Download PDF | (Crusade Texts in Translation) Georgios Chatzelis_ Jonathan Harris - Byzantine Sources for the Crusades, 1095-1204-Routledge (2024).
245 Pages
Byzantine Sources for the Crusades, 1095–1204
The Christian, Greek-speaking Byzantine empire was placed rather uneasily between western Christendom and the Islamic world during the Crusade era. Like all historical topics – particularly medieval – sources on the crusades give a variety of perspectives and accounts, but Byzantine writers provide a unique outlook on these crucial events. Byzantine Sources for the Crusades, 1095–1204 brings together important sources on the Crusades into one volume.
The texts translated here include established accounts, such as selections from Anna Komnene’s description of the passage of the First Crusade in 1096–8, John Kinnamos’ writings on the Second Crusade and Niketas Choniates’ studies on the Second and Third Crusades, particularly covering the passage of German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa during the latter. However, less well-known accounts are also translated and provided, such as Zonaras’ and the contemporary letters of the archbishop of Ohrid during the First Crusade, various poems and speeches recorded throughout the reigns of John II and Manuel I Komnenos and smaller accounts about crusaders passing through the Byzantine empire. This book covers up to the Fourth Crusade, in which Niketas Choniates was an eye-witness to the Siege of Constantinople in 1204 and later a refugee in Nicaea, writing a series of speeches about the capture of the Byzantine capital and rallying the Byzantines to recover the city from the newly created Latin empire.
This book will appeal to scholars and students alike studying the era of the Crusades in the East and the perspectives and accounts of Byzantine writers both at the time and after, as well as all those interested in the history of the Byzantine empire in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.
Georgios Chatzelis is currently a teaching fellow at Democritus University of Thrace and at Hellenic Open University. In the past, he held research and teaching positions at Royal Holloway University of London, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Centre for Advanced Study Sofia and New Europe College: Institute for Advanced Study. His recent publications include Byzantine Military Manuals as Literary Works and Practical Handbooks: The Case of the Tenth-Century Sylloge Tacticorum (2019) and, with Jonathan Harris, A Tenth-Century Byzantine Military Manual: The Sylloge Tacticorum (2017).
Jonathan Harris is Professor of the History of Byzantium at Royal Holloway, University of London. His recent publications include Byzantium and the Crusades, third edition (2022); Introduction to Byzantium (602–1453) (2020) and The Lost World of Byzantium (2015). His first novel, Theosis, appeared in 2023 and he is currently editing The New Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades.
Preface
The task of translating the Greek texts in this book fell principally to Georgios Chatzelis, with Jonathan Harris providing suggestions and amendments to his versions. The division of labour was reversed with the small number of Latin texts that we included [3, 11 & 13]. The book introduction, text introductions, footnotes and index were likewise all initially compiled by Harris, with Chatzelis providing the suggestions and amendments. Our volume is by no means comprehensive. For example, the 1174 speech of Eustathios of Thessalonica, which includes an account of the Second Crusade, the speeches of Manganeios Prodromos about Manuel I’s expedition to Antioch and the funeral oration of Nicholas Mesarites for his brother John have not been included as they have recently been translated by Andrew Stone, Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys and Michael Angold, respectively: details are included in the bibliography. Earlier translations of our texts into English and other languages may also be found listed there. We initially planned to omit Anna Komnene as well because her work is freely available in the translation by Sewter and Frankopan but it soon became apparent that the early sections of our book would not make much sense without her work.
We have therefore included selected passages from the Alexiad in the translation of Elizabeth Dawes (1864–1954), albeit with the spellings of personal names adapted to fit in with the rest of the volume. Throughout the book, square brackets in the text ([]) indicate where we have supplied words to bring out the sense of the passage or omitted sections for reasons of space. . . . We are grateful to Routledge for their permission to reproduce the Dawes translation of Anna Komnene. We would also like to record our appreciation to our editors at Routledge, Michael Greenwood and Louis Nicholson-Pallett, to Andreas Gkoutzioukostas, Martin Hall and Chrysa Zizopoulou for their advice on points of language and to Gilbert Rajkumar and his colleagues at Apex CoVantage for their careful and thorough copy editing of our text. Georgios Chatzelis and Jonathan Harris Thessaloniki and London, May 2024
Introduction This volume presents translated extracts from contemporary texts which throw light on the first four Crusades and the subsequent Latin presence in the east. All were written between 1095 and 1330 from within the Byzantine empire (also known as Byzantium). This Christian state could claim direct continuity with the eastern half of the Roman empire, which had survived after the western provinces had been lost to Germanic invaders during the fifth century CE. It had contracted over the years and had had to fight for survival against the expansion of Islam during the seventh and eighth centuries CE. By 1050, it was centred on Asia Minor and the Balkans, along with the islands of Crete and Cyprus and part of southern Italy.
The link with the empire of the Caesars remained an important part of its official ideology and, as readers will notice in the extracts, its inhabitants generally described themselves as Romans. Their predominant language, however, was not Latin but Greek. That is an important point to bear in mind when reading the extracts. Only three of them, connected to external relations [3, 11 & 13], were originally in Latin, a language which very few Byzantines understood. Most were in Greek but it has to be remembered there were varying forms of the language. That used by the mass of the people for everyday spoken communication was developing into the Demotic that prevails in Greece and Cyprus today.
The Church used something closer to Koine or Common Greek, the language of the New Testament and the liturgy. Monastic chronicles were often penned in this idiom.1 The court and administration preferred Classical Greek, especially the version known as Attic, which had developed in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The Greek texts translated in this book are mainly in Attic, with two in simpler language [45 & 47]. They were almost all authored by intellectuals employed in some capacity or other in the state administration and based at the palace of Blachernae in the capital city of Constantinople. Securing such a post was dependent on completing a course of higher education, which involved reading and internalising works of ancient authors such as Homer, Plato and Demosthenes. Students were required to write and even to speak in that Attic language and were expected to use it in the literary works that they produced in their subsequent careers.2
Those writings fall into a number of clearly defined genres. History was one of them, and most of the texts translated in this book are from historical works which were modelled on those of ancient historians such as Thucydides and Plutarch. But there were several other forms of writing produced at the Byzantine court that discussed the crusades and the Latin East. Members of the Byzantine political and literary elite often exchanged letters [4, 19 & 32]. There was ekphrasis, a description of a place, building or work of art [37 & 41], poetry [9, 20, 28, 31, 33, 38, 46 & 51] and the encomium or laudatory speech.
The last was the most public form of Byzantine writing. Encomia could take the form of a eulogy at a funeral [54] but most often they were in praise of a reigning emperor in whose presence they would be delivered on important feasts of the year, such as Epiphany on 6 January [24, 25, 43, 49 & 53]. However, all these works were intended to be read out loud at court, not just encomia. Even letters were often not so much private, intimate communications as exercises in literary skill, designed to be admired for their virtuosity in the ancient language, even if their subject was something as dry and practical as tax exemption.3 Byzantine writings present some challenges when they are approached as sources of historical information.
They can be difficult to read, even in translation, coming across as stilted and long winded. They were deliberately so because their authors considered it good style to use the most archaic and obscure vocabulary that they could muster. They also demonstrated their erudition by cramming in as many allusions to ancient mythology, history and literature as they possibly could so that the matter in hand can often be hard to discern.4 This deliberate archaism can also have the effect of making Byzantine writings appear remote from their own times.
To preserve the purity of the ancient language, authors preferred not to use contemporary names. So the Turks were called Persians and Western Europeans Celts and even their capital city of Constantinople was sometimes given its old name of Byzantion. Byzantine authors also mirrored the world view of their ancient models, replicating their sharp distinction drawn between ‘civilised’ peoples and others: those who did not speak Greek and who did not accept the authority of the emperor were labelled ‘barbarians’.5 Finally, it has to be remembered too that these works only represent the views of a tiny segment of the Byzantine population, albeit a very influential one.
They circulated only among the very small caste of palace administrators. Some of them, such as the history of John Kinnamos, survive in just one manuscript, suggesting that they were not widely read even within that group. Others, like those of Niketas Choniates, do survive in numerous manuscripts but these date from several centuries later. In any case, their language and style would have rendered them incomprehensible to the vast majority of Byzantines. These points should be borne in mind before using them as a guide to ‘the Byzantine view’ of the crusades. On the other hand, in spite of the obscure language, deliberate antiquarianism and the plethora of classical allusions, the extracts translated in this book can provide an intriguing glimpse into how the policy makers at the Byzantine court perceived the crusades and the Latin East.
They reflect not only the literary genre in which their authors were writing but also the way in which they used those conventions to present and construct the crusaders and the Latin states of Outre Mer and to defend and promote the policies pursued by their own rulers. Thus Anna Komnene, Michael Italikos and John Kinnamos championed the actions of Emperors Alexios I, John II and Manuel I, respectively [5, 6, 10, 15, 24, 34, 36 & 39]. Some provide eyewitness testimony: Constantine Manasses and John Phokas gave their impressions of the Latin East when in the area on official business [37 & 41] and Niketas Choniates recounted his own experiences during the Third and Fourth Crusades [42 & 50]. Joel and Ephraim of Ainos voiced the perspective of later generations looking back on these events, about which they were not always well informed [9, 20, 28 & 52].
There is even a set of advice left by an emperor for his son [21]. These viewpoints are, of course, highly partisan but that is only to be expected. What is even more intriguing, however, is the way that Byzantine authors could express real concerns and even criticism as a kind of subtext behind the formal façade. Two of the letters translated here, for example, leave the reader in no doubt about their authors’ uneasiness at the approach of western crusade armies and the intentions of their leaders [4 & 32]: they do not always display the blithe confidence in the emperor that fills the pages of Komnene and Kinnamos. Similarly, while the hyperbolic praise of the encomia reads like vapid sycophancy, skilful orators could subtly subvert the convention by weaving in ‘advice’ to the emperor which effectively amounted to criticism of a particular action or policy [43]. 6 Nikephoros Chrysoberges, for example, subtly expressed his doubts as to the wisdom of Alexios IV’s dealings with the leaders of the Fourth Crusade [49].
The same applies to histories. While Komnene and Kinnamos adhered closely to the convention to praise Emperors Alexios I and Manuel I [5, 6, 10, 34, 36 & 39], Niketas Choniates manipulated it to suggest criticism of Byzantine policy in the years leading up to the sack of Constantinople in April 1204 [42 & 48]. None of this was stated openly, merely hinted at: for the art of Byzantine writers was, as one contemporary put it, ‘to weave webs of phrases, and transform the written sense into riddles, saying one thing with their tongues, but hiding something in their minds
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