Download PDF | Sylvester Syropoulos On Politics And Culture In The Fifteenth Century Mediterranean
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List of Contributors
Vera Andriopoulou completed her PhD in Byzantine History at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham. Her research interests include Byzantine diplomacy and foreign affairs in the Late Byzantine period (fourteenth—fifteenth centuries), travel and communications in the late medieval Mediterranean world, late medieval identities and prosopography. She currently works as a member of the educational staff at the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation in Piraeus, Greece.
Neven Budak, PhD, is Professor of Medieval Croatian History in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. His research interests include early medieval identities, urban history, slavery, early medieval Croatian history and early modern Croatian history.
Recent publications include Hrvatska i Slavonija u ranome novom vijeku [Croatia and Slavonia in the Early Modern Period], (Zagreb, 2007); ‘Identities in Early Medieval Dalmatia (7th—11th c.)’, in Franks, Northmen and Slavs: Gentes and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, eds Ildar Garipzanov, Patrick Geary and Przemyslaw Urbanzcyk, Cursor mundi vol. 5, (Brepols, 2008), 223-41; ‘Using the Middle Ages in Modern-day Croatia’, in Janos M. Bak, Jorg Jarnut, Pierre Monnet and Bernd Schneidmiiller (eds), Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.-21.
Jahrhundert (Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages: 19th—21st Century], (Miinchen, 2009), 241-62; ‘Communication in Towns’ in Jowns and Communication vol. 1, (Zagreb, 2010); ‘Croatia between the Myths of the Nation State and of the Common European Past’ in Claudia-Florentina Dobre, lonut Epurescu-Pascovici and Cristian Emilian Ghita (eds), Myth-Making and Myth-Breaking in History and the Humanities: Proceedings of the Conference Held at the University of Bucharest, 6-8 October 2011, http://www.unibuc.ro/n/resurse/myth-maki-and-myth-brea-in-histand-the-huma/, 51—72.
Mary B. Cunningham is Lecturer in Historical Theology in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham. She is also an Honorary Fellow in the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham. Her main research interests include early and middle Byzantine homiletics, the cult of the Virgin Mary in Byzantium, and the spiritual tradition of Eastern Christianity. She hopes (with a team including Drs Vera Andriopoulou and Fotini Kondyli) to produce a complete English translation of Sylvester Syropoulos’s Memoirs, along with a new commentary on the text. Recent publications include (ed. with Leslie Brubaker) The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images (Aldershot, 2011), Wider Than Heaven: Eighth-Century Homilies on the Mother of God (Crestwood, NY, 2008), and a number of articles.
Trevor Dean is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Roehampton. His main research interests include the history of crime and criminal justice in later medieval Italy and the cultural history of the climate and weather in later medieval Europe. Recent publications include ‘Natural encounters: weather, climate and the Italian Renaissance’, European Review of History, 18 (2011), ‘A regional cluster?: Italian secular laws on abduction, forced and clandestine marriage (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries)’ in Mia Korpiola (ed.), Regional Variations in Matrimonial Law and Custom in Europe, 1150-1600, (Leiden, 2011).
Fotini Kondyli is a post-doctoral researcher in Byzantine Archaeology at the Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology at Brown University. Her main research interests include the study of non-elite groups and the archaeology of daily life in Byzantium. Her most recent publications include “Tracing Monastic Economic Interests and Their Impact on the Rural Landscape of Late Byzantine Lemnos’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 64 (2010), 129-50, ‘Meeting the locals: peasant families in 13th century Lemnos’ in G. Saint-Guillain and D. Stathakopoulos (eds), Liquid & Multiple: Individuals & Identities in the Thirteenth-Century Aegean (Centre de recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, Monographies 36, Paris 2011), pp.75—90 and ‘Changes in the structure and wealth of the Late Byzantine family’ in S. Tougher and L. Brubaker (eds), Approaches to the Byzantine Family (Aldershot, 2013), 371-94.
Nikos D. Kontogiannis is an archaeologist at the 23rd Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities (Chalkida), Greek Ministry of Culture. He was a member of the University of Athens excavation team working on the medieval castles of Andros, and was formerly employed by the Committee for the Restoration and Conservation of the Pylia Province Castles (Niokastro, Palio Navarino, Castle of Methone and Castle of Korone) (1999-2005). He has worked as lecturer under contract in the Department of History, Archaeology and Management of Cultural Goods at the Faculty of Human Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Peloponnese in the subject of Fortification Studies.
Recent publications include: Meoaiwvikd KkoTpa Kal oxUpWoEIS THS Kw, [Medieval Castles and Fortifications of Kos, Eng. Synopsis], (Athens, 2002); ‘A fragment of a Chinese Marbled Ware Bowl from Methoni, Greece’, Byzantinistica, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Slavi, (Serie Seconda, anno IV—2002) 39-46; ‘Excavation of a 13th century church near Vasilitsi, Southern Messenia’, Hesperia, 77 (2008), 497-537; (ed. with S. Germanidou) ‘The Iconographic Program of the Prophet Elijah Church in Thalames, Greece’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, vol. 101, n. 1 (2008), 57-88; (ed. with I. M. Grigoropoulou) Toxdéotpo tys Me8wvng (Athens, 2009); ‘Settlements and countryside of Messenia during the late Middle Ages: the testimony of the fortifications’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 34 (2010), 3-29.
Eirini Panou is currently working at the Institute of Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the University of Birmingham. Her major topics of interest are Byzantine topography, art, religion, relics and literature. Some of her most recent publications include The Cult of St Anne in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2013), and articles ‘Patronage in the Patria, matronage and maternity’, Wiener Jahrbuch fiir Kunstgeschichte, 54 (2012), and ‘Mary’s parents in homilies before and after James Kokkinobaphos’ in Wonderful things: Byzantium through its art (42nd Symposium of Byzantine Studies, King’s College, London and Courtauld Institute, March 2009) (Aldershot, 2013), 91-101.
Richard Price is Professor of The History of Christianity at Heythrop College, University of London. He is in the process of producing an English translation and commentary of the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, of which the volumes on Chalcedon and Constantinople II have already appeared.
Annemarie Wey] Carr is Professor Emerita of Art History at Southern Methodist University. She has written five books and a number of articles on Byzantine icons, the role of women as artists in the Middle Ages, and the art of Byzantine and medieval Cyprus. Recent publications include Imprinting the Divine: Byzantine and Russian Icons in the Menil Collection (New Haven, 2011), and Asinou Across Time: The Church and Frescoes of the Panagia Phorbiotissa, Cyprus, co-edited with Andreas Nicolaides (Cambridge, MA, 2012).
Elizabeth Zachariadou is Professor of Ottoman History and Honorary Member of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (FORTH). Recent publications include ‘Les Tocco: Seigneurs, Vassaux, Otages, Renegats’, Ankara University: Journal of the Center for Southeast European Studies GAMER, vol.1 (2012), 11-22; ‘ZvpBoAn OTHV EKKANoLAOTIKH loTtopta ths Kw (1572—1648)’, Apidédvn, Eniotnuovixd Tlepiodix6 ty¢ PiAocogiKris ZXoArs Tov Mavemsotyuiov Kprjitns, 17 (2011), 203-35.
Introduction
Sylvester Syropoulos was a member of the Byzantine delegation that travelled to Italy in 1437 for the council of the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. As a high-ranking official he was involved in the negotiations pertaining to the council among the Byzantine political and religious elites, and between the Byzantines and the Latins. Syropoulos agreed to the union of the Greek and Latin Churches while in Italy but renounced it when the Byzantine delegation returned to Constantinople and was faced with the opposition of the people and clergy. After his return to Constantinople, he wrote an account about the council and the political and religious events surrounding it.
His work reads as an eyewitness account, a narrative that contains the personal experiences and memories of the author. Due to the style of his narrative and perhaps to his colloquial language — in contrast to the more refined and archaic language of Byzantine historiography — Vitalien Laurent entitled Syropoulos’s work The Memoirs of Sylvester Syropoulos.' Laurent published a critical edition of the text in 1971, accompanied by a French translation.
Despite Laurent’s extensive comments and bibliography and Joseph Gill’s in-depth research, both on the council and on Syropoulos’s writing, Syropoulos is still not widely used as a source for the events of the period.” Syropoulos’s work is better known as a source for the council and the religious history of the early fifteenth century, while the richness of information on the political conditions and diplomatic missions of the period, the cultural and artistic exchange networks, the travelling and living conditions in the main ports and cities of the Mediterranean in that period, remains unrecognized.
The main objective of this book is to explore the richness of information that makes Syropoulos’s writings so unique and valuable but also enjoyable to read, and to make his work more widely known and better understood. The volume seeks to analyze various aspects of Syropoulos’s work, and to approach the political and cultural realities of the fifteenth century from different perspectives, focusing especially on Section IV that deals with the journey of the Byzantine delegation to Italy and its reception by the Latins in Venice and Ferrara.
To do so, scholars from different fields, such as philology, religious studies, history, art history and archaeology have come together in this volume to contribute to the analysis and interpretation of Syropoulos’s writing. This collaborative effort argues for a less traditional and certainly more rewarding way of dealing with ancient texts. Although philologists’ contributions to understanding Byzantine texts, as products of Byzantine society, cannot be questioned, we argue that these are better understood when an interdisciplinary approach is adopted and collaborations among specialists are encouraged.
Although this is an edited volume, major themes in Syropoulos’s writing, such as its historicity and writing agenda, the author’s political and social views and his perceptions of both Byzantines and Latins are discussed in all articles. Thus, a desired dialogue is achieved and multiple connections are formed between groups of papers that deal with the political, cultural and artistic landscape of the early fifteenth century.
Can Syropoulos be Trusted?
Syropoulos’s purpose in writing his account is well known and widely accepted: he was writing an apology in order both to explain his actions and to distance himself from the union and its supporters. This he did by emphasizing the hardships and challenges that he endured while in Italy. As many contributors to this volume suggest, Syropoulos’s portrayal of both the protagonists of the union and of the Latins, as well as his narrative of the events concerning the council, are heavily conditioned by his writing agenda. This realization has led scholars in the past to reject Syropoulos’s work as subjective and unreliable.*
Mary Cunningham challenges such approaches in her article on Syropoulos and his outlook, discussing the author both as an important eyewitness and as a skilful writer who offers a unique, if not objective, perspective of the events. In fact, her article reads as an eloquent defence of Syropoulos and his literary achievement. Cunningham unfolds the merits of his account, focusing on his language and literary style as instruments that successfully serve his writing agenda.
Richard Price also underscores the importance of Syropoulos’s account as an important source of the events surrounding the council. However, in writing on papal precedence and primacy Price remains sceptical about the tensions and misunderstandings between the Byzantine clergy, especially the patriarch and the pope before the union, as portrayed by Syropoulos.
In a similar manner, Annemarie Weyl Carr and Nikos Kontogiannis juxtapose Syropoulos’s attitudes towards Western art and cultural values with artistic trends and cultural exchange between Latins and Greeks in the fifteenth-century Mediterranean. They both point to an amalgamation of Byzantine and Western aesthetics, along with a cultural coexistence in the Eastern Mediterranean that is silenced in Syropoulos’s account. Following Cunningham, Vera Andriopolou and Fotini Kondyli also recognize Syropoulos’s critical attitude towards the emperor and his officials. However, they both maintain that it becomes obvious in Syropoulos’s account that the clergy was not fully informed about all of the political and diplomatic manoeuvres that were orchestrated by the emperor.
That lack of knowledge enhanced the misunderstandings between the emperor and the clergy and fuelled Syropoulos’s criticism. Trevor Dean also considers the lack of information available to Syropoulos in his discussion of the delegation’s stay at Ferrara. Setting the record straight, Dean gives the background story of the economic and political conditions at Ferrara and presents the negotiations between the pope, Venice and Ferrara regarding the Byzantine delegation’s stay at the city. Although Syropoulos’s knowledge of such agreements remains questionable, his interpretation of the Byzantine delegation’s reception at Ferrara accords well with his negative portrayal of the Latins.
All of the authors in this volume consider the reliability of the Memoirs as an historical account, comparing it with other sources of information, including texts, objects and monuments. Some contributors caution against taking Syropoulos’s account literally, while others rejoice in the fact that this is an eyewitness account conditioned by the author’s writing agenda as well as by his cultural and personal biases. They all agree, however, on the richness of information that such a text offers. Together, they attempt to disentangle the multiple meanings of his account that intentionally mask or selectively reveal different aspects of the political, economic and religious realities of this period.
It is Complicated — Politics and Diplomacy Before the Union
The early fifteenth century was definitely the era of the Italian maritime powers and the establishment of the Ottomans in Europe. Caught between these powers, Byzantium found itself politically and economically weak and thus in need of financial and military support to defend its territories. The Byzantine emperors used to their advantage the wars and internal conflicts of the Ottomans during the first two decades of the fifteenth century.
They also maintained their contacts with the West, through numerous diplomatic missions and imperial visits to the West to secure military aid against the Ottomans.* From the 1420s onwards, the Ottomans adopted a more aggressive policy towards Byzantium, forcing John VII Palaiologos to turn to the West once again and start negotiating more decisively the matter of the union of the Eastern and Western Churches. The journey of the Byzantine delegation to Italy and their participation in the council in 1437 was the end result of lengthy negotiations involving the Byzantines, the pope and the members of the council of Basle with regard to the potential location, participants and cost of such an undertaking. Upon their arrival in Italy, new negotiations concerning authority and display of power commenced among the protagonists of the Council.
The complicated political and diplomatic manoeuvring surrounding the council represents one of the main themes discussed in this volume. Elisabeth Zachariadou’s article provides a fascinating account of the politics that were played out behind the scenes, turning the focus from the Byzantine emperor and his entourage to the real, yet absent, protagonist at the council, namely, the Ottomans. She explores the sultan’s attitudes towards papacy and considers how the threat of potential attacks by the papal naval forces, in the guise of a crusade, informed Ottoman politics and conditioned Byzantine—Ottoman relations.
Zachariadou also skilfully introduces the Byzantine clergy and the patriarch into her discussion, highlighting similar concerns that they and the Ottoman state shared regarding papal power. In doing so, the author places the Byzantine clergy’s opposition to the union within its wider historical and political context. Vera Andriopoulou meanwhile focuses on the political choices of the late Palaiologoi and unravels the richness of information in Syropoulos’s account for the study of diplomacy in the late Byzantine period.
Using Syropoulos, she deconstructs the Byzantine political system of the fifteenth century, discussing the composition and modes of operation of diplomatic embassies. She also contributes to the study of imperial policies in Late Byzantium by tracing in Syropoulos’s account the gradual changes in John VUI’s handling of the union and by discussing his policies in comparison with those of his predecessors.
Focusing on the West, a series of papers are concerned with Greek—Latin relations and how these are perceived and presented in Syropoulos’s writing. Richard Price investigates Syropoulos’s portrayal of the pope and his reception of the Byzantine delegation. Price analyses Syropoulos’s narrative in conjunction with other written sources, pointing out the difficulties of protocol and ceremony that arose from the pope’s encounter with the Byzantine emperor and the patriarch. Price makes it very clear that, even in a religious council such as this, politics, mainly involving issues of authority and supremacy, lay beneath all negotiations and decisions.
Trevor Dean, in his article on Ferrara, is also preoccupied with Syropoulos’s negative perception of the Latins and examines closely Syropoulos’s complaints about the lack of sufficient funds available for the Byzantines at Ferrara. Although Syropoulos blames the marquis of Ferrara for the situation, accusing him for the slowness of payments and revenue-raising, Dean tells a more complex story. He investigates the political and financial context of the Byzantine delegation’s stay at Ferrara, revealing how political instability between the pope and the cities of Ferrara and Venice, combined with financial tensions, affected the delegation’s experience of the council.
Eirini Panou also discusses the issues of political motivation and authority in her article on the use of colour and its meaning in Syropoulos’s narration. Although Panou points to Syropoulos’s limited references to colour, she notes his purposeful use of this theme with respect only to Western objects. She also explores the potential symbolic meaning of colour in Syropoulos’s account and its association with authority, before finally considering how colours could become commentators of political and religious events.
The Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean World
Syropoulos’s narrative in Book IV of his Memoirs allows us glimpses of different aspects of the Mediterranean world in the fifteenth century. His account of the journey and the cities visited on the way to Venice, his perception of Greek—Latin interaction, and of Venetian culture and art function as the starting point for four articles in this volume that deal with the cultural and social realities of the period. All four articles are equally interested in the realities that Syropoulos presents, as well as in the ones that he excludes from his work.
Two articles discuss Greek—Latin cultural and artistic exchange in Syropoulos’s account in juxtaposition to well-known art works and monuments. Annemarie Weyl Carr ponders Melissenos’s comments on Western art in Syropoulos’s account and explores, more generally, artistic production in Syropoulos’s time. Despite Syropoulos’s insistence on cultural differences between Byzantine and Latins, Weyl Carr suggests another interpretation of Melissenos’s remarks.
She moves beyond stylistic and artistic differences to discuss the different functions that the recognition and veneration of icons had in the Byzantine and Latin worlds. She transports us to the artistic ateliers of Crete and Italy in order to explore issues of permeability in Byzantine and Italian artistic production, and also to talk about shared artistic elements and inspirations in the eastern Mediterranean. Nikos Kontogiannis, in his article on fifteenth-century Negroponte, takes a similar position on cultural and artistic exchanges in the eastern Mediterranean.
He tells the fascinating story of Lippomano, a local of Negroponte who rose up in the Venetian hierarchy and occupied an important position in Negroponte’s administration. Kontogiannis links Lippomano with the northern chapel of the church of Agia Paraskevi in modern Chalkida. Through a meticulous examination of the architectural and painted elements of the chapel, Kontogiannis argues convincingly that the chapel was intended as the funerary chapel and burial place of Lippomano and that it was constructed in the early fifteenth century.
The author discusses the hybrid monument as an important example of artistic collaboration and exchange where Western architectural elements met the Byzantine artistic tradition; as such, it is indicative of cultural interaction between the Byzantines and Latins in Negroponte. While Syropoulos might not have been able to recognize these artistic and cultural encounters, the surviving material culture paints a complex picture of life in the Venetian colonies.
Fotini Kondyli contributes an article on the logistics of the union, focusing on the travelling arrangements and means of transportation. Following Syropoulos’s description of the journey from Constantinople to Venice, Kondyli introduces us to a Mediterranean Sea in which Venetian galleys faced pirates, braved storms, anchored in Venice’s ports to sell and buy cargo, and transported 700 members of the Byzantine delegation to Venice.
Kondyli discusses life on board and on shore in order to highlight the value of this literary source with regard to travelling conditions during the fifteenth century. She further examines the Byzantine delegation’s journey in terms of itinerary and length of travel, and discusses how the journey was shaped by the Byzantine emperor’s political handlings and diplomatic manoeuvres. On the way to Venice, Neven Budak provides us with an extraordinary window into the world of the Adriatic and its coastal cities in the fifteenth century. He discusses the political history of the region as a lengthy game of chess in which Venice moved its fleet and diplomats around in order to eliminate its enemies and to establish its control in the Adriatic Sea.
On the basis of Budak’s article, one is struck by the flexibility with which Venice managed the Adriatic cities, offering them varying degrees of freedom and oppression. Since Syropoulos refers only briefly to the delegation’s stay in the Adriatic cities, Budak’s article helps to fill the gap concerning the political and economic conditions of the region, along with its culture, landscape and living conditions. In addition to this, Budak provides a rich bibliography of works in languages other than English, focusing especially on valuable Croatian publications that may have been neglected by Western scholars.
The Background Story
This book is the end result of a colloquium entitled Sailing from Byzantium: Themes and Problems in Sylvester Syropouloss Memoirs, Book IV that took place at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, at the University of Birmingham in June 2009. The colloquium aimed to bring together scholars with various research interests and skills in order to discuss and analyse the writings of a fifteenth-century author, Sylvester Syropoulos. Interest in Syropoulos had started already in 2006 at the University of Birmingham when Mary Cunningham led a translation seminar on Syropoulos’s Memoirs. Syropoulos’s Memoirs was an ideal choice of text since there is to date no translation of the text in English.
The seminar was comprised of faculty members and graduate students with an interest in Byzantine culture, who met weekly to study Syropoulos’s account, specifically, Section IV, and to translate it into English. Seminar members included Mary Cunningham, Joseph Munitiz, Ruth Macrides, Dimiter Angelov, Vera Andriopoulou, Fotini Kondyli, Eirini Panou, Kayoko Tabata and Polyvios Konis.
The variety of themes discussed in Syropoulos’s account also suited the interdisciplinary nature of the Centre. In 2007, Fotini Kondyli and Vera Andriopoulou proposed the electronic publication of the English translation, accompanied by commentaries that reflected the work done in the translation seminar. With the generous funding of the Roberts Training Initiative and the support of the Dover Fund 2008/9 Grant for the Study, Edition and Exegesis of Greek Texts, the website was launched in May 2008 (www.syropoulos.co.uk). Nowadays, the website and Syropoulos’s work in English attracts the attention of scholars and institutions from around the globe and is used as a teaching tool for classes that deal with the religious, political and cultural affairs of the Late Middle Ages. This renewed interest in Syropoulos’s Memoirs and the appreciation of the opportunities that such a text offers for interdisciplinary research finally led to the organization of the colloquium in 2009.
The English translation of Syropoulos’s Section IV, included in this volume as an appendix, was based on the translation of the Birmingham seminar, and is also published on the project’s website. It has since been further refined and updated by the editors for the purpose of this volume with the valuable help of Joseph Munitiz. The main themes raised in this volume, combined with the English translation of Syropoulos’s Section IV, allow a better understanding of the political, socioeconomic and religious affairs in the first half of the fifteenth century. They also permit a greater appreciation of the text itself and its author.
This book is the final step of a six-year initiative. The editors of the volume are grateful to everyone who supported this project over the years. The faculty and students of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies who participated in the seminar were instrumental in the first phase of the project, as well as in the translation and study of the text, and we are very grateful for their input and support in all stages of this undertaking. We are also indebted to all the contributors to the volume who respected its focus, responded to the main objectives of the book, and made great use of Syropoulos to address questions that are related to their own research interests and expertise.
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