The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]

So feeble was the character of Zoe, that she was oppressed by the liberty and power which she recovered by the death of the Paphlagonian; and at the end of four days, she placed the crown on the head of Michael V who had protested, with tears and oaths, that he should ever reign the first and most obedient of her subjects. The only act of his short reign was his base ingratitude to his benefactors, the eunuch and the empress. The disgrace of the former was pleasing to the public; but the murmurs, and at length the clamours, of Constantinople deplored the exile of Zoe, the daughter of so many emperors; her vices were forgotten, and Michael was taught that there is a period in which the patience of the tamest slaves rises into fury and revenge. The citizens of every degree assembled in a formidable tumult which lasted three days; they besieged the palace, forced the gates, recalled their mothers—Zoe from her prison, Theodora from her monastery, and condemned the son of Calaphates to the loss of his eyes or of his life.

For the first time the Greeks beheld with surprise the two royal sisters seated on the same throne, presiding in the senate, and giving audience to the ambassadors of the nations. But this singular union subsisted no more than two months; the two sovereigns, their tempers, interests, and adherents, were secretly hostile to each other; and as Theodora was still adverse to marriage, the indefatigable Zoe, at the age of sixty, consented, for the public good, to sustain the embraces of a third husband, and the censures of the Greek church. His name and number were Constantine X and the epithet of Monomachus,[72] the single combatant, must have been expressive of his valour and victory in some public or private quarrel.[73] But his health was broken by the tortures of the gout, and his dissolute reign was spent in the alternative of sickness and pleasure. A fair and noble widow had accompanied Constantine in his exile to the isle of Lesbos, and Sclerena gloried in the appellation of his mistress. After his marriage and elevation, she was invested with the title and pomp of Augusta, and occupied a contiguous apartment in the palace. The lawful consort (such was the delicacy or corruption of Zoe) consented to this strange and scandalous partition; and the emperor appeared in public between his wife and his concubine.h

SEPARATION OF GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES

[1042-1053 A.D.]

In looking back from modern times at the history of the Byzantine Empire, the separation of the Greek and Latin churches appears the most important event in the reign of Constantine X; but its prominence is owing, on the one hand, to the circumstance that a closer connection began shortly after to exist between the Eastern and Western nations; and on the other, to the decline in the power of the Byzantine Empire, which gave ecclesiastical affairs greater importance than they would otherwise have merited. Had the successors of Constantine X continued to possess the power and resources of the successors of Leo III or Basil I, the schism would never have acquired the political importance it actually attained; for as it related to points of opinion on secondary questions, and details of ecclesiastical practice, the people would have abandoned the subject to the clergy and the church, as one not affecting the welfare of Christians, nor the interest of Christianity. The emperor Basil II, who was bigoted as well as pious, had still good sense to view the question as a political rather than a religious one.