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Constantinople and the Eastern Empire

The City of Constantinople

On the death of Theodosius I in AD 395, Constantinople had been an imperial seat for over sixty years, since the refoundation of the classical city of Byzantium as Constantinople (‘the city of Constantine’) by Constantine.¹ Although it is common to refer to it as the eastern capital, this is not strictly correct: Constantine founded it along the lines of existing tetrarchic capitals such as Nicomedia, Serdica and Trier, and although he resided there for most of the time from its dedication in 330 to his death in 337, he seemed to envisage a return after his death to an empire partitioned geographically between several Augusti.² It was not a novelty in itself when on the death of Theodosius I the empire was ‘divided’ between his two sons Honorius and Arcadius. What was different now was the fact that the two halves of the empire began to grow further and further apart.

Constantinople was the scene of some bitter disputes among Christians in the late fourth century, but it was still not yet a fully Christian city. Eusebius, writing of Constantine’s foundation in sweepingly panegyrical terms, would have us believe that all traces of paganism were eliminated. However, this would have been impossible to achieve in practice, short of deporting the existing population, and indeed, the later pagan historian Zosimus tells us that Constantine founded two new pagan temples.³ According to the fifth-century ecclesiastical historian Sozomen, the new city was given a senate and senate house, with classical statuary,⁴ and it had a Basilica and a Capitol. Presumably the latter was at first a temple like the Capitol in Rome, but teaching went on there in the fifth century as the seat of the so-called ‘University’, and by then it was surmounted by a cross.⁵ Constantine adorned his city with many classical statues, taken, Eusebius assures us, from pagan temples and put there as objects of derision, but more likely because they were expected as part of the adornment of a grand and monumental late antique urban centre.⁶ Many were crowded onto the spina in the middle of Hippodrome, others placed in the public squares.⁷ It was Constantine’s son Constantius II (337–61) rather than Constantine himself who was mainly responsible for the first church of St Sophia (burnt down in the Nika riot of 532 and replaced by Justinian with the present building: Chapter 5), and also for the church of the Holy Apostles adjoining Constantine’s mausoleum.⁸ Constantius was extremely pious himself, but the effects of the attempted restoration of paganism by his successor, Julian (361–63), were felt at Constantinople as elsewhere, and there were still pagans at court – indeed, Constantius’ panegyrist, Themistius, was a pagan. At the end of the century, John Chrysostom, who became bishop of Constantinople in 398, directed many of his sermons against the dangers of paganism. The fourth century, after the death of Constantine, was a time of ferment and competition both between Christians and between pagans and Christians, when despite imperial support for Christianity, the final outcome was still by no means certain. It was also only in the fifth century that church building began to take off on a major scale. Again, while Constantinople had been referred to as ‘New Rome’ since the time of Constantine, it was only the council summoned by Theodosius I at Constantinople in 381 that gave its bishop a primacy of honour over all other patriarchates save Rome. In an earlier gesture intended to bolster the Christian claim of the new city and claim apostolic status for it, Constantius II deposited relics of Timothy and Andrew within the empty sarcophagi of Constantine’s mausoleum.⁹

Constantinople had an advantage, as the seat of emperors, but it was not immune from religious and political pressures. After Theodosius I became emperor in 379 he quickly issued an edict together with Gratian condemning all heresies. This affected Constantinople, where the Christians were divided and there was a strong and vociferous Arian population. In 380 Theodosius ordered Arians to be expelled from churches, and promoted the orthodox Gregory of Nazianzus as bishop against strong opposition. He then called what became known as the Council of Constantinople (381), or Constantinople I, a council of 150 eastern bishops who met in the church of St Irene; those present confirmed Gregory and (if not very wholeheartedly) the Nicene faith. However, the election was still contested, and, unhappy at the situation, Gregory stepped down and returned to Cappadocia; he left a record of his feelings in an autobiographical poem, and while it is true that he was already a bishop, and that transfer from one see to another had been forbidden at Nicaea, Sozomen at least thought that his election would have been acceptable.¹⁰ But the affair illustrated the capacity of the patriarch of Alexandria to interfere in Constantinopolitan politics, and tensions were still high when Theodosius installed orthodox relics in a church which had previously belonged to the Arian party, following this by bringing the supposed head of John the Baptist to the city. Moreover the conversion of the Goths to ‘Arian’ rather than Nicene Christianity also added to the explosive mix in the city,¹¹ and John Chrysostom as patriarch allowed the Goths who lived there a church, though only for orthodox worship;¹² he successfully insisted on this even when under pressure from the emperor, nervous about the needs of the Gothic troops led by Gainas. The latter had successfully ousted the powerful eunuch minister Eutropius, but such was the hostility to the foreigners that a large number were massacred after taking refuge in the church, and the church was burnt down. The Goths were expelled from Constantinople in 400 and Gainas became the victim of inter-Gothic rivalries. A main, but difficult, source for Eutropius and the Goths in Constantinople is a speech by Synesius, who visited Constantinople sometime during these years as an envoy from Cyrene, and stayed for three years.¹³ Thus religious issues were mixed in Constantinople, with politics surrounding the reliance on eunuchs in the administration, rivalry between the western and eastern courts and the danger of relying on German soldiery. This was a crisis time for Constantinople.

Figure 1.1 The base of the obelisk in the Hippodrome, showing the emperor in the imperial box receiving gifts from barbarians

Figure 1.2 Istanbul: Justinian’s church of St Sophia

By the reign of Justinian in the sixth century, the population of Constantinople had reached its greatest extent, and may on a generous estimate have approached half a million. So large a number of inhabitants could only be supported by public intervention, and Constantine had instituted an elaborate system of food distribution based on that at Rome.¹⁴ It was from the late fourth century onwards that much of the expansion took place – something of its scale can be imagined from the fact that the original number of recipients of the grain dole was set at only 80,000. The Notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae (c. 425–30) lists 14 churches, 52 colonnaded streets, 153 private bath complexes and several cisterns. The aqueduct constructed in 373 by the Emperor Valens provided further essential water supply, and water was carried to the city from multiple sources in the Thracian hinterland; new harbours were also necessary.¹⁵ The walls built in the reign of Theodosius II in the early fifth century, and still standing in large part today, though heavily restored, enclosed a much larger area than that of the original Constantinian circuit, and though Constantinople did not equal Rome in population size, even at its height, it nevertheless provides a remarkable example of urban growth.

Pagan critics of Constantine, such as Zosimus, were highly critical of his foundation:

the size of Constantinople was increased until it was by far the greatest city, with the result that many of the succeeding emperors chose to live there, and attracted an unnecessarily large population which came from all over the world – soldiers and officials, traders and other professions. Therefore, they have surrounded it with new walls much more extensive than those of Constantine and allowed the buildings to be so close to each other that the inhabitants, whether at home or in the streets are crowded for room and it is dangerous to walk about because of the great number of men and beasts. And a lot of the sea round about has been turned into land by sinking piles and building houses on them, which by themselves are enough to fill a large city.

(New History II.35, trans. Ridley)

Of course the city failed to live up to modern standards of urban planning, but the description vividly brings out both the extent of public investment and the consequent hectic growth. The heart of the city had been planned by Constantine himself – it included the imperial palace (greatly extended by later emperors), the adjoining Hippodrome and the Augusteum, a great square leading to the church of St Sophia, a main processional street (the Mese) leading to Constantine’s oval forum with its statue of himself wearing a crown of rays like the sun god and placed on the top of a porphyry column, and Constantine’s own mausoleum, where he lay symbolically surrounded by empty sarcophagi, one for each of the twelve apostles. Despite the later proliferation of churches, this was originally less a new Christian city than a complex of public buildings expressive of imperial rule.

Map 1.1 Constantinople

Whatever Constantine’s own intentions may have been, Constantinople did gradually assume the role of eastern capital. Legislation under Constantius regularized the position of the eastern senate (though it could not approach the wealth and prestige of that of Rome), and there were both eastern and western consuls; as the Notitia Dignitatum recognizes, by the end of the fourth century the same basic framework of administration existed in both east and west, and a division of the empire into two halves therefore posed no administrative difficulties.¹⁶ But in practice, during this period, the eastern government grew stronger while the western one weakened.

The East c. 400

The turn of the century nevertheless found the east facing some severe problems, chief among them the threats posed by the pressure of barbarians on the empire, and by the so-called ‘Arian question’. As we have seen, the two were linked. At the turn of the century, certain Gothic leaders and their military retinues had acquired considerable influence over the government at Constantinople, and when Synesius arrived there he found city and court deeply divided about how to deal with this potentially dangerous situation. This was not the only problem. Like his brother Honorius in the west, the eastern Emperor Arcadius was young and easily influenced by unscrupulous ministers. In this way the eastern and western governments became rivals; the western court poet Claudian, the panegyrist of the powerful Vandal general Stilicho, gives a luridly pro-western account of the situation, especially in his scabrous attacks on the eastern ministers, Rufinus, master of offices, consul and prefect of the east, and the eunuch Eutropius, head of the young emperor’s ‘Bedchamber’.¹⁷ Though he cannot rival Claudian’s level of invective, Zosimus’ account is similar in tone:

The empire now devolved upon Arcadius and Honorius, who, although apparently the rulers, were so in name only: complete control was exercised by Rufinus in the east and Stilicho in the west … all senators were distressed at the present plight.

(New Hist., V.1.9)

Even allowing for distortion, matters looked unpromising. The weakness of the imperial government is shown by the fact that in 400 Gainas had only recently been given the job of suppressing the troops led by his kinsman Tribigild who were devastating Asia Minor, only to join them himself and march on the city. The choice for the eastern government was stark: either it could follow a pro-barbarian policy and continue to attempt to conciliate such leaders, or it must attempt to root them out altogether. Both eastern and western courts were hotbeds of suspicion and intrigue, and the divisions which resulted led to the murder of Rufinus in 395 and the fall of Eutropius in 399, and were subsequently to lead to the fall and death of Stilicho in 408.

Theodosius I’s policy in relation to the Goths was to settle them on Roman land, but this did not remove the danger, and in 395 Constantinople employed the traditional policy of using subsidies to buy off Alaric, the leader of the Visigoths, who was plundering land dangerously close to the city.¹⁸ This proved disastrous; in the following year Alaric devastated the Peloponnese and large parts of the Balkans, an area whose control was disputed between east and west. A major part of the problem lay also in the fact that Gothic soldiers formed a large part of the Roman army itself. Nevertheless, the east was in a better position to buy off the raiders than the west; furthermore, significant voices, including that of Synesius, were raised in favour of expelling the Goths. When Gainas attacked Constantinople in 400, his coup was put down (albeit by another Goth, Fravitta, subsequently made consul for 401), and with it the pro-German group within government circles was defeated. This result was extremely important for the future of the eastern empire, for though the danger of barbarian pressure was to recur, the influence of barbarian generals on the eastern government was checked, and the east was able to avoid having to make the massive barbarian settlements which so fragmented the western empire. The consequences for the west were also momentous, for Alaric and his followers moved from the Balkans to Italy, besieging Rome in 408–9, demanding enormous payments in return for food and taking the city itself in 410.¹⁹ The sack of Rome was an almost unimaginable event which caused shivers to run down the spine of St Jerome in Bethlehem and sent rich Christians fleeing to the safety of North Africa and asking Augustine how God could have let this happen.

Religious Issues

The violence in Constantinople in 400 also had a religious side to it, and in the case of Rome the very fact that Alaric and his Visigoths were Christian made it doubly difficult for Christians such as St Augustine to explain why God had allowed the sack of Christian Rome to happen.²⁰ By the middle of the fifth century the west was still the target of repeated barbarian assaults and settlements (Chapter 2) and the east was threatened by the Huns; however, the east also had other concerns. Arcadius was succeeded by his son Theodosius II (408– 50), only seven years old when his father died.²¹ Theodosius II’s long reign provided a stable period of consolidation during which the imperial court was characterized by an extremely pious atmosphere especially connected with the most strong-minded of his three sisters, Pulcheria, who became Augusta and regent in 414. Pulcheria chose Theodosius’ bride – the intellectual Eudocia, formerly named Athenaïs and allegedly of pagan Athenian origin, selected by means of an imperial beauty-contest – and the relationship between the two women was predictably stormy. However, Eudocia too had a strong influence on the church in the east, notably through the patronage she exercised on her visits to the Holy Land.²² To this period belong the First Council of Ephesus (431), at which the title Bearer of God (Greek Theotokos) was officially recognized for the Virgin Mary, the Second Council of Ephesus (449), and that of Chalcedon (451), when the orthodox doctrine of Christ’s two natures, divine and human, was decreed (see below). The First Council of Ephesus and that of Chalcedon were landmarks in the history of the church, and together they represent an important stage in the working out of the complex implications of the creed agreed at the first ecumenical council at Nicaea (325). It is also to the reign of Theodosius II that we owe the Theodosian Code, a massive achievement, which aimed to collect all imperial constitutions since Constantine, and which is our major source, with the later Code of Justinian (Chapter 5) for late Roman law.

The extraordinary amount of documentation surrounding the ecclesiastical councils and the Theodosian Code itself marks a new stage in record-keeping. We know little about the actual process of producing the conciliar records (Acts), but the actual proceedings, and the original records, were largely in Greek, though they were often then translated into Latin, or survive in Syriac. This was true of the first ecumenical council held at Nicaea in 325 under Constantine, at which the Latin-speaking emperor’s efforts to greet the assembled bishops in Greek made a favourable impression. It was partly because the attendance at these councils was overwhelmingly eastern (Chapter 3), but also because the dominant, and the official, language of the eastern empire was Greek. In contrast, Latin remained the language of legislation, and both the Codex Theodosianus, as it was called, and its sixth-century successor, the Codex Justinianus, were compiled in Latin. Even if Greek was the basic language in use, as Fergus Millar insists, Latin naturally remained important in the upper levels of education and Theodosius II also established Latin teaching at public expense in Constantinople (Chapter 6). The production of the Theodosian Code, completed in 437 and promulgated in 438, was a massive effort of compilation and editing. All laws were issued in the names of both or all reigning emperors, irrespective of where they originated, and dated by the Roman calendar, and in fact took the form of imperial letters (‘constitutions’) addressed to officials, or sometimes the Senate.²³ The emperor described his motives in ordering the collection in a constitution of February, 438; he wished to replace the mass of law books, imperial letters and other material,

which close off from human understanding a knowledge of themselves by a wall, as though they were swallowed up in a thick cloud of obscurity.

(trans. Harries)

Darkness would give way to light, and laws would be brought together in the name of ‘brevity’. However, interpreting this mass of material is far from simple, and at times one could wish that the compilers had done less editing rather than more. Theodosius himself may have been weak and easily influenced, as contemporaries suggest (‘meek above all men which are upon the face of the earth’, according to the church historian Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica VII.42), but his reign was extremely important in the civilianization of the eastern government in the fifth and sixth centuries. Tellingly, Socrates and Sozomen, who composed continuations of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History in Constantinople in the 440s, both seem to have been lawyers.

Figure 1.3 A Byzantine empress in her regalia, depicted on a leaf from an ivory diptych, late fifth or sixth century. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Not all went smoothly in the early fifth century. In 403 quarrels between John Chrysostom and the Empress Eudoxia, two hot-tempered and outspoken characters, had led to the bishop’s deposition by the so-called Synod of the Oak, and, after his return and yet another perceived affront, to a second exile in the following year.²⁴ As with the events of AD 400, this was a dramatic story. On Easter Saturday, after John’s condemnation, 3,000 new Christians were about to be baptized when the service was broken up by soldiers, and on the night when he left Constantinople, a mysterious fire broke out in the church of St Sophia which burned down the senate house and some of its many classical statues; pagans blamed John’s supporters, many of whom refused to communicate with the bishop who replaced him. John had other powerful enemies, notably the Syrian Severian of Gabala and the forceful Theophilus of Alexandria, who objected to John’s support of the Tall Brothers, a group of monks who had fled from Theophilus’ anti-Origenist activities in Egypt; but it was especially remembered that he had referred to the Empress Eudoxia in a sermon as Herodias and Jezebel, and that she had been offended by another he had preached against the vices of women. Although John had wealthy and influential women among his own following, especially the deaconess Olympias, the jewels and display of rich ladies were also a frequent target of his preaching. The real forces at work behind his condemnation, which was judged illegal in the west by a synod called by Innocent I, were several and varied, but personalities and personal feelings certainly played a large part.

Similar passions aroused in a religious context were demonstrated at Alexandria, a stronghold of paganism and the seat of the major philosophical school after Athens.²⁵ Here the policies of Theodosius I had acted as an incitement to the burning of the great temple known as the Serapeum (after the Egyptian god Serapis) by monks in 391;²⁶ now the aggressive patriarch Cyril raised the emotional tension to such a pitch that Christians were attacked by Alexandrian Jews when they gathered together on hearing that the church was on fire. In 415 Christians in turn lynched the female Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia, Synesius’ teacher:

they dragged her from her carriage, took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them. This affair brought no small opprobrium, not only upon Cyril [bishop of Alexandria], but also upon the whole Alexandrian church. And surely nothing can be further from the spirit of Christians than massacres, fights, and such-like things.

(Socrates, HE VII.15, trans. from Stevenson, Creeds)

It is certainly true that the sources, especially Christian sources, often make claims about violence between pagans and Christians that have to be treated with scepticism, but Alexandria was undoubtedly prone to such outbursts of violence, and trouble stirred up by excitable religious leaders or monks became common as the urban population in many cities of the east steadily grew during the fifth and sixth centuries (Chapter 7).²⁷

Fifth-century Councils

The two great church councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon also have to be seen against this context; they aroused passions equal to those surrounding any political issue in the modern world, and were just as much influenced by personal, social and local rivalries. Unlike the Second Council of Ephesus in 449, both rank among seven recognized ‘ecumenical’ councils, starting with the Council of Nicaea in 325 and ending with the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. However, many other councils and synods were held as well, either local and limited in character, or, just as frequently, recognized as binding only by part of the church. As we have seen, attendance at the Council of Constantinople (381) was eastern; the pope was not present, but the council was recognized as ecumenical by Chalcedon. As the church became more and more influential, and more embedded in general society, division between the great sees and between individual bishops could and did lead to major splits with long-term repercussions. This was particularly the case after the Council of Chalcedon, for much of the east, especially in Syria and Egypt, refused to accept its decisions and went on to form its own ecclesiastical hierarchy during the reign of Justinian, a factor which had profound implications for the empire.²⁸ From the point of view of the state, imperial support for the church necessitated a clear understanding of what the church was as an institution, and was not compatible with quarrelling and division among the clergy. Whether the bishops themselves were as committed to church unity is less clear, but questions of church organization and the authority of episcopal sees were of pressing importance to them, and the many councils and church synods in this period dealt largely with these issues and other questions of church order. As for the doctrinal issues, despite the numbers of councils and the level of controversy, division continued unabated; if anything the councils actually increased the tension and inflamed division by polarizing the various groups and forcing them to define their positions ever more exactly. The eventual outcome of a long process was the growing split between the Byzantine empire in the east and the papacy in the west, especially after 800,²⁹ but the eastern empire was already internally divided in the fifth century over the relation between the divine and the human natures of Christ, a question which the Council of Chalcedon failed to settle for the longer term, just as the Council of Nicaea had failed to settle once and for all the question of the relation of Father and Son.

Christians had interpreted their faith in different ways since its beginning. However, the advent of imperial support, and the consequent public role assumed by the institutional church, gave an entirely new complexion to the process; what had been disagreement became not merely ‘heresy’, worthy of the strongest condemnation, but also a crime liable to punishment from the state. The Greek term ‘heresy’ originally meant simply ‘choice’; but each Christian group in turn defined the choices of the rest as heresies, and in the late fourth century, before the legislation of Theodosius I, Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, had composed a Panarion, literally a ‘Medicine-Chest’ or list of remedies, arguments directed against some eighty such objectionable ‘heresies’; his work was to have a long life and was used by writers as different as Augustine and John of Damascus. The Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon carried forward this attempt to arrive at a definition binding on the whole church, and both councils took place in a context of bitter rivalry. Again, personalities were much involved; one of the most striking, and some would say unscrupulous, both before and during the Council of Ephesus in 431, was Cyril, the nephew of Theophilus and bishop of Alexandria since 412, a formidable leader who dominated the proceedings through a mixture of cleverness, bribes and intimidation.

Nestorius, a monk from Antioch, made bishop of Constantinople by Theodosius II in 428, was also passionate, but he was no match for Cyril and in fact stayed away from the council proceedings. The issue was whether, and, if so, how, Christ had two natures. Cyril seemed to emphasize the divine, while Nestorius emphasized the human. Much later effort, especially in the sixth century, was to go into trying to reconcile the teachings of Cyril with the findings of the Council of Chalcedon. There was hot dispute at Ephesus I over the exact implications of the title Theotokos (‘bearer of God’), which had been applied to Mary already but which now became a key issue; was she the mother of God, or only of Christ? This period also marked a distinct stage in the development of the cult of the Virgin, which was intensified by the debate over her title.³⁰ However, other issues were also in play including the rivalry between the more literal interpretation of Christianity associated with Antioch and the traditional position of Alexandria. The proceedings dragged on, with separate meetings held by Cyril’s group and the Antiochenes, but after much argument and counter-argument, imperial manoeuvring, strongarm tactics and intervention by Egyptian supporters of Cyril, the latter got the better of it and Nestorius was condemned and exiled.³¹ Nestorius’ own justificatory account survives in a sixth-century Syriac translation and is known as the Bazaar, orBook, of Heraclides (c. 450).³² He went into prolonged exile, in 448 his books were ordered to be burned and his name became synonymous with heresy; it was later attached to the ‘Nestorian’ church (better, the Church of the East, for which see Chapter 9), laying stress on Christ’s human rather than divine nature, which later established itself especially in the Sasanian empire, and spread eastwards from there as far as China.

The divisions continued, and the Antiochenes, especially Theodoret of Cyrrhus in northern Syria, did not easily accept Ephesus I; Cyril himself died in 444, and in 448 Eutyches, a monk in Constantinople and vociferous opponent of Nestorius, was condemned by the ‘standing synod’ of the city, the emperor called a new council and the proceedings against Eutyches were themselves challenged. The pope now intervened with a forceful document (the ‘Tome of Leo’, 449) asserting two natures, and a second council was held at Ephesus under the control of Cyril’s successor Dioscorus. The Second Council of Ephesus in 449 ignored the Roman opposition, reinstated Eutyches and with the emperor’s approval condemned Theodoret, Domnus of Antioch and Ibas (Hiba) of Edessa among others, including Flavian of Constantinople, who had gained the support of Pope Leo.³³ Such a reversal could not last, and Ephesus II became known as the ‘Robber Council’. Theodosius died in 450, his sister Pulcheria chose and married Marcian, a suitable though elderly husband, and through him summoned a new council at Chalcedon in 451.

This was a very different affair.³⁴ The final definition of the Council of Chalcedon was signed by some 452 bishops, though the pope himself was not present; it condemned both Nestorius and Eutyches and drew on the arguments of both Cyril and Pope Leo. The Chalcedonian formula, asserting the two natures of Christ, became and remains fundamental to both the western and eastern churches. It developed and clarified the creed of Nicaea, according to which God was Father, Son and Holy Spirit, by further proclaiming that Christ was at all times after the Incarnation fully God and fully human: ‘to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation’, thus rejecting both the Nestorian position and that of Eutyches. However, it was not uniformly accepted in the east, and led eventually to division between the eastern and western churches, and to further divisions in the east which persist to the present day. Recent scholarship, including the translation of the entire voluminous documentary record, has made it possible to appreciate the quite extraordinary amount of effort and procedural complexity that went into these proceedings, as well as the elaborate legal and documentary basis on which church business was now conducted.

The council also issued rulings (canons) on many practical issues of church order and discipline, including marriages contracted by dedicated virgins, and especially on the authority of bishops, also laying down that the bishops in each province should hold formal meetings twice a year. Importantly, it also continued the previous approach of the Council of Constantinople (381) in enhancing the status of the see of Constantinople, now affirming its equal privileges with Rome and giving it jurisdiction over the dioceses of Pontus, Asia and Thrace, a move which Pope Leo soon attempted to annul in a letter to the Empress Pulcheria.

The fifth-century west had been absorbed with its own doctrinal controversies, particularly in connection with the teachings of the British monk Pelagius on free will, against which Augustine fought a long battle. In North Africa another great set-piece council held at Carthage in 411, also leaving extensive documentary records, again condemned the local schism of Donatism and enforced catholic orthodoxy with strong coercive measures, of which Augustine approved as being necessary for the faith.³⁵ In the east the Emperors Leo, Zeno and Anastasius continued to wrestle with opposition to the Council of Chalcedon. Its opponents’ cause was fought by a series of forceful leaders with exotic names – Timothy Aelurus (‘the Cat’) in Alexandria, Peter the Fuller in Antioch and Peter Mongus.³⁶ The so-called Henotikon (‘Unifier’) of 482, the name given to a letter from the Emperor Zeno to the rebellious church of Egypt, attempted to smooth over the disagreements about Chalcedon but instead antagonized Rome, which promptly excommunicated Zeno’s advisers, Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople, and Peter Mongus, the patriarch of Alexandria. There were also differences of view in Constantinople, and since Basiliscus, who had briefly usurped the throne during Zeno’s reign (475–76), had supported the anti-Chalcedonians, Zeno’s letter had political as well as religious aims. His successor Anastasius (491–518) at first tried to pursue a middle line, but later openly supported the anti-Chalcedonians, deposing a moderate, Flavian, from the see of Antioch and replacing him with Severus (512).³⁷ Religious disputes were frequently the starting-point or accompaniment of the violent riots which were a common feature of eastern city life from now on. In 493, statues of Anastasius and his wife were dragged through the streets of Constantinople, and also in Anastasius’ reign there were serious disturbances after the emperor proposed a non-Chalcedonian addition to the words of the liturgy:

The population of the city crowded together and rioted violently on the grounds that something alien had been added to the Christian faith. There was uproar in the palace which caused the city prefect Plato to run in, flee and hide from the people’s anger. The rioters set up a chant, ‘A new emperor for the Roman state’, and went off to the residence of the ex-prefect Marinus the Syrian, burned his house and plundered everything he had, since they could not find him. … They found an eastern monk in the house whom they seized and killed, and then, carrying his head on a pole, they chanted, ‘Here is the enemy of the Trinity’. They went to the residence of Juliana, a patrician of the most illustrious rank, and chanted for her husband, Areobindus, to be emperor of the Roman state.

(John Malalas, Chronicle, trans. Jeffreys, 228)

Emperor and City

The obscure army officer Marcian (450–57) succeeded Theodosius II in a political settlement ratified by his marriage to Pulcheria. He proved to be a careful and competent ruler, but he left no heir, and the succession was decided by the powerful head of the army, Aspar, in favour of Leo (457–74), who was on his staff.

The imperial succession always remained unstable, never having been completely formalized since the early empire. When, as on this occasion, there was no direct heir, it was left to the army (or those elements nearest to the centre of power) and the senate to settle the matter; the religious role of the patriarch, or bishop of Constantinople, only came to be formally recognized from the late fifth century on. However, popular assent, in practice that of the people of Constantinople, was also an important factor. In such a situation too much was left to chance, especially when the possibility of rioting was ever-present. It is probably no coincidence that we now begin to have records of something like a formal inauguration procedure, or that the main elements of this were taken from military custom.³⁸ Leo was invested with the torque, a military collar, in the imperial box in the Hippodrome in full view of the soldiers and people, and then raised on a shield in an improbably military ceremony, only then putting on an imperial diadem. The patriarch was also involved, but there was as yet no religious crowning as such, or anointing, or any of the trappings associated with medieval coronations, though by the seventh century the ceremony had moved to a church setting.

Imperial inaugurations and many other public occasions were accompanied by the shouting of acclamations by the crowd. These might be spontaneous, perhaps like the acclamations at Edessa in the context of Ephesus II (a mixture of the patriotic and the formulaic, and recorded as an official record) or very formal and even more repetitive, as with the acclamations of the senate at the reception of the Theodosian Code, which are faithfully recorded in the documentation; this was to become a feature of later Byzantine court ceremonial. They often took the form of simple cries of ‘long live the emperor’ and the like, but they might also be elaborate metrical chants or, at times, doctrinal assertions. Sometimes the emperor in his imperial box would engage in a virtual dialogue with the people; a striking example survives in the so-called Acta Calapodii of the sixth century, where such a dialogue is recorded in the context of the Nika revolt of 532 (Chapter 5).³⁹ As often, these were a chance to air political and other grievances or to appeal to the emperor. In 532, the Green faction

chanted acclamations concerning Calapodius the cubicularius and spatharius: ‘Long life, Justinian, may you be victorious; we are wronged, o sole good man, we cannot endure, God knows, we are on the brink of danger. It is Calapodius the spatharocubicularius who wrongs us.’

(Chronicon Paschale, trans. Whitby and Whitby, 114)

A surprising licence was at times employed: a few days later during the same uprising the emperor went into his box at the Hippodrome carrying the Gospel, and swore an oath to the people in order to pacify them, ‘and many of the people chanted, “Augustus Justinian, you are victorious.” But others chanted, “You are forsworn, ass”.’⁴⁰

That the Hippodrome was now the setting for such confrontations followed a precedent from the early empire when emperors and people had also met each other at the games. In the urban topography of Constantinople the practice was formalized, the Hippodrome being linked to the palace by an internal passage, and it was here that the emperor was expected to make his formal appearances to the people as a whole. We can see evolving in the fifth century the ritualized yet turbulent relation of emperor and people characteristic of later Byzantium, in which the ‘factions’ of the Hippodrome, the Blue and Green sides in the chariot races, played a major role both as participants in state ceremonial and, at times, especially in the early period, as instigators and leaders of popular disturbance (Chapter 7). Emperors tended to support one faction or the other, and it has frequently been supposed that these Blues and Greens also represented the religious divisions of the day; however, though a group in a given city at a particular time (Blues and Greens were prominent in the rioting which took place in many eastern cities at the time of the fall of the Emperor Phocas in 609– 10; Chapter 9) might take on a particular cause, there is no evidence to show that either faction was identified with one particular group. However, the combination of sporting enthusiasms and political unrest was dangerous and could be explosive. They were also naturally a target for the disapproval of conservatives such as Procopius. The sculpted reliefs on the base of the obelisk set up by Theodosius II in the Hippodrome show the emperor in his imperial box, surrounded by his court, not only with barbarians bringing gifts (Figure 1.1), but also with the performers and musicians in front of him. The Blue and Green supporters themselves sat in special places in the Hippodrome (many graffiti with messages such as ‘Victory to the Greens’ also survive carved on the seats of other theatres and circuses, as at Aphrodisias and Alexandria), and, like partisans of all periods, they dressed in a special way:

the part of their tunic which came to their hands was gathered in very closely round the wrist, while the rest of the sleeve, as far as the shoulder, billowed out in great width. When they waved their hands about while they applauded at the theatre and at the Hippodrome, or while they urged on their favourites in the usual way, this part actually ballooned out, so that unsophisticated people thought that their physique was so fine and strong that they needed garments like these to cover them. … Their cloaks and trousers and most of all their shoes were classed as ‘Hunnic’, both in name and style.⁴¹

(Procopius, Secret History 7)

East and West

Important changes were taking place in the east during this period. They included a burgeoning of urban life, in strong contrast to the west (Chapter 7), the impact of local cultures, especially in Syria and Mesopotamia, where the border area with Persia acted as a two-way channel for transmission of language, ideas and material culture, and the emergence of new identities. A real shift of emphasis took place within the empire towards the very provinces where the opposition to Chalcedon was strongest (though not universal), and where Islam was to make its first impact outside Arabia. But even as the western empire began to fragment, the east still attempted to maintain its relations with the west. We have seen that the developing papacy had to be taken into account in religious affairs, and the idea of an empire of both east and west was not lost. The conquest of North Africa by the Vandals, who had overrun it and ruled the former Roman province since 430, was a very serious blow to the empire. The eastern emperor Theodosius II also intervened to confront them, but the Roman army under Boniface and Aspar was defeated in 432 and retreated to Carthage; soon after, Valentinian III recognized Vandal possessions in Numidia. In 441 an expedition sent from Constantinople was recalled under pressure of a serious attack by the Huns;⁴² peace was made and by 442 Geiseric had gained the important city of Carthage, as well as the rich provinces of Proconsularis and Byzacena in modern Tunisia.⁴³ In 468 the Emperor Leo launched a massive expedition to free North Africa from the Vandals. But despite its size (over 1,000 ships) and the fact that it represented a joint effort with the western government, the expedition proved an ignominious and catastrophic failure through incompetence and disunity among the command. The possibility of success slipped away, and the general in charge (the same Basiliscus who later staged a coup against Zeno) barely escaped the anger of the populace at Constantinople, while the financial consequences were disastrous. The expedition had allegedly cost 130,000 lb of gold (Procopius, Wars III.6), and it is a measure of the underlying prosperity of the east at this period that it was able to absorb such a loss virtually within a generation. It was perhaps characteristic that the eastern government chose to concentrate its military effort on the dramatic target presented by Vandal Africa, just as Justinian was to do, but the failure of the expedition ruled out any thought of similar intervention in Italy itself. The Vandals remained in control of North Africa until defeated by Belisarius in 533–4, and when the line of Roman emperors in the west came to an end in AD 476, the east was already resigned to the situation and proceeded to deal by a kind of de facto recognition with the barbarian leaders who succeeded them. It was easier to close one’s eyes, and it was some time before Constantinople fully realized that the west was in practice divided into several barbarian kingdoms, particularly as the kings for their part tended to adopt a deferential tone towards the eastern emperor.⁴⁴

A means of maintaining relations with the west was through dynastic marriage, though this too could mean military action. On the death of Honorius in 423, Theodosius II intervened to support the claims of the young Valentinian, grandson of Theodosius I, against the usurpation of a certain John; in order to do this he had to recognize the position of Valentinian’s mother Galla Placidia, widow of Honorius’ short-lived colleague Constantius III, whom he had refused to recognize as empress only two years before, and who had now fled to Constantinople.⁴⁵ A force was dispatched under the Alan Ardaburius and his son Aspar to install Galla Placidia and her son, and Valentinian was duly made Augustus, and married in Constantinople in 437 to Theodosius’ daughter Licinia Eudoxia, to whom he had been betrothed as a child. For the first part of his reign Placidia acted as regent, and relations between east and west were good. But Valentinian proved a fragile reed, and the influence of the general Aetius accordingly grew. However, the western court was also making marriage alliances with the barbarians, and Valentinian himself agreed to betroth his tiny daughter Eudocia to the Vandal Huneric. Older imperial women sometimes took matters into their own hands: after Galla Placidia’s death in 450, Valentinian’s sister Justa Grata Honoria chose to get herself out of an awkward situation by offering herself to the Hun king Attila, a fool-hardy action with dire consequences (Chapter 2), but one to which Theodosius II gave his support.⁴⁶ Luckily for Honoria, and certainly for the empire, Attila died first, having just taken a new wife, one Ildico, and his empire broke up:

on the morrow, when most of the day had passed, the king’s attendants, suspecting something was amiss, first shouted loudly and then broke open the doors. They found Attila unwounded but dead from a haemorrhage and the girl weeping with downcast face beneath her veil. Then, after the custom of their race, they cut off part of their hair and disfigured their already hideous faces with deep wounds to mourn the famous warrior not with womanly tears and wailings but with the blood of men.

(Priscus, fr. 24, trans. R.C. Blockley)

On the death of Valentinian III in 455, the intervention of the eastern emperor was no longer sought, but the idea of an eastern intervention was not altogether lost, and in 467 Leo helped to elevate Anthemius, the son-in-law of Marcian. This involved an unequal contest with a rival candidate, Olybrius, who was married to Valentinian III’s other daughter Placidia and was being promoted by the Vandal king. The combination of circumstances in Italy and the growing power of barbarian individuals and groups now made such interventions by the eastern emperor less and less relevant. Even so, certain aristocratic families in the west, especially in Italy, remained wealthy and important in the sixth century during Ostrogothic rule, and their voice continued to be heard in Constantinople. For this reason, too, the balance struck in Ostrogothic Italy between Goths and Romans had to be delicately maintained. We shall return to this issue below, and when considering Justinian’s attempt to reconquer Italy in the sixth century (Chapter 5).

The Barbarian Question in the East

The immediate danger to Constantinople and the east in 399–400 had been averted, but the barbarian danger to Constantinople was not yet solved. Leo I (457–74) came to the throne as a member of the staff of a powerful Alan, Aspar, the son of Ardaburius, and Aspar seems to have aspired to the same kind of influence exerted by comparable barbarian generals in the west. Determined that this should not happen, Leo tried to counteract the German influence by recruiting heavily for the army among the Isaurians, a mountain people living in Asia Minor. The future emperor Zeno (then called Tarasicodissa) was their chief and married Leo’s daughter Ariadne. Though Leo had to make concessions to Aspar by marrying him to another of his daughters, the fact that Aspar was Arian probably helped Leo to take the next step, that of removing Aspar and his father by having them murdered (471). But the promotion of Isaurians also had problems. Contemporary writers are very hostile to them, and refer to Leo himself as ‘the Butcher’.⁴⁷ Moreover, Zeno was deserted by some of the Isaurians, who supported Basiliscus, the brother of his mother-in-law, the Empress Verina, in a successful coup (475); he therefore fled back to the wild mountains. Luckily for Zeno, Basiliscus’ Miaphysitism so alienated the people of Constantinople that Zeno was encouraged to stage a return and have him executed. But Zeno’s problems continued, and Verina’s supporters, especially her son-in-law Marcian and his brother, marched against him. This too was unsuccessful, but Zeno had to face yet another threat from his fellow-Isaurian, the powerful general Illus, which turned into a real war lasting several years, during which Illus proclaimed Marcian emperor and tried to get help from Odoacer in Italy (Chapter 2). Marcian not seeming to Verina to be the best candidate, Leontius was proclaimed in his stead, and crowned by the empress (484). In this context too Zeno was victorious, though the remnants of Illus’ party held out in the mountains for another four years. One can imagine the ferment created by such a prolonged period of uncertainty, and the tendency of individuals to switch sides in the tangled network of alliances. Anyone with a grudge against the emperor was liable to see their salvation in opposing him, and indeed Illus’ supporters included the pagan intellectual Pamprepius. Zeno also had to contend with other problems from barbarians: on the fall of Aspar in the previous reign, Theodoric Strabo, the Ostrogothic leader, had managed to make Leo buy the safety of the Balkans by extorting political and financial concessions which included his own recognition, and having inherited this situation Zeno’s first years were spent in uneasy balancing acts between Strabo and another Gothic leader, confusingly also called Theodoric. The eastern government alternated between promises of payment and threats of war; meanwhile, Thrace and Illyricum were the prey of the second Theodoric, Ostrogoth and future ruler of Italy. This time the east was exposed to the type of barbarian pressure already familiar in the west, and eventually Zeno was compelled to make substantial concessions by giving Theodoric territory in Moesia and Dacia as well as making him Master of the Soldiers in 483 and consul in 484. Not surprisingly the policy failed, and Theodoric marched on Constantinople in 487. Fatefully for Italy, but fortunately for the east, an opportunity presented itself: Zeno was able to commission Theodoric, secretly of course, to replace Odoacer, the general who had deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476 and now ruled Italy, Sicily and Dalmatia. Theodoric defeated and killed Odoacer and far from ruling Italy on Zeno’s behalf, as the latter had intended, gained control of Italy himself (Chapter 2).

The resilience of the east is remarkable. It was helped by its capacity to pay subsidies in gold, as it had done already to the Hun Rugila and his successor Attila under Theodosius II. Annual payments to Attila amounted to 700 lbs of gold and, after a defeat inflicted by him on the imperial troops in Thrace, increased to 2,100 lb, with a payment of 6,000 lb under the treaty of 443. The demands made by Attila drove the eastern government to despair, but the Hun king managed to foil an assassination plot made by the eunuch Chrysaphius. On Theodosius II’s death, Marcian took the risky line of refusing to give in to this blackmail and ended the annual subsidy. Again the east was saved from danger, this time by a change of mind on the part of Attila, who now turned towards Italy, where as we have seen he soon met his premature death.

When Anastasius was elevated to the throne in Constantinople in 491, Theodoric the Ostrogoth was establishing himself in Italy. Both sides were cautious towards each other, but in 497 Anastasius recognized Theodoric, who still held the post of Master of the Soldiers, as ruler of Italy, though in some sense still within the protectorate of the empire. Theodoric’s exact constitutional position was more a matter of tact and delicate manoeuvring than of hard and fast definition (Chapter 2), and there was still a considerable way to go before the shape of Ostrogothic rule became clearer. But even if in theory and in sentiment the ideal of a unified empire survived, by the end of the fifth century the barbarian kingdoms which were to be Rome’s early medieval successors were coming into being. It was a situation to which Constantinople would have to adapt.⁴⁸