Gibbon's The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
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Chapter LXIII: Civil Wars And The Ruin Of The Greek Empire. Part I.
Civil Wars, And Ruin Of The Greek Empire. -- Reigns Of Andronicus, The
Elder And Younger, And John Palæologus. -- Regency, Revolt, Reign, And
Abdication Of John Cantacuzene. -- Establishment Of A Genoese Colony At
Pera Or Galata. -- Their Wars With The Empire And City Of
Constantinople.
The long reign of Andronicus ^1 the elder is chiefly memorable by the
disputes of the Greek church, the invasion of the Catalans, and the rise
of the Ottoman power. He is celebrated as the most learned and virtuous
prince of the age; but such virtue, and such learning, contributed
neither to the perfection of the individual, nor to the happiness of
society A slave of the most abject superstition, he was surrounded on
all sides by visible and invisible enemies; nor were the flames of hell
less dreadful to his fancy, than those of a Catalan or Turkish war.
Under the reign of the Palæologi, the choice of the patriarch was the
most important business of the state; the heads of the Greek church were
ambitious and fanatic monks; and their vices or virtues, their learning
or ignorance, were equally mischievous or contemptible. By his
intemperate discipline, the patriarch Athanasius ^2 excited the hatred
of the clergy and people: he was heard to declare, that the sinner
should swallow the last dregs of the cup of penance; and the foolish
tale was propagated of his punishing a sacrilegious ass that had tasted
the lettuce of a convent garden. Driven from the throne by the universal
clamor, Athanasius composed before his retreat two papers of a very
opposite cast. His public testament was in the tone of charity and
resignation; the private codicil breathed the direst anathemas against
the authors of his disgrace, whom he excluded forever from the communion
of the holy trinity, the angels, and the saints. This last paper he
enclosed in an earthen pot, which was placed, by his order, on the top
of one of the pillars, in the dome of St. Sophia, in the distant hope of
discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some youths, climbing
by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret; and,
as Andronicus felt himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he
trembled on the brink of the abyss which had been so treacherously dug
under his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly convened to debate this
important question: the rashness of these clandestine anathemas was
generally condemned; but as the knot could be untied only by the same
hand, as that hand was now deprived of the crosier, it appeared that
this posthumous decree was irrevocable by any earthly power. Some faint
testimonies of repentance and pardon were extorted from the author of
the mischief; but the conscience of the emperor was still wounded, and
he desired, with no less ardor than Athanasius himself, the restoration
of a patriarch, by whom alone he could be healed. At the dead of night,
a monk rudely knocked at the door of the royal bed-chamber, announcing a
revelation of plague and famine, of inundations and earthquakes.
Andronicus started from his bed, and spent the night in prayer, till he
felt, or thought that he felt, a slight motion of the earth. The emperor
on foot led the bishops and monks to the cell of Athanasius; and, after
a proper resistance, the saint, from whom this message had been sent,
consented to absolve the prince, and govern the church of
Constantinople. Untamed by disgrace, and hardened by solitude, the
shepherd was again odious to the flock, and his enemies contrived a
singular, and as it proved, a successful, mode of revenge. In the night,
they stole away the footstool or foot-cloth of his throne, which they
secretly replaced with the decoration of a satirical picture. The
emperor was painted with a bridle in his mouth, and Athanasius leading
the tractable beast to the feet of Christ. The authors of the libel were
detected and punished; but as their lives had been spared, the Christian
priest in sullen indignation retired to his cell; and the eyes of
Andronicus, which had been opened for a moment, were again closed by his
successor.
[Footnote 1: Andronicus himself will justify our freedom in the
invective, (Nicephorus Gregoras, l. i. c. i.,) which he pronounced
against historic falsehood. It is true, that his censure is more
pointedly urged against calumny than against adulation.]
[Footnote 2: For the anathema in the pigeon's nest, see Pachymer, (l.
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c. 24,) who relates the general history of Athanasius, (l. viii. c.
13--16, 20, 24, l. x. c. 27--29, 31--36, l. xi. c. 1--3, 5, 6, l. xiii.
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8, 10, 23, 35,) and is followed by Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. vi. c. 5,
7, l. vii. c. 1, 9,) who includes the second retreat of this second
Chrysostom.]
If this transaction be one of the most curious and important of a reign
of fifty years, I cannot at least accuse the brevity of my materials,
since I reduce into some few pages the enormous folios of Pachymer, ^3
Cantacuzene, ^4 and Nicephorus Gregoras, ^5 who have composed the prolix
and languid story of the times. The name and situation of the emperor
John Cantacuzene might inspire the most lively curiosity. His memorials
of forty years extend from the revolt of the younger Andronicus to his
own abdication of the empire; and it is observed, that, like Moses and
Cæsar, he was the principal actor in the scenes which he describes. But
in this eloquent work we should vainly seek the sincerity of a hero or a
penitent. Retired in a cloister from the vices and passions of the
world, he presents not a confession, but an apology, of the life of an
ambitious statesman. Instead of unfolding the true counsels and
characters of men, he displays the smooth and specious surface of
events, highly varnished with his own praises and those of his friends.
Their motives are always pure; their ends always legitimate: they
conspire and rebel without any views of interest; and the violence which
they inflict or suffer is celebrated as the spontaneous effect of reason
and virtue.
[Footnote 3: Pachymer, in seven books, 377 folio pages, describes the
first twenty-six years of Andronicus the Elder; and marks the date of
his composition by the current news or lie of the day, (A.D. 1308.)
Either death or disgust prevented him from resuming the pen.]
[Footnote 4: After an interval of twelve years, from the conclusion of
Pachymer, Cantacuzenus takes up the pen; and his first book (c. 1--59,
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9--150) relates the civil war, and the eight last years of the elder
Andronicus. The ingenious comparison with Moses and Cæsar is fancied by
his French translator, the president Cousin.]
[Footnote 5: Nicephorus Gregoras more briefly includes the entire life
and reign of Andronicus the elder, (l. vi. c. 1, p. 96--291.) This is
the part of which Cantacuzene complains as a false and malicious
representation of his conduct.]
After the example of the first of the Palæologi, the elder Andronicus
associated his son Michael to the honors of the purple; and from the age
of eighteen to his premature death, that prince was acknowledged, above
twenty-five years, as the second emperor of the Greeks. ^6 At the head
of an army, he excited neither the fears of the enemy, nor the jealousy
of the court; his modesty and patience were never tempted to compute the
years of his father; nor was that father compelled to repent of his
liberality either by the virtues or vices of his son. The son of Michael
was named Andronicus from his grandfather, to whose early favor he was
introduced by that nominal resemblance. The blossoms of wit and beauty
increased the fondness of the elder Andronicus; and, with the common
vanity of age, he expected to realize in the second, the hope which had
been disappointed in the first, generation. The boy was educated in the
palace as an heir and a favorite; and in the oaths and acclamations of
the people, the august triad was formed by the names of the father, the
son, and the grandson. But the younger Andronicus was speedily corrupted
by his infant greatness, while he beheld with puerile impatience the
double obstacle that hung, and might long hang, over his rising
ambition. It was not to acquire fame, or to diffuse happiness, that he
so eagerly aspired: wealth and impunity were in his eyes the most
precious attributes of a monarch; and his first indiscreet demand was
the sovereignty of some rich and fertile island, where he might lead a
life of independence and pleasure. The emperor was offended by the loud
and frequent intemperance which disturbed his capital; the sums which
his parsimony denied were supplied by the Genoese usurers of Pera; and
the oppressive debt, which consolidated the interest of a faction, could
be discharged only by a revolution. A beautiful female, a matron in
rank, a prostitute in manners, had instructed the younger Andronicus in
the rudiments of love; but he had reason to suspect the nocturnal visits
of a rival; and a stranger passing through the street was pierced by the
arrows of his guards, who were placed in ambush at her door. That
stranger was his brother, Prince Manuel, who languished and died of his
wound; and the emperor Michael, their common father, whose health was in
a declining state, expired on the eighth day, lamenting the loss of both
his children. ^7 However guiltless in his intention, the younger
Andronicus might impute a brother's and a father's death to the
consequence of his own vices; and deep was the sigh of thinking and
feeling men, when they perceived, instead of sorrow and repentance, his
ill-dissembled joy on the removal of two odious competitors. By these
melancholy events, and the increase of his disorders, the mind of the
elder emperor was gradually alienated; and, after many fruitless
reproofs, he transferred on another grandson ^8 his hopes and affection.
The change was announced by the new oath of allegiance to the reigning
sovereign, and the person whom he should appoint for his successor; and
the acknowledged heir, after a repetition of insults and complaints, was
exposed to the indignity of a public trial. Before the sentence, which
would probably have condemned him to a dungeon or a cell, the emperor
was informed that the palace courts were filled with the armed followers
of his grandson; the judgment was softened to a treaty of
reconciliation; and the triumphant escape of the prince encouraged the
ardor of the younger faction.
[Footnote 6: He was crowned May 21st, 1295, and died October 12th, 1320,
(Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 239.) His brother Theodore, by a second marriage,
inherited the marquisate of Montferrat, apostatized to the religion and
manners of the Latins, (oti kai gnwmh kai pistei kai schkati, kai
geneiwn koura kai pasin eqesin DatinoV hn akraijnhV. Nic. Greg. l. ix.
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1,) and founded a dynasty of Italian princes, which was extinguished
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