Download PDF | (Central European Medieval Studies) Dragoljub Marjanovic - Creating Memories in Late 8th-century Byzantium_ The Short History of Nikephoros of Constantinople-Amsterdam University Press (2018).
251 Pages
Preface
In essence, this book deals with Iconoclasm in the Byzantine empire. While the core of the dispute remained embedded in a Christological argument about depicting the Word and Son of God – Jesus Christ – in his human likeness, and the struggle to obtain justification for this practice of Orthodoxy, the place and role of the emperor remained an equally significant issue in the controversy. The apologists for icon worship in Byzantium’s eighth and ninth centuries consistently insisted upon two crucial points. The first was the undisputed Orthodoxy of displaying God’s oikonomia of the salvation of humankind through the depicting and revering of his icon, while the second was the freedom of the Church to define and propagate its doctrine without pressure and interference from the basileus.
It was an ancient issue in the Church, reintroduced anew in eighth-century Byzantium with particular strength, bringing quite a few challenges to the Church of Constantinople. The Iconoclasm of the Byzantine emperors inspired various intellectual reactions from the Orthodox party, which proved to be up to the challenge and at the height of its capabilities to repel the attack, which was threatening to undermine the very foundations of Christian doctrine. The political and cultural aspects of Iconoclasm in Byzantium thus step into the forefront of research on this problem, as do equally the ecclesiastical and theological aspects. In fact, these processes were closely connected and intertwined. My aim in this study is to demonstrate that history writing at the end of the eighth century in Byzantium was both shaped and inspired by Iconoclasm. It was summoned to give an original contribution to solving the controversy and the various problems it had initiated. Iconoclasm influenced the Byzantine view of the past and forced an engagement with creative memory-making in order to produce a comprehensible and Orthodox view of the earlier traditions.
The Short History of Nikephoros of Constantinople in this context presents the earliest example of such an enterprise, and a most original one as well. In this book – a revised Ph.D. dissertation – I shall reveal and demonstrate how Nikephoros wrote history, and how he responded to some of the key issues that brought the Orthodox Church into a dispute with the emperor, burdening their relationship. This book would not have appeared as it does now without the great inspiration and scholarly support of Professor Vlada Stanković. He directed my understanding of Byzantine historical literature and shaped my interest in Byzantine narrative sources, in a completely new way, when I began my postgraduate studies at the Seminary of Byzantine Studies in the History Department of Belgrade University.
I must reveal here that both of us felt uneasy to a certain extent when Professor Radivoj Radić suggested that I should engage in an analysis of Nikephoros’s Short History for my Ph.D. thesis. We both occupied ourselves with reading Nikephoros’s history, me for the first time, him for the first time after a long time, and in the beginning it seemed to me that, after C. Mango’s thorough critical edition of Nikephoros, there remained little to pull out of this remote Byzantine author. However, Nikephoros proved to be quite an interesting and original historian. Where C. Mango left off with the puzzling conclusion that Nikephoros failed to demonstrate the proper consciousness of a historian, I picked up and tried to offer a new outlook on this significant historical figure of late eighthand early ninth-century Byzantium – a former asekretis, ptochotrophos, and, finally, patriarch of the Church of Constantinople.
As it turned out, Nikephoros’s mistakes according to Mango actually reveal his specific and original method for creating a historical narrative and shaping the past in compliance with the Orthodox party’s notions of the emperor, his place in the Church, and his relationship with its doctrines. I express my sincere gratitude to Professor Nada Zečević, from Amsterdam University Press. She patiently led me through multiple phases of preparation of the manuscript for its publication. Her advice and instructions were most valuable in the process of making this book. I convey my appreciation to the peer reviewers who read the draft version of the manuscript and offered very valuable suggestions on how to improve the argument. Finally, I express my deepest gratefulness to my beloved family. Their steady endurance of the consequences of my research is interwoven with the result of my study of Nikephoros’s Short History. To them I dedicate this work. Belgrade, 1 February 2017 St. Makarios the Great
Introduction
Due to the influence and historical role of Patriarch Nikephoros of Constantinople at the turn of Byzantium’s eighth and ninth centuries, his literary heritage has attracted the attention of modern researchers dealing with various aspects of Byzantine civilization. According to the words of the author of the first monograph dedicated to the epoch and work of Patriarch Nikephoros, the fate of Nikephoros’s secular work1 – the Short History and Short Chronicle –was somewhat unfavourable,2 especially when compared to his more numerous theological writings, which gained much wider circulation and use already in the Middle Ages.3 Likewise, the Short Chronicle enjoyed popularity among the Slavic circles familiar with the Byzantine cultural environment and its impact, while the Short History, with its two manuscript copies, remained relatively obscure even in the centuries close to the time of its author.
The first explicit reference from the Byzantine era, a sort of review of Nikephoros’s Short History, occurred only in the second half of the ninth century. It came from the pen of one of the most prominent successors to Nikephoros’s patriarchal see: the great Patriarch Photios, who, moreover, presented himself as Nikephoros’s relative in the letter addressed to the Roman Pope Nicholas I.4 Photios’s laudatory review of the literary features and qualities of Nikephoros’s Short History, as displayed in his Bibliotheca, resulted from his tendency to connect himself to his predecessor, the Patriarch Nikephoros, both spiritually and in terms of kinship. 5 Still, Photios’s account, in which he praised Nikephoros’s literary qualities as displayed in his Short History, provides valuable testimony concerning the reception and comprehension of the work in the centuries of Byzantine history that followed Nikephoros’s demise in 828. In contrast to Photios’s open attitude and his reflections on the nature and character of the Short History, Nikephoros’s historical work appears to have enjoyed a certain degree of attention from the Byzantine historians of a later period such as George the Monk and Symeon Logothete.6 Could it be that the high appraisal of the Short History by Photios presented some impetus for a wider utilization of Nikephoros’s work among the aforementioned Byzantine historians?
A valuable critical edition of Nikephoros’s Short History by C. Mango stands at the end of a lengthy period of mostly secondary studies regarding the features of the work and its character, opening new questions as well. Some of these we shall re-examine in our work on the basis of Mango’s edition of the Short History. 7 More recent studies devoted to various aspects of Byzantine literature from the eighth and the beginning of the ninth centuries often neglect the Short History of Nikephoros in their research, its character, and its status as one of the first historical works of renewed Byzantine history writing from the beginning of the ninth century.8 However, newer historical overviews of Byzantine literature give an obvious advantage in their research of Byzantine historiography to Theophanes the Chronographer, Nikephoros’s contemporary and fellow combatant in their mutual ecclesiastical struggle for the freedom of the Church of Constantinople. It is usually the case in modern literature that the Short History is mentioned only regarding specific issues and problems in Theophanes’s Chronicle, and even then only in an informal way.
This should be viewed as an unavoidable methodological approach in a historical analysis of the work, but in our case we have conducted it in a rather opposite direction, consulting the narration of Theophanes’s Chronicle in all the places in the text where there exists a mutual correlation with the narration of Nikephoros.9 A contribution towards a negative judgment of the Short History, or at least towards an underrated view of its nature and character – and, due to this, towards the failure to acknowledge its significance in the reconstruction of the Byzantine literary and cultural revival from the beginning of the ninth century – was given by the editor of the latest critical edition of the text, C. Mango.10 Contrary to this radically negative outlook from one of the most significant and doubtlessly very proficient researchers of Byzantine past (in which probably lies a partial explanation for the astonishing disinterest of later scholars towards the various problems of the Short History, besides those already-mentioned works)11 stand two older but valuable articles which place Nikephoros’s Short History in the proper chronological and historical context of the Byzantine cultural revival of the beginning of the ninth century.12
Finally, since it serves as a significant Byzantine narrative source for the history of the seventh and eighth centuries, together with the Chronicle of Theophanes, the Short History initiated a certain number of studies linked to the problem of its sources, as well as to the narrative information dealing with the so-called ‘dark centuries’ of Byzantium’s history.13 For certain data, mainly in our observations on the issues of Nikephoros’s life and his career – before, during, and after his active patriarchate – we utilized literature focused primarily on the patriarch’s ecclesiology.14 A structural analysis serves as our main methodological approach in the analysis of the Short History, as well as an examination of the manner in which Nikephoros shaped and presented the text.
The motivation for such an approach to the research of the text, mainly but also unexpectedly, emerged after our initial examination of the relevant scientific output, which varied in both the cause and the extent of its research. It seems that most previous research into the Short History has been rooted in a positivistic approach and, as such, has resulted in a somewhat superficial review of this work, which to a great extent exhausted its own reach of comprehension and gave its uttermost contribution to understanding the work in its proper context. In regard to this observation, we thought that the main direction of our research and our analysis of the Short History should be aimed at a historical re-evaluation of the author himself, his place and role in the events of the Byzantine epoch of the late eighth and the early ninth centuries – the time when a new revival of the Byzantine state and culture emerged and developed. In that sense, an attempt towards a total and overall review of Nikephoros’s personality, while at the same time knowing that the Short History is only one aspect of his multifaceted historical role and his overall efforts, was intended to provide a greater historical context through which, and in accordance with which, we tried to view and analyse his only secular literary work.
From such an approach to the Short History new questions emerged, as did different perspectives in reviewing the character and distinctiveness of a text often considered to be a mere abbreviated and incomplete narrative, which, when compared with the more voluminous Chronicle of Theophanes, has little to add – a dire approach for a researcher of Byzantine texts of any genre or epoch (who only views such documents as mere sources of information and data). It is hard to attain even a superficial glance at the scope of political influence, power, and reputation of the imperial asekretis Nikephoros from the period of his secular career and his pursuits in the state administration of the Empire. These are blurred by the limited and scant amount of contemporary sources. In contrast, those sources which are explicitly focused on Nikephoros are wrapped in an impenetrably thick veil: the distinctive and characteristic patterns of Byzantine hagiographic literature, which was almost always defined by the rules of its own genre and by the specific interests and intentions of the author. Only after his ascendance to the patriarchal throne of the Church of Constantinople in the f irst decade of the ninth century does Nikephoros appear to us in a brighter light on the theatre of Byzantium’s history. His actions and role in the events are made clearer, although even then certain questions impose themselves on the analysis of a modern researcher. However, some vague evidence does exist. Nikephoros revealed some himself, while other evidence was presented by the acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, indicating Nikephoros’s very close and friendly relations with some of the most prominent contemporaries of his time even during his secular career.
Some indirect and a few direct pieces of evidence suggest that Nikephoros was close to the highest political and ecclesiastical circles of the Byzantine empire during the first phase of renewed Orthodoxy, shortly before, during, and after the Council of Nicaea in 787. Distant statements from the second half of the ninth century, in the personality of the Patriarch Photios, even suggest that Nikephoros had close family relations to the Patriarch Tarasios of Constantinople. Nikephoros’s great successor on the throne of the patriarchs of Constantinople, Photios, built his patriarchal legitimacy and the authority of his ecclesiastical office by underlying both his spiritual and kinship connections to both patriarchs, Tarasios and Nikephoros, thus indirectly demonstrating Nikephoros’s later reputation (or building it himself out of his own interest in promoting his legitimacy as patriarch of Constantinople). Conversely, some contemporary evidence from Nikephoros’s own era indicates that, while still a secular official, he endured the consequences of his political position as a close accomplice of one of the two sides struggling for imperial power between the Empress Eirene and her son, Emperor Constantine VI. These implications about Nikephoros’s deep involvement in the highest political and ecclesiastical events of Byzantium’s late-eighth century are a reasonable motif for reevaluating and analysing his Short History in a more serious manner – in accordance with the characteristics of the period in which the author lived and wrote his work. As a secular work, the Short History presented the deeds of Byzantine emperors who reigned over the Empire from the beginning of the seventh century until the second part of the eighth century, portraying the emperors from Herakleios to Constantine V. Although some fourteen emperors and their reigns thematically dominate the text, its narration is, however, closely interwoven with the images of the patriarchs of Byzantium. The patriarchs of the Short History are presented infrequently in the narration, thus leaving the impression of a secular work totally oriented in its outlook towards the secular issues of the seventh and eighth centuries. Nevertheless, when analysed more thoroughly, it appears that the history of Byzantine emperors and their reigns as presented in the Short History stands in close connection with some of the most important ecclesiastical issues of the time, while some patriarchs are presented as close imperial associates, Sergios and Pyrrhos of Constantinople foremost. From such an examination of the inner composition of the Short History, a question arises as to whether a main protagonist exists in Nikephoros’s work. Are the predominantly mentioned emperors, in fact, Nikephoros’s main characters in his work, or is this role subtly given to the patriarchs of Byzantine Christendom? Nikephoros’s dogmatic attitude is clearly Iconophile, and there is no doubt that he made a distinction between the orthodox and heretical patriarchs mentioned in his work. However, some heretical patriarchs in the Short History are presented as positive individuals and ecclesiastics, while their heresy is shifted into a second narrative plan. What lies behind such a nonconventional literary approach to the issues of church strife over Orthodoxy and correct ecclesiastical doctrine, which obviously opposes that of his contemporary Iconophile combatant Theophanes and his Chronicle? When we analyse the images of Nikephoros’s main characters, a compelling question can be asked: who is his main character? Is it Herakleios or Constantine V – the Iconoclast heretic whom Nikephoros managed to represent as a capable statesman, tempering his personality very carefully through the clear separation of his statesmanship from his ecclesiastical policy.
These matters, which mark a principal issue of our study, are answered only and always in the close socio-political and historical context of the time when Nikephoros wrote his work. Thus, the previously dominant issues of the sources which Nikephoros used in creating his work, the relations between the sources utilized, and the question of the originality of his work, which were predominant subjects of past studies, are almost neglected in this book. Such an approach derives completely from our full conviction that the Short History of Nikephoros should be read as a finished literary work, since it was read and comprehended as such by its contemporaries. Photios’s review of the Short History in the Bibliotheca spoke of it as an intact literary work with no hint that it was incomplete. The messages that Nikephoros engaged with in this work, and because of which he might even have committed to creating it in the first place, are the main preoccupation of this study.
On the Methodology and Approach of this Book
This book attempts to re-evaluate Byzantine historical writing at the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth centuries, at the very core of its society – the imperial city of Constantinople. As a wider goal, this book also attempts not only to present an analysis of the Short History of Nikephoros of Constantinople and his authorial strategies, but also, through an analysis of his narrative techniques, ideological awareness, and engaged interest, to compare the lively ecclesiastical and political issues of his own day with the past that he was shaping and presenting. Thus, our approach was a twofold task: to investigate the inner structure of the Short History, especially all the highly engaged passages of the narration, and to compare this narration with the content and manner of representing the same events and processes in the almost contemporary and ideologically very similar Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor (where these historical works are mutually corresponding). Through such an approach, we believe that new paths of analysing the Short History can be found and investigated, giving possibly new results. Nikephoros was a prolific writer and, although he was more productive in the theological apologetics of icon worship, he obviously had an interest in presenting the past events that shaped Byzantium’s history during the seventh and first half of the eighth centuries. However, his apologetics written against Iconoclast doctrine, where they touch upon the issue of imperial Iconoclasm, demonstrate a specific historicism in the service of religious dispute. Not only does such evidence present a valuable insight into Nikephoros’s overall historical approach, it also uncovers his capability to meet the requirements of both the literary and theological genre he utilized in specific moments of his secular and ecclesiastical career. If we observe Nikephoros as an individual, representative of the Constantinopolitan elite at the turn of the two centuries, such an insight might enable a reconstruction of these elites’ doctrinal, intellectual, political, and cultural actions in the specific times and processes which shaped the f irst post-Iconoclast period between 784 and 815. This template necessarily needs to be combined and analysed with other similar or closely related investigations into Byzantium’s eighth and early ninth-century cultural revival. The methodology that we deemed necessary for such a book required that an analysis of the Short History and a re-evaluation of the findings of such research needed to be closely interwoven with a personal history of Nikephoros. Thus, such an approach involved a combined literary analysis of the Short History and an attempt to reinvestigate Nikephoros’s political and ecclesiastical career in the turbulent times between 787 and his downfall from the patriarchal see of the Church of Constantinople. One other contemporary Byzantine narrative source should be taken into consideration as well. The Life of Stephen the Younger inevitably needs to be investigated when dealing with Nikephoros and his historical representation of the first Iconoclasm and its emperors. Composed in the first years of Nikephoros’s patriarchal office by Stephen, a deacon of the Great Church, it presented the Orthodox position against the Iconoclasm of the first emperors of the Isaurian dynasty, Leo III and Constantine V. It is indeed a valuable source even when our main task is to attempt an analysis of the Short History. The Life of Stephen the Younger falls into a different literary genre – thus, a gap between the secular nature of Nikephoros’s historical writing and the ecclesiastical and doctrinal nature of the hagiography of Stephen the Younger seems to be an obstacle in our investigation. Nevertheless, a comparison of different literary sources from various genres, such as Theophanes’s Chronicle and the Life of Stephen the Younger, which are all more or less contemporary, might help place Nikephoros’s Short History in its proper place amongst the Byzantine sources of the period and contribute to a more insightful understanding of its significance. This is an inevitable approach which we follow in our research and try to present in this book. Where does Nikephoros the historian fall in the long tradition of Byzantine history writing? Can his work be more precisely situated in the aforementioned revival of Byzantine learning and its manifestations at the beginning of the ninth century, as marked and explained in the works of previous researchers? How does he compare to Theophylact Simocatta, the last Byzantine historian before the so-called dark centuries of Byzantium? Did Nikephoros have a clear understanding of such a void in the Byzantine tradition of secular literature, or are such questions merely our own preconceived notions? His history ceased this barren period of Byzantine historiography – but what was his overall goal, and was he personally motivated to write in order to continue this tradition, aside from the obvious intention to produce a work with specific ideas and notions that were related to the major issues of his time? An overall conclusion about Nikephoros as a historian at the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth centuries based primarily on an analysis of his Short History will, where possible, address these subjects as well.
A Note on Translations and Transliteration of Names
All quotations from Nikephoros’s Short History and Theophanes’s Chronicle are according to the English translations by C. Mango in the critical editions of these authors as published in his Nikephoros Patriarch of Constantinople, Short History: Text, Translation and Commentary (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990), and The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813, ed. by C. Mango and R. Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). The quotations from the Life of Nikephoros by Ignatios the Deacon are according to the translation by Elizabeth A. Fisher in Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. by A.M. Talbot (Washington, DC: Harvard University Press, 1998). Any departures from these translations are according to my own emendations which I have deemed worthy of introducing into the text. All other sources cited in this book are translated into English by the author. The transliteration of proper names was impossible in any unified form. I have kept the Greek transcription where it was possible: thus, Nikephoros instead of Nicephorus, Ignatios instead of Ignatius. However, several names of Latin origin which appear in the text of the Short History I have kept in their Latin form: Priscus rather than Priskos, Tiberius rather than Tiberios. I have Anglicized personal names where appropriate (e.g. Constantine rather than Constantinos, Stephen rather than Stephanos) and accepted the standard transliteration for foreign names like Chosroes and Shahin.
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