A Byzantine Christmas

By Pueros

(Constantinople, Christmas Day, AD 820)

On Christmas morning AD 820, Leo V of Byzantium was kneeling before the altar in the great chapel of the Imperial palace in Constantinople, which was now devoid of the splendid, colourful icons that used to adorn the sacred place. Praying to God alongside the bearded and ornately clad 45 year-old Emperor, having adopted similar humble stances, were his wife, Theodosia, and their three young and very pretty sons, aged 3, 5 and 6.

Also present was Leo’s 17 year-old son from his first marriage to a noble woman called Barca, whom he had controversially divorced because of her alleged adultery with his predecessor. The handsome and still clean-shaven youth had originally been named Symbatius, but this had changed to Constantine when his father had usurped the Byzantine throne seven years previously and crowned the then 10 year-old as his co-Emperor. This common practice afforded the boy no power but did clearly designate him as the likely heir to the Empire.

Leo believed himself to be the incumbent of a throne that extended back over eight centuries to the first Emperor of ancient Rome, Augustus. The Byzantines considered themselves heirs to the great Roman Empire, despite the fact that Latin had given way to Greek as the main Imperial language.

Rome itself had not been the centre of Imperial activity for hundreds of years. The process had only been accelerated not initiated when Constantine the Great had moved his capital east to a city on the Bosporus, which he renamed after himself from the ancient Byzantium.

Meanwhile, Rome had long become a much fought-over backwater, and shadow of its former self. Constantinople was now the greatest city in the world, and as such the centre of much, frequently harmful intrigue.

Unfortunately for those present in the chapel, Christmas morning prayers were interrupted when a band of armed men barged in, quickly slew the few guards and unarmed officials present with their swords and then approached the horrified and petrified Imperial family, for whom all avenues of escape had been blocked. Leo, without weaponry in this holy place, tried his best to protect his wife and sons, first by attempting to assert his authority and then, when this failed, with his bare hands. However, the Emperor was soon to be another whose dead body lay in a pool of blood on the sacred floor.

The resistance of the remainder of the Imperial family was also rapidly overwhelmed, and Theodosia began to scream in outrage and terror as her three young sons and older stepson were dragged away from her. The appalled Empress correctly guessed the fate that now awaited the young males on this Christmas morning, as similar had occurred before, not least seven years earlier. Consequently, she was rightly petrified for the welfare of Leo’s four beautiful boys.

(Constantinople, 179 years previously, AD 641)

Living in a Christian society, where murder was forbidden by God’s Holy Commandments, successful Byzantine leaders tried to avoid killing unsuccessful rivals, with the original method of marginalising such threats being to ordain them into the Church or tonsure them into a monastery or, in the case of women, convent. Religious rules forbade subsequent returns to politics. However, this tactic became increasingly ineffective, as ecclesiastical laws began to be flouted in the tussles for power.

The first version of the revised policy that would now be inflicted on Leo’s V’s four sons was inaugurated 179 years before, in AD 641, when the aged Emperor Heraclius died after a reign of over thirty years. Unfortunately, he had been forced to will the Empire jointly to his 29 year-old eldest son, Constantine III, and a 15 year-old product of his second marriage, Heraclonus.

The arrangement seemed necessary to the dying Emperor because his eldest son was sadly suffering from an advanced case of tuberculosis and was not expected to survive much beyond his father’s death. The idea was that Heraclius’ second wife, Martina, who was also his niece, would then act as regent until Heraclonus came of age. However, this settlement discounted the rights of Constantine III’s own young male offspring, a 10 year-old who was another Heraclius.

The arrangements were objectionable to many people. Many thought not only that the throne should pass from eldest son to eldest son but also that Heraclius’ marriage to his niece, Martina, had been incestuous and that therefore the children of their union were bastards. Accordingly, after Constantine III fulfilled expectations by dying of his consumption after a reign of only three months, the eastern army under its commander, Valentine, led a popular revolt.

With the aid of the mob in Constantinople, this rising eventually succeeded in displacing Heraclonius and Martina. They were replaced by young Heraclius, now 11 years old and renamed Constans, and, as the new regent, Valentine, who became the real power behind the throne.

Being a Christian, Valentine shrank away from killing a woman and a child for what he considered to be their own attempt to usurp the throne. Instead, borrowing penalties often inflicted for ordinary crimes, the new regent ordered the noses and tongues of Martina and Heraclonius to be slit, believing that such disfigurements would make them ineligible in everyone’s eyes for a future return to power. However, such a supposition was to prove incorrect over sixty years later.

(Constantinople, AD 705)

Justinian II was Constans’ grandson, and had become Emperor in his own right in AD 685. However, he became so unpopular that he was overthrown to popular acclaim a decade later, again with the aid of the Constantinople mob. A general, or ‘strategus’, called Leonitius both led the latest revolt and succeeded to the throne.

Leonitius also exercised Christian mercy in respect of his predecessor, having Justinian II’s nose and tongue mutilated and then exiling him to the Byzantine Crimean enclave of Cherson. However, he was unable to save a couple of the former Emperor’s hated ministers, who were burnt alive by the mob.

Leonitius’ own nose and tongue were slit three years later, before he was exiled to a monastery, after he was himself usurped by a military officer of German origin called Apsimar, who assumed the title of Tiberius III. However, in AD 803, Justinian II escaped exile in the Crimea with some loyal courtiers.

After many adventures, Justinian II, the ‘Slit-Nosed’, was restored to power in Constantinople in AD 705. Shortly after Christmas, early in the following year, whilst sitting and watching games in the hippodrome, with one foot on the bound and prone Leonitius and the other on the similarly helpless Apsimar, the returned Emperor had both usurpers publicly executed.

Justinian II’s restoration disproved that facial disfigurement was a barrier to being Emperor. However, his example only encouraged worse atrocities to be inflicted on rivals for the throne over the next century, beginning with his own successor.

(Constantinople, AD 713)

A fourth revolution, and second deposition of Justinian II, in sixteen years took place in AD 711, as a result of a revolt in the Byzantine Crimean outpost of Cherson. Assisted by the local Khazars, the leader of the uprising, an exiled official of Armenian blood, called Bardanes, successfully raided Constantinople and butchered the absent Emperor’s infant son and many ministers.

Justinian II, encamped in nearby Chalcedon, was later deserted by the men in his army, who were promised an amnesty if they did so. The Emperor was then captured and decapitated, with his head being sent round the Empire, as far as Rome, as proof of his demise. Meanwhile, Bardanes assumed the name of Philippicus.

It was Philippicus’ turn to be usurped two years later, during a siesta in AD 713. However, he was not himself killed but instead received Christian mercy on the orders of the leader of the palace revolution, a military count called George Buraphas. Nevertheless, the latter was determined to inflict a mutilation harder to ignore than nose and tongue slitting for anyone with future aspirations to power. He therefore had the deposed Emperor blinded.

Unfortunately for the count, the head of the Imperial chancery managed a successful counter-coup. He also punished conspiracy and strengthened his own position by blinding George, as well as the officer responsible for perpetrating the original act on Philippicus.

The new Anastatius II then sent Philippicus to a monastery and the defeated rebels into distant exile in Thessalonica. Two further successful revolts, making seven in just over twenty years, subsequently occurred, although those deposed were allowed to enter ecclesiastical institutions without harm in return for peaceful abdications.

Some order to the Byzantine Empire was finally restored under the new Emperor, Leo III. However, the practice of blinding now became the usual penalty for serious state crimes, as it avoided the Biblical Commandment against killing whilst incapacitating the victims sufficiently to prevent them supposedly from being realistic candidates to be involved in future political intrigue.

Blinding was also useful to use, for the same reasons, against more innocent rivals, guilty of nothing except being of dangerous lineage. For example, the young Constantine VI blinded two of his uncles, sons of Constantine V, who, despite being diplomatically ordained into the Church, were the focus, usually unwanted, of intrigue.

In AD 797, Alexander VI was himself blinded by conspirators supporting the claims of his formidable mother, the Empress Irene, to at least a share in power. The act was so botched that the 26 year-old man died from his wounds.

In the following year, after Irene had resumed the power she had previously enjoyed as regent, the remaining three sons of Alexander V were blinded, after other plotters tried to free then from exile in Athens.

Given that even blinding did not appear to rule out anyone’s claims to power, another solution began to be preferred to resolve the dilemma of how the ambitions of potential male rivals could be permanently eradicated without killing them. The new policy began after Leo V’s successful usurpation of the Byzantine throne in AD 813.

(Bulgaria, AD 811)

The Emperor, Nicephorus I, was intent on crushing the Bulgars, who, with the Arabs to the east, presented the main and most frequent threats to his Empire. The army that he led against the enemy was the largest assembled in living memory and so terrified the opposing Khan, Krum, that the latter sued for peace whilst the Byzantines were still on the border. However, the Emperor ignored the desperate entreaty, and several more of the same kind, and instead launched his campaign.

After slaughtering the garrison and capturing the Bulgarian capital of Pliska, Nicephorus plundered much of the countryside, destroying all forces the Khan despatched against him. However, the wily Krum eventually somehow mustered the remnants of his army and laid a trap for the Byzantines.

When Nicephorus’ forces entered a high-sided river valley amidst the Balkan Mountains, the Bulgars hastily blocked both ends with log palisades. The Emperor paused, deciding not to launch an immediate assault of the barriers. However, on the second night, the enemy attacked and the result was a rout of the Byzantines.

The Emperor was himself killed, being the first to suffer so in battle since Valens in AD 378. The Khan subsequently used Nicephorus’ skull as a drinking bowl.

Nicephorus’ only son and nominated co-Emperor and heir, the teenage Stauracius, survived the carnage but was badly wounded in the spine, and his legs became paralysed on the long sad return journey back to Constantinople. Recovery seemed unlikely and so the youth nominated his young wife to assume power. However, such a move, involving the advancement of a woman, was unpopular amongst his misogynist chief officials, who instead preferred the husband of his sister, Michael Rhangabe.

Stauracius’ futile attempt to have Michael blinded in response only hastened his brother-in-law’s promotion. The former Emperor was then retired to a monastery after a reign of over a month.

Michael I Rhangabe was in his late thirties, handsome and cultivated. He also had few enemies, being popular in the very powerful civil service and Church. However, he was too amiable and of poor judgement, allowing himself to be easily led. He also proved to be militarily incompetent in the punitive expedition launched against the Bulgars in revenge for what was perpetrated on Nicephorus.

In AD 813, after one half-hearted and therefore failed attack, the forces of an Armenian general of the Byzantine army, by the name of Leo, were the first to take flight, setting off a rout. Michael then timorously left his defeated soldiers to return to Constantinople.

Remarkably, Michael left Leo, who had either been negligent or treacherous in the previous battle, in charge of the Imperial forces, where unrest grew. Subsequently, the soldiers proclaimed their new commander to be also their new Emperor.

Leo accepted his promotion with feigned but becoming reluctance and then launched a retreat from Bulgaria back to Constantinople. On observing the arrival of the mutinous general and army before the westerly walls of his Imperial capital, Michael again displayed timorousness and abdicated.

Leo then exhibited due Christian mercy by simply exiling Michael and his two handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed sons, 16 year-old Theophylact and 14 year-old Nicetas, to a monastery. However, before he did so, he perpetrated something on the two boys, potential rivals to his own lineage, that was to become fashionable in similar circumstances in the future, as his own male offspring was to discover.

(Constantinople, AD 820)

Although Leo ruled quite well, he was a usurper on the Imperial throne, who was therefore a target of others with similar ambitions. He had also decided to reintroduce iconoclasm into religious affairs, which meant banning the use of icons in Church ritual. He argued that recent Emperors had been unsuccessful because they revered such images whereas the victorious leaders of the previous century had banned them. He also controversially divorced his first wife, Barca, because of her alleged affair with his predecessor.

As a consequence of all these factors, the number of Leo V’s enemies grew. Amongst them was a man married to the sister of Barca, Michael the Amorian, who was the leader, or ‘domestic’, of the special Imperial guards, or ‘Excubitors’, and who was exposed in late AD 820 as planning a coup.

Leo V had Michael the Amorian arrested and ordered that he be burnt to death. However, the Emperor’s second wife, the Empress Theodosia, fatefully suggested that the execution should be postponed until after Christmas.

Some undetected plotters used the delay to rescue Michael the Amorian, although, because the relevant key could not be found, he was still incongruously in chains when they all then invaded the palace chapel on Christmas morning. One of the rebel number was 21 year-old Nicetas, son of the previous Emperor, Michael I Rhangabe.

Leo V’s four beautiful sons soon found themselves in the dank, dark bowels of the palace dungeons, where the same cool chamber, central table and bathtub had been used to create Imperial servants of a particular type for centuries. The assassinated Emperor’s three youngest boys, aged only 3, 5 and 6, were naturally petrified, although they undoubtedly did not appreciate, because of their tender ages, what was to come. However, 17 year-old Symbatius-Constantine certainly did realise what was about to be inflicted on him in this sinister place, and fought mightily but fruitlessly to avoid being stripped of his rich princely garments and strapped, face-upwards, spreadeagled and nude, on the waiting furniture. The polished surface of the latter was very dark in colour, because not only of the nature of the wood and its original polish but also of the fact that it had been regularly re-stained over many years with sanguine human fluid.

Meanwhile, Symbatius-Constantine’s very pretty and similarly fair-featured half-brothers were also deprived of their clothes. Their sublime bodies, especially their immature genitals, were then closely inspected by an aged skilled craftsman, for whom the dank, dark chamber, illuminated only by oil lamps fixed to the damp walls, had been his place of work for decades. Whilst the oldest pair, resistance restricted by the burly arms of Excubitors, subsequently waited their turns to be strapped to the table, the youngest was forcibly placed, despite his struggles, in the round wooden bathtub, which was now full of very hot, almost unbearable water.

The smoothness of Symbatius-Constantine’s chin was reflected on his handsome slim body, with the only noticeable hirsute patch present being a little crown of fair pubic hair above his pleasantly proportioned genitalia. The 17 year-old’s sensuous and currently understandably tearful blue eyes then watched the approach towards him of the aged craftsman.

Symbatius-Constantine’s eyes widened in horror when he saw, in the aged craftsman’s right hand, the principal well-used tool of his ancient trade, whilst a thin but strong leather cord rested in the other palm. After the well-honed ivory-handled blade was placed menacingly between the 17 year-olds splayed legs, the princely youth then felt his nicely formed scrotum being bound tightly with the twine.

Symbatius-Constantine would have squealed in humiliation and pain at the shameful and painful act of disrespect to Imperial genitalia, if his mouth had not been effectively gagged. Instead, the young prince began to shake his head in a desperate negative gesture and vain attempt to beg the craftsman not to proceed. However, the futility of this action was quickly demonstrated. After the 17 year-old’s scrotum began to discolour and hurt tremendously, the lifeblood that fed the small white oblongs within with vital sustenance having been virtually cut off, the youth felt a sharp blade come to rest on his smooth, vulnerable ball sac.

Meanwhile, 21 year-old Nicetas, vengefully witnessing the operation from nearby, experienced little remorse at what was about to be perpetrated on a prince of the Imperial family. Instead, his mind went back seven years.

(Constantinople, AD 813)

16 year-old Theophylact had already spent his time on the table, as was evident by the small pool of blood the youth had left behind. Now, the immensely gorgeous 14 year-old Nicetas was strapped naked onto the table and gagged.

Nicetas could feel his brother’s blood soil his bare bottom, as his naked, delightfully curvaceous rear was forcibly rested on the sanguine tabletop in the dark, dank chamber. However, the boy paid little attention to this unpleasant dampness. The 14 year-old blonde, blue-eyed beauty was instead intensely anguished by the cord that severely constricted his normally very nicely low-hanging scrotum.

Tears of pain and despair had already formed in Nicetas’ lovely blue eyes, although his lithe divine body still showed some resistance by attempting to struggle within its tight and resolute tabletop confines. However, his immaculate form could not wriggle much, certainly not sufficiently to disturb the craftsman or his knife.

The aged wielder of the blade grasped Nicetas’ soft slender cock, to prevent it from disturbing what he now intended to do. This action caused the boy’s penis to begin to grow, rather incongruously given his terror regarding what was now to be perpetrated.

Nicetas then felt the craftsman’s blade begin its delicate incision, carefully slicing open the boy’s scrotum down the middle. The 14 year-old’s wriggling intensified but he was so well confined by the strapping that his loins hardly moved.

The very well practised craftsman soon produced the size of cut he required on this particular assembly of completely hairless young male genitalia. The set of sexual organs concerned were one of a great number he had operated on in the service of the various Byzantine Emperors over the years, just as the long line of his many predecessors had done going back in time into the distant mists of Imperial history.

The craftsman now expertly squeezed and manoeuvred Nicetas’ smooth scrotum until he exposed the crying boy’s left testicle. A little proficient snip with his knife then easily severed the associated spermatic cord.

After placing the little white oblong ball on the tabletop between the new young half-eunuch’s splayed legs, the craftsman then proceeded to expose the right testes. He then perpetrated the same acts of severance and display on that small orb, converting Nicetas into a fully-fledged 14 year-old gelding. Nevertheless, the boy’s impeccable body simultaneously vibrated and his now rigid cock erupted with several spurts of white ejaculate.

The boyish cum, which would be the last the new eunuch would ever produce, gushed into the air between the craftsman’s fingers, which were still holding Nicetas’ eagerly throbbing penis, and fell onto the 14 year-old’s chest, neck and face. However, the fresh gelding was too distressed by acute genital agony to worry about such degradation.

There were two main reasons why the Byzantine Emperors liked to appoint eunuchs to many bureaucratic positions, some amongst the highest in the Empire.

First, the women members of the Imperial family generally exerted great influence, requiring frequent access to such officials, and so castrating the males concerned assisted the maintenance of courtly proprieties. For example, Constantine VI’s mother, Irene, employed many eunuchs, some in important military positions.

Second, eunuchs could produce no offspring. Their loyalty could usually therefore be relied upon as they could not develop aspirations for their own direct lineage, which might otherwise, for people in powerful posts, have threatened that of their Imperial masters.

As far as the revised policy to eliminate potential rivals to the Imperial throne was concerned, castration was useful because eunuchs were considered to be totally inappropriate candidates to gain supreme power. Nevertheless, this did not prevent many geldings from becoming some of the most influential people of their era, as Nicetas was to prove.

(Constantinople, AD 820)

Nicetas now watched a virtual re-enactment of his own castration, as Symbatius-Constantine was gelded, producing much semen in the process. Even the subsequent cauterisation of the handsome 17 year-old youth’s genital wound brought back some remembrance, although the now 21 year-old had fainted when he had experienced the same.

After Symbatius-Constantine’s wound was later dressed and the 17 year-old released and carried off to a nearby cell to begin his recovery and life as a eunuch, Leo V’s screaming 6 year-old son was then attached to the bloody table. The craftsman had judged that the scrotums of both this prince and his 5 year-old brother were sufficiently formed to justify the attention of his knife, although stitching as opposed to cauterisation would repair the resultant wound. However, the youngest 3 year-old sibling was to be treated differently.

After two more young eunuchs had been created on the sanguine table, to add to the thousands of males similarly transformed on its surface over previous years, Nicetas watched as the craftsman approached the 3 year-old prince, who was still soaking in the very hot tub. The castrater then stood the naked boy up, spread his legs and fondled his tiny scrotum.

The appalled and terrified infant’s little penis reacted to this humiliating intrusion by becoming immediately erect. However, the 3 year-old then had no time to contemplate this strange phenomenon, which he was experiencing for the last time in his life, because the craftsman began to crush one of the boy’s minuscule balls between his strong, manly right thumb and forefinger.

The craftsman’s young victim then fainted, but was retained in place by a couple of guards so that his other tiny testicle could be similarly transformed into mush, which the new infant’s natural bodily juices would later dissolve. The technique followed to convert the 3 year-old into a gelding made him a ‘thlibias’ eunuch.

Having watched a new Emperor succeed in a bloody manner to the Imperial throne, and four more young princely eunuchs created in the bowels of the Imperial palace, Nicetas returned to his monastery. However, he now discovered that his thirst for vengeance had been subsumed by deep distaste for both what he had seen and wanted.

In acute repentance, the very handsome, blonde, blue-eyed 21 year-old eunuch absorbed himself in his religion and good works.

(Constantinople, AD 847)

48 year-old Nicetas, second son of the Emperor Michael I and, through his mother, grandson of Nicephorus I, and now known by his Church name of Ignatius, was being crowned in the great cathedral of Saint Sophia. However, he was assuming spiritual not temporal supreme leadership.

6 year-old Michael III, grandson of Michael II the Amorian, was Emperor, although power currently rested in the hands of the regent, the boy’s widowed mother, the Empress Theodora. The latter had been instrumental in seeing Ignatius being enthroned in Saint Sophia as Patriarch of Constantinople.

Ignatius’ troubled and interrupted reign as supreme head of the Byzantine Church, during a period of much continued political turmoil, extended until his death at the advanced age of 79 in AD 878. His body was then interred in the church of St. Michael, which he himself had built near the Bosporus.

Ignatius of Constantinople was later considered to have been so good a Patriarch in such disturbed times that he was canonised, and he is honoured today in both the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches.

Ignatius, mentally absolved and improved by his reaction to the horrors he had seen on Christmas Day in AD 820, having been physically changed in similar circumstances seven years previously, thereby became the first eunuch to become a Saint.

THE END

of

‘A BYZANTINE CHRISTMAS’

by Pueros