Download PDF | Eastern Approaches to Byzantium Papers from the Thirty-Third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, March 1999 Edited By Antony Eastmond.
324 Pages
Preface
This volume arises from the Thirty-third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies — Eastern Approaches to Byzantium — held at the University of Warwick in March 1999. The Symposium was organised in the optimistic (and naive) belief that it would be possible to bring together scholars from across Europe, the Caucasus and America who could speak on all aspects of life and cultural exchange on the Byzantine frontier. I had not at that point considered what this would all cost. That the Symposium did succeed in attracting speakers from Austria, France, Georgia, Germany, Ireland and Russia, as well as from across the UK and USA to do just that stands entirely as a tribute to all those who were prepared to fund such an extravagant idea. It is therefore with great pleasure and a debt of gratitude that I thank the Humanities Research Centre of the University of Warwick, the Leventis Trust and the Hellenic Foundation for their extraordinary generosity.
I received further grants from the British School of Archaeology at Ankara, the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, and the Centre for East Roman Studies at the University of Warwick. These contributed to speakers’ travel costs and to the subsidies needed for students to be able to attend a symposium at a market-driven conference university. Those speakers who were able to fund themselves are my particular heroes. The support of John Smedley and Variorum/Ashgate for the Symposium Feast lubricated many discussions.
A number of speakers were not able to include their papers in this volume, but I would like to thank Anthony Bryer, Hugh Kennedy, Alexei Lidov, Michael Rogers and Rachel Ward for their contributions to the Symposium itself. As ever, the communications given by other scholars were integral to the Symposium, and abstracts can be found in the Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies 26 (2000), 75-91.
In the organisation of the symposium I was blessed by the help of my mestumretukhutsesi, Susan Dibben, and of my pareshni, Duncan Givans and Ian Kelso. Stephen Hill provided an exhibition on Eski Giimis, derived from material in the Michael and Mary Gough archive that he curates at Warwick University.
The swift publication of this volume owes much to the efficiency of Kirsten Weissenberg at Ashgate, and also to all the contributors who heeded my incessant nagging to turn in copy and answer queries within tight deadlines with efficiency and (a facade at least of) good humour.
Finally, a word needs to be said about transliteration. The papers in this volume employ Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Persian, Syriac and Turkish in addition to the normal Greek and other Western and Slavonic languages. Given this, the pursuit of consistency has proved a thankless task and an elusive goal. Any major discrepancies and alternatives are listed in the index.
Introduction
Antony Eastmond
The papers collected in this volume derive from Eastern Approaches to Byzantium, the Thirty-third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, which was held at the University of Warwick in March 1999. They examine Byzantium from both sides of its eastern frontier. Concentrating on the period of the re-conquest and subsequent loss of the eastern provinces from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, they look at aspects of Byzantine policy and actions all along the frontier, and also at the actions and reactions of the peoples that they encountered: principally those of the Armenians, the Georgians and the Seljuqs, but also of the Syriacs and the other Turkoman tribes. Rather than concentrate on relations between Byzantium and one of its neighbours, the Symposium discussed questions of interaction among all the peoples on the eastern frontier of the Byzantine world.
The importance of the eastern frontier to the development of Byzantium from the ninth to thirteenth centuries has long been established in modern Byzantine histories, whether characterized in terms of over-expansion in the tenth century (with consequent effect on the economy and resources of the empire), of bad management in the eleventh century (the idea that the annexation of the Armenian kingdoms led to the loss of a buffer zone which opened the way to the Seljuq invasions), or of consumption of scarce manpower and resources in the twelfth century in a futile and ‘misguided’ attempt to regain what had been lost.
To a lesser extent, it has been recognised that the processes of interaction on the eastern frontier, and the introduction of new populations — mostly Armenians — into Byzantium as the empire swallowed up their territories also had an impact on Byzantine society. One of the principal aims of the Symposium was to bring together new research into the peoples to the east of Byzantium, but the results of this are twofold. The first is to build up a greater understanding of each of these neighbouring societies whose history impinged on that of Byzantium so much in this period. It is this aspect that most of the papers concentrate on.
The second is to use this knowledge to help understand Byzantium itself, by examin-ing the nature of the encounters and exchanges, whether military, political, cultural or ideological, and the impact that they had on both sides of the frontier. These results can be gleaned from the volume as a whole, and it is these that point to the direction for future research.
Any attempt to examine the whole length of the frontier in terms of history and imperial policy, of artistic and cultural production, of the perceptions, interactions and influences of all the peoples and cultures involved is an enormous undertaking. At the Symposium it was only possible to scratch the surface of the many ways in which all the peoples of the east interacted with Byzantium and with each other over this period.
One of the key points that emerges from this volume lies not in the common threads and themes which link many of the papers, but in the diversity of materials and approaches and the many areas of difference between the papers. This book demonstrates the fragmentation of ideas, policies and identities along the eastern frontier of the Byzantine empire. From this mosaic of religions, histories, cultures and peoples we can build up a fuller picture of the role that the eastern frontier, and the peoples who lived along it, played in the formulation of the middle Byzantine empire, as well as the impact of Byzantium on its neighbours.
Many of the papers in this volume deal with topics that lie outside the traditional (but artificial and self-imposed) ‘borders’ of Byzantine studies; some, indeed, argue that the influence of Byzantium in certain aspects of the history and culture of its neighbours was minimal. However, all the papers are important to furthering our understanding of the Byzantine empire. In those cases where an aspect of the relationship between Byzantium and one of its neighbours is argued to be slight, it is the absence or denial of the relationship that becomes the key to analysis.
The study of why Byzantine models were not adopted or deemed useful in these particular contexts provides insights into the limits of Byzantium, particularly in its self-defined roles as bastion of Christianity and ultimate power on earth. These studies can help us to examine the ways in which Byzantium’s institutions and ideologies were constructed for its own particular needs; this is a task that cannot be so easily undertaken from within Byzantium itself. In the cases where Byzantine ideas and models were not adopted or adapted abroad we can see the very frontiers of Byzantine identity itself: here the margins (from a Byzantine point of view) can define the centre.
Elsewhere, it is in the varying nature of the relationships and exchanges revealed that the importance of these papers for the study of Byzantium lies. Some present familiar material in an alien context, such as the cult of St George now seen through Svan eyes, or the pseudo-Byzantine titles proclaimed by Turkoman rulers; others examine alien approaches to familiar problems, whether it be the promotion of royal power aspresented in tenth-century Vaspurakan, or the methods and aims of the writing of history in the east. All enable us to look at the ways in which these issues were handled in Byzantium itself in a new light. They also raise methodological issues as the possibilities opened up by access to different types of material in different contexts can provide models for the ways in which these issues are handled by Byzantinists. The contrasts and similarities throw Byzantium into sharper relief.
The opening chapter by Speros Vryonis charts how far studies of Anatolia and the eastern frontier have developed since the publication, thirty years ago, of his seminal book, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. In it he notes that some disputes have been resolved and some lacunae filled, but most of all he makes clear how much more there is still to be done. What is required, ultimately, is a composite, comparative study of the processes and effects of cross-cultural exchange all along the frontier, and this volume provides some of the much-needed evidence that will lie at the heart of any such work. Individually, the case studies here stand alone as studies of particular problems, but together they provide fragmentary glimpses of the types of material that must be gathered as well as the questions that must be asked of them. They build up a picture of the complex and disparate societies that developed to the east of Byzantium. And these, in turn, must inform our understanding of Byzantium itself.
The first section on Byzantium’s eastern frontier presents the view from within the empire. The chapters here explore the problems Byzantium faced as it tried to negotiate, advance and defend its frontier. Jonathan Shepard and Jean-Claude Cheynet write of the vagaries of imperial policy and their effects, of the many different policies required all along the fron-. tier, and of the ways in which these policies had to change over the centuries to adapt to new circumstances. From these, the frontier emerges as an ambiguous, changing space.
Catherine Holmes’s study of the local: intermediaries, often of Muslim origin, who governed the border regions under Basil II demonstrates not only the porous nature of the border, but also the impossibility of providing an easy definition of the empire and its regional administrators. How were these officials regarded by Constantinople, and how did they view themselves? What impact did they have on contemporary perceptions of the empire? All demonstrate how Byzantium itself was changed by the re-conquest of the east, not only in the obvious ways one would expect from the inclusion of new lands and new peoples within the frontiers of the empire, but also in more subtle ways: the changing dynamic of Byzantine society itself, and the impact it had on Byzantine culture.
Further evidence for these changes is provided by Catherine Jolivet-Lévy and Pamela Armstrong from art and archaeology respectively. They write about the populations on the ‘wrong’ side of the frontier — of Greek Orthodox Christians living in Seljuq-controlled Cappadocia in the thirteenth century, and of nomadic Turkomans in Byzantine Lycia more than a century earlier. In each case they raise questions of the process of negotiation (or lack of it) between these populations and the dominant culture around them, and of the survival of aspects of their indigenous cultures. Jolivet-Lévy demonstrates the degree to which the Orthodox Christians in thirteenth-century Cappadocia were able to maintain cultural ties with the empire of Nicaea, but also hints at the transformation wrought by Seljuq overlordship.
The chapters on the Armenians, Georgians and Seljuqs present very different approaches to the study of this interaction between east and west in Anatolia and the Caucasus: the delicate balance between Byzantium, Persia, and local indigenous cultures. They are particularly valuable for the evidence they provide of changing perceptions of Byzantium, which can be related back to changes within Byzantium itself. These issues come across clearly in the three chapters on history writing in the east.
The studies of Seljugq, Armenian, and Georgian history-writing traditions, by Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Thomson and Stephen Rapp respectively, outline the differing agendas and cultural ties which shaped much of the writing of history to the east of Byzantium. They demonstrate the moral and cultural conceptual structures that each of these peoples brought to their own history, and the ways in which they have shaped how modern historians must investigate them. These chapters force us reevaluate our use of these texts as sources for Byzantine history, and they present new methodological frameworks for the interpretation of the events and actions they describe. The question of changing perceptions of Byzantium is made most explicit in Giorgi Tcheishvili’s chapter on Georgian attitudes to Byzantium, which reflects the changes relations underwent as the political, economic and military position of both states developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The other chapters on these peoples to the east employ material evidence to explore aspects of their cultures. The two chapters on Armenia concentrate on élite culture, and on the promotion of rulers and the public projection of their political ideologies, first in tenth-century Vaspurakan, and then in thirteenth-century Cilicia. Lynn Jones’s chapter on the visual promotion of king Gagik Artsruni in his palace church at Aghtamar presents a nuanced view of his concept of his own power, as it balanced Islamic caliphal iconography with local means of expressing Christian orthodoxy; she argues for a minimal impact of Byzantine models of power. Helen Evans’s examination of the royal image presented by Levon Het’‘umid of Cilicia three hundred years later shows how far the geopolitical situation had changed.
Now Byzantine imagery, rather than Islamic, lay at the core of the royal image, but this was being supplemented, if not supplanted, by the vigorous Crusader states to the south and by contact with the new power in the region, the Mongols. Both papers provide perceptive accounts of these different Armenian states that force us to re-evaluate their histories, and to revise the role played by the neighbouring cultures to which they turned in the formation of their royal identities. But both also allow us to gain new insights into the Byzantine state: they reveal much about the status of the empire and of the ways in which it was perceived by those who lived around it.
These studies of Armenian royal imagery and the embodiments of Christian power that they present provide a control against which we can judge Byzantium itself, and its internal perceptions of its own power. To compare the image of Gagik on the west facade of Aghtamar with the contemporaneous portrait of emperor Alexander in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is to witness the stark disparity between Byzantine pretensions and Armenian experience. It reveals how fragile the glorious vision of imperial Byzantine power was at the start of the tenth century among its Christian neighbours as the empire began its re-conquest of the east. Alexander’s overbearing pomp carries no weight compared to the lure of caliphal power.
Equally — if at first sight paradoxically - Levon Het’umid’s more Byzantine appearance in the manuscripts of Cilicia demonstrates an analogous disparity in the thirteenth century. Byzantium does now provide the essential visual and material attributes for the display of power, but these can now be appropriated precisely because of the collapse of Byzantine power in the east over the previous 150 years; a collapse now made absolute by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the consequent fragmentation of the empire. Armenian Cilicia provides us with yet another vision of ‘Byzantine’ power to add to those promoted by the successor states of Nicaea, Epiros and Trebizond. The fall of Constantinople in 1204 opened up Byzantium to redefinition, and we must remember to include those ‘non-Byzantine’ attempts to appropriate it and to lay claim to the mantel of imperial authority in any account of the development of Byzantium in the thirteenth century.
In contrast, the chapters on material culture in Georgia by Zaza Skhirtladze and Brigitta Schrade look to very different levels of society away from the heartlands of a royal court. They present material from the most remote regions of the country, at its two climatic extremes. They move from the art produced by the ascetic monks who lived in the rockcut monasteries of the semi-arid Gareja desert (on the modern frontier between Georgia and Azerbaijan) in the eighth to tenth centuries to that commissioned by the minor, local élites of the mountainous province of Svanet‘i, high in the Caucasus, in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries.
Inboth cases the evidence — published here for the first time - concerns the promotion and veneration of cults, and the liturgical and ritual use of art among these societies. The focuses of this veneration - Sts George and Barbara, Sts Quiricus and Julitta, archangels, the cross, the Theotokos — are familiar throughout the Byzantine world, but here they emerge filtered through local customs and adapted to suit local needs. Again these studies reveal differing perceptions of Byzantium, but this time of its spiritual authority rather than its political power. They demonstrate the early residual authority of Syria and the Holy Land as an alternative source for spiritual leadership and the subsequent, but never complete, domination of Byzantium, as transmitted through the monasteries of Mount Athos.
In the past, the discussion of this type of material has often tended to run to extremes: representing the cults either as provincial, corrupted forms of Byzantine cults, or as specifically local creations, requiring nationalistic interpretations. However, the more syncretistic studies here run along much more sensitive lines, and the value of the material they produce for our understanding of Byzantium is enormous, not least because it fills in gaps in our knowledge of what was happening in Byzantium itself (whether in the case of church decoration in the eighth century, where the artistic losses in Byzantium are so great, or in fleshing out details of the ways in which a Christian cult could function within a particular society). However, it is also in the very process of change, accretion and adaptation, in the differences between the veneration of St George or the archangel Michael in Byzantium and Svanet‘i and the rest of Georgia, that their value lies.
The mutability of these cults, and their ability to transform themselves to suit local needs parallels a similar ability within Byzantium itself - think only of the specifically local aspects of the cults of figures such as St Demetrios in Thessaloniki, or St Eugenios in Trebizond. These studies provide further comparative evidence for the ways in which cults operated throughout the east Christian world.
Much work in recent scholarship has begun to focus on the intricacies of Byzantine society, on the diversity of its populations, on the networks of alliances and cultures that it contained, and on its different regional affiliations. From these a more detailed picture is emerging of the complex nature of Byzantium, of its varying perceptions of itself, and of the fragmented nature of Byzantine identity. By approaching Byzantium from the east, this volume seeks to advance that process and to expand the range of cultures that must be included in that picture of Byzantium. As the papers in this volume all show, there was no single eastern frontier, but rather a series of borders — physical and mental — that continually overlapped with one another.
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