Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters. The Byzantine Family of Michael Psellos ed. by Anthony Kaldellis (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 263 Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters. The Byzantine Family of Michael Psellos, trans. and ed. Anthony Kaldellis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2006) x + 209 pp. In Anthony Kaldellis’s examination of texts written by Michael Psellos (1018– 1075?), the famous Byzantine philosopher is presented as a son and as a father in a complicated system of family relationships, placed in the wider circle of a social and political context, opening thus a window on family life in eleventh century Byzantium, of which we know so little. Psellos was much more than a family man. He was a politician, poet, and writer. He was interested in philosophy , rhetoric, and education, and his vast corpus of writings that cover almost every field of knowledge and genre is impressive. His name appears in discussions of almost every aspect of Byzantine civilization. He was deeply engaged in the political intrigues of his time, most notably in the events of the Schism of 1054 and the defeat at Manzikert (1071). Before now, only the historical work, “Chronographia,” Psellos’s memoirs of the emperors of his time, has been known among modern readers. This volume presents in translation all the texts that Psellos wrote concerning his family. They present the reader with the most complete picture we have of any non-imperial family by casting light on the life of Byzantine women outside the circle of hagiography and court history. The volume includes a long funeral oration for his mother, a funeral oration for his daughter Styliane, a legal work regarding the engagement of his second, adopted, daughter, a letter to his very young grandson, six letters regarding Psellos’s family, and a brief work on the festival of St. Agathê. In Kaldellis’s excellent translation, Michael Psellos’s times and family come to life. Each text is annotated and prefaced by an introduction, while the volume as a whole is introduced by an essay on Psellos ’s life, the history of his family, and the lives of women and children in eleventh -century Constantinople. Psellos’s “Encomium for his mother” is, according to Kaldellis (29), “one of his longest, most rhetorically complex, and personally revealing narrative works after the “Chronographia.” The work is at the same time an encomium and a funeral oration for Psellos’s mother Theodote. The Encomium focuses on her domestic and then on her ascetic life, linking her always to his own intellectual and spiritual development. Psellos includes in the oration his father and his sister, praising their lives and lamenting their deaths in similar terms. The work ends with an extended list of his own intellectual interests. Psellos organizes his material concerning family life around his saintly mother’s life, conversion and death. Kaldellis proves with logical arguments based on textual evidence (the Encomium) that political concerns rather than filial piety motivated this composition. The political pressures to which Psellos was subject to in 1054, when the Encomium was written, confirm this interpretation. Psellos loved himself, and his mother’s sanctity is used to defend his actions against his adversaries. He uses his rhetorical talent to present his family as an assembly of saints, allowing this light to reflect upon himself. In the end, this work can be interpreted as a funeral oration for his mother, who had died a long time ago, but it is in the first place an encomium to Michael Psellos, showering high praise on his many talents. REVIEWS 264 Kaldellis thinks that Psellos wrote the Encomium in late 1054, towards the very end of Konstantinos IX Monomachos (1042–Jan. 1055), immediately after the philosopher had accepted monastic tonsure, seeking refuge from his political complications in a monastery, which he fled soon after Monomachos’s death. He returned to the capital and resumed his activities: court intrigue, philosophy, and teaching. In the last years of Monomachos reign, Psellos’s faith was publicly questioned, as he was perceived as leaning towards paganism, Neoplatonism, and astrology, so the Encomium would have been a way to create a saintly icon of himself. Kaldellis’s chapter on “Daughters and Wives in Eleventh-Century Constantinople” clarifies an idea that might be unfamiliar to the modern reader...