Andorra: It’s a Country!

High up in the Pyranees Mountains, sandwiched between France and Spain lies a small country called Andorra.  Many people I talk to doubt its existence, but it really is there.  Get a magnifying glass and a map.  The whole country is about 179 square miles which is about half the area of New York City and about a third the size of Charles the Fat.  In this mountainous country, most of its 84,000 people squeeze into its seven small valleys.  It’s not an easy country to get to. Andorra has no airports or train stations.  One must drive up into the mountains on perilous, winding roads. Within Andorra itself, ski gondola becomes the most popular means of transportation.  Andorra has two princes (that’s what I said now) who are neither Andorran nor live in the country (just go ahead now).  It’s long and relatively insignificant history begs the question, how on Earth did this little country survive so long?

Andorra traces its history all the way back to the time of Charlemagne.  In 795, Charlemagne created a series of buffer states called the Marca Hispania (Spanish Marches) which stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean.  The purpose of these states were to act as a buffer zone between the Islamic Moors (or Moops) in Spain and his Christian Frankish kingdom.  Andorra is the only survivor of these states and today Andorra rocks out to its official anthem: El Gran Carlemany, Mon Pere (The Great Charlemagne, my Father).

During the ninth century, Charlemagne’s grandson, Charles the Bald, named the Count of Urgell as overlord of Andorra (perhaps in return for a toupee). This meant that the Andorrans would pay tribute and homage to the powerful Count who ruled a large county south of Andorra in return for protection.  In his last will and testament, the count gave his rights to Andorra to the Bishop of Urgell, who retains the title of Prince of Andorra to this day.

Andorra’s official history begins in 1278 after a conflict arose between the French Count of Foix to the north and the Bishop of Urgell to the south over who gets the tribute from Andorra.  In a treaty, both agreed to create Andorra as an independent state and establish its 75 mile long boundaries.   Andorra was to be a dual principality with the Bishop of Urgell becoming one prince and the Count of Foix the other.  The two princes would receive tribute and homage in return for their protection over the small principality.

In 1433, the County of Urgell was officially dissolved by King Ferdinand I of Aragon, but the Bishopric remained.  To clear up any confusion, note that Aragon is not the returning king of Gondor (that’s Aragorn), but a kingdom in northeastern Spain.  The kingdom of Aragon briefly annexed Andorra 1396 and 1512, but soon realized both times that it wasn’t really worth pissing off the Count of Foix just for a bunch of sheep in the mountains.  The County of Foix was annexed to France in 1607 which meant one of the princes of Andorra was now the head of state of France.

Things became quite confusing during the French revolution, when the French people executed one of the Andorran princes, King Louis XVI, in 1792.  When a delegate from Andorra showed up in Paris in 1793 to offer tribute, the revolutionary government turned away the money because it smacked of feudalism and then promptly annexed Andorra to the French state.  Later, the Andorrans petitioned Napoleon (who may have had an affinity to all things small) for a return to independence, which he granted in 1806.  Andorra remained neutral through the Napoleonic Wars despite Napoleon being one of Andorra’s two princes.

Andorra wasn’t to remain neutral in Europe’s next major conflict.  It was no Switzerland, after all.  During World War I, Andorra declared war on the Kaiser’s Germany in 1914 and officially remained at war with the Kaiser until 1958 because the country was forgotten in the Treaty of Versailles.  During the 1930s, the French government occupied the country and garrisoned it during Spain’s bloody Civil War.  Despite still being at war against imperial Germany, Andorra remained neutral during World War II, which was probably for the best considering it spent most of the war sandwiched between Franco’s Spain and Vichy France.  After World War II, this impoverished, mountain country grew to become one of the most prosperous states in Europe.

In 1900, Andorra’s population of 5,000 people lived as they had since time immemorial scraping out a living grazing sheep and growing crops the two percent of the country’s land that was actually arable.  After World War II, Andorra became popular tax-free shopping destination for the people of Europe.  Tourism became the mainstay of the local economy as people would travel to its ski resorts, spas, and tax haven banks.  Today, Andorrans are a minority in their own country. The official language, Catalan, is no longer the primary spoken language as tourists and expatriates from Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and the U.K. flood the country bringing their considerable wealth along with them.  Andorra now boasts one of the highest per capita incomes in the world and a zero percent unemployment rate.  1993 was a big year for Andorra.  Although probably unrelated in any way, the Spin Doctor’s song Two Princes topped the American charts, and Andorra abandoned the feudal system to adopt a parliamentary system where the two princes (the president of France and the bishop of Urgell) retain their title as head of state, but with little actual power in the governing of the country.

The fact that Andorra remains an independent country to this day truly is an accident of history.  Foix, Ugell, and Aragon, all states with more power and wealth that had once dominated the little country, are no longer in existence.  Through the centuries, Andorra watched as counties, principalities, duchies, and kingdoms became swallowed up by Europe’s modern nation-states.  Yet poor, little Andorra still remains.  Dr. Sweatervest puts the question to you readers. What is the secret to Andorra’s staying power?

 

Charles the Fat

Very few can claim to be remembered throughout all posterity with the moniker “the fat” added to their name.  Not even King Henry VIII or President Taft.  No, that honor would go to the great-grandson of that great medieval emperor Charlemagne (or Charles the Great.)  In the days before surnames, there had to be some way to distinguish between all those Charleses and Louises in that Frankish family tree.   So, from the family that gave history such frank names as Pepin the Short, Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald, Louis the German, Louis the Stammerer and Charles the Simple, we get the uninspiring, ineffective, and generally uninteresting (except for the names associated with his story) emperor/king, Charles the Fat.

For a brief three years, Charles the Fat squeezed into a throne and ruled a realm the size of his famous great-grandfather Charlemagne’s new revived Roman Empire (modern-day France, Germany, and Italy) – something none of his skinnier and more ambitious descendents were able to do.  His Royal Corpulance was born in A.D. 839 into a powerful family during Europe’s Dark Ages that traced its lineage back to the leaders of the Franks who carved kingdoms for themselves out of a disintegrating Roman Empire.  He was the third son of Louis the German who ruled a sizable kingdom in Germany and Italy.  During the early 860s, Charles that Fat joined his two older brothers, Carloman and Louis the Younger, in a rebellion against their father who was ultimately forced to divide his kingdom into three parts. Charles received the leanest part of the kingdom, Alemania, and became its king following his father’s death in 876.  Within a just few years, with no planning, the lethargic Charles the Fat found himself ruling most of Central and Western Europe.  Kingdoms would just fall into his lap (or more likely onto his protruding belly) as his brothers and cousins began to die off.

In 879, his oldest brother, Carloman, had a stroke and abdicated as king of Italy.  His Chubbiness took the Italian crown, and slowly made his way to sample the culinary delights of his new kingdom.  Again, he found himself in the right place at the right time.  The pope’s personal fiefdom, the Papal States were being attacked by some guy:  Duke Guy II of Spoleto to be exact. Pope John VIII crowned Charles the Fat as Emperor in 881 in hopes that Charles, as defender of Italy, would throw his considerable weight on the side of the Pope and deal with Guy II.  Unfortunately for Pope John VIII, Charles the Fat never got around to doing much about it.  He did begin constructing a palace in Alsace in Eastern France complete with extensive exercise and fitness facilities.  (Just kidding about that last part.)  The next year, he inherited Eastern Francia from a dead cousin and a couple years after that, another cousin kicked the bucket and Charles the Fat found himself the king of Western Francia too.  These fortunate events were celebrated with much feasting.

With great power, comes great responsibility.  It was time for His Royal corpulence to get to work.  The main job of a monarch is to protect his people from bad guys.  During the 800s, there were no badder guys (other than maybe Guy II) than the marauding Vikings who were sacking towns, pillaging the fields, and doing all kinds of other unpleasant things.  Brave Charles called for a council (a diet…probably his only diet) to meet at Worms to figure out what to do.  There he decided he would bribe some of the Viking leaders to go away and marry the others to some important ladies of his family and give them land. The problem wasn’t solved entirely, though.  In 885 an army of Vikings sailed down the Seine and was threatening the city of Paris.  Count Odo of Paris fought successfully to keep these invaders at bay, but when he needed help he sent word to the emperor.  Charles the Fat led an enormous army to Paris and surrounded the Vikings who were besieging the city.  Then, rather than fighting the Vikings and putting an end to this, he decided he would rather make a deal.  He allowed the Vikings to retreat south and enjoy the winter in Burgundy (which ticked off the Burgundians).  Afterwards, on their way back north in the spring, the Courageous Charles paid them 700 pounds of silver as a parting gift (which ticked off everyone else).

Vikings were not Charles the Fat’s only problem.  There was the problem of no heirs.  His wife, Richgard, gave him no children.  Because this, he made attempt after attempt to legitimize his bastard son, Bernard.  A council of bishops refused to go along with him.  Not surprisingly, not even the pope would support him in this.  Adding to his dilemmas, he soon found that he had problems with ministers in his own court.  To deal with this, he accused his wife of having an affair with his chief minister.  She was proven innocent in this, however, because she survived a by fire in 887.  She left Charles and became a nun at Andlaus Abbey which she had founded in 880.  Later, the Catholic Church canonized her as a saint.  Today Saint Richgard is known as the patron saint of Andlaus and protector against fires.  Charles the Fat, however, could not survive the fires of controversy surrounding him.  Nobles and bishops gathered at the Diet of Frankfurt in 887 to depose of inept Charles the Fat.  He finally abdicated in 888, adopting his cousin Louis the Blind as his son and his heir.  He died several months later.

So, what can we learn from the reign of this man of magnificant size?  Perhaps the most important lesson is that while inheriting wealth, position, and power can be easy, keeping it is another matter completely.  888 was the last year that Western Europe could be said was ruled as one empire.  Had Charles the Fat been a man who was able to rule wisely and consolidate his power, perhaps European history would have been much different.  It is difficult to imagine today a Europe not fragmented into many different states, cultures, and languages, but I would argue that it was far from an inevitability.  An empire reminiscent of the Romans could have rising in the west and sent history on a vastly different course.  The other thing that I felt was important was the need to exercise.  After all is said and done, it is better to be known as Dr. Sweatervest the Lean rather than Dr. Sweatervest the fat.

Pythagoras: Brilliant Theorems Seasoned with a Bit of Crazy

Pythagoras appears stoic and pensive in the picture magneted on my whiteboard.  His visage is a model of rational Greek thought, almost nodding approval as I extol the virtues of the Pythagorean Theorem to a group of bored seventh graders.  My effort to present the foundations of the field of mathematics as a pursuit of brilliant, rational thinkers comes from some need of mine to show that the study of mathematics is simple, logical, and attainable.  Perhaps, however, I’m doing my students a disservice.  Truth be told, the guy in the picture was somewhat of a whack job…even by the standards of his day.  Truth is, genius does not always come from a calm, cool, collected, and sane mind.

Pythagoras was born at around 580 BC and lived until somewhere around 500 BC.  Not a whole lot is known for sure about his life because of several reasons. Nothing that we know about Pythagoras was written by himself.  He was far to secretive and paranoid to put any of his thoughts in writing.  Everything was written well after the fact by his followers, and not many of those ancient sources have survived antiquity.  We do know that he was from the island of Samos, which was a Greek Island on the side of the Aegean Sea that is now Turkey.  He may have traveled extensively and studied in Egypt and Babylon, or he maybe he didn’t.  At some point he set up a school on Samos and began teaching on a semi-circular stage there.  He was one of the first to call himself a philosopher (a lover of wisdom).  However, at around 518 B.C., because of political disagreements with the leaders on the island, he moved to the Greek city of Croton on the Italian heel.  There, he set up a new school where his teaching had much more influence.

Pythagoras wasn’t simply a math teacher.  He taught on all subjects, and his school took on the trappings of a new religion.  At his school in Croton, he had set up an inner circle of students, known as the mathematikoi, and an outer school of students.  The inner circle of students were the only ones he allowed to watch him teach.  Like him, they were to renounce all worldly possessions and could eat no meat or beans.  Pythagoras was strictly vegetarian because he believed in reincarnation.  Once he saw a man beating a dog, Pythagoras ran to the man and shouted, “Stop!  Stop now!  The spirit of that dog was once my friend.  I recognized his voice when the dog yelped!”   The bean restriction still remains a mystery.  Although, after teaching math after lunch on refried bean day, I may be able to certainly offer an explanation.

The outer circle of students did not have to follow these restrictions, but all associated with the school had to follow a strict code of loyalty and secrecy.  It was clear that Pythagoras did not intend for his teachings to be known by anyone who he deemed unworthy.  Pythagoras taught that at its deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature.   Numbers themselves held mystical power.  The whole cosmos was a scale and a number. Each number had its own personality.  Some were feminine, while others were masculine.  Some where beautiful, while others were ugly or even evil.  Justice was the number four.  Marriage was the number five.  (No one can quite figure out why.)  Then number ten, of course, was the very best.  The soul itself was a self-moving number.  It could rise to union with the divine, or it could be reincarnated into an animal.

Despite some of his very bizarre teachings, he and his school did make some very important discoveries.  He demonstrated the connection between mathematics and music.  He taught that the Earth was a sphere and that it might indeed be moving through the heavens somehow.  His most famous contribution, of course, was the Pythagorean theorem.  He discovered the relationship between the two legs of a right triangle with its hypotenuse.  This meant that his school was dealing with square roots, and thus, irrational numbers.  Although, some historians believe that the irrational numbers must have troubled him greatly considering his ideas about numbers.

Despite some of the crazy, one cannot deny that the guy was brilliant and instrumental in the foundation of mathematics. Thinking of numbers in an abstract way was a seminal step in changing how humanity thought in terms of numbers.  Pythagoras paved the way for future mathematicians such as Euclid and Archimedes.  I’ve heard it said often that the line between genius and insanity is very thin.  Many of the most brilliant people in history were in fact tinged with a little bit of crazy.  How much of that is true, I can’t say.  I haven’t really studied it enough to come up with a conclusion.  I’ve always held those who possessed cool, calm, and collected minds in very high esteem.  But are those minds capable of producing something ingenious?

The “Holy” “Roman” “Empire”

Teaching about the Holy Roman Empire is not an easy task.  I would often begin telling my students that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman.  In fact, it really isn’t an empire either.  I thought I had come up with that quip myself, but it turns out that I must have picked it up along the way somewhere because the French philosopher Voltaire was quoted saying it way back in the days of the Enlightenment.  So, after spending an entire school year trying to get sixth graders to understand different structures of government (monarchy, democracy, republic, etc.) and explaining the difference between nation and empire, the class reaches the Middle Ages and me trying to explain what the bloody Holy Roman Empire is.

Perhaps it’s best to start by explaining what it’s not.  The Holy Roman Empire was not holy. No, not by anyone’s definition.  It’s history is filled with greedy dynastic power struggles, steamy sex scandals, and murderous regimes. Surely, no one could argue that the “empire” was the consistent defender of any one particular faith.  Early emperors and kings would depose one pope after another, install their own popes, and often find themselves excommunicated from the church. Later ones were responsible for the slaughter of both Catholics and Protestants.  Well, there was the “Grand Army of the Holy Roman Empire” which saved the city of Vienna from an onslaught of Ottoman Turks during the 17th century, but it was a Polish king that led that army, not a Holy Roman Emperor.

The Holy Roman Empire was not Roman either.  German was the language most often spoken in the empire, not Latin (although the clergy did use it.) There were no gladiatorial contests, no legions marching on orders from centurions, no Roman roads, no Roman theaters, and no Roman aqueducts.  The city of Rome wasn’t even inside the borders of this thing.  It was definitely more German, than Roman, but as we shall see later, even that description is problematic.

It’s can’t even be called an empire.  An empire is a state that rules many different peoples. The key word here is rules.  The Holy Roman Empire didn’t have a capital.  For much of its history, it didn’t have a standing army or even an emperor for that matter.  It lacked an effective tax code and an imperial bureaucracy to either conduct foreign policy or regulate domestic affairs.  It’s not an empire;  it’s more like the Holy Roman Tea Party.

After about the first five centuries of its confusing existence, people finally felt that it was time to nail down exactly what the thing was.  In 1512, its name was officially declared by Emperor Maximilian I as “The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.” Aside from the obvious contradiction between empire and nation, the borders of The Holy Roman Empire of the German Empire failed to include many Germans who lived in eastern Prussia, eastern Austria, and many other Germans who resided as far east as Russia.  However, it did have lots of non-German lands including parts of Northern Italy, Switzerland, the Low Countries, and a few French-speaking principalities.  Thanks, that was a big help, Maximilian I.

Okay, so we’ve established that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor German, nor a nation, nor an empire.  However, it was something. But explaining what it was can’t start at the beginning, because it’s hard to tell when it really started.  All agree on when it ended, though.  The Holy Roman Empire finally kicked the bucket in 1806 when the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicated after losing miserably to the unholy Napoleon.  Napoleon established the short-lived Confederation of the Rhine in its place.  After his defeat, the Congress of Vienna redrew the map of Europe and not even the most holy and conservative of European diplomats saw a need to resurrect the Holy Roman Empire.

Many date the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire with the coronation of Charlemagne in AD 800.  The Pope in Rome crowned the Frankish king the emperor of the long defunct Roman Empire, which served to piss off the real Roman emperor ruling a real empire from Constantinople.  To differentiate between two, the Pope referred to Charlemagne as the “Holy” Roman Emperor.  Believe it or not, that didn’t really help the relationship between Eastern and Western Christianity.  But Charlemagne’s empire which included roughly West Germany and France, was divided into three parts after his death and disintegrated even further over subsequent generations.   (His son Charles the Fat will have to be a future blog topic simply because of his name.)  Even though Sid Meier’s Civilization IV has Charlemagne as the leader of the Holy Roman Empire, I must disagree that the Holy Roman Empire began here.

Others date the beginning from 962 when Otto I was crowned King of Germany by the Pope (who he later deposed).  He was, at times, called Emperor.  Still, there wasn’t really an empire for him to rule.  It was basically a bunch of squabbling princes, dukes, bishops, abbots, independent cities, and Van Helsing agreeing to call the guy with the biggest army in central Europe a king.  Otto’s son was also called the King of the Germans and Emperor as well, but that did not survive to the next generation.  If the Holy Roman Empire started here, there was a long period of time where there was no emperor.  During the next few centuries, the kings of Germany were inconsistently elected by an inconsistent number of princes, dukes, and bishops.  Sometimes the pope would recognize him as emperor, sometimes not.  Sometimes the king’s son would follow him a king, sometimes someone else would be voted in.  Try explaining this political system to 6th graders.

During the 12th century, there was some real progress in establishing a functioning, centralized government in central Europe under Frederick I “Barbarossa.”  Imperial courts were created and certain lands were dedicated as imperial holdings to fund the government.  In 1157, the word “holy” was consistently used to describe this supposed rebirth of the Roman Empire.  So, the Holy Roman Empire clearly existed as an institution by the 12th century.

So, how are we to understand this “empire” with no clear, definite beginning? Some have suggested that the Holy Roman Empire is an empire of the mind.  While it’s tangible existence was severely lacking, it did exist powerfully in the minds of Europeans during the middle ages.  The idea of one Christian church and one Christian empire under God was very real concept to most Europeans.  To those in the early middle ages, the security and prosperity that the Roman Empire offered was not a distant memory, but a reality that could be just around the corner again.  Although reality proved to be much different, the idea that there was a rigidly established hierarchy of church and government officials was strongly imprinted on the medieval mind.  All clergy were to ultimately answer to the noble and infallible pope and all nobility were to ultimately answer to the brave and wise emperor.  Both of which answered to God.

I would argue that the Holy Roman Empire was more than an empire of the mind.  It really was an empire of aspiration which could have been actualized except for a seminal event in history: Martin Luther’s protestant reformation.  After the Diet of Worms (yummy) in 1495, the Holy Roman Empire was on its way to becoming an actual functioning empire.  A Reichstag (an imperial legislature) was officially established to control the finance and foreign policy of the empire.  Feuds between the cities, principalities, and duchies within the empire’s borders were forbidden.  An Imperial court system was established. Ten Circle Diets (kind of like provincial legislatures) were established to raise troops and collect taxes.  A way of electing a Holy Roman Emperor had been formalized since 1356.  The only thing that was needed was a strong personality to lead this empire to greatness.  The Hapsburg Charles V who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 fit the bill perfectly.  The Holy Roman Empire was set to be the dominate power of Christian Europe, but, alas, it was not to be.  The protestant reformation had begun two years earlier.  Wars between the Protestants and the Catholics would come to dominate the central part of Europe for the next century ripping apart whatever unity the Holy Roman Empire might have provided for the region. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Holy Roman Empire existed as a more or less meaningless collection of 300 sovereign states until Napoleon could finally put the final nail in the coffin in 1806.

The Holy Roman Empire is by no means an interesting historical anomaly. Reality is often far removed from what institutions claim to be.  There are many examples today of institutions that imagine themselves as functioning governments over lands they don’t really govern (eg. Afghanistan, Yemen, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Republic of California.).  The United States is not a democracy; it’s a republic.  The U.S.S.R. wasn’t even remotely close to being communist.  The People’s Republic of China seems to be more of a monarchy that the United Kingdom.  After all, your very own Dr. Sweatervest is neither a doctor nor a sweatervest.  So, I say long live the Holy Roman Empire!

Belisarius: Who does number two work for?

While the name of Justinian is forever linked with the great and mysterious Byzantine Empire, the name Belisarius barely receives a footnote on a world history survey course.  Sometimes I wonder if it should be the other way around.

Belisarius was Justinian’s “number two” for most of Justinian’s illustrious reign (AD 527-565) as emperor over the high point of Byzantine civilization.  Justinian is credited with reconquering much of the fallen western Roman Empire, building the magnificent cathedral (now mosque) Hagia Sofia, and reorganizing Roman law into the epic Code of Justinian.  What, though, is Belisarius credited with?  The life of Belisarius is a great example of loyalty of duty and begs us to ask the question: what does it mean to serve?  One of the most difficult relationships we have in life is in working with our bosses. Being “number two” meant that Belisarius had to do the dirty work (somewhat of a pun intended) of a demanding and distrustful boss.  Is Belisarius an example of a model employee or a model doormat?

Belisarius was already an accomplished general and an empire-wide superstar by the time Justinian faced the first major challenge of this reign. In AD 530 as governor of a province in northern Mesopotamia, Belisarius crushed a Persian army twice the size of his securing a treaty between the two superpowers.  The Byzantine Empire and the (Sassanid) Persian Empire signed “The Eternal Peace” which lasted a whole decade.  Justinian almost found his reign at an end in 532 when masses of the capital city, Constantinople, revolted against him.  In a rare show of unity, the Blues and the Greens (Think Republicans and Democrats as crazed soccer fans and multiply the violence and political rhetoric by ten) proclaimed a new emperor in the Hippodrome and called for the emperor’s head.  Justinian wanted to flee at the advice of his friend Belisarius, but was talked into manning up and breaking this rebellion by his wife, the empress Theodora.  Belisarius, then faced with death, devised a plan to gain control of the city.  He called for army reinforcements from local cities and spread rumors that Justinian had quit the capital.  Meanwhile, he sent men through the city with bribes to cause dissention between the Greens and Blues to add to the general confusion in the city.   Belisarius along with Justinian’s other generals entered the Hippodrome with whatever soldiers they could muster at both of the giant stadium’s gates while the new “emperor” was presiding over the chariot races.  Panic and peril ensued.  It is reported that 30,000 people died that night in the chaos.  The rebellion’s leaders met their cruel end, and the population would not revolt against Justinian again for as long as he reigned.

In 534, Belisarius was charged with waging war against the Vandals who had conquered northern Africa from the now defunct Roman Empire.  Justinian had sent him across the Mediterranean with a less than adequate amount of horses, ships, and men.  Nevertheless, as luck would have it, Belisarius landed in Africa at just the right time and took Carthage without much a fight due to a civil war among the Vandals.  In no time, he was able to add the entire Vandal kingdom to Justinian’s burgeoning empire.  Justinian rewarded Belisarius with a huge victory parade back in Constantinople complete with the treasures from the old Jewish temple rescued by Belisarius from the Vandals to be placed back in Jerusalem and lots of enslaved Vandals.

Now after winning Africa on the cheap, Justinian was dreaming big.  He commissioned his number two to conquer Italy in 535.  Belisarius captured Sicily later that year and made it his base of operations for the reconquest of Italy from the Goths with the relatively little resources given to him by Justinian.  Belisarius’ success continued.  By the next year, Belisarius had reconquered the Eternal City itself and was soon proclaimed the “Master of Italy.”  In AD 540 Justinian, have expanded the size of his empire by 45% to include most of the Mediterranean, could boast having restored the great Roman Empire.  It was at this time, Justinian was becoming very suspicious of his “number two” and before Belisarius had time to consolidate his victories in Italy, Justinian was recalled to Constantinople.

As Italy began to fragment once again in the absence of Belisarius, Justinian found that he had new problems in the East.  His expensive building projects in the capital and his wars in the West had drained the treasury.  He had no money to pay the tribute to Persia so that the “Eternal Peace” could continue. A ticked off emperor Chosroes I of Persia invaded the empire, and leveled the Empire’s third largest and most important city, Antioch.  The population was enslaved and Chosroes oddly rebuilt the city almost exactly as it was.  He renamed Antioch “Built Better than Antioch” which probably held about as much truth as the “Eternal Peace” did.  Justinian responded as he always did in a crisis. He sent Belisarius out to deal with it.  Belisarius was able to restore Antioch and its province of Syria back to the Empire and win a few minor victories against the Persians before being sent back to Italy to deal with the chaos there.

By this time, Justinian had a very healthy paranoia that Belisarius was seeking to usurp him and refused to send Belisarius the soldiers and money needed to successfully restore Italy to Byzantine control.  Belisarius was met with failure after failure and continued to lose ground in Italy and was continuously blamed by the emperor for not producing results.  During this time, Belisarius was ordered by Empress Theodora to depose the Pope in Rome in order to replace one she favored more.  For the orthodox Christian Belisarius, this act would haunt him for the rest of his life.  But he followed his orders all the same.  Finally, in 548 he was officially retired from duty by Justinian who sent another general to deal with things in Italy.

A decade later, Justinian found himself in crisis once again.  This time the problem was to the north.  The Bulgars were invading the empire.  He brought back his old friend from retirement and sent Belisarius north to save the Empire once again.  After Belisarius was successful against the Bulgars, Justinian feared once again that his “number two” was becoming too popular and in 562 had him arrested and jailed on trumped up charges of corruption.  A year later, Justinian relented and pardoned Belisarius.  The two old friends both died two years later in A.D. 565.

The thing that stands out in the life of Belisarius is that he was loyal to Justinian no matter what.  We can definitely see that the kind of loyalty demonstrated by Belisarius is rare in our world, but it is important to comprehend that it was equally rare in his.  The entire history of the Roman and Byzantine empire has countless examples of generals rising up, becoming insanely popular, and overthrowing their superiors.  Witness Julius Caesar for one.  Justinian’s fears were not unwarranted.  We’ll never know whether Belisarius entertained the idea of becoming emperor in his head, but one must assume that the thought crossed his mind.  We all have times when we think we can do a better job than our bosses, especially when poor decisions are being made and we are being thrown under the bus.  Or when we are asked to do things we are morally opposed to.  What is the right course of action to take?  Could Belisarius have been a better emperor than Justinian?  That’s doubtful.  Especially when one considers the amount of blood and treasure that would have been spent on a civil war.  The question that should be asked is whether the Byzantine Empire could have survived an internal war between the two while enemies surround each border of the empire.  Belisarius did his duty and the empire was stronger for it.  Justinian’s reign is considered one of the most successful reigns in history.  The Byzantine empire was at its height.  But was it because of Justinian?  Or was it because Justinian had a loyal “number two.”