Download PDF | Krijna Nelly Ciggaar - Western travellers to Constantinople. The West and Byzantium, 962-1204_ Cultural and political relations-BRILL (1996).
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PREFACE
When the moment of writing the preface has come and a book is about to be launched into the world of learning, the author usually reviews the past few years and realises how much he or she is indebted to all those who, in one way or another, have assisted with the task.
For this book the first stone was laid by Judith Herrin who suggested the subject of the book to Messrs Brill of Leiden. I am grateful to her and to the publishers for inviting me to write this book, a study of the relations between Western Europe and the Byzantine empire between 962 and 1204, which is meant to build a bridge enabling both Western medievalists and Byzantinists to take a look at the other half of medieval Europe.
In the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries people became more and more aware of the differences between the Western and Eastern halves of Europe. The subject has fascinated me since my days as an undergraduate. Since then there has been a growing interest among Western medievalists in the ‘other Middle Ages’, the Middle Ages of the Greek and Christian empire in the East.
Some chapters have been read by friends and specialists in their fields. I am extremely grateful to Vera von Falkenhausen for having read so carefully the chapter on Italy, and to Donald Nicol, Lennart Rydén and Reiner Stichel for having done the same for the chapters on Britain, Scandinavia and the German lands. They have saved me from a number of errors, those remaining are entirely my responsibility. I am also grateful to the anonymous ‘censor’ of this book, who made stimulating remarks and suggestions to improve the book.
A book like this needs to be richly illustrated, and I thank the libraries and museums, friends and relatives, and private institutions for their courtesy in sending photographs and for giving permission to publish them. .
There are many others who need to be mentioned here for their help. The staff of the University Library, Leiden, has always been very friendly and helpful, and so were many colleagues and pupils who helped me with technical problems. Julian Deahl, my editor at Brill’s, did his best to turn the language into more beautiful English.
In a work which deals with East and West it is almost impossible to use a consistent and logical system for transliteration. I have tried more than once to avoid shocking Western readers by a ‘literal’ transliteration of Greek names and terms (as is becoming usual among modern Byzantinists) with which they are not yet familiar.
To all who helped me and supported me during the preparation of this work I dedicate this book which, I hope, will narrow the gap between the Western Middle Ages and the Byzantine empire, and will reveal how much the West owes to Byzantium, in many fields and in many ways.
Leiden, November 1995.
INTRODUCTION
... dicunt redeuntes..., Ralph of Coggeshall’
Relations between the West and Byzantium and their cultural and political consequences form the subject of this book. This is not the first publication on such relations nor will it be the last one. The subject is vast and it has to be limited in time and space.
The historical setting of this work is the period from 962 to 1204, its geographical setting is Western Europe. The Slav world, with its own identity, languages, culture and Orthodox Christianity which was part of the Byzantine cultural commonwealth, is not included. As direct neighbours of the Byzantines the Slavs had other sorts of relations with them, not infrequently in the form of military confrontations. Outremer, the territories conquered by the Latin crusaders in the East, where the Greek world impinged directly on the life of the Latins, will also be excluded. Here too clashes and confrontations often created an atmosphere different from that which, in times of peace, set the tone of contacts between East and West in the Byzantine empire, and more significantly in Constantinople, capital of the Eastern empire.
Several chapters, some of a general character, some of a more ‘national’ character, will discuss the Byzantine-Western relations, and the effects they had on the life and culture of Western nations.
The period from 962 to 1204 was important in the history of Western Europe. The early Middle Ages, for which source material is scarce, slowly gave way to a period in which new initiatives and an interest in the outside world became more important and source material more abundant. The Carolingian empire had come to an end owing to internal divisions. In France the Capetians came to power, in Germany the Western empire found its successor in the Saxon dynasty of the Ottonians, which succeeded in giving a new shape to Western Europe and stimulated its cultural life. They exercised power and assumed the imperial throne when Otto I was crowned emperor in 962, in Rome.
The existence, again, of two empires, the Byzantine empire and the Roman empire of the Ottonians, was to play a decisive role in a period when both tried to gain hegemony in Europe. Contacts, contracts and confrontations, positive and negative, are keywords in this process. The wish of the Ottonians to imitate the grand style of the Byzantine emperors played its own role. Only on the southern frontier, in Italy, were the Ottonians direct neighbours of the Byzantines. Some military confrontations took place but astonishingly enough there were few battles, few prisoners of war and little war booty. In Ottonian times problems were often solved diplomatically, which paved the way for the long-lasting influence of a cross-fertilization that was fostered by friendly contacts.
Shortly before, in 959, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913-959) had died. He was one of the most cultured and learned rulers of Byzantium who had stimulated the compilation of several compendia of learning and diplomacy. On his instructions Byzantine princesses were no longer allowed to go abroad and marry foreign rulers.’ After his long and stable reign, a succession of military leaders occupied the throne for longer or shorter periods. And so it was possible for Otto II, son of the emperor Otto I, to wed in Rome, in 972, in the presence of the pope, a Byzantine princess who was related to the reigning imperial family in Constantinople. She was to solve the problem of the two empires by bringing together the two reigning families by marriage. Her son Otto III was to marry Zoe, daughter of Constantine VIII (1025-1028), brother of Basil II (976-1025). She had already landed in Bari (southern Italy), in 1001, when she heard that her fiancé had died of a mysterious disease, and so she returned to Constantinople. Hopes for unification were doomed to fail for the immediate future now that the Ottonian dynasty had come to its end.
During the period under discussion political power and economic power slowly but inexorably shifted from East to West. Source material on economic developments is, however, very poor. It is as yet unclear whether this economic shift happened thanks to or in spite of the crusades, international expeditions which can be seen as longterm investments of time, money and energy, if one judges from a distance of hundreds of years. The Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, in which the majority of Western nations took part, on both Greek and Latin sides, formed the finale in this process of a weakening of the East on one hand and a strengthening of the West on the other.
Openmindedness, a willingness to travel (and many routes led to Byzantium in those days), to learn and to accept, even to adapt, elements of foreign cultures, including that of Byzantium, had been factors in the eventual conquest by the Western armies of the Byzantine capital. Western Europe, fragmented as it was mto numerous realms with their own feudal rulers and dynasties, and experiencing frequent changes of political alliances and territorial changes, — had nevertheless succeeded in organising a number of expeditions to the East. In Byzantium the dynasties of the Comnenians and Angeloi were faced with these masses of Westerners passing through their lands. The first three Comnenians, Alexius I (1081-1118), John Comnenus (1118-1143) and Manuel Comnenus (1143-1180) were strongwilled rulers who were able to deal with the masses of crusaders and pilgrims; their successors were less energetic and less successful.
In the fragmented West the church of Rome, with its ‘international’ organisation of bishoprics, abbeys and monasteries, and by its policy of nominating and transferring its Latin-speaking and Latinwriting servants all over Western Europe, had greatly contributed to stimulating the departure of thousands and thousands of inhabitants of Western Europe to the East where they could see for themselves the growing weakness of the Greek empire. The church of Rome became an ‘international’ power. Another factor in Western Europe in ‘cementing’ the Eastern connection were the ruling families. ‘Their various matrimonial policies and longstanding crusading connections had given them some familiarity with the Eastern lifestyle.
The Byzantine empire was a large and unified empire where classical Greek was the official language, although the spoken language was occasionally used for written texts. Power was concentrated in Constantinople, the age-old capital where the emperor and a network of civil servants, recruited among all social classes, firmly held central power in their hands. Nevertheless the empire was slowly being corroded from within. Landowning families and the military had different interests. Strife and struggle were the result of these tensions which weakened the position of the central power and its services. Emperors came and went, until the throne, open to all with ambition, power or pretensions, came into the hands of the Comnenians.
It is of course true that even in such a large, unified empire, where conservatism was highly valued and was the prevailing influence, changes took place in life and culture.’ During the reign of the Comnenians internal weaknesses became more visible once military aid was sought in the West; the Italian cities gladly provided such help in return for commercial privileges. Internal division and external threats so weakened the Byzantine army that it was no longer able to resist the crusaders who wanted to restore a legitimate heir to the Greek throne. And, what was even worse, they conquered the imperial city a second time, in 1204, now for their own benefit. The Greek emperor went into temporary exile to Nicaea in order to rule the Asian remnants of the once so glorious empire. Marriage partners were sought to bridge the ‘gap’ between the two empires which co-existed on Byzantine soil, but once again attempts failed to result in any tangible alliance.
In the meantime, between 962 and 1204, many changes had taken place in Western Europe and Byzantium. Different sorts of contacts produced different sorts of influences. Sometimes these contacts have left clear marks, for example in the presence of Byzantine artefacts in Western treasuries, or by Western artefacts in Byzantium, although the latter are fewer in number. Nor is it always clear how and when such objects arrived in the West. The effect of the presence of Byzantine objects on the people of the time is difficult to judge. Some source material has yet to be really used; sometimes it has already been lost and we only possess vague indications. Concrete models are useful in drawing conclusions, but there are some indirect references which hint at contacts between East and West. Memories and story-telling also transmitted Byzantium to the West, without always leaving direct or concrete traces.
There is a growing interest in the life and culture of Byzantium. Great research projects, such as the prosopography of the Palaeologan period, new text editions, the publications of large collections of seals and the recently published Dictionary of Byzantium for example, lay a more solid basis for future research. The relations of Byzantium with its neighbours, and the effects of the meeting of these worlds, have also become the objects of more intensive study in recent times. It is no longer considered exotic to look for Byzantine influence in Western history and culture. Diplomacy, politics, literature, various art forms, may all now be set against a Byzantine background. In 1930 P.-E. Schramm had already remarked how necessary it was to study Byzantine history and Western European history together, to see their differences and the things they had in common.‘
One had to wait until after World War II before this line of research became more popular and more frequently exploited. W. Ohnsorge, one of the pioneers in the field, with some satisfaction repeated the words of M. Deanesly who in a review wrote that ‘It is becoming increasingly apparent, that the history of medieval Western Europe cannot be studied adequately without reference to the history of the Byzantine empire, with which it was so constantly interconnected culturally and economically, and, during certain phases, so Closely linked politically’. In 1955 P. Classen resumed an article on church relations by saying that ‘Je mehr griechische Gedanken und Methoden die lateinische Wissenschaft aufnimmt und verarbeitet, um schliesslich im 13. Jh. die grossen Systeme der Hochscholastik aufzubauen, desto unabhangiger und selbstandiger kann das Abendland neben dem Hort der griechischen Uberheferung in Byzanz stehen’.® More recently the well-known French medievalist G. Duby referred to the interrelations between Byzantium and Western Europe saying that ‘Europe ne fut jamais séparée [de Byzance] par des frontiéres étanches; elle en subit constamment influence et la fascination’.’ In the Dictionary of the Middle Ages and the Lexicon des Mittelalters Byzantium is well represented.
Too often and too simplistically pilgrims and crusaders are held to be solely responsible for establishing contacts with Byzantium and transmitting its cultural heritage to the West. Scholars are now also focussing attention on other ‘carriers’ of culture, other social groups and other channels of transmission. For it had- become clear that crusaders and pilgrims could not have been in a position to transmit certain aspects of Byzantine culture with which they had not been in contact. These last fifty years it has become clear that the Ottonians played a considerable role in the process of adoption and adaptation of Byzantium to the Western tastes and ideals. The Ottonian world was impressed by the splendour of the Byzantine empire. The frequent exchange of embassies and above all the arrival of Theophano and her followers, which resulted in a period of continuous contact with the Eastern world, contributed to an atmosphere in which Westerners were willing to imitate the style and structures of the Byzantine empire. Receptivity was essential in this process. Even if, from time to time, one might speak of ‘second-hand’ influence, it is clear that the Ottonian world possessed enough Byzantine models to find inspiration there.
This growing fascination with Byzantium’s influence on its neighbours has led to a great number of detailed studies, but so far general surveys have been scarce. One of the reasons may be that it seems too early to publish such general studies since so many gaps have still to be filled. But without a number of general studies which, of course, have to be updated from time to time, it is difficult to find the signposts and other landmarks to further study.
In 1966 DJ. Geanakoplos published his book Byzantine East and Latin West. Its long subtitle explains his interest in ecclesiastical and cultural aspects.’ A number of congresses and symposia have taken place in recent years.’ Some surveying articles have become classics in their fields, such as P.M. McNulty and B. Hamilton’s article ‘Orientale lumen et magistra latinitas: Greek influences on Western monasticism (900-1100), dealing with Orthodox monks travelling to the West.!°
In Renavssance and Renewal in the twelfth century, attention is paid to relations between Byzantium and the Romanesque world, a period in which Byzantium played an important role.'! Art historians had already tried to resume the outlines of Byzantine influence wpon the . arts in.the West, both in style and in iconography. Outstanding are K. Weitzmann’s ‘Various aspects of Byzantine influence on the Latin countries from the sixth to the twelfth century’, published in the Dumbarton Oaks Papers of 1966 and O. Demus’ book Byzantine art and the West, published in 1970.
Several times I have used the term Byzantine influence, following in the footsteps of distinguished Byzantinists who used the term in the title of their publications. These publications were the result of discoveries and of research they and others had made in various Western art forms. It made O. Demus conclude that Byzantium was, as far as the arts of the Romanesque period were concerned, the magistra Europae.'? But contemporaries hardly ever commented on foreign influences in products of art. Therefore the artefacts have to speak for themselves. The finished state of a work of art has the advantage that it can no longer take another form, it cannot change, unlike writers who, in the course of their lives, can change their minds and adopt other views and attitudes, thus explaining the ambivalence and inconsistency of many medieval and later authors. Another point which one has to consider is the availability of an object or a text. Silks which were sent as official gifts or were bought in Constantinople and were used as shrouds could hardly exert a permanent influence. The same is true of texts which, sometimes in a single copy or in a ‘closed’ library, were not available to a larger public.
It is true that the term influence (‘presence’ would sometimes be a better term to use) is sometimes used too quickly and too easily, especially where Byzantine and Byzantinizing influences are concerned. A careful use of these terms can be of great benefit to enlighten the complexity of the problem. The terms influence, acculturation, adaptation, adoption, borrowing etc. etc. are used to indicate the presence of foreign elements and have sometimes their own connotation. The process’ of influencing and of being influenced, of actively copying elements of other cultures or rejecting them, is complex and complicated. This holds true of every period in history, in ancient times and in modern times. The vocabulary used by contemporaries varied and had its own special context.'? The Middle Ages were no exception. The admiration for and rejection of other cultures does vary between times, places and individuals, and even groups.'*
The discussion of Byzantine influence in Western Europe was reopened in 1976 by P. Brown, in the context of Late Antiquity when Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity went their separate ways. He warned, and with reason, against the assumption that Byzantium possessed a superior culture which graciously poured down her gifts onto the West where an ‘inferior’ culture was eagerly waiting for them. He introduced the interesting metaphor of cultural hydraulics, which has now become a classic, when he wrote that ‘the east tends to be treated as a distinct and enclosed reservoir of superior culture, from which the occasional stream is released, to pour down hill—by some obscure law of cultural hydraulics—to water the lower reaches of the West’. This hydraulic metaphor is quoted more than once without taking into account or questioning what the author had in mind when using the term ‘obscure law’. The obscure law may represent the system of devices in modern hydraulic systems which, in the Middle Ages, and possibly in modern times as well, stand for psychology and politics. But I will leave this interesting discussion to others. Psychologists may help historians to uncover the process of these devices in individuals and in societies, when elements from abroad, from the outer world, are adopted, absorbed, adapted, rejected, denied and even ignored deliberately.
P. Brown made clear that Byzantine influence should not be taken for granted too easily, neither in the arts nor anywhere else, since the early Middle Ages had a common heritage. Roman Antiquity had created a substratum of Roman culture in great parts of Europe and had left spola all over medieval Europe. This view had already been developed by art historians who referred tothe broken classical tradition in some parts of Western Europe, and by others who, long before, had discerned Byzantine influences in Ottonian times, not only in the arts but in other fields as well.'® The period of the early Middle Ages, with far fewer texts, is a period for which P. Brown’s warning may be more relevant than the period under discussion here, but the warning has to be taken seriously. Sometimes the hydraulic system of P. Brown was interpreted as a system of communicating vases, without the ‘obscure law’ which prompted its functioning. This was also the case at the International congress held in Oxford in 1984 which discussed the relations between Byzantium and the West between ca. 850 and ca. 1200. The papers of the congress were published in 1988. Opposing views, statements rather, were expressed by scholars working in different fields, but no real discussion took place.!”
In her article on Eastern influence on Western monasticism M. Dunn concluded that “To accept a notion of contemporary Byzantine influence on the West reflects an assumption of eastern cultural supenority and the peculiar view of cultural transmission recently deplored in a slightly different context by Peter Brown... By the eleventh century, in any case, the West had no need of such dubious sources of inspiration. Western society embarked on a period of social, economic and intellectual ferment, the church attempted to reform itself. It is to these processes and to Western monastic tradition that we should look when seeking to explain the rise of the new houses and orders of the period’.!® This is not the place to give a full analysis of this passage. Suffice to say here that it is not always a question of need to receive or undergo inspiration or influence from other cultures. Sometimes influences operate more autonomously.
The opposite view was held by T. Avner who dealt with the influence of Byzantine manuscript painting on the illustrations of manuscripts produced in the royal scriptorium of King Louis IX of France. She concluded her paper with the following words: “The study of Old Testament iconography in the Middle Ages has repeatedly demonstrated that while Byzantine biblical illustration was unresponsive to Western art, century after century it acted as a reservoir of iconographic and stylistic ideas which were absorbed and assimilated by the West as by a dry sponge. This continuous input enriched the latter’s repertoire and often affected the course of its development’
With this statement we are back to the water works of hydraulics. For miniature painting, a field already thoroughly studied by various renowned scholars, Byzantium was the sole model, the reservoir full of examples, since Byzantium provided a hardly ever interrupted stream of book illustration from ancient times onwards. Where else had the Christian West to look for such models? For certain aspects of the arts the statement mentioned above hardly needs discussion.
From these two statements it is clear that scholars themselves are influenced by their field of studies, by the special topic they have selected and perhaps, in one way or another, by unknown motives, such as prejudices. Students may sometimes be influenced too easily by the titles of widely known books in their field of studies.”” There is, however, no need to resort to compromises, since every case should be studied on its own merits.
A short and very clear article by M. McCormick, published in 1987, made clear how complicated the process of influence was dur-ing the early Middle Ages. McCormick prefers to speak of Byzantine contributions to Western culture, in various times, in various places and in various social groups. Like P. Brown he emphasized the existence of a Mediterranean culture, impregnated with Roman elements, thus offering a sort of late antique mainx. For the early Middle Ages he distinguished three periods. ‘The first period extends from the fifth until somewhere in the seventh century. The second comprises the seventh and eight centuries, and the third period is the period of the Carolingians. He made clear that in these early times state symbolism, an important part of the life and prestige of rulers, played an important part in the process of adopting symbols and semiotics, because the emperors of Rome had been succeeded by rulers in East and in West, creating the so-called Zweikaiserproblem, which caused all sorts of competition between the emperors of East and West. State symbolism in the West paid a large tribute to Byzantium. In contrast to other aspects of public life, state symbolism is well ‘documented’, in spite of the relatively few written sources. Images and symbols are important sources of information and they do often replace the lack of written material. This scarcity of texts, however, prevents us from seeing more clearly who stimulated the import or introduction of elements of Byzantine life and culture: why, when and where they found their way into the West.”” McCormick concluded his article with the remark that any study of Byzantium’s share in the formation of early medieval civilization would have to differentiate the Byzantine contribution in time, space, social strata and content. This view can easily be extended to other periods.
For the period 962-1204 we dispose of large amounts of written documents. But only rarely are they explicit as far as the introduction of foreign elements in Western society are concerned. More than once they mention the presence of Greeks, artists and others, of Greek objects, or other contacts without tellg what exactly these people did in the West, why they came and how long they stayed and, even more important, what their feelings and reaction were; this is also the case of the arrival of objects. In the few cases where authors refer to Byzantine sources and the reason why Westerners used them, one has to be very careful not to extrapolate such data. For some groups Byzantium was a reservoir of models, for others it was a centre of arrogance or, even worse, of mendacity.
In 1980 D,J. Geanakoplos gave a résumé of recent research in the field, and since then a great number of articles and studies dealing with Byzantium’s impact on the West have seen the light.” _In many of these publications a specific object, a specific topic or text passage is studied. They are scattered over a wide variety of reviews or are ‘hidden’ in national or local publications; the same goes for objects which are kept sometimes in local museums, small and obscure church treasuries and private collections, not always easily accessible to the interested reader. A good mitiative was the republication, in three separate volumes, of a great number of articles of W. Ohnsorge dealing with relations between Byzantium and the Holy Roman empire: Abendland und Byzanz (1958), Konstantinopel und der Okzident (1966) and Ost-Rom und der Westen (1983), which helped the interested reader find his way through this area of darkness, particularly thanks to useful indices. Such publications are an incentive to further research.
For practical reasons it is useful to divide history in periods which are marked, at the beginning and the end, by special events. For the subject under discussion here another subdivision could be made, since no general survey of the subject exists yet. We are dealing with two different worlds, with two entities: the Byzantine empire and Western Europe, fragmented as the latter was. Here is hardly room to go into every detail of this complex problem. Grosso modo it is possible to distinguish four settings: 1, Byzantines who were willing to accept and introduce Western influence. 2. Byzantines who were unwilling to accept or adopt such influence. 3. Westerners who were unwilling to accept and adopt elements of Byzantine culture, and 4. Westerners who were willing to let Byzantium play a cultural role in their world.
It is clear that these categories offer all sorts of varieties, since people and collectivities are frequently ambivalent and inconsistent in their opinions. Personal comments on ideas and views are lacking most of the time and therefore one cannot be too categorical in judging people according to this subdivision. It is possible that a person is full of admiration for other cultures. But admiration is not identical to imitation, due sometimes to a lack of money or of skill, or for other unknown reasons. And thus it is possible that a person who greatly admires another country, another culture, consciously or unconsciously, does not introduce any of its elements into his own culture. The opposite holds good too. One does not usually accept what one rejects, but' there are interesting and intriguing exceptions to this rule. Generally speaking, however, admiration and enthousiasm easily lead to borrowing. ‘This does not prevent one from criticizing certain aspects which one considers to be negative. An interesting example of this variant is a French nobleman, Hugues de Berzé, who expressed his admiration for the wealth and grandeur of Constantinople where he had spent some time, while at the same time he mentions the tragic fate of four successive emperors. He seems to give an exemplum: money is no guarantee of happiness and power, whereas poverty is no mark of inferiority: ‘Qar je vi en Constantinoble/Qui tant est bele et riche et noble,/Que dedenz un an et demi/Quatre Empereres, puis les vi/dedens un terme toz morir/de vil mort’.” Such descriptions of Constantinople undoubtedly contributed to its legendary image in East and in West. In this survey, however, I shall stress the admiration and leave out the criticism which one finds more than once and which is often expressed, although not exclusively, in a political context. It may be useful to make a few remarks about all four categories mentioned above.
1. The group of Byzantines who were willing to accept Western features was rather small. Western influence in Byzantium was rare and superficial, as A. Kazhdan made clear.** They are to be found among the Comnenians and in some Byzantine aristocratic circles, where elements of Western knightly life, like jousting for instance, became popular in the course of the twelfth century. Many Westerners lived then in Constantinople, rank at the court lived Western aristocrats and, not to forget, the Western wives of Manuel Comnenus and of some of his relatives. Elements of feudal life had already been introduced and exploited by Alexius I Comnenus who had asked the leaders of the First Crusade to become his liegemen.” This asymmetry between Byzantium and the West was already established by A. Grabar who had found very few instances of Western influence in the arts of Byzantium.” Archbishop Eustathius of Thessalonica praised the women of his town who helped to defend it against the Norman attack in 1185, and he compared them with the Amazons of Antiquity, which was quite unusual for a Byzantine. According to the archbishop the history of these fighting ladies needed revision. He may have remembered the visit to Constantinople of Western armed ladies, among whom the queen of France, Eleanore of Aquitaine, who had joined the crusading armies and who sometimes took part in military expeditions. Women bearing arms had hardly been appreciated by the Byzantines so hitherto.”’ Some literary influences may have found their way to Byzantium at that time, but Western influence in literature seems to belong to later periods.”
2. The Byzantines who were unwilling to let in any Western influence must have been far larger in number than those who had contacts with the West or with Westerners. Western influence during the period under discussion was minimal. It was certainly not always a form of contempt for the non-Greeks, the Barbarians. Most of the time it was probably simply a question of indifference or neglect of everything not Greek. The consequences of such an attitude need not be our concern here. Byzantium had no tradition of actively propagating its own culture or of actively combatting foreign people or foreign elements in its society.
3. A great number of Westerners were unwilling to be influenced by Byzantium and rather criticized and openly rejected certain aspects of Byzantine life, its learning and its culture. The schism of 1054, when the churches of East and West parted ways, stimulated feelings of criticism and bitterness on both sides. The qualification of Byzantium as Grecia mendax certainly deserves the attention of scholars who want to discuss the more negative attitude of Westerners towards Byzantium. The period of the Crusades played an important role in this process. The group of those who rejected Byzantium, interesting as this group may be for the history of Western Europe, shall not be our concern here, although we shall refer to them from time to time. The group of those who utterly rejected Byzantium is as interesting for the history of Western Europe as the group of those who were willing to receive Byzantine impulses.** One wonders how many Westerners did not feel at ease when contemplating the wealth of the Greeks, perhaps unjustly feeling inferior to them. Sometimes this wealth was seen as decadent and pernicious/nocuous. Otloh, author of the Liber vistonum, reports the well-known story of a nun who had seen the empress Theophano in a dream. The empress told her that now, after her death, she was being punished for having introduced luxury and jewelry to the West.* Peter Damian condemned the luxurious lifestyle of a Byzantine princess, probably Maria Argyropoula, who came to live in Venice with her husband John Orseolo, the doge’s son.*! Bernard of Clairvaux who in his Apologia rejects the presence of exotic animals in the decoration of cloisters, ‘may belong to this group. Where else could these unknown animals have come from than from Byzantium, in the form of silks and other luxurious items?*? Other Westerners criticized the learning of Byzantium, especially in theological matters. he Renaissance of 12thcentury Western Europe seems to have looked back to Rome rather than to Greece.*
4. I shall mainly deal with those Westerners, in Western Europe and in Constantinople, who were willing to introduce all sorts of elements and aspects of Byzantine culture or who simply referred to the Byzantines and their Christian ancestors, the Greek Fathers, as the auctoritates, even if they sometimes seem to belong to the foregoing category.** Many of them never expressed personal feelings of appreciation or of sympathy. In all its complexity I shall try to describe them in this book. Unfortunately most of them have left no individual memoir or autobiographical details about the journey or the social group to which they belonged or the company with whom they travelled to Constantinople. For in those times carriers of culture had often to travel alone, see things for themselves and learn in isolation. It was only a small category of people who could avail themselves of information by correspondence. Oral reports were another element to be taken into account, but these are even more anonymous and untraceable. Sometimes admiration of the arts of Byzantium caused Greek artists and Greek materials to come to the West.
Individual cases of contact and influence, and the presence of Byzantine objects or Western objects with Byzantine influence, shall mostly be discussed in the chapters dealing with the various parts of Western Europe. Often their presence can only lead to provisional interpretations and conclusions. It seems useful to bring together the material for specific areas in separate chapters which have a somewhat selfcontained character. In such a framework a number of crossreferences and repetitions are necessary. I have chosen the following regions: The Northern Countries, Britain, the Holy Roman empire, France, Italy and the Iberian peninsula. Artificial as the choice may be it has, apart from certain inconveniences—the anachronistic terms used sometimes, and the fact that some areas nowadays ‘house’ several ‘nations’—certain advantages.
Each area had, in the context of Western European medieval history, its own political history and its own network of local rulers, part of the feudal pyramidal system with its infinite fragmentation. More than once does one see the emergence of monarchies. In some cases modern states were ‘formed’, and the vernaculars of these countries and areas became means of communication which stimulated the genesis of literary texts. The ‘national’ past started to play a role. Secondary literature often concentrates on regional problems and is written in the languages spoken nowadays in these parts of the world. Already in the Middle Ages the vernacular languages of these areas produced sources relevant to our subject and these have often remained unknown to the general student of the Middle Ages because of their inaccessibility, linguistically and materially. .
These chapters form a sort of compilation, or inventory, of Byzantine influence in a specific area, an enumeration of facts and fictions, and of research carried out so far. They have an almost self-contained character. Uniformity cannot yet be reached in these chapters, because the degrees of contacts varied widely. After a short historical introduction mention shall be made of those who travelled to Constantinople and of the Greeks who came to the West. The various fields of influence shall be discussed, resulting in a description of the situation around 1204.
To date no separate surveys of a given country’s relations with the Byzantine empire have been published, except in the case of Italy. In spite of the artificiality of the choice it seems useful to put together a number of known facts, in order to trace, in future, the interrelations between East and West in a wider context. To study medieval history, with its relative scarcity of documentary material, one needs to study whatever material does survive in order to see more Clearly if there are patterns of impact of foreign cultures. The chapters dedicated to ‘national’ history may be read separately by the student interested in a specific area, who may, I hope, find inspiration for further research. Anecdotes and picturesque details may sometimes be more relevant in a national or regional perspective than in the wider context of Western Europe. They may sometimes reveal the ‘identity’ of the people involved rather than being general phenomena.
New material, to be found and discovered in a ‘national’ context, may confirm the validity of anecdotal information. It will be clear that for all these areas, for all these countries, Byzantium’s contribution to cultural and political developments has been different and uneven, and has often been studied in dissimilar ways. Sometimes the vernacular literature has been thoroughly studied already, sometimes the coinage of a specific area or even of a specific ruler, or the life of refugees leaving a country in difficult times.
Such research remains to be done for other vernacular literatures, for other coinages and other aspects of ‘national’ life. The gaps are thus also different in the various chapters. Not every chapter will therefore have the same structure. Frontiers were in flux in the Middle Ages and have been changing ever since. In the Middle Ages travellers did not stop at frontiers, nor did Byzantine influence. In order to see the great waves and tides of Byzantine influence which passed over Western Europe we shall review, in a final chapter, the heyday of Byzantine influence in certain areas and in special fields, such as the arts. It will then become more clear where research has been inadequate, and where possibilities may he for further fruitful research.
Contacts, negative and positive, had to be established in person. People had to travel in order to report what they had seen or experienced. Thousands of people, of all social classes, often accommodated by the network of religious charitable institutions, travelled to Byzantium. The problems they had to face will be dealt with in a separate chapter, and so will the attractions of the Byzantine capital. The Byzantines realised that myriads of people came to their lands, and that their city was a melting-pot of many nations.
Many of the Western travellers became permanent residents in the country which they visited as tourists or where they worked. In Constantinople there lived large communities of Western Europeans often designated as ‘Latins’. The Greeks, mainly ambassadors and wandering monks, were less likely to travel to the West and to settle there permanently, although a few small Greek colonies existed in the West. Theirs was an empire that was the centre of the world, or so they thought.
Many sources, Greek and Western, bear witness to the mass ‘migration’ which took place in the Middle Ages. Chronicles, ambassadorial reports, letters, saints’ Lives, runic inscriptions, sagas, literary texts, contracts, diplomas, objets d’art, coins, seals, precious clothes and many more sources tell us what interested all these people, what struck them as unusual and what stayed in their memories. ‘Together they give us an idea of the way Western travellers saw Byzantine society, and the effects these contacts had on the West. Every Byzantine ‘presence’ is an interesting case. Even the smallest object such as a Greek seal, once attached to a letter, a parcel or a precious silk, may have its own history, and testify to the wide range of contacts. What its influence was on the seal of the country where it was found, is a different story which cannot yet always be told. More than once, however, one can determine the influence of an artefact by considering it in its new ‘national’ context. The official ambassador who was received at the imperial court and the simple pilgrim who contented himself with a small and inexpensive religious memento, all had their own story to tell, their own experiences to remember, once they had safely returned home.
Secondary literature is as varied and at times as inaccessible to the interested reader as are the primary sources. These publications sometimes reflect changing interests among scholars. Changing fashions can explain the ignorance of older publications, not to mention references to objects and manuscripts that have since been lost, and which are sometimes equally ‘forgotten’.
This book can only give a survey of the broad lines of research that has been carried out in a number of fields. It can only be a rough sketch, the definite contours of which are not yet clear. The limited framework of this book does not allow us to give full bibliographical references although attempts have been made to refer to the recent literature and to translations whenever possible.* Most of the time I have had to rely on the work of others, sometimes I have used the results of my own research, published or unpublished. If sometimes anecdotal detail has been used, it was done because of a lack of other solid source material. The discovery of new material may confirm the experience of individual travellers who were impressed by the picturesque element in Byzantine life and lifestyle. It should be remembered that stereotyped opinions existed among Westerners and Byzantines about each other. The Greeks were often considered to be arrogant and effeminate, the Latins were, in the eyes of the Greeks, uncultured people.*° From the earliest times the Greeks cherished feelings of contempt for and superiority towards other people, including the ‘barbarians’ from the West. Alas we cannot here go into the ultimately fatal consequences of this attitude for the Greeks.
Writing a survey means making a choice, a personal choice be-tween the many facts and facets known about Byzantine-Western relations. In my choice a number of leading motifs have played a role: money, mercenaries and manuscripts, politics, princesses and presents, travellers, translations and transfers of relics. It has not been my purpose to cast a Byzantine spell over Western Europe, where other influences from abroad were also active during the period under discussion, but Byzantium played an important role in stimulating the Renaissance in 12th-century Western Europe, directly and indirectly. Future research has to determine how decisive the Byzantine role was in this process in a period when the East was considered by some Westerners to hold the fount of wisdom, from which all Western learning sprang
... quoniam ex Grecorum fontibus omnes Latinorum discipline profluxerunt . . .”
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