25 - Byzantium and the West

Summary

byzantine links with the western christians, 900–950

Byzantium’s relations with the Latin west in this period have a ‘Cheshire cat’ character in comparison with ninth-century exchanges. Very little attention is paid to the Christian west by Byzantine writers even when Saxon potentates begin to intervene in Italy and bedeck themselves with imperial trimmings. A memorandum of diplomatic procedures, compiled partly from older materials in the mid-tenth century, lists the standard form of address for letters to various reges, of ‘Gaul’ as well as Bavaria and Saxony: each is to be addressed as ‘spiritual brother’, unlike the numerous other addressees. But the protocols for receptions of ambassadors make no special provision for western ones: formulaic greetings for envoys from the Bulgarians and eastern Muslims are rehearsed, presumably because their visits were more important or frequent.

A somewhat later compilation would probably have paid western ambassadors little more attention than the Book of Ceremonies did on the eve of the imperial coronation of Otto I. For Basil II, as for his predecessors, the existence of a rival Bulgarian basileus was far more important. But if events beyond the Adriatic were generally of secondary importance to Byzantium’s rulers, the very powers which troubled them in the Balkans or hindered communications with the west obliged them to maintain outlying bases from which to disrupt their activities. Byzantine claims in Italy were based on quite recent military actions and not merely on the inheritance of the old Roman empire. The De administrando imperio recognises the territorial losses to the Lombards, but stresses the help which Basil I had provided against the Arabs, and claims authority over Capua and Benevento on the basis of ‘this great benefit rendered to them’ then.