Their very own and golden city
Frederic Raphael
BYZANTIUM: THE APOGEE by John Julius Norwich Viking £20, pp.389 or many years, the eastern Roman empire was not regarded as a proper subject for edifying study. Although Constantinople was the foundation of the first Christian emperor and, supposedly, enclosed a society dedicated to piety and scholarship, the odour around Byzantium was not only one of sanctity: the City, as Greeks still sometimes call it, in now hope- less nostalgia, is also a byword for devious Intrigue and lamentable sanitation. The western empire was always said to have fallen on account of moral delinquencies, but the eastern reeked of religious enthusi- asms of the most insalubrious kind. How could one choose between the superstitions of the iconodules', those who believed in the quasi-magic properties of often superbly graven images, and the Cromwellian stringency of iconoclasts, whose activities can still make any art-lover or auctioneer wring his hands at the thought of all those incinerated beauties? Thanks to such principled wreckers, there are more antique mosaics in San Giovanni in Laterano than in all of modern Istanbul (the Turkish name announces the unappeased woe of the Greeks).
Sir Steven Runciman has been more responsible than anyone for unravelling the knotty skein of dynastic complexities and nastiness, in which murder, blinding, castration and other fraternal acts were commonplace. His style combined scholar- ship with readability, as his masterpiece, the History of the Crusades, amply proved. John Julius Norwich has equalled his limpid manner without aping it. His second, eminently readable volume begins with the last convulsions of the iconoclastic controversy, which was more or less shelved by the end of the first millennium. In subsequent centuries, Byzantium was faced with problems like the Saracens, the Bulgars and, in due and dire course, the Turks, which should have rendered theo- logy a marginal subject. In fact, there was a steady and stifling habit of ecclesiastic interference in what, in a city without divine affectations, would have been secu- lar affairs. The capacity, and inclination, of the orthodox patriarch to reproach or even
excommunicate the emperor testified alike to the Church's nerve (there could be sav- age consequences for patriarchs who mis- gauged the durability or vindictiveness of the sovereign) and to its centrality as a moral arbiter. The emperors themselves being on a par with the apostles and Christ's vicegerents on earth — were also disposed to pontificate, often to their own regret; Leo the Wise (886-912) committed the folly of denouncing even third mar- riages — porphyrogenetic wives often died from natural causes, of which childbirth was an obvious occupational hazard before himself seeking to contract a fourth. Church and State rumbled seismically for decades with the repercussions of his duti- ful uxoriousness (the establishment of dynasties alone inhibited, but never pre- vented, ambitious generals or empresses' toy-boys from seizing or sliding into power).
Norwich distributes plaudits and winces at excesses in the manner of a stern but enlightened headmaster who can be relied on for witty, succinct reports. His own tutor was Obolensky, whose The Byzantine Commonwealth (1971) is probably the best single-volume treatment of the longest dying fall in history. Thanks to Greek fire — which, no doubt, a conference of Byzantium's enemies, convened to estab- lish peace in the region, would have done its best to declare immoral and inhuman the City survived against the odds, but always at risk. The huge population (R.H.J. Jenkins, in the Cambridge Mediaeval History, reckons it at half a million) depended on alien corn, distributed very cheaply except when a market economy was imposed. It was often penned within the massive walls which regularly defended the people against the crassness or incom- petence of imperial policy. Norwich is not alone in wondering how Byzantium remained so rich, despite the extravagance of its ostentation and the need, quite often, to buy off the hordes it failed to repel by other means. Bluff was an essential skill. The marvels of the court — artificial birds that sang and lions that roared — amazed ambassadors with their prototypical Faberge intricacies. Elaborate protocol intimidated visitors, rather like the English system of titles with its ability to wrongfoot those who cannot distinguish Lady X from Lady Antonia X or Antonia, Lady X.
Norwich plays chef de protocole with unpatronising sureness and unloitering zest as he explains the difference between the `Have you noticed how the Jasons and Kylies are ageing?' parakoimomenos and the Domesticus and between the monophysites and the Pauli- cians, those other Cathars, so to speak, whose eviction from the Christian comity was an act not only of intolerance but also of political lunacy, since it threw them on the mercy of the Caliph, who displayed it willingly. The Arabs, although inflexibly determined on empire, were gracious and often splendid in their diplomatic conduct, once offering lasting peace in exchange for a visiting professorship from a great mathematician.
Norwich complained, amiably, that his history of Venice was slightly irksome to compose since most of the Doges were chosen for their greyness. The empurpled emperors he parades here rarely lack per- sonality and are often men of remarkable wit, energy and culture. Their greatness, and certainly their longevity, could depend on horrific acts, whether a literal hatchet- job on a predecessor or, in the case of Basil the Bulgar-killer, the blinding of a whole army, except for every 100th man who, reduced to a monophthalmic stumble, led the others home to give their king his lesson. Byzantine royal women were hardly less ruthless, though they could be shorn of their hair and committed to a convent at the whim of the men whose fortunes they had favoured.
If Norwich has a fault, it is that upstairs interests him much more than down. His Constantinople has a mob, which takes a rough hand when unpopular emperors fal- ter, but he has avowedly little interest in the lower orders. His palaces are stiflingly sumptuous, but he ignores the open sewers which doubled for streets in the poor quar- ter. Nor does the narrow scholarship of the intellectual class, with its sclerotic conse- quences, entertain him enough to become a topic. His Byzantium is a place for palace plots and foreign wars, but the City's strength — its typically Greek resources of ingenuity of all kinds — was also its weak- ness, since no straightforward character could succeed in it and no speculation which challenged received ideas could sur- vive its hieratic examiners. We must wait for what will certainly be a highly readable third volume to see whether Norwich comes to deal with the 'Byzantine disease', as a result of which these highly cultivated people became more and more narrow- minded and, even as their resources dwin- dled, more and more complacent. If, as we were always promised, the Fall of Constantinople sent civilising ripples through Europe, intellectual stagnation was a common condition during the centuries which preceded the catastrophe. Since the present war between the Serbs (Orthodox) and the Croatians (Roman Catholic) is the direct consequence of a diplomatic demar- cation agreed between the two Romes a millennium or so ago, one could argue that Byzantine policy is still affecting the modern world, like the light from an extinct star.
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