460. The Empress of the Apocalypse
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In the year 972, a young girl of perhaps 12 or 13, adorned in the heavy robes of an authentic Byzantine princess, weighed down with gold and precious stones, and accompanied by an intimidating train of flunkies, treasure chests, and changes of wardrobe,

set sail from Constantinople. Some weeks later, she arrived in Rome. Her name was Theophanu, and Otto the Great, the Emperor of the West, was dazzled by her. He had wanted a princess for his son, and now he had one. The marriage contract inscribed on parchment painted to look like purple silk licensed the most splendid wedding in Saxon history. St. Peter's provided the venue,

The Pope himself officiated, the very union of East and West seemed achieved as the squat and ginger-haired groom was joined to his willowy bride.

So that was Millennium by Dan, by Tom Holland. Dominic, behave. By Tom Holland. A wonderful book all about the world at the turn of the first millennium. And the princess in that story, Tom, a princess sent by the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople to marry the son of the Emperor of the West,

She is our subject today, an extraordinary life story, a tantalizing figure. It's great to be doing a female protagonist on The Rest Is History. I know we love a female protagonist, don't we?

You've chosen this subject, and what's so wonderful about it is it allows us to explore a period of medieval history that usually seems a little bit murky to people in the English-speaking world, doesn't it? Yeah, I think it is a really, really fascinating period. And I think that Theophanu as a figure is fascinating for two reasons, really. The backdrop...

to her life. As you said, it's a period that isn't well known relative to other periods of medieval history, but it's a time when you can almost see the ancient world in the process of mutation into the world that we live in now. It kind of reminds me, you were not as big a fan of natural history museums as I am, but often there may be a diorama of prehistoric mammals

Always. And, you know, you might see a horse or an elephant or something and you can recognise them, but there'll also be all kinds of weird animals that have completely gone extinct. And it slightly has that quality. Hold on, is she a horse or is she a pterodactyl? I think she's more of a pterodactyl.

Because of course the Byzantine Empire has gone. Yeah. So she is a princess from an empire that has long since vanished. She's a Roman. Exactly. And I think that this is a period, it's 500 years on from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, but this is still a period that is massively, massively influenced by that great

seismic geopolitical shock, the implosion and fracturing of the Roman Empire. Because if you think 500 years before this, so let's say 450, the Mediterranean is still just about a Roman lake. It's the only period in history where a unitary power controls all the seaboard.

of the Mediterranean. But now, at the end of the 10th century, that is obviously no longer the case. And essentially, you have three heirs to the Roman Empire. So the first of these is an empire that does not look to Rome as its exemplar, and is not, as the Roman Empire had become, Christian. And that, of course, is the empire of Islam, the Caliphate. But it does occupy a

a large and much of the richest territory of the old Roman Empire, right? Egypt, the breadbasket. Yeah. The Levant.

So you've got a rival caliphate in Cordoba at this point? Yeah, so we talked about that in an episode about the Caliphate of Cordoba that's ruled by the Umayyads, who were the original dynasty, got overthrown by the Abbasids, and one of the Umayyads fled to Spain and established his own little caliphate in Spain. And Cordoba is, with Constantinople, one of the two great cities in Europe at this period. But

But you also have an upstart caliphate, which originates in North Africa and is contesting what's Morocco with the Umayyads. Rules much of Sicily. Sicily at this point is home to all kinds of Muslim corsairs, slavers. But the Fatimids, and they're called that after Fatima, who was the daughter of the prophet. So they claimed descent from Ali, who was the nephew and the son-in-law of Muhammad, and Fatima.

and Fatima and they're Shia, not Sunni. And in this period, the very year that Theophanu is traveling from Constantinople to Rome, the Fatimids are conquering Egypt and founding Cairo. And in 973, the Fatimid Caliph will go to Cairo

to kind of set up base there. So that is a massive, massive kind of geopolitical gorilla in the room. The Muslim world is by far the richest, the most powerful, the most predatory power in the Mediterranean at this period.

But of course, you also have what we call Byzantium. Yeah. They think of themselves as the Romans. They didn't call themselves Byzantines. So the big trend now is to lean into that, right? So there's a guy called Antony Caldellis, who's probably the most influential younger historian of what we would once have called Byzantium. And his book is all the new Roman Empire. You know, this is basically the Roman Empire. They call themselves Romans. They're still around. They're still there in Constantinople. They absolutely are. And they're making a comeback.

So, say AD 900, a lifetime before Theophanu is born, it's still really on its uppers. It's been fighting for its life, really, ever since the Arabs established their empire in the 7th century. They twice besieged Constantinople and the Byzantines. We'll call them the Byzantines for the sake of argument. They hold out, but only just.

In 900, the Byzantine Empire has shrunk to maybe three quarters of what's now Turkey, of Anatolia, Greece, bits of the heel of Italy. But it's a thing of shreds and patches compared to what it had once been. But in the 10th century, the empire is back on the attack. So this is the Macedonian dynasty and then the Macedonian Renaissance, right?

New emperors. Yes, it is. Tough, battle-hardened. Warrior emperors, of whom the archetype is actually he's a usurper. He's a man called Nikephoros Theropolis.

Fuck-ass, amusingly named. I would call him Nikephoros Focas. Would you? I would, yeah. Well, he means victory bringer. Yeah. And he is a victory bringer. He brings victory. And he's very ascetic. He's very battle-hardened. He comes from the eastern limits of the empire where people are forged in constant warfare against their Muslim adversaries.

Very strong. The story told of him is that he could drive a pike right through the front of an adversary in full armor. Wow. And the head would come out the back. So that's very impressive. And he is described by a very sneery Italian diplomat, who we might mention later on, who goes to pay a visit to him, as looking like a wildly bristling pig. And he has small eyes like a mole. Moles are quite blind, aren't they? Yeah.

And so this is, I think, very unfair because he's clearly an unbelievably effective general. Yeah. So he's known by the Byzantines as the Pale Death of the Saracens, which I think is much more kind of complimentary. Yeah, that's a great name. And he has captured from the Caliphate, he's captured Crete. He's pushed the frontier back in Anatolia. So he captures Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul on the south coast. More than a hundred towns and fortresses. And very impressively, he's captured what is reputed to have been

The sword of Muhammad himself, Zulfiqar, the cleaver of vertebrae. Impressive achievements from a Byzantine general. Yeah, I'm sure that definitely was Muhammad's sword. I'm sure it was. So he comes to power in a coup in 963, and he rules for six years, continues his campaigns of conquest, but isn't tremendously popular, basically because he's a little bit too military. So he kind of turns the palace into...

equivalent of a military camp. He's constantly raising money for his campaigns and he stages this brilliant kind of Justinianic tattoo in the Hippodrome. So Justinian was the emperor who presided over the worst sports riot in history. Yeah. Where

a kind of bust up between rival fans, incinerates half of Constantinople. So there's a kind of echo of that. There's a riot, there's a stampede and things. And he's also alienated the church because as someone who is fighting Muslims,

He's come to appreciate that Muslims think that if you die in battle, then you die as a martyr and you go straight to heaven. And he feels that this is an incentive for his enemies. Whereas Christians, if they kill someone, they have to do penance. And he feels it's a bit of a drag, a bit of a drag anchor. And so he asks if maybe doctrine on that could be revised. And the patriarch says no. And not only that, but he doubles the penance that has to be done. That's foolish from the patriarch, I think.

But also, Nikephoros Phokas is not a terribly successful husband, is he? This is the key to his downfall. So often the way in the Eastern Roman Empire. Well, I mean, you know, he's got the eyes of a mole and the hair of a pig. Yeah, it's not a good look. Whereas he has a young officer, John Simiskis, who is unbelievably handsome. And 969, John Simiskis, just before Christmas, he's got a few lads with him. They get in a boat.

They row across the Bosphorus to where the great palace of the emperor is. And there's a balcony. And hanging from the balcony, they find a basket. And John Szymyski gets in the basket. And again, I'm convinced all this actually happened. Definitely happened. He gets pulled up in the basket. And there waiting for him is the empress with whom John has been having an affair. And the empress leads him into the sleeping quarters of her husband,

where he is wrapped up in a bear skin. That's very military. Yeah. Snoring heavily. Yeah. And John kills him, chops off his head and displays it. And he becomes emperor himself. So he's in a tricky position. He needs to consolidate his position as emperor. And so he looks westwards to the third of

of the great successors of the Roman Empire, which is the Latin West. So we've said 500 years since the implosion of Roman power in the West, and you have all these barbarian kingdoms that have kind of planted themselves on the rubble of the Roman Empire. And this is a period where you can see

unitary states emerging in a form that we still have them today. So this is the period of England emerging as a United Kingdom. So Athelstan, the first king of United England, had ruled in the early part of the 10th century. Denmark is emerging. So

So Harold Bluetooth, who gives his name to Bluetooth technology because he joined all the various parts of Scandinavia together under a Christian kingship. So Harold Bluetooth is the first Christian king. England is Edgar. Is it Edgar at this point? I think it is. Edgar the Peaceable. Great. So called because he kept peace by hanging anybody who gave him any trouble. Not because he was a hippie. Tough on crime. Tough on the causes of crime, Tom. That's exactly. Exactly. But elsewhere, it's more of a mess.

Because what today would be France, the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, these are not anything resembling nation states at this point. Because all of them are haunted by the attempt to revive the Roman Empire, which had been led by Charlemagne, who in AD 800, the great Frankish king, had been crowned in Rome by the Pope himself.

But his empire had then split and fragmented, and the line of Charlemagne had gone extinct. So Charlemagne's empire had been divided in three, between what will become France, what will become the Low Countries and the divided line going down the Rhine to Switzerland. Lotharingia. Lotharingia. And then what will become Germany. And in the 10th century, the real motor of power, the real...

center of gravity is in what will become Germany and specifically Saxony. The Saxons have been conquered by the Franks, but have now become Christian. And as is so often the way, it's the barbarian people who end up ruling their conquerors.

And the great conqueror in this period is someone we have talked about on The Rest Is History. Otto the Great loves a kind of Peter Frankopan style shirt open to his navel. Very, very hairy, great tufts of hair billowing out. Mighty warrior. And leads a kind of Ride of the Rorim cavalry charge against the Hungarians who were besieging Augsburg. So long ago we talked about that, Tom. I mean, that was when The Rest Is History had four listeners. Yes.

And he wins this great battle and essentially is in pole position to become emperor, to stand in a line of inheritance that goes back to Charlemagne, but then beyond that to Constantine and ultimately, I suppose, to Augustus. But to do that, he needs the second great institution that looks back to the Roman period. And that, of course, is the papacy. Right. Now, I'm reading your notes. The excellent looking line has been in a bad way. The pornography.

Yes. What is the pornocracy? Well, we actually talked about that in the episode we did on Pope Joan. It's the rule of prostitutes. Right. It's the rule of prostitutes.

It's the name that gets given. And it's probably the darkest period in the history of the papacy. And it kicks off with one of the great scandalous episodes in the history of the papacy. When in 896, the corpse of a pope called Formosus is put on trial by one of his successors and is put on a stool and it's kind of, you know...

Bits of eyeball are hanging out from the skull. It's kind of stinking. Do you have anything to say for yourself? He's arrayed in his papal robes, found guilty. And the papal vestments are ritually torn off his corpse. The rings from his finger are removed and his corpse is thrown into the Tiber where it gets rescued by a monk who then buries it. And in due course, his papacy is re-legitimized. So Formosa still ranks as a pope.

to this day. What have Formosus done? It's political shenanigans. It's nothing to do with theology. Okay. Because this is a period where the Pope rules a chunk of Italy, but is centered in Rome. And there are very, very powerful, ambitious Roman noblemen who essentially are trying to seize control of it. And this is where the pornography comes in. Right. It's nothing to do with pornography. Or is it?

Well, a porne in Greek is a prostitute. So has he been interfering with prostitutes, Formosus? No, Formosus has nothing to do with that. Formosus has been embroiled in political shenanigans, and these political shenanigans run throughout the succeeding decades. The reason that it is given the word pornocracy is because the papacy comes under the thumb of one particular Roman nobleman. He's called Theophilact, and he's the Count of Tusculum, and he has a wife, Theodora.

who, according to the traditions, and obviously they're written by disapproving monks, so slight pinch of salt to the stories. But the story is that she becomes the lover of one of the popes, John X, and in due course, she and her husband then pimp out their teenage daughter, Marozia, to another pope, Sergius III.

And so it carries on. And it's famously summed up by Edward Gibbon in The Decline of the Fall of the Roman Empire. The bastard son, two grandsons, two great-grandsons, and one great-great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, was seated in the chair of St. Peter. So Marozia, the daughter of these two powerful figures in Roman politics, she basically is the porno, the prostitute who is...

engaged with a whole succession of popes. There's a lot for Thomas Cromwell to play with here, Tom, isn't there? Well, but also with reformist popes, because there are plenty of people in the Vatican and the Lateran Palace who think this is appalling. And in 965, you get a pope who takes his place in the chair of St. Peter, who is determined to...

to stop this and to break the power of the Roman aristocracy. It's difficult for him. He's briefly put in prison. He reaches out to one of my favourite early medieval aristocrats of all time. He's an Italian prince called Pandolf Ironhead. Great name. Which is so Game of Thrones, it's not true. And with the help of Pandolf Ironhead, John XIII is able to seize control of Rome

And he breaks the power of the Roman aristocracy, systematically humiliating the guy who is the prefect of the city, a guy called Peter. So they take him to the statue of Marcus Aurelius, the equestrian statue that visitors to Rome may have seen. And it survives because they think that it's a statue of Constantine. And they hang him by his hair from the...

the equestrian statue. So he's kind of dangling there. Then he gets taken down. All his clothes get taken off. He gets put on a donkey, you know, facing backwards. He has a bell hung around his neck and he's then driven through the city all around. So he's kind of made a figure of absolute ridicule. Yeah. And then he's thrown into a dungeon. Hard to recover your dignity after that, I think. Absolutely impossible. But John XIII has absolutely demonstrated that he is, he's the power player. And this then means that when Ottomans

Otto III, who has established his power north of the Alps, who's defeated the Hungarians, who's a tremendous lad. Everyone thinks he's tremendous. When he comes down into Italy, John XIII is in pole position to crown him. And they basically form an alliance. And

In fact, John XIII hands over Peter, the humiliated prefect, to Otto III, who takes him north and imprisons him there. And John thinks this is great. So he hails Otto as the liberator and restorer of the church, crowns him as Caesar. And of course, this...

puts shade on the emperor in Constantinople. And at this point, it's Nikephoros who is not amused by this at all. Otto, he's a Saxon nobleman who is now claiming to be the heir of Augustus. He feels that he can only really legitimize that claim by getting a princess, a Byzantine princess for his son.

And so he sends an ambassador off to talk to Nikephoros, a guy called Leoprand, who comes from Cremona. Oh, Leoprand of Cremona. Great to have him on the show. And he's the guy who is very kind of rude about Nikephoros. And the reason for that is that the Pope has made an absolute howling mistake because in the letters that he writes to Constantinople, he refers to the emperor of the Greeks rather than the emperor of the Romans. Wow.

schoolboy era. It's an absolute schoolboy era. And so Nikephoros is furious and refuses to have anything to do with Otto's embassy and says, no, you can't have a princess. But when he gets killed and John Samiski takes his place, he's anxious to buttress his regime. And so the negotiations can reopen. And so this is the context that sees Theophano arrive in Rome. And

It is assumed in Rome that Theophanu is the daughter of the emperor. So John's daughter, yeah. Yeah. And so this is the assumption that governs the marriage, which takes place on the 14th of April, 972, when John XIII marries them in Rome. But it then subsequently turns out that she's not actually his daughter.

But she's his step-niece. And, you know, there are people in Otto's entourage who say this isn't on. She's damaged goods. We should send her back, get a refund.

But Otto says no, partly, I think, because it would be too embarrassing. But also, I think, because even though Theophano is only a young girl, she's kind of 14, 15 by this point, he can really see something in her. He can see that she is an impressive, impressive woman. So just to recap, Tom, she has been married to the son of Otto the Great. Who is also called Otto. So Otto Jr. is a fellow who you describe as squat and ginger haired. He's Ron

Ron Weasley. Yeah. And they're not going to send her back. They're not going to send her back. And also, is she a bit of a catch? Yes. But I think she's, well, as we will see, she's a very, very impressive woman. And that matters because this is a period in Latin Christendom. Powerful women are players to a degree that some people might find surprising. Okay. Because you might think this is a period of, you know, hairy men savaging each other with swords. And it is. But

It's a period that Pauline Stafford, who's a great writer on the subject of powerful women in this period, she calls it the century of women.

So we've mentioned Marozia, the Roman porne. I think the abuse that is shoveled on her shows some of the penalties that women run if they are power players. But there are examples of very powerful women who are commemorated as great figures. So Athelstan's aunt Athelflad, the Lady of the Mercians, who plays a great role in the knitting together of the United Kingdom of England.

But it's really the Ottonians, it's the family, the dynasty of Otto that you see this most clearly.

So his sister, who has the brilliant name Gerberga, she marries king of what will become France. So if you think of, you know, there's the German kingdom and there's the, let's call it the French kingdom. Yeah, Frankish kingdom. And she marries the king, has eight children by him, but her husband dies while her son is still only 13. And so she rules his region. I mean, she is responsible for the running of that kingdom. Yeah. And you also have Otto's wife,

who is a woman called Adelaide. She is the daughter of the King of Burgundy, which is one of those kingdoms, Lotharingia, down the middle. When Otto is crowned in Rome and anointed, she is crowned and anointed alongside him. So she is an empress. She is an Imperatrix, an Imperatrix Augusta, and so is Theophano. Theophano has the same thing.

this idea that queens can be consecrated, that this holy oil, which elevates them to a kind of a sacrosanct status, it's not just kings who are benefiting from that.

Their queens and their empresses do as well. And this then, can I say, sacralises the role that they play in the court because nothing in a court is private. Everything that a woman does, especially if she's the queen, is public. It's her role to intercede with her husband, to ask for mercy, to care for the sick, to

to distribute arms to the poor, to be responsible for the weaving of the vestments and the tapestries that will adorn the priests and the churches. And it's all very, very public. And the role played by the queen reflects massively on the king. So if the queen is kind of rubbish or sleeping around or loses her reputation, then that reflects very badly. But equally, if she is

respected for her piety and as someone who cares for her subjects, then that's brilliant for the king. Absolutely brilliant. And obviously I get the sense of a rise in the power of queens in this period, but you're arguing that, or there is an argument,

that this is new, that women are being given more power than in the 8th or 7th century or whatever. Because there had been, for example, women rulers in the Eastern Roman Empire. There'd been Irene and so on and so forth. Well, we'll come to that. So we're just talking about the Frankish traditions at this point, and indeed the Anglo-Saxon traditions too. But in the Latin West, definitely there is a rise in the relative status of queens.

So there's a chronicler who says about powerful, it's not just Queens. I mean, it's, it's aristocrats as well. The powerful women in this world, the Etonian court, um,

They sit while all around her people stand. So this idea that she is a domina, a female lord, a lady, I suppose, but it's more than a lady. A dominus is almost more than an emperor. It's a figure of enormous power. So the virgin is a domina. She is the domina of heaven. And there's a sense in which queens are kind of playing the part of the virgin. And we will see that this is something that Theophany makes great play with.

And I think it's partly to do with kind of theological changes, notions about anointing and all that. But I think it's also the simple fact that men are likelier to die than women because they're fighting, they're hunting, they're doing mad things, kind of throwing bones at each other. And so this then means that women, because of this sacrosanct status, are able to play a role as regents, as Gebirge does. So do you know who did that?

this exact period, St. Olga. That's right. Olga of Kiev. Her husband died. He was torn apart by, I think, the Derevlians. Yes. And she ended up as regent in a very masculine world, the world of the kind of the Rus in Kiev. So again, a woman playing because she's experienced. Well, she's actually not. She's quite young, but because she's not going to die in battle, right? Well, she's a figure of terrifying power. Yeah. I mean, you know, kind of

dive-bonging towns with birds and all kinds of things. Yeah. Burying people alive, all kinds of japes. Yes. All that kind of stuff. Yeah. So this is a period where in Kiev or in England or in France or in what will become Germany, women are expected to play this role if required. Yeah. You know, if a ruler is too young or whatever. Yeah.

And so this then sets up an intriguing tension when in 973 Otto the Great dies. So barely a year after his son, Otto Jr., who now becomes Otto II, has married Theophanu. And of course you have lurking in the background Adelaide, Otto the Great's wife. Yeah. Who would have the expectation that she should play the key role because Theophanu is still 15, 16 at this point. Yeah.

And so the question then is, what is her role going to be? Is she going to be able to carve out a distinctive role for herself? Or is she going to be put firmly in the shadow by the imperious ex-empress and daughter of the King of Burgundy? What drama. And I think we should find out when we come to the second half. What a cliffhanger. With an hour before boarding, there's only one place to go. The Chase Sapphire Lounge by the club. There, you can recharge before the big adventure.

or enjoy a locally inspired dish. You could recline in a comfy chair to catch up on your favorite show or order a craft cocktail at the bar. Whatever you're in the mood for, find the detail that moves you with curated touches at the Chase Sapphire Lounge by the club. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.

Welcome back to The Rest Is History. The tension has never been greater, Tom. We're about to find out the role that Theophanu plays after the death of her father-in-law, Otto the Great, the great hard man of Saxony who sees himself as a Caesar in the West. Just before we find out how Theophanu does, can I ask you, do we have

any sense of her personality at this point. There are contradictory reports, and I think these contradictory reports reflect the fact that there are contradictory

factions who have reasons to emphasize one thing or another. So I think it is very difficult to get a handle on, you know, what she was like as an actual person. But I think that as we will see from her performance, her record, one thing we can be sure of, she is awesomely competent because, I mean, she's in a very tricky position. She's a foreigner.

She's a teenager. She has a massively intimidating mother-in-law. She probably doesn't speak the language. I mean, it's an awkward position to be in. However, the upside is that she is the anointed wife of an emperor, an imperatrix augusta.

And so she has scope to make play with all the things that we were talking about before. This sense that people in the Saxon court and beyond are willing to allow a powerful woman a chance to do her stuff. And I think the fact that she is a foreigner actually works to her advantage because it's pretty clear that the Saxons aren't entirely sure what to make of her. So there are certainly those who...

who are suspicious of her and resentful of her. So you asked, how do people think of her? There are people who say she talks too much, that this is a very Greek thing. So they talk of her insolent prattling. But there are others who say, this is a tremendously serious, solemn and modest woman. And then Chronicler adds, which is of course a rare thing in a Greek. So I think

You see there the sense that her behaviour is obviously not Saxon. But...

The very fact that she is distinctive, that she brings a different way of understanding things, helps her. And I think this is really important because obviously she does have, she has enemies of whom Adelaide is the most notable. Adelaide hates her. She refers to Theophanu as that Greek woman, that Greek girl. She never calls her by name. And to begin with, she is very determined that her son, Otto II,

is going to remain firmly under her thumb. So she follows the happy couple everywhere that they go. She is essentially trying to rule as regent and Theophanu is having none of this. And within a year of her husband becoming king, she and Adelaide having massive bust-ups about whether Adelaide can use the lands that she has in Germany to further Adelaide's own purposes.

And basically, Theophanu wins that. And the sense of a kind of a massive cleavage in the heart of the Ottonian court is heightened by the fact that there is another big adversary that not just Theophanu, but her husband, Otto II, has. And this is Otto II's uncle, who's the Duke of Bavaria, who rejoices in the brilliant name of Henry the Quarrelsome. And he is indeed the

And there's just kind of endless rows. It's all about who gets to appoint bishops, all that kind of stuff. I mean, the details aren't that important. Basically, he wants to become the Duke of Swabia. I mean, basically, he wants to become the king. And there are all kinds of bust-ups throughout the 970s. Otto is endlessly imprisoning Henry the Quarrelsome, letting him go, imprisoning him again. And by 976, there's been open warfare. Henry the Quarrelsome has been captured anonymously.

handed over to the Bishop of Utrecht, who keeps him in prison for the rest of Otto II's life. And I think that this definitely damages Adelaide because she is seen as having been aligned with Henry the Quarrelsome. And I think that really helps Theophanu's status. And of course, the other thing that helps Theophanu is that it's not just her personal qualities, but as you were kind of alluding to in the first half,

that she is the embodiment of a much more sophisticated court than the Saxon court. And that, of course, is the court at Constantinople.

And there are Saxon noblemen who side with Henry the Quarrelsome and Adelaide against Theophanu, who resent it, who basically say, Otto II has gone Greek. You know, he's no longer one of the lads. Right. He's no longer kind of cracking open bones and gnawing out the marrow and throwing it at people and japing. Yeah. I mean, it's a bit like what people say about, you know, Prince Harry. He used to be a lad and now he's gone all weird with his foreign wife. Right. So it's kind of slightly like that. Okay. But...

What Theophanu can provide is basically what Otto the Great had wanted, which is a sheen of class. Prestige. Roman prestige. Yeah. Sophistication. So she has a massive influence on the way the court behaves. So she brings all these kind of silk robes, all these jewels. I mean, no one in Saxony has seen anything like it. She takes a daily bath. Unheard of. I mean, Charlemagne liked to bath, but people...

people are not normally taking a bath every day absolute scenes and very famously she introduces to the table the dining table a fascinating new ornament so it's described as a golden double prong which brings food to the mouth by a chronicler so it's a fork the inventor of the fork but she doesn't invent it i mean the byzantines have it but she brings it yeah i'll be frank with you i don't believe that people in western europe had never seen forks before

I mean, it's golden fork that she has, isn't it? I'm less skeptical. Because I think you'd use a fork for spitting and roasting things. You might use a sword, but it's the double prong, isn't it? Double prong. That's the key. Thank God she didn't have a fork with three prongs. That would have been really shocking. I know. I wonder who introduced that. But it's not just manners, obviously. It's the way of being an emperor.

that in Constantinople is the legacy of centuries and centuries of Roman ritual. Part of that, again, as you suggested, is that this emphasis in the Latin West on the sacral role played by queens and empresses, with Theophanu it fuses with a Byzantine sense that the empress is the counterpart of the emperor, that that is her role.

And I think that Theophanu obviously completely buys into this. And it's an approach that fuses very easily with what she finds in the Latin West, but elevates and dignifies it. It's even grander than anything that Adelaide had known. And Theophanu is able to carry it off because she clearly has a kind of incredible sense of theatre, of dignity, of poise, of sophistication. And I think that lots of Saxons love this because they are aware that

that the emperor in Constantinople traditionally has looked down on the Franks as barbarians. So when Leoprand of Cremona goes to ask Nikephoros at the beginning, can we have a princess, and gets rebuffed, I mean, he's full of complaints that all the snubs he gets. You know, he's sat beneath a Bulgarian. He's given bad food. He's not given good accommodation. He complains that the Greeks are soft, effeminate, long-sleeved, hooded, veiled, lying, gender-fluid, idolatrous.

idle creatures and then to rub salt into his wounds. All the silks that he's bought in the market in Constantinople get confiscated by customs officials. So massive, massive resentment. But he'd been 18 years earlier and had a splendid time hosted by a much friendlier emperor. And he'd loved it. And he'd been invited in. He'd reclined on a couch like, you know, like an ancient Roman eating sumptuous things.

Meals of golden dishes, all kinds of organs spring up from the floor. Gold dishes of fruit descend from the ceiling. There's a kind of weird thing. There's a strong man who he balances a kind of a pole on his forehead.

And kind of two young lads run up and down this pole doing magic tricks. I mean, it's very weird. And you'd think that that was made up, but you get the same thing from the court of the Caliphs. It's clearly a kind of Middle Eastern imperial thing that's done. And Leoprand of Cremona thinks this is tremendous. So I think you get in him what's going on. It's this blend of adversities

admiration, fascination and resentment. Classic cultural cringe, right? Absolutely. And so Theophanu is, you know, she's elegant, she's silken, she's bejeweled and she gives to Otto a kind of a touch of the glamour of Constantinople. And Otto, of course, absolutely loves this. And

It enables her to become a really heavyweight player in the game of court politics. So she sees off Adelaide, who ends up retiring to Burgundy. She accompanies her husband everywhere. She is seen as someone who it's worth approaching. She's playing that classic role of the queen who intercedes with her husband.

And she's very, very influential on table manners. So everyone's using forks now. Little golden forks, exactly. Huge increase in court splendor. And I think a very interesting change in the way that the Virgin Mary is presented. So we talked about how the Virgin is seen as the domina of the court of heaven. It's in this period that the Virgin starts to be portrayed as a Byzantine empress. So with the jewels and the silks. Right. Which is obviously a reflection of how Theophano is presenting herself.

And giving Otto all this kind of, you know, this sense of class. And then in 980, she absolutely does her duty by giving him a son. And Dominic, can you guess what...

the son of Otto II, the son of Otto I, it's called. Otto, of course. Yeah, it is. It's going to be Otto, isn't it? It is. A lot of Ottos. So this is great. So Otto is feeling, you know, by 980, he's got a son. He's seen off Henry the Quarrelsome. He's got a brilliant wife. He's classy. Yeah. He's got his fork. Yeah. Having a bath. Absolutely brilliant. Living the dream. And he feels that he's now ready to cross the Alps and reassert his authority over Italy in the way that his father had done.

Because obviously, as an emperor of the Romans, it's a bit embarrassing if you can't actually rule in Rome. And to be an emperor... He's got to be crowned.

So, Tom, big question. Has he been crowned emperor? Because you have to be crowned in Rome, don't you, to become emperor? Otherwise, you're just king. He has been. He was crowned while his father was still alive, as Theophany was as well. Ah, interesting. So that's why she is an imperatrix, he is an imperator. They are an imperial couple. But, of course, you can't really be an emperor of the Romans if you're not crowned.

sat in Rome. So that's why he goes there. He crosses the Alps in November 980. By spring, he has arrived in Rome. He's holding court. And I think it is hard not to feel that the presence beside him of Theophanu, a princess from the new Rome, from the city of Constantine,

kind of raises his horizons, expands his horizons, and makes him think he would like to rule more completely as a Caesar than his father had done.

And to rule as a Caesar kind of requires you to rule Italy. I mean, this is the homeland of the Roman Empire. And essentially this becomes his plan. He's going to conquer Italy. Now, there are two massive problems with this because there are two very, very menacing adversaries in the south. And the first of these, of course, is Byzantium. Yeah, because if Italy is to be Roman, which Rome? Right, exactly. And actually...

Otto the Great and the Byzantine garrisons in the south, you know, they'd actually been fighting each other about a decade before. Obviously, the peace treaty with John Simitskis had sorted that out. Theophanu had arrived. You'd think it would be peace. So how can he possibly think of going to war with Byzantium? Well, the answer is, is that John Simitskis by this point has been himself assassinated and replaced, poisoned by a eunuch, it is claimed.

And Theophanu is incredibly hostile to the murderers of her uncle-in-law and is clearly encouraging Otto to go down and have a crack at it. Ah, right, of course. So presumably Theophanu herself is thinking, you know, let's start by kicking these usurpers out of Italy.

But then why not go on? Why not become empress of a united Roman Empire? She is now the mother of a son who has the blood of the imperial families, both of Constantinople and of Rome in his veins. So why not? Let's reunite the Roman Empire. That's all very exciting. I think that Theophany is undoubtedly influencing Otto in his ambitions for this.

But of course, there are also non-Christian, non-Roman enemies, and that is the Saracens, the Fatimid Caliphate.

There are kind of various emirs, kind of subordinate rulers in Sicily, who in turn sponsor the various pirate fleets that are sailing up the seaboard of Italy and just stripping Italy bare. So all the old Roman cities basically by this point have been abandoned because it's too dangerous. And if you think about people who've driven through Italy, often, particularly in the south,

villages and towns that are up on hills. They're not down on the plains where they had been in the Roman period. And that's because you have to be up there because otherwise you're going to be taken away as a slave. They have unbelievably sophisticated slaving operations. They have people who take on different roles in the process of enslavement, of rounding people up.

And they've been menacing Rome itself. You know, they've kind of sacked St. Peter's at one point. And I think Otto also is worried that there seems to be a swelling of Saracen power in this period that the pirates are becoming more active. And he's afraid for Rome. So it's also about having kind of preemptive strike at them. And they're striking from Sicily, right? They're striking at the coast from Sicily. Yeah.

So January 982, Otto heads off at the head of a kind of great army of what are called lorikati, armored horsemen. And Theophanu is riding with him. They cross into Byzantine territory.

And Otto says to the Byzantine garrisons, I come as a Christian, I come as a Caesar, I come as a Roman, join with me. Let's pool our resources and go and attack the Saracens in Sicily. The Byzantine garrisons refuse. Otto loses his patience. He invests Tarento, which is under Byzantine rule, captures it and

and then formally proclaims himself emperor of the entire Roman world. His justification for this is that the Byzantines are cowardly, that they have refused to join him in this great war, therefore they no longer have any right to the name of Roman, they no longer deserve to rank as the shield of Christendom. Otto now should rule as sole emperor. An important question. Is that just performative, as it were?

Is that just he knows it's good PR? Or does he genuinely think that within the short to medium term, he will unite the two hours of the Roman Empire again? I think the latter, for reasons we'll come to at the end of this show, and it's massively influenced by Theophanu. I think that Theophanu has a properly pan-Mediterranean vision.

She is familiar with Constantinople. She's familiar with Rome. She's familiar with Saxony. I think that she, for reasons that are not entirely geopolitical, but theological, will come to that particular reason. I think she does think

A time is approaching when the whole Roman Empire will be reunited. Unfortunately, it doesn't go well and Otto's attempt to defeat the Saracens is a complete disaster. So in July, they meet with a massive Saracen fleet and army. Otto is defeated. He has to escape the battlefield, borrows a horse from a passing Jew, rides it out into the sea,

gets picked up by Byzantine galley. Very, very humiliating. Yeah. His enemies. Yeah. So, so Otto says to the guy who's picked him up, let us hope that your emperor, my brother will be a loyal friend to me in my time of need. Whoa. You've changed your tune. Yeah. He's changed his tune and he, he gets road back and he meets up with Theophanu and Theophanu is furious with him, kind of bollocks him and says that her countrymen would never have been so rash. Okay. Just,

This doesn't bode well for the Ottonians becoming masters of the Roman world. If she's saying, you know, the Easterners would never have made this total horlicks of the operation. Yeah.

So it all goes horribly wrong from this point on. Fortunately, the Sicilian battle leader, the Emir, has fallen in his hour of victory, which means that the Saracen onslaught is not as devastating as it would otherwise have been. But it means that Otto has to stay in Italy to shore up the defences of Rome and northern Italy against Saracen raids.

And meanwhile, up in Germany, of course, the news has arrived in Saxony and it's crossed the river Elbe to the Slavs, the Wens in particular. Yeah. The guys who, whenever they want to know what's going to happen, ask a horse. We've talked about them before. And they seize their opportunity and they rise in rebellion and they overthrow Ottonian power. They burn all the churches that have been built there, you know, and that's it. And the Danes get stuck in as well, don't they? The Danes attack Schleswig. Definitely.

Danes get stuck in. Yeah. The specific Holstein question breaks out there. They're attacking and it's, you know, it's all a disaster. Um,

It's a measure, I think, of Otto's trust in Theophanu that he sends her north of the Alps to try and sort the situation out while he is busy in Italy trying to stabilize the situation there. And Theophanu takes her three-year-old son, the infant Otto. It's been a kind of stage-managed election. He's been named co-emperor with his dad, big kind of dyer to Verona. And then she goes north. She goes to Aachen where

the throne of Charlemagne, great palace of Charlemagne. And again, the little boy is crowned there. So she's, you know, she's still very into her ritual, her crowns, all that kind of thing.

And then the crisis gets worse because on the 7th of December, Otto dies in Italy of malaria. Oh. And is buried in St. Peter's and actually is the only Holy Roman Emperor to be buried in Rome. So, you know, the situation seems completely hopeless. You've got Saracens in the south. You've got the Wends have rebelled. Yeah. You've got all these fractious noblemen. You've got a three-year-old boy on the throne. Scavengers everywhere. Looks disaster. But...

Theophanus steadies the ship and more than steadies the ship. She makes Saxony. Great again. You know, she stabilizes the frontiers. She patches up treaties with the Swedes, with the Danes, with Vladimir the Great in Kiev. Yeah. And Dominic with Basil II. Basil the Bulgar slayer. Yes. Great character. And I have to say, I was always team Basil II. Were you? I wasn't on the side of the Bulgarians.

But now my personal trainer, Simeon, is a Bulgarian. I'll just give him a shout out. Ejects Brixton. If anyone wants the best personal trainer you will ever find, he is your man. Well, he won't like this. Basil the Bulgar Slayer, he was a ruthless man, wasn't he? He captured 15,000 prisoners, blinded 99 out of every 100 and got the hundredth to lead them back to Bulgaria. And the Bulgarian Tsar, Samuel, was so shocked. He dropped down out of a stroke. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. So I've talked about this with Simeon. What's he say? He doesn't approve of it at all as behavior. You will know, Tom, that I'm a great Bulgarophile, actually. I've been to Bulgaria twice. I've become a massive Bulgarophile now. It's a great country. Anyway, this is all by the by. So this is all part of Theophanu's approach. She's kind of making international friends, stabilizing the frontiers. Yeah.

presiding as a simulacrum of the Virgin Mary, radiant in jewels and silks. And I think through sheer force of personality, keeps a kingdom that her son can then inherit. She actually dies in 991, so relatively young. And Adelaide, so Otto III's grandmother, Theophanu's mother-in-law, the wife of Otto the Great,

She comes in and takes over. But Theophany, she is given rave reviews. So a chronicler called Thietmar, who was the Prince Bishop of Merseburg, quite fancy being a Prince Bishop. Yeah. He wrote of Theophany, though of the weaker sex, she was moderate in all her actions, trustworthy and possessed of perfect manners. So again, this emphasis on her table manners. These qualities enabled her to preserve for her son his royal authority and to do so with a masculine degree of vigilance.

She was friends to all who did honestly buy her, but devastating to foes and rebels. She sounds great, Tom. That's again a bit like St. Olga. Yeah. I think she is great. And...

I think the biggest tribute to her impact is the character of her son, Otto III, who will rule as emperor in the millennial year, the year 1000. And he's one of the most remarkable rulers, not just in the Middle Ages, but in the whole of European history. Really extraordinary figure who fuses the Saxon and the Byzantine and who is convinced that it is his destiny to unite both halves of the Roman Empire together.

and to rule as this mythic figure, the last Roman emperor, because there are these traditions that are very, very current in Constantinople and with which Theophanu would undoubtedly have been incredibly familiar, that at the end of days, both halves of the empire will be united. The last Roman emperor will defeat all his enemies. He will then go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He will climb the hill of Golgotha. He will take off his crown. A cross will descend.

And at the same time, Antichrist will appear enthroned on the site of the temple. Wow. Yeah. And I think we should do an episode on Arthur III later. It's a brilliant, brilliant story.

I think this conviction comes from Theophanu. And so that is why I think she can justifiably be called the Empress of the Apocalypse. Because she thinks the apocalypse is coming and she prepares her son for it. I think she probably does. I mean, what's interesting is that the Byzantines are much less saturated in the imagery of the book of Revelation, which talks of the thousand year reign. So I think the year 1000 has much less significance for them.

But in this period, when she's growing up, there is an absolute obsession in Constantinople with the figure of the last Roman emperor and also anxieties and hopes that the end of the world is approaching. So there's this kind of great swirl of prophecies, of hopes, of fears. And I think that Theophanu obviously takes those with her to Saxony and investigates

imbues Otto III with them. Right. A lot of that apocalyptic paranoia almost or expectation that you see at the turn of the millennium. You think to some degree she fuels that? It is debated. It is a very live debate how many apocalyptic anxieties there are in Latin Europe in the year 1000. I think there are a lot. Yeah. And I would

I mean, hopefully at some point, maybe next year, make the case for that and look at Otto III and look at those kind of apocalyptic anxieties. But I think Theophanou, her story is fascinating in its own right.

but also as a kind of foreshadowing of what is to come. All right. Brilliant, Tom. Very exciting. A really, really fascinating story. A nice light shone on an otherwise murky corner of medieval history. So on that bombshell, Tom, thank you so much for that tour de force and we will see you next time. Goodbye. Bye-bye.