Download PDF | Robert Browning - The Byzantine Empire-The Catholic University of America Press (1992).
337 Pages
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
The first edition of this book, which appeared in 1981, very soon became out of print, and the publisher was reluctant to reprint it. As time went by, several teachers in North American universities and colleges told me that they found it a useful introduction to the Byzantine world to put into the hands of students, and urged me to try to make it once more available. I am most grateful to The Catholic University of America Press for offering to publish a second edition.
After ten years the temptation to rewrite a book is hard to resist. But after reflection and discussion with colleagues I decided that immediate revision was preferable to rewriting in the future. The present book is therefore substantially a reproduction of the 1981 edition. I have however corrected minor mistakes, removed some ambiguities and infelicities, and added some passages and modified others in the light of new knowledge or insight. I hope that the revised version will be found helpful by students and also be of interest to the general public.
I take this opportunity to thank David McGonagle for his encouragement and Susan Needham for her rigorous and sensitive copyediting. ROBERT BROWNING ,September 1991
PREFACE
It is no longer true that the Byzantine world is unknown to the English reader. Scholars like Norman Baynes, Steven Runciman, Joan Hussey, Dimitri Obolensky, and Cyril Mango have made the story of the Byzantine Empire accessible in broad outline and added insights of their own into Byzantine society and its place in the medieval world. George Ostrogorsky’s History of the Byzantine State has been available in English translation for a quarter of a century.
The new Volume IV of the Cambridge Medieval History surveys every aspect of the Byzantine world from the eighth century onwards. If I have ventured to follow these distinguished predecessors with yet another general book on Byzantium, it is because I believe that Byzantine society is often thought by the non-specialist to have been unhistorically rigid and unchanging, unresponsive alike to external pressures and to its own internal dynamic. In the present book I have tried to emphasize change and development, and the consequent tension between tradition and innovation.
I am only too well aware how many aspects of Byzantine civilization I have neglected. But the book is already longer than either the publisher or the author intended. Thanks are due to the Australian National University, Canberra, on whose hospitable campus the early chapters were written; to Susan Archer, who in typing the manuscript drew my attention to many a slip; to Martha Caute, who took the book through the traumatic transition from intellectual exercise to industrial product with skill and tact; to Catherine Comfort, who obtained much of the illustrative material; and to my wife, who had to put up with even more absentmindedness than usual.
INTRODUCTION
For Edward Gibbon, writing in 1776, the thousand years of Byzantine history could be dismissed as “the triumph of barbarism and Christianity.” Voltaire declared it to be “a worthless collection of orations and miracles,” and Montesquieu, in his survey of the grandeur and decadence of Rome, saw in the Byzantine Empire only “a tragic epilogue to the glory of Rome,” “a tissue of rebellions, insurrections and treachery.”
These representatives of the Enlightenment make two implications: first, that Byzantine society had no development of its own, but remained, fossilized and unchanging, in a world of growth and development which culminated in the Renaissance and finally in the Age of Reason; and second, that the history of Europe and the Near East was independent of and uninfluenced by that of the Byzantine Empire, which played no significant part in shaping the world in which they themselves lived.
In the two centuries which have passed since Gibbon wrote Decline and Fall and particularly in the last hundred years, the study of Byzantine civilization has made great progress. Not only in the field of political history, but also in those of art, music, literature, technology, religion, philosophy, and many others, the role of Byzantium, sometimes dominant, always important, is better understood than ever before. The two propositions which underlay the attitude of the Age of Enlightenment would today be rejected by any serious historian.
The Byzantine Empire was for many centuries the most powerful, the richest, and the most civilized state in Europe and the Near East. Its influence radiated in all directions, sometimes determining the course of events, and always influencing it. Centuries after its disappearance, its traces can still be discerned, as in a palimpsest. Even today the alert traveller can observe the subtle changes in patterns of life and social structures which mark the ancient frontiers of the Byzantine Empire. From the political theory and practice of tsarist Russia to the theology of the Anglican church, from the administrative organization of the Islamic world to the dedications of churches in Scotland, the influence of this wealthy and cultured society upon its neighbors can be traced. Modern place names, too, sometimes perpetuate long-vanished features of the Byzantine world. The province of Romagna in Italy is socalled because from the 560s to the middle of the eighth century it was a province of the Byzantine Empire, known by its citizens as Romania—the world of the Romans—and was sharply distinguished from the barbarous world of the Lombard duchies.
The concept of the Byzantine Empire as a static and fossilized society in an evolving world has been similarly overthrown by the work of recent historians. It is true that it often presents an unvaried facade—the ritual and ceremony of church and palace and the phraseology of official communication show surprisingly little modification through the centuries. But behind this facade we can now discern continuous change and development. The Byzantines’ view of their own society and its place in the world, and the way in which they gave expression to that vision in literature and art, passed through a series of transformations. These in their turn reflected both changes within Byzantine society in the relation of man to man, of man to the state, and of man to the means of production and also shifts in the economic, political, and cultural balance between the Byzantine world and the related but different societies which surrounded it—western Europe, the south Slav states, Russia, the nomad pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe-lands, and the world of Islam.
Good books have been written in English in modern times on the political history of the Byzantine world, and there are many surveys of Byzantine civilization and culture. The former tend to neglect those activities of a civilized society which are not directly political or military, while the latter often pay insuffficient attention to evolution in Byzantine society. The aim of this book is to offer to the general reader a survey of Byzantine civilization, in the widest sense of the word, which takes account of the changing values of that society and of the Byzantines’ developing perceptions both of their own society and of the larger world in which they lived. This book is therefore arranged by periods. A broad outline of the political history of the Byzantine world in each period is given, to provide a frame of reference for the discussion that follows.
First of all, however, a word about names is needed. The Byzantines did not call themselves Byzantines, but Romaioi—Romans. They were well aware of their role as heirs of the Roman Empire, which for many centuries had united under a single government the whole Mediterranean world and much that was outside it. They were also conscious that it was within the framework of the Roman Empire that Christianity had come into being, spread, and ultimately become the religion of the state and of virtually all its subjects. For the Byzantines “Roman” and “Christian” were often synonymous terms. So we find them calling themselves simply Christians or “the Christian people,” although there were always many other Christian societies and Christian states outside the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire. The Greek word “Byzantine” is a rather literary term for an inhabitant of the city of Constantinople, the more usual word being Konstantinoupolites. French scholars of the seventeenth century were the first to use “Byzantine” with reference to the empire rather than to the city, and to speak of “Byzantine history.”
This has become normal usage in modern times, even in Greek. But “East Rome” and “East Roman,” and their equivalents in other languages, are still used to denote the Byzantine Empire. What the Byzantines do not, for most of their long history, call themselves is Hellenes, though the dominant language and the dominant culture of the empire were always Greek. And Byzantine rulers and officials were always deeply offended when western potentates called them Greeks (Graeci) or described their emperor as “Emperor of the Greeks.” This apparent paradox tells us something important about Byzantine society. A Frenchman or a German today regards the community to which he belongs as one defined primarily by a common language and all that goes with it. A Byzantine saw his society in a different light. The image he formed of his society changed along with historical circumstances, as will be seen. But it was never that of a nation—like France or England—nor even of a linguistic and ethnic group—like Italy or Germany before the mid-nineteenth century.
The boundaries of the Byzantine Empire, though they might remain for long periods with only very minor modifications, were subject from time to time to rapid and sometimes catastrophic upheavals. The maps make this point more forcefully than words. Leaving aside gradual expansions and contractions and mere frontier adjustments, sweeping and dynamic changes took place in the sixth century, when | Justinian reconquered Italy, North Africa, and southern Spain from the Germanic kingdoms which had established themselves there; in the seventh century, when the first great expansion of Islam detached forever Syria and Palestine, Egypt and North Africa from allegiance to the Byzantine Empire; when Slavonic peoples, and later the Bulgarian state, occupied most of the northern Balkans, and when much of Italy was lost to the Lombards; in the ninth century, when Sicily and Crete were lost to the Arabs; in the tenth century, when Armenia, northern Mesopotamia and parts of northern Syria were reconquered from the Arabs, Crete was recovered, and large areas of southern Italy became once again Byzantine territory; in the eleventh century, when the Bulgarian state was destroyed and much of the northern Balkans restored to Byzantine rule, while at the same time the Seljug Turks occupied much of Asia Minor; in the thirteenth century, at the beginning of which the armies of the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople and divided most of the European territory of the empire between them, leaving a few tiny Byzantine successor states, one of which, based in western Asia Minor, succeeded in ousting the westerners from some of their European conquests, and ultimately recaptured Constantinople and restored a much weakened and diminished Byzantine Empire; and in the fourteenth century, when the Ottoman Turks drove the Byzantines out of Asia Minor, and established themselves in Thrace, while the Serbian Kingdom absorbed most of the rest of Byzantine territory in Europe, and the empire itself was reduced to Constantinople, Thessalonica, part of the Peloponnese, and a few islands in the Aegean.
Can we meaningfully speak of continuity in a state whose territories underwent such drastic changes? The answer must be that we can. The Byzantines themselves were never in any doubt—for them there were only restorations, never new beginnings. The continuity of political structure, of legitimacy, of religious and cultural unity was proof against the most violent territorial disruptions. Clearly the Byzantine state, and the civilization of which it was the bearer, were not territorial, as all post-Renaissance nation states have been.
It needed some territory, naturally, but it could expand or contract to almost any extent without losing its political and cultural identity. One small territory, however, could not be lost for long without putting the continu-ing existence of the empire in doubt. That was Constantinople itself, the capital founded by Constantine in 330 to be a second Rome, and whose official name was always Konstantinoupolis Nea Romé—“the City of Constantine which is the New Rome.” The successor states which survived the Latin conquest of 1204 did not regard themselves as fully embodying the heritage and traditions of the Byzantine Empire. Only when one of them reconquered the capital could it claim and be granted full legitimacy. When we look at the numerous usurpations of imperial power which took place, it is clear that no emperor ever succeeded in retaining even partial recognition for any length of time unless he had control of the capital, and that, conversely, once a rebel did establish himself there, opposition to him swiftly collapsed.
A further question arises on considering the gains and losses of territory by the Byzantine Empire over the centuries. Did the Byzantine world, the area in which Byzantine civilization developed, necessarily coincide in area with the territory of the empire? Clearly it did not in the last period of Byzantine history, when the empire had become a minuscule Balkan state while the Greek language and Greek culture, the Orthodox church, and a sense of Byzantine identity spread over a very much larger area which was subject to foreign powers.
But this very discrepancy between the area of Byzantine power and that of Byzantine culture was perhaps a symptom of collapse, rather than a state of affairs capable of continuing. In particular, the fact that the ecclesiastical authority of the Orthodox church extended far more widely than the political authority of the Byzantine state at this late stage created many problems. It might therefore appear that state and civilization were essentially coterminous, and that only limited discrepancies could long be tolerated. But when the matter is examined more closely, it becomes clear that neither Byzantine political sovereignty nor Byzantine cultural domination had precise boundaries at all, but that both of them radiated into the surrounding world with different degrees of intensity. It is not always easy to define even the political frontiers of the empire.
As soon as it is looked at in detail, anomalies are encountered—territories which acknowledged Byzantine sovereignty but lay outside the Byzantine administrative system, territories in which the Byzantines shared sovereignty with another power, territories which paid tribute to the Byzantine Empire but did not acknowledge its sovereignty, and finally a gamut of degrees of dependence ranging from thinly disguised and irreversible subjection to freely contracted alliance between equals. In this respect, too, the Byzantine Empire resembled neither modern nation states, with their all-or-nothing sovereignty, nor most medieval European states, in which notions of sovereignty and of personal dependence were not always easy to disentangle. In fact it formed the center of a zone of influence—political, religious, artistic, and cultural—which spread far beyond its boundaries. It thus often played a key role in determining the course of events in distant regions. A recent thoughtprovoking study, D. Obolensky’s The Byzantine Commonwealth, developed the concept of a “Byzantine Commonwealth,” which included all those communities whose links with the Byzantine Empire, whether formally recognized or not, were strong and lasting. The concept is a viable one, even if historians cannot always agree on how to define it.
It is clear, for instance, that medieval Bulgaria or Georgia could exist in the form it did only thanks to the predominating power and prestige of the empire and its civilization. Many Italian city states, like Venice, Naples, and Amalfi, were originally constituent parts of the empire, strongly subject to Byzantine influence, and only gradually developed an independent political existence and pattern of life. Yet it would be very hard to say when, if ever, these communities ceased to belong to the “Byzantine Commonwealth.” Kievan Russia in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries and the later Principality of Muscovy had never formed part of the Byzantine Empire in the political sense, yet their higher culture was almost wholly inspired by Byzantine models, their Church acknowledged its dependence on the Patriarch of Constantinople, and they always recognized themselves as standing in a special relationship to the empire. After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the prince of Muscovy claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire and declared that his principality was the Third Rome, in other words, the natural successor to the Byzantine and Roman empires.
This was no empty boast or arrogant self-aggrandizement, but reflected a real sense that Russia belonged essentially to a Byzantine “sphere of influence,” though no Byzantine emperor had ever exercised even the most indirect sovereignty in that vast country.
This consideration brings us back to our original point, that the history of Europe and the Near East in the Middle Ages cannot be understood without taking into account the existence and influence of this usually powerful and always prestigious political and cultural community—the Byzantine Empire. Even in its period of greatest political weakness it possessed a quality of legitimacy which other states lacked—and sometimes envied—as well as a culture which offered direct access to the thought both of the Fathers of the Church and of the ancient Greeks. And its long survival was proof of its toughness and of the flexibility and viability of its political and cultural principles. Its unique and complex apparatus of administration, its sophisticated legal system, its wealth, its advanced technology, whether in the field of industry or in that of war, made the Byzantine Empire, at any rate until the disaster of the Fourth Crusade, what in modern times would be called a superpower.
It is easy to give a date for the end of the Byzantine Empire. On 29 May 1453 the Turkish army of Sultan Mehmet IT took Constantinople by storm, and the Emperor Constantine XI was killed fighting in defense of his capital. On that day a political entity was destroyed, whose origin could be traced back without any break in continuity to the banks of the Tiber in the eighth century B.c. and to the historical reality reflected by the legends of Romulus and Remus and the foundation of Rome. There was still some Byzantine territory not under foreign occupation, particularly in the Peloponnese. But no new emperor was crowned, what remained of the original administrative apparatus ceased to function and even the most loyal subjects of the Byzantine Empire recognized that it no longer existed. The situation was unlike that pertaining after 1204, when several fragmented remnants of Byzantine power perpetuated the tradition of the empire, and one of them eventually established its claim to legitimacy. In 1453 the hope of a restoration was eschatological rather than political.
It has sometimes been argued that the Byzantine Empire really came to an end with the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 and the partition of most of its territory. There is much to be said for this view. The restored Byzantine Empire of 1261-1453 was a pale shadow of its former self. Its economic role was greatly diminished in the new pan-Mediterranean market which was in process of formation in these years. Most of its power and wealth had been drained away and its territory was soon reduced to a handful of detached enclaves. But its citizens had a sense of continuity with the past. Their political ideology, though modified, was not transformed. The prestige of their culture was enhanced rather than diminished, perhaps in compensation for their loss of political power. And to the very last, the late Byzantine Empire was treated by its friends and foes alike as a special case. It was no ordinary state, nor was Constantinople an ordinary city. In this book, therefore, we shall follow the course of Byzantine civilization right up to the capture of the city by the Turks in 1453.
If we ask when Byzantine history begins, we face a different kind of problem. Byzantine society grew out of late Roman society. The late Roman Empire, distinct in its organization, its culture and its “feel” from the Roman Empire of Augustus, the Flavians, and the Antonines, resulted from the reaction of the ruling strata of Roman society to the half- century of anarchy and invasion that followed the death of the Emperor Severus Alexander in a.p. 235. Some historians have seen that half-century as the true beginning of the Byzantine period. Others have taken the inauguration by Constantine of his new capital city by the Bosphorus in 330 as marking the beginning of the new epoch. For others, again, the final separation of the eastern and western parts of the Empire in 395, or the dismissal of the last western Roman emperor in 476, is the crucial date. Finally, there are those historians who hold that it was only when the armies of nascent Islam conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa that the Byzantine Empire attained its true form, and emerged, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, from the ruins of the old Roman Empire.
The truth is that, though historical periods are real, and are not merely imposed by the historian upon a seamless continuum of events, they are not separated by clean-cut boundaries. They overlap, and features of the old and new worlds coexist for a time. So any particular date chosen to mark the beginning of a new age is largely arbitrary. One feature which distinguishes the Byzantine Empire from the world of the late Roman period is its Christianity. Not only was Christianity the religion of the state and that of the vast majority of its citizens, but Christian modes of thought, Christian ideals, and Christian imagery dominated the political, intellectual, and artistic life of the whole society and determined its peculiar quality.
This state of affairs did not come into being all at once. There was a long transitional period during which Christianity became a permitted religion, then a favored religion, then the only tolerated religion. During this period the urban upper classes, who were the bearers of classical culture, gradually adopted Christianity. When they did so, they did not abandon all their previous intellectual baggage. Rather they adapted it to Christianity and Christianity to it. So the transitional period was marked by an extensive, though not total, fusion of Christianity and classical culture. Revealed religion gained intellectual respectability by being fitted into the framework of the Greek philosophical tradition. The fit was not perfect, and sometimes alternative attitudes to Christian dogma—an Aristotelian or a Platonic view— were adopted. At the same time much of classical literature and art, and the techniques and skills associated with them, were adapted to the needs of a Christian society by allegorical interpretation, or by being demoted to a kind of theoretical second rank as auxiliary or propaedeutic sciences.
The age in which this synthesis of classical and Christian culture took place, the age of Constantine and Julian and Theodosius, of the great fourth-century eastern Fathers Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom, of Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the west, the age when the western, Latin-speaking half of the old Roman Empire largely passed under the domination of new Germanic kingdoms, the age when centralized power and its inevitable bureaucracy replaced the old balance between imperial ad-ministration and self-governing cities, has a peculiar character of its own. It cannot be adequately treated as a mere prologue to the thousand years of Byzantine history for two reasons. The first is its own complexity and importance and the wealth of information it has left us. The second is that it belongs in the last analysis to the ancient world and not to that of the Middle Ages. Constantine has more in common with Aurelian or Marcus Aurelius than he has with Justinian, let alone with any later Byzantine emperor. Gregory of Nazianzus and Augustine, though Christian bishops, are firmly rooted by their education, their values, their habits of thought and action, in the world of classical antiquity.
This book therefore takes up the story of Byzantine civilization after the definitive triumph of Christianity and the working out of the synthesis between classical and Christian traditions, and will not deal, except indirectly, with the age of the Church Fathers and the great Ecumenical Councils. If a date has to be chosen, it would be about a.p. 500. Not that many features of ancient society did not persist long after that date—indeed much of the peculiar quality of the first period of Byzantine history arises out of the contradictions between old and new. But the decisive changes had taken place, and were clearly irreversible. The butterfly had emerged from the chrysalis. Fragments of the chrysalis might still cling to its wings as they dried in the sun. But it could never creep back into it again.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق