Byzantine Perspective Research Articles

“Into the Sea of Forgetfulness”: An Analysis of Anna Komnene’s Alexiad in Relation to the First Crusade

Anna Komnene’s account of the First Crusade in her work The Alexiad provides invaluable insight into the Byzantine perspective of this pivotal event defining the 11th century. While shunned in a monastery, she wrote her celebrated work known as The Alexiad. Anna’s primary motivation for writing the biography stems from her desire to emphasize the accomplishments of her father, especially in regards to protecting the Byzantine Empire against invaders, both Latin and Turkish. For Anna, the crusade functions as a Western pretext for taking land away from the Byzantines. Comparing specific sieges in the First Crusade to their Latin counterparts provides a significantly more nuanced comprehension of the Crusades from a Christian perspective. Anna's Byzantine perspective contradicts the simplified characterization of the First Crusade as a united Christian front against the Muslim forces.

Religious Hatred and Byzantine Ideology before the Crusades

Religious hatred has a long and painful history. It was conceptualized, defined and employed in various ways and for various ends throughout history. The present article focuses on the religious hatred and the roles that it played in Byzantium. It proposes a comparative approach to analyze expressions of religious hatred in Byzantine texts. The article does not analyze religious hatred as the actual hatred that a Christian might feel for his Jewish neighbor because he is Jewish, or vice-versa, but the way it appears in texts as a literary and rhetorical construction. What could be termed “Byzantine typology of religious hatred” as it presented and constructed in different types of texts by different authors will reveal the construction of a Byzantine perspective to mark political enemies as religious adversaries and vice versa. The question is to what end. This article proposes to look more closely into the way religious hatred served as a tool in the construction of Byzantine public opinion, a means for the Byzantines to perceive their polity and themselves as righteous.

The Book Epigrams on Prometheus, ascribed to John Tzetzes

This article presents the Byzantine book of epigrams on Prometheus, found at the end of Prometheus Bound in a considerable part of Aeschylean manuscripts. It offers a critical edition, translation, analysis, commentary, and demonstrates John Tzetzes’ authorship. The detailed reading of the text aims at showing the presence of theatrical effects which characterise these poems, as well as illustrating the author’s poetic technique and interpreting his reproach to Aeschylus. By doing so we will touch upon broader issues, such as the interpretation of Prometheus from a Byzantine perspective and the authorship of the A-commentary on Aeschylus, the most popular among mediaeval students.

The West from a Byzantine Perspective During the Early Crusades

The article explores changing attitudes to western Europeans in the Byzantine Empire from the eleventh century until the Fourth Crusade and for some time after it. Special attention is paid to the development of old stereotypes and the emergence of new ones. More active contacts between the two halves of Christendom from the eleventh century onwards did not result in an expected rapprochement, but rather led to hatred and resentment. The article focuses on a number of texts by Byzantine authors, such as Michael Psellos, Anna Komnena, John Kinnamos, Eustathios of Thessaloniki, and Niketas Choniates. In my view, the changes in Byzantine perceptions of the west could be represented in terms of the following metaphorically named stages: Calm, Menace, and Bitterness and Despair.

Michael Psellos on Literature and Art: A Byzantine Perspective on Aesthetics ed. by Charles Barber and Stratis Papaioannou

Reviewed by: Michael Psellos on Literature and Art: A Byzantine Perspective on Aesthetics ed. by Charles Barber and Stratis Papaioannou Michael Edward Stewart Barber, Charles, and Stratis Papaioannou, eds, Michael Psellos on Literature and Art: A Byzantine Perspective on Aesthetics (Michael Psellos in Translation), Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2017; paperback; pp. 446; R.R.P. US$40.00; ISBN 978026810048. Born as Konstantinos Psellos in Constantinople in 1018, the polymath Michael Psellos has been described by one noted Byzantinist as ‘the most amazing figure in Byzantine history’ (Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 191). While some might quibble with this designation, the burgeoning market for new translations of a wide range of Psellos’s writings underscores his current popularity. Building upon two earlier volumes on Psellos that focused primarily on his orations and letters, this third volume from the University of Notre Dame Press offers English translations and commentaries from a collaboration of scholars on a wide array of his writings on literary theory, visual ethics, and art criticism. For the sake of brevity, I highlight below only some of the sections that I found noteworthy in this fascinating collection. The art of Middle Byzantine rhetoric comes to life in the hands of a master. The book opens with two Psellian treatises on rhetoric, the first a letter to an unknown student, the second a synopsis of grammar in the form of a poem to the [End Page 192] future emperor Michael VII Doukas (r. 1071–77). In these lessons Psellos displays his virtuosity as a teacher and master of what he described lovingly as ‘sweet-speaking’ (p. 65). Elegant prose for Psellos was often a matter of individual style. The next selection of texts focuses on Psellos’s views on various literary genres and ancient authorities—pagan and Christian. Rather than relying upon divine intervention or regurgitating the classics, he insisted that inspiration must come from within. He praised the Church Father Gregory of Nazianzos (329–90) for his ability to employ simple vocabulary to craft his own masterful rhetorical style, declaring ‘Without emulating the ancients he opened up each and every stream from a source from within himself’ (p. 126). For Psellos, there was no single pathway to high rhetoric, advising his student that ‘Words, my son, lie scattered about just like (one might say) unarranged stones’ (p. 128). It was up to individuals to arrange the collected material as they saw fit to craft their own mosaic of ‘perfect composition’ (p. 133). Text and author were for Psellos often distinct identities; chameleon-like, the author needed to adapt his persona to the edicts of his chosen rhetorical form. Psellos recommends ‘to argue either side of a dispute, both because we can hold opposite opinions about the same matter, and because the good are somewhat similar to the bad’ (p. 81). How securely Psellos remained tethered to the religious norms of his day remains controversial. We often find him skulking through delicate theological territory. Although Psellos describes theology as ‘The Science beyond physics […] the first science’ (p. 233), he proudly displays his mastery of Aristotelian logic, Platonic metaphysics, and Neoplatonic visual aesthetics. While Plato stands above all other classical authors, Gregory’s writings earn Psellos’s highest praise, offering an exemplum of a Christian rhetor and philosopher, an idealized image of an educated man steeped in both Christian and non-Christian learning. As the editors suggest, it is likely that Psellos hoped his contemporaries would see Gregory as a double of himself. While some (e.g. Kaldellis, Hellenism, p. 231) contend that Psellos’s praise of Gregory functioned largely as a smokescreen, deployed to protect his Byzantine Hellenism from Christian hardliners within Constantinople, the editors counter that the complex tenor of his work does not support such an interpretation. On this point, Stratis Papaioannou asserts that, while Psellos’s models are predominantly non-Christian, we should not see some ‘sort of anti-Christian pagan world-view in Psellos’ (p. 101). Psellos rooted his visual aesthetic in Christian and Neoplatonist teachings. The study closes by exploring Psellos’s response to...

Michael Psellos on Literature and Art: A Byzantine Perspective on Aesthetics ed. by Charles Barber, Stratis Papaioannou, Michael Psellos

Michael Psellos on Literature and Art: A Byzantine Perspective on Aesthetics ed. by Charles Barber, Stratis Papaioannou, Michael Psellos

Procopius’s Old English

AbstractBy the middle of the sixth century, in Byzantine perspective, Britain had so long since ceased to be part of the empire of the Romans as to have become a kind of never-land, some part of the known world, but also the sort of place of which it was possible to credit the fabulous. Information was scarce. Nevertheless, the chief source for the sixth-century east-Roman regime in Constantinople, Procopius (c. 500 -565 CE), met a group of Anglo-Saxons c. 540, who were contemporaries of Beowulf’s king Hygelac; and Procopius may have learned from hoi Angiloi something about the Old English poetry, at a particularly important point in its formation, before the beginning of the conversion of the English to Christianity in 597 CE. Procopius’s English informants told him a tale (of the vengeful Anglo-Saxon bride of a Frisian basileos named Radigis) of a type consonant with later examples of Old English poetry; also, with an historical basis that coincides with the historical milieu to which the earliest Old English heroic poetry also refers, including Beowulf.

“Soldiers of Christ” from the Byzantine Perspective: Monks, Emperors, and Conflict in the Early Byzantine Empire

This article is an exploration of concept of monks as “soldiers of Christ” in Byzantine Anatolia during the late sixth and early seventh centuries CE. Through a case study of Theodore of Sykeon, this article will explore monks as agents of continuity in the Byzantine Anatolia of the late sixth and early seventh centuries through Theodore's conflicts with the emperors, imperial authorities, and the regional episcopal hierarchy. The conflicts Theodore had with various authority figures of his time were about helping them see the right path of supporting Catholic orthodoxy as the normative belief system of Byzantine society and integrating his rural community of Sykeon into the wider web of imperial and episcopal urban patronage. Thus, conflict in this context was a catalyst for social order and stability rather than a symptom of social collapse. This article also fits into the historiography of the holy man as local patron in Late Antiquity, suggesting an alternate interpretation of this phenomenon as first put forward in Peter Brown's seminal works on this subject.

Bosnia in the work of Kritoboulos of Imbros

Most of the data Kritoboulos of Imbros, a Byzantine historian of the fifteenth century, gives about Bosnia, pertain to the last years of existence of the medieval Bosnian state. Apart from two short side notes on other issues, the bulk of evidence on Bosnia in Kritoboulos' work bears on the events of the year 1463, describing the occupation of Bosnia by Mehmed II the Conqueror and the counteroffensive launched by the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus, as well as the final return of the Ottoman Sultan in 1464. Kritoboulos was obviously well informed about the events, so that his report even though it does not offer spectacular new insights, certainly represents a valuable supplement to other sources. The space Kritoboulos devotes to the fall of Bosnia, taken together with the data from other Byzantine sources such as Laonikos Chalkokondyles' History, Byzantine Short Chronicles and Chronicle of the Turkish Sultans, unequivocally shows that this was one of the most important events in the second half of the fifteenth century. Viewed as a hole, the body of evidence on Bosnia from Byzantine sources, covering the time span of the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, bears witness to how the Byzantine perspective on Bosnia changed over centuries. Originally, e.g. in Constantine Porphyrogennetos' De administrando imperio (tenth century) Bosnia was simply considered a part of Serbia. Later, although still treated as a part of Serbia, it assumes a somewhat different position, as witnessed by John Kinnamos in twelfth century, who notes that "the river Drina which takes its origin somewhat higher up and divides Bosnia from the rest of Serbia", but also that "Bosnia itself is not subjected to the Serbs' grand zupan, but is a tribe which lives and ruled separately". Finally, in the 15th century, Bosnia is an independent state like, for instance, Serbia or Hungary. .

The Perception of Spatial Structure with Oblique Viewing: An Explanation for Byzantine Perspective?

Earlier work has confirmed that (i) observers can judge divergent receding lines, placed directly in front of them, to be parallel, and (ii) converging lines which are displaced laterally, so that they are viewed obliquely, can also be judged to be parallel. The former observation is in accord with traditional views of perspective while the latter, which is in accord with the depictions of objects found in Byzantine painting, is not in accord with perspective but is predicted by the relative magnitude of the visual angles subtended by the near and far ends of the pair of lines. To investigate whether these effects occurred when the stimulus was clearly three-dimensional, experiments were conducted with a novel apparatus, consisting of a framework of computer-controlled motor-driven luminous rods. This could be remotely adjusted so that all visible sides appeared to be parallel, ie to resemble a cube. Results showed that observers set the sides of this trapezohedron framework as diverging when it was viewed immediately in front of them, a result which is concordant with linear perspective, ie they see the normal projection of a cube as having converging edges. When the framework was displaced from the median plane so that it was viewed obliquely, the sides were set as converging and the magnitude of this effect was significantly related to angle of view, ie observers see the normal projection of a cube as having diverging sides.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

The Confraternities of Byzantium

‘The medieval drive to association’. That phrase comes from a monograph by Susan Reynolds. It is to be found in a chapter on guilds and confraternities. And it is representative of the quasi-biological vocabulary to which historians of those institutions seem especially prone. ‘How appropriate is this talk of drives? What, in this context, is the force of ‘medieval’? My ultimate purpose is to address those questions from a Byzantine perspective; to ask in effect whether evidence of confraternities from the eastern Roman empire between approximately 400 and the Ottoman conquest will sustain talk of a Byzantine ‘drive to association’. The enquiry is, however, worth a preliminary approach on a broader front. This is partly because the historiography of European confraternities shapes the questions that must be put to the Byzantine sources. It is also because, unusually, a Byzantine perspective may illuminate problems arising from the western material. Finally it is because the comparative history of confraternities may, by implication, have a modest contribution to make to the larger question of the differences between eastern and western Christianity. Much energy has been expended on accounting for the ‘parting of the ways’ - less, perhaps, on measuring the distance between them.