Episode 307 - Healing the Divisions

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Hello everyone and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 307, Healing the Divisions.

Last time, we watched on with trepidation as a French army prepared to board a Venetian fleet with the Pope waving them off.

Thankfully, the Fourth Crusade was not re-enacted, in large part thanks to the diplomatic efforts of Michael Palaeologos.

The Emperor spent the best part of 20 years doing whatever it took to make sure that the city would not be sacked again.

I felt that telling that story all in one go was the most effective way to explain the threat that Byzantium faced.

I could have broken it up into five or ten year segments as we usually do, but I thought that would end up downplaying the threat which Charles of Anjou represented.

The downside of that approach is that Michael's long reign has not received the focus it deserves.

And I'm afraid Michael is going to have to make do with a slightly bitty approach to his time in power.

His reign actually began nine episodes ago, before Constantinople was retaken.

Then two episodes ago I described his efforts to rebuild and re-beautify his capital, which obviously took place across a 20-year period.

Then last episode we rushed past a lot of what he achieved in Europe because our focus was elsewhere.

And the final insult is I'm going to kill him off today before resurrecting him next week to talk about his time in Anatolia.

I will try to make it up to Michael with my conclusion to this episode.

For now, I want to talk about the damage which Michael's actions did at home.

By trying to appease the Pope, Palaeologos had unleashed bitter divisions which would not heal until well after his death.

The reality is that despite pulling off one of the great achievements of Byzantine diplomacy, Michael was hated by a lot of his subjects.

He had betrayed and blinded the heir to the throne, John Lascaris.

He had repeatedly humiliated and tortured those who refused to accept church union, and he had driven two patriarchs from office.

Those who were ignorant of the dangers which Byzantium faced despised him for being a monster,

forcing Catholicism on them more brutally than the Latins ever had.

While those who did know what Charles of Anjou represented thought Michael was a coward, abandoning Orthodoxy instead of defending it with his life.

While praising his great efforts to save Constantinople, Antony Caldelles also blames Michael for the mess he made.

He points out that in the past emperors had gone to great lengths to build up support for controversial measures, persuading, cajoling, and bribing key players to make sure a consensus developed in favour of imperial policy before announcing it.

This usually prevented dissent from spiralling out of control.

Whereas Michael often acted without consultation and then browbeat his bishops after the fact, first with the blinding of John Lascaris, which was done in secret, and then with church union, which he forced on his clergy without adequate consultation and then viciously attacked them for sticking to their principles.

Not since Leo VI and his four marriages back in the 10th century had there been such a division within the church.

And this was far more serious.

Orthodoxy was the lifeblood of Byzantine culture.

Religion always is, of course, in a way that we struggle to fully comprehend, but Orthodoxy prided itself on having safeguarded the true form of Christianity, and maintaining that relationship with God is what kept the Empire together.

Tampering with it was heresy, and tampering with it to please the Latins was beyond the pale.

Michael died nine months after the Sicilian Vespers had saved him.

He was about fifty-seven years old and had ruled the Empire for 22 years.

He was in Thrace at the time, preparing for another confrontation with an army from Epirus.

His twenty-four-year-old son Andronicus was on hand to be acclaimed and to take charge of the situation.

Andronicus had signed every document his father had put in front of him during the past fifteen years.

His name was fully associated with church union, and yet the new Vasilevs understood how deeply unpopular the policy was.

Quite what Andronicus believed, we can't know.

He was a pious young man and naturally took advice from those around him, and they told him that if he was going to remain in power, abandoning church union was essential.

Andronicus took the momentous and painful step of not bringing his father's body back to Constantinople.

Rather than invite public scorn, he had him quietly buried in a monastery in Thrace and returned to the capital alone.

Once there, he quickly annulled the Union.

This was a potentially dangerous step since it invited further attacks from the west, but the Byzantines gambled that the war raging in Sicily would save them for now, and they were right.

The papacy had already abandoned the Union, so they could hardly argue that Andronicus had acted first.

When the news broke that the hated Union was over, there was cheering in the streets.

The imperial prisons were opened, and Michael's victims paraded through the streets.

Church bells rang and services were held to celebrate the restoration of Orthodoxy.

The patriarch John Beckos, who had negotiated the union, was peacefully arrested and removed from the city.

Andronicus recalled the former Archbishop Joseph, who his father had chased away when he refused to countenance the Union.

The now dying Joseph was stretchered into the city to much cheering from his supporters, who now rejoined the church.

The young emperor was soon pushed into various corners by his clergy.

Those who'd opposed union wanted to purge all those who'd stood against them.

Various monks who'd been tortured by Michael's agents led the charge, calling for those who'd aided the union to be denounced and forced to repent.

Joseph agreed that everyone who'd stood by while the union took place must abstain from the sacraments for three months, while those who had actively worked with Latin priests must be unfrocked.

The emperor was standing by slightly helplessly as the rigorous clergy led a charge against their enemies.

A synod was held, where Bekos was accused of heresy and condemned, while the Acts of Union were burnt.

When Joseph finally died in early 1283, Andronicus was careful to consult widely about who a suitable replacement would be.

The choice fell on the bishop Gregorius of Cyprus, who seemed to command wide support.

The new patriarch convened another synod, which put on trial those bishops who'd publicly signed up to the Union.

Most were deposed, as were many of those appointed by John Beckos.

These hearings exposed the awkward fault lines which the Union had created.

Most clergymen had remained in place, reluctantly going along with imperial policy.

You couldn't get rid of all of them.

And what should you do with all the laymen who had gone along with the Union?

Andronicus's mother had to come before the synod and repudiate her husband's policies.

This concluded with her agreeing that he he would never be buried or commemorated at the capital.

The son of our historian Acropolites had to do the same, since his father had sworn oaths to the Pope at Leon.

Finally, the Emperor himself was criticized for having publicly championed union with Rome.

Andronicus had to put it about that he'd always had his doubts and had only signed his father's documents under duress.

None of this satisfied the Arsenites, supporters of the patriarch Arsenios, who'd resigned after Michael blinded young John Lascaris.

They contended that every patriarch since then had been illegitimate, as had all their actions, which of course included Andronicus' coronation.

The legitimacy of the dynasty itself remained in question.

Andronicus's court propagandists were working hard to counter this, arguing that his family had restored the Romans to Constantinople, and now it was Andronicus who was restoring Orthodoxy.

The death of Charles of Anjou in 1185 was pointed to as another sign that God favoured the new Vasilefs.

Andronicus convened a church council at Adramition in Anatolia in 1284 to try to appease the Arsenites.

He had already appointed one of their number as his spiritual confessor and granted them a church in the capital to hold their services.

Now he faced down a series of monks bearing the literal scars which his father's torturers had left on them.

When debate could not appease them, an extraordinary measure was suggested, a trial by fire.

The practice of trials by fire or ordeal had begun to seep into Byzantine life during the past century, an inheritance from Latin rule.

In this case it was statements of belief which were placed in a fire, the idea being that if the Arsenite argument did not burn, then they would essentially take over the church.

When both documents turned to ash, the Arsenites split into two factions, one willing to compromise with the patriarch, and the other refusing to do so.

The emperor was becoming frustrated.

He had paid all the expenses of this gathering himself and yet still couldn't persuade important men to reconcile with him.

He continued to search for an answer, though.

He had Arsenius' remains moved to Constantinople with great ceremony, and he publicly visited the blind John Lascaris at Nymphaion.

There he made arrangements for the deposed prince to live more comfortably and begged for forgiveness for his father's actions.

Finally, the statue group which Michael had set up at the Church of the Holy Apostles meant to portray himself returning the city to an angel was recast to honour Constantine the Great, rather than the utterly tarnished new Constantine.

Eventually the patriarch Gregorius was forced out by all this controversy.

In an attempt to rid himself of the accusation that he too had accepted union, he wrote a treatise on the Filioque dispute, essentially condemning what the Latins believed.

But by stating his own position, he actually opened up more debate and gave his critics the chance to pick holes in his logic and therefore his orthodox credentials.

Eventually Andronicus persuaded him to step down for the sake of unity.

He was replaced by a stern disciplinarian from Mount Athos called Athanasios.

The young emperor was impressed by this ascetic figure who wore a hair shirt and sandals wherever he went.

Athanasios rounded on everyone, accusing them all of greed and soft living.

He began confiscating monastic wealth to give it to the homeless, an action that was bitterly resented, but very hard hard to complain about in public.

Andronicus had at least found a way to distract his clergy and give them something new to worry about.

Over time, the anger about union began to fade.

Only the strictest of arsonites remained outside the ecclesiastical establishment, and even they came in from the cold in 1310, three decades after Michael's death.

The final ceremony of reunion was an astounding affair, as it involved seating the corpse of Arsenios on the patriarchal throne with a writ of forgiveness in his hand.

That finally ended the story of church union

at least this chapter of it anyway.

What are we to make of it all?

I know for some of you doctrinal disputes are a turn-off.

Perhaps they don't seem relevant to your modern secular life, but I think you should make an exception in this case.

Tom Holland in his book Dominion argues that the changes within the papacy over the past two centuries are what creates the modern West.

That the reformers who championed the First Crusade and the idea of papal primacy are the first revolutionaries whose politics are still with us to this day.

It's a compelling argument if you have time to check it out.

For the Byzantines, this almost meant an encounter with a form of Christianity that they no longer recognized.

The Byzantines believed that by following the procedures of the Church, of synods and ecumenical councils, they had preserved Christianity in the form that God intended.

Latin errors had in the past been viewed as something that could be overcome or tolerated.

But now the utter intolerance of the papacy was making compromise impossible.

The willingness of the Latins to enforce their doctrines at the point of a sword was seen as deeply corrupt and sinful, which is why Michael Palaeologus's willingness to do the same was so despised.

This embedded within many Byzantine communities a hatred of the Latins that seeped into their doctrine.

Orthodoxy Orthodoxy, in some ways, came to be framed in explicitly anti-Latin terms.

John Beckos had argued that the Church Fathers had actually used the Filioque in their writing, and so its use in the Creed wasn't as heretical as many thought.

In response, some Byzantine clergy completely dismissed this, ignoring their own patristic inheritance because the principle of rejecting Catholicism had become more important to their sense of what orthodoxy was.

This will make it much harder for the Romans to accept Latin help when the Ottomans rise to power, and indeed will see many Byzantines accept Muslim rule, believing it to be more tolerable than submitting to the Latins.

It should be clear now how important orthodoxy was to the Roman people.

It was both their faith and their culture.

For it to be tampered with by an outside force was devastating, an attack on the traditions of your ancestors and your relationship with God.

If you are of a secular mind, it would be easy to sympathise entirely with Michael Palaiologos, to see his diplomatic success as much more important than the unhappiness he unleashed at home.

But I think that would be to grossly underestimate the importance of people's relationship to the Church.

Harmony within the clergy provided the reassurance that the Romans were God's people and that he continued to offer them protection as well as salvation.

The Arsenites and Josephites were not extremists who were indifferent to the threat posed by Charles of Anjou.

They were acting out of genuine concern for the soul of the Church and their nation.

I must defer to Anthony Caldellis, who concludes that,

quote, both sides of the dispute manifested different but complementary aspects of the culture of New Rome, a rigorous adherence to rules, on the one hand, without which there could be no lawful society, and pragmatic flexibility on the other, without which no state could survive in a dangerous world.

These were present throughout the history of New Rome, but rarely so starkly distinct in a single conflict.

It was fitting that Michael prevailed in life and accomplished what he had to, while his rigorous critics prevailed morally after death.

Michael Palaeologus is a difficult figure to sum up as a result.

His military record is excellent.

Across two decades he maintained the boundaries of the restored Roman Empire, he kept the Epirates and the Latins out, and his fleet restored some sanity to the Aegean.

When you add the Sicilian Vespers on top, he seems to have done an incredible job.

The problem was that he was debasing his coinage over time.

The Empire just couldn't afford to defend all its borders and keep up an expensive capital.

Something had to give, a problem which his son would inherit.

And what do we say about the divided and angry society he left behind?

He was lucky that he wasn't overthrown.

Had a suitable candidate emerged, the Palaeologi could have been ousted as the Arsenites clearly desired.

Again, we will see this displeasure fester during Andronicus' reign.

Michael's son will have to cut down many a promising general for fear of civil war, something which Michael was partly responsible for.

In the end, I do feel a bit sorry for Michael.

He grew up in the shadow of the Fourth Crusade and fifty years of exile, a nightmare which must have haunted him.

He did everything he could to prevent that from happening again, and he succeeded.

That was his reward.

His punishment was to live with the frustration that he had saved the Empire.

and yet everyone hated him for it.

Hopefully, we've given him a fair fair hearing.

Next time, his son will have to face the consequences of his legacy.

As if Andronicus didn't have enough to worry about, he will have to face the latest existential threat to make its way to Byzantium's doorstep: the rising power of the Turkish Beyliks,

amongst them, the Ottomans.

It's easy to be a superhero.

You don't need a cape or x-ray vision.

You just need to sign up for PowerSaver Rewards.

That way, when you save energy during a flex alert, you get a credit back on your energy bill.

Visit powersaverrewards.org and become a super power saver.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.