the Empress-mother, Mary of Antioch, to be strangled. Then Andronicus became joint Emperor with Alexius II. Several days later, in spite of his solemn promise to protect Alexius' life, he commanded him also to be strangled in secret. Thereupon, in 1183, Andronicus, at sixty-three years of age, became the sole all-powerful Emperor. Ascending the throne with designs which we shall speak of later, Andronicus could maintain his power only by a system of terrorism and unspeakable cruelty. In external affairs, he showed neither energy nor initiative. The mood of the populace turned against him. In 1185, a revolution broke out which elevated to the throne Isaac Angelus. Andronicus' attempt to escape met with failure. Dethroned, he was exposed to hideous tortures and insults, which he bore with superhuman courage. In his atrocious sufferings he many times repeated: "Lord, have mercy upon me! Why do you break a bruised reed?"13 The new Emperor did not even allow the lacerated remains of Andronicus to be buried; and with this tragedy the last brilliant Byzantine dynasty came to its end. Alexius 1. The Norman war in connection with the relations of Alexius Comnenus to the West.-To quote Anna Comnena, the educated and gifted daughter of the new Emperor Alexius, the latter, at the beginning of his reign, having in view the Turkish danger from the east and the Norman from the west, "saw that his Empire was in fatal agony." The external situation of the Empire, indeed, was very serious and gradually became still more troublesome and complicated. The Duke of Apulia, Robert Guiscard, after conquering the Byzantine possessions of south Italy, formed much wider plans. Willing to deal a blow at the very heart of Byzantium, he transferred hostilities to the Adriatic coast of the Balkan peninsula. Having left the government of Apulia to his elder son Roger, he himself, with his younger brother Bohemond, well known as a 13 Nic. Chon., p. 458. The numerous sources on the death of Andronicus are discussed in N. Radojčić, Dva posljednja Komnena (Zagreb, 1907), p. 94, n. 1 (in Croatian). 14 Annae Comnenae, Alexias, III, 9 (beginning); ed. Reifferscheid, I, 117. participator in the First Crusade, sailed against Alexius, with a considerable fleet; his chief immediate aim was to seize the maritime city of Dyrrhachium (formerly Epidamnus; Slavonic Drach (Drač), now Durazzo) in Illyria. Dyrrhachium, the chief city of the theme of Dyrrhachium, which had been organized under Basil II Bulgaroctonus was very well fortified and justly considered the key of the Empire in the west. The famous military road of Egnatius (via Egnatia), constructed as far back as Roman times, led from Dyrrhachium to Thessalonica and then farther to the east towards Constantinople. Therefore it was perfectly natural that the chief attention of Robert was directed upon Dyrrhachium. To quote C. Hopf, this expedition was "the prelude of the Crusades and preparation (Vorbereitung) for the Frankish dominion in Greece."15 Realizing that with his own forces he was incapable of overcoming the Norman danger, Alexius Comnenus called on the West for aid, and, among other rulers, he appealed to Henry IV of Germany. Henry, having at that time some difficulties within his own empire, and not having yet settled his struggle with Pope Gregory VII, could afford no aid to the Byzantine Emperor. But Venice, with a view to her own interests, replied favorably to the appeal of Alexius. In return for the help of her fleet, the Emperor promised the Republic of St. Mark enormous trade privileges, of which we shall speak a little later. It suited the interests of Venice to support the Eastern Emperor in his war against the Normans, because, in case of military success, the Normans could immediately seize the trade routes to Byzantium and to the East; in other words, could obtain possession of what the Venetians themselves hoped, in the course of time, to have in their hands. Besides, a real and immediate danger pressed upon Venice: Norman possession of the Ionian Islands, especially Corfù and Cephalonia, and the west coast of the Balkan peninsula, would have barred the Adriatic to the Venetian vessels plying in the Mediterranean. 15 C. Hopf, Geschichte Griechenlands vom Beginne des Mittelalters bis auf die neuere Zeit, I, 141. After the capture of the island of Corfù, the Normans besieged Dyrrhachium by land and sea. Although the Venetian vessels had relieved the besieged city on the seaward side, the land army under Alexius, composed of Macedonian Slavs, Turks, the imperial Varangian-English bodyguard, and some other nationalities, was heavily defeated. At the beginning of 1082, Dyrrhachium opened its gates to Robert. But a revolt which had broken out in south Italy called Robert away. Bohemond, to whom the command of the expeditionary corps had been delegated by his brother, was finally vanquished.16 A new expedition undertaken by Robert against Byzantium was successful. But an epidemic broke out among his troops and Robert himself fell a victim to the disease. He died in 1085 in the north of the island of Cephalonia. Even in our own days, a small bay and village in the island, Fiscardo (Guiscardo, Portus Wiscardi, in the Middle Ages, from the name of Robert Guiscard), reminds us by its name of the powerful Duke of Apulia. With Robert's death the Norman invasion of Byzantine territory ceased, and Dyrrhachium passed again to the Greeks.17 It has been shown that the aggressive policy of Robert Guiscard in the Balkan peninsula failed. But the question of the south Italian possessions of Byzantium was definitely decided under him. Robert had founded the Italian state of the Normans, because he was the first to succeed in unifying the various countries founded by his compatriots and in forming the Duchy of Apulia, which under him lived through a period of brilliance. A certain decline of the Duchy which came on after Robert's death, lasted for about fifty years, at the end of which the foundation of the Sicilian Kingdom opened a new era in the history of the Italian Normans. Robert Guiscard, to quote a French historian (Chalandon) "opened a new way to the ambition of his descendants: after him the Italian Normans were to direct their gaze toward the 16 See R. B. Yewdale, Bohemond I, prince of Antioch (Princeton, 1924), pp. 18-22. "See F. Chalandon, Essai sur le règne d'Alexis I-er Comnène (Paris, 1900), pp. 6493; idem, in the Cambridge Medieval History, IV, 329-330. The place of the death of Guiscard is not definitely fixed. Chalandon, p. 93, note 9. Yewdale (op. cit., p. 23) says that Guiscard died at Cassiope on Corfù. East; in the East and at the expense of the Greek Empire, twelve years later, Bohemond was to create a princedom for himself." 9718 Venice, in return for the aid given by her fleet, received from the Emperor enormous trade privileges which established for the Republic of St. Mark quite an exceptional position in the Empire. Besides magnificent presents to the Venetian churches and honorable titles with a fixed salary to the Doge and Venetian Patriarch and their successors, the imperial charter of Alexius (or chrysobull, i. e. the charter confirmed with a gold imperial seal), of May 1082, granted the Venetian merchants the right of buying and selling all over the Empire and made them free of custom, port, and other dues connected with trade; the Byzantine customs officers had no right of inspecting their merchandise. In the capital itself the Venetians received a large quarter with many shops and stores as well as three landing places, which were called in the East scales (maritimas tres scalas), where the Venetian vessels could be freely loaded and unloaded. The charter of Alexius gives an interesting list of the places of the Empire, commercially most important, on the seashore and in the interior, which were open to Venice, in Asia Minor, the Balkan peninsula and Greece, and in the islands of the Aegean, ending with Constantinople, which is called in this document Megalopolis, i. e. a Great City. In their turn, the Venetians promised to be the faithful subjects of the Empire.19 By the privileges accorded to the Venetian merchants in that charter they were treated much more favorably than the Byzantine merchants themselves. By the charter of Alexius Comnenus a solid foundation of the colonial power of Venice in the East was laid; the conditions established to create her economic preponderance in Byzantium were such as would seem likely to make competition impossible for a long time. But the same exceptional economic privileges granted Venice served in the course of time, under changed circumstances, as one of the 18 Chalandon, op. cit., p. 94. 19 Tafel et Thomas, Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Stadtsgeschichte der Republik Venedig (Vienna, 1856), I, 51-54 (= Fontes rerum austriacarum, Diplomata et acta, vol. XII). See Fr. Dölger, Corpus der griechischen Urkunden des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit. Reihe A: Regesten. Section 1, part 2 (München and Berlin, 1925), 27-28 (very good bibliography). causes of the political conflicts between the Eastern Empire and the Republic of St. Mark. Struggle of the Empire against the Turks and Patzinaks before the First Crusade in connection with the international relations of the epoch in the Balkan peninsula.-The Turkish danger from the east and north, that is to say, from the Seljuqs and Patzinaks, which had already been very threatening under the predecessors of Alexius Comnenus, increased in intensity under that monarch. The victory over the Normans, and Guiscard's death had permitted Alexius to restore the Byzantine territory in the west as far as the Adriatic coast; but on the other borders, the attacks of the Turks and Patzinaks were so successful that the Empire was considerably reduced in territory. Anna Comnena rhetorically declares that at that time "the neighboring Bosphorus was the frontier of the Roman Empire in the east, and Hadrianople in the west."20 It seemed that in Asia Minor, which had been almost wholly conquered by the Seljuqs, circumstances were shaping themselves favorably for the Empire, because among the Turkish rulers (emirs) a strife for power was weakening the Turkish strength and bringing the country into a state of anarchy. But Alexius was unable to take full advantage of the distractions of the Turks because of the attacks of the Patzinaks from the north. In their conflict with Byzantium the Patzinaks found allies. within the Empire in the Paulicians who dwelt in the Balkan peninsula.21 The Paulicians represented an Eastern dualistic religious sect, one of the chief branches of Manichaeism, which had been. founded in the third century A. D., by Paul of Samosata and reformed in the seventh century. Living in Asia Minor, on the eastern border of the Empire, and firmly adhering to their doctrine, they sometimes caused grave trouble to the Byzantine government by their warlike energy. One of the familiar methods of the Byzantine internal policy was to transport various nationali 20 Annae Comnenae, Alexias, VI, 11 (I, 214-15). 21 See vol. I, 370. |