Lars Brownworth - Lost to the West - The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

The crisis was precipitated when the stubborn patriarch Michael Cerularius wrote a letter to Pope Leo IX, addressing him as “brother” instead of “father” and comparing him to Judas for adding the word fitioque to the Nicene Creed. This was an old—and rather intemperate—argument that had split the church for generations. According to the original version of the creed—the central statement of Christianity—the Holy Spirit emanated from God the Father. So it had remained until the late sixth century when the word filioque (“and the son”) was added by the Spanish church in an attempt to emphasize Christ’s divinity to their Arian, Visigothic overlords. The Eastern Church could, of course, sympathize with the spirit of the Spanish addition (they had after all fought the same battle against the Arians), but to their minds only the authority of a full council could alter the creed, and this arbitrary addition was therefore a vile heresy made all the more shocking when the pope officially endorsed it. *The Scriptures are mostly silent on the topic of the Trinity, making it virtually impossible to resolve an argument about the relationship of its members. Both sides dug in their heels on the issue, and now the patriarch’s letter to the pope ripped aside the church’s veil of unity to expose its deep-seated divisions for the entire world to see.†

It was at this moment of rancor that the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX invited the pope to send some legates to Constantinople to discuss a military alliance against their mutual enemies. The pope accepted the invitation, but, unfortunately for everyone involved, he chose a virulently anti-Greek cardinal named Humbert to act as his representative. Humbert arrived in Constantinople ready to be insulted, and was soon given ample opportunity when the equally insufferable Patriarch Cerularius refused to see him. Annoyed by the oily Greek food, drafty accommodations, and poor hospitality, Humbert spent his time castigating his hosts for the eastern practices of allowing priests to marry, using leavened bread in the Eucharist, and eating meat during Lent. Tempers were soured further when news arrived in late April that the pope had died, depriving Humbert of what little authority he had, and making his entire infuriating mission pointless. Demanding an audience with the patriarch, the cardinal requested permission to leave, but Cerularius gleefully refused, keeping the enraged Humbert under virtual house arrest. For two months, the papal legate fumed in Constantinople, but by July 16, 1054, with no end to his containment in sight, he had had enough. Marching into the Hagia Sophia, Humbert solemnly placed a note of excommunication on the high altar. Turning around, he shook the dust symbolically off his feet and left the building, vowing never to return. The damage done in that moment was equaled only by its tragically unnecessary circumstances. Christendom would never be united again, and it was the disgruntled representative of a dead pope without a single shred of authority who had dealt the blow.

A few weeks later, the patriarch returned the favor by convening a council that excommunicated the West right back. Each side hoped the other would back down, but it was too late—relations were permanently sundered. The pope maintained that the Latin Church was the “Catholic” or “universal” one, while the patriarch made the same claim, arguing that the Greek rite was “Orthodox” or “true.”

Christendom had been ripped in half, and Byzantium was now dangerously and terrifyingly alone. From now on, the powers to its west would offer no succor, and the empire would have to face the enemies to its east with only its own diminishing resources.

The weakened empire still had its army, but it was no longer the peerless fighting force that had made it the superpower of the Mediterranean. Years of neglect since Basil II’s death had reduced it to virtual impotence, and the court, terrified of a military uprising, did its best to weaken it further—even taking the insane step of disbanding the local militias that guarded the frontiers. Outwardly, the empire may have looked glorious, but on the inside it was rotten and hollow, waiting for an enemy to break the brittle shell. Trapped in the firm grip of squabbling aristocrats, the throne was unlikely to produce a figure capable of undoing the damage, and Byzantium was given no chance to recover its strength.

While the empire was still reeling from its struggle with the papacy, a new and devastating enemy made its military weakness all too apparent. The Seljuk Turks had already taken the Muslim world by surprise. Originally a central Asian nomadic tribe, they spread over Iran and Iraq, managing to seize Baghdad in 1055, replacing the weak and crumbling Abbasid caliphate. After crossing the undefended Byzantine frontiers, by 1067 they were looting their way through Armenia virtually unopposed. Combining the hunger of nomads in search of plunder and pastureland with the predatory aggression of jihadists, the Seljuks were unlike anything the Byzantines had seen before. Their mounted raiders struck fast and without warning, making it difficult to know where to concentrate the defenses. The unwieldy empire was used to dealing with states and armies, not roving bands slashing across their borders. In any case, the humiliated, demoralized imperial army could no longer offer much resistance.

Emperor Romanus Diogenes was a determined if not a gifted general, and when the Seljuks crossed the border in strength during his reign, he somehow managed to push them back across the Euphrates. Unfortunately for the empire, the small victory awakened all the aristocratic courtiers’ old fears that a strong emperor would restrict their privileges. By the time the Turks returned the next year and seized a small Armenian fortress in the town of Manzikert, support for the emperor had begun to dangerously erode.

Oblivious to the mounting dissension, Romanus marched out with his army, determined to evict the Turks from Christian lands once and for all. On August 26, 1071, the two armies met, and the most fateful battle in Byzantine history began. Despite massive defections from his unreliable mercenaries, the emperor managed to push the Turks back, but at a critical moment his scheming nobles betrayed him and withdrew. The cream of the army was slaughtered on the spot, and Romanus Diogenes was captured and forced to kiss the ground while the sultan, Alp Arslan, rested a boot on his neck.

The humiliation of an emperor groveling in the dust seemed to many later Byzantines as the awful moment when everything started to go wrong, but if it marked the beginning of their final decline, then it was the Byzantines themselves who were to blame. The battle could easily have been avoided. At Manzikert, the sultan had tried to come to terms, but the petty nobles had refused his offers and insisted on being the authors of their own destruction. And while the loss of prestige and manpower after the battle were bad enough, they could have been recovered from. It was the behavior of the aristocrats afterward that truly wrecked Byzantium. After fleeing from the scene of their defeat, the nobility escaped to spread chaos throughout the empire, unleashing civil war in their vain attempts to seize control of the sinking Byzantine ship. Rival claimants to the throne rose up in a bewildering succession and were overthrown just as quickly by yet another general with imperial dreams.

Now that the facade had cracked, the frontiers of the empire collapsed with alarming speed. In Italy, the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard conquered Bari, ending more than five centuries of Byzantine rule in its ancestral land. In the East, the Turks came pouring into Asia Minor, and instead of trying to stop them, ambitious generals tried to use them as mercenaries in their own bids for power. Unreliable troops switched sides with alarming frequency, and famine followed in the wake of armies that trampled fields and seized crops. Within ten years, the Turks had overrun thirty thousand square miles of Asia Minor virtually unopposed, robbing the empire of the source of most of its manpower and grain. Except for thin strips along the Black Sea coast and the Mediterranean, Anatolia was lost forever, along with any hope of a long-term recovery for the empire as a whole. Even if a strong emperor came along, there were no longer any reserves of men or material to draw upon. The empire was dying, and instead of helping, foolish men insisted on fighting over its corpse.