An Empire That Outlasted Its Strength
The Eastern Roman Empire, which passed in 1261 without bloodshed under the new Palaiologan dynasty, survived, without having meant to, for about two more centuries. Its holdings shrank through Muslim advances in Asia and Europe, the spread of the Slavs behind its borders, and the carving up of parts of it by Christian enemies, Normans, Genoese and Venetians, who had sacked Constantinople in 1204. Industry in the imperial cities stirred slowly, but its goods were loaded onto Italian ships that brought no profit to the state treasury.
Of the middle class, once countless, only a few remained. Above it stood the nobles and extravagant prelates, who dressed in splendid robes and, having learned nothing from the lessons of history, forgot everything but their class privileges. Below it was a restless class: monks who added politics to piety, farmers who had slipped from owning to renting and from renting into serfdom, and proletarians who dreamed of a utopia of equality.
In Salonica a revolution broke out (1341): it ruined the aristocracy, plundered palaces and mansions, and installed a half-communist republican government that ran affairs for eight years until it was put down by troops from the capital. Constantinople was still a bustling center of trade, but no longer as prosperous as before. A Muslim traveler in 1330 speaks of "many ruined houses and fields cultivated inside the city." Ruy González de Clavijo, the Spanish envoy, writing about 1409, says that in the capital there are everywhere palaces, churches and great, splendid monasteries, but most of them are ruined and decayed. Greatness and glory had indeed left the queen of the cities of the Bosphorus.
A Last Flowering of Learning
Amid this political decline, the immortal literary and philosophical heritage of ancient Greece mixed with Byzantine traditions in architecture and painting to sound the last splendid note of Eastern Roman culture. In the schools, the works of Plato, Aristotle and Zeno the Stoic were still being interpreted. Though they avoided reading Epicurus as an atheist philosopher, scholars and men of letters corrected the classic texts and wrote new commentaries on them. Maximus Planudes, the Byzantine ambassador in Venice, edited the Greek Anthology, translated Latin classics into Greek and set up a new cultural link between the Eastern Empire and Italy.
The life of Theodore Metochites shows this Palaiologan renaissance well. While he was grand logothete under Andronicus II, he was also one of the most learned and productive scholars of his time. Nicephorus Gregoras, himself an eminent scholar and historian, says of him: from morning till evening he devoted himself to public business wholeheartedly, as if he had never had any tie to learning; but at night, after leaving the palace, he was wholly immersed in study, as if he were a scholar cut off from every worldly interest. In fluent, beautiful Greek unmatched in the fourteenth century, Theodore wrote many books on history, philosophy and astronomy, and composed fine verse.
In the revolution that deposed his benefactor, he lost office, wealth and home. The rebels imprisoned him, but when he fell ill they let him go to the monastery of St. Savior in Chora, whose walls had been adorned with the most beautiful mosaics in the history of the Eastern Empire, and stay there for the rest of his life.
Plato against Aristotle: Gemistus Plethon
In philosophy the old contest between Platonists and Aristotelians flared up again. Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus defended Aristotle, while Plato was a god to Gemistus Plethon. Gemistus was the best-known sophist philosopher of modern Greece. He studied philosophy at Bursa in Asia Minor, when that city was the center of Ottoman progress, and also learned the principles of Zoroaster's teaching from a Jewish master (the book's claim). When he returned to his native Peloponnese, then called the Morea, he probably no longer believed in Christianity. He settled at Mistra and became a judge and teacher.
In 1400 he wrote a philosophical treatise called, like one of Plato's, the Laws. In it Gemistus proposed to replace Christianity and Islam with the ancient religion of Greece, except that, apart from Zeus, the Olympian gods were taken as personified embodiments of creative processes or "ideas." Plethon did not know that a religion cannot be made, but must come into being. Even so, many pupils gathered around the candle of his wisdom, and one of them, Johannes Bessarion, was destined to become a humanist cardinal in Italy.
Bessarion and Gemistus, together with Emperor John VIII, went to Ferrara and Florence (1438) for the council of the Roman and Greek churches, which for a moment set aside their differences in theology and politics and reconciled. In Florence Gemistus lectured on Plato to a select circle and fanned the fire of the Italian Renaissance, whose groundwork was already prepared. There he added to his name the title "Plethon" (full), alluding to Gemistus (full) and Plato (the Latin form of "Plato"). Returning to Mistra, he gave up theological controversy, became an archbishop, and died at ninety-five (the book's date is 1450).
The Revival of Art
The renewal of art, like the rejuvenation of literature, is a notable event of this age. The subjects and forms of art still had a spiritual cast, but now and then a landscape, a ray of naturalism, or the warmth of color and delicacy of line gave life and freshness to the mosaics. The ones recently exposed in the Chora monastery (now the Kariye mosque) are so full of life that Western historians admit to seeing in them traces of Italian influence.
In fresco, which gradually replaced mosaic in decorating churches and palaces, the dominance of spiritual and religious subjects relaxed, and luxurious, imaginary pictures and secular events appeared beside religious legends and lives of saints. Icon painters clung to the old Greek manner and produced works with slender figures and faces that glowed with a pure piety, something of which one could find not a trace in the morals of the time. Byzantine miniature painting was in severe decline, but silk weaving still produced masterpieces without equal in the West.
The wide-sleeved robe known as "Charlemagne's mantle" is a work of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. On a blue silk ground an artist laid out a design and a skilled craftsman wove silver and gold thread into it, producing scenes from the lives of Mary, Christ and various saints. In Salonica, Serbia, Moldavia and Russia too, cloths with such handsome designs were woven in this period.
Mistra and the Greek Revival
Greece was once more a center of the great arts. As the thirteenth century approached its end, the Franks, who had occupied ancient sites with their distinctive castles, opened the way for a revival of Eastern imperial power. In 1348 Emperor John V Palaiologos sent his son Manuel to the Morea to take up the government there as "despot." He set his seat on a hill overlooking ancient Sparta. Nobles, former lords, monks, artists, scholars and philosophers flowed to the new capital.
Great monasteries were built, three of which keep their medieval frescoes inside their churches: the monasteries of Metropolis and Peribleptos, of the fourteenth century, and Pantanassa, of the early fifteenth. These are the most beautiful wall paintings in the long history of Byzantine art. Careful drawing, the flowing beauty and delicacy of figures, and the depth and brilliance of color make them comparable to the best frescoes of the same years in Italy. Indeed it is quite possible that they owe some of their grace and freshness to Cimabue, Giotto or Duccio, who themselves owe much to Byzantium.
Mount Athos
On the east coast of Greece, on the heights of Mount Athos, monasteries had been founded from the tenth century and in most centuries after: the splendid Pantokrator in the fourteenth and the great St. Paul in the fifteenth. A Greek "Painter's Guide" of the eighteenth century attributes the best wall paintings in these retreats to Manuel Panselinos of Salonica: "In his art he showed such mastery that he surpassed the artists of old and new." But we have no reliable information about the time of Manuel's life and works; he may be a painter of the eleventh or sixteenth century, and no one can say which paintings on Athos came from his hand.
Collapse of Power
While Byzantine art was flaring up in this last enthusiasm, the imperial state went on declining. The army was disorganized and the navy decaying. Genoese and Venetian ships controlled the Black Sea, and pirates raided the Aegean. A band of Catalan mercenaries, the "Great Catalan Company," seized Gallipoli in 1306, banned trade in the Dardanelles, and set up in Athens a republic of robbers (1310). No government was able to deal with them, and they were left alone until the force of their own violence destroyed them. In 1307 Pope Clement V plotted with France, Naples and Venice to reconquer Constantinople.
The plot failed, but it so frightened the Eastern emperors about the Christian West that they showed no strength or courage to stop the Muslim advance. This fear faded only when the Ottoman Turks had reached the empire's gates.
Emperors Who Ruined Themselves
Some emperors brought about their own ruin. In 1342 Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, caught in civil wars, asked help of Orhan, the Ottoman sultan, who sent his warships to help and helped him take Salonica. In gratitude the emperor gave his daughter Theodora in marriage to Orhan, who had other wives. The sultan sent 6,000 more soldiers. When John V Palaiologos set out to depose him, John VI looted the church of Constantinople, sent money for 20,000 more fighters for the Ottoman sultan, and promised him a fortress on the peninsula of Thrace. At the moment of apparent victory the people of Constantinople held him a traitor and rose against him. A one-night revolution took him from the empire to the writing of history (1355). He retired to a monastery and, as a last effort to overcome his enemies, began writing a history of his time.
John V Palaiologos had not a moment's rest from the day he took the throne. He went as a suppliant to the court of Rome (1369) and, in return for help against the Ottoman Turks, promised to bring all his subjects under the papal government. Before the high altar of St. Peter's he gave up his allegiance to the Greek Orthodox Church. Pope Urban V promised him aid against the infidel Turks and urged all Christian rulers to help him. But they were busy with their own affairs. Instead of help, John was held at Venice as a hostage for the debts of Greece. His son Manuel brought the money and freed his father. John returned to Constantinople poorer than before and, for breaking the Orthodox covenant, was rejected by his subjects.
When his next attempt to get help from the West also came to nothing, he acknowledged Murad I, the Ottoman sultan, as his protector and master, agreed to give military help to Ottoman armies and sent his beloved son Manuel as a hostage for his pledge. Sultan Murad was quiet for a time, gave up conquering the Eastern Empire, and set about subduing the Balkans.