Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire Read online

  Byzantium

  By the same author

  The Formation of Christendom

  A Medieval Miscellany

  Women in Purple

  Iconoclasm

  (edited with Anthony Bryer)

  Constantinople in the early eighth century: the Parastaseis

  Syntomoi Chronikai

  (edited with Averil Cameron)

  Mosaic

  (Festschrift for A. H. S. Megaw, edited with Catherine Otten and Margaret Mullett)

  Personification in the Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium

  (edited with Emma Stafford)

  JUDITH HERRIN

  Byzantium

  The Surprising Life of a

  Medieval Empire

  ALLEN LANE

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  ALLEN LANE

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published 2007

  1

  Copyright © Judith Herrin, 2007

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior

  written permission of both the copyright owner and

  the above publisher of this book

  EISBN: 978–0–141–91136–6

  For Tamara and Portia,

  who also asked,

  What is Byzantium?

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  List of Maps

  Introduction: A Different History of Byzantium

  I

  Foundations of Byzantium

  1 The City of Constantine

  2 Constantinople, the Largest City in Christendom

  3 The East Roman Empire

  4 Greek Orthodoxy

  5 The Church of Hagia Sophia

  6 The Ravenna Mosaics

  7 Roman Law

  II

  The Transition from Ancient to Medieval

  8 The Bulwark Against Islam

  9 Icons, a New Christian Art Form

  10 Iconoclasm and Icon Veneration

  11 A Literate and Articulate Society

  12 Saints Cyril and Methodios, ‘Apostles to the Slavs’

  III

  Byzantium Becomes a Medieval State

  13 Greek Fire

  14 The Byzantine Economy

  15 Eunuchs

  16 The Imperial Court

  17 Imperial Children, ‘Born in the Purple’

  18 Mount Athos

  19 Venice and the Fork

  20 Basil II, ‘The Bulgar-Slayer’

  21 Eleventh-Century Crisis

  22 Anna Komnene

  23 A Cosmopolitan Society

  IV

  Varieties of Byzantium

  24 The Fulcrum of the Crusades

  25 The Towers of Trebizond, Arta, Nicaea and Thessalonike

  26 Rebels and Patrons

  27 ‘Better the Turkish Turban than the Papal Tiara’

  28 The Siege of 1453

  Conclusion: The Greatness and Legacy of Byzantium

  Further Reading

  List of Emperors Named in the Text

  Chronology

  Maps

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  Photographic acknowledgements are given in parentheses.

  1 Mount Athos, Chalkidike (copyright © Kallirroe Linardou)

  2 Mount Sinai, Egypt (copyright © Judith Herrin)

  3 Constantinople, land walls (copyright © ArtServe, reproduced by kind permission of Michael Greenhalgh)

  4 Thessalonike, walls of the citadel (copyright © Judith Herrin)

  5 Aqueduct of Valens, Constantinople (copyright © Judith Herrin)

  6 Obelisk of Theodosius I (copyright © Judith Herrin)

  7 Silk roundel (copyright © Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington DC)

  8 Lead seal of kommerkiarioi (copyright © Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington DC)

  9 Pilgrim flask of St Menas (copyright © The Trustees of the British Museum)

  10 Frontispiece from the Bible of Leo (copyright © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

  11 Gold coins, Constantinople (copyright © The Henry Barber Coin Collection, University of Birmingham)

  12 Karanlik Kilisse, twelfth century, exterior (copyright © Dick Osseman)

  13 Karanlik Kilisse, interior fresco with fork (copyright © Dick Osseman)

  14 Ivory plaque of Christ, tenth century, Musée du Cluny, Paris (copyright © Bridgeman Art Library)

  15 Miniatures from the Khludov Psalter, ninth century (copyright © M. V. Shchepkina, Miniatiury Khludovskoi Psaltyri (Moscow 1977))

  16 Hagia Sophia from the sea (copyright © Dick Osseman)

  17 Mosaic of Zoe and Constantine IX flanking Christ, Hagia Sophia (copyright © Dumbarton Oaks, Image Collections & Fieldwork Archives, Washington DC)

  18 Hagia Sophia, interior from the western gallery (copyright © Dumbarton Oaks, Image Collections & Fieldwork Archives, Washington DC)

  19 Mosaic panel of Empress Theodora, San Vitale, Ravenna (copyright © Bridgeman Art Library)

  20 Mosaic panel of Emperor Justinian, San Vitale, Ravenna (copyright © Bridgeman Art Library)

  21 Icon of Christ, St Catherine’s, Mount Sinai (copyright © the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Mount Sinai, reproduced by kind permission of the monastery)

  22 Gold coins of Constantine I and Basil II (copyright © The Henry Barber Coin Collection, University of Birmingham)

  23 Chalice of Romanos II, Treasury of San Marco, Venice (copyright © Bridgeman Art Library)

  24 Earring, sixth or seventh century, Benaki Museum (copyright © Benaki Museum, Athens)

  25 Greek fire, from John Skylitzes’ Chronicle (copyright © Biblioteca Nacional Madrid, reproduced by kind permission of Miletos Press Archive, Athens)

  26 Mosaic of Theodore Metochites, Chora monastery, Constantinople (copyright © Dumbarton Oaks, Image Collections & Fieldwork Archives, Washington DC)

  27 The ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’, c. 1400, icon (copyright © The Trustees of the British Museum)

  28 Frontispiece from the Psalter of Basil II, c. 1000 (copyright © Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice)

  29 Basilica of San Marco, west front (copyright ©
Bridgeman Art Library)

  30 Two of the four classical bronze horses erected on the west front after 1204 (copyright © Courtauld Institute, London)

  31 Monastery of Hosios Loukas, Steiris, central Greece (copyright © Judith Herrin)

  32 Theophilos and The Widow, From John Skylitzes’ Chronicle (Copyright © Biblioteca Nacional Madrid, reproduced by kind permission of Miletos Press Archives, Athens)

  33 Chora monastery, Constantinople (copyright © Courtauld Institute, London)

  34 Monastery of the Mother of God, Daphni, central Greece (copyright © Judith Herrin)

  35 Arta, church of the Paregoretissa, exterior (copyright © Lioba Theis)

  36 Church of the Paregoretissa, interior (copyright © Lioba Theis)

  37 Mistras, the citadel (copyright © Judith Herrin)

  38 Book of Job copied by Manuel Tzykandeles, probably in Mistras c. 1362 (Paris Bibliothèque Nationale; copyright © Bridgeman Art Library)

  39 John VI Kantakouzenos presiding over the Council of 1351, c. 1370–75 (Paris Bibliothèque Nationale; copyright © Bridgeman Art Library)

  40 Manuel II Palaiologos and his family, manuscript of Pseudo-Dionysios (Paris, Musée du Louvre; copyright © Bridgeman Art Library)

  41 Dioscorides, De materia medica, ‘Making Lead’, from an Arab translation of 1224, copied by ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Fadl’ (Paris, Musée du Louvre; copyright © Bridgeman Art Library)

  p. 337 Sundial flanked by peacocks, Skripou, central Greece, 873–4 (copyright © Judith Herrin)

  List of Maps

  1 Constantinople 363

  2 The Roman World 364–5

  3 The Byzantine Empire and Themata c. 800 366–7

  4 The Byzantine Empire c. 1025 368–9

  5 Byzantium in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries 370–71

  6 The Division of Byzantium post-1204 372-3

  Introduction:

  A Different History of Byzantium

  One afternoon in 2002, two workmen knocked on my office door in King’s College, London. They were doing repairs to the old buildings and had often passed my door with its notice: ‘Professor of Byzantine History’. Together they decided to stop by and ask me, ‘What is Byzantine history?’ They thought that it had something to do with Turkey.

  And so I found myself trying to explain briefly what Byzantine history is to two serious builders in hard hats and heavy boots. Many years of teaching had not prepared me for this. I tried to sum up a lifetime of study in a ten-minute visit. They thanked me warmly, said how curious it was, this Byzantium, and asked why didn’t I write about it for them? For someone dedicated to publishing on Byzantium I felt like objecting, but of course I knew what they meant. Endless books are written on Byzantine history – too many to count and most too long to read. Often they describe the succession of 90 emperors, and about 125 patriarchs of Constantinople, and innumerable battles, in predictable categories of political, military and religious activity, relentlessly across eleven hundred years. Few are attractive enough to engage the interest of construction workers, or indeed non-specialists of virtually any other kind. So I began to compose an answer to the question: ‘What is Byzantine history?’

  Immediately I got into difficulties – I made too many assumptions, couldn’t resist the abstruse anecdote. But I had always prided myself on being able to make Byzantine history interesting to audiences unfamiliar with it. As I searched for a method, I knew very well that in its long millennium Byzantium had enough colourful, shocking and tragic aspects to attract those who were seeking the sensational. But this reduced its history to dramatic episodes without depth, flattening the whole experience. Byzantium means more than wealth, mastery of the sea and the exercise of imperial power. I wanted them, and you the reader, to sense why Byzantium is also hard to grasp, difficult to place and can be obscure. This difficulty is compounded by contemporary newspapers’ use of ‘Byzantine’ as a term of insult, for example in phrases like ‘tax regulations of positively Byzantine complexity’ (a recent description of EU negotiations).

  Byzantium conjures up an image of opaque duplicity: plots, assassinations and physical mutilation, coupled with excessive wealth, glittering gold and jewels. During the Middle Ages, however, the Byzantines had no monopoly on complexity, treachery, hypocrisy, obscurity or riches. They produced a large number of intelligent leaders, brilliant military generals and innovative theologians, who are much maligned and libelled by such ‘Byzantine’ stereotypes. They never developed an Inquisition and generally avoided burning people at the stake. But there is a mystery associated with this ‘lost’ world, which is hard to define, partly because it does not have a modern heir. It remains hidden behind the glories of its medieval art: the gold, mosaics, silks and imperial palaces.

  To explain my appreciation of Byzantium, in this book I aim to set out its most significant high points as clearly and compellingly as I can; to reveal the structures and mentalities which sustained it. In this way I want to keep you interested to the end, so that you feel you get to know a new civilization. Crucially, I want you to understand how the modern western world, which developed from Europe, could not have existed had it not been shielded and inspired by what happened further to the east in Byzantium. The Muslim world is also an important element of this history, as is the love–hate relationship between Christendom and Islam.

  What are the key features of this important but little-known history? First, Byzantium was a thousand-year-long civilization which influenced all the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans and Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages. From the sixth to the fifteenth century, this influence waxed and waned but was a constant. Its civilization drew on pagan, Christian, Greek, Roman, ancient and specifically medieval components. Its cultural and artistic influences are now recognized as a lasting inheritance. But in addition, fundamental aspects of government such as the development of an imperial court with a diplomatic service and civilian bureaucracy, the ceremony of coronation, as well as the female exercise of political power, all developed in Byzantium.

  The grandeur of Constantinople, at the centre of a vast empire, with an inherited system of imperial government, and the variety of sources that inspired it, combined to give enormous confidence to both rulers and ruled. It is necessary to emphasize this aspect of Byzantium. By the time of the Emperor Justinian (527–65), the underlying structures of empire were two hundred years old and so firmly embedded that they appeared unchangeable. They had created a deeply rooted culture that sprang from ancient Greek, pre-Christian sources, as well as Roman and Christian ideas, both ideological and practical (for instance, philosophical arguments and military fortifications). The entire system was celebrated in imperial rhetoric and displayed in imperial art intended to elevate it to an everlasting permanency. However vacuous the sentiments expressed, they nonetheless confirmed and further engrained the self-confidence of Byzantine emperors, their courtiers and more humble subjects. They provided the bedrock of Byzantium’s exceptional ability to respond to severe challenges in the seventh century, again in the eleventh and most spectacularly in 1204. Each time it was able to adapt and reform by drawing on these deep inherited structures that combined in a rich awareness of traditions.

  In this sense, Byzantine culture embodies the French historian Fernand Braudel’s notion of the longue durée, the long term: that which survives the vicissitudes of changing governments, newfangled fashions or technological improvements, an ongoing inheritance that can both imprison and inspire. While Braudel applied this idea more to the geographical factors that determined the history of the Mediterranean, we can adapt it to distinguish Byzantine culture from those of its neighbours. For in contrast to other medieval societies both in the West and among the Muslims, Byzantium was old, many centuries old by the time of Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid in AD 800, and the structure of its culture was both a constraint and a source of strength. Indeed, as we will see, it was born old, importing into its capital city at its constructi
on the authority of already antique architecture and statuary. Its established cultural framework, condemned as conservative, praised as traditional, provided a shared sense of belonging, commemorated in distinctive and changing fashions all dedicated to the greater glory of Byzantium. This created a flexible heritage which proved able to respond, often with great determination, to enhance, preserve and sustain the empire through many crises.

  Byzantium’s imperial identity was strengthened by a linguistic continuity that linked its medieval scholars back to ancient Greek culture, and encouraged them to preserve texts by major philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, geographers, historians and doctors by copying, editing and commenting on them. Above all, Byzantium cherished the poems of Homer and produced the first critical editions of the Iliad and Odyssey. Although public performances of theatre died away, the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were closely studied and often committed to memory by generations of schoolchildren. They also learnt the speeches of Demosthenes and the dialogues of Plato. A strong element of ancient pagan wisdom was thus incorporated into Byzantium.

  This ancient heritage was combined with Christian belief, which gradually replaced the cults of the pagan gods. Byzantium nurtured early Christian monastic traditions on holy mountains like Sinai and Athos, where spiritual teachings still inspire monks and pilgrims. It undertook the conversion of the Bulgarians, Serbs and Russians to Christianity, which is why large parts of the Balkans are still dotted with Orthodox churches decorated with medieval frescoes and icons. And it maintained contact with those Christian centres that passed under Muslim control during the seventh century, supporting the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch, as well as communities even more distant like the churches of Ethiopia and Sudan, Persia, Armenia and Georgia.

  Using the inheritance of Roman technology and engineering skill, Byzantium continued to build aqueducts, fortifications, roads and bridges, and huge constructions such as the church of Holy Wisdom, St Sophia in Constantinople, which still displays its massive sixth-century form, complete with the largest dome ever built until St Peter’s in Rome a thousand years later. Its Byzantine dome has often been repaired but remains intact, and is copied in numerous smaller versions found in churches all over the Orthodox world. It also inspired the form for covered mosques, constructed when the Arabs moved out of their desert homeland where they worshipped in open courts. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is aptly named to commemorate the Muslim occupation of a holy place cherished by Jews and Christians. Not only its circular roof but also its vivid mosaics display Byzantine origins, since the seventh-century Emperor Justinian II was asked by Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik to send Byzantine craftsmen to cut the coloured stone and glass tesserae, which shimmer whenever they catch the light. They may also have set the 240-metre-long inscription from the Qur’an, running round the base of the dome, that Islam is the final revelation of Allah (God) and is superior to all others.