Constantine VII Research Articles

Recovering a disfigured Empire. Institutional maintenance in Tenth-century Byzantium

Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (945-959 AD) implements a peculiar institutional maintenance, based on the collection of books and materials from the past. A closer scrutiny of the sources shows some deeper meanings and reveals that the recurring metaphors of the body and the family shape his grand project, shedding light onto the institutional and social agenda which underpinned his embodied maintenance.

Oikoi stratiōtikoi. Open Questions on Land and Military Service in Byzantium (c. 7th–10th centuries)

Abstract The expression oikoi stratiōtikoi, used in Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus as opposed to oikoi politikoi, designates all those families who were bound to military service. They, in the tenth century, were listed in various enlistment registers that were periodically updated, among which one was kept in Constantinople. There is solid evidence to argue that such an administrative practice originated in the eighth century, coinciding with a significant transformation in the enrolment of soldiers and their maintenance. A conscription procedure was devised in the age of the Isaurians, which, although it is not known whether it was on a voluntary or compulsory basis, entailed the entry in the military records (in Constantinople and the provinces) of every person in charge (oikodespotēs) of the family that had assumed the military burden. This implied in later periods a strong uncertainty in the relationship between service and its performance because registration rested on an ambiguous vocabulary. The ambiguity, in fact, was rooted in the polysemy of the concept of oikos, family unit, home and patrimony at the same time. While such a notion allowed the recruitment in thematic armies to function flexibly through the wide network of the family’s cognate and agnatic structure, precisely because the oikos was also a set of economic interests, it exposed the landed patrimony of military families to splitting and erosion. This ambiguity ended with Constantine VII’s famous law of 949, which regulated the property regime of the stratiōtikoi oikoi, a regime that, as the same provision explicitly states in several points, already existed previously throughout the empire. The law provided a precise economic quantification of the assets needed for each ‘military family’ to perform the service. Historiography has generally interpreted Constantine VII’s measure as an act breaking with the previous tradition, since military service appears in it much more markedly connoted as a patrimonial burden, rather than as a personal one. However, this ‘oppositional’ interpretation does not seem adequate for understanding the concept of oikos stratiōtikos, which from the outset must have implied a profound interrelationship between the personality of the service and its patrimonial basis, since the one did not exist without the other.

Riddles of the Text of an Early Byzantine Historian (Book Review: Priscus Panita. Excerpta et fragmenta / ed. by P. Carolla. – Berolini ; Novi Eboraci : Walter de Gruyter, 2017. – XLVIII, 140 p.)

Introduction. The publication is a review of the critical edition of the preserved fragments of the Early Byzantine intellectual and diplomat Priscus Panita’s historical work who presented first of all unique information about the nature of international relations in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Europe at the time of increasing threats to the Eastern and Western Roman empires from the barbarians. Analysis. Italian scholar, philologist, and archaeographer P. Carolla who, unlike many of her predecessors, involved all the codices containing excerpts from the writings of Priscus for the publication, primarily confirmed the concept of her teacher, F. Bornmann, about the authenticity of texts related to the work of Priscus, but contained in the works created under control of the 10th-century emperor Constantine VII. The result of the presentation of these fragments is a logical series of formally separate texts which is based on a perfectly developed stem. This kind of classical archaeographic technique is supplemented by approaches different in their effectiveness to the publication of excerpts whose affiliation to the Priscus’ pen is not indisputable. The review notes that this kind of technique would have been more successful if Carolla had accompanied the published texts with a commentary on their content. But there are no such comments, but only some attempts to indicate that a number of passages belong to Priscus as an author. This approach impoverishes publisher’s archaeographic finds and is methodologically flawed. The disadvantages of such methods of publication are illustrated in the review by examples of hypothetical dependence of the corresponding “Hunnic” passages of the most famous historian of the 6th-century Byzantium Procopius of Caesarea on the texts of Priscus. Results. In general, however, the publication undertaken by Carolla not only presents well-organized topical texts to specialists, allowing them to expand the possibilities of studying the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, but also gives an additional impetus to improving the methodology of Byzantine archaeography.

Un fantôme historique : «l’autre Theophane»

Abstract At the beginning of the 9th c. George Syncellus began to write a universal chronicle, the second part of which was completed by the monk Theophanes. According to Byzantine tradition this monk was Theophanes the Confessor. But 10th-century sources note that this Theophanes was the grandfather or greatuncle of the emperor Constantine VII, which is historically impossible. This prompted P. Speck to invent “another Theophanes”, who lived during the second half of the 9th c. and was the editor of the Chronicle of Theophanes. The hypothesis turns out to be unfounded and untenable. Also untenable and unrelated to the sources is the hypothesis of C. Zuckerman that the author of the Chronicle is another Theophanes who lived at the same time as the Confessor. This study, after an analysis of sources, proves in both cases that they are historical phantoms.

ABOUT THE NAMES OF THE DNIEPER RAPIDS IN THE RUS’ LANGUAGE IN DE ADMINISTRANDO IMPERIO

None of the many etymologies of the names of the Dnieper rapids in the Rus’ people’s language from the De administrando imperio treatise have so far been completely convincing. Perhaps the researchers used the wrong language key in addition to paying lesser attention to the possible connections of the The hydronyms of the Rus’ language with the rapids names which were in use in subsequent centuries. An analysis of these connections, as well as examples of the language of Old Rus’, suggests that the names used in the work of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus had Latin roots. The features of the geographical environment reflected in the hydronyms, the flora of the region quite confidently correlate with the indications of the Byzantine treatise and other sources. Some features of the Dnieper hydronyms may indicate Vulgar Latin forms, including those dating back to medieval Balkan dialects, rather than classic.

A Note on the Dossier of Geographical Glosses Used by the Compilers of the So-called Version B of the Logothete Chronicle under the Macedonian Emperors

The article explains the list of geographical references included in the chronicle of the Pseudo-Symeon 705.16– 707.10 (Bekker) as the result of the careless copying of a dossier of glosses connected with the preparatory work for a lost volume of the Historical Excerpts of Constantine VII. Comparison is made with other contemporary chronicles, such as Book VI of Theophanes continuatus and the so-called Logothete Chronicle B in order to substantiate this hypothesis. It is suggested that Ps-Symeon worked on a copy of the Logothete Chronicle A, which he used as a basis to create a new version of the text expanded with new sources and materials. The problems thus detected make it necessary to reconsider the position of Logothete B in the stemma and to take into account the use of dossiers and the “contamination” (i.e. sharing of sources) among the various versions of the Logothete complex.

On One Byzantine Rhetorical Gambit to Disavow Diplomatic Precedent (Const. Porph. Dai. 13.145–194 & Liud. Relatio. 55)

Introduction. The article aims to compare two texts concerning byzantine diplomatic practices of the mid 10th century. The first one is described in the 13th chapter of the treatise “De Administrando Imperio”, in which its author Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus gave some pieces of advice to his son Romanus II Porphyrogenitus how to line up rhetorical manipulation during the negotiations with ambassadors of different ‘barbarian’ nations. The second one is the description of conversation, which took place on September 17, 968 between emperor Otto I the Great’s ambassador bishop Liudprand of Cremona and patrician Christopher. It is described in Liudprand’s “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana”. Methods. The classical comparative method is used to examine the veracity of two independent texts of different character describing the similar diplomatic trick. The author compares a program-ideological and simultaneously a propaedeutic treatises with a semiofficial report of a foreign senior ambassador. Analysis. In the 13th chapter of the treatise “De Administrando Imperio” its author Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus advised his son Roman II in negotiations with the ambassadors of the “barbarian” nations not to except the precedent of giving in marriage the granddaughter of the Byzantine emperor Romanus I Lecapenus Maria-Irina to Bulgarian ruler Peter, since Romanus I Lecapenus was a man of poor education and incompetent in the ancient sacred customs of the Roman Empire. In “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana” by bishop Liudprand of Cremona during the confiscation of “purple clothes”, which he had bought, he referred to the fact that during his last visit to Constantinople, emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus had allowed him to take out even more expensive clothes without any obstacles. Contrary to this example, he received a reply from patrician Christopher, that emperor Constantine was a weak man and cherished the friendship of barbarians and foreigners with gifts, and ruling emperor Nikephoros II Phokas was a strong and warlike man, he didn’t allow such liberties for foreigners. In both cases, the same counter-argument was used to disavow precedent – a criticism of the bygone emperor in comparison with the current sovereign. This suggests that it was a common rhetorical device for Byzantine diplomats. These two cases allow to clarify the sophisticated ideology of “Tradition” and its “Split” as a corner-stone political idea of Eastern Roman Empire. Results. As a result of comparing the texts “De Administrando Imperio” (952–959) and “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitano” (969) it becomes clear that Byzantine politicians in the mid 10th century used for disavowing diplomatic precedents the criticism of their own emperor, who agreed to some concessions in the past. His personality was declared inappropriate to the high standards of a Roman ruler in comparison with the current emperor. Such rhetoric was surprising for the peoples who considered a series of their rulers as a genealogical aggregate of relatives responsible for their predecessors as for themselves. Byzantine politicians calmly recognized imperfections of their bygone emperors, what allowed them to ignore the strongest diplomatic argument of the early Middle Ages – a historical precedent.

Treatise "De Administrando Imperio" by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus: Date of the Paris. gr. 2009 Copy, Years of Compiling of the Original Codex, and a Hypothesis about the Number of Authors

The article proposes a new version of the history of the famous Byzantine political treatise De Administrando Imperio. The text of this treatise was written after 952 and before November 959 personally by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus for his eldest son Romanus II. The emperor worked in tandem with an “Anonymous Collaborator”. The text of the treatise was based on the private notes and excerpts of emperor Constantine VII and various other historical and geographical data. Such a scheme of cooperation of Constantine VII himself and a second “Anonymous Collaborator” was described in the title of Vita Basilii Imperatoris. The same mode of compiling was mentioned in Constantine VII’s private letter to Theodoros the archbishop of Cyzicus. The original codex of the treatise was kept in the emperor’s palatial library, where one of the readers made a few marginalia on its pages; one of them is dated to after 979. Between 1059 and 1073 a scribe Michael Roizaite made a copy of this text for Caesar John Ducas. Apparently, John Ducas needed it as a handbook for future emperors Michael VII and Constantine X, whom he taught together with Michael Psellos.

Due testi intrusi nella Sylloge Tacticorum del Laurenziano Plut. 55, 4?

Two apparently ‘intruded’ texts in the Sylloge Tacticorum of LaurentianusPlut. 55, 4This paper considers Laur. 55, 4, a mid-10th c. manuscript written inthe imperial scriptorium and collecting, presumably at the suggestion of emperor Constantine VII himself, a set of ancient and contemporarytreatises on military tactics. This manuscript raises, among manyothers, a question related to its composition: why does a collection of“technical” texts include, in a rather conspicuous position, two workson philosophic/religious subjects? It is argued that those two texts (aChristian adaptation of Epictetus’ Manual and an incomplete commentaryon it) are only apparently ‘intruded’ and unrelated to the context.

Ein solidus von Konstantin VII. und Romanos II. aus Marosújvár/Ocna Mureş (RO)

A solidus of Constantine VII and Roman II from Marosújvár/Ocna Mures. The paper deals with a solidus of Constantine VII and Romanos II which was found in 1861 in Marosújvár (today Ocna Mureş, Romania). A drawing and a description of the finding circumstances was sent to Carl Torma, historian of antiquity by the engineer Franz Pošepny. From Transylvania only half a dozen Byzantine coins of the 9th–10th centuries are known. The majority of the Byzantine coins known from the Carpathian Basin belong to the reign of Constantine VII and Roman II, and were given to the Hungarians as a gift or subsidium. The author in his study gives an evaluation of it.

Biblical echoes in two Byzantine military speeches

This article examines the two extant military speeches attributed to Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos for their biblical references and allusions. These speeches demonstrate imperial Byzantine exegesis, establish biblical grounds for the ‘chosen’ status of Byzantine Christians, and reveal that the non-soldierly emperor Constantine VII appropriated the role of a mediating priestly figure as a way of claiming authority over his fighting forces. In this, he follows in the footsteps of his father, the emperor Leo VI (r. 886–912). Both speeches are explicitly Christian, and were used to bolster military morale and to reinforce imperial authority.

The identity of Diocletians according to the De administrando imperio

The article discusses the issue of ethnic identity of the Diocletians referred to by the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in his work De administrando imperio. Of all the tribes of the southern part of the eastern Adriatic coast, only for them the emperor fails to point out that they belonged to the Serbs. Based on the analysis of various segments of the emperor?s narrative on the South Slavs, we come to the conclusion that he considered Diocletians to be Serbs also, although he nowhere explicitly recorded that.

Masks, Marriage and the Byzantine Mandylion: Classical Inversions in the Tenth Century. Narratio de translatione Constantinopolim imaginis Edessenae

This article examines the theatrical and matrimonial allusions in the tenthcentury hagiography of the Byzantine touch-relic of Christ: the Mandylion. The legend of the Mandylion was said to have been created when Christ washed his face and left a likeness of his face on the cloth with which he dried himself. It became immensely popular in the Byzantine and East Christian worlds, and it stood for God's protection of his new chosen people, for his imminence in the material world, and for a divine ratification of Christian figural art. This article argues that the Mandylion's arrival at Edessa and its reception in the king's chamber invests the face of Christ with powerful possibilities of real union with God. Those possibilities were expressed in terms educated Byzantines could have recognized, visceral inversions of the classical past and of the Christian present. Not only were the possibilities recognizable, but they also underscored the legitimacy of sole rule by Constantine VII through parallels to the first Christian king, Abgar of Edessa.

Theophanes Continuatus VI and De Cerimoniis

Abstract Though parts of the text traditionally called Theophanes Continuatus go back to the time of Constantine VII, it is in fact a compilation of various texts put together by a later redactor in the reign of Nicephorus Phokas. Likewise, the original parts of text known as the De Cerimoniis were produced in the reign of Constantine, but the text has come down to us in a later redaction, apparently also from the time of Phokas. In the case of the De Cerimoniis, the final redactor has been identified as Basil the parakoimomenos, the bastard son of Romanus I Lecapenus. Similar interests and coincidences of composition in the two texts, particularly in Book VI of Theophanes Continuatus and chapter I, 96 of the De Cerimoniis, suggest that the compiling of Theophanes Continuatus was also the work of Basil.

The bad relations between Alexander and Leo

It is well known that there was an element of tension, not to say hatred, between the imperial brothers Leo VI (886?912) and Alexander I (912?913). This fraternal enmity appears to have emanated primarily from Alexander himself, as the Life of Euthymios makes explicit. 1 Certainly during Leo's reign Alexander, his co-emperor, was implicated in two plots against his brother. The first is located in the period from late 899 to early 900, a very sensitive moment in Leo's reign as his second wife Zoe Zaoutzaina had just died without providing him with a male heir. The Life of Euthymios reports that at this time Alexander was suspected of designing to overthrow Leo, and as a punishment he was separated from his wife. The second plot in which Alexander was thought to have been involved was that which led to the assassination attempt on Leo in the church of St. Mokios during the feast of Mid-Pentecost 903. Such was Leo's suspicion of his brother that he kept him well away from the tasks of an emperor, and it seems that ultimately he considered removing Alexander as the imperial colleague of his son Constantine VII and appointing the logothete of the drome Himerios as guardian of the young emperor instead. However Alexander did come to power on the death of Leo in 912, and his brief reign suggests the depth of his antipathy for his sibling as it is characterised by its policy of overturning what Leo had established: the treaty with the Bulgarians was rejected, the Arabs were offended, the patriarch Euthymios was deposed and Nikolaos was reinstalled, Zoe Karbonopsina was ejected from the palace, Constantine VII ran the risk of castration, and Himerios was sacked and imprisoned. Thus it is clear from our sources that there was a high degree of animosity between Leo VI and Alexander, which largely issued from the younger brother. What the sources do not indicate is why this should be so, and in this short note I aim to provide an explanation.

Fugitives and ethnography in Priscus of Panium1

Because the historical writings of Priscus of Panium survive only in fragments, we regrettably lack knowledge of the full complexity of this fifth century historian’s concerns. Widely cited in Byzantine sources, the greatest part of Priscus’ work is found in the Excerpta de Legationibus, which was compiled from ancient texts by the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos in the middle of the tenth century as part of an encyclopedic collation of educational and practical information. The Excerpta, which dealt with international relations, found much of interest in Priscus, whose history included a detailed account of the struggle between the Romans and Attila the Hun. Of particular value is Priscus’ first-hand account of an embassy to Attila in 449 to discuss the exchange of fugitives and other matters. On this journey Priscus served as an assistant to Maximinus, the leader of the diplomatic mission sent from Constantinople. Envoys to foreign lands regularly included in their reports detailed observations of the societies they visited, and in this tradition the fragments preserved in the Excerpta constitute an invaluable source of information about Hunnic life as well as diplomatic matters. Priscus later reworked his acute observations of the Huns made on the embassy and mixed them with other information in the larger framework of his historical treatise, adapting part of his diplomatic intelligence report to the needs of a different sort of literary enterprise. We cannot know with any certainty the thematic architectonics of this historical work, but its fragments make it clear that Priscus’ treatment of the relations between Rome and the Empire of the Huns and his development of cultural issues implicit in those relations were more subtle than the tenth century editors’ focus on diplomatics might suggest.

Le Savoir et le Monarque: Le Traité Sur les Nations de L'Empereur Byzantin Constantin VII Porphyrogénète

La permanence de l'école dans ses structures laïques, la continuité d'une culture écrite indépendante, dans ses formes et institutions, du clergé séculier et des monastères, sont une spécificité de l'Empire byzantin par rapport à la chrétienté latine. Le pouvoir impérial s'est à Byzance associé au plus haut niveau une élite publique de fonctionnaires de la capitale et des provinces, formée, pour le Xe siècle qui nous intéresse, dans l'école supérieure de la Magnaure organisée depuis un siècle au palais. A cette même date, le palais impérial est encore le lieu où un atelier copie et confectionne un nombre important de recueils, attribués à l'initiative de l'empereur Macédonien, Constantin VII Porphyrogénète. On trace souvent de ce dernier, en raison de cette responsabilité culturelle et intellectuelle qui fut la sienne dans le déroulement de l'entreprise littéraire, un portrait de pur lettré incapable en revanche d'assumer sa responsabilité politique de souverain. Inversant le raisonnement, il faut au contraire tenter de penser cette compétence érudite comme compétence impériale.

Two Giraffes Emended

In 1880 Spyridon Lambros discovered in the library of the Dionysiou monastery on Mount Athos a manuscript containing, among other things, the missing second book of a compilation of zoological lore made for the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (912–59), generally referred to as the Sylloge Constantini. The first book, already known from a manuscript in Paris, proclaims in its heading that the compilation was based on the epitome of Aristotle's περ ζῴων by Aristophanes of Byzantium, with supplements from the writings of Aelian, Timotheos and others. These supplements are found exclusively in the second book, which Lambros edited, along with the first, for the Supplementum Aristotelicum. They add greatly to our knowledge of the περ ζῴων by the fifth-century grammarian Timotheos of Gaza, a work hitherto known only from the so-called Epitome Augustana, a selection of 53 unconnected chapters made in the reign of Constantine IX Monomachos (1042–55).

The crimean question, the Black Bulgarians, and the Russo-Byzantine Treaty of 944

In the treaty of 944 between the Russians and the Greeks, the clauses which can be referred to as political and military have created some important problems both in interpretation and implication. The most difficult questions have emerged because the treaty has seemed to imply extensions of Kievan sovereignty into the Crimea which it appears unlikely that the Byzantines would have permitted at any time. In addition, the questions of geography and ethnography, connected with the treaty, have proven difficult to reconcile with our existing knowledge of the steppe. In all of its activities related to the steppe in the tenth century, the Empire demonstrated an overwhelming concern for the safety of Kherson and the Climata in the Crimea which were important as bases for Byzantine diplomacy on the steppe. The political and military clauses of the treaty reflect the determination of the Byzantines to protect their Crimean possessions against any real or potential threat from the Kievan Rus', much as the instructions of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the De administrando imperio document a similar effort with the steppe tribes. This concern for the Crimea as well as the fact that the terms of the treaty made the Rus' into allies (symmachoi) of the Empire serves as the essential background for a possible solution to the somewhat tangential but historiographically important question of the identification of the homeland of the Black Bulgarians whom the Rus' were to prevent from raiding Kherson and the Climata. The Black Bulgarians were one of those remnants of an earlier steppe migration who survived on the steppe between the Dnieper and Don rivers from where they raiced the Crimea. The apparent intention of the Byzantines, as reflected in the treaty, was that the Rus' were to stop the Black Bulgarians at the Crimean isthmus from which location the Rus' themselves would not become an important threat to the Imperial possessions.

Poems on the Deaths of Leo VI and Constantine VII in the Madrid Manuscript of Scylitzes

Poems on the Deaths of Leo VI and Constantine VII in the Madrid Manuscript of Scylitzes