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THE EMPEROR IN THE BYZANTINE WORLD
The subject of the emperor in the Byzantine world may seem likely to be a well-studied topic but there is no book devoted to the emperor in general covering the span of the Byzantine empire. Of course there are studies on individual emperors, dynasties and aspects of the imperial office/role, but there remains no equivalent to Fergus Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World (from which the proposed volume takes inspiration for its title and scope). The oddity of a lack of a general study of the Byzantine emperor is compounded by the fact that a series of books devoted to Byzantine empresses was published in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Thus it is appropriate to turn the spotlight on the emperor.
Themes covered by the contributions include: questions of dynasty and imperial families; the imperial court and the emperor’s men; imperial duties and the emperor as ruler; imperial literature (the emperor as subject and author); and the material emperor, including imperial images and spaces.
The volume fills a need in the field and the market, and also brings new and cutting-edge approaches to the study of the Byzantine emperor. Although the volume cannot hope to be a comprehensive treatment of the emperor in the Byzantine world it aims to cover a broad chronological and thematic span and to play a vital part in setting the agenda for future work. The subject of the Byzantine emperor has also an obvious relevance for historians working on rulership in other cultures and periods.
Shaun Tougher is Reader in Ancient History at Cardiff University. He specialises in late Roman and Byzantine political and social history. His publications include The Reign of Leo VI (886-912) (1997), Julian the Apostate (2007), The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society (2008), Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (2012, co-edited with Nicholas Baker-Brian), and Approaches to the Byzantine Family (2013, co-edited with Leslie Brubaker). He is a Series Editor for Palgrave Macmillan’s New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture.
FOREWORD
In 2014, for the first time in its history, the Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies was held in Wales, at Cardiff University. From 25th to 27th April delegates gathered in the John Percival Building to discuss the subject of ‘The Emperor in the Byzantine World’. This subject was chosen in part to reflect the interests of staff in the School of History, Archaeology and Religious Studies who formed the symposium team: Nicholas Baker-Brian, Josef Léssl, myself and, sadly no longer with us, Frank Trombley. Appositely, John Percival himself, who had been Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff, had notable late antique and early medieval expertise.
The symposium was divided into five main sessions, addressing the following themes: Dynasty; Imperial Literature; The Imperial Court; Imperial Duties; and The Material Emperor. Fifteen invited speakers, three in each session, addressed the symposium. Beyond the UK, speakers came from the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, the USA, South Africa and New Zealand. All bar two of these speakers have contributed to this volume; regrettably Michael Griinbart and Eurydice Georganteli, who spoke respectively on ‘The emperor and the patriarch’ and ‘The omnipresent emperor: Money and authority in the Byzantine world’, were unable to provide chapters for the book.
As usual the symposium also featured shorter communications; there were four sessions of these, with speakers hailing from as far afield as Athens, Belfast, Birmingham, Budapest, Cyprus, Ioannina, Istanbul, Leuven, London, Maryland, New York, Oxford, Paris, Rome and Salamanca. It was a pleasure to include three of these communications as chapters in this volume, those by Nikolaos G. Chrissis, Dimitri Korobeinikov and Oscar Prieto Dominguez.
In addition two special lectures were presented. On the Sunday Alessandra Ricci (Ko¢ University) addressed the SPBS AGM on ‘Places of memory, memory of places: What is happening to Istanbul’s Byzantine heritage?’, and on the Friday evening Mark Redknap (National Museum Cardiff) gave a public lecture on ‘Wales and Byzantium: Antiquity, connections and collections’, delivered in the museum itself in the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre. Mark’s paper is also included in this volume, emphasising the Welsh character of the symposium but also the significant material relating to Byzantium found in Wales and collected in the museum, especially its coin collection.
Iam very glad to be able to record in this Foreword some particular acknowledgements. Especial thanks are owed to Cardiff University itself, for its generous funding of the symposium. Financial support was also provided by the publishers Ashgate and Cambridge University Press, who sponsored the reception held after the public lecture, in the imposing hall of the museum. Thanks are owed to several Cardiff postgraduates who assisted ably with making up conference packs and registering delegates: Panagiotis Sotiropoulos, Ulriika Viheralli and Michal Zytka. Thanks are also due to my Cardiff colleagues Nicholas Baker-Brian, Josef Léssl and Frank Trombley for their support in planning, organising and running the conference. Administrative support was provided in the School by the wonderful Emma Fisher. Thanks are also due as usual to Lis Fouladi and her catering team at Aberdare Hall (the university’s female-only hall of residence, built in 1893), where the symposium feast was held on the Saturday evening.
Regarding the production of the volume itself, I owe an immense debt of gratitude to the publication team: Rowena Loverance and then Angeliki Lymberopoulou as successive Chairs of the Publications Committee of the SPBS, and especially Michael Greenwood at Routledge for his positivity and supportiveness. This debt is also owed to all the contributors themselves, who have borne the production of the volume with such patience and cheerfulness. Emerging from serving a second three-year stint as Head of Department at Cardiff, it is a great pleasure both to be on research leave and to recall happy memories of the symposium held in this special city in spring 2014.
Shaun Tougher Cardiff, September 2018
CONTRIBUTORS
Nikolaos G. Chrissis is Assistant Professor of Medieval European History at the Democritus University of Thrace and Associate Lecturer at the Hellenic Open University. His main interests revolve around Byzantine—Western interaction, the crusades, and Byzantine identity. He is the author of Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Byzantine-Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204-1282 (2012), and co-editor of Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204-1453 (2014) and Byzantium and the West: Perception and Reality (2019).
Jonathan Harris is Professor of the History of Byzantium at Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications include Greek Emigres in the West, 1400-1520 (1995), The End of Byzantium (2010), Byzantium and the Crusades (2nd ed., 2014), The Lost World of Byzantium (2015), and Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium (2nd ed., 2017). He is currently writing a textbook of Byzantine history, 602-1453.
Mike Humphreys is currently a Lecturer in Early Medieval and Byzantine History at Cambridge University. His research focuses on Byzantine history, c. 600-900. Recent publications include Law, Power and Imperial Ideology in the Iconcolast Era, c. 680-850 (2015), and The Laws of the Isaurian Era: The Ecloga and its Appendices (2017).
Mark Humphries is Professor of Ancient History at Swansea University. His main research interests focus on politics and religion, urbanism, and world history during Late Antiquity, and he has published widely on these subjects. He is a general editor of the series Translated Texts for Historians.
Lynn Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at Florida State University. Her work focuses on issues of medieval identity and the visual expression of power and piety in Byzantium and Armenia. Books published include Between Islam and Byzantium: Aght’amar and the Visual Construction of Medieval Armenian Rulership (2007), and Byzantine Images and their Afterlives: Essays in Honor of Annemarie Weyl Carr (2014). Her current book project, The Imperial Cult in Middle Byzantine Art, is contracted for publication in late 2019.
Dimitri Korobeinikov is Associate Professor in Byzantine Studies in the University at Albany SUNY. His main research area is relations between Christianity and Islam in Asia Minor, Syria, and Armenia from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. His book Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century (2014) received the 2018 John Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America.
Sawvas Kyriakidis is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. He specialises in Late Byzantine History. He has published extensively on the military history of the Byzantine empire. His publications include Warfare in Late Byzantium, 1204-1453 (2011).
Mark Masterson is Senior Lecturer of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His major research interest is same-sex desire between men in classical antiquity and now medieval Byzantium. He has published Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood (2014) and was one of three editors of Sex in Antiquity: Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World (2014). Between Byzantine Men: Desire, Brotherhood, and Male Culture in the Medieval Empire will appear from Routledge.
Meaghan McEvoy is Lecturer in Byzantine Studies at Macquarie University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK). She specialises in late Roman and early Byzantine political history. She has published on the late Roman imperial court, and particularly on child-emperors, imperial women and military men. Her publications include Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367-455 (2013), ‘Rome and the transformation of the imperial office in the late fourth- and mid-fifth centuries’, PBSR (2010) 78: 151-192, and ‘Becoming Roman: The not-so-curious case of Aspar and the Ardaburii’, JLA (2016) 9.1: 151-192.
Prerona Prasad wrote her doctoral thesis on ‘Diplomacy and Foreign Policy in the Personal Reign of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (945—-959)’ and received her D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 2015. She is currently the Exhibitions and Programming Manager at The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, where she spends her time mounting exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.
Oscar Prieto Dominguez is a Lecturer in Greek Language and Literature at the University of Salamanca. His research focuses on literary, historical and philological aspects of Greek literature of Late Antiquity and Middle Byzantium. His publications explore the sociological and ideological elements of texts, considering issues such as literary fabric, cultural milieux and literary genres.
Mark Redknap, FSA, is Head of Collections & Research in the Department of History & Archaeology, Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales. His fieldwork, research and publications cover aspects of terrestrial and maritime archaeology, with a recent focus on early medieval and medieval material culture, including crannogs, Vikings, metalwork and ivories. He provides reports on possible post-Roman treasure to coroners in Wales, and was appointed a Commissioner for the Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Wales in 2008.
Jonathan Shepard was University Lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge. He co-authored The Emergence of Rus (1996) with Simon Franklin, with whom he also edited Byzantine Diplomacy (1992). His other edited volumes include The Expansion of Orthodox Europe (2007); The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (2008); and Byzantium and the Viking World (2016, with F. Androshchuk and M. White).
Bernard H. Stolte is Emeritus Professor of Byzantine Law in the University of Groningen and a former director of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. His books include Theophili Antecessoris Paraphrases Institutionum (with J.H.A. Lokin, R. Meijering and N. van der Wal, 2010), and Introduzione al diritto bizantino. Da Giustiniano ai Basilica (co-edited with J.H.A. Lokin, 2011). He is a founder-editor of Subseciva Groningana, and has written numerous papers on Byzantine law and on legal Humanism.
Shaun Tougher is Reader in Ancient History at Cardiff University. He specialises in late Roman and Byzantine political and social history. He has published extensively on the Constantinian and Macedonian dynasties. His publications include The Reign of Leo VI (886—912) (1997), Julian the Apostate (2007), The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society (2008), and (co-edited with Leslie Brubaker) Approaches to the Byzantine Family (2013).
Frank R. Trombley was Professor in Religious Studies at Cardiff University. He was the author of Hellenic Religion and Christianization (1993-94), and coauthor of The Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite (2000). He also published numerous articles on war and society in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, societal factors in the transition from paganism to Christianity, and the problems of using inscriptions and archaeological materials to interpret historical texts.
John Vanderspoel is Professor of Roman History at the University of Calgary. His main area of specialisation is the late Roman Empire, focusing on political and intellectual history. He has published Themistius and the Imperial Court (1995), as well as numerous chapters and articles in books and journals. He also co-edited, with three others, the Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilization (2006).
Alicia Walker is Associate Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture at Bryn Mawr College. Her primary fields of research include cross-cultural artistic interaction in the medieval world from the ninth to thirteenth centuries and gender issues in the art and material culture of Byzantium. Her first monograph, The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Byzantine Imperial Power, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.
NOTE ON SPELLING OF NAMES
In general I have used Anglicised or Latin forms for names up to the sixth century AD, but Greek forms from the seventh century AD onwards. There are some exceptions however, when an English or Latin form is more familiar (e.g. Heraclius rather than Herakleios, Nicholas rather than Nikolaos).
INTRODUCTION
Shaun Tougher
At the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first century there were published in quick succession four monographs on the Byzantine empress. In 1999 there appeared Lynda Garland’s Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527-1204 and Barbara Hill’s Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025-1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology, and in 2001 there followed Judith Herrin’s Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium and Liz James’ Empresses and Power in Early Byzantium. As Liz James wryly remarked at the opening of her monograph, ‘Books on Byzantine empresses seem a little like buses at present: you wait a hundred years for one, and then three or four turn up at once’.' Remarkably, no such buses have turned up for the Byzantine emperor; there exists no Byzantine equivalent of Fergus Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC — AD 337). It was this odd fact that inspired the Symposium on which this volume is based, its title modelled on Millar’s famous monograph.
Of course, there have been countless books devoted to particular emperors or aspects of emperors, but the fact remains that for all the centrality of the emperor in the Byzantine world there has been little study of the emperor as emperor. The closest approximation which comes to mind is Gilbert Dagron’s Empereur et prétre: Etude sur le ‘césaropapisme’ byzantine published in 1996, followed in 2002 by an English translation titled Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium. Nevertheless even this book had a very particular aspect of imperial identity to explore, the religious-cum-political character of the emperor.
This entailed exploring imperial ideology, such as the ideal of the Byzantine emperor as a New David, and there has been a rich tradition of studying Byzantine imperial ideology through its literature and art. For instance, a previous Symposium, held in St. Andrews in 1992, focused on Byzantine emperors as New Constantines.?
Perhaps the rise and nature of gender studies explains in part the focus on the empress rather than the emperor, or perhaps even the traditional gendering of Byzantium as a society marked by powerful women and weak men. As alluded to by James, empresses had already drawn the attention of scholars in the early twentieth century, witness Charles Diehl’s Figures Byzantines in 1906 and 1908, notable also for his later Jmpératrices de Byzance of 1960. While Byzantine empresses, and Byzantine women generally, have received much study, Byzantine men as men have been neglected. It is perhaps telling that the one group of Byzantine men who have received as much attention as empresses in recent years is eunuchs. Several monographs devoted to them have appeared this century; in 2003 there was published Kathryn Ringrose’s The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium, followed in 2008 by my own The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society, and then in 2014 Charis Messis’ Les eunuques a Byzance, entre réalité et imaginaire.
This may also reflect the particular gender interest presented by eunuchs, as well as the fact that they too were part of the gendered depiction of Byzantium as a society characterised by corrupt effeminate eunuchs. Non-eunuch men have fared much less well. In Liz James’ edited volume Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium, published in 1997, only one chapter addressed men, Charles Barber’s ‘Homo Byzantinus?’.° There are signs, however, that this situation is begining to change. In 2009 there was published Myrto Hatzaki’s Beauty and the Male Body in Byzantium: Perceptions and Representations in Art and Text, and there followed in 2014 Mark Masterson’s Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality, and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood and in 2016 Claudia Rapp’s Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual. Thus Byzantine men are finally coming to the fore in Byzantine Studies, and emperors need to be part of this.
Another factor which might explain the lack of a monograph on the Byzantine emperor is the sheer scale of the subject. Even Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World, covering 368 years in 673 pages, did not address all functions of the Roman emperor, nor did it seek to. Millar declares that the ‘subject-matter’ of his book ‘is certain patterns of contact between the inhabitants of the empire and the emperor in person, and its object is to suggest that these patterns are of fundamental importance in understanding what the Roman empire was’.® So, Roman empire rather than Roman emperor.’ Millar also makes explict that his book does not ‘set out to deal with all aspects of the role played by the emperor; in particular it does not deal with the still neglected topic of his relations with client kings, or his diplomatic contacts with kings and peoples beyond the empire; nor with his role as general, and his relations with the army and with individual soldiers’ .
* In the second edition of his book Millar added an ‘Afterword’, reflecting further on the absences from, and reactions to it.” He emphasises again that the book was consciously about the emperor and his civilian subjects; he knew that Brian Campbell’s The Emperor and the Roman Army, 31 BC-AD 235 was already in preparation.'° He acknowledges further though that the book did not deal with the visual image of the emperor, the imperial cult and the role of the emperor as priest, or sufficiently with the journeys of the emperor.!!
Thus to produce a comprehensive and satisfying treatment of the emperor is challenging. Certainly this volume, like the Symposium on which it is based, does not claim to be the last word on the Byzantine emperor, or even to cover all salient aspects of the Byzantine emperor; that would be impossible in a conference of 15 main papers and a number of short communications, and in a book of 17 chapters. The approach taken to organising the conference and the volume was to address a range of particular and important aspects covering the chronological span of the empire, though the Middle Byzantine period receives more representation than Early or Late Byzantium. The volume sticks to the five aspects chosen for the conference though orders them slightly differently, as follows: Part I: Dynasty: Imperial families; Part Il: The emperor’s men: Court and empire; Part II: The emperor as ruler: Duties and ideals; Part IV: Imperial literature: Emperor as subject and author; and Part V: The material emperor: Image, space and empire. Many of the chapters, however, cut across these part divisons, as will be clear from the following overview of the volume.
Part I: Dynasty: Imperial families consists of four chapters, taking us from the so-called Julio-Claudians to the Palaiologoi. In Chapter 1 Mark Humphries tracks imperial succession from Augustus to the Theodosians. As is well known, the Roman empire did not have codified laws of succession, so different principles could co-exist. There was the sentiment that succession should be dynastic, passing from family member to family member, typically from father to son, but at the same time there also existed the view that it was the person best qualified for the role of emperor that should succeed to imperial power. Taking as his starting point the report in the history of Ammianus Marcellinus that in 364 the comes domesticorum Dagalaifus advised Valentinian I not to take his brother Valens as co-emperor but to choose someone else, to put love of the state over love of his family, Humphries surveys imperial sucession over five centuries.
His main focus is the Early Byzantine period, from Constantine to the end of the Theodosian dynasty, and he argues that dynastic succession was the norm, though ‘there were many different ways of constructing dynastic legitimacy . .. and dynastic claims usually operated alongside other markers of legitimacy, including military success and religious rectitude’. In Chapter 2 Mike Humphreys asks the question ‘to what extent did dynasties actually matter?’ in relation to the Heraclians (610-695, 705-711). Considering the views of George Ostrogorsky that the Heraclians constituted the first Byzantine dynasty and Dagron that it was the Isaurians (717-802) who deserved this recognition, Humphreys reviews what distinguishes this particular family.
He finds that its presentation of itself did vary over time, being explicitly dynastic until the reign of Constantine IV, and then drawing more on alternative justifications and models of rulership, turning from David to Christ and from Constantine I to Justinian I (527-565); once again we witness the alternative means of legitimisation available to Byzantine emperors. Humphreys concludes that ‘rather than being its first dynasty, the Heraclians reveal the limits as much as the potential of dynasty in seventh-century Byzantium’. In Chapter 3 Mark Masterson brings us to the Macedonian dynasty, addressing the infamously odd fact that Basil II did not take a wife. Questioning the evidence for a commonly accepted view that religious reasons motivated Basil, Masterson reopens the case for the factor of same-sex desire, through an oration of Symeon the New Theologian and by setting same-sex relationships and attitudes to them within the cultural context of the time.
It transpires that the Byzantines may have had less of a problem with such relationships than might be assumed. The fact remains that Basil’s decision not to marry remains odd within standard male imperial behaviour (only one other emperor did not marry, Constans I); as Masterson says, ‘Basil’s decision not to wed and play a direct part in the continuation of the Macedonian line was a momentous one’. In Chapter 4, the final chapter of Part I, Dimitri Korobeinikov focuses on a specific text to explore questions of dynasty in Late Byzantium. This text is a poem written by Manuel Philes which mentions a certain Demetrios Soultanos Palaiologos. Korobeinikov carefully tracks the identity of this individual, and this reveals a dynastic relationship between the Byzantine imperial family and the Seljuks of Rim, through a marriage in the thirteenth century. This dynastic relationship reflects the altered political status of the Byzantine empire by the thirteenth century, a sign of the ‘harsh political reality’ of the power of the Seljuks.
Part I: The emperor’s men: Court and empire consists of three chapters, again taking us from Early to Late Byzantium. In Chapter 5 Meaghan McEvoy focuses on two powerful eastern families and their fortunes in court politics and government in the fifth and early sixth centuries, the Anthemii and the Ardaburii, the former a Roman family, the latter ‘a non-Roman, unashamedly “barbarian” family’. McEvoy also discusses the Theodosian dynasty itself, thus her chapter links strongly with Part I, touching especially on the issue of succession. It was the decision of the Theodosians to avoid marriage — most famously demonstrated in the embracing of virginity by Pulcheria, the sister of Theodosius II — that ultimately brought about its extinction (thus anticipating the case of Basil II and the fate of the Macedonian dynasty). McEvoy contrasts the failed ‘non-alliance policy’ of the Theodosians with the long-lived power and influence of the Anthemii and Ardaburii. Shut out from marriage with the imperial family, these families in effect formed military dynasties themselves.
As McEvoy observes, while ‘the Theodosians died out, these military factions would dominate the course of eastern court politics for almost the next half century’. The chapter also demonstrates that ‘despite the pious and civilian image of the court [of Theodosius II], military advisers were never far from the centre of power’. In Chapter 6 Jonathan Shepard considers counsellors of the emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118), focusing in particular on a group of outsiders, the Latins, and examining the role they played in Alexios’ ‘Pivot to the West’. One thinks of Alexios’ plans to secure military support against the Turks as well as his desire to counter the western threat of the Normans, but as Shepard shows, Alexios had wider ambitions than this. Amongst his counsellors and contacts were Latin priests and monks, whose assistance the emperor also sought to attempt to achieve ‘Christian consensus’.
Thus Shepard’s chapter is about how the emperor sought to harness a particular group of his counsellors to help him achieve his military and religious objectives, a model that ‘lived on — in the form of his grandson Manuel Komnenos’. Chapter 7, the final chapter in Part II, brings us back to the later empire and its changed fortunes. Jonathan Harris explores the identity of the men who served the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, amongst whom were not just native Byzantines but outsiders. Harris demonstrates that despite the drastically reduced fortunes of the empire at this time individuals were still willing to serve the final Byzantine emperors, who wielded ‘a kind of moral authority that was out of all proportion to their political power’, maintaining a vital ‘residual prestige’ even at the end.
Part III: The emperor as ruler: Duties and ideals consists of two chapters, on law and war. At the Symposium this section also included a paper on the religious role of the emperor, Michael Griinbart’s examination of the emperor’s relationship with the patriarch. Regrettably this paper was not able to be included in the volume but there is coverage of the emperor’s religious role provided in other sections: in particular in Part II, Jonathan Shepard’s Chapter 6, which includes discussion of the religious plans of Alexios I Komnenos as has been seen; in Part IV, Oscar Prieto Dominguez’s Chapter 11 examines the image of Theophilos (829-842) in iconodule sources and deals with the role of emperors within the definition of Orthodoxy; and in Part V, Alicia Walker’s Chapter 15 examines ceremonial and imperial images within Hagia Sophia and deals with both the transition of the emperor into ecclesiastical status at particular ceremonial moments and also his relationship with the patriarch within the context of utilisation of the church. The chapters on law and war can also touch on the emperor and religion. In Chapter 8 Bernard Stolte deals succinctly with the emperor and the law.
He considers the classical idea of law as king of all things and its continuation in Byzantium, and the Byzantine attitude to the relationship between the emperor and the law. This was a relationship heavily advertised by emperors themselves, most famously Justinian I in the sixth century and Basil I and Leo VI in the ninth and tenth centuries. Infamously, under Basil I there was produced the Eisagoge which contained a statement which asserted that the patriarch embodied law and was above the emperor, but Stolte points out that this idea is unique to this text; it seems to have been a draft or a one-off, perhaps reflecting the ambitions of the patriarch Photios. Stolte also touches on the role of the emperor in receiving and responding to petitions, an aspect so central to Fergus Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World, and petitioners are also encountered in Lynn Jones’ Chapter 16 in Part V, in which she focuses on emperors ‘on the road’.
Ultimately, as Stolte asserts, when it came to law the emperor ‘not only had a monopoly of legislation, but also had the last word in court. Indeed, for practical purposes the basileus was the nomos’. Chapter 9 turns to the question of the military role of the emperor, touched on elsewhere in the volume too, such as McEvoy’s Chapter 5 in Part II, and Savvas Kyriakidis’ Chapter 14 on the history of John Kantakouzenos, in Part IV. Frank Trombley and I concentrate on textual accounts of the military activities of Byzantine emperors in the Middle Byzantine period in particular. Focusing on historiography and informed by ideals found in military manuals, we draw out a range of duties emperors are depicted as fulfilling: organising, directing and funding the army, participating in campaigns, providing leadership by example, demonstrating military expertise and intelligence, and securing and acknowledging divine support for military activities and successes. These depictions provide a sense of what was expected of emperors in the military arena, but first and foremost they are rhetorical constructs designed to assess whether emperors were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ rulers.
This brings us neatly to Part [V: Imperial literature: Emperor as subject and author. This part has the most chapters, five in total, but in effect of course almost all chapters in the volume deal with images of emperors in literature. Chapter 10 deals with a form of literature fundamental to accessing concepts of what an emperor was like and what he did: imperial panegyric. John Vanderspoel focuses on the Early Byzantine period, when panegyrics are much in evidence compared to the early and high Roman empire; there survives, for instance, the famous Panegyrici latini. Vanderspoel’s approach to the subject is to consider the function of imperial panegyric. He argues that it had an important role to play within communication between emperor and subject, and could play an active role in discourse, rather than being ‘mere flattery’, a concept he challenges anyway.
He asserts that ‘political discourse and independent political thought continued to be possible’ in the empire. Panegyric could also be a vehicle for criticism. He provides some particular case studies, from Themistius and Julian, to illustrate his points. He reflects the more recent appreciation that panegyric is a type of literature of the first interest for historians studying emperors, rather than a hideous embarrassment. Chapter | | also deals with an idealising form of literature, hagiography. Oscar Prieto Dominguez analyses how the image of the ‘iconoclast’ emperor Theophilos transitioned from one of heretic to saint in hagiography. Effectively the emperor’s reputation was rescued through the dynastic impetus of his widow, the empress Theodora, who was acting as regent for their young son Michael III. Prieto Dominguez also emphasises that empress saints have received a great deal of study while emperor saints have not, reinforcing the observation that emperors have been neglected as a subject compared to empresses. Chapter 12 deals with one of the most famous of Byzantine texts — one that features in several chapters in the volume (Chapters 2, 15, 16) — the Book of Ceremonies.
Prerona Prasad analyses its prefaces to understand the project of the Macedonian Constantine VII to re-establish his dynastic authority after the fall of the Lekapenids, who had pushed him into the shadows. Prasad highlights that in this restoration narrative there was a strong emphasis on paternal legacy within the Macedonian dynasty, Constantine looking back to the achievements of his father, Leo VI, and grandfather Basil I, and forward to the reign of his own son, Romanos II; for instance, Constantine also produced a work of advice on foreign affairs for Romanos II, the De administrando imperio. In Chapter 13 we return to issues of panegyric again, Nikolaos Chrissis analysing orations of Niketas Choniates written at the court in Nicaea under Theodore I Laskaris, after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the Fourth Crusade. Choniates of course is best known for his History, and Chrissis shows how the orations reflect similar ideas to the critical ones found there, despite the orations ostensibly being vehicles to present the ideology of the Nicaean court.
Like Vanderspoel, Chrissis argues that the orations are not mere flattery but can provide advice for the emperor, and can suggest ‘a political programme’ to him. In Chapter 14 we move further into the late empire, and come face to face with an emperor who was also an historian, John Kantazkouzenos, the author of the ‘only surviving history compiled by a Roman emperor’. Savvas Kyriakidis provides a wide-ranging analysis of the roles of a Byzantine emperor revealed in the history of John. For example, the chapter deals with the sacred character of the imperial office, the virtues emperors were expected to display, imperial ideology, issues of legitimacy and dynastic rights, the ceremonial role of the emperor, the rite of coronation, succession, the role and organisation of co-emperors, the military duties of the emperor, and relations with officials. Kyriakidis also emphasises the contrast between ideal and reality, reflecting on how the empire had changed by the time of the later empire. He observes in his conclusion that ‘Kantakouzenos strives to paint a traditional portrait of the emperor which seems to ignore political and cultural changes. However, the History cannot conceal the fact that political and military realities prompted important changes in the function and prestige of the imperial office’.
The final section, Part V: The material emperor: Image, space and empire, consists of three chapters, focusing on emperors and material culture. At the Symposium this section also included a paper by Eurydike Georganteli on the emperor and coinage. Regrettably this paper was not able to be included in the volume but there is coverage of coinage in this section in Mark Redknap’s chapter, based on his public lecture for the Symposium. Further, in Part I, Humphreys’ chapter includes discussion of the coinage of the Heraclian dynasty. In Chapter 15 Alicia Walker focuses on some of the most famous images of Byzantine emperors, the imperial mosaics in Hagia Sophia, especially the much-discussed image of the emperor in proskynesis before an enthroned Christ in the lunette above the Imperial Door, an image commonly associated with Leo VI.
Walker combines her analysis of the images in Hagia Sophia with consideration of imperial ceremony conducted within the church, following the movements of the emperor as described in the Book of Ceremonies. The Great Church was the ‘site for the meeting of imperial and ecclesiastical authority’, and Walker comments on the sacred identity the emperor could acquire during these ceremonies. She asserts that in the mosaic above the Imperial Door the emperor is depicted ‘in an ambiguous state, as both the all-powerful earthly ruler and the all-humble subject of Christ. He is shown as a privileged witness of theophany and as a high-ranking member of the heavenly court’. In Chapter 16 Lynn Jones is also concerned with ceremony, in the setting of the palace. She focuses in particular on the ‘campaign palace’, the location of the emperor when he was on the road, away from Constantinople.
She emphasises the organisation of the staging of formal audiences with the emperor, and the portability of the objects used for such occasions, not just on campaign but within the Great Palace itself in Constantinople. She argues that “we [should] broaden the definition of palace, and privilege function over buildings’. Once again we think about the relationship between emperors and non-Byzantines, and Jones describes palaces as ‘stages, on which the wealth and power of the empire was displayed’.
In the final chapter, Chapter 17, Mark Redknap is also concerned with the relationship of the emperor and empire with the outside world. Through a range of archaeological evidence, he explores Byzantium’s connections — ‘perceived or real’ — with Britain, and Wales in particular. Inscriptions, coins, pots, luxury items such as metal work and silks, all come under consideration, as do the people themselves. In addition, Redknap considers Welsh collections and collectors. Of particular interest is the significant coin collection of the National Museum Wales itself, and Redknap analyses the depiction of emperors on this coinage. Given that the Symposium took place in Wales for the first time, Redknap’s chapter forms a fitting conclusion to the volume, illustrating both Welsh historical connections with, and continued interest in, Byzantium.
Having provided an overview of the chapters some final thoughts on the volume as a whole are in order. As already noted, many of the chapters cut across the imposed subject divisions, expanding the coverage of the chosen subjects. As also noted above, the volume does not aspire to completeness, an impossible task in such a volume anyway. Other aspects of emperors could have been addressed, some of these pointed to by the volume itself. Despite the desire to give emperors as much attention as empresses, it is clear that empresses need to be discussed too in relation to their male counterparts, given for instance the significance of Constantinian women highlighted by Humphries, and the Amorian Theodora by Prieto Dominguez. It would have been interesting to consider gender further too, for instance in relation to both Pulcheria and Basil II not getting married. Byzantinists do not agonise over the fact that imperial women might not get married; this surely tells us something about gender attitudes within Byzantium as well as the gender attitudes of those who study it. No one, to my knowledge, has suggested that Pulcheria had same-sex desires. Ceremonial features strongly in the volume, and certain rituals merit more attention, such as coronation, which was touched on by Kyriakidis.
The court setting and personnel of the emperor is also an important subject and could have received further attention; for instance, the volume features no discussion of the emperor’s relationship with eunuchs, ironically enough, though Basil the parakoimomenos does surface in relation to the key manuscript of the Book of Cermonies as well as his role in the reign of his great-nephew Basil II. The possible role of the emperor as author does appear in the volume, but could have been discussed further.'? On the other hand, many of these aspects are familiar ones and can be accessed elsewhere.'? More significant is that the volume features some key running themes. Dynasty, unsurprisingly, is a particular thread, and chimes with the recent notable increased interest in this aspect of emperors.'* Likewise, ideals of rulership come to the fore: the political, military and religious roles the emperor was expected to play feature in many of the chapters. Above all, the volume deals time and again with images of emperors — textual and visual — rather than necessarily emperors of flesh and blood. Byzantium was saturated with the idea of the emperor, conscious of its identity as the Roman empire. As such, the emperor is a subject that deserves and requires further detailed attention. It is hoped that this volume will both encourage and assist this.
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