Download PDF | Imperial Spheres And The Adriatic Byzantium, The Carolingians And The Treaty Of Aachen ( 812) Routledge ( 2017)
366 Pages
Although often mentioned in textbooks about the Carolingian and Byzantine empires, the Treaty of Aachen has not received much close attention. This volume attempts not just to fill the gap, but to view the episode through both micro- and macro-lenses. Introductory chapters review the state of relations between Byzantium and the Frankish realm in the eighth and early ninth centuries, crises facing Byzantine emperors much closer to home, and the relevance of the Bulgarian problem to affairs on the Adriatic. Dalmatia’s coastal towns and the populations of the interior receive extensive attention, including the region’s ecclesiastical history and cultural affiliations.
So do the local politics of Dalmatia, Venice and the Carolingian marches, and their interaction with the Byzantino-Frankish confrontation. The dynamics of the Franks’ relations with the Avars are analysed and, here too, the three-way play among the two empires and ‘in-between’ parties is a theme. Archaeological indications of the Franks’ presence are collated with what the literary sources reveal about local elites’ aspirations. The economic dimension to the Byzantino-Frankish competition for Venice is fully explored, a special feature of the volume being archaeological evidence for a resurgence of trade between the Upper Adriatic and the Eastern Mediterranean from the second half of the eighth century onwards.
Mladen An¢ié¢ is Professor of History at the Universities of Zadar and Zagreb. He has published on the Hungarian-Croatian kingdom and Bosnia in the fourteenth century, the medieval city of Jajce, and historiography and nationalism.
Jonathan Shepard was Lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge. Co-author of The Emergence of Rus with Simon Franklin, his edited volumes include The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire.
Trpimir Vedris is Assistant Professor at the University of Zagreb. He has coedited four volumes, including Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints (with John Ott) and Cuius Patrocinio Tota Gaudet Regio (with Stanislava Kuzmova and Ana Marinkovic).
Contributors
Mladen Antéié is Professor of History at the Universities of Zadar and Zagreb. He studied history at Sarajevo and Belgrade before completing his PhD at the University of Zagreb on the Hungarian-Croatian kingdom and Bosnia in the fourteenth century, the subject of his 1997 monograph. Among his other books is a monograph on the medieval city of Jajce, as well as a book on historiography and nationalism. Articles include ‘Church With Incomplete Biography: Plans for the Consolidation of the Byzantine Rule on the Adriatic at the Beginning of the Ninth Century’ (2014) and ‘Lombard and Frankish Influences in the Formation of the Croatian Dukedom’ (2005).
Ivan Basi¢ is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Split. He studied history and art history at the University of Zagreb, with a PhD in medieval studies on ‘Poleogenesis of Split at the Turn of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’. His research interests include the late antique and medieval Adriatic, church history, urban history, historical geography and early Christian and medieval art and architecture. In addition to three co-authored monographs and an edited volume, his works include ‘The Inscription of Gaius Orchivius Amemptus’ (2015), ‘Diocletian’s Villa in Late Antique and Early Medieval Historiography: A Reconsideration’ (2014), and ‘Spalatensia Porphyrogenitiana. Some Issues Concerning the Textual Transmission of Porphyrogenitus’ Sources for the Chapters on Dalmatia in the De administrando imperio’ (2013).
Maddalena Betti is a Research Fellow at the Department of History, Universita degli Studi di Padova. She studied at the University of Florence before obtaining a joint doctorate from the universities of Padua and the SorbonnePantheon, Paris. Her doctoral work focused on the Methodian archdiocese, which emerged briefly in mid- to late ninth century Moravia, and was published as The Making of Christian Moravia (858-882): Papal Power and Political Reality (2013). She has undertaken research in both Prague and Vienna. Her research interests include the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, ninth-century borderlands and urban centres on the Middle Danube, marriage and divorce in the post-Carolingian age and the Roman aristocracy.
Neven Budak is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zagreb and has taught at the Central European University in Budapest. He is an honorary member of the International Commission for the History of Towns. His doctorate from the University of Zagreb on the urban centres of north-western Croatia was published in 1994. He has since published extensively on different periods of Croatian history. Key articles in English include ‘Croats between Franks and Byzantium’ (1997), ‘Liturgical Memory in Croatia and Dalmatia around the Year 1000’ (2000), ‘Identities in Early Medieval Dalmatia (Seventh — Eleventh Centuries)’ (2008), and ‘Early Medieval Boundaries in Dalmatia/Croatia (8th— 11th Centuries)’ (2015).
Marianna Cerno is a Research Fellow in the Department of Humanities, University of Udine. Having obtained her doctorate from SISMEL, Florence, on the Latin passios that circulated in Italy between the sixth and tenth centuries, she is currently working on a project studying Latin translations of the Greek pre-Nicean Fathers to be published as part of the Corpus Christianorum. Atticles include ‘Un’agiografia “dimenticata” del vescovo Domnione, martire di Salona’ (2015) and chapters on Aquilea and the hagiography of Salona, and the passios of Sts Anastasius, Domnion and Donatus, in Le passioni dei martiri aquileiesi e istriani, vol. 2, ed. Emanuela Colombi (2013).
Danijel Dzino is a Lecturer at the Departments of Ancient History and International Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, having obtained his PhD in Classics at the University of Adelaide. His research interests focus on ancient and early medieval IIlyricum, particularly the identity transformations undergone by the indigenous population of the region in Roman and post-Roman times. Author of Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post-Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia (2010) and I/lyricum and Roman Politics 229 BC-AD 68 (2010), Dzino also co-edited, with Ken Parry, Byzantium, Its Neighbours and Its Cultures (2014), to which he contributed a chapter on the Croats in the De administrando.
Sauro Gelichi is an archaeologist and Professor in the Department of Humanities of the Universita Ca’Foscari, Venice. For many years an inspector of archaeology in Emilia Romagna, he has also lectured at Pisa and Parma and edits Archeologia Medievale. His research interests include the history of medieval urban and rural settlements and material culture, particularly ceramics, and he has excavated in Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, Veneto and Lombardy, as well as in Tunisia, Syria, Turkey and Montenegro. He has published extensively, including co-editing with Richard Hodges From One Sea to Another (2012) and New Directions in Early Medieval European Archaeology (2015).
Hrvoje Graéanin is Associate Professor at the Department of History of the University of Zagreb, where he read for his PhD on the history of the region between the Sava, Drava and Danube in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. His research focuses on the Pannonian region, particularly its interaction with the Byzantine empire, and on late antique and early medieval historiography. The author of eight monographs and three edited volumes, titles in English include ‘The History of the Eastern Adriatic Region from the Vth to the VIIth Centuries AD: Historical Processes and Historiographic Problems’ (2015) and ‘The Refashioning of Historical Reality: Three Stories by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus and the Early Medieval History of Croatia’ (2014).
Predrag Komatina is a Research Associate at the Institute for Byzantine Studies in Belgrade. He obtained his PhD from the University of Belgrade on the ‘Church Policy of Byzantium from the End of Iconoclasm to the Death of Emperor Basil I’, which was published as a monograph in 2014. He is currently working on a project on ‘Tradition, Innovation and Identity in the Byzantine World’. Articles include “The “King of Francia” in De cerimoniis, II, 48’ (2015), ‘The Church in Serbia at the Time of the Cyrillo-Methodian Mission in Moravia’ (2015) and ‘Date of the Composition of the Notitiae episcopatuum ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae nos 4, 5 and 6’ (2013).
Ivan Majnari¢ is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of History at the Croatian Catholic University, Zagreb. With a PhD from the University of Zagreb on the middle- and lower-ranking nobility around Zadar in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, his research interests include medieval Croatian church, diplomatic, intellectual and social history, as well as medieval political thought and archival sources. He has published a monograph on papal legates on the eastern Adriatic coast between 1159 and 1204, and his works in English include a book chapter on the ‘Nobility of the Croatian Kingdom Between Zadar and Its Hinterland During the Late 14th and Early 15th Centuries’ (2014).
Angel Nikolov is Associate Professor in the History of Medieval Bulgaria at the Faculty of History, St Kliment Ohrid University, Sofia, having taught there since obtaining his PhD on ‘The Bulgarian Political Ideas 864-971 AD’. His research interests include medieval Bulgarian political and cultural history, including their links with Byzantium, and medieval Bulgarian political thought. He has published books on anti-Catholic literature in Bulgaria and the Slavic orthodox world and political thought in early medieval Bulgaria. Key articles include ‘Convocato omni regno: The Council of 893 and its “Reflections” in Contemporary Historiography’ (2016) and ‘ “A Useful Tale about the Latins”: An Old Bulgarian Translation of a Lost Byzantine Anti-Latin Text of the End of 11th—Early 12th Century’ (2003).
Jonathan Shepard was for many years University Lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge and is Doctor Honoris Causa at St Kliment Ohrid University in Sofia. Co-author of The Emergence of Rus (1996) with Simon Franklin, with whom he also edited Byzantine Diplomacy (1992), his edited volumes include The Expansion of Orthodox Europe (2007), The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (2008) and Byzantium and the Viking World (with Fedir Androshchuk and Monica White, 2016). He is the author of many articles on subjects which range from Anglo-Saxon settlements on the Black Sea to the First Crusade. A collection of his articles was published in Emergent Elites and Byzantium in the Balkans and East-Central Europe (2011).
Magdalena Skoblar is a Research Associate of the University of York and a Research Fellow of the British School at Rome. Her book, Figural Sculpture in Eleventh-Century Dalmatia and Croatia: Patronage, Architectural Context, History (2016), is the first English-language monograph on medieval Croatian sculpture. She received her PhD from the Department of History of Art at the University of York in 2011. Her current research focuses on medieval visual culture in the Adriatic basin, and she recently completed a British Academyfunded postdoctoral fellowship focusing on the cult of the Virgin Mary in the early medieval Adriatic hosted by the British Schools at Athens and Rome.
Panos Sophoulis is Lecturer in East European History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He received his DPhil from the University of Oxford, where he taught Byzantine and Balkan medieval history between 2002 and 2004. He is currently writing a monograph on the mid-thirteenth-century Mongol invasion of south-eastern Europe. His publications include Bulgaria and Byzantium, 775-831 (2012), which received the John D. Bell Book Prize of the Bulgarian Studies Association in 2013, ‘Incorporating the Other: Shaping the Identity of the Christian Community in Early Medieval Bulgaria’ (2015) and ‘Byzantium’s Search for an Ally in the Former Avar Territories in the Early Middle Ages’ (2011).
Peter Stih is Professor of Medieval History and Auxiliary Historical Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, a Member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include early medieval Slav ethnogenesis and state formation in the eastern Alps. He has published many books and articles on the medieval history of the Alpine-Adriatic region, including Studien zur Geschichte der Grafen von Gorz (1996) and The Middle Ages between the Eastern Alps and the Northern Adriatic: Select Papers on Slovene Historiography and Medieval History (2010).
Béla Miklés Széke is Senior Research Fellow at the Research Centre for the Humanities, Archaeological Institute, Hungarian Academy of Science. After obtaining his PhD in archaeology from Budapest, he received his DSc from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and in 2012 was awarded the Stephen Schénvisner Award. He has led and been involved in many archaeological excavations across Hungary and has published extensively, including some twenty books and catalogues and more than a hundred articles. His works include The Carolingian Age in the Carpathian Basin (2014), Awaren und Slawen in Stidwest-Ungarn (1994) and ‘Die Donau und die letzten Tage des awarischen Khaganats’ (2011).
Miklos Takacs is Senior Research Fellow at the Research Centre for the Humanities, Archaeological Institute, Hungarian Academy of Science and Docent at the Péter Pazmany Catholic University, Budapest. His PhD from Budapest was on ‘Clay Cauldrons of the Carpathian Basin’, and in 2014 he gained his DSc from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Research interests include the archaeological investigation of early medieval settlements of the Carpathian basin; early medieval ceramics; tenth- to thirteenth-century Hungarian religious architecture and its Byzantine links; and comparative medieval archaeology in the northern Balkans. He is a participant in many projects and author of more than 135 single and jointly authored publications, including ‘Crafts in the Arpad Era’ (2012) and ‘Byzanz und die Steppenvolker im frithmittelalterlichen Donauraum’ (2012).
Trpimir Vedris is Assistant Professor at the University of Zagreb, where he studied history, ethnography and philosophy. He holds an MA in medieval studies from the Central European University in Budapest and two doctorates: one from Zagreb, on Latin legends about Sts Anastasia and Chrysogonus and a second from the CEU, on saints’ cults and the construction of the past in medieval Dalmatia. He has taught at the Universities of Zagreb and Split since 2005 and is co-editor of four volumes, including Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints (with John Ott, 2012) and Cuius Patrocinio Tota Gaudet Regio. Saints’ Cults and the Dynamics of Regional Cohesion (with Stanislava Kuzmova and Ana Marinkovié, 2014).
Daniel Ziemann is Associate Professor in the Department for Medieval Studies of the Central European University, Budapest. After a PhD from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main on ‘The Genesis of Bulgaria between Eastern and Western Cultural Influences’, he taught at the University of Cologne before joining the CEU. His publications include Vom Wandervolk zur Grossmacht: Die Entstehung Bulgariens im friihen Mittelalter (7.9. Jahrhundert) (2007); ‘The Rebellion of the Nobles against the Baptism of Khan Boris (865—866)’ (2007); and ‘Onglos — Once Again’ (2012).
Preface
Although often featuring in textbooks about the Carolingian and Byzantine empires, the Treaty of Aachen has not received very much close attention from western medievalists, Byzantinists or Slavists. This is surprising, given that it marks the climax of a series of confrontations, armed conflicts and intensive negotiations involving the papacy and local elites in northern Italy and the Upper Adriatic, Dalmatia (a term deriving from the ancient Roman province, encompassing the coast and the hinterland of the north-eastern Adriatic) and the Middle Danube region, as well as the Frankish and the Byzantine leaderships. And although the treaty’s text has not survived, and tensions between Byzantine and Frankish rulers were not eliminated, the treaty represents a milestone in the establishment of legitimate Carolingian hegemony in the west. This volume, the fruits of a conference held in Zadar in September 2012, makes an attempt not just to fill the gap in scholarship but to view the episode from all possible angles, political, diplomatic, military, economic and cultural. A mixture of veteran and younger scholars were enlisted for this task so as to draw upon several other disciplines besides general history and to present in the English language important work done by Central and Eastern European scholars.
Introductory chapters review the state of relations between Byzantium and the Frankish realm in the eighth and early ninth centuries, comparing them with international relations in modern times and setting them in the context of western aemulatio imperii and the problems facing Byzantine emperors much closer to home (see the chapters by Shepard, Anéic, Majnari¢, Sophoulis). One theme of these and subsequent chapters is the relevance of the Bulgar problem to Byzantium’s general interest in the Upper Adriatic (Nikolov, Ziemann). This is why the populations of the coastal towns of the old Roman province of Dalmatia along with those of the interior receive extensive attention, with coverage of the ecclesiastical history and of the cultural affiliations of the townsmen and the various inland elites (Skoblar, Cerno, Dzino, Betti, Komatina, Basic, Vedris). Some chapters focus on the local politics or the local and long-range commerce of Dalmatia, Venice and the Carolingian marches and the interaction of these with the high politics of the Byzantino-Frankish confrontation (Gelichi, Stih, Budak): individuals and families could raise their status by aligning with one side or another, while established regimes might feel themselves threatened. The Franks’ relations with the Avars are analysed in detail and, here too, the three-way play between the two empires and ‘in-between’ parties is a theme. Archaeological, sculptural and other material indications of the Franks’ presence in Dalmatia and the Middle Danube are reviewed (Széke, Graéanin, Takacs). The economic dimension to the Byzantino-Frankish contest for Venice is fully explored, a special feature being the archaeological evidence for a resurgence of trade between the Upper Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean from the second half of the eighth century onwards. Thus the diplomatic exchanges between Constantinople and Aachen and the intermittent bouts of armed conflict are set within the broader background of shifting local allegiances and an economic upswing.
The end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries was, then, a turning-point at several levels and, in an era of experiment, fragmentation and flux, the image of a spinning compass needle would perhaps be more apt. The careers and changing alignments of Slav warlords like Liudewit in Pannonia and churchmen like Fortunatus of Grado epitomise this, while the problems of attribution of ciboria in that town and of assessing the significance of swords and other Frankish weaponry and Byzantine coins found in Pannonian and Dalmatian soil offer material evidence of this. This volume aims to shed light on the periphery of two political systems, namely the otherwise neglected region between the eastern Adriatic and the Middle Danube. Setting out the problems, it illuminates the multiple processes underway when a variety of communities and cultures find themselves confronting one another, some entering the historical stage for the first time. Such a kaleidoscope does not lend itself to a ‘grand narrative’, let alone to an overarching synthesis. But it could be that markers have been laid down here for further interdisciplinary work on the Upper Adriatic and Middle Danube regions and even for a more nuanced history of early medieval Europe in general. And narratives of the main events and issues in the run-up to the making of the Treaty of Aachen are offered in such contributions as those by Mladen Anéié¢ and Daniel Ziemann and in other chapters in the first two parts, while the limitations of our knowledge about key topics like the collapse of the Avar khaganate are shown by Miklos Takacs’ chapter.
Such interdisciplinary work inevitably poses a veritable minefield of questions for the editors to answer. How should we style names? Should we quote in the original language or should we transliterate? And if so, how? Is it helpful to offer a translation of article or book titles when no such translation of the work itself is available? Answering such questions is never easy and invites accusations of inconsistency — or worse. We have tried to make this volume clear and accessible primarily to an English-speaking audience and to non-specialists in the history, art and archaeology of the early medieval southern Slavs, Franks and Byzantines. This has led us to some broad brushwork and possibly controversial decisions. First and foremost, the styling of the very treaty itself: as Mladen Ancié notes in his chapter (below, 34 n. 1), western medievalists have tended to fight shy of styling the ‘Treaty of Aachen’ as anything more concrete than a series of negotiations or possibly a pactum. We have bitten the bullet and call it a treaty. An agreement was, after all, set out in writing, ratified by two powers claiming fully legitimate authority over a disputed area and followed up by negotiations concerning some of its territorial details a few years later. Since the text does not survive, we have to infer its contents from the Frankish annals; Byzantine chronicles are (characteristically) silent about this, as about most other events in the empire’s relations with western potentates. This does not make the formal agreement any less of a treaty. Other issues of terminology include the use of Bulgars rather than Bulgarians up to their Christianization around 864; and Croats become Croatians from the early ninth century, with the formation of what eventually became the kingdom of Croatia. We have also styled as Abodrites the West Slavs who lived in northern Germany in what is today Mecklenburg and Holstein, and as Obodrites the tribe mentioned by the Annales regni Francorum in 822-824 (Praedenecenti) as living close to the Danube in Dacia. We have also tried to be consistent when styling the leaders of the Venetians (as doges), of the Franks (as dukes) and of local Slav groupings (as duces). Colleagues who specialize in any of the fields we range into and perhaps trample upon may, understandably, be uncomfortable with such an approach. For this, we can but plead that these fields are now a little more open to comparison and to exploration.
We have tried to ensure that frequently cited proper names and technical terms are consistent and comprehensible. Greek forms of proper names have generally been adopted — Porphyrogennetos instead of Porphyrogenitus, for example — after c. 500; place names have generally been left untouched unless a familiar English form exists — Athens not Athenai. Some names in the present-day Balkans and Asia Minor appear in their current form when the author is guiding the reader through reference to present-day locations. Because the places and territories under discussion are at the point of so many overlapping circles, they tend to have many names. We have provided a short list of Alternative Place Names at the back of the volume (316-18) to help orient the reader and to prevent overloading the text. Thus the reader will find ‘Serdika’ in the text; but reference to the table at the back will show the alternative forms and spellings encountered elsewhere, including Sardika, Serdica and Sofia.
With a few exceptions, we have transliterated quotations and book titles in Greek, Bulgarian and other Slavonic languages using a modified version of the Library of Congress system for Cyrillic. We have tried to avoid long quotations in the original language, preferring an English translation — unless the passage is the subject of detailed textual analysis. Translations are mostly by our authors unless otherwise specified in the endnote. Given the scarcity of sources for the early history of the Upper Adriatic, some are discussed by more than one of our authors, and so the reader will find different interpretations — and sometimes translations — in the book.
The reader will find a short Glossary at the end of the volume. This does not aim to be exhaustive, and when possible, we have tried to explain technical terms or foreign words in the text. The maps at the start of the book should help to orient the reader and locate some of the key places and areas mentioned by our authors. Absolute consistency is difficult to achieve, and readers may find modern place names alongside ancient ones. It also goes without saying that all boundaries depicted are approximate and, in some cases, highly speculative or controversial. Unless otherwise stated, tables are by the author of a given chapter.
Mladen Anéié Jonathan Shepard Trpimir Vedris
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following people and institutions, and to acknowledge their help in seeing this volume into print.
The conference which sparked the whole project off, “The Treaty of Aachen, AD 812: the Origins and Impact on the Region between the Adriatic, Central, and Southeastern Europe’, held at the University of Zadar between 27 and 30 September 2012, would not have been possible without the help and financial support of the Department of History, University of Zadar; the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports; the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb; the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments, Split; the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split; and the Archdiocese of Zadar. Particular thanks for help with the conference organisation go to Judith Rasson, Nikolina Antoni¢ and Anita Jambrek at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, and to Kristian Bertovic and Sara Katanec at the University of Zagreb.
Preparation of an edited volume — and particularly one dealing with such a disparate range of disciplines, languages and regions — is inevitably long and sometimes tortuous. We would never have got things off the ground without editorial help from Zsuzsanna Reed at the CEU in Budapest and Nicola Sigsworth in Oxford. We would also like to thank David Cox for his superb maps. For permission to use images we owe a debt of gratitude to Roberto Arelli of Fondazione CISAM (Figs. 9.1—9.6); Dr Ante Milosevic, Director of the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments, Split (Figs. 18.1, 18.3 and 18.7); Professor JoSko Belamari¢, Director of the Cvito Fiskovi¢ Center, Institute of Art History, Split (Fig. 18.2); Dr Ante PiteSa, Curator of the Medieval Department, Archaeological Museum, Split (Figs. 18.5 and 18.6); and Dr Jerica Ziherl, Director of the MuzejMuseo Lapidarium, Novigrad-Cittanova d’Istria (Fig. 18.7).
Publication would not have been possible without the encouragement of John Smedley at Ashgate and Michael Greenwood and Michael Bourne at Routledge, whose support and patience have been invaluable; and the skill and professionalism of Tina Cottone, Kim Husband and the rest of the team at Apex CoVantage.
Finally, we would like to thank those colleagues who participated in the Zadar conference, but whose papers are published elsewhere, for the intellectual stimulus they provided; but above all, our thanks go to our authors for their enthusiastic participation in the project and for their patience and good humour in dealing with a raft of queries great and small.
Introduction
Circles overlapping in the Upper Adriatic
Jonathan Shepard
Yalta before Yalta?
The aim of this chapter is not to offer original remarks or fresh information about the course of events leading up to the Treaty of Aachen in 812 or about its immediate aftermath. The aim, rather, is to consider the general problem — not only for us but also for contemporaries — of defining spheres or ‘circles’ of politico-military power and culture, and of examining how they interacted. This is the subject of my current research, and such problems, along with bids made for wide-ranging political dominion, are also of interest to students of present-day international relations.' In fact, upon hearing about the commemorative conference held in 2012, one modern historian asked me whether the agreement of 812 might be said to prefigure the Yalta Agreement of 1945: was it a kind of ‘carve-up’ between superpowers, showing no regard for the interests of those who found themselves at the interface, in regions like the Adriatic? My response — besides noting our lamentable lack of the actual text of the treaty — was to say that there was probably more regard shown for the interests and wishes of local elites and ‘operators’ in the early ninth century than in 1945. This was because the state apparatus even of victorious warlords and of established polities like Byzantium was much more limited; accordingly, to attain lasting hegemony they needed cooperation on the part of local elites rather than being able to rely mainly on coercion. And, of course, negotiations at Yalta were conducted by rulers meeting face to face rather than by means of written messages and ambassadors.
Nonetheless, there is merit in the comparison between 812 and 1945: in both cases, boundaries and spheres of influence were in play, as the chapters in this volume show clearly enough.’ Although the Upper Adriatic and the Italian peninsula were peripheral to Charlemagne and the Byzantine emperor alike, neither ruler was willing to let them pass entirely into the sphere of influence of the other. Byzantium considered Rome and Ravenna to come rightfully within its sphere or circle, much as President Roosevelt considered Rome, Paris and Berlin to fall within what later became known as the Free World, or the ‘American empire’ in the eyes of its foes. Mention of the ‘American empire’ opens up another topic that is of interest to modernists as well as medievalists — ‘empire’, starting with the problem of defining what it means. Some time ago, I was asked to comment on the following draft definition: ‘empires are invariably based on a world view which involves a fantasy of forms of universal government or monarchy, in earlier eras based upon relatively restricted horizons, later taking on an increasingly global scale. It often seems that empires can only be sustained by the maintenance of the expansionist dynamic [. . .] ’. I objected that such a definition fails to take account of ‘Soft Power’ and of all the dividends that may accrue from seemingly un-political cultural, religious and material attractions. In my opinion, this objection holds good for pre-modern as well as for modern hegemonies.
Formulated by American political scientists seeking means of upholding American hegemony in the face of economic and military challenges from rising new powers,* the concept of Soft Power seems to befit the eastern empire’s position from Late Antiquity onwards. It works for the early ninth century, most obviously for the eastern empire’s capacity to corrode or seduce elements in the force majeure of aggressors but also, to some extent, with regard to the Carolingians — partly because of their unforeseeable dynastic mishaps but also from their realization of the ubiquity of eastern Soft Power in the Mediterranean world. Byzantium found itself facing a political formation that had expanded spectacularly fast, yet which began to lose momentum as the individual driving it grew old and spent ever more time in his palace at Aachen. After the sudden death in 810 of his son Pippin, Charlemagne himself had all the more reason to appreciate the benefits which Soft Power could bring. And even the vigorous Pippin, king of Italy, had proved unequal to the force of Byzantine naval vessels in the Adriatic and duly failed to subjugate all Dalmatian coastal centres.*
One may easily enough interpret the Treaty of Aachen as the product of contingency and circumstances — of Charlemagne’s predicament upon losing Pippin and his consequent willingness to strike a deal with the Greeks. But I wonder whether one should dismiss as sheer rhetoric Charlemagne’s profession of thanksgiving in 813 that Christ has ‘both established the peace long sought after and ever desired [my italics] between the eastern and the western empire and [. . .] now in our time has deigned to unite and pacify His holy and immaculate Catholic church’.* The statement occurs in a letter addressed to the Byzantine emperor Michael I. One might explain Charlemagne’s forbearance from describing his realm as an imperium in his earlier correspondence as having been motivated solely by desire to avoid provoking the basileus. However, I suspect that Charlemagne’s phraseology and self-restraint had deeper roots than the need to be tactful. One may, after all, discern a certain sense of partnership in much earlier correspondence between ‘Romans’ and Franks (see below, 8). Furthermore, Charlemagne was only too aware of the considerable reserves of Soft Power still accruing to the eastern empire and exerting magnetism, not least on the bishops of the ‘holy Catholic church’ in Dalmatia and in parts of Italy itself.° Charlemagne’s charters might describe him as ‘Romanum gubernans imperium’ from soon after his coronation in Rome at the hands of Pope Leo III;’ and he was arguably acting in quasiimperial mode well before 800, through the pronouncements issued in his name after the Council of Frankfurt in 794, his patronage of Jerusalem’s churches and the initiation of gift exchanges with the Abbasid caliph.* Yet he seems to have felt that something was lacking from his imperial status without the marks of explicit recognition from the eastern emperor, and that his claims to be in the mould of earlier Roman emperors risked ridicule in the absence of acclamations from the eastern emperor’s representatives. This, at least, seems to me the likeliest reason for his forbearance from portraying himself on his coins in imperial Roman style before 812, the very year when he received acclamations in Greek as basileus in Aachen.’ Solemn declaration from the basileus’ envoys that he was his fellow emperor seems to have mattered to Charlemagne even more than details of the territorial borders between the two empires, seeing that the treaty apparently left precise demarcation unclear. The sheer complexity of delineating them is suggested by the arrival in 817 of a Byzantine embassy to negotiate ‘the borders of the Dalmatians, the Romans and the Slavs’ and by Louis the Pious’ acknowledgement that this could only be done on the spot, using the expertise of locally based figures.'°
Comparable preoccupation with recognition rather than with borders was shown by another aspiring hegemon some two hundred and fifty years later, the Seljuk leader, Toghril Beg. He asked that his name and that of the Abbasid caliph be substituted in Friday prayers in the mosque at Constantinople for the name of the Fatimid caliph, by way of demonstrating his piety and moral right to leadership over the Sunni Islamic world. At the time of asking, in 1055, Toghril Beg had yet to have the titles of ‘Sultan’ and ‘king of the east and west’ bestowed on him by the caliph in Baghdad. Mention in the khutbah at the Constantinopolitan mosque was a means of gaining general respect, if not legitimacy, for Toghril Beg’s sovereignty in Baghdad itself and also from Muslim and Christian populations in Syria and Palestine.'' Not wholly dissimilar considerations, I suggest, lay behind Charlemagne’s bid for recognition as a basileus, the acclamations (expressly stated to have been in Greek) in his church at Aachen and also — presumably at his request — the despatch of the Byzantine envoys who had chanted these acclamations onwards to Rome, where Leo IT] reaffirmed the treaty ‘in the basilica of the holy apostle Peter’.'? This was, I suggest, Charlemagne’s means of ensuring that the rites of respect performed at Aachen became widely known in Italian milieus, where some might question or belittle Charlemagne’s right to be ‘Romanum gubernans imperium’. And as with Toghril Beg, so with Charlemagne, receiving ritual or liturgical recognition from Byzantium probably made more sense than preoccupation with the minutiae of territorial borders. This was not merely because neither hegemon had intended to conquer the empire nor because of all the practical difficulties in demarcating borders. Each was, after his fashion, trying to address the problem Byzantium posed as ‘un empire sans fronti¢res’, with a call upon the political allegiance, religious veneration or material collaboration of churchmen, elites and communities scattered far beyond its chief territorial holdings. They would continue to hear that call, regardless of any demarcations of political boundaries in formal treaties. Hence the particular value of rites of recognition to the respective hegemons, whether performed continuously in the Constantinopolitan mosque or once, but very publicly, in the newly built imperial-style church in Aachen. These served to demonstrate to the aforementioned churchmen and members of elites that Charlemagne and Toghril Beg enjoyed solemn and binding endorsement from the basileus — and that any local rebels could not expect to receive his overt support. Such endorsement could not wholly debar them from turning to the basileus for support. Nor could it put an end to the Byzantines’ enticing of elites on the periphery, as some studies in this collection show.'? Nonetheless, solemn proceedings such as those at Aachen in 812 did something to discredit such goings-on.
The Byzantine challenge to Charlemagne
Charlemagne had, then, in his negotiations with Byzantium in 810-812 — and indeed earlier — to reckon with the persistent appeal of its Soft Power in newly subjugated regions such as northern and central Italy. In his letter of 813 thanking Christ for ‘the peace long sought after [. . .] between the eastern and western empire’ and for the unification of the ‘holy [. . .] Catholic church’, Charlemagne implicitly alludes to two problems he had faced for a long time, even while proclaiming their resolution: firstly, that his newly acquired dominions, including the site of his coronation by the Roman pope, were simultaneously integral to Latin Christendom and within one of the ‘overlapping circles’ of Byzantium; and, secondly, that the basileus’ sprawling and mutating networks of strongholds and urban elites offered all too many bases for ‘Hard Power’ — military force — if and when the basileus needed to summon it up.'*
I have discussed in other papers the elastic and intangible aspects of the Byzantine form of empire, which posed such problems for Charlemagne.'* Rather than going over the ground systematically, I shall pick out four points of some relevance to our theme, dilating only on the fourth of them. Firstly, imperial diplomacy sought to cultivate a series of ‘Open Cities’, a loose term applying to peripheral population centres, peninsulas and islands that were wealthy enough to attract barbarians and to serve as springboards for assaulting Byzantium or, in one or two cases, were of ideological significance as alternative loci of sovereign authority to Constantinople. The prime example of a city capable of posing an ideological challenge was ‘Old Rome’. Hindering the establishment of any alternative imperial regime in the city of Rome was therefore axiomatic, as Constantine VI Porphyrogennetos (945-959) comes close to stating outright in his De thematibus: ‘Rome used to be ruled by an emperor [. . .] but now has put away imperial power and has its own form of government, and it is controlled principally by some pope of the day’.'® Secondly, and concomitant with this preference for keeping some cities ‘open’ (although not necessarily subject to the emperor), imperial strategy took a keen interest in chokepoints: those communications hubs, passes or ports where the onset of wayward armed groupings could be regulated with the help of local elements and timely application of Hard Power. The latter could entail forays from garrisoned strongholds or naval expeditions such as the ones initially despatched from Constantinople but apparently commanded by Paul, the stratégos of Cephalonia, against Pippin in 808-810.'7 Thirdly, Soft Power was invaluable for predisposing at least some members of elite families in Open Cities to collaborate with the basileus, thereby maintaining a kind of surrogate presence for him there. Without elaborating upon what devices generated the Soft Power, one may note that they ranged from such earthly delights as three-day-long feasts in the Great Palace to gifts of holy relics — something for every type of sense and sensibility.'®
Fourthly and finally, the various writings of Constantine VII deserve attention for all the evidence they provide about imperial calculations and geopolitical continuities. The calculations of the various parties that were involved with, or at least had an interest in, the Treaty of Aachen receive fair coverage in this volume.” What we lack in panoramic surveys and explicit statements from the imperial circles of that era is partially made up for by the assortment of writings that Constantine and his assistants produced a century and a half later. As Constantine’s selection of much earlier texts relating to the Upper Adriatic implies, there were recurring themes and significant constants in the geopolitics of the region. The excerpts provide extensive coverage of Dalmatian coastal population centres and the Upper Adriatic. And their very extensiveness reflects imperial awareness of the potential role of Open Cities and other communities in these regions in curbing or channelling the activities of potentially troublesome military powers, whether nomadic peoples installed in Pannonia or elsewhere in the Danube basin, the Bulgars or the Franks. Constantine does not expressly mention either the coronation of Charlemagne in Rome or the Treaty of Aachen. His silence could reflect sheer ignorance or disinclination to perpetuate the record of unpalatable events. But perhaps it is rather because Charlemagne — a northern-based monokrator, as Constantine signals*® — had not installed himself permanently in Rome and thus did not seem to pose a serious ideological challenge, despite the provocative silver coins portraying him as a Roman emperor and despite the basileus’ riposte, in the form of specifying on his own miliarésia that he was ‘emperor of (the) Romans’.”' Nonetheless, the mention in the De administrando imperio of Charlemagne’s building of ‘very many monasteries’ in Palestine and despatch of money suggests keen awareness of his quasi-imperial act.” So, too, does Constantine’s own interest in those peoples and elites of the Upper Adriatic with a track record of resisting the Franks and the Bulgars, and his recounting of stories of the Venetians’ and Croats’ feats of resistance against them.”
There is still fuller treatment of the geopolitics of the region and its links with the Danube basin in the De legationibus, in contrast with Constantine’s inattention to the episodes occurring in Rome in 800 or Aachen in 812. The task of excerpting passages from historical works was carried out by his aides and, as its title declares, the De legationibus is primarily concerned with the dynamics of embassies and messaging. But there seems to be method in the choice of areas and peoples covered, corresponding with the interests and preoccupations of the emperor who commissioned the work. Constantine’s De /egationibus offers quite full background data on the Franks as well as the Goths in the fifth and sixth centuries. One learns, for example, of the Franks’ designs on and routes to Italy, and the Goths’ understandable distrust of them;™ of Attila’s intervention in the affairs of the Franks and in Italy;** and of the Franks’ proposal of joint action with Emperor Maurice (582—602) against the Avars.”° Allegations of the Dalmatians’ ‘waywardness’ feature, too.”’ The daily expectations of Rome’s citizens that relief would arrive from Ravenna to break Alaric’s siege are recounted, as are Alaric’s negotiations with the emperor’s Ravenna-based representative and request for lands for his people in the Upper Adriatic region, Noricum and Dalmatia, and Honorius’ attempt to incite ‘thousands of Huns’ against Alaric, commandeering livestock for them ‘from Dalmatia’.** The efforts of the Avar khagan Baian to acquire Sirmium receive extensive coverage, along with their diplomatic ramifications.” These vignettes register the strategic importance of the Upper Adriatic region and its accessibility to martial occupiers of the Danubian basin. The inclusion of this subject matter in the De /egationibus seems to me to reflect the concerns of Constantine’s own day and a search for precedents and instructive analogies from, mainly, the fifth and sixth centuries. If Constantine’s team of excerptors did not draw on extensive narratives for what happened around the year 800, this is presumably because no such narratives were available in Byzantine chronicles or any other texts in the imperial library, and not because the events and leading figures of that era appeared any less relevant than those of the fifth and sixth centuries.*”
To make this claim of selectivity for the De /egationibus is perhaps bold, but its choice of areas and peoples matches quite well with the pattern in the De administrando, a work reflecting Constantine’s personal views and diplomatic calculus. Both works contain material illustrating key characteristics of the Franks and evincing ambivalence towards them. Aggressive and formidable, the Franks are capable of brutality, illustrated by their ‘murdering Croats’ babies at the breast and casting them to the dogs’.*! Yet they are susceptible to resistance and distrust on the part of independent-minded peoples like the Croats, Open Cities like Venice and the nobles of Capua and Benevento;** so they are unlikely to maintain intensive dominion over them for long. The Franks are, at the same time, potential allies for the emperor, as the passages lifted from Procopius and Theophylact Simocatta in the De legationibus suggest. These characterizations, along with the likely scenario for Constantine’s amassing of historical data about the Franks and his close interest in the Dalmatian coastal centres in the De administrando, will receive further attention in what follows. My point here is that they are consistent with Constantine’s apparent indifference towards the coronation in Rome in 800. Of greater strategic and long-term ideological import to him was the accessibility of Italian cities to naval vessels at Byzantium’s disposal. If Constantine says nothing of the expeditions in the Adriatic of the patrikios Niketas or (a few years later) Paul, his tale of the joint operations of the Croat, Serb and other Slav chiefs together with ‘the men of Ragusa’ and ‘all the cities of Dalmatia’ against the Muslim emir of Bari conveys the message that the Adriatic is easily crossable.*? He specifies that ‘all these were present by imperial command (keleusei)’ and also that the Slavs were transported to Italy by the Ragusans ‘in their own vessels’. Constantine’s implication is that so long as Byzantium enjoyed cooperation from the peoples and Open Cities of Dalmatia, no occupier of southern or central Italy — Franks among them — was secure, in default of Byzantine approval. And this, I suggest, is precisely why King Pippin was concerned to subjugate the Dalmatian coastline in the early 800s. It could also be one reason for Charlemagne’s wariness about associating his regime closely with the city of Rome, and for his forbear-
ance from using the title of ‘emperor of the Romans’ .*4
Byzantium, the Franks and the Upper Adriatic before Charlemagne
The eastern empire, then, possessed a formidable arsenal of Soft Power and Hard Power in the face of Charlemagne’s arrival south of the Alps and installation of his offspring there, and we probably have hints of Niketas’ vigorous deployment of Soft Power in Dalmatian towns — including Zadar itself —in the early 800s (below, 16 n. 69 and 123). Two propositions need to be borne in mind when considering such episodes. One is quite straightforward: Charlemagne was far from being the first Frankish warlord with whom eastern emperors had had to treat as being, in effect, a potential partner or ally. The second proposition is more contentious: that the sense of ubiquity of eastern Soft Power confronting Charlemagne in Italy was the fruit of deliberate imperial contrivances of the sixth century, rather than being just the general impression made on northerners by the abundance of monuments and other detritus left over from the Roman empire’s heyday. It was not, after all, some monument picked at random but — most probably — the church of San Vitale, built and decorated by churchmen closely aligned with the eastern empire, which chiefly provided the architectural details and design for Charlemagne’s church in Aachen, the very site of his acclamation by eastern envoys as ‘imperator et basileus’ in 812.°°
These two propositions seem to me interconnected, in so far as Justinian, the emperor in whose reign San Vitale was completed, was trying to make an awesome impression on northern barbarians such as the Franks, realizing that their military collaboration was indispensable for safeguarding his acquisitions in the central and western Mediterranean. Well aware that this would entail constant gift giving, hard bargaining and periodic setbacks and humiliations, and even while insisting on his God-given autocracy, Justinian resorted to a variety of means of predisposing elite families in peripheral regions to cooperate, along with warlords well beyond the imperial borders. Through such projects as his much-vaunted building programme — with inscriptions describing him as a ‘lover of building’ ** — Justinian laid down markers for a ‘Roman’ empire that could persist as a concept in the west without very much material outlay on the part of the central government or the massive garrisoning of military outposts. The nature and technical quality of the structures — fortified towns, watchtowers, churches — varied from place to place, and Procopius’ gazetteer, Buildings, may be seen as essentially an exercise in panegyric, elaborating upon what were often small-scale refurbishments or works of low-grade craftsmanship.*’ But Justinian’s intention to monumentalize the universal extent of his dominion is plain enough from, for example, the description by Procopius of building work at Ceuta, on the southern shore of the Straits of Gibraltar. The emperor had restored the fortress and ‘consecrated to the Mother of God a noteworthy church, thus dedicating to her the threshold of the empire, making this fortress impregnable for the whole race of mankind’.*® Inscriptions dating from Justinian’s era are phrased in similarly sweeping terms, for example, the Latin inscription commemorating the governor’s reconstruction of the city gates at Cartagena in southern Spain in 589/590: ‘may Hispania rejoice always for such a governor, so long as the poles turn and the sun circles the earth!’*° Such grandiloquence implies that all Spain was under imperial sway, whereas the literary and archaeological evidence suggests a Byzantine occupation of only a limited number of enclaves, without maintenance of a garrisoned frontier against the Visigoths far inland.”
This sort of exaggeration seems to epitomize Justinian’s approach to the west as a whole, laying claim to wide-ranging dominion from what were often quite modest footholds and in southern Spain, as in other coastal regions like Liguria, envisaging intensive commercial exchanges, and ongoing consultations between imperial officials and the senior churchmen as well as other members of the local elites.*! The attention that Justinian’s officials and litterateurs paid to extensive building works suggests that these served as a kind of ‘visiting card’, literally concretizing the idea of empire and drawing the beholder’s attention to the emperor responsible for them. At the same time, Justinian sent lavish gifts ‘to every part of the known world’, according to Procopius. ‘When they heard what sort of man Justinian was, [barbarians] poured into Byzantium to get in touch with him. The emperor [. . .] delighted in the whole business [. . .] day after day he continued to send them home, every one [. . .] with masses of money’.” This combination of gift giving and hospitality at the imperial court, along with installation of an unmistakably imperial presence by virtue of buildings, amounts to Soft Power. Justinian seems to me to have systematized recourse to it, appealing to more or less autonomous elites at various material and spiritual levels.*
Foremost among the politico-military elites with which Justinian dealt were the Franks, whose martial prowess, interest in Italy and independent mindedness was well known to Byzantine statesmen. Here, one may briefly take note of the forthrightness of Frankish kings in their correspondence with Justinian. Andrew Gillett has drawn attention to the letters addressed to Justinian by King Theodebert and his son Theodobald in the 530s and 540s.“ The two letters written in the name of Theodebert are gracious in style and express his willingness to cooperate militarily. But they leave the reader in no doubt that this rests on ‘friendship’ and ‘our mutual advantage’ rather than on any obedience owed by the king to Justinian.** Theodobald, in his letter, even complains of Justinian’s disparagement of his father’s piety and draws attention to the marks of divine favour shown by ‘the victories of his countless triumphs’, quite probably in pointed allusion to the emperor’s many setbacks in the west in the 540s.*° In emphasizing the reciprocal benefits arising from the enlightened self-interest of each party, the Frankish kings write as partners and allies, treating Justinian with a degree of deference but not in any meaningful sense as their overlord. They certainly do not claim imperial status for themselves or characterize their relationship with Justinian as one of ‘fraternity’, yet their self-confident tone is comparable with that of Charlemagne’s surviving letters to the eastern emperor.*” Probably more than any other potentates, sixth-century Frankish kings personified the ‘barbarian arrogance’ of which Procopius complained and with which Justinian’s lavish distribution of coins, building projects and other exercises in Soft Power was trying to deal. Scattered across the west, with the exception of Gaul’s southern shoreline, Justinian left reminders of his presence, even as he found it necessary to bribe and cajole the Franks and, on occasion, to beat a military retreat.
Justinian wished to reserve for himself dominion over Rome. But he also sought to establish an indelible imperial presence in the Upper Adriatic, whose significance as a resource centre and platform for diplomatic initiatives he came to appreciate.** At Ravenna, his officials and sympathetic bishops were, literally, building on the work of fifth-century aristocrats and of Theoderic, who had made his headquarters there and built a splendid palace with a main gate named ‘Ad Calchi’, evoking the Brazen Gate of the palace in Constantinople.” But they seem to have made sure that the images of the emperor were highly visible, alongside those of patron saints and the bishops themselves, and this practice continued after Justinian’s reign. There seems no reason to regard the famous mosaics of Justinian and Theodora at San Vitale, the less famous head of Justinian at Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo,” or the mosaic of seventh-century emperors at Sant’Apollinare in Classe,*! as having been secluded or out of the public eye. San Vitale was not, after all, a palace church.*” And there were probably many other such images on display in urban centres of the Upper Adriatic, even if few matched San Vitale’s in quality. The overall effect was to lay down challenges to the credentials of all future prospective masters of the Po basin and of Rome, putting indirect pressure on them to come to terms with the one true emperor.
Charlemagne, images and Ravenna
This brings us back to Charlemagne and the scenario confronting him at Ravenna and, indeed, in Italy as a whole. One might speculate about his visits to Ravenna and the rationale behind his choice of spolia to solemnize his church at Aachen. Besides Einhard’s mention of the removal of columns and marble,* there is the letter of Pope Hadrian I (772-795) to Charlemagne, authorizing him to take ‘mosaic and marble and other materials both from the floors and the walls’ of an unnamed palace in the city.** Was the mosaic merely non-figural floor mosaic, or imagery that was more politically charged? One may suspect the latter, given the removal of the statue of Theoderic to stand in Charlemagne’s palace at Aachen, an affirmation that Charlemagne ruled Italy in his own right. One might also usefully consider the points of eastern Hard Power or potential points for the materialization of Hard Power that impinged upon Charlemagne from nearly every direction. Links were still lively between the stratégos of Sicily and one or two autonomous yet sympathetic strongholds in Liguria. At Luni, in particular, excavations have revealed a sequence of coins struck in the Sicilian mint from the seventh to the mid-ninth centuries, perhaps representing payments by the governor for services rendered, alongside commercial exchanges.*° Small wonder that around the time of his coronation in Rome Charlemagne should have contemplated the invasion of Sicily, or at least that the Byzantines had serious apprehensions of his intention to do so.*’ The island was an even more troublesome thorn in his side than Dalmatia, especially if — as seems likely — a direct imperial presence persisted on Sardinia longer than scholars used to suppose. Even if one rejects the statement of the wellinformed Ibn Khurdadhbih that a batrig (patrikios) resided there in the mid-ninth century, Francesca Fiori has presented very strong reasons for dating the famous inscription of the consul Constantine, found at Porto Torres, to the era of Constantine V (741-775). And the imperial court maintained relations with Sardinian elite families long afterwards.*° However, instead of exploring the implications of all this, I shall return to the subject of the lingering imperial presence on the Italian mainland, the imagery of emperors, and Charlemagne’s attitude towards them.
Our principal source is the Libri Carolini, composed for presentation before the Council of Frankfurt in 794 by Theodulf of Orleans in the name of Charlemagne. The work condemns the canons of the Second Council of Nicaea (787) concerning the nature of icons and the practice of venerating Christ and the saints through a visual medium. The subject matter was essentially theological, but it raised questions as to what figural images could convey and the meaning of respect shown to mortal emperors. The Libri Carolini takes on not only these issues but also Byzantine diplomatic terminology, for example an alleged description in the Council of Nicaea’s canons of Irene and Constantine VI as ‘co-reigning with God’. St Jerome is quoted approvingly for his injunction that “we should adore the images of emperors minimally’. And there is a laboured explanation for the Byzantine citizens’ habit of greeting with candles and incense the effigies of emperors sent out to them in provincial towns: “because they [the emperors] were not able to be everywhere, they ordered men to adore their own images, being unable to be adored in person in all places’.*' The Libri Carolini treats this Byzantine practice as alien, promoted by those ‘elated by the pomp of this world’;® and, most importantly, it reflects the views of Charlemagne himself. Of this we may be sure, thanks to the investigations of Wolfram von den Steinen and Bermhard Bischoff, which the latest editor of the Libri has corroborated. The principal manuscript held in the Vatican Library (Cod. Vat. Lat. 7207) contains marginal comments emanating from Charlemagne. The great man seems to have given a running commentary while the text was read out to him. And we may note that the arrogance of Irene and Constantine in claiming to ‘co-reign with God’ drew Charlemagne’s very first comment. This is, unfortunately, now lost.“ But one gains some inkling of Charlemagne’s outlook from the comment on a passage describing as res inlicita the veneration of images of emperors in the streets and invoking St Paul to the effect that one must imitate and follow Christ (rather than emperors): prudenter.©
Iam not suggesting that Charlemagne opposed icon veneration simply because the Byzantines’ appetite for venerating images of their emperors was so vibrant, or in reaction to their concept of the emperor as being ‘virtually’ everywhere. But the concept refracts that sense of universal imperial presence which emperors seem to have fostered systematically in the west from Justinian’s time onwards. And Charlemagne cannot have been unaware that public shows of respect for imperial images were germane to the political culture of urban centres in Italy. In fact, he received a letter to this effect from Pope Hadrian in 788, reporting that the people of Naples had greeted the stratégos of Sicily on his way back from Benevento ‘with great respect’, bearing ‘standards and images’, presumably a mark of loyalty towards Irene and Constantine VI.® I am not aware of any mention of such communal reverence for images of emperors in the Upper Adriatic region around this time. But occurrences, if not regular staging, seem likely enough, especially in view of the political culture of Dalmatian townsfolk in the mid-ninth century, as noted by the Saxon Gottschalk. Leading, or would-be leading, members of the community seem to have been eager visitors to the emperor’s court at Constantinople. And the conversations Gottschalk overheard suggest fascination with procedures and parlance at court: ‘We stood before [his] majesty’ and ‘the royalty said this to us’, and ‘Benevolent Lordship, have pity upon us!’*’ Talk of this sort would, I suggest, have been music to the ears of Justinian, judging by the delight in barbarians’ visits ascribed to him by Procopius. By the same token, Charlemagne could well have found it jarring, and this is the background to his efforts to hinder or supervise communications with Constantinople, through occupying Venice and the Dalmatian coast.
Byzantium, the East Franks and the Upper Adriatic in the mid-tenth century
One might consider further examples of eastern Soft Power at work, noting how it swung into action against Pippin and entailed not only the bestowal of court titles on the doges Obelerius and Beatus but also, most probably, the gifts of relics of St Theodore to Venice,® of relics of St Trypho to the church of Kotor and of St Anastasia’s relics to a cathedral rededicated to her in Zadar.” Indeed, there are grounds for interpreting the latter town’s Church of the Holy Trinity as part of a bid to make Zadar an imperial outpost with the help of architecture, in effect a miniaturized version of eminent Constantinopolitan churches. But these issues have received attention in recent publications and feature elsewhere in this volume.” So, by way of a conclusion, I shall return to the writings of Constantine VII and the light they shed on Byzantium’s geopolitical calculus for the Upper Adriatic: awareness of the interconnections among this region, the Franks, nomadic peoples in Pannonia, the Alpine passes and, ultimately, lordship over the city of Rome (see above, 4-5). One must emphasize that the texts covering these regions and topics incorporated in the De legationibus attest a certain continuity in Byzantine calculations, extending far beyond the Carolingian Franks’ comings and goings. I shall focus on the geopolitical background around the time of the excerpting, noting both the changes opening up in the mid-tenth century and variations on familiar themes. Underlying them all is Constantine VII’s awareness of the role of Soft Power in preserving imperial interests in the Upper Adriatic — and in Rome.
What, then, was the background to the compilation of the De legationibus? Setting aside issues like the consolidation of the structures of Croatian and other socio-political elites, the vigorous church building on the part of notables and the commercial upswing of Venice,’ I shall merely point out that, by the midtenth century, Byzantine hopes of regaining a hegemonic role in the central and even western Mediterranean appeared brighter than for some while, bearing comparison with the outlook in ruling circles early in the ninth century.” Imperial links with the leading families of Sardinia were quite close and, as Vivien Prigent has shown, a substantial expeditionary force was operating on Sicily towards the year 940, with an eye to bringing the island back under the basileus’ dominion.” Its failure did not immediately discourage Constantine from his earlier view of Calabria and Sicily as a single administrative unit, while acknowledging that the city of Rome was no longer imperial.“ From such a perspective, proclamation of an alternative imperial regime encompassing the city of Rome would be as unwelcome as it was absurd.
However, by the later 940s, a robust new grouping, the East Franks under Saxon leadership, was showing signs of close engagement with Italy and, equally significantly, of stemming the Hungarians’ incursions into German-speaking territories.” By 951 the East Franks were, under the leadership of King Otto’s brother, Duke Henry of Bavaria, going on the offensive, raiding the Hungarians’ pasturelands on the Middle Danube. Since the eastern passes of the Alps are relatively low, they were more convenient to use than any other ones for the Hungarians, as they had been for mounted archers like the Huns in the fifth century and later for the Avars. A geopolitical scenario reminiscent of the opening years of the ninth century now began to emerge. Much as Charlemagne’s victories over the Avars enabled him to focus more closely on Lombardy, the Veneto and beyond, Otto could contemplate more ambitious forays there once he no longer had to reckon with serious Hungarian assaults on his eastern flanks.’° Final removal of this Hungarian distraction occurred only with Otto’s destruction of the Hungarian leadership at Lechfeld in 955, a few years after work ceased on the De administrando.” But while Constantine was composing his text and supervising compilation of the De legationibus, Otto made his intentions plain enough, assigning Aquileia (Friuli) and Verona to Duke Henry and, in 951, sending his first request for the imperial crown to the pope.”
Without any mention of Charlemagne’s coronation or the events of 808-812, Constantine’s De administrando focuses on the geography and local politics of the Upper Adriatic. Perhaps these seemed to offer more valuable lessons in strategy for curbing Frankish dominion in Italy, and hence the quite full description of Venice’s islands and settlements,” along with the details about Dalmatia’s coastal cities’ defences and history, and the islands and sailing conditions there.*’ The nearest comparison in terms of topographical detail are the descriptions of the abodes of the Pechenegs and the strategically important north coast of the Black Sea together with freshly gathered data, including place names and natural hazards, about the Dnieper Rapids, where nomads in the emperor’s employ could deter the Rus from raiding Constantinople.*' Venice and the Upper Adriatic were, I suggest, likewise of great strategic significance now that the Hungarians were losing their capacity for diverting the East Franks from interventions south of the Alps. It may be no coincidence that, besides the anecdotes about the resistance of the Croats and the Venetians to the Franks, Constantine’s De administrando offers details of the Croats’ ‘galleys and cutters’. May it not have been with an eye to Croatian sea-power’s potential for obstructing another onrush of Franks that he remarked upon its decline?
Not that the Franks were all bad in Constantine’s eyes. His attitude was ambivalent. The extracts in the De legationibus highlight their military value as allies. And the De administrando refers admiringly to Charlemagne’s martial prowess (above, 5). Constantine probably now envisaged some form of liaison with the East Franks, on the lines of what had been contemplated by Byzantine rulers in Charlemagne’s era — a marriage tie, with court eunuchs sent ahead to instruct the bride-to-be in Greek. Ekkehard of St Gall relates as much, with his tale of the betrothal of an emperor named Constantine to Duke Henry of Bavaria’s daughter. Constantine would have intended Hadwig for his son and heir Romanos, not for himself (as the story has it).’ But Ekkehard’s statement that a Byzantine artist was commissioned to paint the girl seems unlikely to be sheer invention. I am not claiming a precise analogy between this demarche and the proposals of marriage ties in play between Charlemagne’s court and Byzantium. Henry was not even king of the Franks, let alone imperator. Yet the geopolitical dynamics were perhaps not so very different. The emperor was in quite close contact with Hungarian chiefs around 950," as Byzantium’s rulers probably had been with the Avars in the 790s.*° Constantine may well have resigned himself to the onset of the Franks, in view of their recent successes against the Hungarians, and who better to do a deal with than the new master of Aquileia, Henry?*
This marriage proposal came to nothing, but it seems to illustrate the interconnections in Byzantine thinking between the Franks, the Upper Adriatic, the city of Rome (with its imperial connotations) and potential counterweights to the Franks. In the category of counterweights could be numbered not only the Avars and the Hungarians, the Venetians and the Croats (as outlined in the De administrando) but also the elites of the Dalmatian towns. It may be no coincidence that the fullest account of churches, and their patron saints and relics, in the De administrando is for these towns, including Zadar.*’ It does not seem too bold to suggest that Constantine was contemplating gifts to some of these shrines, whether of the type that he sent to the patriarch of Jerusalem in 947, icons of the sort he sent to St Catherine’s monastery on Sinai, or perhaps yet more relics, in the manner of earlier emperors’ despatch of Sts Trypho and Anastasia in the early ninth century.** At any rate, in Constantine’s description of Dalmatian towns’ cults we may discern glimmerings of Soft Power in play, in expectation of another onrush of Franks. Constantine was signalling the existence of overlapping circles even as he tried to turn this to his empire’s advantage.
Aachen 812: A solemnized standoff
The problem was — and is — that where geopolitical circles overlap, total harmony is elusive, and a treaty cannot do much more than paper over the fault-lines.
The settlement represented by the Treaty of Aachen was agreed by the Carolingian court on the basis of rather incomplete — if not misleading — information,* and the various local elites, city fathers and interested regional and ‘apostolic’ hierarchs had agendas of their own to pursue vigorously.” Yet in so far as the treaty amounted to a solemnized standoff, flexible enough to allow for tensions while providing for the main parties’ core concerns, it was worth the effort and had valuable side effects. Among the latter one may account the fact that the Venetians’ commerce, whose early signs of promise had aggravated the FrankishByzantine confrontation, could now burgeon forth.’! And given the difficulty of resolving conflict that involves territorial claims in the modern era, this is no mean achievement.
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