The (Revised Edition) Byzantine Empire

4. From False Dawn to Cataclysm 1081-1204

4 FROM FALSE DAWN TO CATACLYSM 1081-1204 Portraits of six emperors from a fourteenth-century manuscript: (top row) John II, Manuel I, and Alexios II; (bottom row) Andronikos I, Isaac II, and Alexios III. Courlesy ofBjbliolcca Eslense, Modena_ THE CHALLENGE FROM THE WEST When Alexios Comnenus, with the support ofa coalition ofprovincial aristocratic families, established himselfin power in Constantinople , the problems he had to face were at first sight not unlike those which confronted the successors ofHeraclius four and a halfcenturies earlier. Asia Minor, the richest and most populous region of the empire , was almost entirely in the hands ofthe Seljuq Turks. The armies ofthe state were defeated and demoralized and its coffers empty. The Seljuqs, it is true, lacked the fanatical drive which carried the Arabs in less than a century from Medina to the banks of the Loire and the Jaxartes. They had already conquered more territory than they could readily administer and exploit, and the political unity which had held them together on their journey from central Asia was weakening. On the other hand, the Byzantines in 1081 had to face a dangerous attack from the west as well as from the east. The Normans in southern Italy were pressing forward with the same aggressive impetus that had recently led their kinsmen at home to conquer England. In the late 1060s they had mopped up one by one the Byzantine possessions in Apulia and Calabria, and finally taken Bari in 107I. One of their leaders, Roger Guiscard, crossed the Straits ofMessina, overthrew the Moslem rulers of Sicily, and set himself up as king of a polyethnic and multicultural state in which Greek, Latin, and Arabic were all currently spoken. His elder brother, Robert Guiscard, aimed to conquer a kingdom for himselftoo. His purpose was no less than to seize Constantinople and establish himself on the throne of Constantine and Justinian. Accordingly he crossed the Straits of Otranto in 1082 and gave siege to Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), the great Byzantine fortress guarding the gateway to the Balkans. The threat posed by the Normans was more immediate than that ofthe Seljuqs in Asia Minor. Unlike his predecessors in the seventh century, Alexios Comnenus could count neither on a native army of peasants nor on the enthusiasm of defending Christianity against the infidel. The social basis of the old theme armies had been destroyed and their principal recruiting grounds overrun. And many ofthe enemies facing the Byzantines 157 From False Dawn to Cataclysm were themselves Christian states. Mercenary troops and diplomacy were the only weapons available to the new emperor. Mercenaries, however, cost money, so one ofAlexios's first acts was to confiscate the treasures ofthe churches ofConstantinople, the only reserve ofreadily negotiable wealth available to the government. Though he pawned these treasures rather than selling them, his action roused the opposition of ecclesiastical circles and somewhat tarnished the reputation he sought as the champion ofOrthodoxy against the dangerous heresies ofthe intellectuals. With the money so raised, Alexios got together a motley army of soldiers of fortune-including many Englishmen who had left their native land after the Norman conquest-and marched west to face Robert Guiscard. He was too late to save Dyrrhachium , which the Normans captured in October; after their victory they fanned out to pillage and plunder in Epirus, Macedonia, and Thessaly. Alexios needed allies. The Venetians-who were still theoretically subjects of the empire-were not eager to see an aggressive ruler established on both sides of the entrance to the Adriatic and able to interfere with their lucrative eastern trade. They welcomed Alexios's overtures and promised the aid of their own notable fleet-but at a price. The treaty signed early in 1082 granted a high Byzantine dignity to the Doge ofVenice and lavish subsidies to the Venetian church. More important, it gave Venetian merchants unrestricted right to trade free ofcustoms dues throughout the empire, except in the Black Sea. The Byzantines had never sought or enjoyed a monopoly offoreign trade within their own territory, but they had always restricted foreign traders to certain ports and markets and insisted on their paying the same customs dues as citizens of the Empire. The special position now granted to the Venetians enabled them to undercut Byzantine merchants in every market and inevitably led to the transfer of much long-distance trade to, from, or through the empire into their hands, with the consequent grave...