The Power Game in Byzantium by James Allan Evans

Author:James Allan Evans [Evans, James Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity, General Christianity, History, Ancient History
ISBN: 9781317076926
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

8

The Fall of John the Cappadocian

The praetorian prefect of Oriens, whose headquarters was in Constantinople, was a grand officer of state who completely overshadowed his colleague, the praetorian prefect of Illyricum, whose headquarters was in Thessaloniki. The title was an ancient one. Five hundred years before Justinian, the emperor Augustus had established a praetorian guard with two prefects in command of it and it rapidly became an elite force with an unhealthy amount of political clout. Three centuries after Augustus, the emperor Constantine disbanded the old praetorian guard and revamped the prefecture. The prefect kept his title but lost his military function and became an administrative official instead. He had a multitude of civil responsibilities: trade, prices, provision of grain, higher education, public construction, the dromos, that is, the imperial postal and transportation system, and last but not least, taxation and justice. His only rival in the imperial bureaucracy was the Master of Offices, who directed the secret police as well as the ceremonies at court that grew in importance in the reign of Justinian and Theodora. Praetorian prefects tended not to remain long in office. John the Cappadocian was an exception. He was a survivor who lasted for ten years and his influence grew to rival Theodora’s.

John’s background was modest. He came from Cappadocia in central Turkey, a hard land that bred tough people: there was a saying that a viper once bit a Cappadocian and it was the viper that died.1 In 520, when Justinian, still emperor-in-waiting, became one of the two Masters of the Soldiers in the Presence, the commanders of the troops in Constantinople, he found John working as a clerk in his office. For some reason, he noticed him. Once Justinian became emperor himself, John’s rise was rapid. He became an accountant – a logothetes – in charge of a department, and before the end of April 531 he was appointed praetorian prefect. The Nika riot intervened and John was replaced briefly by Phocas, a man more acceptable to the senatorial class. Phocas was reputedly a man of old-fashioned virtue but he was also a pagan and when he was swept up in one of Justinian’s witch-hunts against pagans, in 546, he would commit suicide. He did not last long as praetorian prefect. John the Cappadocian was back in office after a hiatus of no more than eight months.

He became consul in 538. Consuls by this time wielded no real power and three years later the consulship would be abolished, but the office still possessed great prestige. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in the year of John’s consulship the Arian churches that remained in Constantinople were closed down. The Arians, heretics though they were, had worshipped more or less freely in Constantinople until this time, though Justin had harassed them enough to provoke a protest from the Theoderic in Italy, who was himself an Arian. The Arian churches, however, possessed some wealth and, once Theoderic was dead and his successors were in no position to help, they were vulnerable to John’s covetous hands.

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