personal honours, as if they had been legally extinct, were revived by the patents of succeeding princes. But there still survived a lineal descendant of Hugh the first earl of Devon, a younger branch of the Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham Castle above four hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to the present hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently restored to the honours of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still retain the plaintive motto which asserts the innocence and deplores the fall of their ancient house. 86 While they sigh for past greatness, they are doubtless sensible of present blessings: in the long series of the Courtenay annals the most splendid æra is likewise the most unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of Britain be inclined to envy the emperors of Constantinople who wandered over Europe to solicit alms for the support of their dignity and the defence of their capital. 86 Ubi lapsus! Quid feci? a motto which was probably adopted by the Powderham branch after the loss of the earldom of Devonshire, &c. The primitive arms of the Courtenays were Or, three torteaux, Gules, which seem to denote their affinity with Godfrey of Bouillon and the ancient counts of Boulogne, CHAPTER LXII. THE GREEK EMPERORS OF NICE AND CONSTANTINOPLE. REIGN OF MICHAEL PALEOLOGUS. HIS FALSE UNION WITH THE POPE AND THE LATIN CHURCH.. HOSTILE DESIGNS OF CHARLES OF ANJOU. REVOLT OF SICILY.-WAR OF THE CATALANS IN ASIA AND GREECE.-REVOLUTIONS AND PRESENT STATE OF ATHENS. Restoration empire. Theodore A.D. THE loss of Constantinople restored a momentary vigour to the Greeks. From their palaces the princes and nobles were of the Greek driven into the field; and the fragments of the falling monarchy were grasped by the hands of the most vigorous or the most skilful candidates. In the long and barren pages of the Byzantine annals' it would not be an easy task to equal the two characters of Theodore Lascaris and John Ducas Vataces,' Lascaris, who replanted and upheld the Roman standard at Nice in 1204-1222. Bithynia. The difference of their virtues was happily suited to the diversity of their situation. In his first efforts the fugitive Lascaris commanded only three cities and two thousand soldiers: his reign was the season of generous and active despair; in every military operation he staked his life and crown; and his enemies of the Hellespont and the Mæander were surprised by his celerity and subdued by his boldness. A victorious reign of eighteen years expanded the principality of Nice to the magnitude of an empire. The John Ducas throne of his successor and son-in-law Vataces was founded on a more solid basis, a larger scope, and more plentiful resources; and it was the temper, as well as the interest, of Oct. 30. Vataces to calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure the success, of his ambitious designs. In the decline of the Latins I have briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks; the pru For the reigns of the Nicene emperors, more especially of John Vataces and his son, their minister, George Acropolita, is the only genuine contemporary; but George Pachymer returned to Constantinople with the Greeks at the age of nineteen (Hanekius de Script. Byzant. c. 33, 34, p. 564-578; Fabric. Biblioth. Græc. tom. vi. p. 448460). Yet the history of Nicephorus Gregoras, though of the xivth century, is a valuable narrative from the taking of Constantinople by the Latins. Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ii. c. 1) distinguishes between the and the rate of Vataces. The two portraits are in a very good style. Vataces died on the 30th of October, 1254. Gibbon was misled in the year by following the chronological synopsis which gun of Lascaris Possin has annexed to his edition of Pachymeres. Finlay, Byzantine Empire, vol. ii. p. 398.-S. dent and gradual advances of a conqueror who, in a reign of thirtythree years, rescued the provinces from national and foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all sides the Imperial city, a leafless and sapless trunk, which must fall at the first stroke of the axe. But his interior and peaceful administration is still more deserving of notice and praise. The calamities of the times had wasted the numbers and the substance of the Greeks: the motives and the means of agriculture were extirpated; and the most fertile lands were left without cultivation or inhabitants. A portion of this vacant property was occupied and improved by the command, and for the benefit, of the emperor: a powerful hand and a vigilant eye supplied and surpassed, by a skilful management, the minute diligence of a private farmer: the royal domain became the garden and granary of Asia; and, without impoverishing the people, the sovereign acquired a fund of innocent and productive wealth. According to the nature of the soil, his lands were sown with corn or planted with vines; the pastures were filled with horses and oxen, with sheep and hogs; and when Vataces presented to the empress a crown of diamonds and pearls, he informed her, with a smile, that this precious ornament arose from the sale of the eggs of his innumerable poultry. The produce of his domain was applied to the maintenance of his palace and hospitals, the calls of dignity and benevolence: the lesson was still more useful than the revenue: the plough was restored to its ancient security and honour; and the nobles were taught to seek a sure and independent revenue from their estates, instead of adorning their splendid beggary by the oppression of the people, or (what is almost the same) by the favours of the court. The superfluous stock of corn and cattle was eagerly purchased by the Turks, with whom Vataces preserved a strict and sincere alliance; but he discouraged the importation of foreign manufactures, the costly silks of the East and the curious labours of the Italian looms. "The demands of nature and neces"sity," was he accustomed to say, "are indispensable; but the influ"ence of fashion may rise and sink at the breath of a monarch :" and both his precept and example recommended simplicity of manners and the use of domestic industry. The education of youth and the revival of learning were the most serious objects of his care; and, without deciding the precedency, he pronounced with truth that a prince and a philosopher are the two most eminent characters of 4 Pachymer, 1. i. c. 23, 24; Nic. Greg. 1. ii. c. 6 [tom. i. p. 42, ed. Bonn]. The reader of the Byzantines must observe how rarely we are indulged with such precious details. 4 Μόνοι γὰρ ἁπάντων ἀνθρώπων ὀνομαστότατοι βασιλεὺς καὶ φιλόσοφος (Greg. Acropol. c. 32). The emperor, in a familiar conversation, examined and encouraged the studies of his future logothete, human society. His first wife was Irene, the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more illustrious by her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex, than by the blood of the Angeli and Comneni that flowed in her veins, and transmitted the inheritance of the empire. After her death he was contracted to Anne or Constance, a natural daughter of the emperor Frederic" the Second; but as the bride had not attained the years of puberty, Vataces placed in his solitary bed an Italian damsel of her train; and his amorous weakness bestowed on the concubine the honours, though not the title, of lawful empress. His frailty was censured as a flagitious and damnable sin by the monks; and their rude invectives exercised and displayed the patience of the royal lover. A philosophic age may excuse a single vice, which was redeemed by a crowd of virtues; and in the review of his faults, and the more intemperate passions of Lascaris, the judgment of their contemporaries was softened by gratitude to the second founders of the empire. The slaves of the Latins, without law or peace, applauded the happiness of their brethren who had resumed their national freedom; and Vataces employed the laudable policy of convincing the Greeks of every dominion that it was their interest to be enrolled in the number of his subjects. Theodore A.D. 1255, Oct. 30 A.D. 1259, A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between John Vataces and his son Theodore; between the founder who sustained the Lascaris II., weight, and the heir who enjoyed the splendour, of the Imperial crown." Yet the character of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had been educated in the school of his father, in the exercise of war and hunting: Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three years of a short reign he thrice led hia armies into the heart of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a choleric and suspicious temper: the first of these may be ascribed to the ignorance of control; and the second might naturally arise from a dark and imperfect view of the corruption of mankind. On a march in Bulgaria he consulted on a question of policy his principal ministers; and the Greek logothete, George Acropolita, presumed to offend him by the declaration of a free and honest opinion. The emperor half unsheathed his scimitar; but his more deliberate rage reserved Acropolita for a baser punishment. One of the first officers of the empire • Compare Acropolita (c. 18, 52), and the two first books of Nicephorus Gregoras. A Persian saying, that Cyrus was the father, and Darius the master, of his subjects, was applied to Vataces and his son. But Pachymer (1. i. c. 23) has mistaken the mild Darius for the cruel Cambyses, despot or tyrant of his people. By the institution of taxes, Darius had incurred the less odious, but more contemptible, name of Kánλos, merchant or broker (Herodotus, iii. 89). ■ Sister of Manfred, afterwards king of Naples. Nic. Greg. p. 45.-M. was ordered to dismount, stripped of his robes, and extended on the ground in the presence of the prince and army. In this posture he was chastised with so many and such heavy blows from the clubs of two guards or executioners, that, when Theodore commanded them to cease, the great logothete was scarcely able to arise and crawl away to his tent. After a seclusion of some days he was recalled by a peremptory mandate to his seat in council; and so dead were the Greeks to the sense of honour and shame, that it is from the narrative of the sufferer himself that we acquire the knowledge of his disgrace. The cruelty of the emperor was exasperated by the pangs of sickness, the approach of a premature end, and the suspicion of poison and magic. The lives and fortunes, the eyes and limbs, of his kinsmen and nobles, were sacrificed to each sally of passion; and before he died, the son of Vataces might deserve from the people, or at least from the court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron of the family of the Palæologi had provoked his anger by refusing to bestow her beauteous daughter on the vile plebeian who was recommended by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or age, her body, as high as the neck, was enclosed in a sack with several cats, who were pricked with pins to irritate their fury against their unfortunate fellow-captive. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish to forgive and be forgiven, a just anxiety for the fate of John his son and successor, who, at the age of eight years, was condemned to the dangers of a long minority. His last choice intrusted the office of guardian to the sanctity of John of the patriarch Arsenius, and to the courage of George Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by the royal favour and the public hatred. Since their connection with the Latins, the names and privileges of hereditary rank had insinuated themselves into the Greek monarchy; and the noble families were provoked by the elevation of a worthless favourite, to whose influence they imputed the errors and calamities of the late reign. In the first council after the emperor's death, Muzalon, from a lofty throne, pronounced a laboured apology of his conduct and intentions: his modesty was subdued by an unanimous assurance of esteem and fidelity; and his most inveterate enemies were the loudest to salute him as the guardian and saviour of the Romans. Eight days were sufficient to prepare the execution of the conspiracy. On 8 Minority Lascaris, August. Acropolita (c. 63) seems to admire his own firmness in sustaining a beating, and not returning to council till he was called. He relates the exploits of Theodore, and his own services, from c. 53 to c. 74 of his history. See the third book of Nicephorus Gregoras. Pachymer (1. i. c. 21 [tom. i. p. 65, ed. Bonn]) names and discriminates fifteen of twenty Greek families, καὶ ὅσοι ἄλλοι, εἷς ἡ μεγαλογενής σειρὰ καὶ χρυσῆ συγκεκρότητο Does he mean, by this decoration, a figurative or a real golden chain? Perhaps both. |