By the middle of the ninth century, the context had changed dramatically.
The Frankish empire had fragmented even as Mediterranean infrastructures
recovered and ramified. The duchy of Rome was regaining autonomy,
Venice grew in wealth and power, while Arab attacks on the coasts
intensified and Sicily slowly slid under Arab control, perhaps encouraging
Venice to focus its future on the Levant and Constantinople. Yet Byzantine
power was on the upsurge at home and abroad. Between the Frankish kingdoms
and Constantinople, new centres of power were emerging among the
Moravians and the Bulgars. These changes combined with the recent past
to shape the final phase of Byzantine–Carolingian interaction. Frankish
imperial ambitions continued to irritate the Roman emperors of Constantinople.
And the old papal claims to jurisdiction in the Balkans lost
none of their relevance as that area figured anew on the historical stage.
The installation of Arabs on the Italian mainland from 838 combined
with their sack of St Peter’s to dramatise the need for cooperation. The
residence of the Frankish emperor, Louis II (855–75) in Italy deepened his
involvement in the complex politics of Rome and southern Italy, and consequently
with Constantinople. At least two more marriage alliances were
contracted between members of the Frankish emperor Lothar I’s (840–55)
family and its Constantinopolitan counterpart, although again the marriages
never took place.96 Cooperation focused on the key strongholds of
Apulia, where the complementarity of Frankish land forces and the Byzantine
navy was obvious. Bari had been an Arab emirate for decades; its
coastal site counselled a land and sea operation. Joint Byzantino-Frankish
operations were foreseen in 869 and 870 but coordination broke down. In
871 Louis II finally captured Bari in an operation in which the Byzantine
sources claim they participated. He then failed to take Taranto.97 It was in
this context that Louis II sent his famous letter to Basil I, composed probably
by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, newly returned from a Frankish mission
to Constantinople. The letter responded vigorously to Basil’s criticism of
the Carolingian imperial title, even as Louis requested more naval support
and suggested that he and Basil had agreed to liberate Sicily once Calabria
was rid of Arabs.98
The ambivalent tone of Louis’ letter foreshadowed how interests which
had converged at Bari now collided. Both powers aimed to control southern
Italy and both focused on Benevento in this respect. Louis II had turned
Bari over to the duke of Benevento rather than the Byzantine admiral. But
the duke soon turned on him, capturing and humiliating the Frankish ruler.
Louis’ further efforts to subdue the duke were frustrated in part because
of the duke’s new alliance with Constantinople.99 Louis’ subsequent death
without an heir precipitated a struggle over northern Italy which Charles
the Bald’s short-lived success failed to resolve, even as the pace of Byzantine
intervention accelerated in the south. Already in 872 the Byzantine fleet
had scored one success off the Campanian coast to the relief of Pope John
VIII (872–82).100 When Rome itself was occupied by the duke of Spoleto
early in 878, John VIII felt himself driven into the arms of Constantinople.
As his letter to Basil I shows, the Roman see was now led to look with a
different eye on the latest in the Byzantine church’s continuing upheavals
and to seek resolution of its own bitter conflicts with recent patriarchs.101
These conflicts had arisen despite the final restoration of icons and the
appointment as patriarch of Methodios, a Sicilian who had been ordained
during the few years he had lived in Rome. In fact, however, the papacy’s
resentment over its jurisdictional losses had not disappeared. It was exacerbated
by the expansion of Bulgar power in the Balkans, that is Illyricum.
Papal suspicion of the patriarchate was plain to see right from 787, when
Hadrian had qualified his cooperation by repeating long-standing papal
objections against the patriarchal title oikoumenikos or universalis, as well
as against Tarasios’ elevation from lay official to patriarch.102 Two generations
later new developments were to mix different sources of contention
in explosive fashion: Roman primacy, lost jurisdiction over southern Italy
and Illyricum, growing awareness of disciplinary divergences and the factionalisation
of the Byzantine elite.
Monastic pressure on Patriarch Methodios to purge all bishops compromised
under the second spell of iconoclasm was given new life by his
rigorist successor, the monk Ignatios (847–58, 867–77), a castrated son of
Emperor Michael I (811–13). For reasons that are unclear, Ignatios deposed
one of Methodios’ close associates, Gregory Asbestas, archbishop of Syracuse,
who appealed to Rome. While this case was pending, Ignatios himself
was swept away by a political crisis and replaced by the head of the
imperial chancery, the great lay intellectual Photios (858–67, 877–86), who
was consecrated by none other than Gregory Asbestas. In spring 859, the
deposed Ignatios’ supporters met in Constantinople and claimed to depose
Photios; Photios retorted with a synod which attacked Ignatios (see above,
p. 293).
At this point, the opposing factions seemed to stall in stalemate. Photios
and Michael III sent an embassy to the new pope, Nicholas I (858–67),
seeking his support for a council which would deal finally with iconoclasm
and the current schism within the Byzantine church.103 Bishops
Radoald of Porto and Zacharias of Anagni, the papal legates, apparently
exceeded their mandate at the ensuing council held at Constantinople
in April 861, by approving the deposition of Ignatios; but they failed to
recover Illyricum.104 The remainingGreek monastic communities in Rome
again added an internal dimension to papal relations with Constantinople.
Ignatios clearly had vociferous supporters there, particularly the monk
Theognostos. Pope Nicholas I convened a council which repudiated his
legates’ actions and declared Photios and Asbestas deposed, eliciting from
Michael III the famous and contemptuous letter about the barbarity of
Latin Rome.105
On an already complex situation, further complications now obtruded,
as the Bulgar ruler Boris (c. 852–89) was having second thoughts over his
contacts with Constantinople and approached Louis the German about
converting to Frankish rather than Byzantine Christianity.106 At about the
same time Constantinople dispatched two veteran diplomats and missionaries
to the edges of East Francia, in response to the Moravians’ expression
of interest in conversion. It is a sign of the rapid development of both
Bulgar and Moravian societies that they now looked to conversion and
therefore cultural integration with the dominant neighbouring cultures. It
is a measure of their political astuteness that each explored the advantages
of converting to the church most removed from their respective borders.
The Bulgar initiative, which was soon notified to the pope, opened up
the unexpected prospect of recovering jurisdiction over Illyricum regardless
of the Byzantine emperor’s attitude. In 866, the Bulgar ruler expressed
dissatisfaction with the Greek missionaries working in his kingdom by
approaching Pope Nicholas I, who answered with legates and a remarkable
document responding to the khan’s queries about Byzantine criticism of
Bulgar customs. The pope expressed a fairly enlightened attitude towards
Bulgar practices even as he slammed the customs of rival Constantinople
(see above, p. 319). Photios retorted by enumerating western doctrinal
and disciplinary deviations in an eastern encyclical. He convoked a council
which deposed Nicholas I and dispatched emissaries to Louis II to solicit
his help in toppling the pope, even as Nicholas sought theological support
from the dynamic cultural centres of the Frankish kingdoms.107
At that very moment, the power constellation with which Photios was
identified crumbled when Basil I had Michael III assassinated. The new
emperor soon restored Ignatios and requested papal support, offering to
have the rival patriarchal parties submit to the pope for judgement. Only
Ignatios’ legation made it to Rome intact, and Nicholas I’s successor, Pope
Hadrian II (867–72), unsurprisingly found for Ignatios. Papal legates then
travelled to Constantinople for a council convened over the winter of 869–
70 to sort out the implications of the recent upheavals. At the same time,
Louis II’s ambassadors – including AnastasiusBibliothecarius –were busy in
Constantinople discussing a marriage alliance and the military cooperation
we have already noted. The intractable papal legates imposed their own
views on the council. But afterwards, theywere confronted and confounded
by Bulgarian ambassadors and a Byzantine hierarchy led by Ignatios, backed
by Basil and supported by the eastern patriarchates, which forcefully denied
Roman claims in Bulgaria. The resulting strain would endure until events
in Italy drove Pope John VIII in 878 to seek political rapprochement with
Byzantium.108
Ignatios had died in 877 and Photios resumed the patriarchal office.
The pope allowed his legation to participate in another winter council in
879–80. The text of the Roman documents presented there appears to have
been toned down; Photios emphasised that he had never opposed Roman
jurisdiction over Bulgaria; he had only bowed to the imperial will in the
matter. Concord of a sort was re-established. Although Roman jurisdiction
over Bulgaria would never become a reality, old and new Rome were again
in communion and the way was open for military cooperation.109
The need was great: the Byzantine stronghold of Syracuse had fallen to
the Arabs a few weeks after John VIII wrote to Basil seeking his support,
and Constantinople reacted vigorously. In 879, the Byzantine navy attacked
the Arabs off Naples, and the pope complained that the detachment had
not continued up the coast to receive his blessing and defend Rome. After
the latest council in Constantinople the pope received the seemingly good
news about Bulgaria, the loan of several warships and the restoration of
Roman rights over the elegant Justinianic church of Sts Sergius and Bacchus
next door to the Great Palace.110 A powerful military force from the
western themes reconquered Taranto, even as a Byzantine fleet won an
important victory off the northern coast of Sicily. Basil I’s hold on Calabria
expanded considerably, as the Byzantines occupied some strongholds while
others recognised eastern overlordship.111 Charles the Fat now claimed his
family’s inheritance in Italy; he rightly feared that Rome – and even the
Frankish family who ran the duchy of Spoleto – was turning away from
the Carolingians to Constantinople. Duke Wido had in fact sent his own
embassy to Byzantium.112
As post-Carolingian chaos descended on the north of Italy, the Byzantines
briefly occupied Benevento from 891 to 895, organised the new theme
of Langobardia and seemed more significant to Italy’s fate than ever.113 That
significance expressed itself in the dating formulae of local charters or the
dispatch of Venetian bells to adorn Basil I’s splendid new palace chapel of
the Nea. Monasteries scurried to obtain Byzantine confirmations of their
privileges and local Italian aristocrats flaunted Greek court titles. Reinforced
by population transfers from the east, the Byzantine south became
increasingly active in the renewed writing and copying of Greek texts.114
Italians made pilgrimages to St Demetrios’ shrine in Thessaloniki and Leo
VI invited to his court holy men from Italy, even as Eugenius Vulgarius
sent him fawning panegyrical poems in Latin.115
Presumably in anticipation of the impending Carolingian succession in
Italy, in 872 and 873 Basil I had reopened diplomatic contacts with a northern
Frankish court by concluding an alliance (amicitia) with Louis the
German.116 Italy motivated, at least in part, the Byzantine envoy who travelled
to Regensburg in 894 for an audience with King Arnulf of Carinthia
after his Italian expedition. So too another embassy in 896 followed Arnulf’s
imperial coronation.117 Pope John IX’s ambassadors to Constantinople in
899 consecrated the renewed harmony between Rome and the east and
may have played a hand in arranging the betrothal of Louis III, king
of Provence – whose mother Ermengard had once been promised to the
Byzantine emperor – to Anna, daughter of Leo VI (see below, p. 541). The
question of whether the betrothal was followed up by actual marriage is
controversial. If the marriage did take place, Louis III the Blind, who sporadically
controlled areas of northern Italy between 900 and 905, sired the
only Carolingian also descended from the Byzantine Macedonian house,
Charles-Constantine, count of Vienne. Such a union might perhaps clarify
the mention of Greek merchants in Louis’ privilege of 921.118 In any event,
Rome’s relations with Constantinople and renewed Byzantine power in
Italy would soon be symbolised by the victorious joint operation against
the Arab colony on the Garigliano river in 915.119
World History
