§ 1. CHAP. II. hindered them from attaining definite practical views concerning the improvement of their condition. Local prejudices, growing out of restricted communications, produced a blind selfishness that nourished rivalry and hatred in the servile communities that were allowed to exist. The Byzantine empire in the middle of the eleventh century embraced the richest and most civilised portion of the world; both in extent and population, it greatly surpassed any other European state. The Danube served as its northern boundary, but it included under its power the southern part of the Crimea. With the exception of Bosnia, it embraced all Turkey in Europe, Greece, and the Ionian Islands. In Asia its eastern frontier commenced on the shores of the Black Sea, beyond the mouth of the Phasis, and passing below the mighty peaks of the Iberian and Armenian mountains, by the summits of Ararat and the shores of the lake of Van, it descended to the plains of Mesopotamia, gained the banks of the Euphrates, and joined the Mediterranean at the northern slopes of Mount Libanon, including within its limits the populous city of Antioch and the rich island of Cyprus.1 In judging the Byzantine government according to modern ideas, it is often necessary to regard the change of emperors and dynasties as something nearly equivalent to a change of ministers and parties. The imperial power was generally not more endangered by the murder of an emperor, than the monarchical principle by a change of ministers. Revolutions at Constantinople assumed the character of supreme criminal tribunals, and pretended to punish national crimes. Society had not then learned to frame measures for guarding against abuses of the executive power, and it had sense enough to perceive 1 The limits of the themes or provinces of Lykandos and Mesopotamia, and of the Dukedom of Antioch, were liable to frequent changes. The possessions on the Syrian coast, which the emperors proudly designated as their conquests in Palestine and Phoenicia, did not reach so far south as Tripolis. THEORY OF BYZANTINE GOVERNMENT. 49 $ 1. that this power must be invested in government without CHAP. II. direct control. The theory that the emperor concentrated in his person the whole legislative, as well as the executive power, was universally admitted; yet the people regarded his authority as a legal and constitutional sovereignty, and not an arbitrary sway, for he presented himself to their minds as a pledge for the impartial administration of that admirable system of law which regulated their civil rights. The emperors, however, claimed to be the selected agents of divine power, and to be placed above those laws which they could make and annul.1 Yet, absolute as their servants in the state and their flatterers in the church proclaimed them, many enlightened men repeated the truth that they were restrained in the exercise of their power by the promulgated laws of the empire, by the fixed order of the administration, by the immemorial privileges of the clergy, and by the established usages of local communities; and each successive emperor, at his coronation, was compelled to subscribe his submission to the decrees of the general councils and the canons of the Orthodox Church.2 Thus the regular administration of justice by fixed tribunals according to immutable rules of law, the order of the civil government based on well-defined arrangements, the limits on financial oppression by established usages, the restraint of military violence by systematic discipline, and the immunities secured by ecclesiastical privileges and local rights, became parts of the Byzantine constitution, and were guaranteed by the murder of emperors, and by those revolutions and rebellions which the absence of hereditary right to the throne made so frequent. Strictly speaking, it is true that the state consisted only of the imperial administration, of 1 *Εξεστι γὰρ τοῖς ἐκ Θεοῦ τὴν οἰκονομίαν τῶν κοσμικῶν ἐγκεχειρισμένοις πραγμάτων, ὑπερτέρως ἢ κατὰ νόμους οἰκονομεῖν. — Nov. iv., Alexius I. Comnenus. Bonefidius, Juris Orientalis, lib. tres, p. 54. 2 Codinus De Officiis Const., c. xvii., De Coron. Imp. D CHAP. II. which the emperor was the absolute master. § 1. The rights of the people were comprised in the duty of supporting the state; of political franchises, as members of the state, they were in theory utterly destitute. The power of rebellion was the guarantee against oppression. No state ever possessed such a long succession of able rulers, competent to direct all branches of the administration, as the Byzantine empire. The talents of the emperors, as well as the systematic order of the administration, held together their extensive dominions long after the tendencies of medieval society urged the provinces to separate. It was a constant object of the imperial attention to prevent too great an accumulation of power in the hands of any single official, and yet it was absolutely necessary to intrust the provincial governors with great authority, for they were called upon incessantly to resist foreign invaders and to quell internal insurrections. Never did sovereigns perform their complicated duties with such profound ability as the Byzantine emperors. No mayors of the palace ever circumscribed their power; nor were they reduced to be the slaves of their mercenaries, like the Caliphs of Bagdad. When the Byzantine empire came in contact with the western nations, its military forces were strong and well disciplined, its navy numerous; its artillery, and the mechanical adjuncts of war, were very far superior to those possessed by the early Crusaders. But a great change took place in the position of the Greeks and Franks, before the commencement of the thirteenth century. In the interval between the first and fourth crusades, the navy of the Italian republics grew to be more powerful than that of the Byzantine emperors, and the whole energies of feudal Europe were devoted to the study of the military art, as well as to its practice; while, after the death of Manuel I., the resources of the Byzantine empire were allowed to fall to decay, or were wasted by the incapacity and infatuation of the two brothers CHAP. II. Isaac II. and Alexius III. The Byzantine army was organised to prevent its being able to dispose of the throne, as well as to make it efficient in defending the empire. The troops raised from the native provinces were formed into themes, or legions, of a thousand men. These themes were placed in permanent garrisons throughout the provinces, like the ancient legions. The most celebrated of the European themes were the Thracian, Macedonian, and Illyrian, whose ranks were filled with Sclavonian, Vallachian, Bulgarian, and Albanian mountaineers. But the most esteemed portion of the Byzantine army consisted of standing corps of foreign mercenaries and federate soldiers. These last were recruited among the rude population of some districts, whose poverty was so great that they were unable to bear the burden of direct taxation; but they willingly supplied the emperor with a fixed contingent of recruits annually. The mercenaries consisted of Russian, Frank, Norwegian, Danish, and Anglo-Saxon volunteers. The Varangians, who about this time began to rank as the leading corps of the imperial guards, consisted of Anglo-Saxons and Danes.1 The financial administration seems to have been the most complex and important branch of the public service. The emperors always reserved to themselves the immediate direction of this department. In civilised states, the finances must form the life of the government; and the emperors, feeling this, acted generally as their own first lords of the treasury, to borrow modern phraseology. One fact may be cited, which will give a better idea of the financial wisdom of the Byzantine emperors than any detail of the administrative forms they employed. From the extinction of the western Roman empire in 476, to the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, 1 Penzel, De Barangis in aula Byz. militantibus, 9. $ 1. § 2. CHAP. II. the gold coinage of the empire was maintained constantly of the same weight and standard. The concave gold byzants of Isaac II. are precisely of the same weight and value as the solidus of Leo the Great and Zeno the Isaurian. Gold was the circulating medium of the empire, and the purity of the Byzantine coinage rendered it for many centuries the only gold currency that circulated in Europe. In England, Sweden, and Russia, the byzant of Constantinople long enjoyed the same superiority as is now conceded to the British Funds. The few emperors who ventured to adulterate the coinage have been stigmatised by history, and their successors immediately restored the ancient standard. But the Byzantine financial system, though constructed with great scientific skill, was so rapacious that it appropriated to government almost the whole annual surplus of the people's industry, and thus deprived the population of the power of increasing their stock of wealth, and kept them on the verge of ruin from every accidental catastrophe.1 SECT. II.-SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE GREEKS IN THE TWELFTH There is no more remarkable feature in the history of the Greek race than the constant opposition of its various communities to a close political union; yet the portions of this singular people which were the most widely separated from the parent stock retained so great a similarity of habits, manners, and feelings, that they were instantly identified as one nation by all foreigners. This fact exemplifies the power of family education, which 1 Michael Akominatos, Archbishop of Athens, in his monody on Eustathios, Archbishop of Thessalonica, says, Πάντως φορολόγοις ἐκκείσομαι, πάντως δασμολόγοις βρωθήσομαι, ὡς ἑτοίμη καὶ ἀγαπὴ θήρα, καὶ τοὶς ἀνθρωποφάγοις Toútois Inpoìv ekdotos.—Tafel, Thessalonica, Appendix, 387. Things must have been bad when an archbishop spoke of the imperial tax-gatherers as wild beasts with cannibal propensities. |