Download PDF | Michael J. Decker - The Byzantine Dark Ages-Bloomsbury Academic (2016).
298 Pages
Introduction:
Dark Ages Transformation vs. decline Why write a book, especially a book on Byzantium, with 'Dark Ages' in the title? Freighted as it is with the cargo that is partly teleological and partly the product of humanist repulsion of barbarism and Christianity (whatever those are), the term 'dark ages' is both judgemental and scintillating. The Dark Ages live on in popular culture as the stereotype of the medieval world (which usually means the medieval world apart from Byzantium, which is rarely mentioned).
The history of the label has been unwound by several scholars, among them Theodor Mommsen (1942), who attributed the term to the Renaissance (or late medieval) scholar Petrarch (d. 1374). And Lucie Varga was clear in tracing the history of the expression that it was pejorative and intended to contrast the 'enlightened' eras of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance humanists and their successors with the intervening centuries of barbarism. As Janet Nelson notes, the term Dark Ages is laden with materialist, religious, and humanist cargo and is thus understandably shunned and deemed inappropriate as a marker of periodization.
This is especially true outside of the Anglo-Saxon academy (under whose umbrella I place UK scholars as well as many in North America, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand) where the term rarely appears. In fact, recent magisterial works on the Mediterranean that tilt towards Italy and the west for the most part eschew the Dark Age label, preferring instead 'early medieval' to signify the period of roughly 500-1000, give or take a century on either side. Periodization remains a contested arena in Byzantine studies. Does one adopt the viewpoint of the French school, with its 'protoByzantine' age that ends with the accession of Heraclius (610--641) or the 'early', 'middle', and 'late' conceptualizations of other schools of thought, each with their own starting and ending points? Confusingly, 'early Byzantium' is often synonymous with 'Late Antiquity'. 'Early Byzantium' usually corresponds to the period from the founding of the capital in 324, or perhaps as early as 284 with the start of the reign of Diocletian, until the Arab conquest of the 630s and 640s.
A more positivistic conceptualization as common among many students of Late Antiquity would proscribe the Dark Ages and instead consider the end of Late Antiquity as occurring around 750; this may work in the Caliphate where the year marks the rise of the 'Black Banners' of the 'Abbas ids and the fall of the Umayyads, but the same year found Byzantium gripped by economic recession, war, and religious controversy. The reign of Basil II (976-1022) is typically taken to mark the apogee of the medieval empire and the pivot of the 'Middle Period' of Byzantine history, which most consider as terminating with the fall of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, while the Late Byzantine period usually encompasses 1204-1453. There is scholarly recognition that the society of Heraclius or the Isaurian emperors (711- 802) is of a markedly different order than that of Justinian I (527-565) or Basil II (976-1025). Greek supplanted Latin in the army, bureaucracy, and legal culture. Monumental building all but ceased. The empire lost the bulk of its territory to foreign powers. Urban patterns fundamentally changed over most of the Byzantine world. Most striking for historians, the output of written documents plummeted.
It seemed therefore appropriate to George Ostrogorsky in his survey which remains essential reading for the training of Byzantinists the world over, that 'Dark Ages' be applied (Ostrogorsky 1969: 87) to the epoch immediately following the reign of Heraclius. While the 'Iconoclast' era has sometimes served as a proxy and perhaps more interesting label, 'Dark Ages' may still apply to Byzantine history and material culture. Archaeologists such as Timothy Gregory (1993), Florin Curta (2005), and Eric Ivison (2007) have found the Dark Ages a useful category at the same time they reject its pejorative connotations. In any case, discussion of the appropriateness of 'Dark Ages' - which I often use synonymously with early medieval - could go on for many pages; suffice it to say my defence of my title will proceed over the remainder of this work.
Whose Byzantium?
Writing a book about the material culture of Byzantium requires little justification. Although recent years have seen a galaxy of impressive works on the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean world that view the Roman world and its successors in broad context and over the longue duree, few have placed Byzantium at the centre of inquiry. Is Byzantium best seen as nested within a larger Mediterranean, Eurasian or world cultural matrix, or is it best viewed on its own, in isolation, as an object of 'Byzantine studies'?
The question is of course too great to be answered here, but in the present work I attempt to look more distinctly within, and outward from, the territories of the early medieval empire. There are good reasons for doing so, even though the reputation and knowledge of Byzantium has arguably suffered from its being placed in a silo of its own. After all, historians who examine the medieval world through the lens of broad, comparative trends will point to elements within the Germanic-led successor kingdoms of the west - most notably Merovingian Gaul, the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Theodoric, and the Carolingian Empire - of the continuation and adaptation of Roman institutions and ideas and the sophistication of western structures (Wickham 2005). In such discussions, the role of Byzantium is either sidelined or ignored. Even in economic studies, where older scholarship afforded greater latitude for the role of the eastern Romans in European trade, the recent trend has been to view the Caliphate as the dominant presence, even on the northern shores of the Mediterranean (McCormick 2001).
Perhaps, as Cameron (2014) has suggested, these approaches are partly to escape charges within the academy of scholarly Eurocentrism (odd if one considers these works still place Europe at the centre of their studies) or the parochialism that has plagued archaeology and history since nationalist thinkers gave rise to both professions as practised today. Certainly, scholars practising this pan-Mediterranean, or even pan-European (if Europe excludes the lands of Poland, Hungary, and east to the Urals) (Wickham 2005) perspective have achieved remarkable things. There is, to my knowledge, no parallel within Byzantine studies that seeks to integrate the empire within wider Eurasian history. Where, and to whom, does Byzantium belong in these discussions?
The question is increasingly relevant as the Turkish state and its citizens take an ever more active role as custodians of their cultural heritage. A new generation of Turkish-born and -trained historians and archaeologists is investigating and writing new histories and archaeologies for consumption in Turkey and the world over. This is laudable but comes with a great weight of responsibility; nationalism, religion, and other cultural forces are ever in tension with scientific endeavour and academic integrity. Byzantium remains uniquely international - belonging to no one country, no one culture, no one discipline. Despite its millennium-long existence, written sources are scarce for many places, times, and subjects of inquiry. As Byzantine studies evolve, archaeologists will offer the most new data of any discipline and hopefully shed a great deal of light on the empire and its inhabitants.
A generation of scholars who have grown up out of the shadow of the Cold War (though hardly free of the perils of nationalist tensions) need to contribute to this project as vigorously and as objectively as possible. The good news for them is, as we shall see in the pages that follow, there is a great deal of work to be done. Many new discoveries and roads to exciting and likely fundamentally altering interpretations lie ahead. To spark such debate is one of the great challenges of this book. Indeed, if most scholars accept that the East Roman Empire was politically in retreat and psychologically demoralized after its initial battering at the hands of the armies of the Arab-led takeover of the Levant, the extent to which society was altered is a matter of crisp debate. Did the Byzantine economy contract to such an extent that money became a rarely seen thing in the provinces? Did the cities shrink so much that only a handful remained, like the remnants of burned-out stars in a once-thriving constellation? Did long-distance trade slow from a rush to a trickle as the Mediterranean was ripped from the grasp of New Rome?
These are some of the topics touched upon in the chapters that follow. Of course, as with any area of inquiry our questions are conditioned as much by what we know as what we do not, and the Dark Ages puts this fact under an even harsher light. In undertaking this study, I have endeavoured to limit my discussion to evidence and debates pertinent to the seventh through the tenth centuries, or roughly 600-900 AD. Inevitably, given the dearth of evidence which researchers of the early modem and modem period often find difficult to grasp, there are times when comparative evidence is drawn upon to plausibly fill in the gaps or raise possibilities.
In the end, undertaking this work has opened my eyes to the great challenges of making firm statements about this demanding and exciting period, and I am grateful to my colleagues who have done the hard work of amassing primary data and those who have undertaken (often magisterial) syntheses. Most of the case studies I have selected come from the areas that formed the core of the state, namely Asia Minor and the Balkans, though I have drawn contemporary or near-contemporary material from neighbouring areas.
Transliteration is notoriously difficult, and in this I have generally followed the conventions of the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium for Greek unless the English people or places are so well-used (e.g. Heraclius rather than Heraklios or Justinian rather than Iustinianus or Iustinianos). Finally, this series is about debates in archaeology and material culture. I have tried to flesh out the opposing and sometimes multivariate positions on specific issues. When sharp distinctions are lacking, I have endeavoured to amplify some of the problematic areas with my own analyses, which, it is hoped, will further advance the discussion.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق