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Chapter Twenty Four: The Emptying Chalice
Chapter Twenty Four: The Emptying Chalice

"Many men, and even impious and immodest woman, grasped after the supreme power of the Roman state in those days, but the more they snatched at the office, the more all that was most noble and excellent drained away, until the Emperors themselves became shrunken, feeble things"

Panegyric of Nicholas the Builder delivered to the imperial court of Constantinople in the spring of 1357​

At the time of the death of Constantine Palaiologos, most of his immediate relatives were out of the City, with only Andreas Chryselios of his great nephews within easy reach of Constantinople. Andreas immediately rallied a number of retainers, including a flamboyant personal bodyguard of four hundred and forty four Jušen fighters from Kiev, and marched on the city, but an attempted triumphal entry through the Golden Gate was met with stiff opposition by the urban mob.[1] Andreas eventually managed to scurry into the city by night a few days later, but by that point, his chance of gaining the throne was gone for good.

Affairs within the Palace had moved quickly. Still at court in Constantine’s last weeks were his “honoured sister” Agatha Synadene, the widow of the Emperor’s long since deceased younger brother George, and her daughter Eirene Palaiologina.[2] Eirene had hitherto been a half forgotten woman at court, but she had always held a special place in her uncle the Emperor’s affections for her modest piety. As a young woman she had led the virgins of Constantinople in a vigil during the darkest days of Ākǔttǎ Khan’s siege[3], and during Constantine’s final descent into madness she read homilies to the confused Emperor every evening. Despite all of this, however, neither she nor her mother had ever retreated into monastic confinement, and had strongly resisted pressure by Gregory Maleinos to do so. With all serious competitors now out of the way, and as the last member of the Palaiologan dynasty still standing, Eirene now found herself in prime position to take the throne.

She could not do it alone, however. Indeed, Eirene’s very name told against her: she was the great-great granddaughter of Eirene Nafpliotissa, after all, and was generally accepted to bear a strong likeness to the Nafpliotid Empress.[4] The aversion to female power still ran very strongly within Constantinople, so if Eirene wanted to rule, she needed to find a man to share power with. Fortunately, there was a clear candidate: and moreover, one whose background and breeding were low enough that Eirene Palaiologina could have a reasonable hope of being the true power in the marriage.

Two days before the death of Constantine X, Michael Photopoulos had celebrated his fifty eighth birthday. He remained, however, a strikingly handsome man, with hair that had only begun to grey, a lean physique, and deep, almost black eyes. More importantly, there were few who held the unqualified affection of the populace of Constantinople more firmly than the war hero of the East, and the saviour of the city from the depredations of the rebel Constantine Maleinos.

Photopoulos had never married, though rumours never ceased to swirl that he had promised his heart to an Arab peasant woman who had tended to him during his time in the East but had then died. Needless to say, such a dalliance was of little relevance to anyone a generation later, and the elder statesman was duly approached by Eirene Palaiologina and her mother, proposing an alliance. After a couple of days’ dithering, the spectacle of Andreas Chryselios’ botched entry into the city appeared to make up his mind. On March 1st 1306, Michael IX was crowned Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans, and married to Eirene Palaiologina, who took the new name Eudocia, to mark the day.[5]

Eudocia-Eirene and Agatha Synadene had boldly snatched power, but they would have very little time to enjoy it. Towards the end of April, Agatha fell badly ill and died soon afterward. The Empress, meanwhile, soon found herself being pushed from the levers of power by her astute husband, who had no wish to be seen as the puppet of an overmighty woman, and in any case needed urgently to build bridges with his new extended family. In 1307, Michael IX named a Maleinos and a Chryselios to the office of Caesar, ignoring the fury of his wife’s allies.[6] Slowly, Eudocia-Eirene saw her influence wither at court, and she died a broken woman in 1309, last of the Palaiologoi.

But the future would not lie with the two other great imperially linked families. Michael IX was predeceased by both of his deputies, and signally refused to appoint a replacement for either, despite the fact that there were numerous other family members with imperial blood. Instead, he increasingly came to rely on the Grand Logothete Alexander Iasites and his longstanding monkish friend Michael the Weaver, who in February 1310 was named Patriarch of Constantinople.[7] An attempt by the Chryseloi to wrench things back their way when the Emperor departed Constantinople in autumn 1310 for the Danube frontier was swiftly defeated thanks to the opposition of the urban mob, who continued to show utmost loyalty to the conquering hero Michael IX.

Photopoulos was not a great Emperor, by any means: but he at least showed himself to be popular and capable. It was unfortunate for all, therefore, when in December 1311 he suddenly fell ill and died after a reign of just five years, to be succeeded by his close ally Alexander Iasites.

The best thing that can be said about the reign of Alexander IV was its short duration. Alexander was a Constantinopolitan aristocrat through and through, who had grown up under Constantine Palaiologos’ long and stable reign and rarely left the City. This, together with his close association with Michael IX, was enough to shield him from serious popular opposition towards his policies, which he surely richly merited.

Though he had little to no military experience, Alexander IV dreamed of being remembered as a conquering hero. Accordingly, in 1312, when a revolt broke out in Bulgaria upon the death of the deposed Tsarina Maria[8], the Emperor decided to take to the field personally. Initially, all went well, with a number of Bulgarian towns torched, but Alexander then allowed himself to be led on a pursuit deep into the mountains by a rebel army. There, the imperial forces received a violent mauling, with the Basileus only just escaping with his thanks to, it was rumoured, his dressing up as a nun. He returned to Constantinople to celebrate a triumph in January 1313, but by this point, what had been a minor disturbance had blown up into a full scale conflagration that would take the better part of a decade to subdue.

Undeterred by the Bulgarian misadventure, Alexander now looked to the East. From 1309 the thoroughly Persianised Jušen prince Jamshīd, claiming to be the grandson of Ākǔttǎ Khan, had ruthlessly imposed order on the dying Khanate, bringing back under his control Mesopotamia, the Iranian uplands and parts of the Caucasus and Arabian peninsula in a series of highly effective campaigns. In the process, he had ruthlessly pruned his own family tree, executing half a dozen supposed relatives of Ākǔttǎ. These promptly sought asylum in the Empire, which Michael IX had been only too pleased to grant.[9]

The previous Emperor had been wily enough to keep the Jušen princes back as a reserve, should Jamshīd Khan prove himself to be a truly serious threat, but Alexander IV had no such compunction. Aiming to prove himself worthy of his conquering namesake, in 1314 he set out to the East, and became the first Emperor in centuries to cross the Euphrates. Jamshīd Khan, however, had no intention of passively waiting for his hard-won reign to be demolished. Alexander led his army out of Edessa on the 15th of May, and three days later, the Iranian army descended. Tired from a fast march, and acutely aware of the proximity of shelter in the great walled city[10], Alexander’s army first buckled, and then broke.

The accounts of Alexander’s end differ, with Rhomanian writers universally writing that he attempted to flee, only to be thrown from his horse and murdered by his guardsmen, who took the ceremonial garments of an Emperor back to Antioch and their new wearer. Iranian writers tell a different tale, of the Emperor mounting a valiant last stand, even as his army dissolved around him. We will never know the truth, although it is fair to say that Alexander IV suffered an unusually large number of detractors in Rhomania, who would have gleefully seized the chance to mock his passing: while in Iran, it was important for Jamshīd Khan to establish himself as saviour of Iranians and Jušen alike from the warlike invader from the West.

Whatever the case, the Khan did not press his victory, besides ransoming back a number of nobles from Rhōmanía for huge sums, and extracting further sums of money from Edessa and Melitene- lurid tales of virgin girls being sold into slavery by their parents are probably exaggerations.[11] The Euphrates frontier was stiffened by the armies of the Doux of Antioch, David Pegonites, and the Khan, his prestige boosted immeasurably, opted not to push his luck. Meanwhile, the remains of Alexander’s great army (which probably did not suffer enormous losses) scrabbled back into friendly territory. On the way, the imperial vestments were seized by the enterprising Pegonites, who had himself raised upon the shields of his soldiers and named David I, Emperor of the Romans.

This might easily have been the start of a civil war: but fortunately for David, his wife was Sophia Chryselie, a granddaughter of Constantine X’s sister Maria and member of the influential Chryselios family. Sophia’s brothers (including the same Andreas who had tried to seize the throne seven years earlier) opted to stand aside and let their brother-in-law peacefully ascend the throne. David I duly entered Constantinople for his coronation on New Years’ Day[12]. With him, somewhat ominously, marched the troops of the Duchy of Antioch that had raised him, made up primarily of Armeno-Romans.[13] David’s first act as a crowned Emperor was to allow the dedication of not one but two large Armenian monasteries within the city walls of Constantinople itself, a move that swiftly raised hackles within the Church establishment, notably in Italy, where compromise with heretical Easterners was seen not as pragmatism, but surrender.

Notable amongst the Italian bishops who loudly denounced David I that autumn was the firebrand young “Patriarch” of Grado, Samuel the Bulgar.[14] A precocious young man, Samuel had been born on the day news of Constantinople’s liberation had reached Preslav, and in the ensuing chaos in Jušen-occupied Bulgaria, his father had opted to flee with the family, eventually making it to the safety of Italy. Samuel, his father’s only heir, had defied his parents and entered the clergy at the age of eighteen in 1300. In the following decade he had risen high under the corrupt regime of the Patriarch of Rome Victor VI, who had apparently coveted the handsome young Bulgarian and rewarded him with a plum see in 1308. To the surprise of many, he quickly came to display incredible piety and intelligence, although from the start, many not so Christian characteristics were on display. He was a deeply calculating man, and, it was believed by all that he had his eye on the Papacy itself. For now, though, he would play an important but still relatively minor role in the Italian embassy that arrived in Constantinople in 1315 to attempt to persuade the Emperor David to call an end to his dalliance with heresy.

This, David resolutely refused. Secure on his throne, and newly delivered of a third son, Rōmanos, the new Emperor could look forward to resuming an age of peace and plenty after a rocky few years. For now, Samuel would remain an unknown to the imperial court of the for-now triumphant Chryseloi: but his rise had begun, and his obscurity would not last long.
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[1] The southernmost gate in Constantinople’s land walls, the Golden Gate was used as a ceremonial entry point for Emperors, and, on rare occasions, honoured visitors to the city.

[2] Something of a playboy prince, George was a keen sailor and was drowned in a summer Aegean storm in 1262, leaving his wife Agatha heavily pregnant. Their daughter Eirene was born a few weeks after his death, and named after Eirene Bringaina, the mother of the-then Regent Demetrios’ wife Zoe.

[3] See Chapter Twenty One.

[4] All of the children of Isaac III Palaiologos (1234-1245) and his wife Theodora took after their mother, who herself was said by those who would remember to have born a strong likeness to Eirene. Eirene Palaiologina looks like her father, and therefore, resembles the Devil-Empress.

[5] March 1st is the Feast Day of St Eudocia of Heliopolis.

[6] Damianos Chryselios, the patriarch of his family and husband of Constantine’s sister Maria, and Demetrios Maleinos, younger brother of the rebel Constantine.

[7] “The Weaver” is something of an enigmatic surname. It may refer to Michael’s Theban roots, given Greek Thebes was a centre of the silk trade.

[8] See Chapter Twenty Two.

[9] After all, he had a long history of supporting various Jurchen pretenders for the greater good of the Empire. See Chapter Twenty Two.

[10] Two days march has taken Alexander’s unusually large army of circa 16,000 men around twenty miles from Edessa. For a more detailed look at marching and army sizes, see Haldon 1999.

[11] In an echo of the campaigns of the Sasanian kings, Jamshīd deals directly with the bishops of these cities to extract large amounts of gold.

[12] This is of course September 1st in the Byzantine calendar. See Chapter One.

[13] The reconquered East was settled by Armenians from the tenth century onwards. ITTL, by this point, they have become fairly integrated into the power structures of the Empire, speaking classical Greek alongside their native tongue. Importantly, however, the Armeno-Roman community continues to repudiate the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon.

[14] The title “Patriarch” was claimed by the see from the sixth century, in opposition to the religious policies of the Emperor Justinian the Great. It is not one officially recognised by the Uniate Church.
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