Download PDF | Art and Identity in Thirteenth-Century Byzantium Hagia Sophia and the Empire of Trebizond By Antony Eastmond, Routledge, 2004.
246 Pages
Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs
About the series
Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs is devoted to the history, culture and archaeology of the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds of the East Mediterranean region from the fifth to the twentieth century. It provides a forum for the publication of research completed by scholars from the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham, and those with similar research interests.
About the book
The church of Hagia Sophia in Trebizond, built by the emperor Manuel I Grand Komnenos (1238-63) in the aftermath of the Fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade, is the finest surviving Byzantine imperial monument of its period. Art and Identity in Thirteenth-Century Byzantium, with extensive illustrations in colour and black-and-white, provides a new analysis of the architecture, sculptural decoration and extensive wall paintings in the church. Antony Eastmond situates the church in the context of political and cultural developments across the Byzantine world in this turbulent period, and examines questions of cultural interchange on the borders of the Christian and Muslim worlds of eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus and Persia. He argues that a new visualisation of Byzantine imperial ideology emerged in Trebizond, determined as much by craftsmen and expectations of imperial power as by imperial decree; and that this was a credible alternative Byzantine identity to that developed in the empire of Nicaea.
About the author
Antony Eastmond is Reader in the History of Byzantine Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK
Acknowledgements
Any book with ‘Trebizond’ in its title will inevitably be compared with Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond. Just as inevitably it will be found wanting. However, I hope that what this book lacks in terms of the style, humour and philosophy of Rose Macaulay’s book it makes up for by the inclusion of pictures.
The British have a long history of studying the Pontos, and this book relies on the fruits of that history. The name that dominates the field (and my footnotes) is that of Bryer, who has supported and nurtured my work (although he may disagree with my conclusions). My study of Hagia Sophia depends on — and, J hope, celebrates - the restoration of the church carried out under the direction of David Winfield. David and June Winfield talked me through their memories of the work, showed me all their records and images, and offered generous hospitality and beautiful views on the Isle of Mull. My debt to them is evident on every page. The restoration work was organised by David Talbot Rice, whose interest in Trebizond stretched back to the 1920s, and was financed by the Russell Trust from 1957 to 1962. The Russell Trust’s continuing willingness to support the church, this time through a publication grant for this book is eloquent testimony to their longterm interest in the work carried out then: I thank Mrs Croal for her trust in my work. The Dr M. Alwyn Cotton Foundation was similarly generous.
Laurie, the heroine (hero?) of Macaulay’s book, was accompanied to Trebizond by Aunt Dot, Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg, and a camel (a white Arabian Dhalur [single hump]) among others; my various art historical pilgrimages to Trabzon between 1988 and 2001 were shared with Liz James, Zaza Skhirtladze and Marion Lynden-Bell (as she was then) among others, although here the analogy with Laurie becomes fraught. In between long stints at the Ayasofya Miizesi, to the staff of which I extend my thanks, my companions listened to and critiqued my ideas, and we witnessed the rise and fall of the Russian Bazaar and its accompanying Natashas. Whilst in the city, I received magnificent hospitality from Sevtap and Sena Tirko, the daughter and granddaughter of Cumhur Odabasio#lu, Bryer’s blood-brother, immortalized in The Towers of Trebizond.
My interest in Hagia Sophia and the empire of Trebizond started out as apractice exercise for an otherwise unrelated PhD on medieval Georgia in May 1990. The church has been festering away in my mind ever since. This book bears no relation to the naive text of more than a decade ago, for which many people will be greatly relieved, not least Robin Cormack, who made me write that first essay, and whose intellectual rigour remains an inspiration. The fact that I am still working on Byzantine matters ten years on is testament to the support and friendship I have received from many colleagues, not least Liz James, Ruth Webb, Dion Smythe and Barbara Zeitler. The final text was written at Warwick, where my colleagues in the History of Art department have listened in seminars to endless variations on this theme.
As my research on Trebizond progressed, I have received help and advice from Michael Angold, Julian Gardner, Zaga Gavrilovié, Robert Hillenbrand, Lynn Jones, Darejan Kidiashvili, Ruth Macrides, Margaret Mullett, Michael Rogers and Dorothy Verkerk. Michael Grianbart was kind enough to send me materials from Jacob Fallmerayer’s diaries, which he is currently in the process of publishing; Roger S. Wieck gave me an advance view of the Pierpont Morgan’s catalogue of Islamic Manuscripts; and Selina Ballance sent me a copy of an unknown watercolour of Hagia Sophia. Audiences in Birmingham, Chapel Hill, NC, Dublin, London and Oxford forced me to articulate and clarify my ideas, and I was able to manipulate the XXXII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held at Warwick in March 1999, to make speakers answer some of the questions that I had, and to fill in some of the huge gaps in my knowledge of the Christian East. I am grateful to all the speakers and others who attended it. One trip to Trabzon was organised as part of a tour for the British Museum, which enabled me to meet many people, not least David and Helen Melliar-Smith, who kindly shared their memories of Trebizond, and lent me their photographs from the 1960s. Other thanks for photographs go to Saba and Eteri in Georgia; Jim Crow; John Lowden; Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi, Nicole and Jean-Michel Thierry, Roger S. Wieck and Annabel Wharton; as well as to the staff of the DAI in Istanbul, the Benaki in Athens and the CMN in Paris. Harry Buglass prepared the maps for me, and John Smedley at Ashgate has long supported this work.
This book has long been in the background at home, where Marion, Helen and Stephen have all provided vital distractions.
This book received publication grants from the Russell Trust and the Dr M. Alwyn Cotton Foundation, and I thank both organisations for their very generous support.
Preface
In conduding the history of this Greek state [Trebizond], we inquire in vain for any benefit that it conferred on the human race. It seems a mere eddy in the torrent of events that connects the past with the future. The tumultuous agitation of the stream did not purify a single drop of the waters of life.
George Finlay’
In the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the city of Trebizond emerged as one of three new centres of the Byzantine empire, each ruled by a rival dynasty which sought to claim the imperial crown for itself. This small state, located at the south-east corner of the Black Sea, survived as an independent empire until 1461, eight years after the final fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. This book is concerned with the early history of the empire of Trebizond, from its creation to the late thirteenth century, which it examines through a study of its major surviving monument, the church of Hagia Sophia. Hagia Sophia was built by the emperor Manuel I Grand Komnenos (1238-63), the greatest of the city’s thirteenth-century emperors, and is the only complete Byzantine imperial commission from the period of the Latin empire of Constantinople (1204— 1261). It has not been the subject of detailed study for more than thirty years. The church provides important evidence about the development of Byzantine art in this period, and about the promotion of imperial identity by one of the rival claimants for the Byzantine throne. The early decades of the empire of Trebizond have also received relatively little attention, especially compared to its better documented later history. This book uses the study of the church and the history of the empire to illuminate each other.
Trebizond was one of the major Byzantine centres in eastern Anatolia. Its port was important for commerce arriving in caravans from the east. Its easily defensible position ensured its importance as a Byzantine military outpost, and it was used as a base for military expeditions to the east. Later it served as a stronghold as other parts of Anatolia fell first to invading Arabs and then to the Seljuq Turks. Consequently, Byzantine emperors over the centuries were concerned to protect, enhance and improve the city, and major commissions are recorded in, among others, the reigns of Justinian (527-65), Basil I (867-86) and Basil II (976-1025).” The relative distance of the city from Constantinople encouraged a degree of autonomy in the region, which was exploited by the local noble families, notably the Gabrades, who were able to wield much power and influence in Anatolian politics.? The city also acted as an important ecclesiastical centre to which neighbouring countries turned for advice and legitimacy and it had access to important silver mines in its hinterland.*
The natural borders of the empire, the Black Sea and the Pontic Alps, were its greatest defence and the guarantor of its security, but at the cost of isolating Trebizond from Anatolia and ultimately from Byzantine history. The state has long been relegated to the status of a semi-mythical place, famous for romance, decadence, luxury and intrigue. From as early as the sixteenth century, a mythical ‘Trebizond’ has acted as the setting for a series of orientalist tales designed to titillate and outrage European readers; a land where fable and legend are already stronger than fact and reason.” Indeed, the empire of Trebizond has been dismissed from Byzantine history for as long as it has been studied.® Finlay’s damning historical judgement of what he saw as a morally bankrupt and historically worthless despotic state, quoted at the start of this preface, has been repeated frequently by others.” Georg Ostrogorsky, in his general history of the Byzantine state, dismissed the empire as remote, insignificant, untouched and indifferent.®
Yet its first emperors self-consciously gave themselves the supreme imperial Byzantine titles and they saw themselves at the heart of the empire. They fought to recapture its capital of Constantinople, and they recreated much of the imperial court bureaucracy in this small city on the Black Sea.’ To study the empire of Trebizond, then, is to be faced by an immediate conflict. Should we judge it on its own terms, and according to its own pretensions, or accept the consensus of modern historians? Was Trebizond a true expression of Byzantium, or was it, as Michael Angold has described it, a ‘Greek emirate’: "Its history belongs with that of Anatolia and the Black Sea rather than with that of the late Byzantine empire"?””
The study of Trebizond calls into question many preconceptions about what Byzantium was, and argues that our modern notions of what Byzantium represented in the period after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 are in need of substantial revision. With the church of Hagia Sophia as its principal piece of evidence, this book explores the identity of empire presented by emperor Manuel I Grand Komnenos and his predecessors. The church allows us to study a material manifestation of an imperial ideology, and to see one of the possible paths along which Byzantine art and culture developed away from Constantinople. The book takes a thematic approach to the design and decoration of the church and analyses its architecture, sculpture and painting in order to explore the issue of Byzantine political identity and cultural orientation in Trebizond. In recent years there has been a wealth of new research into the cultures which surrounded Trebizond, the Georgians and Laz to the east, the Armenians to the south-east, the Turkoman tribes of the Mengujekids, Saltugids, Artugids and others to the south, and the Seljuqs of Rum to the south-west. This allows us to place the empire of Trebizond more firmly in its regional context, and to study the degree to which its culture derived from those around it, and the degree to which it was able to appropriate ideas, motifs and policies from its neighbours and use them to its own ends. What was Byzantium in the thirteenth century?
Introduction
The Byzantine empires in the thirteenth century
The church of Hagia Sophia in Trebizond (plates I, IT) was built and decorated in the reign of the emperor Manuel I Grand Komnenos (1238-63). At his coronation, which probably took place in the cathedral of the Panagia Chrysokephalos in Trebizond, Manuel adopted the imperial title of ‘Faithful Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans’. This was the traditional title of the ruler of the east Roman empire, Byzantium.’ Manuel thereby inherited a claim to act as Christ’s vice-regent on earth and to wield universal authority over all Christendom, which had begun when his grandfather, Alexios I Grand Komnenos (1204-14) had first established himself as ruler in the city. Through his coronation Manuel became one of three men to appropriate the hallowed imperial title and the potentially awesome power that went with it. It was a rivalry that had been fought for more than thirty years since the fall to the Fourth Crusade in 1204 of Constantinople, the queen of cities, the heart of empire, the new Rome and new Sion. By 1238, the rivals were well established, as were the natures of their claims. Each man ruled a different part of the fragmented territories of the Byzantine empire, and each man portrayed himself as the rightful inheritor of the imperial crown, and as the legitimate ruler of the whole Christian world (Fig. 1). In so doing all three sought to proclaim their state as the true successor to the Roman empire: Byzantium in exile.
The claimant in the strongest position was the emperor John IIT Doukas Vatatzes (1221-54) who ruled north-western Anatolia and much of Thrace from Nicaea.” His location across the Sea of Marmara from Constantinople, and his political and military position gave him the most realistic hope of recapturing the great city. He was surrounded by many remnants of the old Byzantine imperial court and bureaucracy, transplanted to Nicaea from Constantinople. John could claim an additional aura of legitimacy from the fact that he had been crowned as emperor in 1221 by the traditional bestower of the crown, the patriarch of Constantinople, Manuel I Sarantenos, who shared John’s exile in Nicaea. John’s father-in-law and predecessor, Theodore I Laskaris (1205-21), who had been crowned as the first Nicaean emperor in 1208, had held the imperial rank of despot before the fall of Constantinople in 1204, so providing another link with the old regime.
The second rival, the emperor John Komnenos Doukas (1237-42), was based in Thessaloniki, to the west of Constantinople. However, his claim to the title of emperor and his chances of recapturing Constantinople were, by 1238, looking increasingly frail.* John acted as a front for his father, Theodore Komnenos Doukas (ruled 1215-30; died 1253). Theodore had expanded from his base in Epiros to capture the major city of Thessaloniki, where he was crowned as emperor in 1225 by the autocephalous archbishop of Ohrid, Demetrios Chomatenos.* Although he was last of the rivals to elevate himself to imperial rank, Theodore had briefly looked the most likely winner, when his army moved to within striking distance of the walls of Constantinople. Theodore had only been prevented from retaking the great city by tsar Ivan II Asen of Bulgaria (1218-41) who defeated him in battle at Kokotnitsa in 1230, and later blinded him. On his release in 1237, Theodore sought to re-establish power, first by forcing his ineffectual successor Manuel (1230-37) into exile, and then by ruling through his son John, whom he had crowned as emperor. John’s position, with little military support or resources, was barely tenable and in 1242 he was forced by John III Vatatzes of Nicaea to renounce his claim to the throne and accept the lesser title of despot, which he held until his death in 1244.
Manuel I Grand Komnenos’s position in this contest was ambivalent. In many ways he had the strongest claim to the imperial purple. He could trace his descent in a direct line back to the Komnenian dynasty which had dominated the Byzantine throne for over a century until 1185, and he was the fourth man to rule Trebizond since 1204.° Although Manuel's use of the title of ‘Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans’ in his donor portrait in Hagia Sophia is now the earliest surviving record of the use of the imperial rank in the city, the rebuilding of the city’s cathedral after 1214 by Alexios I Grand Komnenos to accommodate coronation ritual (which is examined in chapter 2) suggests that its adoption already had a long history in Trebizond, possibly even predating that in Nicaea.® Moreover, Manuel also had access to wealth through rich silver mines in the Pontic Alps, and this funded his building programme and his army, which emerged as an effective and capable force under his rule.”
Manuel's disadvantage, however, lay in the location of his empire. Trebizond stood at the north-east corner of Anatolia, hemmed in between the Black Sea and the Pontic mountains, and so was isolated from direct contact with Constantinople. Its southern and western borders ran against those of the Seljuq Turks, whose powerful state frequently threatened the empire's very survival; and to the east lay Georgia, which also claimed Trebizond as a vassal state. The Mongol conquests of the Caucasus and Anatolia in the 1230s changed the position further. Manuel's empire was on the fringe of the Byzantine world, yet he sought to proclaim Trebizond as its centre. Manuel ruled from 1238 until 1263, and so encompassed nearly half the period of exile, and overlapped by two years the recovery of Constantinople by Michael VII Palaiologos in 1261. His reign therefore saw an enormous change in the nature and status of the Byzantine empire, and the veracity and viability of his own claim.
The three Greek emperors faced a fourth rival, the Latin emperor Baldwin II (1237-61), who ruled in the great city of Constantinople, the cornerstone of the empire, and the key to its revival.* Baldwin was dependent on Venetian support and his policies were often determined by Venetian interests, which severely limited his ability to manoeuvre, even after appeals to the west.” The Orthodox kingdoms around Byzantium also sought to take advantage of the power vacuum at the centre. From the 1180s, the rulers of Bulgaria and Georgia had taken advantage of the disputes and usurpations at the imperial court to begin to display their power in increasingly imperial terms.!° This was followed by the Rubenid/Hetumid rulers of Armenian Cilicia after 1204, and then by the Nemanji¢ rulers of Serbia who were able to compel recognition of their monarchic status from both East and West in 1217." Other areas on the edges of the Byzantine world, such as Rhodes, also sought to break away from central control.’
There was nothing new in rival claimants all seeking the Byzantine crown at the same time; imperial opponents had faced each other in every century of the empire’s history. What was new was the manner and nature of the rivalry between the three Greek contenders. This was no simple civil war to be fought out between rival armies, although each of the successor empires did seek to win back Constantinople and overcome their rivals by military might. While Constantinople remained in Latin hands and the Greek contenders sought to build up their own power bases outside the symbolic capital, the war had to be fought by different means, in which government and Orthodoxy, honour and legitimacy, ceremony and ritual were all key weapons. It was a fight for the aura, symbols and authority of imperial rule as much as for the real power that might accompany it. This was a battle to recreate the empire in exile; and each successor state sought to argue that it was the true inheritor of the power and authority of the Byzantine empire and that only its rulers could legitimately claim the titles and attributes of the emperor.
This book investigates the ways in which one of the rivals, Manuel I Grand Komnenos, proclaimed his claim to the throne and his inheritance of Byzantine power in the successor state of Trebizond. It analyses Manuel's claims through a close examination of the principal surviving record of his reign, the church of Hagia Sophia at Trebizond, which provides a detailed and expressive model for the construction of a Byzantine imperial identity in exile. The image of Byzantine identity developed in Nicaea (which will be outlined below), which most historians have accepted as the standard model for the thirteenth century, was not the only model available. There was more to Byzantium than just Nicaea after 1204.
The twin contests for Constantinople and for imperial legitimacy underwent many twists and turns in the decades after 1204 as the various rivals were able to exert their claims with more or less conviction and authority.. However, military or political reverses did not necessarily affect the arguments for legitimacy. The rhetoric of empire and the realities of power were not mutually dependent. The territorial battle was only finally settled in 1261, when Michael VIII Palaiologos, ruler of Nicaea, recaptured Constantinople after its Latin occupiers had fled. He entered the city at the head of a great procession led by the famous icon of the Theotokos Hodegetria to be crowned again in the church of Hagia Sophia. His recapture of the imperial city re-established the authority of the Byzantine emperor and created a new ruling dynasty, which was to remain in power until 1453. However, Manuel I Grand Komnenos did not concede defeat, but continued to maintain his claim to imperial supremacy until his death. It is this rhetorical, moral battle for supremacy, which is recorded in the monuments of the city of Trebizond, that forms the core of this book. The titular battle continued through the reigns of the next three emperors of Trebizond (all sons of Manuel), until John II Grand Komnenos (1280-85; 1285-97) finally agreed in 1282 a treaty with Michael VIII in Constantinople. At this, according to the Palaiologan historian George Pachymeres, writing in c.1310, John I agreed to exchange his red shoes for black and to accept the lesser title of Despot of Trebizond, in return for a marriage alliance with Michael’s daughter, Eudokia. 18
It is often said that Constantinople was Byzantium. For the chronicler Niketas Choniates, lamenting the city in exile in Nicaea in c.1210, it was the terrestrial heaven, the second firmament, the source of so much of the empire's social, political, economic, artistic and cultural life: ‘O city, city, eye of all cities, universal boast, supramundane wonder, wet nurse of churches, leader of the faith, guide of Orthodoxy, beloved topic of orations, the abode of every good thing!’ As a result, the fall of the city has encouraged the period of the Latin empire to be neglected by modern historians and art historians. Indeed, more often than not, the years from 1204 to 1261 are only briefly outlined in larger studies of Byzantine history and culture.’ The exile has provided a means for the modern categorisation of Byzantine history: the ‘middle Byzantine’ period ending with the calamitous sacking of Constantinople by the forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and the ‘late Byzantine’ or ‘Palaiologan’ period only beginning with Michael VIDI's triumphant return in 1261.° The years of exile occupy a liminal space. However, the loss of Constantinople raises many questions about the Byzantine empire, its self-perception and about constructions of identity. Examining these reveals much about the very nature of the empire, and so this period must be seen as one of the most interesting in Byzantine cultural history. A study of the fragmentation of Byzantium can tell us much about what the empire was. How did Byzantium survive in exile? What devices were adopted to promote and retain belief in a divinely-ordained empire, especially at a time when that divine support had been so obviously undermined by the loss of the imperial city? How did claimants promote their rule, both on the larger international stage where their claims to Constantinople were judged, but also on the local stage, where their power was actually exercised among a local population that was very different from that in the great city?’” How did the Greek emperors face the problem of projecting a suitable imperial identity which would act as a rallying call to Greeks in the event of their recapturing Constantinople, but which at the same time would project a credible image of power to the peoples they actually ruled, in these three disparate parts of the empire?’® One of the themes that will concern us in this book is the ways in which these two different and often contrasting needs were balanced. What did these rival rulers believe that they were fighting for: what was Byzantium?
To the extent that recent historians have seen continuity in Byzantium from 1204 to 1261, they have looked to the empire of Nicaea.” That they should do so was the aim of George Akropolites’s Chronike Syngraphe, which is the main narrative source for the re-conquest. Akropolites was related by marriage to Michael VIII and it is apparent where his sympathies lay. The modern emphasis on Nicaea in the years of exile has, of course, been validated with hindsight by the fact that it was Nicaea that did eventually provide the new emperor in Constantinople. It has also largely been dictated by the survivals of thirteenth-century chronicle accounts, encomia, letters, charters and other documents from Nicaea rather than from Epiros or Trebizond.”” These Nicaean texts reveal much about the Nicaean concepts and perceptions of the Byzantine empire, and it is from these that most historians have drawn their conclusions. The government and society of Nicaea have been the subject of a magisterial study by Michael Angold, which has examined the continuity of government in exile.”4
The texts from Nicaea show that the debate about imperial legitimacy and power, indeed about the very identity of Byzantium, raged at a number of different levels in the thirteenth century. The loss of Constantinople resulted in many practical problems for all the rival states. They had to establish armies, invent or revise government bureaucracies to collect taxes, organise commerce and control society, and they sought to oversee and direct the organisation of the church in their territories. These were the immediate priorities for day-to-day government. However, the rival emperors had not only to govern but also be seen to govern, and this opened up a series of larger, theoretical problems. The loss of Constantinople forced many to reevaluate what the empire was, what powers its ruler held and how it should be ruled. Forced into exile, away from the palaces, churches, fora and other monuments that had for so many centuries housed imperial power and framed the ways in which it was expressed, the basic tenets of imperial power and its public display needed to be reviewed. Could the empire exist away from the city that lay at its core? Did the emperor retain his authority over all Christendom, when his actual power was so limited and he could no longer claim to be the guardian of so many Christian relics and shrines?
At its most abstract, the collapse and fragmentation of the Byzantine empire after 1204 raised questions about the very nature of Christian rule. The most fundamental of these was how a political, but quasi-theocratic entity, which claimed universal power over all Christendom, could continue to exist and function when divided. Must the secular and ecclesiastical realms embodied in Byzantium coincide? This issue primarily concerned theologians and clergymen, but it had important ramifications for political leaders. The key ecclesiastical figures of the period provided very different answers.” Germanos II, patriarch in Nicaea (1223-40), saw these two complementary aspects of Christian power as indivisible and he exerted much effort to promote both secular and ecclesiastical universalism. This consequently meant that Germanos supported the Nicaean emperor John II Vatatzes’s claims to power, since they would inevitably reflect on his own attempts to maintain the traditional, universal authority of the patriarchate. The opposing view was propounded, unsurprisingly, away from Nicaea, where rival emperors and clergymen were seeking to enhance their own power in the new world order.
The alternative case was put forward most powerfully by Demetrios Chomatenos, archbishop of Ohrid (1216/7-c. 1236). He produced a different justification of Byzantine power in which the need for secular and ecclesiastical unity was avoided. Demetrios argued that so long as the patriarch was recognised by all, that Orthodoxy remained united, then the secular power could be divided. Universality depended on religious and not political unity. With one patriarch, the number of rulers was immaterial.” This alternative definition of the Orthodox world, of course, defended Chomatenos’s own actions and authority. A divided empire had given him the opportunity to crown Theodore Komnenos Doukas as emperor in Thessaloniki, an unprecedented rise in the status of the archbishopric of Ohrid. Demetrios’s acceptance of the patriarch’s spiritual supremacy masked his delight in a new political reality. The coronation of Theodore had formalised the recognition of the new pretender, and so undermined the religious foundations, and even existence, of the Byzantine state. The new political world had first to be argued for in a ecclesiastical context. Similar arguments could, of course, be adopted by the emperors of Trebizond to justify their own claim to power.
The desire to claim universal authority also encouraged the rulers of Nicaea to enter negotiations with Rome for a union of the churches. The policy was first pursued by patriarch Germanos II, and had symbolic and practical aims. The symbolic purpose was to assert Germanos’s patriarchal claim to parity with (if not superiority over) the pope and thereby give him universal spiritual authority over the eastern and western churches. The practical side of the measure was to remove papal support for the Latins in Constantinople and so hasten the fall of the city. The bitter nature of relations between the eastern and western churches over the previous centuries provoked great resistance to this policy. As early as 1220, John Apokaukos, metropolitan of Naupaktos in Epiros, condemned patriarchal plans to negotiate with Rome, and in later decades Nicaea’s rivals were able to appeal to anti-union sentiment as a key element in their claim to imperial authority.4 From a political point of view, the policy had important effects. John DI Doukas Vatatzes managed to manoeuvre the negotiations so that they were dominated by the needs of imperial rather than patriarchal policy. This was later continued by Michael VIII Palaiologos, who was able to impose a settlement on the church at the council of Lyons in 1274.” Michael's negotiations and treaty with Rome allowed his rivals to give themselves greater authority as they cast themselves as guardians of Orthodoxy against Nicaean heresy. The internal rivals to church union threatened to recognise the emperors of Trebizond after the treaty.” From the mid 1240s, the rulers of Epiros/Thessaloniki and also Trebizond were able to promote themselves as Orthodox in contrast to the rulers of Nicaea, and this became a key feature in their imperial identities.””
For the rival emperors, the battle for legitimacy was fought in a different arena that had more specific goals: to assert their claims to the throne and to delineate their superiority over their rivals. From the surviving Nicaean texts it is possible to build up a detailed picture of the ways in which the political ideology was developed by its emperors between 1204 and 1261. It is this model that has been seen by modern historians as being the definition of Byzantine imperial identity in the thirteenth century. At its core lay traditional ideas about the emperor as God's vice-regent on earth. These were expounded through a rhetoric of continuity and renewal, which sought to create an image of an unbroken link with the past; an idea that was reinforced after the recapture of Constantinople.”* For their coronations, the emperors of Nicaea conspicuously adhered to the old symbols of power and legitimacy, such as the raising aloft of the emperor on a shield at his coronation, which then placed their election in a hallowed, if partly fictive and interrupted, tradition going back to the fourth century.” The ceremony of anointing the emperor at his coronation also took on increased importance as the Nicaean emperor and his rivals all sought to claim divine legitimacy. There is debate whether the emperors of Nicaea innovated in this area by using chrism instead of oil, in an attempt to ensure that the Nicaean coronation ceremony was not upstaged by that in Latin Constantinople or Thessaloniki.*° The patriarch had claimed the sole power to consecrate chrism, but the Latin emperor could turn to the new Latin patriarch to sanctify his own supply, and in Thessaloniki the myrrh that emerged from the tomb of St Demetrios was considered holy enough to use at coronation.
A similar moulding of the old and the new can be seen in the Nicaean alterations of the structures of Byzantine government. The emperors retained the established range of court ranks, titles and hierarchies, seeming to maintain the same old imperial structures and bureaucracy of government. But, as Angold has argued, the retention of these titles disguised a subtle but far-reaching transformation towards a far more efficient and simpler household system of government.*! The old rhetoric of Byzantine government was preserved but was adapted to fit the new administrative conditions. The concept of Byzantium superficially remained the same, but it was gradually being remodelled to match the circumstances of Nicaea. And as this definition of Byzantium came to mirror the actual state of Nicaea, so too did it exclude any alternative definitions being promoted by its rivals.
Ruth Macrides has noted that the Nicaean model of imperial rule was very subtly nuanced, and subject to constant change as successive emperors felt their way towards a construct of power and legitimacy that most closely suited them.” John II Vatatzes and Theodore II Laskaris sought to explain their inheritance of power in different ways from the emperors of the previous thirty years. They did not exploit the rhetoric of renewal embodied in the idea of the ‘new Constantine’ which had been prevalent in previous centuries.** This was possibly in recognition of the disparity between their reduced circumstances and the powers embodied in the rhetoric of the claim. Instead, they sought to ground their power in the realities of their position and to re-establish the basis of their legitimacy. John II even re-evaluated the source of his power, looking to his subjects as much as to God. This produced some inconsistencies in his position. He paraded his own inheritance of power by proclaiming himself porphyrogennetos on his coins, but at the same time he refused to crown his son as co-emperor.* He said that imperial legitimacy could only come through the acclamation of the people. Equally, the imperial finances were carefully harboured, and the emperor claimed not to be above the law.™ It would appear that these emperors were trying to avoid the internal tensions caused by basing power purely on a Constantinopolitan model that no longer suited their current conditions. This approach found support in the writings of men such as Niketas Choniates and Nikephoros Blemmydes who explicitly blamed the loss of Constantinople on the corruption of its government and the degenerate lifestyle of the ruling class in the years up to 1204.3”
The recapture of Constantinople in 1261 saw an end to these experiments. Michael VIII Palaiologos was able to abandon these ideas and return to the established rhetoric of power. On his return to the city he immediately revived imperial processions and the cults of the greatest icons, notably that of the Theotokos Hodegetria, which had been kept by the Venetians in the Pantokrator monastery. He actively promoted himself as the new Constantine, the re-founder of Constantinople.** He even set up on a column a bronze statue of himself offering the city to the Archangel Michael, which echoed the early bronze imperial statues in the city, so many of which had been destroyed after 1204.” The tentative steps taken by his predecessors to re-assess the nature of imperial power, it seemed, could safely be ignored. Instead Michael preferred to do everything that he could to stress continuity with pre-1204 Constantinople, creating a fiction that the fall of the city had never taken place. The short-term effects of this were to diminish further the authority and standing of his rivals, but in the long term it failed to recognise the new realities of the empire.
A more significant change in the years 1204-61 came in the way the empire and its make-up were defined by the emperors of Nicaea and their patriarchs. The new definition was still one which saw the empire as the fountainhead of Christendom, with the patriarch (now resident in Nicaea) at its centre. However, it now also increasingly identified itself around a core of Hellenism. The rhetoric of political and theological universality was elided with a rhetoric of cultural exclusivity. As the terminology of the empire shifted to describe its subjects as Hellenes (Hellenes) in addition to Rhomaioi (Romans), so there was a shift in the self-perception of the empire itself. Until the twelfth century, ‘Hellenic’ had had a pejorative slant, a means of referring to the pagan, classical past in opposition to the Christian present. It now began to lose that negative aspect, and instead became a positive characteristic that could proclaim the unique heritage and longevity of civilisation inherited by the emperors of Nicaea. This transformation had begun in the twelfth century, but accelerated after 1204.“° Theodore I Laskaris, writing about the ruins at Pergamon, even compared his own times unfavourably with those of classical Greece.“ Hellenism now became a key element in the identification of the Byzantine state, and came to be interpreted as an increasingly exclusive intellectual, territorial and even ethnic trait.47 This had both literary and physical manifestations. It excluded and alienated other ethnic groups within the empire, such as the Armenians around Troy, who then sought status through rebellion and alliance with the Latins. In 1205, this led to their massacre by Theodore I Laskaris.** John III Vatatzes and Theodore II Laskaris both enforced the conversion of Jews in Nicaea.“ This attempt by the Nicaeans to restrict Byzantine legitimacy has been seen as an attempt to give themselves, and by implication the Byzantine empire, a Greek identity which could not be claimed by any of its other rivals. This policy seems to have begun as a way to give the Nicaeans a weapon against their Latin rivals in Constantinople, who from the 1240s at least, proclaimed a government free from any Greek taint. However, it was expanded to be used against the empire’s Greek rivals in Epiros/Thessaloniki and Trebizond. Epiros/Thessaloniki could be written out of the Hellenic polity because it lay beyond the Pindos mountains, which George Akropolites defined as the border of ‘our Hellenic land’; and Trebizond could be excluded because of its largely non-Greek population.” An economic policy of self-sufficiency was also used to similar ends. The sumptuary laws of John Ul, which were primarily designed to protect domestic cloth production from western and Muslim imports, also served to help define the state and give it a sense of identity and independence.*”
The justification of imperial power that emerges from Nicaea in the period of exile is one that was sophisticated but in flux. Its mixture of revivals of traditions and innovation, and the ways in which it subtly changed direction in order to suit changing political conditions demonstrate the care with which the image of power was cultivated.
We have less evidence for the imperial identity that was constructed in Epiros/Thessaloniki.® As has already been seen, the policy of the union of the eastern and western churches that was pursued in Nicaea allowed Theodore Komnenos Doukas and his successors to use the defence of Orthodoxy as a central feature of their argument for imperial legitimacy. It enabled them to promote themselves as the true defenders of the faith and so attract disaffected members of the Nicaean court. It also encouraged them to promote the independence of the church in their territory as a way of demonstrating their preservation of Orthodoxy. Theodore sought to deny the right of the patriarch to nominate bishops in his territory.”
In general, it seems that the imperial identity of Epiros/Thessaloniki was largely determined in opposition to that established in Nicaea. This is perhaps unsurprising given that by the time that Theodore was crowned as emperor in 1225, Nicaea had already had eighteen years in which to develop its own ideology. The new emperors were always fighting to catch up with the aura of authority that the Nicaean emperors were able to exude. The result is that what little we know appears to be a defensive strategy, responding to what emerged elsewhere, rather than the result of any internal, coherent ideology. The evidence of coins and seals suggests that the emperors of Epiros/Thessaloniki attempted to promote their imperial credentials through a rhetoric of continuity, echoing Nicaea, although with less regard for the credibility of their claims.°° Manuel Komnenos Doukas (1230-37), the weakest of the three Thessalonikan emperors, even commissioned coins showing himself with St Constantine, a comparison he could never live up to.’ The only major innovation that we know about is the exploitation of the power of the local cult of St Demetrios in Thessaloniki, one of the most popular and venerated saints in the Byzantine world. Demetrios frequently appears on the coins and seals of the rulers of Thessaloniki.” The saint was also invoked in arguments about the legitimacy of imperial coronation in the city. In general, Theodore, Manuel and John do not seem to have had the time or desire to produce an ideology with the subtlety and nuances of that in Nicaea. Presumably from 1225 to 1230, John relied on force of arms and the imminent recapture of Constantinople to support his case; and thereafter the claim was largely redundant.
Although John Komnenos Doukas was forced to renounce his imperial title in 1242, the territory of Epiros remained largely independent of Nicaea (and then Constantinople), and its rulers seem to have taken over aspects of the imperial claim. Later despots were to adopt some of the trappings of imperial power and display at their capital at Arta, with the use of expensive imperial dress and mosaic.™ They had briefly tried to go one step further, and the seal on a chrysobull from Vatopedi in 1247 records that Michael II of Epiros (123171) used the full imperial titles.°° No other evidence supports this daim and this indicates the haphazard nature of the Epirote imperium.
The empire of Trebizond provides evidence of an alternative definition of Byzantium and Byzantine imperial power. This can be used to supplement those produced in Nicaea and Epiros/Thessaloniki, and to broaden arguments about the development of the ideal of Byzantium during the years of exile. This alternative definition is available by approaching the subject both from a different perspective and by using different evidence. The rival model of empire that was produced by the emperors of Trebizond was no less valid than that proclaimed in Nicaea, and by studying it now it is possible to examine the different pressures and tensions which underlay the construction of identity across the Byzantine world. Although Trebizond was cut off from Constantinople geographically, the model of imperial authority that was constructed by its emperors enabled it to act more influentially than its weak political position might at first sight lead one to believe. However, this study is more concerned with the emperors of Trebizond’s perceptions of their power and their imperial pretensions than with the realities of their political position.
This evidence for a new definition of Byzantium comes from sources that have largely been ignored by conventional historians: the material remains of the empire of Trebizond, and in particular the design and decoration of its churches. The art of Trebizond can provide important evidence for the maintenance of an alternative Byzantine ideal of power and identity through the years of exile. The result of this is a reassessment of Byzantine art and culture in this period that shows the divergent nature of ideas of identity and power in the thirteenth century as different factors influenced the development of the rival states. The art of Trebizond can provide a new, broader definition of Byzantium. It should be remembered that the Trapezuntine definition of Byzantine identity proved to be exceptionally successful, and enabled the pocket empire to outlive its rival in Constantinople until 1461.
One of the great problems with studying the years of exile that historians have faced is the lack of contemporary sources from outside Nicaea. The few histories that do survive force us to look through Nicaean eyes and vividly demonstrate that history is written by the victors. No thirteenth-century history survives from either Trebizond or Epiros/Thessaloniki.°° The main sources about the thirteenth century in Trebizond, the chronicle of Michael Panaretos and Joseph Lazaropoulos’s account of the miracles of St Eugenios, were both written over a century later.*” However, when we turn to material remains the situation is reversed. Few buildings survive that can be connected with the rival empires of Epiros/Thessaloniki or Nicaea. For Nicaea, apart from the Laskarid fortifications, only a few scattered, minor churches and the empty shell of the imperial palace at Nymphaion still stand, although two larger foundations, the monastery of St Antony in Nicaea and the imperial funerary monastery at Sosandra are known from documentary sources.’ Wall paintings may have been commissioned, but all are now lost.’ Manuscripts do survive from the thirteenth century, some of which may have originated in Nicaea, and the city certainly had a lively intellectual climate and active collectors of books, notably Nikephoros Blemmydes.™ However, manuscripts do not share the ideology of display that is implicit in monumental art.
For Epiros/Thessaloniki there are more survivals, but almost all are associated with the later Despotate rather than the period of empire. In Thessaloniki, only a few repairs to the city wall now remain from the period of the empire, and the circumstances of its emperors suggests that they would have had little time or money to devote to non-defence work.” The midthirteenth-century churches in Arta do not seem to show an interest in displaying imperial power; they are very small, even the mausoleum church of Michael II is only just over 10m square. Only the mosaics in the Paregoritissa at Arta demonstrate a later response to the need to display wealth, magnificence and power.
It is therefore difficult to reconstruct the ways in which the attributes of empire and the magnificence of imperial power were proclaimed in these two states. For Trebizond, however, we are much more fortunate. Three of the major churches of the city survive, its cathedral of the Panagia Chrysokephalos, the church of the major cult saint of Trebizond, St Eugenios (although both of these churches were partially remodelled in the fourteenth century, and still hide much beneath their modern Turkish whitewash), and Manuel I’s church of Hagia Sophia. Fragments of the great palace in the citadel between the ravines also survive. These free us from the literary construction of Byzantium produced in Nicaea, and allow us to see how empire was proclaimed by one of the rival empires. In addition the coins of Manuel I Grand Komnenos and a reliquary of the True Cross that he commissioned provide further evidence from his reign. This book brings together all the known material evidence associated with Manuel I and the early empire.
This book primarily uses visual evidence as its source. Material remains are no less historical document than texts, but they are far less exploited. In the Byzantine world visual culture was a central component of society. It is well known that the public presentation of power through art, architecture, ceremonial and ritual was a fundamental aspect of imperial government.® To ignore the physical manifestations of Byzantine power is to neglect essential evidence. Hagia Sophia and the other buildings and objects examined in this book were created by imperial will, and provided a public display of imperial power. These were the major imperial commissions of the empire of Trebizond, concerned with the core activities of the state: the coronations and funerals of emperors, the housing of the imperial court and government, and the celebration of the liturgy. Buildings framed the emperor: they provided the settings and props for imperial rituals and ceremonials, they articulated the display of power in concrete form both to the empire's subjects and to its foreign visitors, and they provided a permanent record of imperial ambition and desire. At the same time, imagery on coins allowed imperial claims to be projected further afield. Public works embodied and expressed the political, ideological, theological and cultural concerns of the emperors of Trebizond through every aspect of their design. The architectural design and location of buildings, the choice of materials, the incorporation of spolia, the selection of non-figurative decoration, as well as the choice and juxtaposition of inscriptions and figurative imagery all act as signifiers of identity.
Link
Press Here
