Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Ecclesiastical problems under the Palaeologi

Page 6

The Arsenites gained strong support from the people, among whom they sent secret agents, pilgrims and vagrants, called by the populace godly men and by a historian, Pachymeres, wearers of sackcloth (σακκοφόροι), who made their way into many families and sowed there the seeds of schism. A Russian church historian, J. E. Troizky, described the situation as follows:

There was in the Byzantine Empire a force, dark and unrecognized. It was a strange force. It had no name, and revealed itself only in moments of emergency. It was complicated, intricate, and of doubtful origin and character. It consisted of the most manifold elements. Its members were beggars, wearers of sackcloth, pilgrims simpletons, obscure wanderers, madmen, and other disreputable people men of unknown origin, without settled homes. For various reasons they were joined by disgraced dignitaries, deposed bishops, interdicted priests, monks expelled from their monasteries, and sometimes even by dishonored members of the imperial family. The spirit of this party was determined by its origin and composition. Created by abnormal social conditions, it offered a secret opposition, in general passive but effective, to these conditions and to the power responsible for them, that is, the imperial power. This opposition was usually expressed by spreading rumors which more or less compromised persons in government authority. This force seldom ventured openly to provoke political punishment, but it often seriously affected the government, whose fear was the greater, because, on the one hand, the secret activity was very difficult to trace, and, on the other hand, it had a great effect on the social organization. The people, miserable, depressed, and ignorant, and therefore credulous and superstitious, constantly persecuted both by external enemies and state officials, burdened with exorbitant taxes, and crushed under the pressure of the privileged classes and foreign merchant monopolists the people were very easily influenced by the insinuations coming from the out-of-the-way places where lived the representatives of the secret force. This was the more true because the force, formed from the people and subject to the conditions under which they lived, had the secret of playing upon their feelings at the decisive moment. The populace of the capital itself was particularly affected by these insinuations This force in its opposition to the government used different slogans; but its opposition was particularly dangerous to the head of the state, when upon its banner was exhibited the magic word Orthodoxy.

Under Michael Palaeologus the partisans of the blinded ex-Emperor John Lascaris joined the Arsenites. The government of Michael Palaeologus resorted to measures of compulsion and severity and the Arsenites were forced to flee from the capital, where their activity had been almost exclusively concentrated. The provinces were now open to their propaganda, and the provincial population, in huge crowds, thronged to listen to their inflammatory speeches condemning the Emperor and exalting the deposed patriarch. Arsenius' death failed to put an end to the schism, and the struggle continued. As J. Troizky said, the struggle of the parties under Michael, by its feverish animation and unscrupulousness, reminds us of the stormiest times of the heresy struggles in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.

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