Many roads lead to Byzantium, ‘the New Rome’, and guidance comes
from dozens of disciplines, including art history and archaeology, theology
and expertise in stone inscriptions, coins or handwriting. Indeed, those
general historians who act as guides have themselves often majored in
other fields, such as ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval west, the Slav
or Mediterranean worlds, and even the Italian renaissance. The surest fact
about the elusive ‘New Rome’ is that it lasted over a thousand years, albeit
with a fifty-seven-year dislocation from 1204. Across this millennium, the
questions of how, why and where the empire survived, receded and (most
importantly) revived as a more or less functioning organism – and as an
idea – underlie this book.
We take a narrower road than the one chosen by this volume’s predecessor,
The Cambridge medieval history IV,1 whose first part recounted
political, military and ecclesiastical history in detail from 717 until the end
of the empire, and devoted several authoritative chapters to neighbouring
peoples and powers; its second part contained thematic chapters, on for
example law, government, the church, music, the visual arts and literature.
No such comprehensive treatment of Byzantium’s culture will be attempted
here. Our chapters follow the fortunes of the empire, as shifting politicomilitary
organisation and as abiding ideal and state of mind, but do not
attempt portrayal of Byzantium and its civilisation from every angle; however,
some important alternative approaches to its history are sketched in
the third section of this introduction (see below, pp. 53–75).
Our narrative picks out those occurrences salient to the political organism,
with an eye for the many problems, external and internal, facing the
upholders of imperial order from their capital in the New Rome. Unfashionable
weight is given to individual emperors’ characters, and to the statecraft
of such giants as Justinian (527–65), Leo III (717–41), Basil I (867–86)
and Basil II (976–1025), Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118) and Manuel I
Komnenos (1143–80). Their diverse, often successful, solutions to problems
Byzantium’s rulers in coping with plague, financial straits and the inroads
of ‘barbarians’, and also with unexpected problems of success. The dynamics
of these improvisations, abrupt overhauls and longer-term shifts are
traced through the course of events rather than through detailed analysis
of institutions as such, a justifiable approach given that the precise workings
of so many of Byzantium’s institutions – from the army to provincial
administration – are so hard to determine and highly controversial.
Topics of relevance to Byzantine political culture are brought into the
narrative, from religious devotions to patronage of the visual arts, and the
broader, provincial society revolving around that of the metropolis is outlined.
Thematic chapters look at the economy and Christian missions, and
there is treatment of several societies, elites and powers that had long-term
dealings with Byzantium. Here, too, coverage is less than comprehensive:
for example, no chapter is dedicated to ties between the empire and the
lands of the Rus. But enough is provided to demonstrate the impact of
Byzantium on various cultures of world significance: the world of Islam,
the Eurasian and the Slav worlds, and the Christian west. The aim is to
outline and analyse interaction rather than to recount every known detail
of relations with a particular state. The importance of Byzantium to neighbouring
or newly forming societies and powers emerges more clearly when
their individual situations and needs are taken into account. This is particularly
true of the tortuous interrelationship with the Christian west across
the centuries, and the vitality of the exchanges, cultural as well as ecclesiastical
and political, between ‘Latins’ and ‘Greeks’ is brought out in full
here.
The chronological range of our chapters spans from just after the formal
termination of the western half of the Roman empire (476) to the fifteenth
century, when the Christian west was viewed by some Byzantines as a
potential saviour from the Turks. This broad yet careful sweep takes in the
numerous communities and towns ofGreek-speakers who came under new
rulers after the empire’s collapse in 1204, sometimes Venetians or Frenchspeakers,
sometimes Bulgarian or Serbs. The ebb and flow of the imperial
dominions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is presented in more
detail than is usual with this kind of survey, and it shows up qualities of
the Byzantine body politic too easily overlooked: its ‘variable geometry’, a
capacity to function quite effectively even without the use of apparently
vital members; and resilience, its constituent parts realigning themselves
with imperial dominion more or less of their own accord, without much
prompting from the top.
The conspectus offered here, at once authoritative and unusually wideranging,
should yield some fresh insights to specialists in, and postgraduate
students of, the Byzantine world. But it also has something to offer newcomers
to the enigma variations of Byzantium. No prior knowledge of the
subject, or indeed of pre-modern history, is presupposed, and every effort
has been made to provide guidelines for readers whose mother tongue or
first foreign language is English. Translations of primary texts are cited in
the footnotes where available, and a guide to sources in English translation
is offered in the fourth section of this introduction (see below,
pp. 76–90).
Our introduction is divided into four sections, The first – this one –
looks at Byzantine notions of empire, their tenacity in the face of adversity
and the significance of religious rites for believers at grass-roots, constituting
Byzantium’s special blend of faith and power. It concludes with a
discussion of the nature of the interrelationships between outsiders and
insiders, and of their bearing on the broader question of the Byzantine
identity.
The second section addresses the book’s time-frame and considers possible
alternatives. It is followed by a survey of the book’s three main parts,
which run from c. 500 to c. 700, c. 700 to 1204 and 1204 to 1492. Themes
running through chapters that may, at first sight, seem rather disparate are
picked out, part by part. The chapters are not surveyed in strict order of
their sequence in the book: thus the topic- or region-specific chapters of
Part II are considered en bloc, after the chapters forming the main narrative
spine. Part III’s contents, lacking a single fixed point, and encompassing
a wide variety of populations and polities, receive fairly lengthy treatment
without close adherence to the order of the chapters.
The third section outlines other possible approaches to those taken in
this book, which mostly follow the course of recorded events of political,
ecclesiastical or military significance for the empire. The outline draws
attention to some more or less recent introductions to art, institutions
and the human condition among the Byzantines. It is nonetheless slanted
towards topics germane to the idea or substance of empire, whether political
imagery, size of armies, or castration.
The fourth and final section of the introduction addresses some of the
problems of approaching Byzantium without benefit of Greek and offers
short-cuts that may help towards the study – and teaching – of the empire’s
story: historical atlases covering Byzantium and neighbouring peoples,
chronologies, art-historical lexicons and whole dictionaries devoted to the
subject. Far more works penned by the Byzantines or about the Byzantines
by contemporary outsiders are available in English translation than is generally
realised and further translations are underway. These make aspects
of Byzantium readily accessible to newcomers from the English-speaking
world, and this section of the introduction points to some of the online
guides to English-language translations now available.
The phenomenon of Byzantium has multiple connotations and even the
name which its rulers used of their polity, ‘Roman’, was controversial.2
‘Greeks’ was the name by which they and their subjects were known to
many of their neighbours. This was a reflection of the language in everyday
use in Constantinople and provincial towns and in which most imperial
business was done from the sixth century onwards. To Goths fanning Italians’
prejudices, ‘Greeks’ carried intimations of frippery and rapaciousness
(see below, pp. 214–15). Yet a certain readiness to accept the empire’s claim
to be ‘Roman’ surfaces spasmodically among Frankish courtiers, for all
their fulminations to the contrary (see below, p. 397). And while some
Arabic writers in the Abbasid era stressed the Byzantines’ cultural inferiority
to the ancient Greeks or Romans,3 Rum (‘Romans’) was the name
by which Muslims called the Byzantines, and the Turkish potentates who
made themselves masters of south-central Anatolia from the late eleventh
century became known as sultans of Rum.4
The very terms Rome and Roman had overtones of unimpeachably legitimate
sovereign authority, evoking the greatest empire the world had yet
seen. Fantastic as popular notions might be concerning the imagery of
classical monuments in Constantinople,5 Byzantine rulers still acted out
triumphal parades through its streets and enlisted the citizens’ support
in staging them, manifesting the classical Roman concept of ‘eternal victory’.
6 Less flamboyantly, the City’s water-supply kept flowing through
an intricate network of pipes and cisterns established in the sixth century,
to standards set by Roman engineers. The workings of this system,
ensuring the pure water vital to Constantinople’s survival, were seldom
if ever set down in writing,7 and in fact the importance of this state
secret features in a late thirteenth-century treatise on Byzantine political
thought.8
In contrast to mundane matters of pipelines, the supernatural protection
enjoyed by the ‘God-protected City’ of Constantinople was a leitmotif
of imperial pronouncements from the seventh century onwards,9
becoming engrained in the consciousness of Christians in the eastern
Mediterranean world. The dedication of the new City by Constantine the
Great in ad 330 symbolised his conversion to Christianity and was commemorated
each year on 11 May.10 Constantine’s espousal of Christianity
marked a newbeginning not just for the emperor but for all mankind, whose
spiritual salvation now became his avowed concern. Bishop Eusebius of
Caesarea, Constantine’s counsellor and biographer, interpreted the turningpoint
thus, laying the foundations for an ideology that would treat the
history of the church as being coterminous with the bounds of the Roman
empire.11
The emperor thus became a pivotal figure in God’s grand design for
believers and unbelievers alike, and the conception gained monumental
expression in stone from Justinian’s building of St Sophia in Constantinople
(see below, pp. 111–12, 114). Justinian’s building-works were undertaken
when, for all the pressures from external enemies on several fronts, military
feats could still bring confirmation that the Christian God conferred victory,
and churchmen ranged far and wide on missions to bring remaining
groups of pagans within the emperor’s fold (see below, pp. 307–12).
The association of the empire of the Christians with the future of
mankind remained vital even when the tide abruptly turned and, following a
Persian occupation, the empire’s eastern provinces were overrun by bands of
Arab warriors in the mid-seventh century. Formerly deemed poor, divided
and readily manipulable by the Romans, these Arabs now acted in concert,
united in responding to their own revealed truth, as conveyed byGod to the
prophetMuhammad (see below, pp. 173–95, 365–9). Little more than a generation
later, Pseudo-Methodius12 explained ‘the Ishmaelites’’ extraordinary
victories as God’s punishment on the Christians for their sins. He prophesied
that ‘the Ishmaelites’ would carry all before them until the emperor
awoke ‘like a man from sleep after drinking much wine’, arose and put
them to flight; the emperor would subsequently make for Jerusalem, and
his arrival there would lead to the appearance of the anti-Christ and Christ’s
second coming.13 The text was soon translated from Syriac into Greek and
the surviving version contains an interpolation alluding to actual Arab expeditions
against Constantinople of the late seventh or early eighth century.
It also represents the Ishmaelites as momentarily entering the City before
the emperor’s resurgence.14
The Arabs never did penetrate the walls of Constantinople and so these
events were not, strictly speaking, relevant to Pseudo-Methodius’ prophecy.
But the interpolation reflects widely held Byzantine beliefs: that they were
acting out events foretold in sacred writings, and empire and capital were
closely bound up with the fate of mankind.15 Sudden strikes against the City
by barbarians such as the Rus in 860 were interpreted as divine punishment
for its sins,16 and after Constantinople’s fall to the Crusaders in 1204, many
believed this was God’s warning that the Byzantines should mend their
ways before He showed His displeasure terminally (see below, p. 735).
Faith and empire could no longer be held to be indissoluble to the same
extent after 1204, yet eastern orthodox emperors remained at large and
upon seizing control of Constantinople in 1261, Michael VIII Palaiologos
(1258–82) presented himself as a new Constantine: his success in occupying
the City was in itself a mark of God’s favour towards him and of God’s
mercy for His people. Apocalyptic writings and sayings, some deriving
from Pseudo-Methodius, circulated widely among orthodox Greek- and
Slavonic-speakers alike. The Byzantine emperors’ predicament in the face
of Ottoman Turk advances from the mid-fourteenth century onwards, the
collapse of other orthodox polities and then, in 1453, the City’s fall to these
Ishmaelites, appeared to bear out the prophecies.
These developments could be aligned with other computations that
earthly time would cease upon expiry of the seventh millennium from the
creation, a date corresponding with the year 1492.17 Such computations
were commonplace in the higher echelons of the church, and Patriarch
Gennadios II Scholarios (1454–6, 1463, 1464–5) foretold doomsday on 1
September 1492. He thus assumed the City’s occupation by infidels could
only be provisional, now that the empire was no more. Meanwhile, at
grass-roots, orthodox Christian faith was integral to Roman identity; even
today, a villager in north-eastern Turkey can explain that ‘this was Roman
country; they spoke Christian here’ (see below, pp. 852, 853).
Thus Byzantium is best viewed as an amalgam of communities of religious
ritual and faith in the power of God, and of administrative institutions
and defence works, some kept to a high degree of efficiency.18 True
believers, however far removed from the material protection of the imperial
authorities, could hope for spiritual salvation and perhaps physical protection
through prayer, regular celebration of the eucharist and access to the
holy. As with the bread and wine bringing the body and blood of Christ
to mankind, other rites of worship and also the decor and layout of the
structure within which they were celebrated symbolised higher things, the
medley standing for an infinitely superior, harmonious whole.Willingness
to see providential design in the domed interior of a Byzantine church
was articulated by Maximus the Confessor, and it was further elaborated
upon by Patriarch Germanos I (715–30) in his influential treatise on the
liturgy. Theological meaning was assigned to even the humblest example
of ecclesiastical architecture and its interior furnishings: proceedings inside
the church building mirrored those in heaven.19
The ‘corporate consciousness’ generated by rites revolving round the
liturgy could hold communities of Christians together, so long as priests
could be mustered to perform the church services. In a sense, therefore,
imperial governmental apparatus was superfluous, and orthodox communities
could carry on even under barbarian occupation. This was the case in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the populations under Frankish
or Italian rule were still, in their hearts, ‘turned towards Greek matters’.
Such ‘Greek matters’, which did not distinguish very sharply between this
world and the next, gave Marino Sanudo, a fourteenth-century Venetian
observer, grounds for unease (see below, p. 778). In similar spirit the eminent
holy man, Neophytos, ignored the Latins’ occupation of his island of
Cyprus, and as Catia Galatariotou has remarked, judging by his writings
alone, one ‘would be forgiven for believing that Cyprus never ceased to be
a province of Byzantium’.20
Byzantine writings about the apocalypse offer little coverage of rebounds
of imperial power before the final awakening from drunken sleep, but individual
emperors showed resilience, sometimes recovering territories after
generations of barbarian occupation. An emperor’s expectations of acceptance
and collaboration from the orthodox under outsiders’ rule could be
misplaced, as in the case ofManuel IKomnenos (see below, pp. 716–17). But
after the Latin occupation of Constantinople and the emergence of rival
orthodox emperors, widely scattered populations still proved receptive to
the idea of belonging to the original Christian Roman empire. Not even
the well-organised, culturally accommodating regime of the Villehardouin
lords of the Peloponnese could counteract this magnetism, and Marino
Sanudo’s apprehensions were voiced at a time when the Palaiologoi were
gaining ground on the peninsula (see below, pp. 803–33, 860). Only outsiders
with overwhelming military might, bonded together by distinctive
religious beliefs and able to count on numerous like-minded enthusiasts,
had fair prospects of implanting themselves lastingly in the ‘God-protected
City’. This conjuncture did not come about swiftly or inevitably: the
subtle, tentative quality of Mehmet II’s (1444–6, 1451–81) measures even
after his capture of Constantinople in 1453, suggests as much (see below,
pp. 858, 865–72).
This is not to claim that the amalgam of faith-zone, imperial idea and
state apparatus which the Byzantine empire represented was an unqualified
asset, or that it was sustainable indefinitely. The bonds were coming apart as
Athonite monks and some senior churchmen and officeholders denounced
the overtures to the Roman papacy which beleaguered emperors, pressured
by raisons d’´etat, were constrained to make. The implacable opponents of
ecclesiastical subordination to the Latins accused John VIII Palaiologos
(1425–48) of betraying orthodoxy when he accepted a form of union with
Rome at the Council of Florence in 1439 (see below, pp. 862–3). Perhaps
other, un-imperial socio-political structures could better have served the
earthly needs of Greek-speaking orthodox in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, allowing for the development of their burgeoning urban centres,
trading enterprises and litt´erateurs.21 But the plasticity, even virulence, of
the orthodox Roman order during its protracted decomposition goes some
way to answering the question of why the empire lasted so long.
World History
