Download PDF | ( Publications Of The Society For The Promotion Of Byzantine Studies, 19) Marc D. Lauxtermann Mark Whittow, Byzantium In The Eleventh Century Being In Between Routledge ( 2019)
271 Pages
The eleventh century in Byzantium is all about being in between, whether this is between Basil II and Alexios Komnenos, between the forces of the Normans, the Pechenegs and the Turks, or between different social groupings, cultural identities and religious persuasions. It is a period of fundamental changes and transformations, both internal and external, but also a period rife with clichés and dominated by the towering presence of Michael Psellos whose usually self-contradictory accounts continue to loom large in the field of Byzantine studies.
The essays collected here, which were delivered at the 45th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, explore new avenues of research and offer new perspectives on this transitional period. The book is divided into four thematic clusters: ‘The age of Psellos’ studies this crucial figure and seeks to situate him in his time; ‘Social structures’ is concerned with the ways in which the deep structures of Byzantine society and economy responded to change; ‘State and Church’ offers a set of studies of various political developments in eleventh-century Byzantium; and “The age of spirituality’ offers the voices of those for whom Psellos had little time and little use: monks, religious thinkers and pious laymen.
Marc D. Lauxtermann is Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature and Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford University. He hails from Amsterdam. He has written extensively on Byzantine poetry and metre, and is the co-editor of a recent book on the letters of Psellos. Further research interests include translations of oriental tales in Byzantium, the earliest grammars and dictionaries of vernacular Greek, and the development of the Greek language in the eighteenth century.
Mark Whittow is the University Lecturer in Byzantine Studies at the University of Oxford. Recent or forthcoming publications include ‘Byzantium’s Eurasian Policy in the Age of the Tiirk Empire’, in Maas and Di Cosmo’s Entangled Empires: Rome, Iran, China, and the Eurasian Steppe in Late Antiquity (2017); ‘Byzantium and the Feudal Revolution’ in HowardJohnston and Whittow’s The Transformation of Byzantium (2017); and ‘The End of Antiquity in the Lykos Valley’ in Simsek’s The Lykos Valley and Neighbourhood in Late Antiquity (2016).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The 45th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies was held in Exeter College, Oxford on 24-6 March 2012, three remarkably warm days for the season, the second of which not only happened to coincide with the liturgical feast of the Annunciation, but also saw a blockade of Exeter College by LGBT activists. Reason enough, one would say, to enjoy the lovely weather and the idyllic surroundings of Oxford. And yet they came in droves, from nearby and further afield, ostensibly to listen to talks on Byzantium in the eleventh century, but also, even though they may not have realized it, to explore in-betweenness (it’s a word, look it up).
There was a record number of 52 speakers (23 lectures and 29 short communications) and 150 participants, for which we are immensely grateful. All this would not have been possible without the kind and generous support of the A.G. Leventis Foundation, the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, the Interfaculty Committee for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and the History Faculty. We are also most grateful to the staff of Exeter College and our two energetic student assistants, Prerona Prasad and Eleni Karafotia.
INTRODUCTION
Marc D. Lauxtermann
There are moments in history when time suddenly seems to accelerate and speed on, leaving behind a trail of bewildered and confused spectators: such is the case with the eleventh century in Byzantium. In poem 66, John Mauropous expresses his surprise at seeing how promptly officials are raised through all the ranks of the imperial administration: the traditional cursus honorum has become a dizzying experience in his time (probably the reign of Monomachos, but perhaps later), and he writes: dA Bev H x0és, 1 8 éveotéoa tpéyet, / Kai tv Mapodoav adprov yVéc tig Opaoet, ‘yesterday is gone, and the present is speeding by: as some may say, today will be yesterday tomorrow’.
This is the historical sense of in-betweenness, of being caught up by momentous events and then left behind wondering what has just happened. Is the eleventh century a short Hobsbawmian one (say, 1025 to 1071, from grandeur to misery), a long interval between the Macedonian and Comnenian heydays (say, late tenth to early twelfth centuries), or a blitz moment of Psellian bliss (roughly 1042-75)?
In-betweenness is a state of mind. In postcolonial studies it indicates the being in between cultures, the fate of second- or third-generation immigrants in Europe. In postmodern urban development studies it indicates the being in between places, the fate of commuters travelling from A to B: the London Tube, for example, is a ‘heterotopy’ (to use the term of Foucault), a place of difference and abandonment, a unique non-place in between conflicting identities (say, loyal employee and loving husband).
In our field of studies the concept of in-betweenness seems an apt description of the eleventh century as a transitional period, an in-between area, a state of ambivalence that avoids easy categorization and challenges us to rethink our ideas of Byzantium. In poem 46, Christopher Mitylenaios tells us that the beginning and the end of the book of Job are a story of bliss; it is the middle part, the in-between, that is agonizingly painful: ta 8’ ad uéoa ped dSvvnpa, ‘but it’s the things in the middle that sadly hurt’. The eleventh century is all about being in between, whether this is between the anvil and the hammer, between Basil II and Alexios Komnenos, between the forces of the Normans, the Pechenegs and the Turks, or between different social groupings, cultural identities and religious persuasions. And there is no reason to doubt that this in-betweenness must have been a distinctly unpleasant experience for many Byzantines.
It is because of Psellos’ rhetorical forcefulness that we tend to see the eleventh century as a triumph of ‘humanism’ and enlightened ‘Hellenism’, but it is also, and perhaps primarily, a period of religious uncertainty, spiritual anguish and pious regrets. To quote the always quotable Lemerle, ‘La caractéristique du temps, c’est plutét qu’on parle beaucoup du savoir et de la culture’: it is indeed much cry and little wool. The eleventh century significantly begins with the mystical effusions of Symeon the New Theologian and ends with the Dioptra of Philip Monotropos, a huge compendium of religious and ethical teachings. There is little ‘Hellenism’ there and much spiritual anxiety.
In general, the problem with the eleventh century is that there is too much Psellos and a lack of everything else. Few would doubt that it is a period of fundamental changes and transformations, both internal and external (just compare the later part of Basil II’s reign with the early years of Alexios Komnenos, and it is not difficult to spot the differences). But it is also a period rife with clichés and dominated by the towering presence of Michael Psellos whose usually self-contradictory accounts continue to loom large in the field of Byzantine studies. How do we move forward from there? And to what extent do other old explanatory models (all of them owing some sort of debt to Psellos) have any relevance now?
The last sustained effort to look at the eleventh century from multiple perspectives came in the 1970s, shaped strongly by work on a series of key texts, such as the lists of precedence, the will of Boilas, the diataxis of Attaleiates, the typikon of Pakourianos, the archival materials of Athos, the letters of Psellos, and so on. This led to a number of extremely important publications by Lemerle, Lefort, Gautier and others; the special issue of Travaux et Mémoires 6 (1976) is significant in this respect.
Since that time there has been a great deal of work in a variety of disciplines and on a variety of materials which were not privileged in the 1970s, especially sigillography, numismatics, epigraphy, historiography, poetry, epistolography, religious polemic, monastic life and popular religious culture; there has also been a greater appreciation of the need to look at material culture across middle Byzantine history, even if that archaeological material is still relatively unexplored. See, for example, the various papers in V. Vlyssidou (ed.), The Empire in Crisis (?): Byzantium in the Eleventh Century, or the numerous highly important articles by Jean-Claude Cheynet and his colleagues in Paris.
Much remains to be done. The most pressing issue at hand is the need to have reliable editions and translations of key texts. Stratis Papaioannou is preparing an edition of Psellos’ letters and Michael Jeffreys will publish English summaries of these letters in a volume he and I are co-editing. James Howard-Johnston is preparing a translation of the Peira with commentary.
Eirini Afendoulidou is about to publish the first scholarly edition of Philip Monotropos’ Dioptra. Christian Hannick has recently published the Taktikon of Nikon of the Black Mountain, including his extremely important correspondence — in this time of growing Greeklessness, Nikon’s writings urgently need to be translated. Then there are texts that have been published, but are strangely overlooked by all and sundry: for example, the homilies John Mauropous wrote when he was metropolitan of Euchaita - a rich source of information on the eastern provinces shortly before Manzikert, but foolishly ignored. There is the mass of archaeological data, scattered around in various publications: these need to be assembled and put into perspective; the same goes for numismatic, epigraphic and sigillographic evidence — there is a lot of it, but we need an overview of, and some kind of perspective on, the available material.
As noted above, the second task — after making the primary sources available to the scholarly world — is to rethink the eleventh century. Some years ago fellow Oxonians and I initiated a research project on legal, intellectual and social change in eleventh-century Byzantium, called ‘Transformation of Byzantium’, leading to three workshops, dedicated to the Peira of Eustathios Romaios and legal culture in the eleventh culture, the letters of Michael Psellos and his social networks, and social change in town and country and the feudal revolution. The present volume is the natural outcome of this research interest in the eleventh century, and I hope it may further our understanding of this fascinating period, though I must admit it is a bit of a prothysteron to do the rethinking before the sources are all available. In a sense, the study of the eleventh century is as in-between as the period itself: the old certainties are gone, but no new ones have taken their place. And prothysteron sums this up admirably — we are advancing in reverse.
The volume is divided into four themes. As noted above, Psellos remains the key figure in our understanding of the eleventh century, and the only way to out-Psellos the Psellian paradigm, is to face him head-on — and this is done in the first thematic cluster, ‘The age of Psellos’. Magdalino discusses the transition from Constantine VII’s ‘encyclopaedism’ to the age of Psellos; Jeffreys offers an overview of Psellian studies now; Bernard analyses the social network of Psellos and his fellow d6y1o1, with reference to schools and literary production; and Cheynet studies Psellos as a civil servant writing to other civil servants, with particular interest in the workings of the imperial administration.
The second thematic cluster, ‘Social structures’, looks at the gradual, almost imperceptible changes in Byzantine society: the ways in which the deep structures of society and economy respond to change. HowardJohnston examines the Peira and the workings of the judicial system in the eleventh century; Sarris views the rural landscape in eleventh-century Byzantium as both stable in terms of traditional agriculture and unstable in terms of temporary ownership; and Greenwood discusses urban patterns in Armenia and the eastern provinces of the Byzantine empire.
The third theme is that of ‘State and Church’. In contrast to the slow societal developments discussed in the previous thematic cluster, here the emphasis is on political change - and it is not the deep structures but the rippling, rapidly changing surface patterns that attract our attention. Whittow argues that the crises of the late eleventh and the late fourth and fifth centuries present two comparable falls of Rome; Shepard offers a detailed analysis of the growing tensions between east and west in the runup to the schism of 1054; Krallis discusses the civil versus military elites and offers a ‘republican’ reading of Attaleiates; Ryder discusses the ecclesiastical conflict between Alexios I and Leo of Chalcedon; and Frankopan examines the make-up of the imperial administration, before and after 1094.
The fourth thematic cluster, ‘The age of spirituality’, offers the voices of those for whom Psellos had little time and little use: monks, religious thinkers and pious laymen. It consists of three chapters: Krausmiiller argues that monastic conformity becomes the rule in the eleventh century; Crostini analyses the social and pictorial image of the monk in eleventh-century sources; and Parpulov offers a fascinating insight into spiritual practices as reflected in Byzantine art of the period.
Not only does this volume have no pretensions to completeness, it also does not claim to present a comprehensive and rounded assessment of the issues at stake. Indeed, there is a fair amount of disagreement among the authors, which is only to be welcomed because scholarship thrives on argument and contention. There are differences of opinion on the concept of the eleventh century (long, short, extremely short); transformation and change versus the longue durée; internal reform versus external pressure; turmoil and upheaval versus ‘crisis? what crisis?’.
There is also still a lot of Michael Psellos, even among those who wish to move forward and abandon the old Psellian paradigm. It is not only the eleventh century that is somehow somewhat in between; it is also current scholarship that, in its understanding of the period, sometimes wavers between opposite views. The optimist will say that we are on the brink of a paradigm shift; the pessimist that we are stuck in the past. I would say that we are somewhere in between.
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