Death of an Emperor

10th December 969
A freezing winter night, a strong wind from the north and snow falling heavily. The empress of Constantinople stood on a palace balcony looking out to sea. In the distance a small boat glided through the rough icy waters carrying her lover. Inside her husband slept the last minutes of his life on the cold marble floor.

The empress, Theophano, was not born to the palace, she was an innkeepers daughter whose legendary beauty won her the hand of the crown prince, Romanos. The emperor died shortly after, the word poison was on everyone’s lips and all fingers pointed to her. Then when her husband died, she was left very alone with two small children.

Nikephoros Phokas, was the empire’s greatest general. He had spent a lifetime battling the Arabs, leading the great Byzantine revival, retaking the coast of Lebanon and sacking Aleppo. He looked at what was going on in the city and saw weakness and opportunity. His troops declared him emperor and he marched west to claim the throne. Theophano saw the writing on the wall and offered a truce - she would marry him and he would recognise her children as his heirs. Nikephoros was a tough and pious old solider, used to the hard life on campaign. Even for an arranged marriage, this match with the pleasure loving Theophano was not a good one. His vow of chastity after the death of his first wife didn’t help either.

John Tzimiskes was Nikephoros nephew and second in command and it was he who had urged his uncle to grab power. He was everything the Nikephoros wasn’t; young, handsome and charming. The empress soon saw that he was a man who dared more than others and kept him in town and in the palace as much as possible. A plot was hatched.

The great palace of the Byzantine emperors was a huge complex; from beside Hagia Sophia and the Hippodrome dropping down to the sea. It was a collection of terraces and scattered free standing buildings. Little survives to today, but wander the back streets of Sultanahmet and you see fragments of brick walls sticking out from between the old wooden houses. There is also the palace mosaic museum almost under the blue mosque and the empress’ bath has recently been dug up in the back garden of the four seasons hotel. The top of the hill was the more public part of the palace, where eunuchs ran the empire and emperors held court. At the bottom was the Boukoleon palace, the private residence. It was built right out over the walls, a perfect sea view and private back door boat landing. A decent chunk of it survives, wedged between the lanes of traffic of Kennedy Bulavari, and the train line carrying 100s of rattling earthquakes a day. What is left is strewn with garbage and the homeless live in the basement lighting fires against the cold. It doesn’t take much imagination though to see the sea lapping at the walls, and the royals above enjoying the sea breeze and the best view in town.

The empress prepared for her balcony scene, but this was no Romeo and Juliet. The basket on a string is an old Istanbul tradition in this vertical city, you see it used every day as you walk the streets. And soon a few strong servants had hauled Tzimiskes and his men up. The party headed straight for the emperors bedroom, but his bed was empty. Panic. He knows. They ran for the sea but a servant stopped them. The royal bed was too soft for this pious old soldier; he was curled up in the corner on the floor on a panther skin with his icons. They formed a circle, kicked him a bit till he was awake and screaming, then finished him off with their swords.
Next morning, a path was cleared through the snow and the happy couple set off to the great church for a wedding and a coronation. They found the patriarch waiting, but he wasn’t happy, “No”. The wise heads got together. The empire needed an emperor and Tzimiskes was the best man they had, so on Christmas day he got his coronation. Someone had to be punished though and Theophano was disposable. They decided to pack her off to a distant nunnery. When her former lover gave her the news, the innkeepers daughter, replied with language the likes of which had rarely been uttered in the palace particularly by an empress. But the deal was done, after landing a few decent punches on the court chamberlain she was dragged off to a ship and sailed into exile leaving John and her sons behind, perhaps waving from the palace balcony.

Theodore Metochites and the Chora Church

One of the greatest cultural legacies of the Byzantine world is the Chora church in Constantinople - iStanbul. Because of its famous painting and mosaics we remember the man who paid for them - Theodore Metochites, intellectual and bureaucrat.

The church lies in the north west corner of the city not far from walls and a short walk up the hill from the golden horn - a short distance away was the Blachernae palace, the royal residence in the last centuries of the empire. Theodore Metochites' palacial home was also in the area - the elite presumably liked to live as close to the centre of the political action as possible. Nearby was also the the church of St Mary of Blachernae, the most important shrine of the saint, who was seen as protectress of the city. Here was kept both a highly venerated icon and what was believed to be a robe of the virgin Mary, an object of great pious attention particularly during the many sieges of the city and it was believed to have saved the city from peril several times. In 1443, the shrine was burnt to the ground, in an accident apparently involving some local lads climbing onto the roof trying to catch birds - this was perhaps the reason, why the Virgin was not up form in final Ottoman siege of 1453. The icon and robe made their way to Moscow, where their abilities recovered and they were believed to have saved the city numerous times. Rumours have it that Stalin allowed a secret service in the cathedral where they were held when the Nazis were at the gates.
The church of Chora, was a very ancient church, it originally stood outside the walls of Constantine - and it's name means 'in the countryside'. But, like St Martin in the fields in London, its day in green open spaces didn't last long and the new 5th century walls of Theodosios brought it into the city. It had, like many churches in the city, a history of destruction and rebuilding. The core of the current church was built around 1080 by Maria Dukaina, the mother-in-law of Alexius I Comnenus. It was this building that Theodore Metochites would extend and decorate. Inspired by Psalm 116:9 "I will work before the Lord in the land of the living", the term Chora was reinterpreted, as a dedication to Jesus as "The land (chora) of the living" and the Virgin Mary, the theotokos (mother of god), as "she who contained (chora) the uncontainable(achoreite)". In the decoration the two stand almost equal. The inner narthex tells the story, of the life of the Virgin, the outer one, the birth and infancy of Jesus. Standing just inside the entrance, a large figure of Christ leads into the church, while Looking back, the Virgin Mary, as the Theotokos of Blachernae, is over the door leading out. In the side chapel, filled with the tombs of Theodore and his friends and family, Christ raises Adam and Eve from their graves on the day of judgement whilst above the virgin fills the dome, and equal in the salvation for the dead.
Theodore Metochites was born, 1270, at the beginning of the final phase of Byzantine history. Nine years earlier 1261, Michael VIII Palaiologos had retaken the shattered and neglected city from the Crusaders, founding the dynasty that would reign until the final fall of the city in 1453. The Chora church was one of many that needed serious rebuilding, and the great palace by the Hippodrome and Agia Sophia, was such a write off that the imperial family took up residence in Blachernae instead. In the Anatolia, the Turks had been pushed west by the Mongols, and groups of Gazis, holy warriors, led by their Beg (Bey) chieftains, constantly nibbled at the Byzantine frontier. In Europe, the Kings of Bulgaria and Serbia dreamed of a great new Orthodox empire with themselves on the throne in Constantinople and made trouble whenever they could. Relations with Rome, always a touchy topic, were even more strained in the wake of the recent Latin hold over the city. The Byzantine elite, were general worldly and tolerant, and often showed interest in burying the hatchet with Rome, but the common people, led by conservative Monks took the street at the mere mention of it. The emperor had enough enemies without dealing with Catholic plots to retake the city, and saw union with Rome as a relatively painless way of turning an enemy into an ally. A deal was done, and the monks weren't happy. When Michael died, his son Andronikus II cancelled the deal, and the delighted church hierarchy even refused the old emperor an orthodox burial. One of his strongest supporters, George Meotchites, father of Theodore, soon found himself and his family exiled and under virtual house arrest in one of the monasteries of Mount Olympus (Ulu Dag) near Prusa (Bursa).
The young Theodore was a talented youth, perhaps his father, suddenly with a lot of time on his hands, tutored him personally. In 1290/1 the young Theodore was introduced to the emperor who was impressed with the talented youth and brought him back to Constantinople for a career in the imperial bureaucracy. His first appointed was as Logothete of the herds, which presumably meant keeping the city in red meat. He was entrusted with several foreign missions, including delivering Byzantine princesses to their foreign royal husbands in Serbia and Armenians Cilicia. He worked his way up through various financial positions, and finally he 1321 he became Grand Logothete, head of the imperial bureaucracy, and effectively in modern terms, Prime Minister. His rule though was unpopular and unsuccessful. Taxation was heavy and aggressively collected, this was mostly used, with very limited success, to pay foreign enemies to leave them alone, while the army and navy were cut back to save money.
By day Theodore was a dedicated public servant, but by night he led the life of an intellectual and was one of the brightest stars in the great cultural rensaiscance of the last centuries of Byzantium. In the dark years to follows, many of the products of this renaiscance would move west to Italy, carrying their knowledge with them, and so the world of the new Rome, in its death, who help rekindle the flame of old Rome. Theodore's vast literary output, ranged from poetry, to the most groundbreaking work on philosophy in centuries, and technical work on Astronomy. He and his friends breathed new life into the study of the preChristian classics, they hunted down manuscripts, and many ancient works survived through the copies they had made. He liked to show off his learning by writing with the mostly convoluted grammatical structures and filling them with the most obscure words he had found in ancient texts, or had even made up himself - his contemporaries found his writings difficult, moderns scholars find them virtually illegible. He would be a minor footnote in history, but he used the vast fortune he raked in thanks to the privileges of high office, to decorate the church of Chora in a style lavish enough to put even a royal foundation to shame.
In 1320, Andronikos III, grandson of the emperor, hired an assassin to bump off a romantic rival, who then accidentally killed the prince's own brother instead. The resulting family explosion left the the young Andronikos exiled and disinherited. The young prince though had a born to rule attitude and the expensive lifestyle to go with it and soon gathered friends around him and plotted revolution. This soon took on a character of the have nots against the haves, the young elite against the old, and the poor against the rich. The two Andronikoi, circled each other for years, with the younger establishing a rival court in Didymóteicho, across the river from Adrianople (Edirne) in modern Greece. Finally in 1328 the younger Andronikos took the capital and the mob took their revenge on the unpopular grand logothete, looting his palace and burning it to the ground. The old emperor and his circle were sent to mmonasteries- and the new emperor even picked out Didymóteicho, his own place of exile for the unpopular former grand logothete. Theodore, used to the high-life in the capital complained bitterly about the coarse people and the bad food. His health soon deteriorated and he was allowed to return to the capital and spend his last days, with his library, in his monastery Chora, which overlooked the ruins of his old home. He died and was buried there on the 13th of March 1331.

From the Golden Horn to the Golden Horde - In Search of St. Mary of the Mongols

From the Golden Horn to the Golden Horde - In Search of St. Mary of the Mongols

When most visitors think of Byzantine Istanbul, they think of the monumental bulk of the great Agia Sophia, but it isn’t the only Byzantine church left standing in the city. In fact there are something like two dozen of them - and the quest to find them takes you across the width and breadth of the city - through time and space. Most of them now serve as mosques; a few like Agia Sophia, are museums. One shrine of some unknown saint is even currently being used as work shop for metal security doors. One, and only one, I learnt, was still a church, the church of St. Mary of the Mongols and so I set out to find it.

The church lies where the flat expanses of Çarsamba, drop through the steep hills of Fener to the golden horn. Nowhere in Istanbul is the cliché of the middle eastern maze of streets more true than here. I searched through the streets of Çarsamba several times but my map was definitely not up to this rabbit warren. Streets go up and down, curving in all directions, and getting from point A to B, even if you can see it, is easier said than done.

Çarsamba, in Fatih, is typical Istanbul combination of 6 story concrete boxes and decaying wooden houses, washing drying in the sun and scavenging cats - but it is also one of the more conservative parts of the city, full of woman in head to toe black and with a grey bearded hoja on every corner. *Beyond what seems like a defence line of mosques is infidel Fener, once the home of the Fanaroite Greeks, a power behind the scenes of the Ottoman empire. At the top of the hill is the huge red brick Megali Scholio, the Phanar Greek Orthodox College, whose great tower is a monument on the golden horn skyline and gave it the nickname of the 5th largest castle in Europe. The grand old mansions were abandoned in the mid 20th century as the neighbourhood dropped from one of the cities richest to poorest and many are mere empty shells. Now it is the scene of a major urban renewal project funded by the EU and with its old mansions and Golden Horn views, it will hopefully regain something of its lost glory.

The name, St Mary of the Mongols, is to put it bluntly, a bit startling. A confused classicist friend honestly mistook it for some bizarre relationship between the stories of Mongols drinking blood from the skulls of their victims and the Christian communion and its wine into blood ritual. The truth is more prosaic. Most of the world viewed the arrival of the Mongol hordes with a terror verging on the apocalypse. *For the Byzantines though, most of the previous owners of the skulls piled high by the Mongols had been their enemies and so in Constantinople this was seen as an opportunity and a mail order bride princess was promptly sent east. This was Mary, Maria Despina Palaiologina, the illegitimate daughter of the reigning Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos.
Mary began the long journey east to Iran in 1265, with a church shaped tent , decorated with images of the saints, for a her future Mongol flock. When she finally arrived her husband to be, Hulagu Khan, the original Butcher of Baghdad, had died an apparently natural death. She had, though, travelled a long way to marry a Mongol Khan, and so she married his son and heir Abaqa Khan instead. Although she failed to convert the Khan, a Tibetan Buddhist, to Orthodoxy, she was apparently successful at promoting and protecting Christianity and when the Khan began to persecute his troublesome muslim subjects, the christians were left in peace. When Abaqa was assassinated and replaced by his Muslim brother Tekuder in 1282, it was time to go home.

Back in Constantinople her half brother Andronicus, now emperor, offered her hand to another Mongol, Charbanda. He marched west with his army to claim his bride, and as part of the deal, to thump Othman, founder of the Ottoman dynasty, who was besieging the important city of Nicaea, where Maria was waiting. The city fell before he arrived though, and he returned empty handed. Mary, seems to have decided on a quiet life and retired to a nunnery. Byzantine royalty though, didn’t retire to just any Monastery, they preferred to build their own. So whilst the nunnery of St Mary - officially known as that of Panangiitis, apparently existed in some form already, quite possibly a ruin after the great sack of the city during the fourth crusade, she rebuilt it to such an extant that she was deemed to be its founder and so it became popularly known as St Mary of the Mongols.

After a few trips to the back streets of Carsambe, I turned a corner and saw a building, the rose red colour of the Roman world, from the houses of Pompeii to Agia Sophia itself , and the cross above the little dome declared it a church. The red colour may be the source of its Turkish Name, Kanli Kilise (the bloody church), but tradition says it comes from the aftermath of heavy fighting in the area during the conquest. It is not a large building, but from the outside it has a certain charm. The churches of Istanbul, unlike the mosques, are generally closed, making them difficult to visit, but luck was with me as a man with a key approached the door and soon I had talked myself in. Unfortunately the interior was a bit of a disappointment, after several fires and major renovations the interior is now oddly misshapen and with the surviving mosaics transferred to the Patriarchate museum. *Now, apart from the goldern Iconostasis, the interior is a uniform austere white. Beside the door are two Ottoman Imperial Firmans, one from Fatih Sultan Mehmet and the other from his son Beyazit II guaranteeing possession of the church to the Greek community in perpetuity. When various attempts were made to take it from them, these firmans were shown, and the Greeks kept their church. Local Fanaroite tradition has it that Greek born architects Christodoulos (alias Atik Sinan) and his nephew, were responsible for the mosques of Fatih and Beyazit respectively, and used their influence with these Sultans to protect the church.

In Iran little remains of the short lived empire of the Mongols. Whilst they tried to maintain their nomadic traditions, they still built capitals which were in their time marvels. I visited Maragheh, the capital of Hulagu and Abaqa in the hills east of lake Urumiyye on a snowy January afternoon. What Mary thought of this place, and her life as a Mongol queen is sadly unrecorded. Today it’s not much more than a quiet village with little to show for its time as the centre of a world empire. In random corners of the village are some impressive tombs and on the hill outside town are a few stones from the famous astronomical observatory of Nasr-uddin of Tus. East, across the mountains, is the great grassy plain of Zanjan where the Mongols grazed their horses. Here at Soltaniyeh was the capital of Ojeilu, grandson of Abaqa and his gigantic domed tomb dominates the collection of shacks that now squat on his once glorious capital. Whether he was Mary’s grandson is not recorded. Back in Istanbul, the Church of St Mary continues as a church, but with few Greeks left in the city, especially in Fener, it sits alone and little visited. As with the Mongol remains in Iran, it is like a piece of drift wood left on a beach by a receding tide - but it remains an echo of history.