Download PDF | (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies) Theresa Urbainczyk - Writing About Byzantium_ The History of Niketas Choniates-Routledge (2017).
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Writing About Byzantium
Niketas Choniates was in Constantinople when it was burnt and looted by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade and he wrote a history which has always been the mainstay for anyone wishing to learn about the Comnene dynasty and the Byzantine Empire of the twelfth century. Yet it is a very diffi cult and puzzling text and, given its signifi cance for the period, is understudied. The author says at the start that he wrote his work hoping that even workers and women would be able to profi t from it, yet he wrote those words, and the rest of the history, in a highly convoluted, literary and at times opaque style and language. This examination is an introduction to the history of Niketas, and to the author’s views of why this period saw such catastrophe for the Byzantines. It looks at Niketas’ thoughts about history- writing, the emperors, and the Comnene dynasty in particular, about the presence of God in man’s affairs, and the historian’s attitudes to the women of the imperial family.
Theresa Urbainczyk taught in the School of Classics, University College Dublin from 1992 to 2017. She is the author of Socrates of Constantinople: Historian of Church and State (1997), Theodoret of Cyrrhus: The Bishop and the Holy Man (2002), Spartacus (2004), and Slave Revolts in Antiquity (2008)
The puzzle of the History of Niketas Choniates
Niketas Choniates is one of the most important Byzantine historians and yet, relatively speaking, he has not received the attention he deserves. He wrote about one of the most exciting, if tragic, periods of medieval history in an ornate and elevated style. One might expect him to be better studied simply because he described the effects on the Byzantine Empire of the Fourth Crusade. His narrative however is not only worth studying because of its signifi cance to an important period of western medieval history. From the Byzantine perspective, 1204 was a catastrophe, and here we have an eyewitness account of the fall of the city. In 1204 Constantinople, the head of the Byzantine Empire, was captured by the troops of the Fourth Crusade whose aim was supposed to be the liberation of Jerusalem. 1 Constantinople had never been taken by any enemy in the nine centuries of its position as imperial city. 2 Niketas describes the period before, during and after this calamitous event. 3
As Constantinople neared its end, Niketas extended his criticism to everyone for their role in its downfall, everyone who lived there, not so much the Crusaders, who are portrayed as barbarians but little more could be expected from them. 4 They took advantage of the fatal and obvious weakness of the Byzantines. 5 Niketas’ focus, perhaps as Thucydides’ main subject is the Athenians in his history, is on the Byzantines or rather Romans, as he calls the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire. 6 Both Thucydides and Niketas were patriots writing about the mistakes of their fellow citizens and trying to understand why the disaster happened. 7 Towards the end Niketas has a striking aside. The last emperor before the fall of the city was Alexios Doukas, and of him Niketas says: Inasmuch as the worst elements prevail among the Constantinopolitans ( for truth is dearer to me than my compatriots ), Doukas grew stronger and increased in power.
And the Greek makes clear what the English leaves ambivalent, which is that he values truth more than he values his compatriots: filte/ra ga\r u9pe\r tou\v o9mogenei=v h9 alh/qeia. This phrase encapsulates what appears to have driven Niketas to write his history. He wanted above all to write the truth as he saw it, even though it meant criticizing his own people. 9 Most readers would agree that Niketas wrote his history to understand the calamity that had struck his city, and most would agree that he laid the blame generally with the rulers and yet there is much that is puzzling about the work. 10 Anthony Kaldellis started his article on Niketas titled ‘Paradox, Reversal and the Meaning of History’ with the following paragraph: Those who wish to study Niketas Choniates as both a historian and a sophisticated writer face a formidable challenge. The mountain to be climbed is tall and steep and there are no ‘royal highways’ to the top. It is possible that no one has been there before.
If the view promises to be spectacular, the ascent is sure to be treacherous. Niketas left no directions, despite the fact that he created something new, something that he knew would confound the expectations of even the most seasoned climbers. Any place where we might pause may collapse beneath our feet; there are pits and deep caverns everywhere; or else, his grottos may be so charming that, like Siren songs, they entice us to linger and give up the ascent. Likewise, we cannot afford to be dizzied by the spiraling chasms of irony and paradox. We can take little for granted here. Where is the solid ground in Niketas Choniates’ History.
And he carries on: I have no answer to that question. 12 The rest of the article illustrates some of the diffi culties of the text, such as the preface and the way that Andronikos is portrayed in the most negative manner, and yet when he is torn apart by the Constantinopolitan populace, Niketas turns against ‘the stupid and most ignorant inhabitants of Constantinople’. 13 As Kaldellis points out, it is very diffi cult to see exactly what Niketas himself thought as one judgement may immediately be undercut by the following remark. 14 He may describe an emperor in the blackest terms and then go on to praise him for extraordinary benefi ts he brought the empire. He narrated how Manuel framed one of his faithful subjects because he was envious of his abilities, and then says ‘A glorious deed was now performed by the emperor’ without appearing to be ironic since he describes how the cities of the East fl ourished under his rule (150). Or later, having described the random cruelty of Andronikos, he comments ‘yet he did participate in many virtuous actions’ (323–325).
What follows is a search for some solid ground in Niketas’ History . The work is very sophisticated, using recondite vocabulary, and it is also difficult to read and to understand. It appears to be a classicizing history 15 and yet the author most frequently cited is Homer, which to classicists seems odd, since this is a historical work. 16 Another complication is that there were different versions of his history circulating. 17 It appears that at first there was a history which would have been acceptable to the ruling emperor, but then once Constantinople fell, Niketas felt free to write as he wished, and the result was very different. 18 One might attribute the apparently contradictory judgements as being the result of careless or rapid editing. 19 But complexity seems to be part of the text. 20 The preface itself is one of the clearest examples of Niketas’ lack of clarity and will be discussed in Chapter .
Niketas’ life The name Choniates comes from the place Chonai, modern Honaz/ Khonaz – Colossae in the classical period, in Phrygia – southwestern Turkey, which is where he was from. 21 He also had a prominent brother, Michael Choniates, bishop of Athens (1182–1204), who wrote letters and a monodia or lament when Niketas died. 22 None of Niketas’ letters to him has survived and only one of Michael’s to Niketas remains, but there are bits and pieces of information in others. 23
Michael relates that the boys were educated in Constantinople as their parents were rich enough to send their sons to the capital for their education, although they are thought not to be from the aristocracy. 24 Niketas was born about 1155 and had a career as a bureaucrat, fi rst as a sort of tax offi cer, then as imperial undersecretary; then he studied law, and afterward was appointed imperial secretary; by 1188–1189 was head of the public treasury. Although we know of his titles thanks to his brother Michael, it is not entirely clear what these positions entailed. 25 The high point of his career was his appointment of grand logothete in 1195, but he was removed from this pinnacle when the emperor changed, just two months before the fall of Constantinople in 1204. 26 Niketas tells the reader that he lost his job (565) and then describes how then with the sack of the city he also lost his home and property (587–595). He and his family went into exile first to Selymbria and then to Nicaea, after briefly returning to Constantinople and seeing the destruction of the artistic masterpieces by the barbarian army (635–636). From Michael’s funeral address we learn that Niketas died about 30 years after Michael became bishop of Athens in 1182, so thus it must have been about 1215 or 1216 when he would have been 60 or 61. 27
His history His history starts with the death of Alexios Komnenos in 1118 (Alexios I) and ends with events of 1207, so it carries on a little after the taking of the city. In the organization of his history he does not follow the classical Greek historians, but one might say he models his work on a writer like Tacitus, in that his history goes from emperor to emperor. 28 It could be argued that history- writing is dependent on whatever its focus is. 29 Thucydides, because he was writing about city- states, was able to keep his work about governments rather than individuals. The Roman historians in the imperial period tended much more towards biography because the power of the emperor was so great. 30 The History was largely about Niketas’ own lifetime and where he goes further back, he acknowledges this. He says: Since I was not an eyewitness of that which I have recorded [that is John’s reign] I could not describe these events extensively but have set down what I heard from those contemporaries who personally knew the emperor and who escorted him on his campaigns against the enemy and accompanied him into battle.
What follows is not an investigation into his sources. That is not to say this is not an important question, but my main aim here is to look at what Niketas does with his material, what impression he is trying to give the reader, and to examine the views he reveals in the work. 32 Because it seemed to me that the work as a whole was intriguing, I wanted to examine it further. There is an excellent book recently published on Niketas by Alicia Simpson, which has already been referred to several times in this chapter. 33 Without this pioneering work, this book would have been very different. She has not only given the basic background to his work and describes the nature of his text, but has done invaluable research on the different versions of the history that the manuscript tradition bears witness to. This work in no way supersedes hers, but instead builds on the huge learning displayed in her book, to suggest a way of understanding Niketas that helps the reader approach this complex text.
As will become apparent, there are many diffi culties with this history. Andrea Catanzaro has recently produced an article, one might say trying to impose some taxis on the text. 34 What follows is the result of my own attempts to fi nd a key to this challenging text. I came to this text as a classicist, and I am sure Byzantinists will fi nd much that is lacking in what follows. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that it would be fruitful for someone with a knowledge of the historiography of antiquity to examine this most learned and allusive history. For me, what soon became striking as I became better acquainted with the text was that, although superfi cially it owes much to classical learning, its more important model was the Old Testament, as one indeed might expect. One might also suggest that the many apparent paradoxes or puzzles in Niketas’ work have a model too in the Bible itself. 35
Harry J. Magoulias published a translation in 1984 titled O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates.36 This book is often singled out for criticism for mistakes in translation, however Magoulias did the scholarly community a service in making the text accessible to a much wider readership. 37 Plus it must be noted again that the text is very diffi cult to understand. Consequently the German translation by Franz Grabler and the Italian one by Anna Pontani have been consulted also. 38 However, unless stated otherwise, quotations will be based on Magoulias’ and the references to Niketas’ text from the van Dieten edition, as is conventional. 39 Magoulias, using van Dieten’s apparatus, also provided a helpful introduction and notes indicating the echoes in the text. I have sometimes used these notes as will become apparent, but the numbering for the Psalms and references for the Bible I have taken from the New Revised Standard Version . 40 The following chapter will look at the preface, which is not long but which contains several puzzles.
The examination of these few pages not only is a study of what Niketas thought he was doing when he wrote his history, but it also gives a good indication of what to expect in the body of the work. Some comparison with Anna Komnene is made, and it is suggested that Niketas had her work in mind when he wrote his own. Anna Komnene can be seen as an important figure for Niketas, not only because of her history but because of her ambitions which we learn about in the first few pages of his history, where he gives a very negative portrait of this famous figure. In Chapter 3 , his descriptions of female characters are looked at more closely. They can be seen as a key to his judgements about the men in their lives, so that the powerful but destructive Anna and her mother Irene can be seen to reflect badly on Alexios I Komnenos. Similarly other women that appear in his pages give an indication of his judgement of the men in their lives, usually their husbands. Chapter 4 looks at the classical allusions in Niketas’ work, which has often simply been described as a classicizing work. On closer inspection however, this seems to be a distracting description.
Niketas was not concerned to allude to the great historians of antiquity. His classical learning could be seen more as the grammar of the high register of his language, rather than a tool he consciously deployed. The classical allusions decorate the work, and the vocabulary owes much to the vastness of his education, but the main text that influenced the history is the Old Testament. The next chapter then continues the discussion from the previous one, and demonstrates the debt owed to the Old Testament and considers why Niketas turned to that rather than the New Testament. Niketas is often consulted because of the information he provides on the reigns of emperors in the hundred years leading to the fall of Constantinople. Chapter 6 considers what difference having the Old Testament as a model makes to the way we read what Niketas has to say about the individuals, and how he chooses to criticize or praise them.
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