Download PDF | The Emperor Theophilos and the East, 829–842_ Court and Frontier in Byzantium during the Last Phase of Iconoclasm_ 13 (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies)-Routledge (2014).
533 Pages
Preface
In the summer semester of 1988 I attended a seminar on Theophanes Continuatus at the Freie Universitat Berlin conducted by the late Professor Paul Speck. It was my first, abrupt introduction into the field of Byzantine Studies after my degree in Classical Philology at the University of Salamanca. I was at that time unaware that I was destined to work on this fascinating history of the second iconoclasm over the years that followed, until, under the stimulating direction of Professor Antonio Bravo Garcia (Universidad Complutense of Madrid), in Salamanca in September 1993, I finally obtained my PhD with a comparative study of the first three books of the “Continuator” and the contemporary history of Genesios. When my research was published two years later in Amsterdam (Signes Codoner 1995), I stopped thinking about the text for several years and began working on other authors and periods, for it seemed to me that I needed to deepen my knowledge of Byzantine literature and historiography.
It was only after more than 10 years that I came back to the text in 2006 on the occasion of a summer research stay of three months at the University of Birmingham. There I met Leslie Brubaker and discussed with her the possibility of publishing a historical monograph on the emperor Theophilos based mostly on the evidence provided by the Continuator. She immediately welcomed my idea, so I submitted to her a draft of the project even before leaving Birmingham at the end of August. The plan was approved some weeks later by John Smedley of Ashgate Publishing. By then, during the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies held in London in 2006, I happened to meet Michael Featherstone (CNRS Paris), who had been charged with editing the first four books of Theophanes Continuatus for the Series Berolinensis of the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae. He generously offered to share with me the editing of the text, on which we have been working since. This unexpected chance encouraged my research, for it offered me the opportunity to read the text intensively once again and thus appreciate better its structure and the working method of the anonymous author who composed it during the reign of Constantine VII.
My research, however, proceeded more slowly than I had initially imagined, especially because of the high number of complementary sources I needed to check (Greek, Arabic and Armenian) and the many secondary issues that needed to be dealt with. In order to consult bibliographies not available in Spain and also to exchange points of view with foreign colleagues, new research stays in Paris (2008), Oxford (2009, 2010) and Vienna (2010) were undertaken. I was even granted a sabbatical by the University of Valladolid for the academic year 20092010 to finish the work. I spent my leave mostly working at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales of the CSIC in Madrid.
At the end of this process the book had grown into twice its original intended size, mostly because of the necessity of dealing with minute textual problems, which were not easy to tackle with passing references, but needed to be commented upon in some detail.
I relied on the assistance of many colleagues and friends whom I would like to mention here for their invaluable help. First of all, mention must be made of Michael Featherstone, my joint editor of the text, whose advice on many particular details always proved useful. The passages quoted from the “Continuator’”, as well as the English translation, are taken from our common, still unpublished edition of the text. Other colleagues contributed to correcting errors in the original manuscript by reading the draft of some sections: John Haldon (Chapters 1 and 10), Timothy Greenwood (Chapters 15—16), Jonathan Shepard (Chapters 19-21), Joseph Munitiz (Chapter 21), Marie-France Auzépy (Chapter 21) and Otto Kresten (Chapter 21). Stephen Gero, James Howard Johnston, Chris Lightfoot, Pagona Papadopoulou and Mark Swanson, among others, also gave me their advice on many particular issues. Many others also helped me with bibliographical enquiries and petitions or just encouraged my work with their friendly support. On the financial side, the study has been made possible to a great extent by funding provided by the Spanish research project FFI2012-37908-C02-01. I must also especially thank Leslie Brubaker for the painstaking reading she made of the final draft of the book, polishing my deficient English at many points and thus producing a correct text.
Finally, Arantxa and Micaela made my life easier and more colourful during the long time it took for me to put my ideas in order. For the welcome pauses needed during research I dedicate this book to them.
A note on the transcription of names: I have transliterated Greek names except for those that are most common in English (Constantine, John, Gregory, Theodore, Peter, and also Nikaia, Cappadocia etc.). For the Arabic names I use diacritics according to the usual norms in English but avoid the article when at the beginning of the name. I apologize for minor inconsistencies.
Valladolid, April 2013
Introduction: Some Short Remarks on the Methodology and Purpose of the Book
The reign of Theophilos (829-842), the last iconoclast emperor, has always attracted historians of Byzantium, who tend to regard it as a crucial turning point in the history of the empire. However, the reasons for such an assessment are difficult to ascertain. Certainly, he enjoyed a relatively mild treatment in the iconophile sources, at least in contrast with the demeaning accounts of his iconoclastic forerunners, especially Leo II, Constantine V and Leo V. These same sources have preserved some family scenes of the emperor that render Theophilos’ figure more humane and even enable us to draw an approximate profile of his character. A legendary halo of righteousness even surrounds Theophilos in some later accounts.
But when we try to be more specific about his achievements and leave aside any romanticism, we only find what seems to be a string of military defeats by the Arabs, interspersed with some minor triumphs, and a tenuous link with the origins of the so-called Byzantine Renaissance. Moreover, Theophilos’ posthumous fame is usually connected with the good offices of his widow Theodora, who struggled to preserve the memory of her husband against the thirst for retaliation of many icon worshippers after 842 and, in order to achieve that, effectively managed her power as regent of her infant son Michael until 855. As the story goes, she promised to enforce a new religious policy of icon worship only in exchange for an official absolution by the Church of her late husband. Her attitude is quite understandable, as she was defending the continuity of the dynasty embodied by her son. Theodora knew what kind of propaganda could be levelled against dead emperors: the second Council of Nikaia had already launched a slanderous campaign against the iconoclast rulers of the eighth century, virtually effacing every positive trace of their reigns and branding them with infamous nicknames. Curiously enough, it was the iconophile Michael III and not his father Theophilos who was to be denigrated after his death in 867 by the official historiography of the new Macedonian dynasty and therefore depicted as a dissolute and incompetent drunkard.
Thus, most modern historiography has become accustomed to portraying Theophilos in a favourable light, taking at face value the legendary account that makes of him a righteous and learned ruler, and excusing as bad luck his apparent military failures against the Muslims. At least this is the attitude of the only current monograph about Theophilos, written by John H. Rosser in 1972 under the title Theophilos the Unlucky (829/842): A Study of the Tragic and Brilliant Reign of Byzantium § last Iconoclastic Emperor. This thesis, although not easily available, has influenced the approach of many scholars since then, because Rosser undertook a thorough research of the sources and was able to build on them a consistent image of the emperor.
Warren Treadgold in his popular book The Byzantine Revival 780842 accepts this overall pattern and speaks of “brilliance at home” and “brilliance abroad” when outlining the main events of his reign before the defeat of Amorion in 838 that is said to have triggered “Theophilos’ depression”. For Treadgold, Theophilos was also an “unlucky emperor’, and although he concedes that his good reputation was mostly an effect of his own propaganda, he states that “if Theophilos had reigned 50 more years, as was quite possible in view of his youth, he might well have become one of the greatest Byzantine rulers”.' In his final assessment of Theophilos’ career it does not matter apparently for Treadgold that his military record could be, “to put it charitably”, as he says, “disappointing”.
In spite of the great number of studies devoted to particular aspects of Theophilos’s reign, this contradictory assessment remains well established in modern research. There are however several reasons that commend a reappraisal of this image. The first has to do with the nature of the evidence. As a matter of fact, the positive evidence linking the origins of the Byzantine Renaissance with Theophilos is scanty, reduced in fact to the already mentioned legendary accounts and therefore highly controversial. And it is to be expected that it will remain so for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, Theophilos’ fame as patron of the arts and the sciences, no matter how probable, is mostly indirectly deduced through the historical context.
The opposite is the case when we try to assess the military abilities of the emperor, for we can now rely on a good number of sources. However, modern authors have in general tended to magnify the impact of the taking of the city of Amorion in 838 by caliph Mu‘tasim, following closely the propaganda and detailed accounts of the Arabic sources as well as the tendentious narrative of later iconophile sources, which put the focus on the defeats of Theophilos in the battlefield in order to counteract the effects of the dynastic propaganda. One of our most important sources for Theophilos, the anonymous continuation of the chronicle of Theophanes written by order of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, provides the critics, so to say, with the slogan they needed, for he writes that “[Theophilos] carried off no fitting exploits in war, but was always defeated and returned in a manner unworthy of an emperor” (o06é Tac Ev TOAELOIG GvVOpayabiag KATOAA AWS EAGUBAVEV, GAA’ HrtTNTO TE dei Kai OD KATH Paolréa DTEOTPEGEV).”
A more positive verdict is possible that will bring the military record into accord with the cultural achievements of Theophilos’ reign. This appears highly desirable and will probably account for the posthumous fame of the emperor, which could not be sustained just through dynastic propaganda. As a matter of fact, it appears that Theophilos’ prestige as a ruler could not be assured in the eyes of his contemporaries merely with a cultural programme, not even by showing himself incorruptible, accessible to his subjects or righteous in the law court. It is to be doubted whether these attitudes could ever have mattered for the Byzantines if they were accompanied by permanent failure in the battlefield or a financial crisis. It is rather to be surmised that Theophilos, despite serious setbacks such as the defeat at Amorion in 838, effectively pushed back the Arab military threat and even won some reputation as an efficient ruler. It is upon this basis that his image must have been built.
Another reason for writing a new study on Theophilos has undoubtedly to do with the marked progress made in recent years in the knowledge of the sources and the protagonists of the history of ninth-century Byzantium. Friedhelm Winkelmann and his team of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in East Berlin during the DDR period were pioneers in attempting a thorough review and cataloguing of the available evidence, thus paving the way for later projects. Books like the Quellenstudien zur herrschenden Klasse von Byzanz im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert of 1987 or the Quellen zur Geschichte des friihen Byzanz’ remain essential references. It is upon this basis that the huge Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit (PmbZ), conducted and led by Ralph-Johannes Lilie, again at the Berliner Akademie, was made possible.
The first part (“Erste Abteilung”) of this encyclopedia, covering the years 641 to 867, appeared between 1998 and 2001 in six volumes “nach Vorarbeiten F. Winkelmanns”. It not only provides an exhaustive register of every single source for every single person who played some role in the events of the time (be it an emperor or an anonymous person), but it also makes a critical assessment of the often contradictory evidence at hand, certainly with occasional slips, but always providing an honest and reliable interpretation of the facts. It should also be mentioned that the first volume of this vast enterprise, titled Prolegomena, contains a detailed study (“Quellenkunde”’) of the sources according to their nature and genres, which includes also non-Greek texts and archeological material.
Simultaneously with the German Prosopographie, a parallel project appeared under the auspices of King’s College, London, the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire I: (641-867) (PBE) edited by Robert Martindale and covering exactly the same period.* Although the English project is less detailed than the German, it remains nevertheless a very useful research tool, for it is published as an electronic database, which not only makes consultation and search easier but will also allow for permanent updating of the entries. Finally, scholars at the University of Birmingham produced an even more detailed register of the sources in a volume written by two of its leading academics in the field of Byzantine Studies, Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon.°® With the title Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca. 680-850): The Sources. An Annotated Survey, this impressive study was conceived as the introduction to the comprehensive historical study of the iconoclast period that appeared in 2011’ and that has as its two main foci the socioeconomic history and material culture, in clear contrast to the more political approach of previous work on the period.
All these publications and others ofa more limited focus but no less encyclopaedic nature® have thus provided scholars with tools and data that enable a more accurate appraisal of the evidence. However, at the same time, they raise the bar for future research and make it more difficult to present new results. In view of the large amount of evidence now available, it is therefore advisable to reduce the scope of any new study on the period in order to gain a deeper insight into the problems involved: overviews over a long period are possible only after decades of research and mostly conceivable only on a team basis. The main reason for this is that we can no longer take the sources as “medieval databases”, as was necessarily the case before these new vast projects appeared, when scholars invested most of their time struggling with texts in search of substantive data. Now that the data as well as the sources that convey them are known, something more is needed. This is mainly a more careful approach to the texts that must consider the aims and scope of their authors, the sources they used or the literary codes that unavoidably determined their task. New information will appear mainly by taking these aspects into account.
Curiously enough, this approach has been relatively neglected by historians of the iconoclast period. A first symptom of this is that the most detailed historical writings that cover the reign of Theophilos, such as the chronicles of the Logothete group and the Continuator of Theophanes, are still waiting for a critical edition.’ This neglect extends also to many hagiographies of the period, which remain badly edited, not to speak of dozens of minor sources. Consequently, not many monographs on single works of the period have appeared in recent times, in contrast to the constant appearance of new studies on Byzantine texts before the Muslim invasion or from the eleventh century onwards. However, there are obviously exceptions to this general rule, personified mainly by the late Paul Speck and more recently by Marie-France Auzépy, who represent two different methodologies. Both have contributed in their way to disentangling the thicket of fragmentary and biased reports produced by the iconophiles, which obscured to a great extent the eventual achievements of the iconoclast emperors. It is perhaps worth commenting briefly on their work.
Before Speck, modern historians had always avoided paying too much attention to the most evident pieces of slander against iconoclasts produced by the iconophiles, as their partiality was blatant. However, as the scholars did not have an alternative version for the events, in the end they became somewhat resigned and endorsed the general assessment of cultural and economic decay that the iconophile propaganda had produced for the long century before the “restoration” of icon worship in 843. Legends like the burning of the university at the time of Leo ITI or even the pact of this same emperor with a Jew to start the persecution of icons were repeated in the manuals,'° albeit with a sense of distaste and weariness, as if these naive stories somehow reflected the general atmosphere of decadence the iconophiles were denouncing.
Speck began scrutinizing one by one the pieces of the puzzle, and consequently submitted many single texts to a painstaking analysis, revealing the patchwork character of many compositions, the final result of a complex transmission process. He detected inconsistencies and a random combination of sources, and tried to reconstruct out of them the iconoclast perspective. He also proved that there were a good number of forgeries behind many of the texts concerning the iconoclast controversy. The iconophiles were in fact already used to altering or interpolating pro-iconoclastic texts between 787 and 815 and then again after 843, in order to hide or alter their original message. Nevertheless, they often worked clumsily, not being able to erase all traces of the original intent of the work. After Speck’s research, many legends and stories now found an historical explanation.
However, Speck suspected more interpolations and forgeries than was certainly the case and occasionally went too far in his minute reconstruction of the original texts, which was mainly hypothetical and unwarranted. Although his intuitions were frequently sound,'' his attempt to reconstruct in every single detail the original wording of the text under consideration was sometimes excessive and based on a chain of petitiones principii, whose accumulation made the whole building tremble.’* His preconception of what the text was supposed to say (mostly guided by his vindication of iconoclast emperors against iconophile propaganda) in fact determined his analysis, which in many instances ignored the authorial intention and dismembered the text into a disparate series of textual fragments. The shortcomings of this procedure had already been denounced by Jakov Ljubarsk1j in some of his publications, where he defended the personality of the author against the abuses of a more mechanical Quellenforschung.'*
A much more careful and prudent approach to the texts was needed, such as that offered by Marie-France Auzépy during the last 15 years.'* Instead of explaining out problematic data in texts by means of chance transmission and ad hoc hypothesis, Auzépy closely scrutinizes the overall structure of the texts under review and detects minor inconsistencies in order to prove their composite nature. She avoids an exact explanation for every single problem she detects, but convincingly finds a more likely historical and cultural context for the work under review. She does not ignore the Quellenforschung, but recognizes the importance of the author as well.
It is this middle way that we aim to follow in the present work when dealing with pieces of evidence taken from the sources. Now, as we are not writing a succession of monographic studies on single sources (as most of Auzépy’s studies are), but aim to reconstruct a period out of them (as was Speck’s main purpose), it is our duty to obtain a coherent picture from disparate sources, which can certainly be regarded as contradicting the philological method. However, being conscious of that, we will try not to sacrifice or to force into the overall picture the partial conclusions obtained through the detailed analysis of the texts, thus admitting exceptions and alternative explanations to our interpretation. As a consequence, our assessment of the period will be less evident or, so to speak, more contradictory, but it will be richer and, we hope, closer to the complex reality of the empire. That our conclusions will be perhaps more open to debate is not necessarily a deficiency of this method.
On the other hand, since we aim at making a partial historical account of Theophilos’ reign out ofa relatively large number of sources, we will evidently not be able to provide a philological analysis of all them when assessing the evidence they bear. However, we will try at least to consider the context and intention of the evidence given by the most important sources of the period, namely the histories of Genesios and the Continuator of Theophanes, both written in the tenth century during the reign of Constantine VII and at his request.'° Also important will be works such as the Annals of Tabart, the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian and the famous Letter to Theophilos of the three Melkite patriarchs, which will be the main focus of analysis in separate chapters or sections of the book.'®
These works, along with some other minor texts, will be quoted in the following pages of this book and their accounts will provide more often than not the starting point for the discussion. My method will be the opposite of that followed by Treadgold in his influential book quoted above, The Byzantine Revival: instead of building a coherent narrative out of the data taken from the sources and relegating to lengthy footnotes the discussion of the textual problems, I have preferred to put the textual discussion into the main text (making of it the core of the book) and relegating the historical conclusions to the end of the corresponding chapter or section.'’ This obviously makes reading more difficult for the average reader in search of a coherent narrative of the period, but in exchange it provides a faithful picture of the process by which the conclusions are gained. The reader can thus easily check the arguments at stake for every single passage and eventually refute them if unconvincing.
Moreover, the fact that I have always tried to let the sources speak for themselves before proceeding to discuss the historicity of their accounts has the advantage of preventing a good deal of unfounded speculation, because the arguments thus remain closely bound to the texts that trigger the discussion. In fact, the permanent reference to the sources obliges one to take them seriously and not to discredit too quickly the information they furnish if it does not tally with our particular reconstruction of the events: in those cases we must do our best to look for some likely cause for the distorting version offered by a given source and not to consider it just fanciful or legendary for no particular reason, as has too often been the case in modern research when approaching Byzantine sources.
This, I concede, is a difficult task, for it frequently occurs that no apparent reason for a problematic statement emerges after a first reading. However, this book attempts to centre the discussion in the internal logic of the sources and not only in the logic of the scholar at work. It is my hope that the narrative of the discussion process, however technical it may be, may nevertheless appeal to readers, especially if I succeed in exposing the chain of facts according to their natural order and the relevance of the sources. Obviously if the conclusions turn out to be sound, or at least likely, the effort will have been worth it.
This procedure of presenting and discussing the sources before coming to any conclusions takes more space than usual in books on Byzantine history, the consequence logically being a book bulkier than I initially wished. This circumstance has forced a selection of topics, because a comprehensive monograph on Theophilos would have undoubtedly surpassed my own abilities and turned out to be unrealistic. So I decided to leave out of my research essential aspects of Theophilos’ reign, such as administration and economy (which obviously need a broader perspective, like the one attempted in the recent book of Brubaker and Haldon),'* but also the diplomatic exchanges with the Latin powers, the military campaigns in the west (from the Danube frontier to Sicily), not to mention the iconoclastic controversy within the frontiers of the empire or the building activity of the emperor (mainly attested in the capital), among many other topics. Instead, I put the lens on the relationship of the empire under Theophilos with its eastern neighbours, be they Armenians, Persians, Arabs or even Khazars. The arrangement of the subject matter is, however, neither purely thematic (according to the nations involved) nor chronological, but combines both factors and perhaps requires some explanation.
The revival of iconoclasm under Leo the Armenian and Michael of Amorion, both soldiers of the eastern frontier, as well as the regional tensions between westerners and easterners as expressed mainly during the so-called civil war of Thomas the Slav, will be the focus of Section I of the study, for it is against this background that many of the events during Theophilos’ reign are better understood. Theophilos’ interest in the east is also explained through the dominance of Armenians at the court, an aspect that links his reign with that of his predecessor Leo the Armenian (Theophilos saw himself as an avenger of his assassination) rather than with his father Michael.
The evidence collected will allow a detailed prosopographical analysis of some of the most conspicuous agents of power at the time, such as Manuel the Armenian or John the Grammarian (see Section ID). Again, the recruitment of Persians in the army since 833 was evidently a countermeasure to check Abbasid aggressive campaigns in Anatolia (even since the time of Thomas’s usurpation), but also explains further the development of later campaigns. It had internal consequences for the emperor (the usurpation of the Persian Theophobos) that are also worth considering (see Section III).
That eastern policy was a priority for the empire during Theophilos’ reign was in the first instance a consequence of the threat posed by the Abbasids, since the caliph Ma’min and his brother Mu‘tasim took the field as many as four times against the empire and caused Theophilos in turn to react by personally leading several campaigns beyond the eastern borders of Byzantine Anatolia, some of them quite successful. The review and assessment of the main sources for these military actions understandably constitute the longest section of the book and will allow for a somehow improved and more detailed sequence of the events. There, attention will also be paid to the war between Michael and Thomas (820-823), which was a turning point in the permanent crisis between the two rival powers, since it was in fact triggered by the personal involvement of Ma’min in Thomas’s usurpation (see Section IV).
The strategic importance of the Khazars, one of the main economic powers in the Russian steppes and an important commercial partner of the Abbasid caliphate, explains the renewed interest of the Byzantines in an alliance with them, which, contrary to current chronology, is to be set at the beginning of Theophilos’ reign. The shift to the Rus took place only towards 838 (see Section V).
The following section will explore the aim of the appeal addressed by the Melkite patriarchs to Theophilos in 836 as put forward in the so-called Letter to Theophilos, a rather problematic text that has been the subject of much controversy. Despite the current opinion that the Melkites were at the time fervent partisans of icon worship, we will explore the possibility that they could have tried to come to an agreement with the emperor as a result of the recent military victories of Theophilos in the eastern border and of the apocalyptic prophecies that circulated at the time and announced an impending end of the Abbasid caliphate (Section V1).
Next, the cultural exchanges with the Arabs, the so-called “road to Baghdad”, will be our focus, for the origins of the Byzantine revival of the ninth century are not to be explained without the contribution of the Abbasid philhellenism, however this phenomenon may be assessed (Section VII). Finally, we will try to balance Theophilos’ eastern policy against his image as a righteous ruler as advanced in contemporary or later sources (see the Epilogue).
A new chronology of many of the events of Theophilos’ reign, made possible only after painstaking analysis of the sources discussed throughout this book, is included in an appendix at the end of the study.
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