The Contexts of Roman Society, Part 13-2: Rhomania in the World-To Forfeit A Soul
By the end of the 1640s, the war hawks were still the most coherent ideological grouping in Roman society, but they were facing increasing competition in that quarter. The competition, which rose partly in reaction to the increasing demands of the war hawks, has been labeled as defensivism, although the term itself is much more recent than the phenomenon it describes.
Defensivism had deep precedents in Roman society. Rhomania in the Middle Ages repeatedly engaged in warfare, but in its own way was substantially less militaristic than its neighbors both in the east and west. Although there was the occasional nod in that direction, there was no concept of a holy war comparable to a Latin Crusade or a Muslim Jihad. In surveys of the possessions in medieval Roman households, weapons and military equipment are conspicuous for their absence. Military service was supposed to be done by professionals in the service of the state, not of a ‘people-in-arms’, which is a major reason why contemporaries of the medieval Romans often called them effeminate. [1]
The medieval Romans were certainly not pacifist, as those facing Nikephoros Phokas or Alexios Philanthropenos on the battlefield could attest, if they survived the experience. But throughout much of medieval Roman intellectual thought, conquest was not celebrated for its own merits. What belonged to the Romans must be defended, and what had been lost that was rightfully Roman should be retaken, but it was not right to go and seize from others what rightfully belonged to them. In the early tenth century, Arethas favorably compared Leo VI above Alexander the Great himself. That was because Leo VI had waged just war to reclaim what had been taken from the Romans but which rightfully belonged to them. In contrast, Alexander was greedy and unjust, failing to recognize the Hellespont as the natural limit to his ambition in his quest to steal what did not belong to him. [2]
This precedent strongly influenced the defensivists as they articulated their ideas in the late 1640s. Many of the most prominent and influential were members of the Orthodox clergy, who were guided by concerns over Roman morality. They were far from alone in this regard. In the summer of 1648, Thrace was devastated by an earthquake. This was followed by the freezing of the Bosporus in early 1649, and then a volcanic eruption at Kolumbo in 1650. Throughout these years, plague raged. And those were just the most striking examples as climatic conditions turned more erratic and destructive.
Romans lacked the means to explain such phenomena through natural means, although those historically-minded recognized extremely disturbing parallels with the mid-6th century. Athena was one of these, musing in 1650 about the similarities, speculating if the earth went through a cycle whereby every 1100 years or so it became sharply hostile to human life. Most though believed the cause was a manifestation of God’s anger towards human behavior. Denunciations of drunkenness, greed, fornication, and sodomy were never absent, but there seems to have been a sharp uptick after 1645.
Defensivists, especially the clerical ones, were not immune to these ideas, but they thought there was more to the matter. Bishop Manuel Rekas considered homosexuality to be a most grievous sin, but highly doubted that sodomy was more common in Roman society in 1650 as opposed to 1575, when God’s wrath had not manifested in bizarre and deadly climatic conditions. For God’s wrath to be manifesting now, there had to be more than just the typical moral failures decried in all generations.
The reference to the year 1575 was not random, for that year was during the height of the Flowering, commonly dated as stretching from about 1560 to 1595, albeit with fuzziness around the edges. This era was perceived as a golden age of peace and prosperity, bounty and beauty, in stark contrast to the years of iron and pain that had marked the Roman experience of the first half of the 1600s. Now rose-tinted nostalgia was a factor as Romans of the 1640s looked back, but certainly the mid/late 1500s were much more beneficent to Roman life and happiness than the era of the Flowering’s children and grandchildren.
To re-cultivate the Flowering, to make that now-barren garden bloom again, was the goal of the defensivists. It must be said that some of their representation of the Flowering had never existed in reality; not all of that Golden Age had been made of precious metals. Furthermore in the ways they wished to go back to that era, they relied on innovations that would make their proposed re-creation different from the model. For example, Rhomania at the beginning of the Flowering had been appreciably less urbanized and commercialized than was the case three generations later. Most defensivists did not want to roll these back, but wanted to regain the perceived fairness and good conduct of Flowering Society by reviving the ideas of just profit and just price. This image of the Flowering, as a period of peace, prosperity, justice, and morality, whether accurate to the time period or not, heavily influenced the defensivists.
And that is where the defensivists ran, with the force of a wine-mad triceratops, into the war hawks. For the war hawks thought to secure and prosper Rhomania by massive military expansionism, while the Flowering had been marked by peace and diplomacy. It had even begun with some territorial concessions to Timur II, then at the height of his power. (The cession admittedly soon ended up in Ottoman hands, but the historical connection with the House of Sideros possibly added to the appeal when used as a precedent for the cession of Malta to the Despotate of Sicily.)
During those decades, the White Palace had emphasized good relations with the West. Many now were critical of those endeavors, as the resulting marriage ties had given Theodor his opening. But the defensivists countered that Theodor’s opening had come about because of Drakid dynastic failings. The Latins existed, and existed in far greater numbers than the Romans, and it was important to just deal with those facts, annoying as they might be. For what other option was there?
The defensivists also used the War of the Roman Succession to bolster their point. During the conflict Rhomania had received substantial military aid, mainly manpower, primarily from the Russian states, but also Arles and Spain. There had even been a good chance that the latter two would’ve joined the Romans in the war had not the entry of Lombardy on Theodor’s side upset the geopolitical table. Spanish and Arletian hostility had arisen later, after the Romans had ignored their concerns about the geopolitical arrangement of Italy.
In short, the defensivists thought that Rhomania was secure in its present state. The success of the Romans in defending themselves in that war showed that. Yes, it had been costly, but it had been successful, and such high costs could be obviated in the future by avoiding certain errors, such as alienating Georgia, and regaining and retaining the friendship of Spain and Arles. Plus now there was the Russian factor to consider.
But the plan of the war hawks would not help make Rhomania secure; it would make it more insecure. Such a program would spread out Roman forces and sharply increase their list of enemies. Of what good was Italy if its possession ensured the hostility of Spain, Arles, and Sicily? A free Hungary would look askance at Germans marching through its territory. A Hungary subservient to Constantinople would likely welcome and even encourage them.
There was more to the defensivists’ argument than just disputes over foreign policy; for them there was also a moral issue at play. They saw a growing darkness in the soul of Rhomania, grown hard and callous and cruel in the decades of near-constant and grueling war since the start of the century. And they feared what it portended. The Great Crime was just the most extreme example. Now they believed in putting down rebellions and certainly weren’t interested in seeing an independent Sunni Syria, but did it really have to end with so much blood and death? Had it really been necessary, or had it ended that way because that was how the Romans wanted it to end?
They saw the war hawk program as an expression of that darkness, and more worryingly a way in which it might grow. A thirst for blood, for conquest, an eagerness to hurt the outsider and to steal what belonged to them and not to the Romans. This thirst is what Bishop Manuel Rekas identified as the key difference between the Romans of 1650 as opposed to 1575, and he considered that it was this lust for blood that was kindling the fire of God’s wrath.
But that consideration is also why he emphasized that Rhomania was secure, that it did not need to claw and hack at the world to make itself safe. For he identified the root of the darkness, and that root was fear. What it came down to was that the Romans were afraid. The trauma of the Fourth Crusade and the Black Day had never truly faded, and likely never would, and the trials of the early 1600s had only exacerbated them. That was the context behind his famous saying in a sermon in Constantinople: “Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.”
This was the true attraction of the Flowering for the defensivists. The Fourth Crusade and the Black Day could not and should not be forgotten, but these traumas did not have to warp and darken the Roman soul. The Flowering was proof of that, and the defensivists hoped that the spirit of the Romans in that time could be regained.
They hoped, and they prayed. For clearly God’s wrath was building, and even if he did not enact justice, the hearts of men could bring forth much evil on their own. For if the wrath of the war hawks was turned upon the world, what would be the wrath of the world? And if the wrath of the war hawks could not be turned outward, how long before it would be turned inward? How long could darkness reside before consuming its host?
These were alarming questions. As Patriarch Adam II of Constantinople, the highest-ranking defensivist, said “I sense a great evil in the heart of Rhomania. This tumor must be excised, lest it doom us all. But I fear the surgery will be terrible in its own right.”
For the defensivists, the Flowering must be regained. Rhomania could be secure and safe, but it must regain that spirit of peace and diplomacy, not continue along this path. And to do so, it must emphatically reject this spirit of conquest, of seizing what rightfully belonged to others. What rightfully belonged to the Romans must be defended, but no more must be taken, for that was not just.
This sparked the obvious question: what rightfully belonged to the Romans? For the defensivists, the answer was simple. They looked back to the Flowering for their ideal Rhomania, and so it was the borders of Rhomania during the Flowering that they considered to be rightfully Roman.
There were some caveats to this. While they might deplore the Great Crime, no defensivist thought to try and reverse it. Such evil was done; it could not be undone. What was needed was to ensure that such a thing would never happen again. (Even then, some critics found this to be rather ‘convenient’.) And one curious blind spot among the defensivists was any acknowledgment of Rhomania-in-the-East, which might as well not exist in their writings. They were concerned with the heartland, and the heartland alone, perhaps because it was the threats to the heartland that was the source of the fear and darkness that they hoped to exorcise.
But once those were considered, the position of the defensivists were clear. The borders of Rhomania during the Flowering were what were right and just for the Romans to possess, and no more. Any more, no matter the justification, was an act of injustice, of theft, of blood, of darkness, of evil. And this was no mere rhetoric either. As Father Andronikos Hadjipapandreou, the most famous of the defensivists, said: “Evil must be opposed. No matter the cost, for to surrender to evil is to pay an even greater price.”
But the defensivists were not the only ones who thought they were in an existential struggle for the soul and people of Rhomania. As Tourmarch Thomas Nereas, one of the literal Tourmarches, also said at around the same time: “The Roman people must become steel. This must be done in fire, and the slag cast out into the waste dump. This is necessary, so let it be done. Mercy will hinder this task, so let it be abandoned.”
[1] Nicolas Oikonomides, “The Contents of the Byzantine House from the Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century,” in
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990).
[2] Angeliki E. Laiou, “Economic Thought and Ideology”, in
The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh to the Fifteenth Century, pg
. 1126
.
