Download PDF | Margaret Mullett, Dion Smyth (eds.) - Alexios I Komnenos-Belfast Byzantine Enterprises (1996).
437 Pages
Editor's preface
This volume began life as a colloquium held at Portaferry on 14-16 April 1989 with the brief of reevaluating the rule of Alexios I Komnenos. It was attended by economic and ecclesiastical historians, Roman lawyers, textual critics, an art historian and an archaeologist, from Greece, Cyprus, Belgium, Germany as well as Ireland and UK. It was organised by a splendid team of ten student sebastoi (gaffer Michael Guiney, cook Tony Simpson) under the guidance of Paula McMullan (protovestiaria and housekeeper) and Barbara Hill (chartophylax). Betty Robinson, as well as creating this text series, transformed the house, kindly lent to us by Dr Boaden of the Marine Biology Centre, with flowers and pictures; Christine Robertson worked and thought us through the weekend. We are very grateful also to Anna Wilson and Clemence Schultze for their designs.
As at all our colloquia we provided both archaeological and literary stimulus: Bruce Campbell led an expedition to the tower-houses of Strangford, and seminars in London, Brussels, St Andrews and Belfast had prepared materials for an afternoon seminar on the Mousai; Charlotte Roueché, Patricia Karlin-Hayter and Robert Jordan worked indefatigably. (1 shall say nothing of the Cuparensis fragment, The colloquium could not have happened at all without the support of our sponsors: the Northern Bank, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, Arthur Guinness, The Society for Promotion of Byzantine Studies and the Society for Promotion of Hellenic Studies. Every colloquium has its hero, and Dion Smythe was the hero of this one—and of the many challenges of transforming it into print.
Janis Boyd and Fiona Wilson keyed accurately and swiftly. Gail Nicholl began the work of copy-editing as her diploma project and she was greatly assisted by Anthony Kirby. At a point when we despaired of completion, Paul Magdalino and St Andrews stepped into the breach with the skilful and accurate help of Shaun Tougher. His index, as well as the plates and acknowledgements for support in publication, will be found in the second volume. Margaret Kenny designed the jacket as a computer project and Ernest McConville gave us his enthusiasm and printer's imagination. As always, I am grateful to the sharp eyes of Estelle Haan, Robert Jordan and Michael McGann and to the indispensable presence of Anthony Sheehan, whose Arts Computing Unit has transformed our lives.
Margaret Mullett, General Editor, BBTT March 1996
Introduction: Alexios the enigma
Margaret Mullett
The colloquium at Portaferry began with the realisation that no monograph on Alexios has appeared since Chalandon’s in 1900* and that views on Alexios have tended to diverge radically in recent years. For Ahrweiler he is the providential saviour who snatched the empire from the jaws of defeat, rebuilding the navy and overhauling the local government system.? For Lemerle he is rather a false deus ex machina who turned the empire away from its eleventh-century path of peace and prosperity down the rocky slopes which led to 1204.
This is a more sophisticated version of the view which sees the trading concessions to the Venetians as the fons et origo of Byzantium’s woes. For Hendy, building not only on his studies of the coinage but also on the work of Darrouzés and Oikonomides in particular on administrative change, Alexios is the great reformer—though recent years have shown us how double-edged a description that can be.* Michael Angold warns us against talking about a revolution in government: ‘Alexios remained true to the system of government he inherited. He patched it up and made it work.” Yet others would be prepared to talk of a Komnenian revolution which goes far beyond the overhaul of titles and so-called ‘clan government’. Whom are we to believe?
We all recognise however that the end of the eleventh century marks a crucial period in the history of Byzantium, when the empire had begun to come to terms with not only the new factor of the Seljuk Turks but also the new factor of the Normans, something well understood in the home of the colloquium in Norman County Down. That we do not speak of the Norman conquest of Albania as we do of the Norman invasion of Ireland may make Alexios’s achievements worthy of our scrutiny. In fact at the colloquium we turned to praise of Alexios; the papers were organised on Menandrian lines according to the specification for the basilikos logos, the encomium of the emperor.‘
We began, properly, with patris. The eleventh century is a time when country houses in the provinces began to look less attractive than the lights of Constantinople, and we asked where was his ancestral home, and whether he tried to recreate it in Constantinople at'the Blachernai. James Crow, for reasons of genos, was not able to be with us, but Stephen Hill was able to give Crow’s paper, and talk to his slides, supplemented by his own experience of fieldwork in Paphlagonia. We are grateful to both of them, and to Crow’ for working up the subject further for this volume.
Genos then concerned us. The role of the family has been coupled with patris as an overwhelming concern of the period,’ and indeed of Alexian government. Hohlweg spotted Alexios’s penchant for putting inadequate members of his family in crucial strategic commands; Stiernon in a brilliant series of articles® pre- pared the groundwork for many further studies.
Oikonomides and the rest of the Table ronde of 1974 proposed the notion of clan government," which I argue elsewhere is a misnomer.” Certainly without the activities of the two arch-matchmakers John caesar Doukas and Anna Dalassene it is unlikely that a colloquium could have been held at all on Alexios, but that is another question. Barzos’s monumental prosopography makes it possible to look at one middle Byzantine family in enormous detail and apply anthropological techniques of kinship analysis; the recent work of Ruth Macrides has brought us a long way in a short time. More is needed, including an interactionist approach which shows the family in action: parent-child relationships, sibling relationships, intergenerational relationships; there is a great deal to be done, perhaps as part of a wider network study of the period. Menander, however, passes over this rather hurriedly: ‘after disposing thus of the topic of his origin, inquire next about the birth of the emperor himself’. It must be carefully noted that if we find ourselves able to conceal lack of repute by some technical device we must do just this; if there is no technical resource we must omit the topic.
At the colloquium indeed we had no formal paper on the family, perhaps because Dumbarton Oaks had timetabled a colloquium on that subject for shortly afterwards. But paper after paper picked up the question: changes in administration to accommodate the family, using national wealth as a family resource, Alexios leaving the patronage of monasteries to his womenfolk, Alexios as dominated by these women. So it is appropriate that Barbara Hill, who was present as a research student at the colloquium, should have filled the formal gap with a paper for the volume on Alexios and the imperial women.”
On genesis, physis and anatrophe, Menander is more forthcoming, but our sources are not. ‘Straight from the labour of his mother’s womb he shone forth radiant in beauty, dazzling the visible universe, rivalling the fairest star in the sky.’ Even Anna does not go so far (but then she is not writing panegyric); there is though a surprising lack of information about the early life of the Komnenoi, and we were drawn to look at the nature of those sources. In particular we spent an evening discussing the radical thesis of James Howard-Johnston, which I believe will continue to be discussed for a long time. Everyone of course had something to say about Anna; Jonathan Shepard had offered us a paper on Anna and the past but was sadly unable to come; Graham Loud examined Anna’s treatment of the Normans, which has found a home elsewhere,“ but Dion Smythe” has nobly slanted his study of heretics under Alexios in this direction for the volume.
There is so much still to be explained about the Alexiad: both its genre and its gender need analysis, though both are touched on below." There are basic problems about its structure which remain unsolved. Not everything can be explained by Buckler’s identification of errors and inconsistencies, nor by distance in time and Anna’s isolation as James Howard-Johnston makes clear. An issue of importance is how deliberate that structure is: the classic question is the Bogomil trial. Why is it transposed to a prominent position in Book XV, fifteen years out of chronological order?” As a matter of style? or of image-making?" Or to mask a messy case of heresy possibly connected with the succession crisis at the end of Alexios’s reign?” We also need to see the Alexiad not as a work of the reign of Alexios but in response to productions of the midtwelfth century; this will be considered in our second volume, as well as the puzzling question of Alexios’s education.
Menander then turns to epitedeumata and the question of philanthropia. This seems to me to open questions of patronage both in literature and in art. We are unusually well equipped with portraits of Alexios in both literature and art, but the issue of patronage is more complex. Although so many contributors at the colloquium wanted to talk about literature that there was no room for me to offer a paper, the literary patronage of Alexios at first sight appears unpromising territory. Alexios flourished in the period after the intellectual and philosophical revival of the eleventh century and before the ‘Age of Manuel’, or the ‘Komnenian Renaissance’. And he has been portrayed as a military backwoodsman who knew nothing about literature but knew what he liked—or did not. It needs to be demonstrated that literature flourished under Alexios. Some case.
can be made. Theophylact’s lettercollection and much of his large oeuvre falls into the reign of Alexios, as do works of Niketas 6 tod Leppv, and the occasional poetry of Nicholas Kallikles. We are unclear about the writing of history in the period, but Skylitzes and Attaleiates are candidates, and. Psellos may still have been alive. A new genre was born, the panoply of heresies, written to Alexios’s order by Euthymios Zigabenos and later emulated by Andronikos Kamateros and Niketas Choniates. To at least one twelfth-century writer" Theodore of Smyrna was the dominant figure, many of whose works have not survived. Other works written to imperial order do survive: Stephen Physopalamites’s alphabet and John Xiphilinos II's hagiographical collection, for example.
But rather than concentrate on known authors of Alexios’s reign speakers at the weekend chose texts less firmly dated and used a method of synkrisis which Menander would have applauded. Roderick Beaton” looked at the milieu of Digenes and of Timarion; Catia Galatariotou did as much for Kekaumenos and Digenes. Charlotte Roueché examined the rich parainetic literature of the period and its background; this will appear in Alexios I Komnenos, Il. According to our contributors, rather than by boring polemic or poems ordered by the inch, the period is characterised by the return of fiction, wild flights of fantasy, sex and violence, satirical contemporary comment and practical advice. It was seen as a worthy forerunner of the experiments of the twelfth century, which surely none of us any more regard as ‘an age of uncreative erudition, of sterile good taste’.
But we must also ask whether any of this had anything to do with Alexios, since our knowledge of the patronage pattern of the period is still, despite the efforts of Robin Cormack* and Elizabeth Jeffreys,* so incomplete. The colloquium realised that a study of the works attributed to Alexios himself is also overdue: we circulated texts and draft translations of some of the works in Alexios I Komnenos, II and gave pride of place to the Mousai; the meeting was divided on the question of authorship, but the discussion has found its way into many of the papers in this volume.
The question of the visual arts was left in the capable hands of Lyn Rodley, who had originally said she would keep a watching brief for art, then lucidly opened a discussion at the colloquium and has now contributed a full paper to this volume.” But it was clear even before she turned her attention to the problem that the status of art is rather different from that of literature.
It is a truisim that an emperor whom art historians regard as a great patron of the arts is seen by ‘economic historians as a spendthrift. Alan Harvey was given a clear field to put Lemerle and Svoronos and Hendy in their place,” for nowhere: are views on Alexios more polarised than on the question of the economy. Was his overhaul of the financial system an economic miracle? Was his the catastrophic devaluation of the eleventh century? Were his concessions to Venice the first nail in the coffin of the Byzantine empire? Or simply a device to expand the empire’s markets? What was the point of the Nea Logarike and did life get worse or better for the paroikos during the reign? Above all, is it realistic to expect that the emperor who had to confiscate church property should have enough cashflow to have an economic policy at all, let alone to put money into the patronage of the arts?
But what Menander thinks of as the core of any basilikos logos is the section on praxeis, deeds. We looked, according to his prescription, at both war and peace, and at the imperial virtues of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. Alexios at war is an interesting topic. So often seen as the crude military man without a taste for the finer things of life it is interesting to consider how effective he actually was as a soldier. Clearly John the Oxite was not impressed.
Ahrweiler was delighted by Alexios’s respect for the navy, so much so that she may have overestimated his success as a soldier. Certainly her picture of the Alexian reconquest has found short shrift in more recent historians like Lilie and Angold. It is possible to see his castle-building activities in the Balkans as essential elements of his policy there, just as Ahrweiler analysed his Anatolian castle-building as part of the four-point plan of reconquest: 1. military assault, 2. castle building, 3. replacement of the bishop, 4. urban regeneration.” Work on the ground in Macedonia is needed to build on the excavations of the Greek archaeological service at Moglena;” in Turkey work by Foss and Whittow prom ises as much. So what remains of the reconquest? What Mark Whittow makes clear in this volume is that it was absolutely necessary for Alexios (as distinct from the Byzantine population of Anatolia) to mount a new campaign in 1092. And what is clear from Jonathan Shepard’s paper, newly written for the volume,” is that his diplomacy was that of a soldier.
If we move on to peace, we turn to dikaiosyne with both administration and legislation being considered. Mildness, humanity and accessibility are recommended: how did Alexios measure up? Anna’s alarming list of plots against his person is balanced by his generous treatment of the offenders, only the Bogomil trial really meriting the sternness which he could muster. But it is clear that some of these plots were nothing of the kind, simply trumped-up excuses to contain possible competition. And how accessible was Alexios? How did his subjects see him? How public was his rule? What difference did architecture make? Administration is clearly to be considered under this head.
Anna Komnene gives the impression that the creation of court titles is all that matters here, but many have seen Alexios as the arch-reformer. Patricia KarlinHayter and Paul Magdalino addressed this question from different angles and with somewhat different conclusions.” Menander’s handling of legislation has severe standards: ‘therefore laws are more legal, contracts between men are more just’. To assess Alexios’s record on this score we were delighted to welcome Ludwig Burgmann and Joseph Sonderkamp from the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt. We hoped for years of fruitful cooperation with both of them; alas, Joseph died suddenly only eighteen months after the colloquium. The volume is dedicated to-his memory; we hope that Ludwig will continue to collaborate with us for Joseph’s sake as well as for our many common concerns.
Sophrosyne offers us an opportunity to observe the emperor's life-style, the new piety of a man accustomed from boyhood to take a holy man on campaign with him. Praise of the empress ‘if she is of great worth and honour’ follows—but which empress? Barbara Hill’s paper examines the balance of power among the several powerful women of the time; the sources make clear that all good emperors in the 1080s had mothers—and Alexios had two. Anna Dalassene’s court may have been more like a monastery than a palace, but as far as Alexios is concerned Zonaras* could have given the lie to Menander’s suggested praise: ‘for the rest of womanhood he does not so much know they exist.’
In the early stages of planning the colloquium it looked as if everyone would want to address the question of sophrosyne under the heading of: Alexios the Thirteenth Apostle, represented not only in Anna but also in the Vatican Zigabenos. Alexios and the church is an area which badly needs reassessment. The work of Elefteria Papayanni has led the way, and Michael Angold’s new book® gives the issues full treatment. But the questions are clear: how far is the energetic, theologically interested Alexios of the Alexiad a creation of its author? Did he put his money where his logos was? Or was the logos perhaps not his either, just as Christodoulos was, like Pantepoptes, Anna Dalassene’s responsibility, Strumitsa bishop Manuel’s, and Philanthropos the counterpart to Eirene Doukaina’s Kecharitomene? Whether Alexios wrote the speech against the Armenians is a question we shall leave to the second volume, but if he was not interested in theology, why were there so many heresy trials in his reign? I used to believe that he was interested, though not for theological reasons, but Damian Leeson persuaded me that Alexios’s actions were far less a matter of policy than of reacting to events, though the initiators of the events still remain dim. In this volume Dion Smythe* makes the straightforward case for heresy as a convenient device for social control, though his deliberate reliance on Anna’s witness allows us to ask again whether Anna is not the creator of Alexios the heresy-hunter.
But there are other ecclesiastical issues: the tricky issue of monastic reform, which was tackled at the colloquium by Rosemary Morris” and will in future be a concern of the Evergetis project. Why is it that the Alexian holy men (Meletios, Christodoulos, Cyril Phileotes*) seem to be the last of their kind in relation to the state? Was there a monastic reform movement” and was Alexios part of it? Were John the Oxite and Leo of Chalcedon also? Is there a non-monastic counterpart and is this how we should see Alexios’s reform of the clergy? Here Pamela Armstrong looks at Alexios’s patronage of holy men.“
And so to phronesis, which Menander sees as the facilitating virtue. “You should say that the emperor would not have been capable of carrying out all these deeds, not would he have borne the weight of such weighty matters, if he had not surpassed all men on earth in wisdom and understanding, which enables lawgiving and temperance and all other virtues to come to successful fruition.’ Was Alexios, like Menander’s ideal emperor, ‘quick to see, clever in understanding, better than a prophet at foreseeing the future, the best judge of the good counsel of others, and well able to tell the difficult from the easy’? Alexios is more often seen as the foxy diplomatist par excellence, the epitome of all that journalists like to describe as Byzantine. Jonathan Shepard’s recent analysis® has shown him as outsmarted by the hunk Bohemond, and Shepard looks even more carefully at the issue here.*
And so it should be possible to arrive at some assessment of Alexios’s achievement. Should we lay it at the door of fortune? Or is phronesis the true explanation? Alexios’s long life must have contributed to the apparent solidity of his rule, but so also must the achievements of his son and grandson; some synkrisis with John and Manuel, as well as his eleventh-century predecessors and western enemies, is desirable. Few would now see with Ostrogorsky John as the greatest of the Kemnenoi, but do Alexios’s attempts pale by comparison with Manuel’s achievements? The praise—and blame—of Alexios I are left to a later chapter“ (for our 1989 encomium was indeed foreshadowed in 1088).
What may be learned from the rhetoric of his deathbed I leave to the second volume, but the task of this volume is the unfashionable one of assessing the achievements of a single emperor against every possible yardstick, medieval and modern, and then deciding where this successor of Constantine should be placed: did he initiate or react? Was he a reformer or a reactionary? conservative or dangerous radical? brilliant general or incompetent soldier? pious Christian or cynical exploiter of orthodoxy? patron or philistine? author and hero of the Komnenian reconquest? or simply the primary engineer (and failed exploiter) of the Crusades? The papers which follow do not follow an agreed line or indeed answer all or any of these questions, but they seek to call back an enigmatic emperor from the oblivion of nearly a century.
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