In my fourth book, The Red Empress, Michael Psellos, is a viewpoint character, not least of which is because he seemed to be in so many places, have so many opinions and write on such a plethora of subjects. He is best known for his Chonographia, a history covering at least a century leading up to the time of Psellos himself, in which in his contemporary writings, he maintains those opinions for which he himself was an eyewitness. In addition to his historical writings, he was also known for bringing Plato back into serious study in Constantinople and was a disciple of music theory and philosophy.
In my last post, I mentioned his observations on the strategos Georgios Maniakes, including his prodigious height. He was also witness to the evacuation from Constantinople of the emperor Michael V and his uncle the nobilissimus when things began to take a dangerous turn for those two gentlemen of dubious character. From what Psellos leads us to understand, he was coerced by them, but given his position as an imperial secretary, it is likely that he went along because, after all, it was part of his job. In the tumult of the riots in Constantinople following the reinstatement of the empress Zoe (the erstwhile emperor Michael’s adoptive mother), when Michael and his uncle were forced to flee to the Studikon monastery, they clung to the alter of the monastery. When this proved to be fruitless in averting their fate, Psellos witnessed their eventual blinding at the hands of the Varangian Guard (some say by Harald Sigurdsson personally, who probably also had an axe to grind with Emperor Michael).
Psellos was actually born Constantine (arguably one of those most popular names for men at this time and place) and chose the name Michael when he entered a monastery later in life. Psellos, as a last name was probably more of a nickname and meant “stammerer”, an ironic appellation given that he was known for his copious writings, but perhaps, he was, like most writers, better at expressing himself through the pen than the voice.
When my story opens, he is a young man who has just been able to return to his studies under the venerable Ioannes Mouropous. His studies had been interrupted by the need to earn a dowry for his sister, and so at the age of ten, he was sent outside the city where he was employed as a secretary to a provincial judge. When his sister passed away, he was allowed to return to study under Mouropous. The latter was undoubtedly responsible for the social climb of the young Psellos, who, under his influence, would meet and rub elbows with many who would later be notable such as the emperor Constantine X. As John Julius Norwich says in his book Byzantium – The Apogee, “[Psellos] thus writes of events in which he not only experienced but frequently himself helped to shape and control.”
As he was a personal friend of Constantine X, it is hardly surprising that some of his writings regarding that man were rather prejudiced in his favor. Yes he spared no gushing rhetoric on the aforementioned Stephen who fancied himself a naval commander. We see some of the true Psellos in his snide assertion that “I saw him after the metamorphosis. It was as if a pygmy wanted to play Hercules and was wanting to make himself look like the demi-god. The more such a person tries, the more his person belies him – clothed in the lion’s skin but weighed down by his club.”
I find such scathing assertions make Psellos one of the more readable biographers of his time. He is witty and opinionated. Perhaps not the best attributes of an impartial historian, but without a doubt, he gives us a peek into politics as only politics in Constantinople could truly be. We are given a hint of the real Michael Psellos who was known to write a taunting letter to the disgraced emperor Romanos Diogenes as he lay in exile, dying of the infection in his blinded and bleeding eyes. Here he congratulated him on his martyrdom and the loss of his eyes as God had found him worthy of a “higher light”. It should not be lost on the reader that it was Psellos himself who had engineered the emperor’s downfall.
As such, Psellos was a product of his environment and the times, equally avaricious and opportunistic, once given a taste for power, he was not likely to let it go. The term “byzantine politics” comes to mind when speaking of Psellos here. In all the chaos of the riots in Constantinople following the reinstating of the empress Zoe, Psellos’ greatest concern was that the empress Zoe see that he was not personally affiliated with Michael V and this his loyalty was instead reserved for her. Yet he did not spare her, acerbically commenting on the “transformation of a gynaeconitis [women’s quarters] into an emperor’s council chamber.”
He was even more blunt later on the Chronographia as he wrote on their political blundering (diplomatically after both the sisters had passed on of course):
“For those who did not know them it may be instructive if I give here some description of the two sisters. The elder, Zoe, was the quicker to understand ideas, but slower to give them utterance. With Theodora, on the other hand, it was just the reverse in both respects, for she did not readily show her inmost thoughts, but once she had embarked on a conversation, she would chatter away with an expert and lively tongue. Zoe was a woman of passionate interests,
prepared with equal enthusiasm for both alternatives—death or life, I mean. In that she reminded me of sea-waves, now lifting a ship on high and then again plunging it down to the depths. Such characteristics were certainly not found in Theodora: in fact, she had a calm disposition, and in one way, if I may put it so, a dull one. Zoe was open-handed, the sort of woman who could exhaust a sea teeming with gold-dust in one day; the other counted her staters when she gave away money, partly, no doubt, because her limited resources forbade any reckless spending, and partly because inherently she was more self-controlled in this matter.
To put it quite candidly (for my present purpose is not to compose a eulogy, but to write an accurate history) neither of them was fitted by temperament to govern. They neither knew how to administer nor were they capable of serious argument on the subject of politics. For the most part they confused the trifles of the harem with important matters of state. Even the very trait in the elder sister which is commended among many folk today, namely, her ungrudging liberality, dispensed very widely over a long period of time, even this trait, although it was no doubt satisfactory to those who enjoyed it because of the benefits they received from her, was after all the sole cause, in the first place, of the universal corruption and of the reduction of Roman fortunes to their lowest ebb. The virtue of well-doing is most characteristic of those who govern, and where discrimination is made, where the particular circumstances and the fortune of the recipients and their differing personal qualities are taken into account, there the distribution of largess is to be commended. On the contrary, where no real discernment is exercised in these questions, the spending of money is wasted.”
Michael Psellos, Chonographia
Whether this was the misogynistic temperament of the times that influenced Psellos’ writing or an actual candid observation, it may be noted that many of the failings in a male ruler might have been forgiven him would be called into greater scrutiny on the part of a woman. However, as a contemporary biographer, within the confines of the imperial residence, he was certainly closer to the facts that we are today.
Despite the Byzantine Orthodoxy that sought to minimize the Classical emphasis on grooming and beauty, citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire enjoyed primping. Certainly, the wealthy and noble women of the empire were concerned with their looks and Christianity cast no pall on the baths nor the sale of cosmetics and perfumes. Indeed, law in Constantinople decreed that the perfumers must set up their shops near the Great Palace so that the Emperor and his family might not have their olfactory senses assaulted by the common smells of the streets.