Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

by Judith Herrin

  As the builders in King’s College London observed, Byzantium has something to do with Turkey, and Turkey certainly has something to do with Byzantium. Whether or not you believe that Turkey’s rich Byzantine past entitles it to take its place among the other states of the European Union, something of the spirit and legacy of the medieval empire continues to influence the world from its ancient emplacements on the Bosphoros and across Anatolia. Even today, in the enormous sprawling conglomeration of suburbs, with two bridges linking the European with the Asian side and a subway system under construction, Istanbul retains its Byzantine character – not only in the Christian presence, but also in the grandiose form of the city, its bustling commercial activity as an international metropolis and its polyglot population.

  I hope I have convinced the reader who has accompanied me this far that Byzantium must be saved from its negative stereotype. Recently, major exhibitions held in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Benaki Museum in Athens and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, have revealed the ‘Glory of Byzantium’, its ‘Faith and Power’ and ‘Holy Image, Hallowed Ground’, which displayed Byzantine art treasures from around the world and icons and manuscripts from the monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. Through these sympathetically curated, and unexpectedly popular, presentations of Byzantium the public has glimpsed part of the Byzantine world which has no modern successor state but has influenced so many. Byzantine art helps to correct the stereotype in part because of its skill and sheer beauty, but also because it has stimulated a much wider interest in the society that could produce unfamiliar objects of such high quality over such a prolonged period. Together with the International Congresses of Byzantine Studies, most recently held in London in 2006, a new phase of appreciation has begun.

  So if we need a word to describe the mendacity of our present political leaders, the bizarre incompetence of our own bureaucracies, the cunning selfishness and illegal mechanisms of our great corporations, or the intricate glamour of our global corridors of fame, then we should find the appropriate, modern adjective – and it is not ‘Byzantine’. That empire was not without its corruption, cruelty and barbarities, far from it, but by projecting onto it the notions which are still insinuated by the term ‘Byzantine’, we suggest that these failings belong to some remote and doomed society, foreign to our character and quite unconnected with our own traditions.

  Have I overemphasized the ingenious, educated and resourceful perseverance of Byzantine society, from its builders to its eunuchs, its monks to its empresses, its silk-weavers to its schoolteachers, rather than centring more of the story on its great emperors and generals or the repetitions of its court ceremonial? If so, it is for two reasons.

  First, because we should be aware of Byzantium’s exceptionally persistent, skilled fusion of traditions and inheritance, and how it created a varied and self-confident civilization that grew as often as it lost ground and fought to the end to survive. It is astounding that Byzantium continued after 1204, when the West captured and occupied its capital for fifty-seven years, even if the mini-empires which sprang to life in its place were not truly imperial states. Something of that same combination of resources – classical, pagan, Christian, eastern and western – was in the founding DNA of Byzantium, and provided a reliably constant life force across the centuries.

  Second, because I hope to have shown that the spirit of Byzantium survives not just the capture of 1453, but also the intervening centuries between then and now, and its legacy lives on beyond the world of central Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East. I have sought to convey some aspects of what it was like to be a Byzantine. In doing so, my aim is to expand, however slightly, our knowledge and experience of others, and to glimpse how people of a cosmopolitan, city-based society, with a consciously historical belief in who they were, as well as a pious belief in the hereafter, could be so different from ourselves and yet so recognizably like us.

  Further Reading

  Suggested reading for additional information and sources of quotes, chapter by chapter.

  Introduction: A Different History of Byzantium

  The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan), 3 vols. (Oxford 1991)

  Henry Maguire, ed., Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204 (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC 1997).

  Elizabeth Jefferys, ed., Rhetoric in Byzantium (Aldershot 2003).

  Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols. (London 1975).

  Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford 2005).

  Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (Oxford and Princeton 1987).

  Judith Herrin, ‘The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium’, Past and Present 169 (2000), 3–35.

  Judith Herrin, Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (London and Princeton 2001).

  Meyer Schapiro, Late Antique, Early Christian and Medieval Art (London 1980).

  Chapter 1: The City of Constantine

  Chapter quote: Zosimos, New History, tr. Ronald T. Ridley (Canberra 1982), pp. 37–8.

  Quote on p. 11 from The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, tr. with introduction and notes by Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, 3 vols. (Liverpool 2005), vol. 2, p. 240.

  Eusebius, Life of Constantine, tr. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford 1999).

  Leslie Brubaker, ‘Memories of Helena: Patterns of Imperial Female Matron-age in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries’, in Liz James, ed., Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium (London 1997), pp. 51–75.

  Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London 1985).

  Chapter 2: Constantinople, the Largest City in Christendom

  Chapter quote: Niketas Choniates, O City of Constantinople, Annales of Niketas Choniates, tr. H. Magoulias (Detroit 1984), p. 325.

  Quote on p. 19 from al-Marwazi, V. Minorsky, ‘Marvasi on the Byzantines’, in his Medieval Iran and its Neighbours (London 1982), 455–69.

  Quotes on p. 20 from Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), p. 204.

  John F. Matthews, Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New Haven/London 2000).

  Cyril Mango and Gilbert Dagron, eds., Constantinople and its Hinterland (Aldershot 1995).

  Sarah Guberti Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople (Cambridge 2004).

  Cyril Mango, ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’, in Maria Vassilaki, ed., Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (Milan 2000), pp. 209–18.

  Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924 (London 1997).

  Chapter 3: The East Roman Empire

  Chapter quote: The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle by George Sphrantzes 1401–1472, tr. Marios Philippides (Amhurst, Mass., 1980), p. 122.

  Procopius, Secret History, tr. G. A. Williamson, Penguin Classics (London 1981).

  Peter J. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford 2005).

  Leslie Brubaker, ‘Sex, lies and textuality: the Secret History of Prokopios and the rhetoric of gender in sixth-century Byzantium’, in Leslie Brubaker and Julia M. H. Smith, eds., Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300–900 (Cambridge 2004), pp. 83–101.

  Janet Nelson, ‘Symbols in context: inauguration rituals in Byzantium and the West in the early Middle Ages’, Studies in Church History 13 (1976), pp. 97–111; reprinted in her collection Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London 1986).

  Chapter 4: Greek Orthodoxy

  Chapter quote: St Maximos Confessor, Mystagogia, quoted by Patriarch Germanos in his Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, tr. Paul Meyendorff (Crestwood, New York, 1984), p. 93.

  Eusebius of Caesarea, A History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, tr. G. A. Williamson (rev. edn; London 1989); on Blandina, see Book 5.i.47–61, pp. 144–8.

  Peter Brown, The Ri
se of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity AD 200–1000 (2nd edn; Oxford 2003).

  William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (London 1997).

  Helen C. Evans and Bruce White, St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt: A Photographic Essay (New York, 2004).

  Evangelos Chrysos, ‘1054: Schism?’, in Cristianità d’Occidente e Cristianità d’Oriente (secoli VI–XI), 2 vols. (Spoleto 2004), vol. 1, pp. 547–67.

  Chapter 5: The Church of Hagia Sophia

  Chapter quote: Procopius, The Buildings, tr. H. B. Dewing and Glanville Downey (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), p. 21; also in Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453 (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972), pp. 72–8.

  Quote on p. 56 from The Russian Primary Chronicle (Laurentian Version), trs. and eds. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), p. 111.

  On the construction of Hagia Sophia, see Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire (as above), pp. 78–102.

  Averil Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century (London 1985).

  Anna Muthesius, ‘Silken diplomacy’, in Jonathan Shepard and Simon Franklin, eds., Byzantine Diplomacy (Aldershot 1992), pp. 237–48.

  Glen Bowersock, Mosaics as History (Cambridge, Mass., 2006).

  Eunice Dautermann Maguire and Henry Maguire, Other Icons: Art and Power in Byzantine Secular Culture (Princeton 2007).

  Chapter 6: The Ravenna Mosaics

  Chapter quote: Agnellus, Book of the Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, tr. D. M. Deliyannis (Washington DC 2004), p. 200.

  Quote on p. 63 from Cassiodorus’ Variae I.1.3, in Theoderic in Italy, tr. John Moorhead (Oxford 1992), p. 44.

  Quotes on p. 64 from Cassiodorus, Variae, tr. S. J. B. Barnish (Liverpool 1992), V.6 to the illustrious senator Symmachus, pp. 75–6; II.27 to the Jews of Genoa, pp. 34–5.

  Charles Barber, ‘The imperial panels at San Vitale: a reconsideration’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 14 (1990), pp. 19–42.

  Chapter 7: Roman Law

  Chapter quote and p. 78: Thomas Magistros, On the Duty of a King, tr. Ernest Barker, in Social and Political Thought in Byzantium from Justinian I to the Last Palaeologus (Oxford 1957), p. 166.

  Quote on p. 75 from Ruth Macrides, ‘The Ritual of Petition’, in Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos, eds., Greek Ritual Poetics (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), pp. 356–70.

  Quote on p. 77 from Gilbert Dagron, Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium (Cambridge 2003), p. 257.

  Matthews, Laying Down the Law (as above in chapter 2).

  Nikos Oikonomides, ‘The Peira of Eustathios Romaios’, Fontes minores 7 (1986), pp. 169–92.

  Angeliki Laiou, ‘On Just War in Byzantium’, in To Hellenikon: Studies in Honor of Spyros Vryonis Jr., vol. 1 (New Rochelle 1993), pp. 153–72.

  Ruth Macrides, ‘The law outside the lawbooks: law and literature’, Fontes Minores 11 (2005), pp. 133–45.

  Chapter 8: The Bulwark Against Islam

  Chapter quote: Chronicle of Dionysios of Tel-Mahre, tr. Andrew Palmer, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles (Liverpool 1993), p. 212.

  Quote on p. 85: The Chronicon Paschale, 284–628 AD, tr. Michael and Mary Whitby (Liverpool 1989), pp. 183–8.

  Quote on p. 90: Chase F. Robinson, ’Abd al-Malik (Oxford 2005), p. 7.

  Quote on p. 92: Raymond Davis, tr., The Book of Pontiffs (Liber pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Bishops of Rome to AD 715 (rev. edn; Liverpool 2000), pp. 73–4.

  Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (as above in Introduction).

  Henri Pirenne, Mohammad and Charlemagne (London 1939).

  Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge 1977).

  Richard Fletcher, The Cross and the Crescent: Christianity and Islam from Muhammad to the Reformation (London 2003).

  Vasso Pennas, ‘The Island of Orovi in the Argolid: Bishopric and Administrative Center’, Studies in Byzantine Sigillography 4, Nicolas Oikonomides, ed. (1995), pp. 163–72.

  Chapter 9: Icons, a New Christian Art Form

  Chapter quote: Sermon of Eustathios of Thrace, in E. A. Wallis Budge, Saint Michael the Archangel: Three Encomiums (London 1894), pp. *79–*80.

  Quote on p. 103: Greek Anthology XVI 80 tr. W. R. Paton, 5 vols. (New York and London 1916), vol. 5, p. 201.

  Lucy-Ann Hunt, ‘For the Salvation of a Woman’s Soul: an icon of St Michael described within a medieval Coptic context’, in Anthony Eastmond and Liz James, eds., Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium (Aldershot 2003), pp. 205–32.

  Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, tr. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago 1994).

  Michele Bacci, “’With the Paintbrush of the Evangelist Luke”, Mother of God’, in Vassilaki, ed., Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (as above in chapter 2), pp. 79–89.

  Averil Cameron, ‘The Language of Images: The Rise of Icons and Christian Representation’, in D. Wood, ed., The Church and the Arts, Studies in Church History 28 (Oxford 1992), pp. 1–42.

  Thomas F. Mathews, Byzantium: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York 1998).

  Robin Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and its Icons (London 1985).

  Maria Vassilaki, ed., Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (Ashgate 2005), esp. Thomas F. Mathews and Norman Muller, ‘Isis and Mary in early icons’, pp. 3–11.

  Chapter 10: Iconoclasm and Icon Veneration

  Chapter quotes: Daniel Sahas, ed. and tr., Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm… (Toronto 1986), pp. 96, 101; and St John of Damascus, On the Divine Images: Three Apologies Against those who Attack the Divine Images, tr. D. Anderson (Crestwood, New York, 1980), pp. 64, 72.

  Quote on p. 105: Old Testament, Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8–9.

  Quote on pp. 110–11: from Sahas, Icon and Logos (as above), p. 101.

  Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds (London 1997).

  Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton 2002).

  Judith Herrin, Women in Purple (as above in Introduction).

  Chapter 11: A Literate and Articulate Society

  Chapter quote: Kekaumenos, Book of Advice and Anecdotes, unpublished translation by Charlotte Roueché (very kindly made available to the author).

  Quotes on pp. 128– 9 from N. G. Wilson, Photius: The Bibliotheca (London 1994), no. 166, pp. 149–53; no. 170, pp. 154–5.

  Robert Browning, ‘Teachers’, in Gugielmo Cavallo, ed., The Byzantines (Chicago 1997).

  Averil Cameron and Judith Herrin, eds., Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century: The Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai (Leiden 1984).

  Liliana Simeonova, Diplomacy of the Letter and the Cross: Photios, Bulgaria and the Papacy, 860s–880s (Amsterdam 1998).

  For a helpful entry on the founder of Arab algebra, see www-history.mcs.standrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Al-Khwarizmi.html

  Catherine Holmes and Judith Waring, eds., Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond (Leiden 2002).

  Chapter 12: Saints Cyril and Methodios,

  ‘Apostles to the Slavs’

  Chapter quote: The Vita of Constantine and the Vita of Methodius, tr. Marvin Kantor and Richard Stephen White (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1976), p. 49.

  Quotes on pp. 133–4: The Vita of Constantine (as above), pp. 49 and 55.

  V. Vavřínek, ‘The Introduction of the Slavonic Liturgy and the Byzantine Missionary Policy’, in Beiträge zur byzantinischen Geschichte im 9–1. Jh.(Prague 1978), pp. 255–84.

  V. Vavřínek and B. Zástěrová, ‘Byzantium’s Role in the Formation of Great Moravian Culture’, Byzantinoslavica 43 (1982), pp. 161–88.

  Chapter 13: Greek Fire

  Chapter quote: Liutprand of Cremona, The Embassy to Constantinople and Other Writings, tr. F. A. W
right (London 1930; repr. London 1993), p. 136.

  Quote on p. 145: from J. Mavrogordato, ed. and tr., Digenes Akrites (Oxford 1956), p. 219.

  Quote on p. 146: from The Book of Strangers: Medieval Arabic Graffiti on the Theme of Nostalgia, tr. Patricia Crone and Shmuel Moreh (Princeton 2000), p. 40.

  J. F. Haldon et al., ‘Greek Fire revisited’, in Elizabeth M. Jeffreys, ed., Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilization in Honour of Sir Steven Runciman (Cambridge 2006), pp. 290–325, with photographs at p. 312.

  John Haldon, Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World 565–1204 (London 1999).

  Chapter 14: The Byzantine Economy

  Chapter quote: The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, ed. and tr. Cyril Mango and Roger Scott (Oxford 1997), Anno Mundi 6287, p. 645.

  Quote on p. 157: from Liutprand of Cremona (as above in chapter 13), p. 156.

  Angeliki Laiou, ‘Exchange and trade, seventh–twelfth centuries’, in A. Laiou et al., eds., The Economic History of Byzantium (Washington DC 2002), and online at http://www.doaks.org/EconHist/EHB36.pdf/