Download PDF | A. P. Kazhdan, Ann Wharton Epstein - Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries-University of California Press (1990).
349 Pages
CHANGE IN BYZANTINE CULTURE IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES
byzantium, that dark sphere on the periphery of medieval Europe, is commonly regarded as the immutable residue of Rome's decline. Kazhdan and Epstein attempt to revise this traditional image by documenting the dynamic social changes that occurred during the eleventh and twelfth centuries—not on ly the emergence of semi-feudal structures, but also the revitalization of the provinces, the development of new attitudes toward knowledge and toward alien peoples, and the growth of both popular and aristocratic pursuits.
In contrast to earlier political histories or histories of civilization, the authors—a historian and an art historian—present byzantine culture synthetically, treating seminal themes of medieval life within a broader social and economic context. It emerges from this study that the classical tradition of Byzantium— Involving its institutions, intellectual life, and artistic production—provided not only the substance of the Empire's cultural continuity, but also the real impetus of its change in this crucial period.
“A work of distinguished scholarship, as one would expect from these authors, both of whom are Byzantinists of international reputation.... [here emerges a new insight into the economic, social, political, and cultural development of Byzantine society in the two centuries preceding the Fourth Crusade which not only brings Byzantine history into the mainstream of modern historical thought, but suggests fruitful lines for future research” Kobert Browning, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, V1
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is a collaborative effort by a historian and an art historian that began in the spring of 1979. Alexander Kazhdan had then recently arrived from the Soviet Union to take a position at the Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.; Ann Epstein was still in residence there as a Fellow for the 1978-79 academic year. We drafted the first chapter together in the summer of 1979. Drafts of the other five chapters have made numerous journeys between Washington and Durham, North Carolina, generating in their rounds a great deal of scrap paper and fruitful argument. Our disagreements were, in fact, small; the areas of our agreement are vast.
Most fundamentally, we believe that understanding is best gleaned through a synthetic approach to culture. The narrow borders of any discipline impose arbitrary limitations on history. In this era of increasing specialization, the stimulation and insight that come of working closely with a colleague in a neighboring discipline is one of the few remedies for the desiccation of the humanities. Our shared purpose and perspective was complemented by our mutual affection and respect.
Our work has entailed many debts. We both want to thank Peter Brown, editor of this series, and Doris Kretschmer of the University of California Press, and as well James Epstein, Robert Browning, Anthony Cutler, Charles Young, and Kent Rigsby, for their comments on various drafts of this work. Our collaboration was greatly facilitated by a grant from the American Philosophical Society, as well as by the Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and its director, Giles Constable. Elizabeth Mansell and David Page of the Department of Art at Duke University and Charlotte Burk of the Photographic Archive at Dumbarton Oaks have kindly assisted us in the illustration of this volume.
We particularly want to thank Mary Cash and Denise Franks for their care and patience in typing our manuscript. Ann Epstein wishes to express her gratitude to the Humanities Council of Duke University, who supported her leave from teaching responsibilities during the academic year 1981-82 with a faculty grant from the Mellon Foundation.
INTRODUCTION
When little is known of a society, whether it is distanced from us by time or by geography, there is a tendency to conceive of it as simple and static. Byzantium, that dark sphere at the eastern edge of medieval Europe, is regarded by even a well-educated layman as the immutable residue of Rome’s decline, interesting for its resplendent decadence, intrigues, and icons. Battles and provinces might be won or lost, dynasties might end in a flurry of nose splittings and blindings, but the ideological construct remained unperturbed: a sumptuous still-life, a world of static values and changeless institutions.
The assumption of Byzantium’s changelessness grows from the West's bias for the rhythms of its own development: in comparison to the social and political upheavals of medieval Europe, the Eastern empire seems quiescent. This prejudice is, furthermore, complacently maintained because of a scarcity of sources from Byzantium and because of the conservatism of those sources that do survive. But all cultures, past or present, are rich in their complexities.
That some societies are survived by less documentation than others does not mean that they were less complicated. An anonymous work of art is not necessarily cruder or more easily understood than one associated with a name or even with a personality; a culture cannot be judged immutable because it had no newspapers.
In an effort to modify this sensuously ponderous image of Byzantium, we have put our emphasis on change in the empire, change within the narrow bounds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By limiting the time-frame of our study, we can consider change on a human scale: we can look at material changes that occurred over decades as well as at abstract changes that occurred over centuries. The reader may feel in the end that we have overdramatized the changes that took place in Byzantium. If we have, it is in a desire to stimulate discussion of both the structural shifts in the empire and the means of identifying these basic developments.
The sources for Byzantine history are limited. There are no clay tablet shopping lists or papyrus shipping accounts. Only a few monastic archives survive with documents concerning land donations and peasant taxes, and most of these date from the first half of the fourteenth century. The works of Byzantine historians are usually reliable, but often they provide information rather than insight, facts rather than perceptions.
Developments in the form and emphasis of these histories have proved more useful for identifying changes in society than have the political events the historians recorded in them. Similarly, by their style and approach the authors of works in other literary genres, from poetry through encomia and saints’ lives to foundation documents, unwittingly have provided glimpses into Byzantium’s preoccupations. But largely because of its fragmentary nature, Byzantine literature is not an enviable resource for understanding the medieval East. Consequently, we have sought to supplement our evidence by considering less explicit media.
Our primary sources apart from literature are the material remains of Byzantium. Potentially the richest field of investigation is archaeology. Answers to questions of land and livestock use, as well as of urban expansion and dwelling modes, lie just below the surface of the Macedonian massif and of the Boulevard Ataturk. Unfortunately, there they are likely to remain until archaeological expeditions are better funded than they now are. Such information as has so far been gathered in the trenches we have incorporated into our analysis. The economic life of the empire, as reconstructed from the encrusted pocket money of the Rhomaioi, also figures in our overview.
But the part of the material culture of Byzantium that most absorbs our attention is its art. Byzantium’s contribution to the stock of the world’s great works has long been appreciated. Art historians have, however, tended to enshroud the empire in a cloak of artistic predestination, plotting its stylistic and iconographic path from antiquity to the fall of Constantinople. Its forms are often presented as having a life distinct from and, indeed, above that of the society that produced them. One architectural historian went so far as to remark, “How strange that sucha decadent society could produce such great architecture.” We do not believe that life and art are so separate.
In the present study, manuscript illuminations, mosaics, buildings, and other art forms are treated as evidence for understanding social change. As with literature, we have at-tempted to interpret in these forms not only shifts in subject matter but also reflections of the broader patterns of the culture. This way of looking at art is new to us. By no means have we seen all that can be seen. Our essay represents only an initial effort in using art as a historical document.
Three technical points must be mentioned. First, regarding the transliteration of Greek terms and names: following the old Roman principle, we have represented Greek letters by their Latin equivalents. Pronunciation has not been taken into account. Thus both epsilon and eta are represented by e, although in spoken medieval Greek they were pronounced differently; or again, the Greek chi has nothing to do with the English sound ch used in this book to render it.
We also followed tradition by rendering the upsilon as y, rather than as u. Our treatment of Greek diphthongs is an exception to our basically graphic approach. It would be ridiculous to write aytokrator, considering such English forms as “automobile.” We deviated from Latin principles by rendering the diphthongs oi, ai, and ou as such, and not as oe, ae, and u (e.g., paroikot, scholai) and by using k, not c, for the Greek kappa.
Transcribing Byzantine names is even more problematic. We tried to preserve traditional forms for all geographic names: e.g., Athens, Constantinople. Familiar first names we tried to render as closely as possible to modern English: John, Nicholas, and Constantine, not loannes, Nikolaos, or Konstantinos. For rare first names and for family names that have no English equivalents, we applied the same principles as for the terms, e.g., Alexios and Psellos, not Alexius or Psellus. We did, however, retain conventional spellings for well-known last names, such as Comnenus and Palaeologus.
Second, because the points that we make from literature, like those that we make from monuments, require illustration, we have included texts as well as plates in this volume. Although both texts and plates might function better were they introduced into the book at the point at which they are discussed, such an arrangement is prohibitively expensive. Consequently they are gathered in two sections at the end of the work.
Finally, regarding references: because of the flood of scholarly literature, references threaten to outgrow the text. The danger is especially great in books, such as this one, that treat a broad range of subjects. We tried to control our appetite for references, not always.successfully. We sought to place short references within the text itself and to avoid “explanatory notes,” those minute monographs rarely relevant to the sub-ject of the book. When they do occur in our volume, they are usually due to final revisions. Dates of emperors and other prominent individuals have been included in the index. We ask the readers’ forbearance in respect to any failures of consistency and hope that they will remember how many more troublesome difficulties we had to overcome, being persons of different ages, backgrounds, and fields of study.
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