Thrace. Philippopolis taken and inhabitants massacred.

971 Joannes proceeds against the Russians. Capture of Presthlava and King Boris of Bulgaria. Siege and capture of Dorystolon. Peace with the Russians. Bulgaria again a part of the empire and Boris a pensioner of the Byzantine court. The Mohammedan wars carried on.

972 Marriage of Otto the Great and Theophano, daughter of Romanus II.

973 Imperial victory at Nisibis. Defeat at Amida.

974 Joannes takes command of the Mohammedan War.

975 Many victories but futile siege of Tripolis. Antioch shuts out the imperial force.

976 Death of Joannes Zimisces, probably by poison. =Basil II= head of affairs with his brother for colleague. He is one of the greatest of the Eastern emperors.

_Beginning of Period of Greatest Splendour of the Empire_

979 Defeat of Sclerus by Bardas Phocas, the general, after a desperate revolt to capture the throne. The Bulgarians begin a long struggle to regain their independence.

982 On death of Otto, Basil consolidates his authority in southern Italy.

989 Death of Bardas Phocas, who for two years has been in revolt against the emperor. Sclerus, conspiring for the second time against the throne, dies.

991 Southern Iberia ceded to the empire by King David.

995 Campaign of Basil in Syria. Aleppo taken. Unsuccessful attack on Tripolis.

996 Great defeat of King Samuel of Bulgaria at the Sperchius.

1002 Samuel invades Thrace, takes Hadrianopolis, but is driven off. The war now proceeds for some years in desultory fashion.

1014 Basil resumes the Bulgarian War in earnest. Great victory under Nicephorus Xiphias at Zetunium. Basil puts out the eyes of 15,000 prisoners. Death of Samuel. The emperor’s cruelty engenders a last effort in the Bulgarians, but by 1018 the destruction of the kingdom is complete. Gibbon calls this the most important triumph of Roman arms since the time of Belisarius.

1022 Victory of Basil over a coalition of Armenian princes. They sue for peace.

1025 Basil prepares to expel Mohammedans from Sicily, but dies. His brother =Constantine IX= becomes sole emperor.

1027 Attack by the Patzinaks and Mohammedans repulsed.

1028 Constantine on his death-bed appoints =Romanus (III) Argyrus= his successor, makes him divorce his wife, and marry his daughter Zoe.

1030 Romanus defeated by the Mohammedans at Azaz and takes refuge in Antioch. He becomes the prey of melancholy, and Zoe takes the reins of government.

1031 Mohammedan pirates ravage Illyricum and Corfu. They are driven off by the people of Ragusa.

1032 Conspiracy and death of Constantine Diogenes.

1033 Capture of Edessa by the imperial fleet.

1034 Death of Romanus, probably by slow poison administered by Zoe, who now causes her paramour, =Michael (IV) the Paphlagonian=, to be proclaimed emperor, and marries him the day of her husband’s death. Earthquake at Jerusalem lasting forty days. Great famine throughout the empire.

1037 The Mohammedans attack the empire on all sides. They capture Edessa. The Patzinaks invade Thrace.

1038 The Mohammedans regain Edessa, by a stratagem that is the origin of the Tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

1039 The imperial force and the Normans attack the Mohammedans in Sicily. Messina (Messana) and Syracuse taken.

1040 A fresh Mohammedan army from Africa utterly defeated in Sicily. The Norman power begins to get the control in the island. The Bulgarians attempt to recover independence. They invade Thrace and Macedonia.

1041 Michael drives them back and brings the country again to Byzantine rule. Death of Michael. =Zoe= attempts to rule alone, but finds herself unequal to the task. She adopts her husband’s nephew, =Michael (V) Calaphates=, and makes him emperor. He expels Zoe. At his imprudent acts the people rise in rebellion.

1042 After a fierce battle between the people of Constantinople and the adherents of Michael, the latter and his uncle flee. =Zoe= and her sister =Theodora= are proclaimed co-empresses. Zoe has the eyes of Michael and his uncle put out. Jealous of her sister, Zoe marries =Constantine (X) Monomachus=. Rebellion of Maniaces, brother of Constantine’s mistress Sclerena. He is murdered in the midst of his camp.

1043 Invasion of the Russians; driven back after a defeat by Catacalon.

1045 Successful war with Cacicus, vassal king of Armenia and Iberia, ending in destruction of his kingdom.

1047 Rebellion of Tornicius.

1048 The Patzinaks invade the empire with a large army. Attack of the Seljuk Turks under Toghril. Indecisive battle of Capetron.

1050 Toghril retires to Persia. Death of Zoe.

1052 Second invasion of Toghril.

1053 The Patzinaks driven back to their own territory.

1054 The great schism between the Greek and Roman churches begins. Death of Michael. =Theodora= reigns alone.

1056 Death of Theodora, after appointing =Michael (VI) Stratioticus= her successor. Attempt of Theodosius Monomachus to seize throne.

1057 Battle of Hades. Defeat of Michael by Isaac Comnenus and Catacalon.

DECLINE AND FALL OF THE BYZANTINE GOVERNMENT (1057-1204 A.D.)

1057 =Isaac (I) Comnenus= proclaimed emperor. Michael retires to a monastery. The emperor introduces a system of great economy into all branches of the government.

1059 Invasion of the northern frontier by Hungarians and Patzinaks. Treaty of peace concluded. Isaac, after a severe illness, resigns crown into the hands of =Constantine (XI) Ducas=. Through motives of economy the latter materially reduces the size of the army.

1060-1064 Toghril Beg and Alp Arslan invade the empire from Mesopotamia. Ani captured, 1064.

1064 The Uzes, a nomad Turkish tribe, invade from the north. They are driven back by outbreak of the plague.

1067 Death of Constantine. The imperial title conferred on his young sons, =Michael (VII) Ducas Parapinaces Andronicus=, and =Constantine (XII) Ducas=. The empress =Eudocia= is regent. She marries =Romanus (IV) Diogenes=, who is proclaimed as emperor. Great ravage of the Turks. Massacre of Cæsarea.

1068-1069 Successful campaign of Romanus against the Turks.

1070 Manuel Comnenus takes command against the Turks. Alp Arslan captures Manzicert. Romanus returns to the command.

1071 Byzantine expedition to Sicily defeated by Normans. Surrender of Bari. End of the imperial authority in Italy. Romanus taken prisoner by Alp Arslan at Manzicert. Restored to liberty and makes a treaty of peace. Refused admittance to Constantinople. Michael VII regains power reigning conjointly with Constantine XII. Romanus blinded, dies of his wounds.

1072 Alp Arslan, unable to obtain payment of Romanus’ ransom, invades empire. He finally conquers the Byzantine part of Asia Minor, giving it to Suleiman to rule.

1074 Rebellion of Ursel. Treaty with the Turks.

1076 The Turks take possession of Jerusalem.

1078 Bryennius attempts to gain the throne. After a severe struggle Michael abdicates in favour of =Nicephorus (III) Botaniates=.

1081 Nicephorus, after a constant struggle with many aspirants, is dethroned by =Alexius (I) Comnenus= after the capture and sack of Constantinople. Many pretenders are put down. Treaty of peace with Suleiman. Defeat of Alexius by Robert Guiscard.

1084 Defeat of Bohemond, the Norman leader. Relief of Larissa.

1085 Alexius recovers Dyrrhachium from the Normans.

1087-1099 Patzinak war ending in imperial victory at Levounion.

1092 Tzachas, emir of Smyrna, assumes title of emperor.

1093 Murder of Tzachas at instigation of Alexius.

1096 The first crusaders appear at Constantinople.

1097-1098 With the help of the crusaders, Alexius regains Nicæa, Antioch, and the whole of Asia Minor.

1103-1108 War of Alexius with Bohemond, prince of Antioch.

1110-1116 War against the Turks in Asia Minor, ending in many Turkish losses, enabling Alexius to make treaty of peace.

1111 Hostilities of Alexius with Tancred and the crusaders.

1118 Death of Alexius. =Joannes Comnenus=, his son, succeeds. Failure of conspiracy of Anna Comnena and Nicephorus Bryennius to place latter on throne.

1119 Joannes takes Laodicea and 1120 Sozopolis in campaigns against the Turks.

1122 Great victory of Joannes over the Patzinaks in Macedonia.

1124 Joannes drives back the Servians who have seized Belgrade and Branitzova. He now proceeds again against the Turks of Iconium and holds Castamonia and Gangra for a short time.

1131 Campaign against Livo of Cilicia, whose dominions 1137 are united to the empire.

1138 Joannes proceeds against Raymond of Antioch, who refuses to recognise him for his liege-lord. Raymond apologises and helps Joannes in a successful campaign against the Turks in Syria.

1141 Joannes defeats the sultan of Iconium.

1142 He sets out for Cilicia to conquer all the Latin principalities taken from the empire, but 1143 dies as the result of a wound received while hunting. His son =Manuel (I) Comnenus= succeeds.

1144 Raymond, prince of Antioch, compelled to renew bonds of vassalage.

1145 Manuel invades Isauria and concludes treaty of peace with Turks.

1147 Manuel promises to aid the Second Crusade, but gives secret information of it to the Turks.

1148 War with Roger of Sicily, who attempts to invade Greece. Manuel quickly repels an invasion of Patzinaks, and with the help of Venice proceeds against the Normans at Corfu.

1149 Fortress at Corfu taken. Roger invites the Hungarians and Servians to attack from the north.

1152 Imperial repulse in Cilicia, but great successes in Italy.

1153 Peace made with King Geisa of Hungary.

1153-1155 The Norman war turns against the empire. Many defeats. Maius, the Sicilian admiral, lands at Constantinople.

1155 Peace made with William of Sicily, Roger’s successor. Punishment of Reynolf of Antioch, successor of Raymond, and his reduction to vassalage.

1157 Renewal of war with sultan of Iconium. Peace made.

1161 War breaks out with Stephen III of Hungary.

1163 Short interval of peace in Hungarian War.

1168 Battle of Zeugmin. Great imperial victory. End of Hungarian War. Manuel joins with Almeric of Jerusalem in an attack on Egypt.

1171 Failure of attack through jealousy of Almeric. War with Venice over, Manuel attacks the Lombards. After an unprofitable contest 1174 peace made with Venice.

1176 Renewal of war with Kilidj-Arslan, sultan of Iconium. Crushing defeat of Manuel near Myriocephalus. Dishonourable peace made by Manuel.

1177 Manuel breaks peace. Imperial victory on the Mæander. Honourable peace.

1180 Death of Manuel. His son, =Alexius (II) Comnenus=, succeeds, under guardianship of mother, Maria of Antioch.

1183 =Andronicus (I) Comnenus= usurps the throne after inducing Alexius to have his mother put to death, and then killing him. Marries Alexius’ widow, Agnes, daughter of Louis VII of France.

1184 Isaac, sent to Cyprus to govern by the emperor, causes rebellion by his misgovernment, which entirely separates the island from the empire.

1185 Silician invasion at instigation of Greek fugitives. William II destroys Thessalonica, but is induced to desist from attack on Constantinople. The lieutenant, Hagiochristophorites, incites rebellion at Constantinople against Isaac. The people take Isaac’s part and proclaim him emperor. Death of Andronicus at hands of mob. =Isaac (II) Angelus= emperor. Victory at Demerize over Silician invaders.

1186 Rebellion of the Bulgarians and Wallachians owing to unjust taxation.

1187 Defeat of rebels by Joannes Cantacuzenus. Alexius Branas given command of army. He takes advantage of victories to proclaim himself emperor and appears before Constantinople, but is defeated and killed by Isaac’s brother-in-law, Conrad of Montferrat. William II of Sicily gives up his conquests in Greece.

1188 Wallachian successes lead to formation of independent kingdom.

1189 Emperor Frederick I of Germany appears with 150,000 crusaders. The terrified Isaac offers to make alliance with Saladin, but the latter declines.

Theodore Mancaphas proclaims himself emperor. He is pardoned, and gives up claim. Careers of the “False Alexius” and other pretenders.

1191 Capture of Cyprus by Richard I of England. It is lost forever to the empire.

1194 Isaac recognises the Wallachian kingdom.

1195 Isaac deposed by the nobles, and his brother =Alexius (III) Angelus-Comnenus= “the tyrant” made emperor. Alexius has Isaac’s eyes put out, and imprisons him in a Constantinople dungeon. Alexius’ extravagant conduct completes the destruction of the financial mechanism of the Roman Empire. Great disorder and anarchy throughout the empire.

1197 Peace purchased from Mueddin, sultan of Angora.

1198 War with the sultan of Iconium.

1199 Rebellion of Chryses, the Wallachian officer. Alexius makes peace, leaving him in possession of several towns.

1200 Ivan the Bulgarian attempts to found independent monarchy in Thrace and Macedonia.

1202 Alexius, son of Isaac II, escaping to Italy, brings about treaty between Venetians and crusaders to replace Isaac and himself on the throne.

1203 Siege of Constantinople. Flight of Alexius III to Italy. Crusaders occupy the city. =Isaac III= and =Alexius (IV) Angelus= on the throne. Great fire in Constantinople. Constant trouble between Alexius and the crusaders, in consequence of which 1204 =Alexius (V) Ducas= “=Murzuphlus=,” a party leader, seizes the throne. Murder of Alexius IV. Isaac dies of grief. Alexius finds it impossible to hold out against the crusaders. Capture and sack of Constantinople by crusaders and Venetians. Treaty of partition. End of true Byzantine Empire. The Latin Empire of Romania founded with Baldwin, count of Flanders. The Greek Empire continues at Nicæa.

THE LATIN EMPIRE OF ROMANIA (1204-1261 A.D.)

1204 =Baldwin I= elected emperor. His dominions consist only of Constantinople and Thrace, for the rest of the empire is divided among the Flemish, French, and Venetian leaders.

1205 Joannice of Bulgaria revolts, and obtains possession of Hadrianopolis. Capture of Baldwin in siege of town. He dies in captivity. His brother =Henry I= succeeds.

1206 Treaty with David Comnenus, brother of the emperor of Trebizond, in the interest of the latter.

1207 Death of Joannice. Henry marries his daughter, and thus effects peace with Bulgaria. Treaty with Theodore Lascaris, emperor of Nicæa.

1209 Parliament of Ravenika (ancient Chalcidice) summoned by Henry to determine definitely the feudal relations of all subjects of the empire.

1214 War between Henry and Theodore. Defeat of Henry in Bithynia. Siege of Pemanene. Peace, ceding to Theodore all territory east of Sardis and Nicæa.

1215 A mock union between the Greek and Roman churches in Henry’s dominions.

1216 Death of Henry during expedition against Theodore, the despot of Epirus. =Pierre de Courtenai=, then in France, chosen emperor. He falls into the hands of Theodore of Epirus on his way to Constantinople, and dies in captivity, 1219.

1221 His second son, =Robert de Courtenai=, after a delay of two years, is made emperor.

1222 Theodore of Epirus takes possession of the Lombard kingdom of Thessalonica. Defeat of Robert at Serres.

1223-1224 Robert invades Nicæa with many losses. Revolt of the Greeks in Hadrianopolis. Theodore of Epirus takes the city.

1228 Death of Robert. His young brother, =Baldwin II=, succeeds. =Jean de Brienne=, titular king of Jerusalem, elected guardian and colleague. The empire is attacked by Joannes Vatatzes of Nicæa and John Asan, king of Bulgaria.

1233 Jean de Brienne routed in Bithynia.

1234 Alliance between Vatatzes and Asan to attack Constantinople. They ravage the whole Latin Empire.

1236 Danger to Constantinople averted by help from the Venetians and Geoffrey of Achaia.

1237 Death of Jean de Brienne. The Bulgarian king abandons Nicæa and makes alliance with Latins. Baldwin visits western Europe to obtain help. Louis IX of France gives pecuniary assistance.

1240 Baldwin with his new army attacks Nicæa and obtains some advantage.

1243 Baldwin makes alliance with Seljuk Turks, but in spite of this is compelled to 1245 revisit western Europe for assistance.

1259 On the accession of Michael Palæologus, the Nicæan Empire attacks the Latin Empire.

1261 Recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks of Nicæa. End of the Latin Empire of Romania. Although driven from their dominions, the descendants of Baldwin II are known in eastern Europe as titular emperors until 1383 when, with the death of James de Baux, the family of Baldwin became extinct.

THE GREEK EMPERORS AT NICÆA (1204-1261 A.D.)

1204 After the capture of Constantinople Theodore Lascaris, leader of the anti-Latin party, flees to Bithynia, and makes himself master of the city of Nicæa.

1206 =Theodore (I) Lascaris= crowned emperor by the Greek patriarch. His title is contested by several princes, among them Alexius Comnenus, reigning as emperor of Trebizond. David Comnenus, the latter’s brother, proceeds against him, but is badly defeated on the Sangarius.

1210 Alexius, father-in-law of Theodore, claims throne, supported by the sultan of Iconium. The latter slain in battle, Alexius falls into Theodore’s hand, and is put into a monastery.

1214 War with Henry of Romania. Peace defining limits of empire.

1214-1222 Years of peace.

1222 Death of Theodore. His son-in-law, =Joannes (III) Ducas Vatatzes=, succeeds. Theodore Angelus, despot of Epirus and Ætolia, assumes title of emperor of Thessalonica.

1224 Victory of Pemanene over Robert, the Latin emperor.

1225 Peace with the Latins. Conspiracy of Nestongos.

1233 Defeat of the Latins by Joannes in Bithynia. Naval campaign to obtain sovereignty of the sea. The Greek fleets driven back to Asia by the Venetian, Marino Sanuti.

1234 Alliance of Joannes Vatatzes and Asan of Bulgaria against Baldwin II. Vatatzes reduces the empire of Thessalonica to a despotat (despotat of Epirus).

1236 Attack of the allies on Constantinople unsuccessful.

1237 Asan breaks the alliance as Constantinople is about to be attacked the second time.

1241 On the death of John Asan of Bulgaria, Vatatzes begins to assert his supremacy over the emperor of Thessalonica.

1242 Joannes Comnenus, the Thessalonian emperor, reduced to rank of despot by Vatatzes. Alliance with the sultan of Iconium to resist threatened invasion of Mongols who have already destroyed the Seljuk empire.

1245 Joannes Vatatzes reconquers Byzantine dominions in Thrace from the infant king Michael of Bulgaria.

1246 Vatatzes unites despotat of Epirus to the empire.

1251-1253 War with Michael II, despot of Epirus, ending in a peace ceding some Thracian territory to Vatatzes.

1254 Death of Joannes Vatatzes. His son =Theodore (II) Lascaris= succeeds.

1255-1256 War with Bulgaria resulting in slight concessions to Theodore.

1257 War with Michael of Epirus conducted by Michael Palæologus, with unfavourable results.

1258 Death of Theodore. Succeeded by his young son =Joannes (IV) Lascaris=. The prime minister Muzalon and the patriarch Arsenius are regents.

1259 =Michael (VIII) Palæologus= proclaimed emperor as the result of a successful conspiracy. Muzalon murdered. The emperor goes to war with Michael of Epirus and puts him to flight. Battle of Pelagonia. Capture of William Villehardouin, prince of Achaia.

1261 The general Strategopulus captures Constantinople. Fall of the Latin Empire. Michael removes the seat of empire thither.

THE PALÆOLOGUS DYNASTY AT CONSTANTINOPLE (1261-1453 A.D.)

1261 Michael imprisons Joannes IV and has his eyes put out. For this Arsenius excommunicates Michael. Important commercial treaty with the Genoese renewed after hostilities in 1275. Pope Urban IV frees Villehardouin from his promises to Michael on his release. Warfare results.

1263 Urban IV mediates between Michael and Villehardouin.

1264 Peace between the emperor and Michael of Epirus.

1265 Deposition of Arsenius causing the Arsenite schism.

1269 Charles of Anjou, aided by Joannes of Thessaly and Michael of Epirus, takes up arms against the emperor to restore Baldwin II.

1271 Great defeat of the imperial forces at Demetriades (Volo). Constantinople in danger. Michael proposes union of Greek and Latin churches as a means of saving his throne.

1274 Union of churches effected at council of Lyons. It is opposed by a large faction in the Greek church. It was never really completed, and falls to pieces at Michael’s death.

1280 The Seljuk Turks take Nyssa.

1281 Treaty of Orvietto between the pope, Naples, and Venice to conquer the Greek Empire for Philip, son of Baldwin II. The plan is frustrated by the Sicilian Vespers.

1282 Death of Michael in an expedition against Joannes Ducas of Thessaly. He is a conspicuous example of the misuse of despotic power. His son =Andronicus (II) Palæologus= succeeds. Ecclesiastical troubles compel the emperor to neglect military matters for a time.

1290 Unsuccessful attack upon Nicephorus of Epirus.

1295 =Michael IX=, son of Andronicus, receives the imperial title from his father.

1301 Foundation of Ottoman Empire by Osman, who attacks the Greek Empire. Disgraceful defeat of Greeks commanded by Michael, near Nicomedia. The command given to a Tatar chief. The Ottomans gradually conquer all the Byzantine possessions in Asia.

1303 The Catalan Grand Company, engaged by Michael to help fight the Turks, and headed by Roger de Flor, lands in Constantinople.

1304 Relief of Philadelphia by Roger. He conceives the idea of forming a principality in the East.

1305 Roger de Flor visits Constantinople to demand pay for his men.

1306 Turks retake Philadelphia. Plan of Ferdinand of Majorca to conquer a kingdom in the Greek Empire.

1307 Roger de Flor created cæsar. He sets out for Asia but is assassinated. The company breaks its ties with Michael, and sets out to conquer territory for itself. Battle of Apros. The company takes possession of several districts. Excommunication of Andronicus by Clement V.

1310 The company and their Turkish auxiliaries enter service of the duke of Athens. Conquest of Rhodes by knights of St. John.

1311 Battle of the Cephisus and victory of the Catalan Grand Company over the duke of Athens pave way for the conquest of Attica. The Turkish auxiliaries return home.

1315 Victory of Philes Palæologus over Turks at Bizya.

1320 The emperor Michael dies.

1321 Beginning of civil war by partisans of the emperor’s grandson Andronicus led by Cantacuzenus and Synadenus.

1322 Peace of Epibates concludes civil war.

1325 Andronicus compelled to bestow imperial crown on his grandson =Andronicus (III) Palæologus=; the two reign together.

1327 Andronicus II brings charges against Andronicus III. Civil war breaks out again.

1328 Synadenus overcomes garrison of Constantinople. Abdication of Andronicus II puts an end to civil war, but the court remains full of intrigue.

1329 Imperial defeat at Pelekanon by the Ottoman Orkhan.

1330 Surrender of Nicæa to Orkhan.

1330-1337 Ottoman invasions of the European provinces.

1334-1337 Expedition of Andronicus into Epirus.

1337 The Mongols cross the Danube and ravage northern district. =Anne= regent for Nicephorus II, despot of Epirus, turns the despotat over to Andronicus.

1338 Surrender of Nicomedia to Orkhan.

1339 Revolt in the despotat of Epirus put down.

1341 Death of Andronicus. His young son =Joannes (V) Palæologus= succeeds with Empress =Anne= of Savoy as regent. Rebellion of the prime minister =Joannes (VI) Cantacuzenus=, who is proclaimed emperor and guardian of Joannes. He often calls himself Joannes V. Apocauchus and Joannes Apri intrigue against Cantacuzenus. A long civil struggle commences.

1342 Stephen Dushan of Servia allies himself with rebels and invades empire.

1343 Cantacuzenus makes alliance with Turks. The war continues with violence.

1344 Cantacuzenus takes Gratianopolis and makes treaties with Servia and Bulgaria.

1345 Murder of Apocauchus. Vicinity of Constantinople devastated.

1346 Defection of Orkhan from Anne’s cause leads to triumph of Cantacuzenus. Earthquake at Constantinople destroys portion of St. Sophia.

1347 Treaty of Cantacuzenus with Anne recognises right of former to rule for ten years. The Black Death rages.

1350 Cantacuzenus uses money sent by Russians to rebuild St. Sophia to pay Ottoman mercenaries.

1351 Joannes V takes up arms against Cantacuzenus.

1352 Peace with Genoa after three years’ war. Cantacuzenus hires Turkish mercenaries to fight Bulgarians and Servians.

1353 Cantacuzenus proclaims his son Matthæus emperor, and a deadly strife between him and the Palæologus family ensues.

1354 Cantacuzenus dethroned. Joannes V sole emperor. Matthæus Cantacuzenus continues civil war.

1357 Matthæus Cantacuzenus delivered to Joannes by his captors the Servians and made to renounce all rights to the throne.

1361 The Ottoman Turks under Murad I take Hadrianopolis. This seals the fate of the Greek Empire.

1363 The Ottomans take Philippopolis and Serres. Defeat of Louis of Hungary.

1369-1370 Joannes visits Rome to obtain help for his falling empire, but is unsuccessful. On way home is arrested for debt in Venice and released with money raised by his son, Manuel.

1375 Andronicus, Joannes’ eldest son, conspires against him while the emperor is absent on a visit to Murad. He is aided by Saugdi, eldest son of Murad. Murad hastens to Europe and quells rebellion. Both Andronicus and Saugdi have their eyes put out.

1377 Andronicus escapes from prison, imprisons his father, and confers title on his own son.

1381 Joannes rescued by Venetians under Carlo Zeno. Concludes treaty with Andronicus, recognising his and his son’s rights to the title. Treaty with Murad in which Joannes acknowledges himself the vassal of the Ottoman Empire.

1384 Manuel, second son of Joannes, proclaimed emperor and crowned.

1389 Battle of Kossova. Great Ottoman victory over the Servians. Assassination of Murad. Bajazet succeeds, renews treaty with Joannes, and puts Manuel at head of Greek troops in Ottoman army.

1390 Ottomans capture Philadelphia the last independent Greek community in Asia Minor.

1391 Death of Joannes. =Manuel (II) Palæologus= sole emperor. He hastens to Constantinople, fearing his brother will seize the crown.

1396 Great victory of Bajazet at Nicopolis. He now determines to proceed against Constantinople. Manuel visits France for help.

1398 Marshal Boucicault arrives at Constantinople with his fleet. The Tatar conqueror, Timur, distracts Bajazet’s attention from the empire.

1399 Joannes of Selymbria, son of Andronicus, enters Constantinople and is proclaimed emperor. Manuel visits European courts for help.

1402 Manuel returns home, his mission unsuccessful. Battle of Angora. Crushing defeat of Bajazet by Timur.

1403 Treaty of Suleiman and Manuel, the former yielding up territory in Macedonia and Thessaly.

1410 Musa, Suleiman’s brother, after the latter’s death, reconquers territory ceded by Suleiman to Manuel.

1412 Musa begins a feeble siege of Constantinople, but is soon distracted by civil troubles.

1413-1421 During reign of Muhammed I, the Greek Empire enjoys uninterrupted peace. Manuel employs time in reorganising administration and consolidating his power.

1419 Manuel makes his son, =Joannes (VII) Palæologus=, co-emperor.

1422 Murad II besieges Constantinople to punish Manuel for his intrigues. He is obliged to raise siege in order to proceed against his brother, Mustapha.

1423 Manuel assumes monastic habit, taking name of Matthew. Joannes sole emperor. The empire is now reduced to the city of Constantinople and vicinity, Thessalonica, and a part of the Peloponnesus. The finances are exhausted through payment of tribute to the Turks. The empire enters its final stage of lethargy.

1430 Murad II conquers Thessalonica. The Genoese of Galata attack Constantinople on account of trade dispute in Black Sea.

1431 Terrible epidemic in Constantinople.

1439 Joannes and the Greek patriarch attend council of Florence and ratify union of the Greek and Roman church. The pope promises to aid the empire, but forgets agreement to send fleet to Constantinople.

1440 On return of the emperor, the bishop of Ephesus succeeds in confining the union only to the palace. The emperor’s brother Demetrius attempts to gain throne, but fails.

1447 Murad marches against the emperor’s brother Constantine, who is ruling over the Peloponnesus. Corinth and Patras taken. Treaty with Constantine, who pays tribute.

1448 Death of Joannes. His brother =Constantine (XIII) Palæologus= or =Dragazes=, despot of Sparta, succeeds.

1449 Muhammed II succeeds Murad II. His chief ambition is the conquest of Constantinople, and he at once prepares for it. Builds a fort on the Bosporus.

1452 Joannes appeals to Pope Nicholas V for aid. Cardinal Isidore and a small body of auxiliaries are sent.

1453 Siege and capture of Constantinople by Muhammed II. Death of Constantine in battle. Muhammed enters his new capital. End of the Eastern Empire.

THE EMPIRE OF TREBIZOND (1204-1461 A.D.)

Isaac Angelus, as soon as he is placed on the throne by the exasperated mob that slew the tyrannical Andronicus I (1185), has the eyes of Manuel Comnenus, the murdered emperor’s eldest son, put out. Manuel dies under the operation, leaving two sons, Alexius and David. They live in obscurity in Constantinople until the crusaders besiege the capital (1203), when they escape to the coast of Colchis. Alexius gathers around him a small force and 1204 about the time of the fall of Constantinople enters Trebizond, the ancient Trapezus, on the Black Sea, having been proclaimed “emperor of the Romans.” He calls himself =Alexius (I) Grand-Comnenus=, to distinguish himself from the family of Alexius Angelus-Comnenus. The weakness of the expelled house of Angelus permits Alexius to found his empire and begin a career of conquest. In the course of a few months the whole country from the Phasis to the Thermodon is his. David Comnenus adds the coast from Sinope to Heraclea to the new empire.

1206 Defeat of David on the Sangarius, by Theodore (I) Lascaris. Alexius badly beaten at Amisus by the sultan of Iconium or Rum in league with Theodore. David makes treaty with the emperor Henry of Romania, in the interest of his possessions.

1214 Theodore I attempts to reunite David’s territory to the empire of Nicæa. Death of David in defence of Sinope, besieged and captured by the Turks. Pontus assailed by the Turks. Colchis by the Georgians.

1216 Alexius compelled to declare himself a vassal of the sultan of Iconium.

1222 Death of Alexius. His son-in-law, =Andronicus (I) Ghidus=, succeeds, Joannes the eldest son being passed over.

1224 Treaty with Ala ad-Din, sultan of Iconium. Hayton, Turkish governor of Sinope, seizes a Trebizontine ship. Andronicus attacks Sinope; Ala ad-Din breaks treaty and attacks Trebizond. Andronicus drives him off and by a treaty frees himself from vassalage.

1226 Andronicus acknowledges himself vassal of Gela ad-Din, shah of Khwarizm.

1230 On defeat of Gela ad-Din by the Mongols, Andronicus renews vassalage to Iconium. The Iberian provinces of Trebizond unite with the new Iberian kingdom where King David still retains his independence against the Turks.

1235 Death of Andronicus. His brother-in-law, =Joannes (I) Auxuchus=, succeeds.

1238 Death of Joannes. His brother, =Manuel (I) the Great Captain=, succeeds. There is little information about the events of his reign, but he was a vassal of the Seljuks; and, after their defeat, in 1244, at Kusadac of the Mongol khan, Octar.

1263 =Andronicus II= succeeds his father.

1266 =George= succeeds his brother. The power of the Mongols and Seljuks in Asia Minor declines, and George frees himself from them. He attempts to conquer more territory but in 1280 is deserted by his nobles on an expedition and captured by the Turkomans. =Joannes III= succeeds. He is invited by a party in Constantinople, disgusted at Michael VIII’s union with the Latin church, to place himself at the head of the orthodox Christians and of the Greek Empire; but Joannes fears to do this.

1281 Michael sends George Acropolita, the historian, on a mission to Joannes to induce him to lay aside title of emperor of the Romans or accept matrimonial alliance with his family. It is unsuccessful. An insurrection at Trebizond deprives Joannes of his power, but he soon recovers it.

1282 Joannes agrees to marry Michael’s daughter Eudocia. The ceremony is performed at Constantinople, and Joannes gives up title “emperor of the Romans,” taking that of “emperor of all the East, Iberia, and Peratea.” David of Iberia makes an unsuccessful attack on Trebizond. George released by Turkomans, but fails in an attempt to regain throne.

1285 Joannes’ sister, =Theodora=, assembles an army and mounts throne, but Joannes soon recovers it and drives her from it. Pope Nicholas IV invites Joannes to assist in crusade to recover Ptolemais, but affairs at home prevent his doing so.

1297 Death of Joannes. His son =Alexius II= succeeds at age of fifteen. He soon frees himself from his guardian, Andronicus II of Constantinople.

1302 Alexius repels a Turkoman invasion in a great battle near Kerasunt.

1310 After many trade disputes with the Genoese establishments on the Black Sea, Genoa demands a favourable treaty with Alexius, which he refuses. The enraged Genoese burn a portion of Trebizond, but fear of the Venetians compels them to agree to trading on the old terms.

1314 Sinopian pirates set fire to Trebizond and much damage is done.

1330 Death of Alexius. His eldest son, =Andronicus III=, succeeds. A period of anarchy and civil war begins. Andronicus supposed to have put two brothers to death. Another brother and an uncle flee to Constantinople.

1332 Death of Andronicus. Accession of his young son, =Manuel II=, with everyone in power attempting to gain the direction of affairs. Taking advantage of the condition of affairs the Turkomans invade the empire, which is in great danger, and =Basil=, the fugitive son of Alexius II, is invited to become emperor. Manuel deposed. Basil proves a profligate monarch, and marries his mistress in spite of the fact that he has a wife. The power becomes decentralised.

1340 Death of Basil. His lawful wife, =Irene Palæologina=, daughter of the Byzantine emperor, is placed on the throne by her adherents. Civil war breaks out.

1341 =Anna Anachoulu=, daughter of Alexius II, is placed by the Comnenian party on the throne. Irene deposed. Michael, second son of Joannes II, claims throne. He is imprisoned, but a party forms around his son, Joannes.

1342 =Joannes III= gains throne from Anna. She is strangled.

1344 Disgusted with Joannes’ conduct the young nobles release his father, =Michael=, from prison and make him emperor. Michael confines Joannes in a monastery, and afterwards sends him to Hadrianopolis. He tries to improve the condition of affairs and decrease the power of the nobles, but is not strong enough for the task.

1347 The Great Plague (Black Death) rages in Trebizond. The Turkomans ravage the empire up to the walls of the capital.

1348 Turks capture Kerasunt. Genoese men of war attack Trebizond. The Greeks massacre the Franks for revenge.

1349 Michael makes peace with Genoese, ceding them fortress of Leontokastron. Civil riots break out. Michael dethroned and =Alexius III=, son of Basil, and his mistress, Irene of Trebizond, are brought from Constantinople to occupy the throne. The rebellions of the aristocracy continue.

1355 The rebels headed by the grand duke Nicetas appear with a fleet before Trebizond. Alexius drives them off. He begins to consolidate his power, but the Turkomans gradually seize territory from the empire until there is only a narrow strip of sea-coast left.

1380 Alexius quarrels with Megollo Lescari, a Genoese merchant, who fits out galleys to ravage the Black Sea. Alexius submits and confirms trade privileges of the Genoese.

1390 Death of Alexius. His son =Manuel III= succeeds.

1400 Manuel sends troops to the army of Timur, but does not himself take part in the battle of Angora (1402).

1405 After Timur’s death Manuel delivers empire from tribute to the Mongols.

1417 Death of Manuel. His son =Alexius IV= succeeds. After the retreat of the Mongols the empire is overrun by the two great Turkoman hordes of the Black and White Sheep. Kara Yusuf, chief of the Black Horde, compels Alexis to send a daughter to marry his son, and exacts tribute.

1420 Death of Kara Yusuf--the emperor ceases to pay tribute to the Black Horde.

1426 Rebellion of Alexius’ son Calo-Joannes, who has been raised to imperial dignity. The nobles rescue the emperor. Alexius confers rights of heir apparent and imperial dignity on his second son Alexander, who dies soon afterwards.

1442 First attack of Ottoman Turks on Trebizond is repulsed.

1446 Second rebellion of Calo-Joannes. He murders Alexius and succeeds as =Joannes IV=. He is hated for his crimes.

1449 The sheikh of Ertebil fails in an attempt to capture Trebizond. Joannes forms plan to expel Ottomans from Asia Minor and Muhammed II forced to invade the empire. Joannes compelled to become vassal of Muhammed and pay tribute.

1458 Death of Joannes as he is forming a great league against the Ottomans. A four-year-old son is set aside in favour of his brother =David= who continues Joannes’ work on the league.

1461 Siege and capture of Trebizond by Muhammed II. End of the empire of Trebizond. David retires to Mavronaros which he receives in exchange for his empire, and a few years later is put to death at Constantinople for refusing to join the Moslem faith.

THE KINGDOM OF SALONICA (1204-1222 A.D.)

1204 In the division of the Byzantine Empire among the crusaders, =Boniface=, marquis of Montferrat, commander-in-chief, receives a feudatory kingdom in Asia, but not liking to be so far from his Italian domains, he exchanges it for the province of Macedonia with Thessalonica for his capital. He calls it the kingdom of Salonica. He also believes himself entitled to Crete, and exchanges it with the Venetians for portions of Thessaly. Boniface would like to maintain an independent realm, but Baldwin I of Romania promptly compels him to do homage.

1204-1207 Boniface defeats attempts of the Greeks to recover his kingdom. He marches into the Peloponnesus and lays siege to Corinth and Argos, but is recalled by a rebellion in Thessalonica.

1207 Death of Boniface in a skirmish with the Bulgarians. =Demetrius= his son two years old succeeds with the queen, Margaret, as regent.

The kingdom is protected against the prince of Epirus and the king of Bulgaria by the Romanian emperor, until after the death of Pierre de Courtenai.

1222 While Demetrius is still completing his education in Italy, Theodore, prince of Epirus, conquers the kingdom and is crowned emperor of Thessalonica. Demetrius makes unsuccessful attempts to recover his kingdom. The title is held by the descendants of Demetrius until William marquis of Montferrat cedes it to the Byzantine emperor in 1284.

1266 Baldwin II, then titular emperor of Romania, granted the kingdom of Salonica to the house of Burgundy, where it remained until Eudes IV sold it to Philip of Tarentum, titular emperor of Romania in 1320.

THE DESPOTAT OF EPIRUS AND EMPIRE OF THESSALONICA (1204-1469 A.D.)

1204 After the conquest of Constantinople, =Michael I=, a natural son of Constantine Angelus and uncle of Isaac II and Alexius III, escapes into Epirus, marries a native lady, and establishes a government in the territory west of the Pindus Mountains. His capital is at Joannina. It is a typical Byzantine state, totally different from the Frankish feudatory governments. Michael and his descendants all take name of Angelus Comnenus Ducas. He is an able military leader, and extends his principality over all Epirus, Acarnania, Ætolia, and a part of Macedonia and Thessaly. He is virtually independent, but acknowledges Theodore Lascaris I as the lawful emperor of the East.

1214 Assassination of Michael by one of his slaves. His brother =Theodore= succeeds, having sworn fidelity to the throne of Nicæa. He at once begins to extend his dominions.

1217 Theodore captures the Latin emperor, Pierre de Courtenai, who is on his way to Constantinople.

1222 Theodore drives the Lombards out of Salonica, and is crowned emperor of Thessalonica.

_The Empire of Thessalonica_

1224 Theodore takes Hadrianopolis. His empire now extends from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. He plans attack on Constantinople, but becomes involved in war with John Asan of Bulgaria.

1230 John Asan takes Theodore prisoner and puts out his eyes. Theodore’s brother =Manuel= assumes imperial title.

1232 John Asan marries Theodore’s daughter and releases him. Theodore returns to Thessalonica and forms party strong enough to drive Manuel out. Theodore’s blindness prevents him from reigning, so his son =Joannes= takes the title. Manuel escapes to Nicæa and returns with aid from Joannes Vatatzes, but Theodore persuades him and his brother Constantine to aid in defending the empire against Nicæa.

1234 Vatatzes takes Thessalonica. Joannes compelled to give up imperial dignity and assume rank of despot.

_The Despotat of Epirus_

1244 =Demetrius= succeeds his brother Joannes.

1246 Joannes Vatatzes, owing to disputes, drives Demetrius from office and unites Thessalonica to the Greek Empire. A natural son of Michael I, Michael is, however, in possession of a portion of the despotat and the blind Theodore of another. Joannes Vatatzes makes =Michael II= despot under promise of absolute fidelity, but Theodore, 1251-1255 by his intrigues, involves Michael in war with Vatatzes.

1255 Michael delivers up Theodore and makes peace with Vatatzes. Michael is expelled from his dominions, but recovers the southern portion and rules there.

1267 Death of Michael. =Nicephorus=, his son, receives title and marries daughter of Theodore Lascaris II. He extends his territory in Acarnania and Ætolia.

1290 Nicephorus attacked by Andronicus II and the Genoese, but he repels them with help of the prince of Achaia and the count of Cephalonia.

1293 Death of Nicephorus. His son =Thomas= succeeds.

1318 Murder of Thomas by his nephew, =Thomas II=, the count of Cephalonia, who is murdered by his wife =Anne=, who is guardian of her son, Nicephorus II, twelve years old, when in 1337 Andronicus III invades the country. Anne turns the despotat over to him. Nicephorus killed, 1358, in a battle with the Albanians while attempting to recover the despotat.

_The Wallachian Princes of Thessaly_

1259 =Joannes Ducas I=, natural son of the despot Michael II, marries daughter of the Wallachian chief in Thessaly. He founds an independent government, fighting with or against Epirus or Constantinople, as suits his interests.

1290 Succeeded by his son, name not known.

1300 =Joannes Ducas (II)= succeeds under guardianship of Guy II, duke of Athens, his cousin.

1308 On death of Joannes, his possessions are divided among the frontier states.

_The Servian Despots of Epirus_

1367 =Thomas Prelubos= recognised by Stephen Dushan as prince of Joannina or Arta.

1385 Assassination of Prelubos on account of his cruelties. His widow marries =Esau Buondelmonte=, who wars with the Albanians until captured in 1399.

_The Tocco Family in Epirus (Despotat of Romania)_

1400 =Charles Tocco=, grandson of Leonardo Tocco, who was invested with Cephalonia by Robert of Tarentum, titular emperor of Romania, invades Epirus about 1390, and finally conquers enough territory to declare himself despot of Romania.

1429 =Charles II= succeeds his uncle.

1431 The Turks capture Joannina and Ætolia.

1433 Charles becomes a citizen of Venice in order to obtain the protection of that republic.

1452 =Leonard= succeeds his father.

1469 The Turks drive Leonard from the throne.

THE DUCHY OF ATHENS (1205-1456 A.D.)

_The House of de la Roche_

Between the kingdom of Salonica and the Peloponnesus lie several feudal states apportioned among the crusaders. Of these the duchy of Athens is the most important.

1205 =Otto de la Roche=, a Burgundian noble, takes possession of Athens. He is master of all Attica and Bœotia, but does homage to Boniface of Salonica.

1207 On death of Boniface Thebes is taken from Otto and added to Salonica, but is returned later by Henry of Romania.

1225 Otto prefers to return to his fief in France and resigns in favour of his nephew, =Guy I=.

1264 =John= succeeds his father. He assists Joannes Ducas against the Byzantine army and forms a close alliance with him later on. John captured in the battle of Oreus by the forces of Michael VIII and is released without payment of ransom.

1275 John succeeded by his brother, =William I=.

1280 William assumes the government of Achaia during minority of Isabella Villehardouin.

1290 Death of William. His son, =Guy II=, succeeds.

1293 Guy is invited to administer the dominions of the despot of Wallachia, his ward. Anna, widow of Nicephorus of Epirus, prepares to attack him, but withdraws through fear.

1304 Guy on his marriage to Maud of Hainault receives a fief in the Morea, but claims the whole principality of Achaia.

1308 Death of Guy before he can force his claim. His cousin, =Walter de Brienne=, succeeds.

_The House of Brienne_

The despots of Epirus and Wallachia threaten invasion. Walter makes alliance with Catalan Grand Company for defence and 1310 Walter defeats his enemies, but the Catalans refuse to quit the land.

1311 The Catalans defeat Walter at the battle of Cephisus. The Frankish power falls in northern Greece; the house of Brienne still holds fiefs in Nauplia and Argos.

_The Catalan Grand Company_

=Roger Deslau= appointed duke of Athens. His dominions are extended north and west.

_The House of Aragon, Duke of Athens and Neopatras_

1326 On death of Roger, =Manfred=, son of Frederick II of Sicily, is invested with the duchy, which becomes an appanage of the house of Aragon.

1330 =William=, Manfred’s brother, succeeds.

1331 The son of Walter de Brienne makes unsuccessful attempt to regain duchy.

1338 =John=, brother of William and Manfred, succeeds.

1348 =Frederick=, marquis of Randazzo, son of John, succeeds. He never visits Athens.

1355 =Frederick III=, king of Sicily, succeeds the marquis of Randazzo.

1377 =Maria=, daughter of Frederick III, succeeds to the duchy.

1386 Conquest of Athens by Nerio Acciajuoli, governor of Corinth, in a war concerning the countess of Salona and her heritage.

_The House of Acciajuoli_

1394 =Nerio I= confirmed in the duchy by King Ladislaus of Naples. Nerio taken prisoner by Navarrese troops and purchases his liberty. Death of Nerio; his natural son, =Antonio=, succeeds. Bajazet recognises his authority. Athens enjoys a tranquil rule of forty years.

1435 =Nerio II=, grand-nephew of Nerio I, succeeds on death of Antonio. The administration comes into hands of his brother, Antonio, while Nerio is in western Europe.

1443 Nerio pays tribute to the despot of Morea.

1450 Nerio joins forces with Muhammed II and becomes Ottoman vassal.

1453 Infant son of Nerio succeeds on his father’s death with his mother as regent.

1455 Muhammed orders duchy conferred on =Franco=, nephew of Nerio II.

1456 Muhammed finding the Athenians disgusted with Franco annexes duchy to the Ottoman Empire.

There are other feudal states north of the isthmus of Corinth, ruled by the lords of Budonitza, Salona, and Negropont, but details of their history are lacking. Like Athens they are finally merged in the Ottoman Empire.

THE PRINCIPALITY OF ACHAIA (1205-1460 A.D.)

1205-1208 =Guillaume de Champlitte=, receiving territory in the Peloponnesus as his share of the Byzantine Empire, is joined by Geoffrey Villehardouin, nephew of the chronicler, and conquering about half the peninsula within three years organises a strong feudal government. Geoffrey is his most important feudal vassal, and receives the fief of Kalamata.

1210 Guillaume returns to France leaving his relative Hugh in charge, but the latter dying, Geoffrey is elected in his place. =Geoffrey= possesses himself of the principality. He strengthens it in every possible way.

1218 =Geoffrey II= succeeds his father.

1219-1222 Serious quarrel of Geoffrey with the pope. The ban of excommunication is finally removed.

1246 Death of Geoffrey. His brother =Guillaume Villehardouin= succeeds. He proposes to complete conquest of Peloponnesus.

1247 Conquest of Nauplia with help of Venetians of Modon.

1248 Conquest of Monemvasia. Before the end of the year the entire Peloponnesus is under Frankish domination.

1259 Guillaume assists his father-in-law Michael II of Epirus in his war against Michael VIII of Constantinople. Battle of Pelagonia, and capture of Guillaume, by Michael VIII.

1261 Guillaume released by ceding Monemvasia, Misithra, and Maina, three strong cities, to Michael VIII.

Pope Urban IV releases Guillaume from promise not to wage war on Michael. Warfare results in the Morea.

1263 Urban IV mediates between Michael and Guillaume.

1267 The principality becomes a dependency of the kingdom of Naples, having been that of the Romanian emperors.

1277 Death of Guillaume. His daughter =Isabella= succeeds.

1278 Death of Isabella’s husband Philip of Anjou. =Guillaume de la Roche=, duke of Athens, governs for ten years.

1291 Isabella marries Florenz of Hainault.

1297 Death of Florenz and end of last prosperous period of the principality. The suzerainty of Achaia has been transferred to Philip of Tarentum.

1301 Isabella marries Philip of Savoy.

1304 Isabella and Philip leave Greece in consequence of disputes with their vassals and with Philip of Tarentum.

1311 Death of Isabella in Italy. Her daughter =Maud of Hainault=, widow of Guy II of Athens, succeeds.

1313 Maud marries Louis of Burgundy.

1315 Maud and Louis leave for Greece. Ferdinand of Majorca claims principality and sets out to take it.

1316 Death of Ferdinand in battle with Louis.

1317 Death of Louis. The house of Anjou try to marry Maud to Count John of Gravina, but finds she has already married Hugh de la Pallisse. King of Naples declares this marriage null, and Maud is compelled to go through ceremony with John. She is then imprisoned and dies about 1324. =Philip of Tarentum= takes title of prince.

1332 =Robert=, titular emperor of Romania, succeeds his father Philip as prince, while his mother Catherine of Valois becomes suzerain. John of Gravina still disputes the principality. The Achæan barons fail in attempt to transfer their fealty to Constantinople and to Don Jayme II of Majorca.

1346 At death of Catherine de Valois, Robert becomes suzerain of Achaia as well as prince.

1364 Death of Robert, leaving principality to his widow =Mary= of Bourbon, the suzerainty devolving on Philip III titular emperor of Romania. Mary establishes herself in Greece, but is unable to hold the position.

1373 James de Baux becomes suzerain.

1387 Mary retires to Italy. She is last sovereign to rule over the whole of the principality. Achaia falls into a state of anarchy. The country is ravaged by the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks; the strategi and despots of the Palæologus family established by the emperor of Constantinople in the Morean territory that was the price of William Villehardouin’s ransom, gradually reconquer the Peloponnesus from the French feudal lords. About 1425, Murad II sets about ruining the Byzantine possessions in the Peloponnesus. After this the Ottoman power in the land steadily increases. In 1458 Muhammed II visits the Peloponnesus, and it is finally conquered by him in 1460, except some cities still in the hands of the Venetians. For world-historic interest, perhaps the most important feature of the feudal states in Greece is thus stated by Finlay: “The Franks ruled the greater part of the Peloponnesus for two centuries, and the feudal system which they introduced was maintained in full vigour for sufficient time to admit of its effects on civilised communities living under the simpler system of personal rights, traced out in the Roman law, being fully developed. The result was that the Franks were demoralised, the Greeks impoverished, and Greece ruined.”

THE VENETIAN ACQUISITIONS (1207-1566 A.D.)

In the partition of the Byzantine Empire, the republic of Venice receives about three-eighths of the whole empire of Romania; but her resources not being adequate to conquer this amount of territory, she makes no effort to take a considerable portion of her share. We have seen how a portion of Thessaly was exchanged with Boniface of Montferrat, and a considerable amount of land falls into the hands of the other adventurers. Venice pursues the policy, allowing her barons personally to conquer certain territories, on condition that they be held as fiefs of the republic. Thus the Dandolo and Viaro families take Gallipoli and the island of Andros; the Ghisi seize Tinos, Scyros, Mycone, and other islands. Ceos falls to the Justiniani and Michicle, Lemnos to the Navigajosa, Astypalia to the Quirini. The twelve islands of the Archipelago forming the Byzantine theme of the Ægean Sea are taken by Mark Sanduno. He invades Naxos about 1207. The Sanduno and Della Carceri rule the islands, vassals of Romania and Venice--uneventful rules in which a fierce Seljuk invasion of Naxos in 1330 is perhaps the most important event--until 1381 when through conspiracy the Crispo family seizes the duchy. In the treaty between Muhammed II and Venice after the capture of Constantinople, the dukes of the Archipelago act as subjects of Venice. When the republic and the Ottoman Empire engage in hostilities, the duke of the Archipelago is compelled to become a vassal of the Sublime Porte, 1537. In 1566, on complaint of the Greek residents, the sultan Selim II seizes the duchy and adds it to his empire, and the last fief of the Romanian Empire is extinguished.

[Illustration]