Читать книгу The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks - Edwin Pears - Страница 12

Reign of John after retirement of Cantacuzenus (1355 to 1391).

John occupied the throne after the retirement of Cantacuzenus for upwards of thirty-five years. A youth largely spent in selfish pleasures gave little promise that the young man of twenty-three would be able to cope with the difficulties by which the empire was beset. With the aid of his mother, Anne of Savoy, and of partisans whose only hope was in the patronage of the new ruler, he had succeeded in ridding himself of his elderly, respectable, and patriotic colleague. He had now to face the difficulties with which the empire was beset. Of these the dynastic struggle which still continued with Matthew, the son of Cantacuzenus, was soon disposed of. An agreement had been arrived at before the withdrawal of his father by which Matthew should retain the title of emperor and remain in possession of certain districts of the Rhodope mountains, and of the island of Lemnos. A few months later the island was exchanged for a lordship in the Morea. Shortly afterwards Matthew was made prisoner by the Serbians, delivered to John, and, after he had been kept for a while prisoner in Tenedos, abdicated and retired in 1358 to the Morea.

John had no liking for religious controversies within his own Church, and although Cantacuzenus in his retirement wished that the most important of them should be continued John forbade it. There was a curious theological controversy, related by the writers of the time, which is of value as showing that in the midst of the most grave political difficulties the Byzantine people had not yet lost their interest in religious questions. Barlaam, a Calabrian abbot of the Greek Church—who, as we have seen, had been sent to Rome to negotiate for Union and aid because, among other reasons, he was well acquainted with Latin, ‘better indeed than with Greek’76—charged certain monks at Mount Athos and their followers, known as Bogomils, with heresy, called them Omphalopsychae, Messalians, men who believed that by looking long at their navel they could see God with mortal eyes,77 or at least with the uncreated light of Mount Tabor. Barlaam’s great opponent was Palamas, archbishop of Salonica. The party headed by Palamas was favoured by Cantacuzenus, whose mother, indeed, was a Bogomil. The controversy waxed fierce and bitter, but Barlaam was unable to obtain the condemnation he desired. It raged for fifteen years until forcibly put an end to by John on the withdrawal of his colleague.78

By far the most important difficulty which John had to face was the constantly increasing encroachments by the Turks. Their influence at the beginning of his sole occupancy of the throne is shown by the consent he was forced to give to the engagement of his infant daughter to the son of Orchan, the great Turkish leader and successor of Othman. Their influence at a later period, in 1374, is shown by his having been forced into an alliance with Murad and, towards the end of his reign, by his having to destroy a part of the walls of the capital at Murad’s bidding.

At no period of his life did the emperor show that he possessed ability above the average. Neither he nor any of his ministers rose above mediocrity. He nevertheless recognised the danger to his empire from the advance of the Mahometans, the powerlessness of his own unaided subjects to resist that advance, and the expediency of obtaining help from the West. In dealing with some of the questions which disturbed his subjects he possessed a certain aloofness which made him examine them as a statesman. It is probably true, as Gibbon suggests,79 that in his appeals to Rome he was greatly influenced by his mother, Anne of Savoy. She had been brought up as a member of the Latin Church and, though compelled on her marriage to change her name and her religion, she yet remained attached to the Church and country of her childhood. Her struggles during the minority of her son had not tended to make her look with favour on the Orthodox, and her influence upon her son’s mind was probably sufficient to make him regard with as much favour the Church to which his mother had belonged as that of which he was now the temporal head. He had come to regard the differences between the two Churches as matters rather for ecclesiastics than for statesmen. He personally was ready to accept the Union of the Churches and even papal supremacy in religious matters, provided that in return he could obtain aid from the West against the enemies of the empire. But, whatever were his own sentiments towards the Church of Rome, his conduct during the long period of thirty-five years showed that he felt the need of external aid if the empire were to be saved. His reign is one long series of efforts to obtain it. He was ready to humiliate himself, to use all his powers of persuasion for Union, provided that the pontiffs would induce Western rulers to fight the Turks.

Renewed efforts by popes against Moslems.

Hope was probably stimulated in the empire by the fact that the pope and the West generally seemed at last to recognise that, in their own interest, measures should be taken to defend the empire. Moreover, the danger was now so pressing, not only to the Greeks but to Europe, that it appeared possible to obtain aid without submitting to the humiliating conditions hitherto imposed. While John knew that to persuade the Orthodox Church to acknowledge any of its doctrines as heretical, and especially to induce the ecclesiastics to accept the supremacy of the pope, was almost impossible, he professed himself ready to make his own submission. The Union of the Churches could be accomplished at a later day. There appeared reason to hope that the pope regarded the danger from the Moslems mainly from the statesman’s point of view and desired mutual action. John was so far justified in this hope that it may be confidently asserted that had the counsels of more than one of the popes during his reign been followed there would have been a concerted action against the common enemy sufficient to have delayed the Turkish progress, and possibly to have altogether arrested it. We shall see, however, that, although all the states of Western Europe still acknowledged the supremacy of the pope, their interests and jealousies were as diverse as they have been in modern times, and that the pontiff was able neither to induce nor to compel the nations acknowledging his supremacy to act in concert.

Knowing from his own visit to Italy and from the negotiations carried on by Cantacuzenus that Rome was predisposed to aid, John, immediately he became sole ruler, sent an embassy to the pope. His delegates were authorised to make the emperor’s submission to the papal authority in exchange for the undertaking by the pope to furnish galleys against the Turks.

In the following year, 1356, John sent a golden bull to the pope at Avignon containing the terms of his submission.80 The pope thereupon expressed his satisfaction by a reply to the emperor, and while communicating the good news to the knights of Rhodes, the king of Cyprus, and the doge of Venice, invited them to make preparations to aid the Christian cause. So far, however, as the empire was concerned, the series of efforts made at the pope’s instigation were without any satisfactory result. Ill planned, inadequately supported, unenergetically pursued, they were all almost useless. Six years afterwards—namely, in 1362—John was invited to join the kings of France and Denmark and Guy de Lusignan of Cyprus in a Crusade against the Saracens, an expedition of quite secondary importance to the empire. To the men of the West, Turks and Saracens were all the same. The Greeks knew better. Two years passed and a new pope, Urban the Fifth, was still organising a plan against the Saracens. In reply to the pontiff’s invitation John promised all the aid possible to the new Crusade, though pointing out that the benefit to the empire would be slight. But the sovereigns of the West had had enough of Crusades and would not respond to the call from Avignon. The companies of military monks who were in France equally refused to take part in the proposed undertaking, and the efforts of the pope only succeeded in inducing a few English adventurers to join with Peter of Lusignan in a fruitless attack upon Egypt.

At length, in 1366, a more hopeful Crusade, or at least one more likely to result in advantage to the empire, was proclaimed. At the bidding of the pope, Louis, king of Hungary, and Amadeo of Savoy proposed to attack the Turks and to aid the emperor. Once more the condition was attached that John should complete the Union of the Churches. But, once again, the crusading army was weakened by the division of forces judged necessary for an attempt at the same time upon the Saracens. Nor would other states join. In vain the pope threatened the Genoese, Venetians, and Spaniards with all the terrors of an interdict if they gave aid to the enemy. They continued to trade with the Saracens as before. In vain he exhorted the sovereigns of Western Europe to go to the aid of Cyprus and Rhodes, and promised them indulgences if they would take part in this war of the Cross. They turned deaf ears to his summons.

In 1367 Urban had entered Rome, and one of his first acts on taking possession of the chair of St. Peter was to exhort the Genoese and Venetians to facilitate the voyage of John to the imperial city. The emperor was willing enough to go to Rome, provided that there was a reasonable chance of obtaining substantial aid. He had made submission once and was ready to do all that he could to complete the Union the pope so greatly desired, but he knew much better than the pope how difficult it would be to induce his people to accomplish the proposed task. His needs, however, were great, and the summons of the pope was urgent. Accordingly, in 1369, he ventured on the dangerous step of leaving Constantinople. He was received with every honour in the elder Rome, and made a profession of faith which satisfied the four cardinals who had been deputed to receive it. An encyclical notified the great news to all Christian princes. The pope allowed John to negotiate with English mercenaries then in Italy for service, granted him religious privileges, loaded him with presents, and requested the rulers of the states through which he had to pass on his homeward journey to receive him with the respect due to his rank. Urban at the same time addressed a letter to the Greek clergy urging them to accept the Union.

John, however, found little or no material help. He left Rome in debt, and on his return to Venice, where, on his Romeward journey, he had been received in great state and promised four galleys, he was detained until he paid his debts. The emperor urged his son Andronicus, who had been appointed regent during the absence of his father, to find the means of releasing him. The son declared that as the treasury was empty and the clergy would not help, he was unable to obtain ransom. His younger son, Manuel, contrived, however, to find in Salonica sufficient money for his father’s release.

Both Urban and his successor, Gregory the Eleventh, displayed a great desire to aid the empire to stem the tide of Moslem progress. Gregory in 1371 urged the kings of France and England to join with the Genoese to save the remnant of Christians in the Holy Land from the Saracens. All their efforts were fruitless.

The Turkish invasion had meantime become more serious than the Saracenic conquests, as the invaders had now penetrated by land and sea respectively as far as Albania and Dalmatia. The pope once more urged Louis of Hungary, the successors of the crusading nobles who still held territory in Greece and along a portion of the coast of the Adriatic, the knights of Rhodes, and the king of Sicily to combine in a great movement with John against the common enemy. Once more he caused a new Crusade to be preached and promised indulgences to those who took up the Cross. He begged the Emperor Charles to make peace with Bavaria so that the empire in the West might join the Crusade. On all sides, however, there was a reluctance to enter upon it. In spite of the pope’s influence and promise to arm twelve galleys for despatch against the Turks, John’s ambassador returned from the West having completely failed in obtaining aid.

Gregory the Eleventh was equally persevering in his efforts to bring about the Union of the Churches. Franciscan and Dominican missionaries were sent into the East to expose the wickedness of the schism caused or persisted in by the Orthodox Church. Nuncios were despatched to complete the reconciliation. The emperor was reproached, quite unjustly, because he was unable to persuade or compel his subjects to accept Union and to become reconciled with the Latin priests.

The pontiff, however, did not lose sight of his political object. Louis of Hungary fell under his condemnation because he had neglected to engage in the Crusade. But Louis had seen the great defeat of Bulgaria and Southern Serbia on the Maritza in 1371 and was not prepared to make war hastily against so formidable a foe as the Turk had then shown himself to be.

In 1374 the pope returned to the charge and urged the king of Hungary to be on watch against the incursions of the Turks into the empire until the fleet prepared at the pontiff’s expense should arrive in the Marmora. At the same time he invited John once more to visit Rome in order to discuss measures for the accomplishment of Union.

In 1375 he again urged Louis of Hungary to do his duty as chief of the Crusade. He sent five hundred knights of Rhodes and an equal number of squires to defend the Greeks. He authorised the bishops in Western lands to apply large sums from the Church revenues for the purpose of resisting the enemy of Christendom. His influence fell far short of his desire. The Hungarian king was reported to have misappropriated the money he had been allowed to acquire from the Church, and the great fleet which the Genoese had collected for the purpose of attacking the Turks endeavoured to depose John in favour of his son Andronicus.

Difficulties with Sultan Murad.

John himself was in serious difficulties with the Ottoman sultan, Murad. These two sovereigns were now, indeed, the two great actors on the stage during several years, but the character of Murad dominated over that of the commonplace John. To avoid possible treachery, the Christian emperor, who was not trusted by Murad, was in 1374 compelled with his son Manuel to follow the sultan in a campaign. During his absence he entrusted the government to Andronicus, his eldest son. Thereupon an accident occurred which seems greatly to have impressed contemporaries. Andronicus entered into an arrangement with the son of Murad by which the two swore to be friends and to act together, when one should become emperor and the other sultan. A definite arrangement may well be doubted and possibly all that passed was due to the impulsiveness of boyish friendship without any likelihood of practical result. Murad, however, when he heard of the agreement, blinded his son, insisted that John should treat Andronicus in the same manner, and threatened war if he did not comply. According to Ducas, John blinded not only Andronicus, but also his infant son.81 Probably the sight of one eye only was destroyed. Andronicus was imprisoned in the Tower of Anemas with his wife and son, and John’s younger son, Manuel, was crowned as co-emperor. Two years afterwards Andronicus escaped to the Genoese in Galata. With their aid he succeeded in entering Constantinople, proclaimed himself emperor, and shut up his father in the same prison in which he had himself been confined. Two years afterwards the prisoner escaped to Scutari, and Andronicus had the sense to avoid civil war by coming to an arrangement with his father by which John was once more placed on the throne with his son Manuel. Andronicus in compensation received certain of the towns on the north side of the shore of the Marmora.

When Andronicus had succeeded in obtaining possession of the city with the aid of the Genoese, almost his first act was to arrest all the Venetians, with whom the Genoese were again at war. With their aid, John endeavoured to take Tenedos from his enemies, but failed. In the following year (1379) the Genoese united themselves with Louis of Hungary and defeated the Venetians at sea. They were still sufficiently influential in 1382 to compel the emperor to make peace with Andronicus.82 Constantly strengthening themselves, they entered into a treaty in 1387 with the Bulgarian prince of the Dobrutcha.

During this time the Turks were making steady and almost unchecked progress in Greece, on the eastern shore of the Aegean, and in Bulgaria and Macedonia. The inhabitants were becoming weary of the constant struggle and it is significant that in 1385 the patriarch Nilos wrote to pope Urban the Sixth that the Turks left complete liberty to the Church. Even Rome appears to have been in despair. Urban the Sixth like his predecessors had so completely made his action against the Turks conditional upon the renunciation by the Greeks of their heresies and upon Union with Rome that all hope of aid from him or from Western Europe had for a time died out.83

The last years of the reign of John Palaeologus were once more disturbed by domestic troubles. His eldest son, Andronicus, had died in 1385, but his grandson, John, had many friends and was supported by the Genoese. His party was sufficiently powerful to gain an entry into the city by the Chariseus or Adrianople Gate and to compel the old Emperor John to associate his grandson of the same name as emperor with Manuel, his younger son, and himself. After a few months, however, Manuel, who had never accepted the arrangement, entered by the Golden Gate and Death of John.his nephew fled. In 1391, the elder Emperor John died after a reign of fifty-one years.

During his long occupancy of the throne the power of the Turks had enormously increased and the empire had almost become a vassal of Murad. In the last year of his reign there occurred an incident, already alluded to, which illustrates at once the weakness of John and his practical vassalage to the Turks. Wishing to strengthen the landward walls and especially at and near the Golden Gate, where the defences had fallen into decay, he gave out that he was about to clear the city of its accumulated rubbish and to ornament that gate. Bajazed, who was now the Ottoman sultan and successor of his father, Murad, when he learned what had been done, insisted that the new defensive works should be destroyed, threatening that if his wishes were not complied with he would put out the eyes of John’s son Manuel, who had gone by the Sultan’s orders to accompany the Turkish army on a campaign in Pamphylia. John obeyed the orders he had received.84