Download PDF | By the Emperor’s Hand Military Dress and Court Regalia in the Later Romano-Byzantine Empire, 2016.
461 Pages
INTRODUCTION
he study of the clothing of ROmania, or the Enduring Roman (or ‘Byzantine’) Empire, is an area which has been under-explored to date in serious scholarship.' Even in the area of court dress and regalia, for which there is a great deal more reliable source material than for the garb of common folk, the amount of study to date is quite scant. Much of the material that does exist on the subject is quite antiquated and all of it leaves a great deal of room for refinement.
The purpose of this volume is to trace as accurately as possible the evolution of clothing around the court and in the military from the sixth century to the end of the empire in 1453. Crucial to tracing this evolution will be the task of identifying wherever possible the precise form and defining characteristics of garments mentioned and depicted in the sources, for it is only with such clear identifications that changes in terminology can be distinguished from changes in the form of the physical items of dress, or changes in the manner of artistic representation.
The principal sources will be in the first instance literary, corroborated where possible by pictures. The old paradigm which suggested that the art of Byzantion was unrelievedly formulaic? has come under significant challenge in recent years, and so it can be increasingly seen that pictorial sources can be accurate representations of their time and social context at least in some of their details.? Suitable middle and late Byzantine archaeological remains are scarce, but will make an indispensable contribution to the study, as will comparative material from Islamic and European realms. Other important inputs to this work are those of practical knowledge and _ practical application.
The great majority of previous studies touching upon dress history in general, let alone that of Byzantion, even in the more popular realm, have manifestly been undertaken with little or no hands-on experience of the construction of clothing, and this has often led authors down blind alleys. Prior practical knowledge of this type proves to be especially invaluable in interpreting pictorial sources. In certain cases physical reconstruction has also proven to be very useful in testing and illustrating conclusions based upon academically conventional types of source material.
What will generally not be examined in much detail is the ritual and social significance of garments and ensembles. This is simply because the significance of formal court regalia is necessarily overt — it exists to advertise status in a specific and readily recognisable manner. There will, however, be some cases where there is an interrelation between the identity and nature of a garment and a signification projected across rank divisions, and then it will be discussed. Another caveat is that it is impossible to discuss all the permutations of garment, ensemble and use recorded in the sources.
A further area largely untouched here is that of religious regalia and vestments. This is not because I regard it as unimportant, nor because it is unconnected with the secular regalia, but rather because it merits dedicated study of its own.*
Clothing is often highly expressive, whether its wearers intend it to be or not. It can convey indications of gender, ethnicity, social class and status, occupation, identification with a subculture or, indeed, voluntary detachment from dominant social norms. The purpose of regalia is to make certain aspects of such expressiveness explicit, advertising rank and establishing a framework for the ritualistic enactment and validation of dominant social structures and the ideologies that underpin them. An essential characteristic of regalia is that it must differ from everyday dress and accessories in formally defined ways. The medieval Greek term used to denote regalia in our largest source, allaxima, embodies this, expressing the meaning of ‘having been transformed from what commonly is’. This conceptual framework is fundamental to interpreting terminology that may use words which are also applied to more mundane situations and items.
THE PRINCIPAL LITERARY SOURCES
On the civilian side, the parameters of this study are based primarily upon three comparable works. The earliest is On Powers or the Magistracies of the Roman State written by the sixth-century courtier and literateur John Lydos. The second is a composite source comprising the brief so-called Klétérologion of Filotheos, and the encyclopaedic Book of Ceremonies which was based upon it. The latest is the Treatise on the Offices falsely attributed to Kodinos. These works are of a type called taktikon which originated in the Later Roman Empire, and were devoted to recording and systematising the hierarchy of the court.° More will be said about the nature of each of the works at the beginning of the chapters based upon them.
Another outstanding source for this project is the Oneirokritikon (Dream interpretation manual) of Achmet ben Sirin, believed to have been written in the tenth century. The importance of clothing in this social context is reflected by the large number of scenarios given in the work which hinge upon clothing. The exceptional value of many of these is that not only does the author give garment terminology, some of it unattested elsewhere, but the nature of the items discussed and their use and behaviour is often essential to the message to be drawn from the dream, and therefore the descriptions give unique insights into the character of the dress elements discussed.
It might well be said that the Roman Empire was not merely created and sustained by its military but defined by it. In keeping with this, it developed a rich tradition of military literature early in its history. There are military manuals attributed to the sixth century, but they contain little detail of use in this project.° The essential early source is the Stratégikon attributed to Emperor Maurice from 602 ce.
This work had enduring influence, for not only were manuscripts of it still being copied as late as the eleventh century, but Emperor Leo ‘the Wise’ incorporated much of it into his own manual, the Taktika,’ around the turn of the tenth century; Sullogé Taktik6n, of the Same period and sometimes associated with the same emperor, owes a similar debt to it. Two other major manuals largely conclude the tradition. The more important is the Composition on Warfare (traditionally known as Praecepta Militaria) newly written by General (later Emperor) Nikéforos (II) Fokas around the middle of the tenth century. A little later, another General, Nikéforos Ouranos, produced a slightly reworked version of Composition on Warfare, once again under the title Taktika.® The incorporation of the Stratégikon and the Composition on Warfare into later works has tempted some to suggest that this was a formulaic literature.
The reverse, however, is true. We can rely on these sources because they reflect the normal nature of the military vocation — practical and pragmatic. For a soldier to be anything else carries the ultimate penalty, and for a commander to be otherwise may result in the death of the institution he serves. The sensitivity with which Leo and Ouranos adapt the earlier texts shows the characteristic which was fundamental to the empire’s longevity — they knew how not to throw the baby out with the bath water.”
Since I embarked upon this project there has been one development which was of some help to me, and will be a great boon to many readers. It is an English translation of the Book of Ceremonies painstakingly prepared by Ann Moffat of the Australian National University. While my own theories and conclusions necessarily go beyond the established scholarship she could draw upon, I heartily recommend the work to anyone interested in the subject.
The limitations of the literary sources
Byzantine literary sources give us a copious terminology for clothing, but much more rarely do they give a clear indication of the nature of the item involved. This must often be deduced from subtle hints, gleaned sometimes from disparate sources, and sometimes corroborated by depiction in graphic arts. The very subtlety of such hints make interpretation, or even identification, of garments and accessories difficult, and often demands that some other bases of knowledge are needed to assist in illuminating them. Therein lie techniques which have as yet not been brought to bear to any great degree in this field. Previous scholars have certainly been highly knowledgeable in matters literary and artistic, and have done a great deal to elucidate matters in those disciplines. Yet, corroboration between the literary and artistic fields has often not been pursued as systematically as it might, and further significant advances can be made by forging links between the disciplines of textile history, the more embryonic field of costume history, and practical experience of textile craft.
Artistic sources
The traditional treatment of Byzantine art, whether in art history or in illustrating more general historiography, has done the field an enormous disservice in one respect. Again and again, a very narrow sampling of art works have been reproduced, at least in the more accessible published works. Those pictures may well be useful and representative of what they depict, but their endless re-iteration to the exclusion of so much other material misrepresents the entire culture. In choosing pictures for this volume, therefore, I have largely avoided the most widely reproduced pictures, however relevant, in favour of lesser-known pictures which could corroborate them or add new insights. Thus, it will assist a reader who wants to be able to look at more of the pictorial and ‘minor’ arts referred to in the following pages to have a Byzantine art book or two to hand, especially ones such as Helen Evans and William D. Wixom, The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Byzantine Era A.D. 843-1261 and Sarah T. Brooks (ed.), Byzantium, Faith and Power (1261-1557): Perspectives on Late Byzantine Art and Culture.
In pursuing a more extensive and systematic correlation of pictorial sources with the written ones, the difficulties with the artistic sources must be acknowledged. Despite the overall inaccuracy of Cyril Mango’s summation of Byzantine art (see note 2), it does have a kernel of truth in the statement: ‘Christ, the Apostles, the prophets appear in antique garb.’ Iconographic stylisation does indeed rule the depiction of that narrow group of the dramatis personae of the biblical narratives. Furthermore, that stylisation does sometimes bleed outward from that core, influencing the representation of less-significant figures. Hence, a degree of sensitive discernment sometimes needs to be exercised in assessing the realism of what is shown, and, in that, a margin for error acknowledged. There is an array of good examples from the beginning of our period. The sixth century is often characterised as a time of religious apprehension, with many people expecting an imminent Second Coming. Yet, whether in spite of that or because of it, the major monuments of literary religious art of this time, the Ashburnam Pentateuch, Rossano Gospels and Vienna Genesis, show very limited stylisation, with many scenes dominated by a great deal of contemporary realism. After the first quarter of the seventh century we enter the so-called ‘Dark Age of Byzantion’. The curtailment of artistic production is first caused by the effect of external threats. With the depredations of the Avars and Muslims diminishing, the potential for recovery was forestalled by the debate over the acceptability of the depiction of religious figures, the ‘Iconoclast Controversy’. The Iconoclast Controversy was settled in favour of icons before the end of the ninth century, but artistic production was slow to recover, apparently taking more than a century to generate extensive results.!° The eleventh century is quite well supplied, both in illuminated manuscripts and major monuments, while once again there are fewer in the twelfth century. Another dark age encompasses the thirteenth century in the wake of the atrocity of the Fourth Crusade and the hard fight back. The fourteenth century once again presents some good material, in contrast to the last half century before the Ottoman conquest, which has virtually none.
The nature of the art shows its own pattern of variance. As hitherto noted, the Late Antique artworks are usually highly realistic, even the religious scenes, even whilst being quite formal. Once source material begins again to be more prolific from the late tenth century onwards, the picture is much more mixed. Religious art tends to be much more stylised, yet that stylisation can vary from the hard-core antiquarianism which inspired Mango’s comment, to a work such as the Menologion of Basil II (Vat. Gr. 1613), whose stylisation consists of quite realistic representations, but following fashions of two or three centuries earlier, rather than further back, and untainted by novelties and foreign influences. And yet, even works which treat the central religious figures in a hard-core antiquarian manner can still have realistic details in the margin or on peripheral figures (fig. 1). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries much more realistic pictorial material exists, although often with that subtle admixture of characteristics. The art of the Palaiologian period articulates a new paradigm, a greater dichotomy. The religious art is even more stylised than any prior period, and often in a way that is quite fantastical rather than antiquarian. The secular art consists almost entirely of donor portraits, and verges upon photo-realism. Through all this, even in the most realistic phases and examples of the art, however, there remained a sense that some things, however familiar in everyday life and well attested in the literature, were not suitable for inclusion in illustrations, either because they were trivial mundanities, or — particularly in the area of dress — seemingly because they were regarded as being ‘not properly Roman’. A simple example of this last phenomenon is the turban. From literature we can see that turbans were common wear for men of Romania from the ninth century, yet in a work of elite illumination such as the Menologion of Basil IT they appear solely as a signifier for Arabs, and a generally negative one at that. Nevertheless, within these constraints the visual arts offer extensive and useful support to the written sources, and can help to explain much that is obscure.
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