“Herrin is acutely aware not only of Byzantium’s place in the world, but also of its idiosyncrasies, which she illuminates by bringing into play the ecclesiastical sources in a way that few other Byzantine historians have done. Her essays reveal first and foremost her breadth of vision.”–Michael Angold, editor of The Cambridge History of Christianity: Eastern Christianity

“Tracing her journey across the history of Byzantium, Herrin’s elegant essays display her insightful approaches, solid methodology, and vast historical knowledge.”–Christine Angelidi, Institute of Historical Research, Athens

“Herrin’s essays reveal a capacity given to very few historians–the power to present the big picture without ever losing sight of the vital details. Their genesis over the course of her career, and more importantly their bearing on our current intellectual and political situation, illustrate what it means to be a humane and humanistic scholar in the last half century.”–Anthony Cutler, author of The Hand of the Master

“All of Herrin’s essays reveal a distinguished historian with a clear intellectual consciousness.”–Antonio Carile, University of Bologna

“This wide-ranging collection of studies by one of the foremost medieval historians of this generation opens up new perspectives on Byzantium. The life experience of women and men is re-created with a view from the margins. Women at the court and in private households are restored to agency and the capital of Constantinople is seen from the perspective of the provinces. As a result, Byzantium no longer appears as a monolith steeped in unchanging ritual, but as a dynamic society that developed its own responses to challenges and so ensured its extraordinary longevity.”–Claudia Rapp, author of Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity

Judith Herrin is the Constantine Leventis Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium, and The Formation of Christendom (all Princeton).

MARGINS AND METROPOLIS

AUTHORITY ACROSS THE BYZANTINE EMPIREBy Judith Herrin

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15301-8

Contents

Abbreviations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….ixIntroduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..xiii1. A Christian Millennium: Greece in Byzantium—How the Empire Worked at Its Edge………………………………………………………….32. Aspects of the Process of Hellenization in the Early Middle Ages………………………………………………………………………….333. Realities of Provincial Government: Hellas and Peloponnesos, 1180–1204………………………………………………………………..584. The Ecclesiastical Organization of Central Greece at the Time of Michael Choniates: New Evidence from the Codex Atheniensis 1371…………………1035. The Collapse of the Byzantine Empire in the Twelfth Century: A Study of a Medieval Economy…………………………………………………..1116. Byzantine Kythera……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1307. Byzantium: The Palace and the City…………………………………………………………………………………………………….1598. Philippikos and the Greens……………………………………………………………………………………………………………1799. Philippikos “the Gentle”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..19210. The Historical Context of Iconoclast Reform……………………………………………………………………………………………20611. Constantinople, Rome, and the Franks in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries………………………………………………………………….22012. The Pentarchy: Theory and Reality in the Ninth Century………………………………………………………………………………….23913. From Bread and Circuses to Soup and Salvation: The Origins of Byzantine Charity……………………………………………………………26714. Ideals of Charity, Realities of Welfare: The Philanthropic Activity of the Byzantine Church…………………………………………………29915. Mathematical Mysteries in Byzantium: The Transmission of Fermat’s Last Theorem…………………………………………………………….31216. Book Burning as Purification in Early Byzantium………………………………………………………………………………………..335Index…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………357

Chapter One

A Christian Millennium

GREECE IN BYZANTIUM—HOW THE EMPIRE WORKED AT ITS EDGE

* * *

Robert Browning commissioned this chapter for his elegant compendium, The Greek World: Classical, Byzantine and Modern, published by Thames and Hudson in 1985. In those days publishers had picture researchers who scoured unusual photo collections for suitable material to illustrate what the publishers conceived as a brilliant coffee-table book. Robert, however, had planned an overview of the entire history of Greece written to his specifications by experts in their fields. His own introduction sets the scene and lays out his Marxist interpretation in very clear terms. Even if all the contributors did not share these views, they prepared chapters on their periods of Greek history with care, and the whole volume has a greater coherence and quality than many multi-authored books. References were not footnoted and have not been added, as most recur updated in later chapters.

It was an honor to participate, and I enjoyed the challenge of covering the period when Greece was effectively a rather minor province of the great empire of Byzantium. The problems of imposing Christian belief on a population deeply rooted in traditional rituals dedicated to the pagan gods, of converting temples to Christian use and adapting pilgrimage and miraculous cures to novel ends are not tackled as directly as I would now wish. But the overview of Byzantine Greece stands as an introduction to the Christian Millennium, and many of its distinct features are treated in greater detail in the following chapters. The chapter is reprinted by kind permission of Thames and Hudson.

At the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries AD the history of Greece enters a period that is perhaps the least well documented since the development of Greek script and written records. The early medieval period has been aptly characterized as the “Great Breach” in Greek history. For the first time historical documents are almost completely lacking; archaeological evidence is also sparse; outside sources present little information. While a similar trend is clear throughout the Mediterranean world from the late sixth to the late eighth centuries, giving rise to the epithet “The Dark Ages,” the label does not assist our understanding of developments in Greece. For what is witnessed during this period is the very slow and uncertain shift from a society organized according to the principles of the ancient world—a world of half-autonomous cities—to one dominated by a peculiarly medieval concept of empire, the Christian Roman empire of Byzantium.

Precarious Survival

During the first half of the seventh century the great empire built up by Justinian was subjected to a series of devastating blows from which it barely recovered. Among the newly reconquered lands in western Europe, southeast Spain and much of Italy succumbed to the Visigoths and the Lombards. From the 580s onward, the Slavs from across the Danube swept through the Balkans, reaching as far south as the Peloponnese and sailing to Crete. Finally, in the east, no sooner had the threat of the Persian invasion been removed by Heraclius (628) than it was replaced by the far more irresistible advance of Islam, which deprived Byzantium of its Near Eastern provinces—Syria, Palestine, and Egypt—in one decade (following the death of Muhammad in 632).

The effect of these upheavals, combined with the changes already underway within the empire, was traumatic. The first evidence of fundamental change is the marked decline of urban life: there was a radical break with the traditions of the ancient Greek polis and an increasing ruralization of areas previously dominated by cities. The second, related, aspect lies in the movements of population that forced Greeks away from their cities, scattering them to Sicily, southern Italy, small Greek islands, and fortified refuges in the eastern Peloponnese, while newcomers from the north settled in the fertile agricultural areas. The Slavonic tribes who raided, plundered, and finally occupied parts of the Balkan peninsula from the late sixth century onward undoubtedly contributed to these upheavals.

Major sites such as Athens, Corinth, and Thessalonike shrank to smaller areas within defensible walls, reflecting this process of adaptation. Similarly, ancient cities often associated with riverine trade were replaced by settlements on inaccessible mountain peaks. Among the Greeks, withdrawal, circumspection, and self-protection imposed themselves in place of outgoing contacts, open access, and confident self-assertion.

For many years during this breach, numerous Greek communities existed sometimes in self-imposed exile, sometimes in enforced flight. They were directed by their elders and religious leaders, in isolation, beyond the authority of any ruler. But many survived and in due course returned to their regions, as Arethas, bishop of Caesarea (in Cappadocia) describes. His ancestors had sailed from Patras to avoid the incursions of non-Christian “barbarians.” They settled in Calabria, where many generations had lived, until his own grandparents learned that the emperor in Constantinople could guarantee their safety. Then they returned to repopulate the city of Patras in the early ninth century.

Such turbulent uprooting, resettlement, and mobility of population was indeed characteristic of the entire Byzantine Empire at this time. From Palestine, Egypt, and Syria large numbers of Christians fled the Persian and Islamic invaders of the early and mid-seventh century to occupy safer lands behind the natural frontier of the Taurus mountains; island populations harried by Arab pirates similarly sought refuge elsewhere. Through these movements the inhabitants of Sicily and Syria were brought into much closer contact than usual; Greek colonies once again dotted the Italian landscape, reinforced by refugees from North Africa. But in the east Mediterranean these political changes were accompanied by a total eclipse of Greek culture; Arabic gradually replaced even Syriac, the lingua franca of a vast area in northern Syria, and endowed some of the Christian communities that remained behind with a new language for their worship. The Coptic churches of Egypt and the Greek monasteries near Jerusalem succeeded in maintaining their own identity but had progressively less and less influence over the Islamic environment in which they survived. Knowledge of Greek and observance of Christianity remained the preserve of a tiny minority; in general the dominance of Islam became undisputed.

In contrast, the Slavonic invaders of the Balkan peninsula failed to preserve their own distinct identity. They may have disrupted the political and military control of Constantinople for many years, but they could not dislodge the Greek tongue or the Christian faith. Instead, the Slavs gradually embraced both, adopting in addition the medieval Byzantine style of city life (as cities slowly revived), of coinage, trading organization, ecclesiastical structure, and Hellenic culture. So while the Great Breach divided ancient from medieval Greek, it did not involve a fundamental linguistic loss. Certainly changes occurred in the Greek tongue between the sixth and ninth centuries, but the process of “hellenization” predominated: the newcomers were converted to Christianity and inducted into Hellenic culture to become the not-always obedient subjects of the Byzantine emperors.

Stability Restored

During the late seventh and eighth centuries the Byzantine state slowly imposed its authority upon nearly all the Slav tribes that had crossed the Danube. This process will be described in more detail in a later section; it was not finally complete until 1018. By about 800, too, what seemed to be a reliable defense system against Islam had been established in the east.

For the next 400 years, from ca. 800 to 1204, the Greek world was governed by the emperors of Constantinople, who extended their own political system throughout the east Mediterranean and as far west as Palermo. Administered through a series of large provinces (called themata, singular thema) embracing Cyprus, the Aegean islands, the northern Balkans, Thrace, and the mainland, Greece was subordinated to the needs of the imperial capital in the same way as the rest of the empire. Thus it was expected to provide naval and military forces, manpower for the industries of the capital, taxation in kind and coinage, as well as to act as a place of exile for dissidents. These duties were balanced by an imperial responsibility for the well-being of provincial inhabitants, not only in the form of an often rhetorical philanthropy, but sometimes in direct assistance. When the people of Tenedos, Imbros, and Samothrace were taken prisoner by Slavs, Constantine V (741–75) ransomed 2,500 by sending an embassy laden with silk clothing. The internal development and organization of Greece, however, were geared to that of an empire, whose center lay on the Bosphorus, on the site of a colony established by Greeks from Megara in the seventh century BC.

It is no exaggeration of the conflict between center and periphery to say that an element of competitiveness governed the relationships between Constantinople and all its provinces. And everywhere the tedium of provincial life was contrasted, unfavorably, with life in the metropolis—the Queen of cities, Empress, as Constantinople was called. This reflected both the fact that Constantinople had remained a great urban center, while other famous cities had declined, and also an extreme centralization that had concentrated power and influence in the capital. Provincial inhabitants understandably looked to it as if to a city whose streets were paved with gold. One, the future Basil I (867–886), even made good that dream, in a career from “stable-boy” to emperor, assisted by his wealthy patron, the widow Danelis from Patras. Another, Rendakis, rose to be a senator, and married his daughter to the heir presumptive in the early tenth century.

Metropolitan disdain for provincial life, however, should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the Greek provinces became relatively prosperous in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This development was related both to the decline of imperial power in Anatolia and to the inherent resources of Greece. A clear demographic increase accompanied greater economic activity; there was a more rapid circulation of coinage and local products, which included silk spun in central Greece on mulberry farms established by Justinian. While internal demand accounts for some of the expansion, the role of Italian merchants in stimulating greater production may be significant. There can be no doubt that the appearance of Venetian, Amalfitan, and Genoese traders in the ports of Methone, Korone, Nauplion, Thebes, Corinth, Halmyros, and of many islands attracted additional commerce. They took a larger share of Byzantine foreign trade than the Greek merchants of the time. And their presence was to be formally recognized by treaties that gave them a privileged position in Byzantine commerce—for example, the charters of 1084, 1126, or 1147. They established landing stages in many harbors and set up warehouses, depots, and offices. Eventually, by the mid-twelfth century, there were Italian residential quarters in several major export centers, each patterned on the extensive communities of Constantinople, which were strung along the Golden Horn and in Pera (Galata), the Genoese enclave.

The penetration of Byzantine commercial life by western merchants was paralleled by a military threat from the west. While it may not have been as dangerous as the challenge from the east, posed by the Seljuk Turks, it was still a constant worry. For many years the Normans had threatened Byzantine possessions in southern Italy; from the late eleventh century they extended their attention to Greece. Ports on the Adriatic littoral and round the Peloponnese—Dyrrachion, Korone, and Methone— were attacked. Although the Norman naval force of 1147 was beaten off by Monemvasia, it proceeded to sack both Corinth and Thebes, carrying off as booty their skilled artisan populations as well as much woven cloth and embroidered silk. In 1185 the great city of Thessalonike succumbed to a Norman attack. Imperial military and naval weakness (and reliance on Italian mercenary forces) were partly to blame for this increasing Norman presence in the empire, but it was also part of a continuous western push to establish states in the east, on the model of the kingdom of Jerusalem, set up after the First Crusade (1098–99).

In both a military and an economic sense, therefore, western activities in Greece during the twelfth century foreshadowed the occupation that followed the Fourth Crusade of 1201–4. This ill-fated attempt to recover the holy places from Islamic control, preached by Pope Innocent III and accompanied by many pilgrims and feudal princes of the west, also brought the Venetians permanently into the Eastern Empire. Under the combination of military challenge and economic rivalry Byzantium collapsed.

The Disaster of the Fourth Crusade

Some powers in Constantinople had no doubt hoped to use the crusade for their own, more local, concerns: ever since the first expedition of westerners it had been Byzantine policy to assist crusading troops on the march farther east while forcing them to participate in imperial campaigns of reconquest, unrelated to the holy places. This tactic had caused bad feeling in the past. When it appeared to be surfacing again in 1203—as Alexios III refused to honor the terms of an agreement made with the Venetians—the crusaders quickly decided to assist the Doge in taking revenge, and captured and plundered Constantinople. The Byzantine court and many metropolitan inhabitants fled to Asia, some to Trebizond, others to Nicaea, where they gradually regrouped under the leadership of Theodore Laskaris (son-in-law of Alexios III and emperor 1204–22). The sack of Constantinople in April 1204, which lasted for twelve days and denuded the city of many of its finest antiquities (the four gilded bronze horses now at San Marco, Venice, for example), set a new precedent in crusader brutality toward Christians. Possession of the city then permitted Doge Andrea Dandolo and the crusaders to implement their planned division of the empire; Baldwin of Flanders was elected Latin Emperor of Constantinople, while all the possessions of the Orthodox patriarch were assigned to Venice. Booty was divided and lands allotted to the crusader knights, who set out eagerly to conquer them. Mainland Greece and the islands thus became the preserve of a variety of Western rulers, most of them feudal vassals of the Latin emperor, or of the Lombard Boniface of Montferrat (who had married the Emperor Isaac II’s widow).

Opposition to the crusaders was led by local Greek archontes, Leon Sgouros in Corinth and Nauplion, and the chief families of cities like Monemvasia in the far south. Only in Epiros, however, was an independent Greek state established by Michael Komnenos Doukas, cousin of the Emperors Alexios III and Isaac II. In the Peloponnese the Burgundians Guillaume de Champlitte and Geoffroi de Villehardouin succeeded in imposing their own authority, forming the principality of Achaia in an area that had been given to Venice in the partition plan. The Venetians concentrated initially on gaining firm possession of those ports and harbors in the Ionian and Aegean seas which would guarantee their commercial dominance. Most importantly, Marco Sanudo assumed the title “duke of the Archipelago,” and set up his own Venetian authority in the Aegean, from which west/east shipping could be regulated.

At a gathering held in Ravennika in 1209 the occupying forces reviewed their position and reaffirmed their loyalty to the Latin emperor, Henri de Hainault (1206–16). Boniface was already dead, killed in a battle with the Bulgars (1207); control in the Thessalonike region remained tenuous rather than firm and would be largely destroyed in 1224 when Theodore, despot of Epiros, recaptured it. But in central and southern Greece, Othon de la Roche, Nicolas de St. Omer (a newcomer), and Geoffroi de Villehardouin had established principalities that would endure through most of the fourteenth century. In Thebes, Athens, and Clermont (the site chosen by Geoffroi for the capital of Achaia) crusader culture intermingled with that of the occupied Greeks to form a flourishing hybrid, aware and relatively tolerant of the differences between Greek and Latin, Orthodox and Catholic, eastern imperial and western feudal traditions.

(Continues…)

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