Download PDF | Toby Bromige - Armenians in the Byzantine Empire_ Identity, Assimilation and Alienation from 867 to 1098-I.B. Tauris (2023).
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
The subject of this book deals directly with themes of identity in the medieval past. For the modern scholar, it is incredibly difficult to maintain strict consistency with identity labels, such as ‘Roman’, ‘Armenian’, ‘Greek’ and so on. This is in large part due to the inconsistencies that come from our medieval sources, which in turn highlights a certain fluidity when assessing themes of religious, social, political and cultural medieval identities. For the most part, I will clearly use either Byzantine or Roman to refer to the inhabitants of what is commonly referred to as Byzantium. Armenians will be plainly identified, as will their Georgian neighbours (who are sometimes called Iberians). Lastly, a group will emerge in the eleventh century whom I describe as Byzantine-Armenians. This particular label is an untidy but necessary term to group those of Armenian ancestry, sometimes only first generation from arriving in the empire, who are only partly assimilated. I will endeavour to address any confusion in the text where our sources are particularly troublesome in terms of clarity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a direct product of my PhD thesis, and as such I owe a great debt to my mentor and supervisor Professor Jonathan Harris for his guidance throughout my PhD studies, as well as advice on converting this into a monograph. A very special mention must go to my great friend and colleague Dr Niccolò Fattori who not only created the map for the Armenian settlements, but who I have shared many joyful memories as we studied for our PhDs together, and have continued to debate many aspects of migration and Byzantium whenever we have the chance. I would also like to pay my thanks to both Dr David Gwynn and Dr Hannes Kleineke for reading draft chapters and their sage advice. Lastly, but equally importantly, I must thank all of those who have supported me outside of academia and on a personal level.
I owe a massive debt to Matthew Williamson, for the advice he has given me through both pleasant and occasionally testing times. I must as ever mention my greatest friend Gregory Goss-Durant for his enthusiasm of pointing out my mistakes, both professional and personal. My love for Zosia Edwards who has been a rock from which this work has been built. A debt I doubt I will ever truly be able to repay. I reserve my great thanks to my parents Timothy and Fiona Bromige, who have supported me entirely through my academic study, and have also encouraged my pursuit of history from a very young age. Finally, I must thank my Grandfather Keith White for his ever sound advice and encouragement since I was a young boy – and to my Grandmother Patricia Ruth Venner White, who sadly passed during my PhD studies, as with the original thesis, I dedicate this book to her for she was always my greatest supporter. Staines – March, 2023. Toby Richard Timothy Bromige
BYZANTIUM AND ARMENIA AN INTRODUCTION
In the reign of Nero (AD 54–68) a Roman general by the name of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo was entrusted with legal powers to reorganize the eastern frontier and defend Rome’s interests in Armenia against perceived Parthian aggression. The main cause of the dispute between the two imperial powers had been over the patronage of vassal kings who ruled the petty kingdoms along the Roman-Parthian border – in particular, the control over the Armenian crown. The kingdom of Armenia was integral to Roman foreign policy in the east: its people, history, language and customs were distinct from its surrounding neighbours, and crucially the location of the Armenian Plateau offered invasion routes for whichever power was able to exert its will over the region.
As such, it was crucial for both the Romans and the Parthians to wield influence over the kingdom. The current occupant of the Armenian throne was Tiridates I, a member of the Parthian Arsacid house, who had ruled the country from AD 52 to AD 58, before being ousted by Corbulo in an earlier campaign.1 A Roman client-king was installed by the name of Tigranes VI (58–61), but he was forced to flee when Tiridates returned a few years later with an army backed by his brother Vologases I of Parthia (AD 51–78). Tiridates was able to solidify his rule by defeating a Roman army at Rhandeia in 62, under the command of Lucius Caesennius Paetus, forcing a surrender and evacuation of all Roman troops from Armenia.
The following year, Corbulo was reinstated as the supreme commander in the east, charged with restoring the reputation of Roman arms and bringing Armenia back under Roman influence. This Corbulo achieved and he was able to bring Tiridates back to the diplomatic table where a deal was reached. The Armenian king would travel to Rome, where he would surrender his crown for it to be placed back upon his brow by Nero’s own hand.2 Thus Armenia was to be ruled by the Arsacids but with the explicit blessing of the Roman emperor, establishing a precedence of ceremony and political legitimacy that would bring the two worlds closer together. Borders would fluctuate, dynasties rise and fall, but an inseparable link was established between Rome and Armenia that would last well into the medieval period.
standpoint of Armenians operating within the Byzantine Empire. It will be argued that the most succinct way one can understand this relationship is by looking at it through four linked, chronological and at times overlapping phases: assimilation, annexation, alienation and separatism. Starting with assimilation, this book will argue that one must understand what was meant by custom (ἔθος), an ingredient of medieval Roman identity that is often highlighted in the source material, in order to successfully evaluate the motivation and success of Armenian assimilation in the centuries before the eleventh. In defining what was meant by customs it will be shown that during the ninth and tenth centuries particularly, Armenians did in fact adopt and practice those customs that made one inherently Roman, greatly contributing to the expansion of the Byzantine state in this very same period as soldiers, governors, priests and generals. Our attention will then turn to the next phase, annexation, which will come into focus with the study of the medieval Armenian kingdoms during the late tenth and eleventh centuries. These kingdoms were to eventually surrender themselves to Byzantium, most by the mid-eleventh century, although there were subtle differences in how these came about for each individual kingdom. Nevertheless, the result was the same: the exiled Armenian royalty and nobility were given estates in compensation for their ancestral lands in central Anatolia, where they were expected to become loyal Roman subjects. This policy was to have had unforeseen consequences. While Basil II, the emperor in whose reign many of the annexations were either planned or occurred, had worked hard to integrate the rulers of the annexed lands in estates in Cappadocia, after his death a number of events, notably the suspected Artsruni rebellion of 1040 and the annexation of Ani in 1045, undermined his original intentions.
Rather, from the 1040s onwards the Armenians appear to have struggled in assimilating, and this is where we reach our third phase, alienation. It is in this period, largely the middle of the eleventh century onwards, that we start to see Armenians, now living across the eastern provinces, struggling to attach to the imperial centre with many coming to feel alienated from the empire that most had voluntarily opted to live in. Here, the analysis will turn to explain why this occurred, what tensions were exacerbated and which characters wielded influence in bringing about this souring of relations. Finally, in the years after the Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071, one can witness the last phase of the relationship, separatism. It becomes increasingly obvious in the post-Manzikert world that many Armenians no longer looked to Byzantium for protection. Rather, many of the leading characters, of whom most had been formerly engaged in Byzantine service, sought out the creation of independent lordships separate from the Byzantine state, creating a vastly different world into which the First Crusaders arrived on their journey towards Jerusalem at the end of the eleventh century. * * *
This book starts at the beginning of a crucial period in Byzantine history with the year AD 867, the date in which Basil I Makedon came to occupy the imperial throne. His coronation, in the September of that year, ushered in a new dynasty that would rule for the next 200 years and preside over the apogee of Byzantine civilization. Now Byzantium was no ordinary medieval state; it had a long tradition of continuous rulership from the first Roman emperor Augustus through to Basil’s own time in the mid-ninth century. The regalia and reputation of the emperor were also firmly established on Roman terms, the emperor was considered to be above all other ‘petty kings’ with whom the imperial court treated, he was the secular guardian of the Christian Church and he presided as an autocrat over his Roman subjects, which constituted most of the population. These Roman subjects called themselves Romaioi and firmly identified themselves as the successors of the Romans of antiquity through political traditions and shared historical lineage reaching far back to the dawn of the Roman Republic.
The Romaioi spoke Greek, which had long been the dominant language of the eastern Mediterranean since the time of the Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, and by the ninth century it had long overtaken Latin as the language of the Roman people; the latter language began to fall out of use once the western half of the empire collapsed to the Germanic invasions of the fifth century AD. Latin was still used for a couple of centuries after the collapse in the west, most prominently in legal texts such as the Corpus Juris Civilis, a codification of Roman law by Justinian in the sixth century. Another crucial aspect of being Roman was to be a Christian, following the Orthodoxy of Chalcedonian Christianity as codified at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 451. This was, however, the loosest aspect of being Roman. Christianity, in its many forms, had spread and been adopted by many of Byzantium’s neighbours, who were no more Roman for having converted. Indeed, Christian practices in Byzantium were occasionally at odds with strict ‘Orthodoxy’, such as the period of Iconoclasm (726–843) which saw the Romaioi isolate themselves from the wider Christian world with the destruction of Holy Images. Of course, such religious divisions could be found throughout the medieval Christian world, but it certainly shows how the label of ‘Christian’ was at times a fluid and malleable construct. By the mid-ninth century Byzantium found itself in a far smaller state than the Roman Empire of old; the rise of Islam in the seventh century had removed many of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean away from centuries of Roman governance; whereas some 200 years before that the Western Roman Empire had fallen, traditionally dated in AD 476, which again dispossessed the Romans of lands in Italy, Gaul, Spain and North Africa (though some of these would return under Roman control temporarily in the sixth century under Justinian’s reconquests). As such, the Byzantine state in 867 consisted, geographically speaking, of Anatolia, the southern Balkans (which were hotly contested with the Bulgarian Empire), the Aegean Islands and a smattering of outposts in southern Italy and Sicily.
Despite its smaller size Byzantium was still shaped by Roman attitudes that originated from antiquity; the empire saw its neighbours as inferior, whether through contrasting language, customs, religion or origin, which has led one prominent historian to suggest that it is possible to describe the Byzantines as xenophobic.3 However, this superiority complex could not have practically worked when one considers that Byzantium was surrounded by ‘barbarian’ peoples with whom they had to treat, and historically the Roman state had assimilated foreign groups successfully into its polity for centuries, a process scholars have called Romanization. It is through this process that countless Armenians (and other non-Romans) came to assimilate into the empire in both an ancient and medieval context, with most coming to consider themselves Roman after a certain amount of time, possibly up to three generations after settling with the empire or attaining citizenship.4 The Armenians, and their descendants who became Roman, played a particularly important role in the history of the medieval Roman state, rising to positions of authority in the church, military and government, with some attaining the highest office of state: that of the emperor. While there were some emperors before 867 who had Armenian ancestry, none became as important and influential as Basil I Makedon, who in turn would begin re-engaging with both Armenian peoples and states on a scale not seen since the sixth century. In summary, the ninth-century Byzantine state was a relatively unified entity through its people, ideology and customs but flexible when it came to dealing with its numerous neighbours who were linguistically and religiously diverse. It had significantly contracted, geographically speaking, from the Roman state of antiquity but had lost very little of the Roman world view.
Armenia, on the other hand, was experiencing a revival of its own with Ashot I Bagratuni being crowned in AD 885 as the first independent ruler of the medieval Armenian kingdom, which had finally thrown off the Abbasid yoke after centuries of Islamic rule.5 Armenia too had a long history stretching back into antiquity. As we have seen earlier the country sat between the two great powers of Rome and Parthia/Persia, serving as a crucial buffer state under the Arsacid dynasty (c.AD 52–428). In the fourth century Armenia became the first country in the world to convert to Christianity when St Gregory the Illuminator converted King Tiridates III (298–330) and his court in 301. This conversion was crucial in the future relationship that Armenia was to have with the Roman west, which in turn followed the conversion to Christianity en masse in the fourth and fifth centuries. Before the conversion, the Armenians had predominantly been Zoroastrians, heavily influenced by their Parthian/Persian neighbours, and this had shaped Armenia to be far more eastern-oriented when it came to geopolitical concerns. The Christianization of the country, and its people, later produced the creation of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop Mashtots in c.AD 405, which in turn paved the way for a rich tradition of Armenian literature that was to develop over the centuries. Whereas the Byzantine state fought for its survival against the rise of Islam for much of the seventh through ninth centuries, the Armenian highlands had been conquered through simultaneous negotiations and campaigns by the caliphate and was gradually governed by powerful emirs after the elimination of the old native aristocracy that had stubbornly defended their homeland in the seventh and early eighth centuries. The rise of the Bagratuni dynasty in the ninth century had as much to do with the declining power of the Abbasid caliphate as it did with the expansion of Byzantium’s eastern borders to the threshold of western Armenia, the fates of these two polities and peoples were once again inexorably linked for the next two centuries.
The medieval kingdom of Armenia struggled to maintain a coherent centralized structure for much of its existence, and this was largely down to two factors: geography and the Armenian nobility of nakharars and azats, the upper and lower class of landowners, respectively. The geographical circumstances feed directly into the role and behaviour of the nobility. Armenia’s rugged geography in the Caucasus, dominated by mountains, narrow river valleys and high plateaus, made communication and centripetal processes difficult to maintain and enforce. Instead, local communities formed around local lords who held nominal allegiance to a regional leader, who in turn would recognize a wider/national ruler, which in ninth-century Armenia was the Bagratid king. Another problem that plagued the centripetal developments of medieval Armenia was the role of foreign powers, namely Byzantium and the Abbasid Caliphate. While the former would leave the newly crowned Bagratuni kingdom alone for some time, the Abbasids played a game of divide and conquer against their recent former subjects by recognizing Gagik I Artsruni of Vaspurakan (904–937/43) as king of Armenia in 908, rivalling the Bagratids of Ani. These two claims to kingship were never put to rest, with both claimants eventually coming to recognize each other as king, thereby dividing much of historical Armenia into two political entities. Despite this geopolitical division, however, the medieval Armenian kingdoms were united in a common identity, strengthened by shared language and faith. Medieval Armenian identity was extraordinarily durable in the early Middle Ages, especially when considering the wider social and political context that Armenians faced within their own land. The inherent strength of this identity was drawn from its basic constructs: the land that was recognized as Armenian, the Armenian language, pride in and acceptance of Armenian Christianity (in a broad sense) and the shared history of the Armenian peoples from antiquity.6 The Armenians were proud of their Christian heritage, being the first Christian nation, and their religion and church were crucial to their identity.
The Armenian Apostolic Church was not in communion with the wider Roman Church, having come to disagreements over the conclusions reached at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon, thereby making the Armenian Church Miaphysite in doctrine; we will come back to the importance of this Christological difference later on. Yet a cautionary approach must be urged here, for all of our main Armenian narrative histories were written by men who had careers within the church and/or were writing history under the patronage of a particular princely house and saw the religious identity of the Armenians as the main paradigm of their shared identity. This is particularly prevalent from the ninth century onwards when correspondence between the Byzantine and Armenian churches increased, fluctuating between cordial relations and animosity over confessional differences. This complex relationship is often ignored by both our primary accounts and some secondary writers, who focus on a rigid dichotomy between Armenians and Romans, despite plenty of examples of when tolerance and accord are reached between the two sides. We will come back to this discussion in Chapter 2. In summary, the Armenians were a distinct people set in the disparate world of Caucasia and the wider Middle East, but for all of their prominent characteristics they were remarkably successful in assimilating into the wider sociopolitical milieus in the Christian west and the Islamic east – and especially the Romanization process they underwent when arriving in Byzantium.
. The Armenians in the Byzantine Empire: A historiographical overview It is crucial to recognize that from late antiquity Armenian migrants played an important role in both Roman and, later, Byzantine history, serving with particular distinction in the army as soldiers and generals. As one can expect, the topic of Armenians and the Byzantine Empire is not an entirely new enterprise; indeed, many eminent scholars have written on the subject with varying levels of success. The real difficulty when studying this interaction is answering the question: ‘when do Armenian migrants lose their native identity and become Roman through a process of assimilation/Romanization?’ Fundamentally, this book is going to answer this very question, but first it would be prudent to look at why attempts by previous secondary scholarship have not wholly answered this successfully and how some modern ideological factors have hindered previous historical investigation from analysing this process as objectively as possible. One of the more prominent issues that scholars have struggled with is the use and consistency of identity labels used by our primary sources.
Often terms such as Armenian, Iberian, Greek, Christian, Latin and Saracen can all be used loosely/ broadly in different contexts to define different groups, as can vague references to genetical origins with phrases such as ‘of Armenian stock/blood’, loosely describing the ethnic origins of certain individuals. Without careful analysis this has led some secondary works to take surface-level labels as fact, without asking how we should attempt to understand the use of such labels, whether that be through linguistic, ethnic or religious characteristics. When it comes to the question of Armenians in the Byzantine Empire Anthony Kaldellis has recently tackled some of the issues of what he calls the ‘Armenian fallacy’ which he sees existing within Byzantine Studies. His definition is thus: [. . .] the assumption that Armenian identity was propagated genetically and could not be lost through cultural adaption and assimilation. Put it in the form of a syllogism: if x is an Armenian and y is descended from x, no matter how many generations have passed between them and no matter the admixture of any amount of what is called ‘non-Armenian blood,’ then y is also ‘an Armenian’.7 As such, no matter how Romanized an individual or family was, they are always seen to be Armenian in ‘character’ or ‘origin’, or even faith, and these misjudgements can be applied elsewhere to other ethnicities: for example, Bulgarians or Georgians or Arabs. Another crucial issue that Kaldellis has identified is how modern historians have been influenced by the horrors of the twentieth century where racial-ethnic groups were targeted and persecuted and so have attempted to paint modern concepts of ethnicity and heritage back onto the Middle Ages.8
To accurately observe how ethnic groups operated and understood their own, and other, identities within the medieval context they lived in, the modern historian needs to tread carefully with the labels used by our primary sources and firmly analyse the language and descriptors of medieval identity – not to impose modern interpretations where they do not belong. Returning to the case of Armenian assimilation into Byzantium, the precise nature and mechanics of Romanization are not universally agreed by Byzantinists to this day. Indeed, much of our previous understanding on the subject has been framed by works written decades ago. One such prominent author on this topic was Peter Charanis (1908–1985).9
Central to his approach was his belief in the concept of medieval Hellenism and the negative impact which he believed the Armenian migrations had on this.10 His understanding of what constituted Byzantium, and of what forms of acculturation the Armenians had to take in order to become fully Byzantine, was dictated by his strict division between what he saw as Greek and Armenian culture.11 Charanis argued for viewing the Byzantines as essentially Greek: ‘for those who passed under the ethnicity of “Romans” were in reality Greeks, i.e. Greeks in language and in culture’: in one stroke applying his understanding of Greekness onto the medieval past and ignoring the very language the sources used to describe themselves, Romaioi or even their homeland, Romania. Despite these oversights, Charanis correctly identified the problems that arose between the Romaioi and the Armenian immigrants in central and eastern Anatolia, although his understanding of the causes is elementary and riddled with uncomfortable opinions: The discontent of the Armenians may have been justified but in the end it proved disastrous not only for the Greeks but also for themselves. But then it is in the nature of a minority, aware of its identity and with a sense of power, to be discontented.12 It is true that the Armenians in the eleventh century were indeed more resistant to the process of assimilation; however, the reasons for this are far more complex than a ‘natural discontentment’ found in ethnic minorities.
The wide circulation of Charanis’ works, particularly concerning the subjects of demography, migration and ethnicity, has strongly influenced how subsequent Byzantinists have understood Armenian assimilation, and his works are consistently cited to this day. In contrast to Charanis, one of the most helpful works on Armenian assimilation is an article written by Nina Garsoïan, though much of the paper is a summary of where the various features of the assimilation process struggled, and it leaves open many areas where a wider enquiry is needed.13 These include: a more thorough understanding of what the term ‘Armenian’ means in Byzantine terms, whether the term is a linguistic, religious or geographical indicator, or all wrapped up into one; removing the uniformity that has often been placed on Armenian minorities; and coming to a realistic understanding of the polemically charged religious tensions between the Byzantines and Armenians. Garsoïan’s most pertinent point, however, is in highlighting the ever-problematic reliance on identity labels used by sources, whether that is in the material or literary record. These can often be confusing, interchangeable or attached to xenophobic clichés, all used by our medieval chroniclers on all sides and need careful unpicking to reach a clearer interpretation. There have also been vital works on the social background of Armenian migrants, which is an important differential when it comes to measuring assimilation in the ninth and tenth centuries.
The work of Alexander Kazhdan (1922–97) on the Armenian elite in Byzantium deserves credit for its informative survey on the Armenian origins of the Byzantine aristocracy, though he regards the existence of ethnic groups as a challenge to Byzantine uniformity and potentially falls into the aforementioned ‘Armenian fallacy’.14 Isabelle Brouselle has also investigated how Armenians integrated into the Byzantine nobility, but she parts company with Kazhdan by focusing on the ninth century. Brouselle’s article offers some enlightening findings on the use of ethnic identification within family names. This phenomenon, she states, could be the result either of surnames not being common in the ninth century or of negative qualities attributed to persons of particular ethnic ancestry.15 As mentioned earlier, JeanClaude Cheynet is of the opinion that it took up to three generations for migrants to lose their ethnic identity, which may explain Brouselle’s observation on the ethnic stereotypes surrounding the surnames of recent arrivals into the empire.16 Cheynet’s theory is actually rather durable, although there are examples of assimilation working more quickly, dependent on geographical settlement and direct input by the imperial court to amalgamate certain princely houses into the ruling elite, often facilitated by rapid appointments to governing or military commands. We will look more closely at examples of more rapid assimilation in the first chapter. On the theme of assimilation there is the work of Angeliki Laiou (1941–2008) who attempted to understand what forms assimilation took in Byzantium.
She concluded that the main mechanics of assimilation were ‘Christianization, the use of the Greek language, service in the army or the administration, [and] intermarriage’.17 There is little room to criticize this list; however, some were more important than others. We will return to many of these themes later when we define the process of Romanization. Lastly, Gilbert Dagron (1932–2015) provided a viable comparison for the assessment of migrating ethno-religious minorities in Byzantium with the case of the Syrians; S. Peter Cowe also deserves recognition for his work on the Syrian model of migration into Byzantium in the tenth century.18 Not only were the Syrians who entered Byzantium largely followers of the Miaphysite Syrian Church, a doctrine largely shared with the Armenian Apostolic Church, they were also used by the Byzantines for the same purpose as the Armenians: to resettle depopulated areas after devastation or conquest to provide a Christian, albeit non-Chalcedonian, population which could be used as a buffer against a more hostile state.19 We will come back to the example of the Syrians occasionally, as they provide useful illustrations to compare and contrast both imperial migration/settlement policies and a wider understanding on assimilation.
. Romanization: A process explained We have already touched on the term Romanization, which can be defined as the process by which Roman civilization and culture was spread among non-Roman subjects, through both direct and indirect means. Our attention will be turned to how Romanization worked in Byzantium shortly, but first we must understand how the process developed in antiquity. The Romans were well aware that the most practical way of controlling the vast lands and disparate peoples living under their rule was to provide a way in which newly conquered peoples could become Roman, or at the very least attached to its customs, and so less likely to rebel or cause problems. Indeed, in a speech given by the Emperor Claudius (41–54) in 48 where he argued for the elite of Lugdunum (Lyons) to be granted senatorial status, he further acknowledged the need to assimilate foreign peoples into the Roman state: ‘What else proved fatal to Lacedaemon and Athens, in spite of their power in arms, but their policy of holding the conquered aloof as alien-born?’20 Local elites all across the empire were seen as crucial in spreading Roman customs and culture, and in return they would remain in their position of privilege to which they had become accustomed. In this way, across the empire, temples, forums, schools, roads, aqueducts and other civic amenities were built to encourage the Roman style of life. These projects were often financed, wholly or in part, by local elites who sought to gain from citizenship and imperial patronage through collaboration with Roman governors and administrators.21 Through this process Roman citizenship became a valued commodity that was sought throughout the Mediterranean, providing a bonding agent that recategorized some grand notions of identity. Such a view can be taken from the Roman Oration of Aristides: I mean your magnificent citizenship with its grand conception, because there is nothing like it in the records of mankind.
Dividing into two groups all those in your Empire – and with this word I have indicated the entire civilised world – you have everywhere appointed to your citizenship, or even to kinship with you, the better part of the world’s talent, courage, and leadership, while the rest you recognised as a league under your hegemony.22 The assimilation of foreign peoples became integral for how the Roman Empire maintained its control over its far-flung provinces over the centuries, and there are many instances that stand as testament to the successful nature of this process. Take for example the case of Marcus Valerius Severus, a native of Mauretania Tingitana, who successfully lobbied the Emperor Claudius for Roman citizenship and legal marriage rights for his city of Volubilis.23 In this case, Severus was a member of the local elite who was able to gain patronage for the betterment of his community. Or another, Quintus Lollius Urbicus, a Numidian Berber and the son of a landowner, who was born in the early second century: a career as a soldier and politician saw him serve all around the empire, including Germania, Britain and Judea, revealing an incredible scope of free movement to rise up the social ladder. We know of this from a monument, standing in his native Tiddis (near Cirta, Numidia), which records his distinguished career and Roman credentials.24 By 212, however, the draw of attaining citizenship had been removed by the Constitutio Antoniniana which granted citizenship to all free inhabitants within the Roman world, thereby creating a wide-ranging geographical-based citizenship that granted access to Roman law.
Contemporary writers seem to suggest that the act was passed in order to increase the pool of soldiers/tax revenue at the emperor’s disposal, but whatever the reasons were for such a move it created the largest body of citizens, sharing a broad civic and legal identity, that the Western world had ever seen.25 From the third century onwards, Roman citizenship was largely defined by two factors: the status of being a free man and residing within the confines of the empire. This definition permitted a continuation of the existing linguistic and religious diversity within the citizen body. The two main administrative languages of the Roman Empire were Latin and Greek, which were largely used in the western and eastern halves of the empire, respectively. Beneath the official languages, however, a wide array of tongues was spoken, with many of these languages and dialects lasting well into the fifth and sixth centuries, such as Neo-Punic or Isaurian, and others lasting down to the modern day, having become the main liturgical languages of various Christian churches such as Syriac and Coptic.26
In terms of religion, one could find a plethora of religious and cultist worship, ranging from the traditional Greco-Roman Olympic Pantheon to foreign cults of Cybele, Isis, Mithras and the Dionysian mysteries. Judaism and Christianity could also be found in many cities across the empire, though the followers of these two religions were more populous in the eastern Mediterranean. The ‘bizarre’ (as the Romans saw it) nature of Jewish monotheism had been treated with reluctant tolerance by the Romans, but they had no time for Christianity and its followers. Seen as rebels, cannibals and the harbingers of bad fortune for the empire, the early followers of Christ’s teachings found themselves subject to violent persecution at various stages in the first few centuries of the Roman Empire.
There was one aspect that angered Roman officials towards Christians in particular, and that was their non-conformist attitude towards the Imperial Cult. Neither strictly a religion nor cult per se, what we call the Imperial Cult was a religiously focused statement of political loyalty towards the emperor-head, the leading figure of Rome who represented the body politic of the state and who had a connection with divine powers that watched over the earthly realm. It is important to recognize how inseparable religious and political life was in ancient Rome, with many important politicians holding religious offices concurrently with their political magistracies. For example, the position of emperor also held the religious office of Pontifex Maximus, head of the Roman state religion. From Augustus onwards, citizens and soldiers were expected by the state to make a profession of loyalty and give an offering to the emperor in shrines dotted across the provinces. These offerings and prayers were to bring about divine favour on the emperor who guided Rome and guarded her borders, while also showing their belief and acceptance of the political institutions and customs of Rome, that is, what a Roman is supposed to believe and do. The Imperial Cult was to come under repudiation with the conversion of the imperial household to Christianity under the Emperor Constantine I (306– 37), followed by many inhabitants of the empire through the rest of the fourth century. Any form of sacrifice to the emperor was excluded outright with an edict declaring such practices illegal in 324, although this did not mean that it entirely stopped.27
This had a knock-on effect for the priesthood of the Imperial Cult with the religious dimension of the role now surplus to requirements; however, many did continue their political roles in city and provincial governance.28 But as with many aspects of the Christianization of Rome, there were undoubtedly significant Roman influences on the development of the Church as a centralized institution. Constantine I was a great patron to the early church, granting tax exemptions and land for new religious buildings to be constructed, and this patronage allowed some forms of continuation for the ideology and practice of the Imperial Cult and specifically the role of the imperial office within the new religious hierarchy. The emperor was still seen by the church as God’s representative on earth, and the imperial persons and institutions were held as sacred and part of the divine’s plan. Whereas the Imperial Cult of old had held the person of the emperor as divus (divine), the position of emperor under the church was to slowly regain an element of sanctity, with the later Byzantine usage of theios to describe the imperial person.29 As with the customs of the Romans of antiquity, the religious and political leadership of the emperor was inseparable, with prayers of safety and loyalty to the imperial title an expected part of every Roman’s ideology and practice.
Veneration of the Imperial Cult was not a mindless exercise or a simple declaration of loyalty. The purpose was to create a physical embodiment of the Roman state, allowing provincials in far-flung lands to hold and acknowledge the political entity that they inhabited. The prayers and offerings were part of a wider practical element which showed an engagement with the broader polity, and as such it was an important part of Romanization itself in bringing together diverse inhabitants, from Syria to Morocco, and Britain to Egypt, all gaining a sense of belonging: a shared ‘Romanness’. Another important aspect of Romanization was service in the imperial army – arguably the most common method of assimilation for barbarian and foreign peoples living in or on the frontiers of the empire. An assured way of attaining citizenship for the common, non-Roman man was to serve in the army for a period of twenty-five years, which upon completion gave them land and citizenship, along with any offspring that they might have.
These auxiliary troops, often made up of ethnolinguistic units such as Syrians, Sarmatians and later Huns, Goths, Gepids and Alans, all fought alongside native Roman troops for the empire throughout the centuries. In the imperial period many of the auxiliary companies brought along a specialist skill, such as Syrian archers, Sarmatian cavalry or Rhodian slingers, thereby complementing the skilled heavy infantry that Rome and her Italian allies had been perfecting for centuries beforehand. Indeed, the very service of nonRoman peoples in the army had a knock-on effect on local languages such as in Syriac where the word r(h)ūmāyā (Roman) could be defined as ‘soldier’ as well as an attachment to a ‘Roman’ identity.30 This has led to some difficulties when scholars are unable to distinguish between the two meanings. As Tannous has argued, the Miaphysite patriarch Julian (687–707/9) was known as the ‘Roman’, either for his father’s career as a soldier and Julian’s subsequent upbringing around military life or that Julian had been given an education in a monastery in northern Syria and called ‘the Roman’ on account of his kinship.31 We have already talked through some examples of Romanization where service in the army granted provincials opportunities to rise through the imperial hierarchy, and this process was also used by the imperial court to pacify and convert hostile peoples on the frontiers. This process overlapped with diplomatic and foreign policy, with Rome taking noble hostages from neighbouring peoples so as to ensure good behaviour and spread Roman customs to barbarian peoples. One of the more famous examples of this comes with the disaster in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9,
where three Roman legions were destroyed by the Germanic prince Arminius who had been considered a trustworthy ally. Arminius was a prince of the Cherusci tribe, and it had been hoped that a Roman upbringing would bring about the slow Romanization of his tribe when he would return to rule. Alas, the opposite result came to fruition; however, while Arminius undoubtedly sought to use his knowledge gained from his childhood as a prisoner of Rome to gain the ultimate revenge, his younger brother despised his betrayal and held true to his new Roman identity, even fighting directly against his brother in the campaigns of Germanicus in AD 16. It was not just foreign peoples whom Rome sought to pacify through service in the army, many provincials also came through the system to strengthen the ties between the centre and the periphery. For those who lived inside the empire’s borders, a career in the army allowed significant social advancement for those capable enough to rise through the ranks. As the centuries wore on the main claimants to the imperial throne often came from the army.
This was to reach its zenith during the period known as the ‘Third-Century Crisis’, which saw the rise of the ‘barrack emperors’ who between 235 and 284 produced fourteen different emperors with an average reign of two years apiece. For much of this period the soldier-emperors hailed from Illyria, a region in the western Balkans, and were to produce some of the more capable emperors in this period, such as Claudius II Gothicus, Aurelian and Diocletian whose reforms re-established solid imperial governance. While things were to calm down over subsequent centuries there was always an opportunity for a power-hungry general to use the army to push their political aims and seize the top job. As we will see later on in the Byzantine period usurpation and civil war came to be the most Roman of all pastimes, producing a quasi-meritocratic route to rule and allowing men of many origins to sit upon the imperial throne. We have now explored the most important elements of the Romanization process in antiquity, showcasing diverse examples of becoming ‘Roman’ through the adoption of certain religious, linguistic and political identities. Our attention now needs to turn what it meant to be ‘Roman’ in a medieval context and how strong the links were between the identities that share the same origins, names and structures.
Being Roman in Byzantium How the Romanization/assimilation process actually worked in Byzantium from the ninth century onwards will be the main subject of the next chapter. Here, I want to tackle a more basic issue: what did it mean to be ‘Roman’ in the Byzantine Empire? Obviously, the empire underwent significant contractions during the fifth and seventh centuries, and while this took many former ‘Romans’ away from imperial control it also brought about an ultimately more united Roman people than there had been since the Roman Republic. The Romans of Byzantium, especially from the ‘Middle period’ (c.800) onwards, had come to form an ethnic grouping, bound together by shared language, religion and identifying a native land that was their own and distinguishable from others. One can see the origins of such an understanding of the Roman ‘homeland’, in a geographical sense, with a sixth-century inscription found on a brick at Sirmium which says: Oh Lord, help the town and halt the Avar and protect the Romanía and the scribe. Amen.32
The claims of the Byzantines to their Roman identity and heritage have faced a whole series of responses, from outright rejection, scorn or patronizing explanations that they were in fact confused Greeks using the wrong terminology. Such views have ignored the very claims by primary accounts who talk openly about what made them and their fellow citizens Roman during the medieval period. As such, we need to look closely at how our sources described their ‘Romanness’ for want of a better word. Investigating that issue is easier said than done since, when considering the Byzantine historiographical tradition, it begs the question as to whether the extant works contain any reliable indicators of contemporary identity at all.33 Their authors were often merely compilers and copyists of now lost histories, and even when they were writing distinct histories of their own time, they studiously avoided originality and perpetuated archaic stereotypes from antiquity in order to maintain their link with a literary tradition that stretched back to Herodotus and Thucydides.34 That being said, one can identify a common term that is used through a variety of sources to describe the main constructs of Roman identity in the medieval period, and that is the term ‘custom’ (ἔθος). So we find in the De Administrando Imperio a handbook produced by Constantine VII (913–59) to instruct his son Romanos II (959–63) on good governance, a series of extracts that reference said customs: [N]ever shall an emperor of the Romans ally himself in marriage with a nation whose customs differ from and are alien to those of the Roman order.35 Or defence against the precedent set by Romanos I Lekapenos (920–45) in allowing his daughter Maria (Irene) Lekapene to marry the Tsar of Bulgaria, Peter I (927–69):
The lord Romanos, the emperor, was a common, illiterate fellow, and not from among those who have been bred up in the palace, and have followed the Roman national customs from the beginning.36 These passages are not, in fact, blanket proscriptions. Rather they belong to a particular political context. It is clear the claim that Romanos I was ‘uncouth and poorly educated’ was an attempt to discredit his reputation and point out his humble ‘Armenian’ origins by an embittered Constantine VII, who long dwelt in Romanos’ shadow during the usurpation period which preceded his own sole rule. Furthermore, it is likely that he deeply resented the marriage that Romanos had brokered in 944 between Constantine’s son, the future Romanos II, and Bertha of Provence, the illegitimate daughter of Hugh of Provence, the king of Italy.37 Similar snobbery can be found over a century later when Anna Komnene made a similar retrospective criticism of Michael VII Doukas (1071– 8) for agreeing to the marriage of his son Constantine to Helena, the daughter of Robert Guiscard, in 1074.38 These two examples could be used to describe a closed system, impenetrable to outsiders, but this is simply not the case. After all, such marriages between Romans and non-Romans did take place and often without a word of protest being raised.
The obvious example is that between Constantine VII’s own granddaughter Anna and the Russian ruler Vladimir in 989, although the circumstances of the marriage were rather more desperate for the broker, Basil II, who exchanged his sister for a force of several thousand Varangians.39 Even if custom did not present any insuperable barrier to marriage alliances, it was nevertheless clearly important when it came to defining what a Roman actually was. If we turn to a slightly later period in the writings of Niketas Choniates we find an interesting reference to custom in the narrative of the campaigns of John II Komnenos (1118–43) in southern Anatolia. Here Choniates informs us that the emperor came across the descendants of those who had previously resided in the empire some few decades prior, who were still Christian but now lived under the rule of the Seljuk Sultan of Iconium. Rather than seeing themselves as under alien occupation, they on the contrary: viewed the Romans as their enemies. So much greater is custom, strengthened by time, than race or faith.40 It was the abandonment of custom, Choniates suggests, that marked the departure of these Christians from the Roman camp. Yet once again, the source here actually suggests that custom, though central to Byzantine identity, was not an insuperable barrier. After all, Choniates makes it absolutely clear that these ‘former’ Romans had remained Christian and had not converted to Islam to please their new masters. Thus, custom was apparently distinct from religion. This would suggest that the reverse was also true: just as the abandonment of Roman customs meant separation, by adopting them, a wide variety of people could be included.
In another instance that highlights the complex religious dimensions of the period, the twelfth-century Armenian chronicler Matthew of Edessa describes the Byzantine-Armenian warlord Philaretos Brachamios as: a superficial Christian . . . he professed the Roman faith and followed their customs.41 Let us unpack what is being said here. In the eyes of the Armenian Matthew of Edessa, Philaretos was ‘a superficial Christian’, meaning he followed the Chalcedonian Church of Constantinople, ‘Roman faith’, rather than the nonChalcedonian Armenian Apostolic Church. This statement is made in the context of Philaretos’ autonomous domain that ruled over large swathes of land with dominant Armenian populations such as Cilicia, Commagene and northern Syria during the late eleventh century. It also reveals Matthew’s own prejudice towards the Byzantines and their attempts to impose imperial control over the Armenian Church in the 1060s and 1070s – a serious point of contention for ByzantineArmenian relations in this period. Philaretos’ family certainly had Armenian origins but they had been operating inside the empire for several generations and so held distinct Roman qualities, one being the Chalcedonian faith and the other ‘their customs’.42 Clearly Matthew is offering an indication of some other qualities/ ideologies that made Philaretos Roman, at least in part.
Returning to the DAI, there is evidence to suggest that in the eyes of the imperial court a dividing line was presented by differing kinship and language: it is right that each nation should marry and cohabit not with those of another race and tongue but with those of the same tribe and speech.43 This is another clear statement by an elitist attitude towards outsiders that overlooks examples where outsiders were able to enter the charmed circle of the imperial court. The Chronographia of Theophanes describes the proposed engagement between Erytho/Rotrude, the second daughter of the Frankish king Charlemagne (768–814), and the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI (780–97) in 781. Theophanes informs us that the eunuch Elissaios was sent to the Frankish kingdom before the young woman travelled to Constantinople for her marriage, to teach her: the language and letters of the Greeks (Γραικῶν) and educate her in the customs of the Roman Empire.44 Both custom and language, Theophanes suggests, could be learned and adopted by an outsider through education and example.
One assumes that the same could be said of the Arab Anemas, son of the last emir of Crete, who in 961 became a subject of the empire during the reign of Romanos II and fought bravely in the army, and of the Turk Prosouch who loyally served John II Komnenos after having a Roman upbringing and education.45 It probably also applies to the Venetians whom Choniates says were adopted as ‘natives and genuine Romans’.46 Outsiders were able to become Romans, but again the issue remains, what exactly were these ‘customs’ that the sources spoke of? There is an interesting section in Skylitzes’ Synopsis that sheds some light on what these customs might have been. Within the chapter covering the reign of Basil I (867–86) events turn to the situation in southern Italy where Byzantine holdings were hard-pressed by the Lombards and the short-lived Emirate of Bari. We are told that the emir, Sawdan, destroyed the Italian city of Iontos in 871/2, and Basil I instructed a new city to be built to replace the lost settlement which would come to be called Kallipolis.
It was settled by people from the town of Herakleia in Pontus in addition to those survivors from Iontos and the surrounding population of Apulia. It is at this point in the critical edition of the Synopss that an interpolation, found in several manuscripts, offers an insightful description of the characteristics of the city and its inhabitants. This interpolation does not appear to be a marginal note by Skylitzes himself but rather a later note by some unknown scribe, perhaps one who heralded from the city itself. In any case, the interpolation states: ‘This explains why even today the inhabitants have the same customs, dress and political institutions as the Romans.’47 Here were find once again the term custom but slightly elaborated upon by a contemporary voice.
It is noted that the inhabitants of the city dress like Romans, although this could indeed refer to courtly dress worn by local elites, by which administrators, judges and governance officials mimicked the style worn in Constantinople. But what is far more important here is how the inhabitants of this city followed similar political practices and institutions as other Romans did, which one can assume to mean a shared ideological world view that places the Roman emperor, and his court, at the pinnacle. This really is the missing piece of the puzzle.
It is clear that ‘custom’ was not simply another way to describe either religious confession or native language; rather, the obvious conclusion is that these ‘Roman customs’ were in fact a subconscious, yet simultaneously active, belief, support and loyalty in the universality of Rome, her emperor, her Church and above all the sanctity of the empire and its institutions in contrast with those of its heterodox neighbours.48 What made the people of Kallipolis, or so the interpolation attempts to portray, is a shared understanding of the world and how it should be ordered, noting the superiority of the emperor in Constantinople rather than the western claimants. Indeed, returning to the previous examples we have covered, things appear a little clearer. In the case of marriages, the DAI is advising that foreign princesses should be educated in the Roman way so as to more easily understand and accept the political and ideological belief in the superiority of Romania. Indeed, the criticism of Romanos I for having not been raised with ‘Roman customs’ was to target his Armenian peasant background and insinuate that he may secretly harbour nonRoman views.
When we turned to the twelfth century, and the example of those former Romans of Anatolia who are mentioned by Choniates, the key point borne out in the narrative was that these former imperial inhabitants now held their political loyalty to the Sultan not the emperor. Whereas in the case of Philaretos, he was seen as Roman by Matthew of Edessa for his service in the great institution of the Roman state: the army. Erytho/Rotrude was a Frank and would need to be re-educated to Roman values and ideology if she were to become the consort of the Roman emperor – as would be the case of Anemas of Crete or Prosouch the Turk. What made someone a Roman was fundamentally the acceptance of Roman customs, and this not only held together the peoples of Romania but also provided a pathway for foreigners to enter and assimilate into their new homeland.
. Being Armenian in the early Middle Ages Now that we have covered what it meant to be Roman in Byzantium it is only correct and proper to conduct the same exercise with our other main medieval identity: Armenian. It is imperative to understand how the Armenians themselves recognized and wrote about their identity through the primary accounts we have for the ninth through twelfth centuries. Medieval Armenian identity was without doubt the product of events from the conversion to Christianity in the fourth century to the formation of the medieval Armenian kingdoms in the late ninth century. We have already covered the basic constructs of Armenian identity earlier: the land that was recognized as Armenian, the Armenian language, pride in and acceptance of Armenian Christianity (in a broad sense) and the shared history of the Armenian peoples from antiquity.49 The loudest of these constructs within our sources come from religious identity indicators, especially the independence of the ‘true’ Christianity of the Armenian Church and the perceived threats to this from both Islam and heretical Christian powers.
The manner in which religious identity indicators were viewed by our sources reveals how remarkably fluid they actually were in this period. We rely heavily on Stephen of Taron’s Universal History for the Armenian perspective of events in the tenth century, but we must be cautious in how we treat Stephen’s observations on Armenian identity. We must remain vigilant when using Stephen’s account for study of increased engagement between the Byzantine and Armenian worlds, for Stephen placed great value on the religious aspect of identity, not simply because he was a churchman but more importantly because he believed it to be true.50 Furthermore, with regard to the model of identity that Stephen of Taron followed, it has been argued that his inclusion of a theological letter, which dominates Book III of the Universal History, amounted to ‘a defiant response to the Imperial Church as well as an assertion of Armenian parity with, and independence from, Byzantine intellectual and religious culture’.51 Earlier Armenian historiography was dominated by an ever-present threat of religious annihilation by either the Persian or Arabic empires that surrounded the Armenian homeland. Yet in Stephen’s lifetime there was no traditional Zoroastrian and Islamic power threatening the faith; rather, it was a Christian, albeit Chalcedonian, power that challenged the Armenians’ religious independence. It is important to understand the motives behind Stephen’s decision to give prominence to monastic communities and scholars in his history, for it offers some indication of Stephen’s own view on his Armenian identity, ‘constructing it in terms of cultural memory and tradition as well as historic political and territorial expression’.52 Greenwood goes further in expanding what this meant: This construction of Armenian identity, rooted in a simplified expression of the Armenian past onto which local traditions of sanctity and scholarship could be grafted, proved in the long term to be remarkably resilient, because identity, when expressed in terms of shared cultural memory, is able to transcend political and social upheaval.53 It is clear that the construction of Armenian identity, as enshrined by Stephen, was remarkably resilient. Yet the same identity indicators as viewed by Stephen are not consistently witnessed in the migrations into the Byzantine Empire during the ninth and tenth centuries. Indeed, our understanding of Armenian identity is severely limited in scope for the lives and feelings of everyone below the nobility.
It cannot be overemphasized that it is nearly impossible to evaluate the factors of identity that the majority of Armenians held onto outside of the aristocracy, for our sources did not record their voices. As such we can conclude from our tenth-century source that Armenians placed great emphasis on their Christianity as it underpinned their literary and linguistic heritage – in essence, their cultural significance in the world. This – coupled with the Miaphysite nature of the Armenian Apostolic Church – became the beacon around which Armenians viewed themselves in comparison with the other Christian peoples who lived around them. And it was this religiously themed identity that persisted through the main Armenian narrative sources stretching beyond the chronological scope of this study. The issue with using this understanding of Armenian identity is that it rarely appears in the Byzantine sources; in fact, it could be argued that it is entirely ignored. As we will see later, many of the Armenians who migrated into the empire in the ninth and tenth centuries seem to have had no difficulty in assimilating, despite the insistence on religious identity being held so dearly by our Armenian sources. This is not to claim that Armenian identity as viewed through Christianity was not real, merely that it was not the divisive and obstructive force towards the mechanics of assimilation that historians have usually assumed it to be. Lastly, one must attempt to comprehend how the Armenian sources perceived Byzantine identity and their understanding of assimilation.
Writing in the earlyto mid-twelfth century, Matthew of Edessa was very liberal in his use of identity indicators for the Byzantines, at some points calling them ‘Roman’, at others ‘Greek’.54 Andrews argues that there is no discernible difference between these terms, and that the vitriol coming from Matthew at times only reflects his feeling of betrayal towards the Byzantines who were expected to be the guardians of the Armenian people. It is an oversight on Andrew’s part to ignore the religious dimension of Matthew’s critical depiction of the Byzantines, and one can see a link in Matthew’s use of the word ‘Greek’ when discussing religious affiliation and the more positive (in his view) of the descriptor ‘Roman’ gradually fading from use. Furthermore, the arguments by modern scholars on the feeling of betrayal that Matthew reveals in his work distort our understanding of religiously fuelled identity politics and hinder our understanding of the previously positive relationship between Byzantines and Armenians.55 While betrayal is a consistent theme in Matthew’s work, it does not provide a stand-alone explanation for his dislike or mistrust of the Byzantines, whom he saw as a naturally perfidious and scheming people. Rather, it is through the paradigm of religious conflict and identity that Matthew saw the difference between the Byzantine and Armenian peoples, and this helps explain the variation in presentation of Byzantines within his text.
The Armenian sources only rarely comment on assimilated Armenians and on even more rare occasions criticize individuals for having undergone this process, either themselves or through subsequent generations.56 Yet it is beyond doubt that the sources, both Byzantine and Armenian, did not see their identity as monolithic or immune to foreign influence; rather the fluidity of these two identities directly contributed to the success that brought an Armenian family to dominate the politics of the empire for nearly two centuries. Concepts of identity were undeniably fluid in the eyes of our Armenian sources, as one would expect when utilizing sources from across three centuries in a comparative framework. Identity indicators such as religion, language and origin only mattered for an individual if they otherwise disturbed the political consensus within the empire. From our Byzantine sources one can see firsthand how the ‘ethnic’ background of an individual disappeared after a couple of generations, and a first-generation migrant was able to assimilate into the ruling elite smoothly. Unfortunately, one cannot apply these conclusions to the wider population of migrants, such as those who were forcibly moved by a series of emperors, as we simply do not have the evidence to do so. The social elite whom our sources were interested in documenting was intent on being considered Roman by their contemporaries, and this was largely based on the concept of Roman ‘customs’ coupled with an observation of Chalcedonian Christianity and command of Byzantine Greek. As argued earlier, these ‘customs’ revolved around the imperial court: court titles, salary, army commands, administrative and religious offices and active participation in the politics surrounding the position of emperor.
We have now seen examples from our primary sources where both Byzantines and Armenians contrasted themselves with the ‘foreign’ in their own context. What is clear is that despite some of the religiously charged polemics exchanged by Byzantine and Armenian churchmen, Armenian migrants were not disadvantaged by their Armenian faith in assimilating into the Byzantine Empire. Rather, as will be argued in full in the following chapter, Armenian migrants, by engaging with the empire through its institutions and shared political ideology, were willing and successful in assimilating into the Byzantine Empire.
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