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Forty years on: the political ideology of the Byzantine empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2016

Paul Magdalino
Paul Magdalino*
Affiliation:
University of St [email protected]
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Extract

Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies was launched in the middle of a decade that saw many landmark events in Byzantine scholarship. I remember them well, because this was the decade when I became a Byzantinist, and attended my first two international congresses of Byzantine Studies, the 14th in Ceauşescu's Bucharest (1971), and the 15th, in post-Junta Athens (1976). Apart from the acts of these congresses, the 1970s produced many memorable publications that shaped our field. It would take too long to list them all, and it would be invidious to make, and justify, a small selection. I have chosen to focus my retrospective look on one small monograph of 1975 that makes a comprehensive statement about Byzantium and is therefore a representative illustration of where Byzantine studies were forty years ago and how far they have come, or not come, since then. My book of the decade is L’idéologie politique de l’Empire byzantin by Hélène Ahrweiler (Paris 1975).

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Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , April 2016 , pp. 17 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, 2016 

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References

1 When Ahrweiler wrote, the text was still universally known under the title Epanagoge. It was subsequently demonstrated that the correct title is Eisagoge (i.e. Introduction): Schminck, A., Studien zu mittelbyzantinischen Rechtsbüchern (Frankfurt 1986) 12–13Google Scholar.

2 The author also published an article with this title: ‘L’expérience nicéenne’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 29 (1975) 23–40; note that a French ‘expérience’ can also be an experiment.

3 There is an oblique reference to the military Junta in the comment that the national symbol of the phoenix rising from the ashes is ‘souvent . . . galvaudé’ (p. 125).

4 She wrote the introduction to the volume Byzantium and Europe, First International Byzantine Conference, European Cultural Center of Delphi (Delphi, 20–24 July 1985) (Athens 1987), ed. A. Markopoulos, which had contributions from eight other Greek Byzantinists. They included Evangelos Chrysos, who ensured that Byzantium was energetically represented in the ‘Transformation of the Roman World’ project that was financed by the European Science Foundation. The volume Byzance et l’Europe (Paris 2001) was published by the Greek Embassy in France. Ahrweiler also wrote the preface to Auzépy, M.-F. (ed.), Byzance en Europe (Paris 2003)Google Scholar.

5 Vacalopoulos, A., Origins of the Greek Nation: The Byzantine Period, 1204–1461 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1970)Google Scholar.

6 J. Howard-Johnston, introduction to Byzantium and the West c. 850–1204 [=Byzantinische Forschungen 13 (1988)] 24.

7 Kaldellis, A., Hellenism in Byzantium. The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (Cambridge 2007)Google Scholar.

8 Kaldellis, A., The Byzantine Republic. People and Power in New Rome (Cambridge, MA–London 2016)Google Scholar.

9 Angelov, D., Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium, 1204–1330 (Cambridge 2006)Google Scholar.

10 L’idéologie politique, 33–4. Leo VI was ‘inspiré sans doute des traités militaires des époques précédentes’.

11 Notable omissions are Beck, H.-G., Senat und Volk von Konstantinopel. Probleme der byzantinischen Verfassungsgeschichte (Munich 1966)Google Scholar; Beck, , Res Publica Romana. Vom Staatsdenken der Byzantiner (Munich 1970)Google Scholar; and Tinnefeld, F., Kategorien der Kaiserkritik in der byzantinischen Historiographie von Prokop bis Niketas Choniates (Munich 1971)Google Scholar.

12 Byzantinists have been taken to task for much less summary treatment than this: see Cameron, Averil, Byzantine Matters (Princeton and Oxford 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Ahrweiler tacitly altered her position (pp. 28–9) in a subsequent publication: ‘The geography of the Iconoclast world’, in Bryer, A. and Herrin, J. (eds), Iconoclasm (Birmingham 1977) 21–27Google Scholar.

14 Prigent, V., ‘Le rôle des provinces d’Occident dans l’approvisionnement de Constantinople (618–717). Témoignages numismatique et sigillographique’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Moyen-Âge, 118/2 (2006) 269–99Google Scholar.

15 Constantine V repopulated Constantinople with families from central Greece and the islands, he married his eldest son and heir into a family from Athens, and two generations later the shipowners of Constantinople could afford major capital investments: Theophanes, , Chronographia, ed. de Boor, C. (Leipzig 1883) 429, 444, 487Google Scholar; trans. Mango, C. and Scott, R., The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor (Oxford 1997) 593, 613, 668Google Scholar. Cf. Magdalino, P., ‘Constantine V and the Middle Age of Constantinople’, in Magdalino, P., Studies on the History and Topography of Byzantine Constantinople (Aldershot 2007), no. IVGoogle Scholar.

16 For the episode see Macrides, R., George Akropolites, The History (Oxford 2007) 24–8, 339–43Google Scholar.

17 For Nicholas IV and his career, see the introduction to the recent edition of the poem in which he justified his resignation from the archbishopric of Cyprus: ed. and trans. Strano, G., Nicola Muzalone, Carme apologetico (Acireale - Rome 2012)Google Scholar.

18 This emerges from the prosopographical analysis of Kazhdan, A. P., Sotsialnyi sostav gospodsvuyushkego klassa Vizantii XI-XII vv. (Moscow 1974)Google Scholar; Italian edition with Ronchey, S., L’aristocrazia bizantina dal principio dell’ XI alla fine del XII secolo (Palermo 1997)Google Scholar. For commentary, see Magdalino, P., ‘Byzantine snobbery’, in Angold, M. (ed), The Byzantine Aristocracy, IX to XIII Centuries, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 221 (Oxford 1984) 58–78Google Scholar [repr. in Magdalino, P., Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Byzantium (Aldershot 1991), no. I]Google Scholar; Magdalino, , The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180 (Cambridge 1993) 187–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Kaldellis, Hellenism.

20 At issue is the degree to which Orthodoxy constituted a set of shared, identifying values beyond theological definitions. Independently of Ahrweiler, Beck formulated the idea of a ‘political orthodoxy’ based on ‘ritual orthodoxy’, and I identified this as the essential marker of the Byzantine cultural elite: Beck, H.G., Das byzantinische Jahrtausend (Munich 1978) 87–108Google Scholar; Magdalino, Empire of Manuel, chapter 5, especially 316–20; Magdalino, , ‘Orthodoxy and Byzantine cultural identity’, in Rigo, A. and Ermilov, P. (eds), Orthodoxy and Heresy in Byzantium, Quaderni di Νέα Ῥώμη 4 (Rome 2010) 21–40Google Scholar. The essentialism of Byzantine Orthodoxy has been challenged from very different quarters: Cameron, Byzantine Matters, 87–111; Kaldellis, Byzantine Republic, xi.