Download PDF | John Burke_ Roger Scott - Byzantine Macedonia_ Identity, Image and History_ Papers from the Melbourne Conference July 1995-Brill (2017).
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Introduction
These studies represent a selection of papers given at a conference on Byzantine Macedonia which was held at the University of Melbourne 10-17 July 1995 under the auspices of the Australian Institute for Macedonian Studies and with the participation of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, the University of Thessaloniki, the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, Melbourne. A further selection is also being published with the title Byzantine Macedonia: Art, Architecture, Music and Hagiography.
The need to divide the papers between the two volumes arose mainly from the number of papers offered for publication and partly from the separate requirements of the two organisations involved in the publication of the conference papers. The Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, which is responsible for this volume, is the academic body concerned with Byzantine Studies in Australia. The Australian Institute for Macedonian Studies, which initiated and was responsible for the conference itself, is concerned with promoting an awareness of Macedonian culture and heritage, and the second volume of papers is being published by the National Centre for Hellenic Studies and Research at La Trobe University. As editors we hope that in dividing the papers between the two volumes we have still managed to provide a thematic link for each volume while meeting as best we can the requirements of the two groups, though some degree of compromise has been necessary.
Thus although we would have dearly liked to have included many of the Art and Architecture papers in this Byzantina Australiensia volume, it seemed more sensible to place all Art and Architecture papers together in a volume more generally dealing with Macedonian culture along with some papers of more general interest. Similar thematic requirements also explain the selection made in this volume which, as the title indicates, deals with the identity, image and history of Byzantine Macedonia.
The conference was the third international conference on Macedonia organised by the Australian Institute for Macedonian Studies. As with its two earlier conferences on Ancient Macedonia (1988) and Macedonian Hellenism (1991), the conference organisers were able to add to our local strengths by bringing to Australia a distinguished group of scholars from Europe and America with, on this occasion, an appropriately strong representation from Thessaloniki. The Australian Institute for Macedonian Studies aimed at providing not merely an academic forum within the discipline but also at making this discussion accessible to the general community in Melbourne and at reaching the English-speaking audience in Australia rather than only the Hellenic one. So in addition to the more specific papers which were presented in a full programme between 9.00 am and 5.30 pm each day there was a public lecture each evening, generally followed by a dinner hosted by a different Melbourne Greek restaurant each night.
To ensure that papers were accessible to the full Melbourne public there was a requirement that all papers be delivered in English, the main language of the community, even though Melbourne also claims to be the world’s third largest Greek-speaking community (after Athens and Thessaloniki). In a few special cases papers were delivered in Greek or French but in these cases it was also determined that the published version be in English. Otherwise the conference might as well have been held in Thessaloniki rather than in the Greek diaspora.
This in turn did lead to some problems for both the contributors and the editors. In the case of perhaps only five of the papers published in the two volumes was English the native language of the speaker. Although this worked perfectly well during the actual presentation of the papers, recasting the papers for publication has been a delicate and time-consuming matter. This only partly explains the horrendous delay in actual publication.
The editors do greatly regret this delay. It has been largely due to local problems. The University of Melbourne decided to end its Modern Greek programme as part of a scheme to rationalise the study of languages at Victorian Universities. It was also intending to curtail its teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek by teaching the languages in alternate years and only to a low level. After this latter move was fortunately defeated, the University then separated Classics from Latin and Greek (if that can be understood) and did not replace several classics lectureships. These moves took their toll on both editors. We would not normally mention such events in an introduction but this has been a period of enormous change in Australian Universities, change which has affected not only the lives of the two editors and the editing of these papers but also the status of the disciplines which underpin Byzantine Studies. We only hope that the publication of these two volumes of papers presented at the University of Melbourne by such a large number of distinguished scholars from across the world will be at least some monument for Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek scholarship and help in the continuation of these studies at an Australian University.
The other major cause of delay is even more difficult to explain. Through no fault of the editors or the authors, five papers did not reach the editors until almost four years after the conference. The editors had simply assumed that these five authors had not wanted to publish their papers with the conference proceedings. Two of these papers involved not merely editing but translating. The conference organisers agreed to pay for a professional translator but in one case the translation, given to the editors only in May 2000, was quite inadequate. We can only apologise to the contributors for this inordinate delay.
In bibliographical abbreviations, Greek and other languages are transliterated according to the practice of the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. In the case of Greek, this follows the guidelines of the US Library of Congress. Passages of Greek in the papers are presented in the diacritic system preferred by the individual authors.
The editors warmly acknowledge the assistance of Annie Carter, Catherine Price and Katherine Rawlinson, who all gave generously of their time in the early stages of editing both volumes. They also gratefully acknowledge the patience and understanding of the contributing scholars, who bear living witness to two Greek proverbial expressions: K&AA1O apya napc& moté (‘better late than never’) and to KOAO TpayLa Apyet va yiver (‘good things take time’).
John Burke & Roger Scott University of Melbourne, 2000
Angeliki E. Laiou
Thessaloniki and Macedonia in the Byzantine period
“Thessaloniki is a great city, the most important of the cities of Macedonia. It is notable for all the things that exalt a city, and ... excels in piety ... It is large and wide, fortified with many walls and barriers, so that its inhabitants are secure. To the south, there is a port ... which gives easy access to the ships that sail into it from all parts of the world ... To the east, the land boasts of large trees, intricate gardens, endless supplies of water ... Vineyards, planted close to each other, crown the villages, and urge the aesthetic eye to rejoice in the abundance of their fruit ... There are two great lakes, ... containing fish both large and small, many in number and varied in kind, which fill the tables of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages as well as of the city ... There was no aspect of the good life that we did not enjoy, from the rich yield of the land and the products of trade. For the land and the sea, which from the beginning were destined to serve us, gave their gifts generously and freely ...””!
This is one of many descriptions of Thessaloniki in the Byzantine period, stressing the size and wealth, as well as the piety of the city. It is, indeed, a fact that after the permanent loss, in the seventh century, of the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire, with their large cities, such as Alexandria and Antioch, Thessaloniki became and remained the second most important city of the Empire, after the capital, Constantinople. It was certainly, throughout the Byzantine period, the largest city in the Balkans.
The Byzantine period is a formative one for the areas ruled by the Byzantine Empire, as it is for the peoples and states of western Europe. It is, for one thing, the period of Christianisation, with all that this entails in terms of culture and mentalities. It is a period, a very long period, of about a thousand years, in the course of which there was much movement of peoples and considerable demographic upheavals, which set the basis for the demographic composition of the area during the early modern and modern periods. Political institutions — imperial governance, strong local communities — as well as political ideology were developed, which influenced the subsequent history not only of the areas governed by Byzantium but also of important states which were outside its political control or which eventually supplanted it, such as Russia or the Ottoman Empire. Even in economic terms, it can be argued that the developments and structures of the medieval period had a very long life.
In general discussions of the Byzantine Empire, it is usually the role of Constantinople that is stressed, and with some justification. In purely formal terms, it was the shift of the permanent capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to the new city of Constantinople that gave impetus to the process of differentiation of the two parts of the Roman Empire, and to the development of the Eastern Roman Empire into a fundamentally new state and society. As the seat of the Emperors and the capital of the state from 330 to 1453, Constantinople had an obvious importance. It was, ultimately, the centre of the collection of resources, in the form of taxes, and the centre of their redistribution, in the form of salaries to officials and generals, or in the form of public expenditures in palaces, churches, and foundations whose role was, in part, that of mechanisms of propaganda. It was, for long periods of time, the arbiter of taste and a major centre of intellectual life. Its role, therefore, is rightly stressed, even though sometimes it was detrimental to the interests of the provinces.
If Constantinople was the capital of an Empire, Thessaloniki was a city of regional and inter-regional importance. Its role was fundamentally different from that of Constantinople for it functioned less as an imperial centre and more as a focus of economic integration and cultural diffusion. I will argue that it played an integrating role for an area that included both the geographic region of Macedonia and also, at times, a much larger area: Thessaly and areas to the North-West, along the Axios—Morava route, deep into Serbia. It is this integrating role of the city that I should like to discuss.
The first important period for the history of Byzantine Thessaloniki starts in the late sixth century and ends in the early or mid-ninth century. It is a time of internal crisis in the Byzantine Empire and serious external dangers from both the Persians and (after the 630s) the Arabs. In the Balkans there were great Avaro-Slav invasions, which threatened both the countryside and the cities. It was in the late sixth century that the Avars (a nomadic, Central Asian people) and the Slavs (for the most part an agricultural people, who, however, were organised into warlike activities by the Avars) crossed the Danube and launched a series of catastrophic invasions into the Byzantine Empire. Soon they acquired the art of building siege engines, which made it difficult for the cities to resist. In 586 (or 597 according to some scholars), a very large army of Avaro-Slavs appeared at the gates of Thessaloniki.
The Miracles of St. Demetrios, the major source for the events of these years, claims that the chief of the Avars realised that Thessaloniki was the richest and most populous city, whose capture would be a major loss for the Empire, and so he camped outside it with “an immense army”. “And,” writes the author, “we heard that, wherever they camped, the streams and the rivers dried out, and the earth became a field of destruction (nediov &gavicpod).””! The pages of the Miracles give a vivid and powerful description of the siege: “The [enemy] surrounded the city from all sides, like a deadly crown ... Instead of earth, grass or trees, one saw the heads of the enemy.”! The city was attacked with siege engines as well. There was no help at all from Constantinople or from anywhere else, and the inhabitants were in danger not only from the attack but also from famine. Eventually, the siege was lifted, perhaps because the siege engines were not yet operating properly; of course, our source attributes the salvation of the city to the miracles of St. Demetrios, its patron saint. On the seventh night of the siege, we are told, a large army was seen to issue forth from all the gates of the city, bringing panic to the besiegers. It was led by a red-haired man, dressed in white and riding a white horse.
This first siege of Thessaloniki was closely followed by others, in 604, 615 and 618. These were all very dangerous. In 615, the city was invested by land and sea by Slavs from the vicinity and from Thessaly. The inhabitants were, once again, on their own. They improvised their defences, and were also helped by a strong wind, which the source attributes to the intervention of St. Demetrios, and which destroyed the Slavic boats. In 618, a large Avaro-Slav army besieged the city by land, but not by sea; with the sea free, provisioning was asuured. New techniques, acquired by experience, undoubtedly helped the defence of the city: for example, at the first siege, the Avars and Slavs had covered their siege engines with sheepskins, so that the inhabitants would not burn them; by 618, the inhabitants had built machines that lifted off the sheepskins. After thirty three days, a very long time indeed, there was some sort of treaty, and the siege once again was lifted.?
This was the last serious threat to Thessaloniki for some centuries. Nevertheless, it took a long time for the presence of Constantinople to make itself truly felt again in Thessaloniki. A major step in the re-establishment of Constantinopolitan authority was the expedition of the Emperor Justinian I] ‘‘against Sclavinia and Bulgaria’”’ in 688-93 which brought him to Thessaloniki. His entry into the city is celebrated in a fresco in the church of St. Demetrios.
Effectively cut off from the capital, for a while at least, Thessaloniki rather rapidly seems to have become an integrating mechanism in the economy and the cultural life of both the adjacent region and much vaster areas. The inhabitants had, of course, to be provisioned, and this led to early trade relations with the surrounding population, including the Slavs. Indeed, R.S. Lopez considers Thessaloniki, along with places like Venice, as an example of cities virtually on the periphery of the effective authority of Constantinople which managed not only to survive but also to develop trade on a regional basis, perhaps more than had been the case before.!
These would be, in his view, cities which, in the darkest and most dangerous years of the Byzantine Empire, acquired the groups of small-scale traders and seafarers that kept communications open and kept the economy of exchange going. The environs of the city produced salt, a very important commodity in the Middle Ages, and undoubtedly an object of trade here too; interestingly, in 688 Justinian II granted the revenues of a salt-pan to the church of St. Demetrios in order to thank the saint for his help in the wars against the Slavs, or perhaps in order to prove his own authority, which must have seemed somewhat illusory.2 In 676—7 the citizens of Thessaloniki, besieged by groups of Slavs, nevertheless sought to buy grain from other Slavs living to the south of the city in the vicinity of Thebes and Demetrias.*
At the same time, Thessaloniki became a central place from which cultural influences emanated and cultural integration took place. The same collection of miracles gives us another story, very often told, but worth repeating. It is the story of a Slavic chief named Perboundos, and it shows us the early stages of this process. Perboundos himself lived in Thessaloniki, a point to be retained, although his tribe, the Rynchinoi, inhabited an area outside the city. In 667 the prefect of Thessaloniki denounced him to the Emperor as contemplating rebellion and sent him to Constantinople under guard. This, however, was not a popular course of action. Not only the Slavic settlers but also the inhabitants of Thessaloniki protested, although in the case of the latter it is hard to tell whether it was for love of Perboundos or for fear of reprisals. In any case, Perboundos managed to escape from his prison and hid in Constantinople for a considerable period of time.
It was hard to detect him, we are told, because he dressed like a Greek and spoke Greek so well that it was impossible to distinguish him from a Greek. After a series of misadventures and misunderstandings, in the course of which he did foment a mini-rebellion, he was executed. At this point, the Slavs of Thrace and Macedonia rose up in arms and blockaded Thessaloniki for two years, we are told (676-7). This time, the imperial authorities were able to intervene by sending grain ships and the city was saved once again.* The story of Perboundos sends obvious messages. It is, first of all, to be noted that a Slavic chieftain should have lived apart from his people, in the city. Surely, Thessaloniki had attractions which all could see. Secondly, it is equally noteworthy that, two generations after the last great attack on the city, this Slavic chieftain was acculturated to a very significant degree. To speak Greek so well as to pass for a Greek perhaps meant some schooling; we do not know whether he was a Christian or not, but since no mention is made of his paganism, the negative implications of which our source would surely not have failed to notice, it is a plausible hypothesis that he was Christian as well. In this context, it becomes virtually a moot point whether he truly nourished designs against Thessaloniki or the Byzantine state; what remains is the acculturating pull of the city. The story also reminds us that in the late seventh century the central government began to make its presence felt again in this part of the world, and that Thessaloniki was a pivot in the enterprise. | mention again the triumphal entry of Justinian II into the city in 688/9.
From that time on, Thessaloniki remained as the most important city of the European part of the Empire, after Constantinople. It functioned, among other things, as an area of attraction for the population of the Aegean islands, which fled here to escape the Arab raids.' Successive claimants to Macedonia tried to capture the city: the Bulgarians under Samuel in the late tenth century and again in 1205 and the Serbs in the middle of the fourteenth century, all unsuccessfully; and finally the Ottomans, who captured it in 1387 and again in 1430, not to mention the dramatic contest between Greeks and Bulgarians for control of the city, i.e. for control of Macedonia, during the first Balkan war. In the medieval period, Thessaloniki, with its strong fortifications and with a strong army and the courage of its population (which is a constant) was able to withstand a number of these attacks. The result was more than the simple fact that the city was not captured. Thessaloniki, like other cities of the Byzantine Empire, only more so, played the role of organising and controlling the countryside. The fact that neither Symeon nor Samuel, czars of the Bulgarians with imperial hopes, nor Stefan DuSan, who also had imperial ambitions, were able to take Thessaloniki had long-term consequences. It meant that their states, which were very large, nevertheless remained ephemeral, without the possibility of becoming firmly established as they would undoubtedly have been had they been able to control Thessaloniki and therefore a large part of its close and remote hinterland.
The vitality of Thessaloniki after the end of the Slavic invasions and its integrating role is evident through another historic event. Around the middle of the ninth century, the Byzantine Empire began a period of expansion which would lead into the great victories of the tenth century. This was on the one hand a territorial expansion, mostly into Asia Minor, and on the other a movement of Christianisation of pagan peoples outside the Empire. In the middle ages, we know, Christianisation was not simply the exchange of many pagan deities for a single Christian one. It also meant the introduction of writing, where there was none, and the formation of a church, whose members, because of their literacy, became part of the ruling class, and promulgated ideas and ideals which were common to all Christians. It meant that the newly Christianised people became a part of a community of nations, which had a shared culture, shared values, similar art and eventually institutions with a certain similarity. It was thus a process not only of the dissemination of a religion, but also of the dissemination of cultural and eventually institutional features.
Among the most important peoples which remained pagan in the ninth century were the Slavs and the Bulgarians. The Patriarch Photios, a great figure of letters and the church, opened in Constantinople a Slavonic academy, where the Byzantines learned Slavic languages in order to engage in missionary activities. Together with Photios, two other men played a role of the very greatest significance in this enterprise. They were the two brothers Cyril (Constantine) and Methodios, sons of a Greek Byzantine official from Thessaloniki. They created the Slavic alphabet, and thus influenced for ever after both the language and the literature of the Russians, the south Slavs and the Bulgarians. The Byzantines were well aware, it seems, of the importance of the introduction of writing. In the Vita of St. Cyril it is said that the Emperor Michael III, answering the request of the King of the Moravians for missionaries, said ““We are sending you this worthy and pious man, the philosopher (Constantine), to whom God revealed the art of writing. Receive this gift, which is more valuable than gold, silver, precious stones and vain wealth.” The two apostles to the Slavs are honored to this day by the south Slavic peoples.
The Christianisation of Bulgaria was followed by a period of peace and prosperity for the city of Thessaloniki, which now became a great centre of trade for a region that included Greece proper but also Bulgaria. John Kameniates, who in the early tenth century wrote a text lamenting the capture of the city by the Arabs in 904, made an explicit linkage between the peace with the Bulgarians and the prosperity of Thessaloniki: “Since the time that the baptismal font brought the Scythian nation (the Bulgarians) close to the Christian people ... the attacks against the city ceased, and so did the massacres. The swords were turned into scythes, the spears became ploughshares;! there was no war anywhere, peace ruled in the surrounding areas, there was abundance of goods from agriculture and wealth from trade.”? This speaks to increased security as a factor that allowed agriculture and trade to flourish. At the same time, there are clear indications that Thessaloniki is becoming an inter-regional commercial centre, collecting the merchandise not only of areas from the South and the West, but also from Bulgaria, which until then had been channelled through Constantinople alone. Interestingly enough, our sources say that this shift, which institutionally had to be approved by Constantinople, was made at the instigation of merchants from Greece proper, who wanted to increase their profits.> Indications deriving from the seals of commercial officials suggest the importance of Thessaloniki as a commercial center and the importance of Bulgarian trade coming down the Nestos—Strymon Rivers.* The new customs officials at Thessaloniki had jurisdiction over Thessaly, Cephallonia, the Theme of Thessaloniki, and the West of Greece, which is suggestive of the role of the city as a factor of economic integration of these provinces or, to say it in more modest terms, as the major commercial centre of the southern part of the Balkan peninsula.
This is a new phenomenon, especially the connection with the interior of Bulgaria, which may, I suppose, have begun even before the official actions, perhaps as early as the peace treaty of 815 with the Bulgarians. For a while, Thessaloniki seems to have profited greatly from the opening of the hinterland and its role in trade. Kameniates speaks repeatedly of intense commercial activity by sea and with the interior, of the presence of many merchants, both native and foreign — again, the indication of an inter-regional role. He reports great wealth in gold, silver, precious stones and “silk cloth, which was to them as woollen textiles are to others.””! Finally, he speaks of the production, in Thessaloniki, of metal and glass objects.
This prosperity was interrupted brusquely in the early tenth century, when Thessaloniki was captured and sacked by Arabs, perhaps attracted by its wealth (904). The wars with Symeon of Bulgaria, which brought the Bulgarians within a few miles of the city walls, also influenced adversely the development of the area. Disrupting communications with the interior of Bulgaria, and generally launching a period of insecurity throughout Macedonia and Thrace, these wars must have had a truly deleterious effect, as did those with Samuel in the late tenth century.
In the early eleventh century things changed again. The wars of Basil II were followed by a period of general peace in the Balkans which lasted, although with important short-term disruptions, until the late twelfth century. It was a period of general prosperity, with increase in population, expansion of cultivation and increase and differentiation of production. Once again we see Thessaloniki as a pole of attraction of men and merchandise from a very wide area. The city had, of course, its immediate agricultural hinterland, which was very productive, and its own craft enterprises: Benjamin of Tudela mentions the manufacturing of silk cloth. But we also have interesting information about the city as a commercial centre. During the feast of St. Demetrios, there took place in Thessaloniki a large inter-regional and international fair. Here we find merchants and merchandise from four regions: Greeks from the South — from Boeotia, presumably mainly Thebes — and the Peloponnese, who brought textiles, by land or by sea, it is not clear. By sea there came also merchants and merchandise (including textiles) from the West — Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and also from the East, that is, Syria and Egypt. There seems to be no direct line of communication with the Bulgarian hinterland. But the Via Egnatia was open and well-travelled, so that the products of the Black Sea were sent to Constantinople, whence they reached Thessaloniki on horses or mules travelling in caravans.” It is worthy of note that the north-western part of the Balkans does not appear in this source, not because the route to NiS and Belgrade was not open but presumably because commercial transactions with the area were unimportant. The fair of St. Demetrios, then, appears as an important occasion for the exchange of textiles and also of sheep, cattle and pigs.
Large international fairs also had financial functions, that is, merchants made loans to finance their transactions.! Undoubtedly, too, there must have been banking transactions of another kind, that is money-changing, as there was at the fairs of western Europe. In any case, in the twelfth century we find Thessaloniki functioning as a centre of attraction for the commercial activities of Greece proper, certainly also of the immediate Macedonian hinterland, of the Black Sea by way of Constantinople, and to a certain degree of areas of western Europe, Syria and Egypt. Interestingly, a twelfth-century witness, the archbishop of Athens, Michael Choniates, made a comparison between Thessaloniki and Constantinople which seems to suggest that the only advantage the latter held over the former was the fact of its being the capital of the state; in all other respects, he seems to imply, Thessaloniki was more important.” This role was predicated upon internal peace, stability in the Balkans, and relatively open communications by sea. An accumulation of events in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century must have had an adverse effect on the situation: the sack of Thessaloniki by the Normans in 1185, the rebellion of Peter and Asen in Bulgaria, and finally the Fourth Crusade which, among other things, fragmented the political space of the former Byzantine Empire. In the territorial partition which ensued, Thessaloniki was given to Boniface of Montferrat, who seems to have governed fairly and left a fair amount of self-government to the inhabitants. The city then became a bone of contention between the Emperors of Nicaea and the Despots of Epirus, finally being captured by the forces of John III Vatatzes in 1246, as part of the drive that eventually brought the Emperors of Nicaea back to Constantinople.
In the course of the thirteenth century, in part, undoubtedly, because of the conditions of political instability, Thessaloniki seems to have had more of an orientation towards the West, i.e. the Despotate of Epirus, than toward the East, i.e. Constantinople. During the restored Palaiologan Empire this orientation was strengthened, for reasons which were both political and economic. To tell the story briefly, Thessaloniki became, certainly by the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, the centre of a system that included the south-western Balkans, that is to say, Greece proper, Epirus, Serbia and Dalmatia. While one must keep in mind that the Via Egnatia remained relatively open until the 1340s and that communications with Constantinople were therefore relatively easy, it is also quite clear that we have the development of an important “western” sub-system separate to a large degree from that functioning in Constantinople. In terms of communications, the sum of our information seems to suggest that the road to and from Bulgaria along the Strymon and the Nestos was not important. Similarly, merchandise from Bulgaria did not reach Thessaloniki either directly or indirectly, nor, perhaps, did that of Thrace. On the other hand, there are good communications with the state of Serbia, with a route that went up the Morava River, as well as with Dubrovnik. From Thessaloniki the areas of the Balkan interior imported both textiles from western Europe, brought here by the Venetian merchants, and wheat; indeed, the wheat production of the hinterland of Thessaloniki was sold both to the Balkan interior and to Venice. Therefore, the city became a centre of exchange of the two main staples of medieval trade, textiles and grain.
To some extent, this strong western orientation was the result of the increase in the political and economic power of the Kingdom of Serbia and its subsequent expansion southward into areas of Macedonia, Albania, and eventually Epirus and Greece. This would eventually bring Stefan DuSan to the gates of Thessaloniki. Serbia also was going through an economic expansion, fuelled partly by the opening of silver mines in Novo Brdo and elsewhere. The western orientation was also part of the effective division of the old Byzantine Empire into two trade areas dominated by two Italian powers: Genoa in the Black Sea area and Asia Minor with the adjacent islands, and Venice in Macedonia, Greece, most of the islands of the Aegean, Crete and the Ionian islands. After the 1340s, civil wars and successive invasions of the Serbs and the Turks almost closed off land communications with Constantinople, reinforcing this western orientation. In political terms, the presence of a strong western sub-system and the concomitantly reduced connection with Constantinople is evident in a number of ways. Already in the 1320s the monk Theodoulos published, in Thessaloniki, two political treatises in which he argued powerfully for local governmental independence, complete with the collection of taxes by city authorities and the creation of city armies financed by local resources. In the 1340s, during the second civil war, Thessaloniki defied the power of the aristocracy and the central government of Constantinople when the capital fell into the hands of the powerful aristocrat John Kantakouzenos and retained its de facto independence from 1341 to 1350. In a different configuration, and before his defeat at the hands of Kantakouzenos, his great opponent John Apokaukos had conceived of a scheme, or so we are told, of creating a coastal state consisting of the coasts of Thrace, Macedonia and possibly the western coast of the Black Sea, with Thessaloniki and Constantinople as the two centres; a state which would live basically off trade. Finally, the political aspect of our topic is illustrated by the fact that, in the late Byzantine period, Thessaloniki functioned virtually independently of Constantinople under the rule of imperial princes who had strong connections both with Venice and with the remaining Greek areas, primarily the Morea (Manuel Palaiologos, Andronikos Palaiologos). Independence there was, to be sure, and contacts with Venice as well as with the Morea, but in this period it can no longer be said that Thessaloniki was acting as an integrating factor, since it could not even control its own hinterland and there were no conditions present for much integration.
Earlier, however, there is one other domain in which Thessaloniki played an important role in the western part of the southern Balkans, and that is the intellectual and cultural domain. There is much to be said about Thessaloniki as an intellectual centre, and much that has already been said. My purpose here, however, is not to give a complete history of the city, but rather to speak of a particular role it played, with different effect at different times of its history. In order to illustrate this in the realm of intellectual activity, the best approach is through the history of art. Here we see, already in the thirteenth century, a great influence of artists and styles which emanate from Thessaloniki into the territories of the Kingdom of Serbia. In 1265, in Sopoéani, a monastic foundation of Stefan Urosh I, we have frescoes of the very first quality in the volume style.! In this period, and in the first half of the fourteenth century, we find artists travelling from Thessaloniki to all of Macedonia, Serbia, Greece proper, with particularly high activity in the Kingdom of Serbia which, as I have already indicated, was acquiring both the economic basis for supporting artistic activity and the political sophistication to wish to have Byzantine art and artists. George Kallierges (‘‘the best painter of all Thessaly’, as he himself claims), Astrapas and Eutychios work in Thessaloniki, in Ochrid and in various churches in the Kingdom of Serbia. The church of St. Nicholas Orphanos in Thessaloniki is a good example of the elegant classical style of the second decade of the fourteenth century. On Mt. Athos, the frescoes of the Protaton (1300) are ascribed to painters from Thessaloniki. Churches in Veroia, Kastoria, the royal chapel in Studenica, the church of Gra€anica, decorated c. 1321, all attest to the excellence of the artists of Thessaloniki.
I have tried to suggest, here, that the city of Thessaloniki played a major role in integrating the economy and culture, and sometimes the political structure of the western, European provinces of Byzantium. Obviously, the specifics of its role and the area over which it exercised its influence changed from time to time. In the late seventh to the ninth century the city functioned as a centre from which radiated forces of acculturation, of which Christianisation was one major aspect. It also seems to have functioned as a centre of commercial exchange, to the rather limited extent that such activities were still possible. Except for the extraordinary breadth of the missionary activities of Cyril and Methodios which, however, were primarily due to Constantinopolitan policy, the area affected would seem to be parts of Macedonia and those areas with which the city could communicate by sea, i.e. Thessaly and the adjacent islands. The period of great prosperity for Thessaloniki falls into two distinct categories: first, the time when its sphere of influence and attraction included not only Macedonia, Thessaly and Greece, but also the Bulgarian hinterland (ninth century, twelfth century), * and secondly, the time when there was a relatively well-integrated western system, comprising Serbia and to a large extent excluding Constantinople (from the thirteenth through the first half of the fourteenth century). Interestingly, this second system accords best with the way the Byzantines themselves thought of Thessaloniki. In their minds, it always remained a western city, the capital of the West, the capital of Europe, meaning the European provinces of the Empire. The Vita of Hosia Theodora of Thessaloniki proclaimed it the ‘‘mother of the West.”! The texts assembled by H. Hunger speak variously of Thessaloniki as “the reigning city of Macedonia and Thessaly” (Nikephoros Gregoras) and in general terms as the capital or the greatest city of the West.? For an important part of its history, Thessaloniki was, indeed, a centre linking, in concentric circles perhaps, activities in Macedonia, in the western provinces generally, and in the areas of the medieval Kingdom of Serbia. Indeed, a glance at the map will show the inevitability of this, for there are two major axes that meet in Thessaloniki: the great East-West axis of the Via Egnatia, linking Epirus/Albania, southern Macedonia, Thrace and Constantinople, and the great traverse North-South route, from Thessaloniki to Belgrade and from there to Central Europe. The extent and direction of the integrating role of the city was, of course, a function of political and economic realities, as it always will be.
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