Download PDF | (Short Histories) Dionysios Stathakopoulos - A Short History of the Byzantine Empire-Bloomsbury Academic (2023).
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Short Histories are authoritative and elegantly written introductory texts which offer fresh perspectives on the way history is taught and understood in the 21st century. Designed to have strong appeal to university students and their teachers, as well as to general readers and history enthusiasts, Short Histories comprise novel attempts to bring informed interpretation, as well as factual reportage, to historical debates. Addressing key subjects and topics in the fields of history, the history of ideas, religion, classical studies, politics, philosophy and Middle East studies, these texts move beyond the bland, neutral ‘introductions’ that so often serve as the primary undergraduate teaching tool.
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Preface to the revised edition
A Short History of the Byzantine Empire was published in 2014 as one of the first in a new series of books envisaged as ‘introductions with an edge’. My aim was to produce a clear account of the long history of the Byzantine Empire based on the latest research in all major European languages. I also wanted to highlight and explain ongoing debates in the field instead of providing a smoothed narrative. Furthermore, contrary to many comparable short histories of the Empire, I gave special emphasis to the economic, social and cultural changes within Byzantium, but also placed its history in the framework of developments in both the Latin Christian and the Islamic worlds.
It was very fortunate that the book was well received and became quite popular. Since its publication it went on to be translated in Estonian (2016), Modern Greek (2016), Turkish (2018), Chinese (2019) and Russian (2020), while a translation in Korean will be published soon. Many of the translators wrote to me with questions that made me rethink some of the book’s contents and make changes. At that point I was not expecting that a revised edition would be forthcoming, but I was very glad to take on the task when asked by my wonderful editor at Bloomsbury, Emily Drewe.
In this revised edition small factual mistakes were corrected, and the bibliography was significantly enlarged in order to incorporate more recent publications in English, but also many important studies in other languages that had been left out of the printed reference section in the first edition (and were available at the book’s dedicated website). Now the bibliography reflects much more clearly the research of colleagues around the world on which this book is based. Furthermore, I have made numerous changes throughout the text. In some instances, new research made existing interpretations obsolete and these were corrected. The progress of my own research has also made me modify some of my ideas. But perhaps more importantly, I have tried to streamline my arguments and to highlight my own views more clearly and explicitly. The result is, I hope, a better, more readable book; it is now up to you to decide whether you agree.
I would like to thank friends and colleagues whose input helped improve the book: Betsy Bolman, Natasha Constantinidou, Tonia Kiousopoulou, Telemachos Lounghis, Pagona Papadopoulou, Kostis Smyrlis, Vlada Stankovic and Yannis Stouraitis. In the revised edition there are a number of new illustrations and I would like to thank all the institutions and individuals that provided them. My heartfelt thanks go to the Very Reverend Archimandrite Ephraim, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Vatopedi, for granting me permission to use the image of the stunning late Byzantine icon on the book’s cover. I also owe special thanks to Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and Elder Gerasimos of the Monastery of Hagios Pavlos for arranging this. I am also very thankful to all my colleagues at the University of Cyprus for their very warm welcome (amid the pandemic, nonetheless) to my new professional home. Finally, I am grateful to Megan Harris and everyone at Bloomsbury for a brilliant cooperation.
Acknowledgements
For the past three years, give or take a week or two, my life revolved around this book. The journey was long and not always easy, and along the way I incurred many debts which I am very happy to acknowledge here.
Alex Wright at I.B.Tauris trusted me with this project and spearheaded it along the way — this book would not exist without him. The production team, Lisa Goodrum and Ricky Blue, as well as my copy editor Stephen Cashmore were wonderful to work with. At the earliest stage of this book Diana Newall and Barbara Rosenwein gave invaluable feedback on questions of organization and structure; it was Ludmilla Jordanova who helped me crack the key question of structure, effortlessly, over a cup of tea.
I am sure that I have driven everyone around me absolutely mad by always talking about this book in an alternating jubilant or desperate manner depending on whether a particular chapter was progressing or not. And so I am very grateful to all my colleagues and students at King’s College London as well as my friends and family for politely ignoring the fact that somehow, regardless of the context, I always brought the discussion back to Byzantium.
Yannis Stouraitis, Kostis Smyrlis, Alicia Simpson, Thierry Ganchou, Alessandra Bucossi, Angeliki Lymberopoulou and Sharon Gerstel will all recognize how a number of discussions we had profoundly shaped some of the key arguments in the book. Vlada Stankovi¢é, Dhwani Patel and Alessandra Bucossi read chapters in draft and made numerous helpful comments. Averil Cameron, Ioanna Rapti, Angelina Chatziathanasiou, Judith Herrin, Vaso Seirinidou and Solon Chouliaras all read a full draft of the book and made very valuable comments, corrections and suggestions. Not only did they prevent me from numerous slips and mistakes but more importantly they gave me the confidence to press on.
I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues who gave me photographs for this book. I would also like to acknowledge my thanks to Kay Ehling (Munich), Nadia Gerazouni (The Breeder Gallery, Athens) and Angeliki Strati (Kastoria) for their permission to reproduce works from their collections. Maria Cristina Carile provided me with the images from Ravenna and Petros Bouras-Vallianatos facilitated the permission to include the stunning image from the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos. Ioanna Rapti deserves my gratitude for her invaluable help in choosing and handling the images in this book.
This short history, however, would never have been written without the support and love of Konstantin Klein. He put up with my frequent tantrums with the patience of a particularly stoic saint; he was the first critical reader and the biggest fan of the manuscript as it was evolving, and so it gives me great pleasure to dedicate the finished work to him.
About the book
The introduction aims to place the Byzantine world in its chronological and geographical context as well as present some necessary background to the reign of Constantine I with which this book formally begins.
The main eight chapters (one to eight) are organized along the same principles. Half of each chapter is devoted to events (largely political history which in Byzantium includes matters pertaining to the Church and questions of dogma); the other half is taken up by the exploration of infrastructures (important issues of economic and social history) and environment (cultural history in the largest sense, dealing both with the material environment and the dominant intellectual trends in each period). Chapter nine picks up the narrative on the day following the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and brings it up to today. The appendices include a timeline of key events as well as a helpful overview of the major peoples that either fought with or against Byzantium through the centuries.
A short history covering more than one thousand years is unavoidably the result of selections and omissions. Consequently, and as a result of the extant sources, this book is top-heavy, dealing mostly with the upper echelons of Byzantine society; furthermore, it is centred on dominant rather than marginal groups and focuses mostly on men. In the annotated bibliography I have made an effort to address some of these implied omissions.
Finally, a note on transliteration: I have used the following system for rendering Greek names and place-names. Standard anglicized forms of personal names (Theodore, George, John, Thessalonica, Constantinople) will be used; all other names will be transcribed as closely to the Greek as possible, avoiding Latinized versions. Thus, Prokopios and not Procopius, Nikephoros, not Nicephorus and so on.
INTRODUCTION WHAT IS BYZANTIUM?
For most people Byzantium is not a familiar world. In English the word ‘byzantine’ is routinely used to characterize something as excessively complicated, while in French the expression ‘c’est Byzance’ refers to something superb and luxurious. So, words can be misleading, but what about bricks and stones? On the ground the remains of Byzantium fall largely into two categories: churches and walls. Churches are far more numerous and have received far greater attention. Their presence seems to corroborate the notion that Byzantium was a state for which the Church and matters of faith were absolutely central. The oftensumptuous decoration of these churches with mosaics, frescoes, icons and colourful marbles fascinates visitors and transports them to an almost timeless space focused on transcendence. Walls, by contrast, are usually overlooked. They are not very much to look at and they seem almost identical. A closer inspection, however, has its merits. Walls are the signs of a state with a very long history in which constant warfare against enemies from all directions was a defining trait. They were erected to protect important cities, torn down when these urban centres grew to make more space and they were constantly repaired and adorned with inscriptions to commemorate those who built them. Walls remind us of the history of a state and its people that did a lot more than just pray. The aim of this book is to put together a basic body of knowledge about this state, to challenge stereotypes about it by providing a straightforward and sober account and to place it firmly in the context of both the European and Middle Eastern Middle Ages. Because Byzantium held for most of its existence a position between East and West, partaking of both, but still following a different path, it is easy, even convenient, to overlook it. But, as I hope to show, Byzantium is an indispensable and fascinating part of European history. It needs to be taken seriously.
Even in this short opening section we are faced with a problem. Names are extremely important, even if we sometimes fail to question them as a result of convention and habit. The problem, in our case, is the name Byzantium. It refers to an ancient city (Byzantion in Greek), a colony of Megara. It was founded in the seventh century BCE on the spot of Constantinople and modern-day Istanbul. The actual term ‘Byzantine’ began to be more widely used in the sixteenth century (see Chapter 9) to denote the historical state that is the subject of this book. But this was a name that the citizens of that state would have understood very differently, namely as referring to someone from or living in Constantinople, never as a designation for their state. The people we call Byzantines called themselves Romans. In their minds, there was no break in the political existence between Augustus’ empire and their own state, and this was true in many ways. This self-designation can be found, for example, in the way that the rulers of the state called themselves emperors of the Romans in an unbroken line between the fourth and the fifteenth century. The eastern neighbours and enemies of this state adopted the term: both Seljuqs and Ottoman Turks referred to the state and its areas as Rum. In modern Greece, the self-designation romios (Roman, but meaning Greek) was current until at least the late twentieth century. However, a significant number of other states — both in the West as well as in the Balkans — termed the Empire ‘Greek’. As far as the West is concerned, it is easy to see why. Once an emperor of the Romans was crowned in Rome in 800 (see Chapter 4), the other empire could no longer be termed Roman as well; it was therefore called Greek or Constantinopolitan. Calling the Byzantine Empire ‘Constantinopolitan’ is quite straightforward: it is meant to reduce the potential sphere of authority and influence onto its capital, and to deny it the more universal claims that the adjective ‘Roman’ would entail. The term ‘Greek’ is much more ambivalent. It is true that Greek was the dominant language in the East since the Hellenistic period, but in the early Christian centuries the word itself had acquired negative connotations: it had come to mean pagan. In the last centuries of the Empire, when its territories were largely limited to regions in what is geographically modern Greece, most people embraced the self-designation of Greeks.
The term ‘Byzantine’ began to be universally employed as a designation for this state in the nineteenth century, completely replacing the designation ‘Greek Empire’ or ‘Empire of the Greeks’ to the effect that such terms would seem incomprehensible and confusing to us today. The self-designation of ‘Roman’ was thought, mainly by Western historians, to be misleading when applied to the period, say, after 300. Adjectives were introduced to make the distinction clearer — East Roman, for example, which suggests a focus on the Eastern Mediterranean world and the Levant and, therefore, excludes the long Byzantine presence in Italy. More recently, the term ‘Medieval Roman’ has been gaining momentum. It is true that changing an established name for a historical state and the disciplines that study it may seem difficult or awkward. There are those who propose sticking to the term ‘Byzantine’, but injecting it with new meaning, namely acknowledging that far from being merely a neutral early modern invention, it became an orientalist derogatory term that keeps its object distant and foreign. The debate is raging at the moment and it is very possible that the next edition of this book may carry a different title. But for now, the familiar term ‘Byzantine’ or ‘Byzantium’ will be used, but readers should be aware of its problematic and contested nature.
Once the question of the name is settled, we are faced with another important problem: chronology. It is simpler to start from the end: in May 1453, Constantinople was captured by the Ottomans, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire. Its beginnings are not as easy to pin down. Those who adopt a long-term perspective (as I do) set the birth of the Empire in the reign of Constantine I (324-37). In this we are following the selfperception of the Byzantines. Constantine is connected with two aspects that came to have a fundamental importance in the life of the Empire: he was the first Christian emperor and he founded Constantinople, the city that grew to become the capital of the Empire, remaining in this role until its conquest in 1453. Therefore, I see little reason to place the conventional start of Byzantine history at a later date — as long as it is clear that it is a convention and that no perfect or universally accepted alternative exists. This by no means implies that the state of the fourth century remained unchanged in its millennium of existence — nothing could be further from the truth. In my mind, however, the changes that the Empire underwent were never as radical as to produce a completely different state: until the end of the Empire, for example, the legal system was largely based on law going back to the Roman imperial period. The capital, its monuments, the imperial office, its institutions and ceremonial always consciously retained core elements that linked them to the past. If Constantine I embarked on a time machine and visited the last Byzantine emperor, his namesake Constantine XI, he would certainly be startled with the sad condition of the state and his capital, but he would still have been able to find plenty of familiar elements, not least a number of landmarks in the city he had founded.
States exist not only in time but also in space. The geographical extent of the Byzantine Empire underwent considerable fluctuation during its long history. We can compare its broad outlines to the movement of a wave. From a vast Roman Empire encompassing an area of almost four million square kilometres and extending from Britain to modern-day Algeria and from Portugal to Mesopotamia, it was divided administratively into an eastern and western part in 395 with the eastern part encompassing an area of around 1.4 million square kilometres and stretching roughly east of a line going from Belgrade to modern-day Libya (see Map 1). The division became permanent due to political developments, but it was reversed for a short period under Justinian I in the sixth century when the Mediterranean became an internal lake once more as a result of the wars of reconquest which re-integrated Italy, a strip in southern Spain and the areas of modern-day Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. This was a period of demographic and economic expansion in the East. In the period following Justinian’s death in 565, large parts of northern Italy as well as the holdings in Spain were lost, and from the second decade of the seventh century so were Egypt, Syria and Palestine — first to the Persians and after the 630s permanently to the Arabs — while the southern Balkans and especially Greece had largely slipped out of the effective control of Constantinople. By the end of the seventh century North Africa had been conquered as well, leaving the Empire with some areas in Italy (Sardinia, Calabria and Sicily, Naples and Rome with their hinterland, and a thin arch of land from Rimini all the way to the Dalmatian coast; see Map 2) and otherwise a clear focus on both sides of the Aegean — the Empire had effectively lost more than half of its territory. In the course of the following three centuries, Byzantium gradually managed first to stem the Arab onslaught and more or less fix a frontier zone, then to recover its dominion in the Balkans and finally to push towards the east and south in Anatolia and Syria. The territorial gains were neither spectacular nor very stable (see Map 3). The emergence of two formidable enemies from the second half of the eleventh century, the Normans in Italy and the Seljuqs in the East, ate away at the margins of the state, forcing it once more to a core in the southern Balkans and parts of Anatolia. The First Crusade (1096-9) changed the landscape in the Levant and on its coattails Byzantium managed to expand in Anatolia and Syria, but this was definitely checked in 1204, when the armies of the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople and fragmented the territory of the Byzantine Empire into dozens of smaller states. Reconquest came fairly fast in 1261, but for the last two centuries of its existence the Byzantine Empire was constantly shrinking: Anatolia was the first to go, most of it captured by the Ottoman Turks in the first half of the fourteenth century; the Balkan provinces quickly followed suit and by the last fifty years of its existence Byzantium merely consisted of a few city states, disjointed and connected to each other only by sea (see Map 4).
THE PHYSICAL WORLD
It is clear that some areas (modern Greece and Turkey) belonged to the core of the state, while others either formed part of it for prolonged periods of time (southern Italy) or became marginal within the long history of its existence because they were lost at a fairly early stage (Egypt, Palestine, Syria and North Africa). The landscapes in all these regions obviously shaped a variety of aspects in the life of the Byzantine state: its defence, agricultural regime and production, networks of exchange and communications.
Mountains come first: the long mountain ranges of the Pontic Alps and the Taurus—Anti-Taurus range flanking Anatolia in the north and the south, respectively; in the Balkans, the Pindos range and the Dinaric Alps in the west, Rhodope and the Balkan range in the north-east. The more or less protected corridors between the mountains formed the usual entry points of invaders from the east and the north, respectively. The Caucasus and its Christian nations, Armenia and Iberia (modern Georgia), were only rarely under direct Byzantine lordship, but the Empire often extended its influence there through the use of diplomacy and the establishment of client rulers. This was the primary field of conflicts between Byzantium and first Persia, then the Caliphate and ultimately the Turks, over interregional jurisdiction and control of neighbouring areas.
Rivers were important as natural barriers (the Danube, between Roman territory and the various nomads of the steppes), as passageways (the systems of the Danube, the Dniester, the Dnieper and the Don providing links to central and northern Europe and to Scandinavia) and as the life force of agriculture (the Nile, whose rich alluvial deposits made Egypt the single-most-productive Roman province; to a significantly lesser extent the rivers in north-eastern Greece).
Agriculture foremost and animal husbandry were the driving forces of the economy and as such plains were crucial, if rare on the whole. The western and southern parts of Anatolia were the most fertile and densely populated, with a number of rivers providing water for agriculture as were the western shores of the Black Sea. Much smaller and fragmented plains were to be found in the Balkans. The Anatolian plateau, the largest area that remained part of the Empire almost down to its fall, is for its most part semi-arid which did not hinder settlement, agriculture and animal husbandry. Bithynia, across the water from Constantinople, and the hinterland of the capital in Thrace, on the European side, formed a large metropolitan area as a result of the pull of the capital. Bithynia linked Constantinople to the plateau, and Thrace and the Roman highways linked it to the inner part of the Balkans and Italy. The Via Egnatia cut across Macedonia to the Albanian coast, providing an easy link to Italy across the water. The Via Traiana, the military highway, connected Constantinople with Adrianople/Edirne, Serdica/Sofia and Singidunum/Belgrade. Constantinople itself was strategically placed with connections to the Aegean via the Sea of Marmara, and to the Black Sea through the Bosporus.
The Aegean Sea was always an internal lake for Byzantium. The very large number of islands fostered close connections to the mainland on either side. The Adriatic provided an easy connection to southern Italy, largely Calabria and Apulia, which remained under Byzantine control for long periods up to the last quarter of the eleventh century as well as to Rome through an ancient network of roads. Finally, deserts separated settled populations with their practice of agriculture from nomadic peoples in Syria, Palestine and North Africa.
When it comes to the demography and settlement density of the Byzantine Empire it is important to stress from the outset that we can only operate with guesswork; for no time of its existence is it possible to produce exact figures. Demography, obviously, followed territorial fluctuation, but there were other important factors affecting it such as the outbreaks of plague pandemics (from 541 to 750 and again from 1347 to 1453 and beyond) and warfare - which both directly claimed human lives, but also created confusion and insecurity, significantly affecting reproduction rates as well as sparking migration. Roughly speaking, we may begin with a positive demographic trend in Late Antiquity in the Eastern Mediterranean: urban centres and the countryside were both flourishing.
Constantinople became the biggest city in Europe, reaching a population of 400,000 or more up to the outbreak of the plague. Other cities were equally populous: Antioch (150,000-200,000), Alexandria (200,000-300,000); by contrast, Rome suffered a severe demographic breakdown in the fifth century, remaining a shadow of its imperial self at around 100,000 — and yet it was still the largest city by far in the West. The combination of plague and warfare (against the Persians and then the Arabs) from the late sixth century onwards led to demographic decline — the population was most probably halved by the late eighth century. There was an influx of Slavic populations settling south of the Danube from the late sixth century onwards; with the exception of Bulgaria, these populations were gradually assimilated (i.e. they became Christian and adopted the Greek language in large numbers).
The same period saw specific population groups (e.g. Armenians or Slavs) moved around either for political or military reasons or to repopulate certain regions. Recovery from around 800 was initially slow, but steady, and sustained a positive trend up to the early fourteenth century. Despite the loss of territory, the Empire experienced a demographic and economic boom, particularly visible in the twelfth century, with the proliferation of cities — perhaps reaching a stage comparable to the conditions before the sixth century. Certainly, Constantinople had become again a vast metropolis.
The traumatic events of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 did not stop this positive trend, but the combination of plague and warfare — both civil wars and widespread enemy incursions — in the fourteenth century led to demographic breakdown; by then the state was in rapid decline anyway. The last centuries of the Empire saw the influx of various ethnic groups: after 1204, a significant number of Westerners (mostly French and Italians) settled in various parts of Greece, but their overall presence paled in comparison with the Albanian and then Turkish migrations to Greece after the mid-fourteenth century.
These demographic changes had clear repercussions in the linguistic landscape of the Empire. Up to the loss of the eastern territories in the seventh century, Byzantium was a clearly multilingual empire. Greek was the dominant language on the ground, but large areas had their own languages that were not just spoken among the inhabitants but were also used to produce a wide variety of literary genres: Syriac in Syria and Palestine, Coptic in Egypt. Latin was dominant in the West but remained important in the East in the imperial administration, especially in law and the army, until the seventh century. It was equally the principal language in Italy, although Sicily and southern Italy had important communities of Greek speakers.
When the Empire was on its way to becoming an increasingly homogenous state after the seventh century, the supremacy of Greek was almost absolute. However, this must be nuanced: at least from the eleventh century onwards numerous foreigners settled permanently in Byzantium — especially in the large urban centres and particularly in Constantinople. Though their numbers were never very large, they formed communities (often with their own churches and mosques) and contributed to the cosmopolitan character of their place of residence.
As in most pre-modern societies, the majority of the Byzantines lived off the land. Agricultural production and animal husbandry provided food and fiscal revenues for the state.
The agricultural regime was defined by a command of natural resources in breadth and not in depth — climatic fluctuations could have extremely negative results on production especially if prolonged (i.e. affecting more than one harvest cycle) or combined (e.g. drought followed by excessive rainfall). Roughly speaking, the climatic conditions in the Byzantine world were not very different from those of today. The coastal areas were characterized by temperate climates with hot, dry summers and moderate winters without snow or frost, while the mainland, where more often than not mountains acted as barriers to the sea, experienced colder winters with snowfall and more precipitation. The most densely settled areas over time were those with coastal climates that favoured agricultural production; marginal areas were settled in times of demographic expansion when the need for more land made populations eager to engage with more taxing environmental conditions.
Finally, we should recognize that a number of landscapes of the Byzantine world have changed considerably and look quite different in our times. Erosion, deforestation, the silting of ports and modern largescale hydrological projects (such as the dredging of lakes and marshes or the creation of dams and artificial lakes) have made a major impact. Classe, Ravenna’s port, for example, dried up by the eighth century. The large-scale building of dams in southern Turkey submerged a number of important Byzantine frontier cities, while deforestation as a result of the use of timber for shipbuilding, mining, smelting and heating has changed the coastal areas of Dalmatia, Cyprus and the modern Lebanon.
FROM CRISIS TO CONSTANTINE |
The reign of Constantine I (sole emperor: 324-37) must be placed within the context of the period that preceded it. This can be divided into two main phases: the so-called ‘crisis’ of the third century (235-84) and its successful termination, which brought about some major transformative changes in the Empire (284-337).
The term ‘crisis of the third century’ is conventionally applied to the troubled era between 235 (the usurpation of Maximinus, an army officer of equestrian rank) and the ascent of Diocletian (another army officer) to the throne in 284. During this short period more than twenty individuals were proclaimed Roman emperors, of which the majority either fell in battle or most commonly were killed by their own armies when the tide was turning towards one of their adversaries. The period is generally marked by constant warfare, often on many fronts at the same time: in the east against Persia, in the south against nomadic raiders in North Africa and in the west and north against Germanic tribes on the Rhine and Danube. Dealing with multiple enemies stretched the capacities of the Empire almost to breaking point: campaigns were very expensive and often prompted rulers to increase taxation (as expected, an unpopular and much-resisted measure).
The coinage was constantly debased, leading to hoarding and inflation. Furthermore, as the majority of these shortlived emperors came from the military, they faced an almost impossible task: to effectively counter enemy threats at the margins of the Empire while not neglecting the powerful centre, Rome and its Senate. The city was obviously still very important; its millennium was celebrated in 246 and emperors, as a rule, tried to control it and be acclaimed and recognized in it. However, the constant campaigns made it necessary to spend considerable time in various other cities that were much closer to the theatres of war: for example, Sirmium (in northern Serbia) for the Danube front, Trier (in modern Germany) for the Rhine or Antioch (Antakya in southern Turkey) for the Persian front.
It is clear that most of these emperors intended to counter the Empire’s problems and to revert to a pacified state, ruled by a strong monarch. A fair number of measures designed to address previous shortcomings were taken. These included sharing power (mostly with one’s sons), the development of more flexible army commands and more permanent field armies, as well as a growing emphasis on the person of the emperor, often linked with deities chosen to demonstrate power and security.
The period was also marked by the outbreak of a pandemic from the early 250s onwards, which claimed many victims, even some emperors. The overall dire military situation and the ravages of the disease prompted some rulers (such as Decius) to favour a metaphysical understanding of this critical phase: the current troubles were perceived as being caused by angry gods displeased at the abandonment of traditional worship. The solution was the imposition of religious uniformity and one of its side effects became the persecution of the growing Christian community for almost a decade in the 250s.
The major change took place in 284 when Diocletian came to power. Initially it seemed a repetition of the usual mode: he was an army officer who was made emperor by the troops. But this time change came about as he disrupted the vicious cycle of the past generations with a bold programme of all-encompassing reforms that gained momentum. Diocletian ruled alone only for a short period of time; he chose Aurelius Maximianus as his Caesar in 285, naming him Augustus in the following year. Both rulers placed themselves under a protective deity: Jupiter for Diocletian and Hercules for Maximianus. In 293 the ruling team expanded to two more, junior, members Constantius Chlorus and Galerius, thus providing a designation for the period - Tetrarchy (rule of four) (Figure I.1).
Territories were divided among them and each controlled a vast area of the Empire, making it possible to react more swiftly to enemy incursions and to deal with administrative problems on the spot: Diocletian controlled the East from Nikomedeia (Izmit, in Turkey), while Galerius resided in Sirmium and Thessalonica and was in charge of the Danube frontier, Maximianus’ residence was at Milan and his territory was Italy and Africa, while Constantius resided in Trier and was responsible for the Rhine border, Gaul and Britain.
The new members were linked to the older emperors by each marrying one of their daughters and becoming adopted by them. For the first time power was shared not with one’s blood kin but with men chosen for their leadership qualities. Diocletian naturally remained the driving force of the project and his programme focused on securing the Empire, both externally and internally, with a strong emphasis on traditional Roman values.
The system proved its worth quickly: the Empire was successful against the Persians and at the same time managed to restore order and Roman rule in Britain while protecting the Rhine and Danube frontiers. The military was one of the key areas of Diocletian’s efforts, especially the strengthening of the Empire’s defences: city walls and fortresses were built and the provincial armies enlarged. By the end of the century, this respite of security allowed the Tetrarchy to focus on internal changes. The control of the state over the Empire and its inhabitants was tightened. The number of the provinces doubled to around 100, but new intermediary structures were placed between them and the government: twelve dioceses and above them three or four praetorian prefectures — all with the aim of improving administrative control and the collection of taxes.
The latter was crucial to finance the most important expenditures in the state, the payment of the large armies which reached some 400,000 men. Diocletian abolished the privileged fiscal status of Italy and Egypt and imposed a uniform taxation throughout the Empire, most of which was now to be paid in cash. A regular census, first every five, then every fifteen, years was introduced to ensure that the tax registers were accurate, although the complexity of such processes and the frequent lack of cooperation at local level meant that censuses were never frequent and that tax registers were as a rule inexact.
The impetus to record and streamline taxation was combined with a reform of the desperately debased currency (Diocletian simply doubled its face value) and an edict fixing maximum prices for commodities and services — all measures destined to curb inflation. To ensure that revenues and production would remain as stable as possible and given that agricultural slaves were rare and thus expensive, the free labour force increasingly became tied to the land (colonate) and would gradually become hardly different from slaves in terms of their social status.
To keep the momentum going divine favour was crucial: it is perhaps in this light that the persecution of oriental cults deemed as subversive can be best understood. First the dualist sect of the Manichees and then in 303 the Christians were singled out as dangerous to the welfare of the state. The Great Persecution as it came to be known, though not uniformly practised throughout the Empire (Constantius seemed to have been quite mild in its application in the West), signified a concerted effort to uproot and destroy the Christian community, attacking both the material property of the church and practising individuals. A large number of martyrs perished in the period, hailed by the Christians as athletes of Christ, their new heroes.
The successful Tetrarchic regime came to a crucial point in 305 when the senior emperors had reigned for twenty years and the junior ones for a decade. As envisaged by Diocletian, the senior emperors resigned — unheard of in Roman history — and the junior ones took their places, while their own positions were filled not by their sons (Constantine, son of Constantius and Maxentius, son of Maximianus) but by two new individuals: Maximinus (a nephew of Galerius) and Severus. If the first two decades of the Tetrarchy had proven little short of miraculous for their efficacy towards the enemies of the Empire and the concord among the four rulers, given the troubled period that preceded them, the next twenty years were nothing like that. In fact, one way of looking at the period 305-24 is to see it as one man’s efforts to restore the rule of the Empire to one person: Constantine I (Figure I.2).
Constantine I was the son of Constantius and a woman called Helena — probably low-born and perhaps a mere concubine. Upon his father’s death he was declared emperor — whether junior or senior matters little at this point — by his father’s troops in York in 306. In any case, with Severus killed in 307, Constantine married Maximianus’ daughter Fausta and was elevated to Augustus. A year later current and former members of the Tetrarchy met at Carnuntum, outside Vienna, to take stock of the situation and plan for the future.
Licinius was added to the ruling team and a little later all four Tetrarchs were named augusti. But the second recasting of the imperial college was not to be as stable as the first. Civil wars between the leaders became again endemic: first Maximianus made a brief reappearance and rose against Constantine only to be swiftly defeated. His son, the shunned Maxentius, followed suit and barricaded himself in Rome; Constantine defeated him in 312, earning the gratitude of the populace and the Senate, as preserved to this day on the Arch of Constantine in the city.
In 311 Galerius died after officially ending the persecution of Christians and offering them freedom of worship; posterity wrongly attributed this to a supposed edict in Milan, issued by Licinius and Constantine in 313. Maximinus rushed to capture Galerius’ territories in Asia Minor, subsequently renewing Christian persecution. In 313 he was defeated and killed by Licinius, who in the same year married Constantine’s sister and thus reinforced the bonds between the two surviving emperors. But peace between them would not last. Between 316 and 324 Constantine waged war against Licinius, twice invading his territories, and he was successful in both instances using the religious card (Licinius had persecuted Christians and Constantine portrayed himself as their liberator).
Constantine’s final victory against Licinius in 324 at Chrysopolis (modern Uskiidar), on the Asian side of the Bosporus, marks the end of the Tetrarchy and the beginning of his sole rule. The choice of a new residence to mark this momentous event fell on the Ancient Greek colony of Byzantion at the intersection of Europe and Asia, which was renamed Constantinople, city of Constantine, just across the water from Chrysopolis. The emperor began an ambitious building programme to adapt the city to its new ceremonial and political function. He also initiated a series of administrative reforms, in a way completing and pushing forward Diocletian’s agenda.
In fiscal terms, his most important and lasting reform was that of the currency. In 309 or 310 a new gold coin of great purity, the solidus, was created with a weight of about 4.5 grams and a fixed relation to the silver coin (which quickly declined in importance) and to the bronze coinage that was the common currency for everyday transactions. The metal reserves required for it came from some of the areas previously ruled by now-defunct Tetrarchs, but also from the sometimes vast confiscated properties of disgraced officials and rulers as well as the fortunes of pagan temples (see Chapter 1). The solidus was from the start a very stable coin and it remained so until the eleventh century. Taxes and imperial office holders were now paid in it, which suggests how its flow operated: the state demanded taxes paid in gold, which it then used to remunerate those in its pay.
Because of its success and stability it reflected positively on Constantine’s project of uniting the Empire under his reign, and also fostered trade. The introduction of the chrysargyron, a new tax on commercial transactions in this period, suggests that revenues from trade were significant. The state had its own factories for essential commodities such as arms, and it ensured the provision of raw materials either on its own properties or, whenever something was lacking, through contributions in kind and compulsory purchases in the provinces.
The army was another sector that Constantine reformed. He increased its size slightly, but also changed the structural emphasis from that of the Diocletianic era by putting together a sizeable field army, headed by the emperor himself, who would be able to intervene wherever it was necessary. Furthermore, he took measures to cement state support for the military, for example, by donating abandoned lands to veterans and granting them tax exemptions. This way he could ensure undisrupted agricultural production and curb any discontent among the military ranks. Finally, he made the imperial guard that was stationed in Constantinople the recipient of free food rations.
But perhaps the aspect of Constantine’s reign that has received most attention has been his relationship with Christianity. He certainly died a Christian (see Chapter 1), but the question is: when and why did he begin to favour this religion? During the onset of the Great Persecution in 303 he was already about thirty years old — contrary to later propaganda that claimed he was a young boy at the time — and seemingly did nothing to oppose it.
The Christian sources record a decisive turn and link it to his victory against Maxentius in 312: Constantine supposedly saw a vision in the sky that was read as the monogram XP, the first letters of the name Christ in Greek (XPIZTOZ). Pagan sources on the other hand speak of a solar vision of the emperor linked to Apollo already in 310. Most probably Constantine experienced the celestial phenomenon known as a solar halo, originally linked to Apollo or the Sol Invictus (the Invincible Sun, a deity that was very current in Tetrarchic circles and which had been revered by his father) only to reinterpret it a little later within a Christian context. If Constantine did not come up with this interpretation himself, Christian authors certainly were unambiguous about it: Eusebios of Caesarea, writing about the vision, records that it was accompanied by the Greek phrase En touto nika (in this [sign] conquer) (Figure I.3).
From 312 at the latest onwards Constantine’s support of Christianity was quite straightforward and consistent and can be seen, among other things in his foundation and endowment of churches, especially in Rome. The Christian response to Constantine was overwhelming. During periods of persecution Christians had feverishly expected the end of times to come - the old and weary world full of toil and suffering would give way to the eternal reign of Christ. The Roman Empire, identified with the worst enemy of God and its emperor as the Antichrist, was transformed in the Constantinian period into something radically different: the Empire and its universal peace made the dissemination of the Christian faith possible and became the vessel of salvation, while its emperor was seen as the last bulwark against the dreadful reign of the Antichrist. The reign of Christ and the reign of the Christian Roman emperor were gradually fused.
Now that Constantine was the one Roman emperor believing in the one true God, the keeping of peace within the community of the believers was all the more crucial. Already in the 310s he had actively intervened in the affairs of the Church in North Africa that was bitterly divided over those priests who had bowed to the pressure of persecution and had recanted. Their restitution after 313 caused a serious rift and the emperor tried to heal it by encouraging councils of bishops to debate the question and end the schism. Donatism (as the movement came to be called) was to have a long afterlife. But Constantine’s most spectacular involvement in the affairs of what he saw now as his church came in the 320s. An Egyptian priest, Areios expressed the complex relation between the persons in the Trinity in a way that seemed to deny Christ’s divinity: the Son was not eternally coexistent with the Father, since He had created Him.
There were those who sided with Areios (termed Arians), but a vigorous resistance to what was seen as heresy was mounted by the forceful and outspoken patriarch of Alexandria, Athanasios. As the rift kept growing it was again Constantine who summoned a general council in Nicaea in 325 for the matter to be debated. For the first time Christian bishops learned what it meant to enjoy the privileges of imperial favour, but at the same time the emperor also sowed the seeds of a particular Byzantine power dynamic between the emperor and the Church by not only attending the church council but also taking on a rather active role in its proceedings.
In a celebrated saying Constantine allegedly declared to the summoned bishops that he was ‘the bishop of those outside’. Areios’ doctrine was rejected at Nicaea: Father and Son were seen as consubstantial, sharing the same essence (homoousios; the novel term was coined to express this relationship). The disagreement was declared terminated, but it was only the start of a very turbulent period in Christian politics.
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