Download PDF | Byzantium And The West Perception And Reality ( 11th– 15th C.), By Nikolaos Chrissis Athina Kolia Dermitzaki Angeliki Papageorgiou Routledge ( 2019).

Download PDF |  Byzantium And The West Perception And Reality ( 11th– 15th C.), By Nikolaos Chrissis Athina Kolia Dermitzaki Angeliki Papageorgiou Routledge ( 2019).

343 Pages

Byzantium and the West

The interaction between Byzantium and the Latin West was intimately connected to practically all the major events and developments which shaped the medieval world in the High and Late Middle Ages — for example, the rise of the ‘papal monarchy’, the launch of the crusades, the expansion of international and longdistance commerce, or the flowering of the Renaissance. 

This volume explores not only the actual avenues of interaction between the two sides (trade, political and diplomatic contacts, ecclesiastical dialogue, intellectual exchange, armed conflict), but also the image each side had of the other and the way perceptions evolved over this long period in the context of their manifold contact.

Twenty-one stimulating papers offer new insights and original research on numerous aspects of this relationship, pooling the expertise of an international group of scholars working on both sides of the Byzantine-Western ‘divide’, on topics as diverse as identity formation, ideology, court ritual, literary history, military technology and the economy, among others. The particular contribution of the research presented here is the exploration of how cross-cultural relations were shaped by the interplay of the thought-world of the various historical agents and the material circumstances which circumscribed their actions.

The volume is primarily aimed at scholars and students interested in the history of Byzantium, the Mediterranean world, and, more widely, intercultural contacts in the Middle Ages.

Nikolaos G. Chrissis is Assistant Professor of Medieval European History at the Democritus University of Thrace and Associate Lecturer at the Hellenic Open University, Greece. He has also taught at the Universities of London, UK, Birmingham, UK, and Crete, Greece. In 2012—2015, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Athina Kolia-Dermitzaki is Professor Emerita of Byzantine History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research and publications deal with: Byzantine ideology; the political and ecclesiastical relations between Byzantium and the West; the ideological background in the ByzantineIslamic confrontation; war and peace; and various aspects of Byzantine society (particularly mentalities).

Angeliki Papageorgiou is Adjunct Lecturer and Researcher in the Department of Slavic Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research interests focus on the transition from the Middle-Byzantine to the Late-Byzantine period and the social, diplomatic and ideological history of the Komnenian era, as well as the relations between Byzantium and the Slavs from the 12th century onwards.

Contributors

Michael Angold is Professor Emeritus in Byzantine History at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He has written extensively on the Byzantine society, Church, and political life from the 11th to the 15th century. His publications include: A Byzantine Government in Exile (1975); The Byzantine Empire, 1025-1204: A Political History (1984; 2nd edn 1997); Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 1081-1261 (1995); The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context (2003); and The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans (2012).

Michel Balard is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), France. His research interests cover trade, crusading, and colonisation in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. His numerous publications include: La Romanie génoise: XIle— Dé but du XVe siécle (1978); La Mer Noire et la Romanie génoise, XI[Te—XVe siécles (1989); and Les Latins en Orient (Xe-XVe siécle) (2006). He has also edited several volumes of documentary sources on Genoese trading in Caffa, Cyprus and Outremer.

Jean-Claude Cheynet is Professor Emeritus of Byzantine History at the Sorbonne-Université, France, and former Director of the Byzantine Institute at the College de France, France. His research and publications focus on Byzantine society and politics, particularly the role of the aristocracy and the army, as well as on Byzantine sigillography and prosopography. He is the author of Pouvoir et contestations a Byzance (1990); The Byzantine Aristocracy and its Military Function (2006); and La société byzantine. L’apport des sceaux (2008).

Nikolaos G. Chrissis is Assistant Professor of Medieval European History at the Democritus University of Thrace and Associate Lecturer at the Hellenic Open University, Greece. He has also taught at the Universities of London, UK, Birmingham, UK, and Crete, Greece. In 2012—2015, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His main interests revolve around Byzantine-Western interaction, the crusades, the papacy, and Byzantine identity. He is the author of Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Byzantine-Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204-1282 (2012), and co-editor of Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204—1453 (2014).

Maria Dourou-Eliopoulou is Professor Emerita of Medieval History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research and publications deal with the presence and the activities of the Latins in the Eastern Mediterranean during the crusades. Her books include, among others: The Angevins in Romania during the Reign of Charles I (1266-1285) (1987) [in Greek]; The Frankish Principality of Achaea (1204-1432): History, Organization, Society (2005) [in Greek]; and From Western Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean. The Crusading Dominions in Romania (13th-15th centuries): History and Institutions (2012) [in Greek].

Nikoletta Giantsi is Associate Professor of Western Medieval History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research focuses on social history, poverty, charity, and urban life in Medieval Europe. She is the author of Female Marginal Movements in Late Medieval Europe (12th—14th c.): The Beguinae (2001) [in Greek]; The Poor between Church and Town: Urban Charity in Western Europe during the Middle Ages (2011) [in Greek]; and Rules and Regulations of Everyday Life in the French Leper Houses (12th— 14th c.) (forthcoming) [in Greek].

Ilias Giarenis is Associate Professor of Byzantine Education and Culture at the Ionian University, Corfu, Greece. His main research interests include: Late Byzantine scholars and writers; the empires of Nicaea and Trebizond; relics; and perceptions of Byzantium in Modern Greece. He has published on the empire of Nicaea, Nikolaos Mesarites, Bessarion’s ekphrasis of Trebizond, the Holy Face in Middle-Byzantine Constantinople, and the reception of Byzantium in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is the author of: Establishment and Consolidation of the Empire of Nicaea. The Emperor Theodore I Komnenos Laskaris (2008) [in Greek]; and Nikolaos Mesarites: A Byzantine Scholar Before and After 1204 (forthcoming, 2019).

Catherine Holmes is Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Oxford, UK. She has published on Byzantine political and cultural history, including her book Basil IT and the Governance of Empire, 976-1025 (2005), and has co-edited two collections which put the history of Byzantium into wider regional contexts: Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond (2002); and Byzantines, Latins and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150 (2012). Recently she has become interested in medieval global history and has published a co-edited volume with Naomi Standen, a historian of medieval China: The Global Middle Ages (Past and Present Supplement 13, 2018).

Elizabeth Jeffreys is Emeritus Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, and Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, UK. She has published widely on topics concerned with Byzantine literature and is currently focussing, with Michael Jeffreys, on the edition of the 12th-century poet known as Manganeios Prodromos.

Anthony Kaldellis is Professor of Classics at The Ohio State University, USA. He has published widely on many aspects of Byzantine culture, including Hellenism in Byzantium (2007), The Christian Parthenon (2009), Ethnography after Antiquity (2013), and The Byzantine Republic (2015). He has also translated many Byzantine authors.

Athina Kolia-Dermitzaki is Professor Emerita of Byzantine History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research and publications deal with: Byzantine ideology; the political and ecclesiastical relations between Byzantium and the West; the ideological background in the Byzantine-Islamic confrontation; war and peace; and various aspects of Byzantine society (particularly mentalities). Her publications include, among others: The Byzantine “Holy War”: The Idea and Propagation of Religious War in Byzantium (1991) [in Greek with English summary]; and The Meeting of East and West in the Territories of the Empire: Byzantine Views of the Crusaders (1994) [in Greek]. She also co-edited Russia and the Mediterranean (2 vols., 2012) and Histories of War in South-Eastern Europe: An Approach in the Longue Durée. Proceedings of the International Conference on the Occasion of the Centenary since the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 (2018).

Christos G. Makrypoulias holds a Ph.D. in Byzantine History from the University of Ioannina, Greece, and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Historical Research (National Hellenic Research Foundation), Greece. He specialises in Byzantine military and naval history, and the history of technology. His publications include, among others: “The Navy in the Works of Constantine Porphyrogenitus” (1995); “Civilians as Combatants in Byzantium: Ideological versus Practical Considerations” (2012); and “Siege Warfare: The Art of Re-capture” (2018). He also co-edited Aspects of Arab Seafaring (2002).

Triantafyllitsa Maniati-Kokkini is Assistant Professor of Byzantine History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research and publications deal with the economic and social history of Late Byzantium (11th—15th c.), with particular emphasis on land tenure and the institution of pronoia. Her publications include among others: “The Chronicle of the Morea and the Byzantine pronoia” (1994) [in Greek]; and Donations of Emperors and Rulers to and from Foreigners in Byzantium, 12th—15th c. (Athens, 2003) [in Greek]. She is also the co-editor of Kletorion in the Memory of Nikos Oikonomides (2005) and editor of Saving and Managing Money in Greek History — Part II; Byzantium (2011) [in Greek].

Sophia Mergiali-Sahas is Associate Professor of Byzantine History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research focuses on the later Byzantine era (11th—15th c.), with particular emphasis on education, intellectual circles, Byzantine diplomacy towards the West, piracy, slave trade, and the role of saints in Byzantine society. Her publications include: L’Enseignement et les Lettrés pendant l’Epoque des Paléologues (1996) and Writing History with the Saints: From the Society of the Saints to the Society of the Palaiologoi, 1261—1453 (2014) [in Greek].

Sandra Origone is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Genoa, Italy. Her research focuses particularly on diplomatic relations, especially marriage diplomacy in the Mediterranean world. She is the author of Bisanzio e Genova (1992), and Giovanna di Savoia, alias Anna Paleologina: Latina a Bisanzio (c. 1306-c. 1365) (1999). More recently, she has published studies on the Turkish advance in the Levant, Genoese policy in the Black Sea, and Western influence over Byzantine authority (e.g. “L’autorita del ‘basileus’ nel confronto con i Latini,” in Autorita e consenso. Regnum e monarchia nell’Europa medievale, ed. M.P. Alberzoni & R. Lambertini, Milan, 2017; “Colonies and Colonization,” in A Companion to Medieval Genoa, ed. Carrie E. Benes, 2018).

Theodora Papadopoulou received her doctorate in Byzantine History from the Ionian University of Corfu, Greece. Her research interests focus on defining collective identity of the ‘self? and the ‘other’, and she has published several articles on this topic in Greek, English, German, and Turkish. She is the author of Collective Identity and Self-consciousness in Byzantium, 11th— early 13th centuries (2015).

Angeliki Papageorgiou is Adjunct Lecturer and Researcher in the Department of Slavic Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research interests focus on the transition from the Middle Byzantine to the Late Byzantine period and the social, diplomatic, and ideological history of the Komnenian era, as well as the relations between Byzantium and the Slavs from the 12th century onwards. Among her publications are: The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja: Translation with Historical Commentary (2012) [in Greek]; The Slavic World in the Middle Ages (2014) [in Greek]; John II Komnenos and his Era, 1118-1143 (2017) [in Greek]; and Byzantium and the Balkan Slavs: War, Ideology and the Image of the “Other” (2018) [in Greek].

Jonathan Phillips is Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. His research interests include the early crusades; the Latin states of Outremer and their relations with the West; the life and legacy of Saladin; and the memory of the crusades in Western Europe and the Near East. He is the author of: Defenders of the Holy Land (1996); The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (2004); The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (2007); Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades (2009); The Crusades, 1095-1204 (2nd extended edition, 2014); and The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin (2019).

Alicia Simpson is Adjunct Lecturer in Classics and History at the American College of Greece, Greece. Her research interests focus on the history, literature, and culture of the Middle Byzantine Period. She is the author of Niketas Choniates: A Historiographical Study (2013) and the editor of Byzantium, 1180-1204: ‘The Sad Quarter of a Century?’ (2015).

Eleni Tounta is Assistant Professor in Medieval History at the Aristotle University of Thessalonica, Greece. Her research interests focus on medieval political

thought, medieval historiography, identities and power relations, ritual studies, and the history of religion, especially in the Western Empire and Southern Italy in the High and Late Middle Ages. Her publications include: The Western sacrum imperium and the Byzantine Empire: Ideological Conflicts and Mutual Influences in the European Political Scene of the 12th Century (1135-1177) (2008) [in Greek]; and Medieval Mirrors of Power: Historians and Narratives in Norman Southern Italy (2012) [in Greek]. She also co-edited Usurping Rituals (2010).

Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Edge Hill University, UK. His work focuses on the ecclesiastical history of the Latin states of Greece in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. He is the author of The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204-1500 (2012) and the co-editor of A Companion to Latin Greece (2015).

Introduction

Nikolaos G. Chrissis, Athina Kolia-Dermitzaki and Angeliki Papageorgiou

The present volume is based primarily on the papers delivered at the homonymous conference held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in September 2014. In addition to the original speakers, however, we have also secured the participation of a number of other well-known scholars in the field who were unable to attend the conference, namely, Michel Balard (Paris), Jean-Claude Cheynet (Paris), Catherine Holmes (Oxford), Anthony Kaldellis (Columbus, OH), and Sophia Mergiali-Sahas (Athens). Thus, we believe we have further strengthened the breadth and the international dimension of the research presented here. Unfortunately, health problems prevented Professor Bernard Hamilton, one of the participants in the conference, from contributing to the volume as well. Dr. Marina Koumanoudi, for all her willingness and efforts, was also unable to submit a revised version of her original conference presentation to the volume due to numerous other pressing obligations. The editors wish to thank them both for their valuable participation in the original event.

The interaction between Byzantium and the Latin West was intimately connected to practically all the major events and developments which shaped the medieval world in the High and Late Middle Ages: the rise of the ‘papal monarchy’, the launch of the crusades, the expansion of international and longdistance commerce, and the flowering of the Renaissance, to name some of the most important ones. The aim of the volume is to explore not only the actual avenues of interaction between the two sides (trade, political and diplomatic contacts, ecclesiastical dialogue, intellectual exchange, armed conflict), but also the perceptions which formed the mental and ideological background within which this manifold contact took place.

The chapters presented here offer new insights and original research on numerous aspects of this relationship, pooling together the expertise of scholars working on both sides of the Byzantine-Western ‘divide’, on topics as diverse as identity formation, court ritual, ecclesiology, literary history, military technology and the economy, among others. The contact between the Greek and Latin worlds is explored in a variety of contexts and settings: not only in Constantinople and the other Byzantine territories before and after 1204, but also in the multi-cultural court of 12th-century Palermo, the Italian maritime republics, the Hungarian kingdom, the crusader states of Outremer, and the Latin-held territories of mainland and insular Greece. There is also variation in scope, approach, and subject-matter. 

Some chapters explore particular themes or offer broad vistas in the Jongue durée, while others focus on turning points or key sources which illustrate the meeting of the two worlds.' The particular contribution of the volume as a whole is to shed light on how cross-cultural interaction was shaped at the intersection of the thought-world of the historical agents and the material circumstances which circumscribed their actions.

Byzantine-Western relations constitute a topic of great importance and of vast scope, and there have been numerous publications that deal with one or more aspects of the contact between the two worlds of Medieval Europe. Even if we limit ourselves to a few of the most recent or best-known publications within this theme we can name here, for example: the pioneering studies by D.J. Geanakoplos on the ‘sibling’ cultures of Byzantium and the Latin West; the proceedings of the eighteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (published in 1988) or the seminal collection edited by Arbel, Hamilton and Jacoby (1989), both of which contain many articles still considered as classics in the field; Krinje Ciggaar’s monograph on Western visitors to Constantinople; as well as a growing number of collected volumes of exceptional quality arising from stimulating conferences held as far afield as Nicosia (Cyprus), Greifswald (Germany), Oxford (UK), and Princeton (USA) within the last decade.’

This research is indicative of the abiding importance of the subject-matter, and evidence that the present volume is part of an ongoing academic debate with a broad and established audience. Nevertheless, we believe that we have avoided extensive overlap with previous publications, as the chapters included here re-evaluate old questions with new approaches and sources, or cover previously unexplored topics under the general headline of ‘Byzantine-Western interaction’. In fact, the particular emphasis on the interplay of perception and reality in Byzantine-Latin contacts is unique to this volume.

Structure of the volume

The contributions are arranged in rough chronological order, while also forming thematic clusters. The volume opens with three chapters which set the scene of East-West contacts: the one by Anthony Kaldellis revisits a landmark event at the beginning of the period under examination, namely the so-called Schism of 1054, offering a radical reassessment of the role of Patriarch Keroularios; the other two chapters explore the broader theme of Italian presence in the Eastern Mediterranean throughout our period, focusing, in turn, on population movements (Michel Balard) and on the relations between Genoa and Byzantium (Sandra Origone).

This opening section is followed by seven chapters that deal with ByzantineLatin interaction in the late 11th and 12th century, primarily in the context of the crusading movement. Athina Kolia-Dermitzaki explores the ideological aspects of the meeting between the Byzantines and the crusaders, while Jean-Claude Cheynet looks into the political motivations and practical considerations for both sides.

Jonathan Phillips then examines how the empire, its capital, and its people were portrayed in crusader accounts from the First to the Third Crusade. Turning to the opposite side, Angeliki Papageorgiou analyses the image of Western peoples in the Byzantine court during the reign of John II Komnenos (1118-1143). Elizabeth Jeffreys takes the same theme further, focusing particularly on the corpus of the elusive but prolific poet who flourished under John’s heir, Manuel Komnenos, and is conventionally known as Manganeios Prodromos. These two chapters on the Komnenian court are followed by Catherine Holmes’ timely reminder that there were Byzantine perspectives which differed from the Constantinopolitan one, in her re-evaluation of local factors in Eustathios’ narration of the Norman conquest of Thessalonica in 1185. Michael Angold’s examination of how the Byzantines reacted to another, near-contemporary conquest, this time of Latin Jerusalem by the army of Saladin in 1187, rounds off this section on Byzantine-Western interaction in the period of the early crusades.

The following section of the volume offers a change of focus in terms of both geography and chronology, and deals with cases that stand very much at the margins of the ‘Western’ and the ‘Byzantine’ worlds. The six chapters here challenge the simple Latin—Greek binary opposition and demonstrate the multilateral character of cross-cultural interactions in the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Holy Land. Eleni Tounta provides an insightful analysis of the intercultural mixture of Greek and Latin elements in the poetry of Admiral Eugenius of Sicily, while Alicia Simpson turns her attention to the kingdom of Hungary, another liminal political entity at the margins of the Latin world but with close and abiding ties with Byzantium as this chapter amply shows. 

The contribution by Nikoletta Giantsi focuses on the provisions of the Third Lateran Council (1179) on leprosy, bringing out connections between papal policy, Byzantine interventionism, and the circumstances in the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem under Baldwin IV (1174-1185). Moving past the watershed of the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, the next two chapters juxtapose the perceptions of Greek or Latin ‘otherness’ and the reality of the manifold symbiosis between the two sides in Romania. First, Ilias Giarenis explores contacts with, and perceptions of, the West in the Byzantine successor state of Nicaea. Then, Maria Dourou-Eliopoulou turns to interactions in the Latin-held territories of Romania as presented in contemporary narrative and documentary sources. Finally, the contribution by Nickiphoros Tsougarakis takes us once more to the Holy Land with a fascinating discussion of the portrayal of Greek rite and Greek clergy in late medieval pilgrim accounts, and the wider context which explains the noticeable hardening of attitudes in the 15th century.

The last section of the volume brings together five chapters on the various functions of the Latins in Late Byzantium; different contexts are explored, including identity discourses, diplomacy, administration, the economy, and the military. Starting with the Byzantines’ view of the Latins, Theodora Papadopoulou provides an overview of how Western peoples were represented in Byzantine literature before and after 1204, while Nikolaos Chrissis takes up the question of how the image of the West can provide insights into the transformations of Byzantine identity in the last centuries of the empire. 

Sophia Mergiali-Sahas follows up with the examination of key questions regarding the presence and role of Westerners in the restored Byzantine empire of Michael VIII Palaiologos (1261-1282). Triantafylitsa Maniati-Kokkini sheds light on the place of Latins in Late Byzantine socio-economic reality through an examination of the relevant terminology used in the sources. The volume closes with a comparative examination by Christos Makrypoulias regarding the evolution of military technology in Byzantium and the Latin West, discussing mutual influences and challenging various modern assumptions on the topic.

Thus, the collection covers a broad array of subjects, spread throughout the period from the 11th to the 15th century, and examining different settings for Byzantine-Western interaction, while at the same time maintaining a unity of focus around the theme of perception and reality. Besides the chronological-thematic organisation of the contributions set out above, there are also numerous other points of intersection between the chapters which lend themselves to comparative research, and which the interested reader can pick up in order to explore continuities and changes over time.

Acknowledgements

This volume is based on the conference ‘Byzantium and the West: Perception and Reality, 12th—1Sth c.’/«BuCavtio Kot Adon: Avtinweis cot Upaypatiucotnta, 12°-15°5 at», held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens on 5-6 September 2014. The conference was organised in the context of a postdoctoral research project carried out by Dr. Nikolaos G. Chrissis and supervised by Prof. Athina Kolia-Dermitzaki. The project and (in part) the conference were jointly funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Greek state.*

Additional funding that helped us cover the expenses for the conference was provided by the Kowagsrés Tdpvpa Kotwovicod Kat ToAittotikot ‘Epyov / Welfare Foundation for Social and Cultural Affairs (KIKPE), generously approved by the foundation’s president, the late Ioannis Fikioris. Further funding as well as organisational support were provided by the Faculty of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, under whose auspices the event was carried out. We would like to give our special thanks to the head of the Faculty at the time, Prof. Anastasia Papadia-Lala, who also honoured us with the opening address. We would also like to thank the National Hellenic Research Foundation (EIE) and the director of its Institute of Historical Research, Prof. Taxiarchis Kolias, who similarly offered support and participated in the conference.

Finally, the editors would like to thank all the colleagues, from Greece and abroad, who accepted our invitation to participate in the conference and/or contribute to the volume. We would also like to thank Dr. Marilia Lykaki and Dr. Nausika Vassilopoulou who assisted in the efficient and smooth running of the conference.

Notes

1 We should note here that the decision was made for the programming of the conference, and consequently for the volume as well, not to include discussions on art, archaeology, and material culture. We fully acknowledge that those are exceptionally important fields for the study of intercultural contacts, but we felt they would not be adequately served as a mere side note to a primarily literary-historical collection because they merit dedicated extensive discussion in their own right.

2 DJ. Geanakoplos, Interaction of the ‘Sibling’ Byzantine and Western Cultures in the Middle Ages and Italian Renaissance (330-1600) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976); J.D. Howard-Johnston (ed.), Byzantium and the West, c.850-c.1200: Proceedings of the XVIII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (Amsterdam: A.M. Hakkert, 1988) [= Byzantinische Forschungen 13]; B. Arbel, B. Hamilton and D. Jacoby (eds.), Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1204 (London: F. Cass, 1989) [= Mediterranean Historical Review, 4.1]; K.N. Ciggaar, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium, 962-1204. Cultural and Political Relations (Leiden: Brill, 1996); M. Hinterberger and C. Schabel (eds.), Greek, Latins and Intellectual History, 1204-1500 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011); M. Altripp (ed.), Byzanz in Europa: Europas Ostliches Erbe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); J. Harris, C. Holmes and E. Russell (eds.), Byzantines, Latins and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150 (Oxford: OUP, 2012); M.S. Brownlee and D.H. Gondicas (eds.), Renaissance Encounters: Greek East and Latin West (Leiden: Brill, 2013). For an extensive list of works dealing with aspects of Byzantine-Western relations, see also the online searchable database created by A. Kolia-Dermitzaki, Tr. Maniati-Kokkini, and M. Dourou-Eliopoulou (Faculty of History and Archaeology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), based on the research programme ‘Byzantine and Western World: Juxtapositions and Interactions, 11th—15thc.’ (available at byzantio-dysi.arch.uoa.gr).

3 The research project “Worlds Apart? Identity and Otherness in Late Byzantine Perceptions of the West’ (SH6—1345) was implemented within the framework of the Action ‘Supporting Postdoctoral Researchers’ of the Operational Program ‘Education and Lifelong Learning’ (Action’s Beneficiary: General Secretariat for Research and Technology) and was co-financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Greek State.

1 Keroularios in 1054

Nonconfrontational to the papal legates and loyal to the emperor

Anthony Kaldellis

The present chapter offers a radical reinterpretation of the events associated with the Schism of the Churches that took place in Constantinople in the summer of 1054.' It focuses not on the liturgical, ecclesiastical, and theological issues but on the stance and politics of the patriarch of Constantinople Michael I Keroularios (1043-1058) and argues specifically, in contrast to the reconstructions of events found in almost all modern discussions, that Keroularios did not engage or seek out confrontation with the papal legates; in fact, that he deliberately avoided doing so even when provoked; that Keroularios was likely obeying imperial directives the entire time; that he never challenged or confronted the emperor Constantine IX Monomachos (1042-1055) or sought to undermine his foreign policy regarding Italy; and that the mutual excommunications did not, as far as we know, affect the emperor’s relations with the papacy regarding the Norman problem there, nor were the excommunications understood by any of the parties as having affected those relations. The issue at hand, then, is not whether Keroularios held liturgical, ecclesiastical, and theological views that were at odds with those of the reformist papacy. It is probable that he did, and so, I suspect, did most Byzantine prelates. In later Byzantine tradition, Keroularios was credited with formulating a series of objections to the beliefs and practices of the Latin Church (though the textual traditions are tangled and, in my view, surely postdate the events of the summer of 1054 [Kolbaba, 2000]). Nor is the issue here the modern debate over the definition of Schism and the attempt to ascertain whether the two Churches came to be in a state of Schism before, during, after, or long after the events of 1054. Rather, the issue is whether Keroularios engaged in confrontation with representatives of the Church of Rome over those issues and whether his actions in 1054 clashed with any aspect of the emperor Monomachos’ policies. My answer to both of these questions is no.

The reconstruction offered here, based on a fresh reading of the primary sources, stands in contrast to all scholarly discussions of the events known to me. The standard narrative can be illustrated from a sampling of general surveys. First, the emperor Monomachos is seen as an ‘ineffective’ and ‘weak emperor no longer capable of controlling the course of events’, while Keroularios was ‘the most strong-willed and ambitious prelate of Byzantine history’, he had a ‘restless 10. Anthony Kaldellis

and bellicose nature ... [with] a ruthlessness which did not hesitate to go to any lengths’ (Ostrogorsky, 1969, 336). Keroularios behaved so poorly toward the legates that he exacerbated whatever prior tensions may have existed with Rome. It was he who ‘broke off discussions with the Roman delegation’ (Gallagher, 2008, 595). Then, ‘exasperated by the patriarch’s intransigence, the papal legates excommunicated him. While the emperor tried to calm the dispute, demonstrations in the capital supported the patriarch, who excommunicated the legates. [This] ruined the emperor’s alliance with the papacy’ (Treadgold, 1997, 596). Those riots were orchestrated by Keroularios: ‘He fomented an anti-Latin riot which destroyed the emperor’s efforts to build an alliance between Byzantium and the papacy’ (Holmes, 2008, 272).? The counter-excommunication of the legates was also his doing, as he ‘managed to persuade the vacillating emperor to change his policy and fall into line. With the consent of the emperor, he summoned a synod which returned blow for blow by excommunicating the Roman legates’ (Ostrogorsky, 1969, 337). The emperor is sometimes cut out of the narrative, leaving the patriarch as the sole agent on the Byzantine side: ‘Keroularios together with his synod retaliated by excommunicating the papal legate’ (Gallagher, 2008, 595; cf. Smith, 1978, 103: ‘the emperor was unable to withstand the patriarch’s reciprocal excommunication of those who scorned the sanctity of Orthodox tradition’). The anti-Norman alliance with the papacy was now dead (Louth, 2007, 310). ‘It was a triumph for the patriarch, a setback for the emperor, whose Italian policy was now in ruins, and a humiliation for the papal legates’ (Angold, 1997, 52).

A substantial portion of this narrative, I will argue, is fiction, and the rest is a distorted twisting of the facts which ensures that Keroularios is blamed. Let us then go back to the sources and see if we can ascertain exactly what it was that Keroularios actually did. Even if not all readers are persuaded to accept the full conclusions reached here, the analysis should expose the tenuous documentary foundations of the traditional narrative.

No contemporary narrative recounts those events in detail. Instead, the story has come down to us as an ecclesiastical version of Les liaisons dangereuses, a scandalous epistolary narrative in which authors were misattributed and signals crossed even as events played out. A recapitulation of the sequence will allow nonspecialists to follow the trail. In 1053, Leon, archbishop of Ohrid, sent a brief letter to John, bishop of Trani in southern Italy, raising certain ecclesiastical issues, especially the use of leavened versus unleavened bread (azyma) in the eucharist. The Byzantine Church used leavened bread, whereas the Latins (and Armenians) used unleavened, and Leon argued against the azyma (in Will, Acta, 56-60). This letter came to the attention of the papal court, especially cardinal Humbert, who was outraged by it and made a rough translation (Will, Acta, 61-64). By this point, Keroularios had (mistakenly) been added as the co-author of Leon’s letter. This addition may have been made by Humbert himself, by Argyros (a Byzantine governor in southern Italy but of local origin Smith, 1978, 124—-125)), or someone else, and it may have been made by mistake, or in the sincere belief (whether correct or not) that Keroularios held the same views as Leon or had authorized him to dispatch the letter, or it may have been done maliciously, to implicate Keroularios

in an emerging controversy and embarrass him. Be that as it may, Humbert hereafter treated Keroularios as the (evil) instigator of the controversy.

Yet Keroularios was not behind Leon’s letter to John (Michel, 1924-1930, 2:282—289; Smith, 1978, 53-54, 85, 106-108). He may have agreed — and likely did agree — with its position (had he known it), but what is at issue here is how Keroularios acted as the head of the imperial Church. When he soon afterward entered the story (see below), he immediately tried to create a constructive relationship in order to promote imperial interests, not instigate or inflame a conflict. In fact, it is not certain that Leon of Ohrid himself meant to instigate one. We do not know how ‘explosive’ the azyma issue was perceived to be in the relationship between the Churches — except by Humbert, of course, who was incensed (the thesis of Smith, 1978). Later, Catholic advocates and polemicists naturally perpetuated the (co)attribution of Leon’s letter to Keroularios. But it has also crept into the mainstream, riding on the premise that Keroularios was a combative polemicist, ‘equally to blame’. So, even in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, we read that Leon was Keroularios’ “spokesman’.* It is important to stress that there is no proof of that. Leon was the autocephalous archbishop of Ohrid (i.e., Bulgaria), a most sensitive post in the Byzantine imperial Church, and had held it for thirty years, far longer than Keroularios had been patriarch. He had a mind of his own and could send letters of his own (for Leon, see Tapkova-Zaimova 2011, 229-230).

Pope Leo, through Humbert, next wrote a long polemical response to Leon ‘and Keroularios’ (Will, Acta, 65-85; for Pope Leo, see Bischoff and Tock, 2008). Before that could be sent, however, the pope received two letters from Constantinople, one from the Emperor Monomachos urging the continuation of the anti-Norman alliance, something that Leo himself desperately wanted; and one from Keroularios, which was irenic, did not raise controversial issues, and also urged the anti-Norman alliance. We do not have these letters, but we know them from Leo’s responses to them and from later back-references. Keroularios’ tone must have confused the papal court, but only because of their prior misattribution of Leon of Ohrid’s letter to him. In reality, the patriarch was doing in this instance what he would do throughout this entire story, namely whatever the emperor told him to do in pursuance of imperial policy. Keroularios later referred to this letter (his first to Leo) as being extremely humble and solicitous, and no doubt it was that.4 There is no reason whatsoever to think that Keroularios sent this letter reluctantly or against his wishes, or that he had to be persuaded by someone else to send it on the a priori assumption that he was not the type to do any emperor’s bidding (Runciman, 1955, 43). This is just the bias against Keroularios churning up fictions to explain facts that cut against the standard modern narrative.

Pope Leo wrote two letters in response, the first to the emperor in favour of the alliance, praising Monomachos but condemning Keroularios on the azyma and other issues (Will, Acta, 85-89). Leo also wrote a hostile letter to Keroularios, calling him out on a number of points, including on his title (‘Ecumenical Patriarch’, which the Church of Rome had never accepted since its appearance in late antiquity) (Will, Acta, 89-92; see Demacopoulos, 2013). The pope’s letters were to be delivered by his legates, Humbert, Petrus, the bishop of Amalfi, and Frederick, the papal chancellor and architect of Leo’s anti-Norman strategy. And here we come to the events in Constantinople.

Despite the importance of the events of 1054 and the frequency with which they are retold in modern studies, we have only three sources for what happened in Constantinople, and they are not ideal. The first is Humbert’s brief Commemoratio, which he wrote after his return to preface the Excommunicatio of Keroularios and his sectatores (Will, Acta, 150-152). As historians have realized, Humbert’s account is extremely biased and must be treated with caution. But what it does not say is sometimes more revealing for our purpose. The second is the edict of counter-excommunication issued by the Byzantine Synod convened by Monomachos and Keroularios after the legates’ departure (Will, Acta, 155-188). This source contains a narrative that explains why the counter-excommunication was necessary at all. In addition to the usual doctrinal polemics, this is a fussy bureaucratic document, concerned with explaining procedural steps and justifying its existence. In my reading, it reflects Keroularios and the other bishops’ anxiety to appear to have done everything by the book, in full compliance with imperial instructions. And third, we have Keroularios’ first letter to Petros of Antioch, which conveys the patriarch’s side of the story and advances his feud with Argyros (Will, Acta, 172-184). Let us look again at all the events which these sources record because that has not yet been done outside of a framework which assumes that Keroularios had an agenda and was behind everything.

These sources record few specific events that took place in 1054 before the legates’ dramatic excommunication of Keroularios, in fact only three. When we look at them closely, the narrative of a ‘confrontation’ between the legates and Keroularios evaporates. But first, we have to remember that the legates’ primary business was presumably to work out the terms of an alliance with the emperor for dealing with the Normans. They would have spent most of their time in the palace or in discussion with Monomachos’ minister, at this time one John the /ogothetes (Skylitzes, Synopsis, 477; Psellos, Chronographia 6.177—181; idem, Orationes funebres 2.9). But we hear almost nothing about that. The legates were also going to investigate or resolve the religious controversies that had arisen in the meantime, in the letter of Leon of Ohrid misattributed to Keroularios (Humbert, Commemoratio, in Will, Acta, 153).

The legates arrived on Constantinople around the end of April. The three known events are the following. First, the legates visited the emperor. Nothing is known about those discussions. Second, they visited Keroularios (these two visits are known from his Letter I to Petros of Antioch, in Will, Acta, 177). Keroularios later claimed that they came with arrogance, did not address him properly — presumably this means they did not address him as Ecumenical Patriarch, or even as Patriarch at all, but probably as ‘archbishop’, the title used in Pope Leo’s letter to Keroularios — and then there was a dispute about the order of seating arrangements (reminding us of Liudprand’s complaint about his visit to the court of Nikephoros II Phokas a century earlier: Liudprand, Relatio, par. 19). The problem was inevitable, as Byzantine ranking protocols did not make provision for Western ranks and 

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