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Updated: May 16, 2025
"Old man," said he at last, "to how many have you told this secret?" "To no one in the whole world," the other answered. "There is Deacon Bardas at the monastery and myself. No one else knows anything." "You are sure of this?" "Absolutely certain." The eunuch had made up his mind. If he alone of all men in the palace knew of this event, he would have a powerful hold over his masterful mistress.
In the year 857 the wicked Bardas, uncle to the reigning Emperor, who wielded an almost absolute power and disregarded all laws, human and divine, unjustly banished from his See, Ignatius, the rightful patriarch of Constantinople, and placed in his stead the learned, but worthless, Photius.
“If your Eternity bestows this woman on Bardas, every husband and father in all your kingdoms will applaud your act,” smiled the commander. The threatened lady fell again on her knees, outstretching her hands and beseeching mercy,—never a more charming picture of misery and contrition. “You tremble, lady,” went on the sovran, “and justly. It were better for my empire if my heart were less hard.
I alone I and Deacon Bardas are to blame. Punish us, if some one must indeed be punished. We are old. It is today or tomorrow with us. But he is so young and so beautiful, with all his life before him. Oh, sir! oh, your excellency, you would not have the heart to hurt him!"
But the uncle of the Emperor, the Caesar Bardas, who was a man of flagrantly immoral life, had divorced his own wife, and was living publicly with his son's widow. For this incestuous connection Ignatius repelled him from the communion.
What then shall be just punishment?” The king bent his head, still rubbing his nose, and trying to persuade all about that he was meditating. “Bardas, satrap of Sogandia, is old; he has but one eye; they say he beats his eleven wives daily with a whip of rhinoceros hide. It would be just if I gave him this woman also in marriage. What think you, Hydarnes?”
The Cæsar Bardas, the uncle of Michael the Third, was the generous protector of letters, a title which alone has preserved his memory and excused his ambition. A particle of the treasures of his nephew was sometimes diverted from the indulgence of vice and folly; a school was opened in the palace of Magnaura; and the presence of Bardas excited the emulation of the masters and students.
The public administration had been abandoned to the Cæsar Bardas, the brother and enemy of Theodora; but the arts of female influence persuaded Michael to hate and to fear his uncle: he was drawn from Constantinople, under the pretence of a Cretan expedition, and stabbed in the tent of audience, by the sword of the chamberlain, and in the presence of the emperor.
I swear to you by Saint Nicephorus, patron of our house, that, save old Deacon Bardas, there is none who knows." "Then let your lips still be sealed. If you have kept faith in the past, I see no reason why you should be a babbler in the future. And you, Leon" she bent her wonderful eyes with a strange mixture of sternness and of love upon the boy, "can I trust you?
"I will never speak," said the old abbot; "neither will Deacon Bardas; neither will Leon. For all three I can answer. But there are others these slaves, the chancellor. We may be punished for another's fault." "Not so," said the Empress, and her eyes were like flints. "These slaves are voiceless; nor have they any means to tell those secrets which they know.
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