4 - Beyond Religion: Homilies as Conveyors of Political Ideology in Middle Byzantium

Summary

Political ideology in its various manifestations in the East Roman or Byzantine Empire has been the focus of excellent studies by eminent Byzantinists such as H. Hunger, H.-G. Beck, H. Ahrweiler and G. Dagron, to name but a few. In this study, I will focus on a specific group of literary works, namely homilies, which have largely remained outside or in the margins of relevant investigations, since the existence of a political message in these religious texts par excellence is not self-evident. In particular, I will deal with middle Byzantine homilies, here defined as those produced between shortly before Iconoclasm began and the year 1204, in order to investigate to what extent, in what ways and for which purposes they transmitted elements of political ideology. I am not, however, going to present an exhaustive study of the chosen topic, or even a detailed list of passages related to ideology, since this is a vast subject indeed. Necessarily, the current presentation will be restricted to a few cases, such as Germanos I, Photios, Leo VI, Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, Philagathos Kerameus and Theodosios Goudeles, that underline the significance of this genre for ideological issues on the basis of the information provided therein.

Contrary to research on the early Byzantine period, where political views in patristic homilies have been explored in more detail, so far the literature concerning the middle period has been limited. For example, in my book on the homilies of Emperor Leo VI, published in 1997, I included a chapter on the political ideology expressed in those texts. In an article that appeared in the same year, Antonio Garzya examined a homily by Philagathos Kerameus in relation to terms denoting political ideology. There are also scattered notes concerning individual works, but no systematic study of the topic has appeared. Nevertheless, a number of studies on the ideology of other religious texts have seen the light of day, with ideological issues in hagiography – a genre closely related to homiletics – being more familiar in scholarly literature, as in the cases of the Synaxarion of Constantinople and certain Lives of saints. It is noteworthy that the importance of homiletics as a source of ideology has become apparent in studies of western medieval Europe, for example in relation to the promotion of the Crusades.