God's City

Byzantine Constantinople

Nic Fields

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781473895102
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Byzantium. Was it Greek or Roman, familiar or hybrid, barbaric or civilized, Oriental or Western? In the late eleventh century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Christendom, the seat of the Byzantine emperor, Christs vice-regent on earth, and the center of a predominately Christian empire, steeped in Greek cultural and artistic influences, yet founded and maintained by a Roman legal and administrative system. Despite the amalgam of Greek and Roman influences, however, its language and culture was definitely Greek. Constantinople truly was the capital of the Roman empire in the East, and from its founding under the first Constantinus to its fall under the eleventh and last Constantinus the inhabitants always called themselves Romaioi, Romans, not Hellniks, Greeks. Over its millennium long history the empire and its capital experienced many vicissitudes that included several periods of waxing and waning and more than one golden age.Its political will to survive is still eloquently proclaimed in the monumental double land walls of Constantinople, the greatest city fortifications ever built, on which the forces of barbarism dashed themselves for a thousand years. Indeed, Byzantium was one of the longest lasting social organizations in history. Very much part of this success story was the legendary Varangian Guard, the lite body of axe-bearing Northmen sworn to remain loyal to the true Christian emperor of the Romans. There was no hope for an empire that had lost the will to prosecute the grand and awful business of adventure. The Byzantine empire was certainly not of that stamp.

Chapter 1

Pilgrim’s Picture

Our story begins with a city, but not with just any city. So, let me begin by assuming, or perhaps merely pretending, that you do not know anything about Byzantine Constantinople. If you already know something, you are welcome to yawn over the following preamble to the city.

Constantinople, throughout its long and turbulent history, has been many things to many peoples: the imperial capital of the Christian Roman or Byzantine empire for over a millennium; the head of a struggling Latin kingdom for five decades; the capital of the Ottoman sultanate for nearly five centuries. To outsiders and visitors such as the Rus’, who adopted its Orthodox Church, it was Tsarigrad, the city of the Caesar; to western pilgrims en route to the Holy Land, it was the New Jerusalem; to the Arabs, who coveted it, it was Rumiyyat al-kubra, Great City of the Romans; to the Northmen, who fought in its armies as mercenaries, it was Mikligarðr, the Great City; whereas to the citizens themselves, it was simply the City (Gr. ή πόλις). Thessaloniki (the biblical Thessalonica) may be a city, as may Antioch, Alexandria or Ephesos, but when the Constantinopolitans spoke of the City they strictly meant Constantinople. Here, in the Queen of Cities (Gr. băsíleúousa), anything else would have been redundant.

It is all too easy for us to assume that once the Roman empire lost the West, and Italy, and the eternal city of Rome itself, it was therefore no longer the Roman empire and had become something else. Yet, the state we are considering had long since ceased to depend on Rome or Italy for it identity. It was still the Roman empire, the Christian empire of the civilized (viz. Mediterranean) world, whatever territory it had lost. A place called the ‘Byzantine empire’ is, in fact, the invention of later French historians, and modern scholars still refer to the ‘Byzantines’ (from their capital’s former name of Byzantium), as we shall continue to do, but they regarded themselves (as did those around them in this part of the world) as the ‘Romans’ (e.g. Ar. Rum) even though they were predominantly Greek speaking. Even today, Greek speakers in Turkey are still known as Rumlar, an echo of this Roman past, while the modern Greek word for a certain kind of Greekness is Rhomiosyni, ‘Romanness’.

Consciously modelled on the first Rome, the second Rome was a worthy successor to the original capital of the Roman empire. The humanist scholar and antiquarian Pierre Gilles (1490–1555), a French visitor to the Ottoman capital who was searching to discover and reconstruct the topography and antiquities of the long-lost Byzantine capital, writes:

The ancient city of Constantinople had five palaces, fourteen churches [including the Church of the Holy Apostles], six divine residences of the Augustae, three most noble houses, eight baths, two basilicas, four forums, two senates, five granaries, two theatres, two mime theatres, four harbours, one circus [the Hippodrome], four cisterns, four nymphaea [public fountains], 322 neighbourhoods, 4,388 large houses, fifty-two porticoes, 153 private baths, twenty public mills, 120 private mills, 117 stairways, five meat markets… the Forum of Augustus [the Augusteon], the Capitol, the Mint and three ports.1

The chosen site was that magnificent setting between Europe and Asia protected by the inlet of the Golden Horn to the north, the Bosporus to the east and the Sea of Marmara to the south. The weakest side of what was then occupied by the Greek polis of Byzantium was the landward: few natural obstacles stood between this and the vast plains rolling northwest towards the Danube. The emperor Constantinus rebuilt it, enlarged it, repopulated it, and encircled it with excellent walls.

According to Dionysios Byzantii, who was writing before a furious Septimius Severus destroyed his Greek city in 196 following a siege that had dragged on for three years, the original circuit of Byzantium was forty stadia in length,2 expertly constructed, we learn from Herodian, who saw the ruins, ‘out of millstone hewn into blocks and fitted together with such close mortises that one might think it was carved from a single block of stone rather than being jointed’.3 It is possible to gather this from Pausanias, who tells us in his Guide to Greece:

I have not seen the walls of Babylon or the walls of Memnon at Susa in Persia, nor have I heard the account of any eyewitness; but the walls of Ambrossos in Phokis, at Byzantium and at Rhodes, all of them the most strongly fortified places, are not so strong as the Messenian walls [in the Peloponnesus].4

We can only wonder what these three Greek gentlemen would have written concerning the land walls of Constantinus had they been fortunate enough to gaze upon them, not to mention the mighty double land walls of Theodosius II.

The new land walls of Constantinus stretched in a great semicircle from the Golden Horn across to the Sea of Marmara,5 which roughly trebled the area occupied by the old Greek polis, while sea walls were added, to link up with those rebuilt by Septimius Severus. A well-travelled visitor would have noted that the newly built Constantinople was emphatically a rival to Rome: a ceremonial Senate, a Capitol, a main forum, a milepost (the Milion) from which all distances in the empire were measured. Constantinople also boasted seven hills and fourteen districts; the same number as its illustrious predecessor Rome, ancient but perhaps not eternal.

The new capital had, therefore, a threefold destiny. By history it was linked to Rome and the Roman empire; by foundation it was the first city of Christendom, by situation and language it was Greek and tied to the Hellenistic world of Alexander the Great of Macedon and to the high intellectual heritage of classical antiquity and classical Greece. Nonetheless, as mentioned above, its emperors and people proudly regarded themselves as Romaioi, not Hellênikés.6 This serves to remind us that Alexander, who put paid once and for all to the independence of the free poleis of classical Greece (Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, and the rest) and then blazed his way to the borders of India effectively snuffing out the vast Persian empire as he did so, was a crucial figure in Roman culture. He was the forerunner of the world conquerors of the Roman Republic (Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey, Caesar, and the others), the yardstick of Roman military glory, and eventually the rôle model for successive Roman emperors. More than that, his conquests shaped the world stage not only for the Macedonian and Greek generals that disputed and carved up his conquests after his death, but later for the Romans too, Rome in the process irresistibly rising from a middle-ranking tribal stronghold to the greatest imperial superpower the world had ever known.

Straddling its seven hills and secure behind its elaborate defences, the city of Constantinus, the imperial powerhouse of the later Roman world, was clearly designed to impress outsiders. The scale of its defences and the density and majesty of its skyline, its urban landscape packed with palaces, villas, churches and monuments, must have been striking. And then there were the hordes of bronze and marble masterpieces that had been whisked off from all over the Mediterranean to adorn Constantinople, a brazen attempt to place the new world capital on a cultural par with her more venerable sisters, such as Rome, Alexandria and Athens.

The noonday sun, catching the walls and terraces of some of the finest buildings in the empire, would have flashed like fire from roofs and domes sheathed in burnished bronze. To any traveller approaching from the glistening waters of the Bosporus, the dazzling metropolis – as if heated in a crucible – seemed to rise out of liquid metal. The Norse poet Bölverkr Arnórsson describes the young Haraldr Sigurðarson watching the gleaming roofs of the city on his approach down the Bosporus: ‘The excellent king saw the metal-covered roofs of Mikligarðr out ahead; many a beautiful ship drew next to the high end of the city’.7 As the future king of Norway was to soon find out, even at night Constantinople shimmered; it was one of the few cities in the empire to have street lighting. This was a city of golden opportunities, an emporium of golden dreams, ruled by a potential employer rich in worldly wealth and furniture, fat in foodstuffs and padded in soft raiment. We can imagine Haraldr’s engaging sense of marvel at the size, scale and splendour of the great city.

Such sights and delights, along with the prosperity and politeness of Constantinople, would have been a source of wonder to any visiting Northman. From as early as the tenth century, Northmen had recorded their impressions of Mikligarðr and its splendours, which permeate Old Norse literature and are possibly based on the routine and ceremony of the Constantinopolitan court, something the Varangians would have intimately known. But this is a topic to be taken up in another place. Suffice to say at this moment, in the mediaeval period ultimate sovereignty had an ultimate source – God himself – and the Byzantine emperor could be seen as one of his most distinguished representatives. When seen in this light, the fact that Northmen would have taken service with the most Christian emperor, ‘the earthly counterpart and vice-regent of the Christ Pantokrator’,8 is to be expected. Besides, the northern adventurer’s thrill of the boundless sea and the lure of its lucrative ports of call were foremost in the minds of these bold predators, while the sword arm was a saleable commodity, naturally. Having been brought up in a heroic tradition, he was willing to fight and die for a noble man he chose as lord, whatever the man’s nationality. The Northman was offered a chance to do what he excelled at – fighting and killing – and where could loyal service be more honourable and reward more bounteous than in the sumptuous treasure-city of the Bosporus?

Splendid, almost unimaginable wealth and finery is characteristic of the Byzantine empire in the prose sagas composed on the small, rugged island of Iceland in the middle of the North Atlantic. Most clearly this copiousness is best expressed by a single line from the Heimskringla: ‘The God of Greece throne is so heavenly rich’.9 That is the impression given by the mosaic depictions of Christ Pantokrator, which must have appealed particularly to the Northman psyche, being so fond of gold and extravagance. Norse far-travellers who return from that southern empire physically display this fondness, such as the conspicuous showmanship of Bolli Bollason decked out in scarlet silk and gold,10 the costume of court officials, or Haraldr Sigurðarson’s gold ornamented, silken-sailed ship and chests of gold,11 and Norse visitors to Constantinople see it on display all around them, such as Alexios I Komnenos’ splendid gifts to Sigurðr I Magnússon Jórsalafari (Jerusalem-traveller).12 These three Norse heroes we shall meet anon in another book.

It is said that gold is the mother of armies, and in Byzantium the Northmen encountered the only state in mediaeval Europe whose fiscal organization permitted regular paying of mercenaries. The inevitable burden imposed by the retention of mercenary forces was the need for their remuneration – or other form of support – in respect of sword-service rendered. In the smaller and economically weaker early mediaeval European states, the maintenance of large standing armies was simply impossible. In the tenth and the eleventh centuries, armies numbering even 10,000 soldiers were considered very large, and it was difficult to maintain them for a long period of time.13 By way of a contemporary comparison, the largest number ever mustered by the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem numbered no more than 15,000,14 and this was a kingdom at war.

It was the Iberian rabbi and world traveller Benjamin of Tudela (1130–73) who once said:

Wealth like that of Constantinople is not to be found in the whole world. Here also are men learned in all the books of the Greeks, and they eat and drink every man under his vine and his fig-tree.15

Similar sentiments were expressed by the humble French knight Robert de Clari, albeit during the systematic looting of Constantinople by the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade:

Not since the world was made was there ever seen or won so great a treasure or so noble or so rich, nor in the time of Alexander nor in the time of Charlemagne nor before nor after. Nor do I think, myself, that in the forty richest cities of the world there has been so much wealth as was found in Constantinople.16

In general, all Latin chroniclers, whatever their views of the Constantinopolitans or their activities in the city, praised Constantinople, and the crusaders of the First Crusade are some of the most enthusiastic. Fulcher de Chartres, chaplain to Baldwin of Edessa (r. 1097–1100) – who was soon destined to be the second king of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (r. 1100–18) – spoke of the marvels of Constantinople as an enthralled eyewitness:

Oh, what an excellent and beautiful city! How many monasteries, and how many palaces there are in it, of wonderful work skilfully fashioned! How many marvellous works are to be seen in the streets and districts of the city! It is a great nuisance to recite what an opulence of all kinds of goods are found there; of gold, of silver, of many kinds of mantles, and of holy relics. In every season, merchants, in frequent sailings, bring to that place everything that man might need. Almost twenty thousand eunuchs, I judge, are kept there continuously.17

Even allowing for the mediaeval propensity for exaggerating, this was undoubtedly one of biggest, and certainly the most splendid, cities in Christendom.

As for Fulcher’s claim about the number of eunuchs, it does seem excessive, yet we cannot prove him wrong. Eunuchs, castrated males who could normally be recognized by their lack of facial hair, played a significant rôle in Byzantium. Indeed, the emperors were quite willing to employ eunuchs in their service, even as military commanders: for example, Iustinianus’ great general Narses (d. 574) was a Perso-Armenian eunuch (who continued to successfully lead armies in the field into his nineties). This practice, abhorrent as it is to us, was because a eunuch, no matter how powerful, was seen as a safer option as no eunuch could hope to become emperor. Indeed, fear of usurpation appears to have also played a rôle in Narses’ promotion. Where Prokopios of Caesarea Palestinae only insinuated, his continuer Agathias made it plain that the no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Pilgrim’s Picture
• Chapter 2 Before Constantine
• Chapter 3 Holy Queen
• Chapter 4 Impregnable Walls
• Chapter 5 Heaven’s Approval
• Chapter 6 Victory Bringer
• Chapter 7 Sacred Space
• Chapter 8 Pious Autocrats
• Chapter 9 Holy Prince
• Chapter 10 Christian Alternatives
• Chapter 11 Icon Wars
• Chapter 12 Purple Born
• Chapter 13 Secular Spectacles
• Chapter 14 Pious Augustae
• Chapter 15 Christian Soldiers
• Chapter 16 Christian Frontline
• Chapter 17 Celestial Fire
• Chapter 18 Deus Vult
• Chapter 19 Last Crusade
• Chapter 20 The Fall
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Rulers of Constantinople
• Patriarchs of Constantinople
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Plate section