Court Titles Research Articles

Constantine Palaiologos’ Conspiracy: A Prologue to the Age of Civil Wars in Byzantium

This research addresses the chronologically first episode among dynastic conflicts during the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos (1282–1328), when the emperor’s younger brother Constantine Porphyrogennetos made a conspiracy. The scholarship has not developed a consensus as to the fairness of accusations against the latter. This article uses the analysis of written sources account to prove that there was a real conspiracy and to find out its content, circumstances, and consequences for the Byzantine state and society. The conclusion is that the conspiracy was uncovered at an early stage, so it did not take full shape. The initiator of the conflict was Constantine Palaiologos. The conspirators, the high-ranking Byzantine military commander representing a major noble family Michael Strategopoulos in particular, tried to lean on various social elements and even to use for their own advantage the controversies within the Byzantine Church, with their final goal to overthrow Andronikos II with the use of military force. Despite his exceptional position in the hierarchy of court titles, Constantine Palaiologos was actually deprived of power as public administrator, and therefore he tried to usurp the rights for which, in his view, he could claim due to uncertainty of his place in power relations in Byzantium of the late thirteenth century. By uncovering the conspiracy against him, Andronikos II strengthened his position on the throne and neutralized the immediate threat of destabilizing the state, preventing (or postponing?) the possible outbreak of civil war in the Empire.

Ксилиниты на службе императоров Византии: печать протоспафария и επι του κοιτωνοσ Никиты Ксилинита

Introduction. Among the most ancient and noble Byzantine families there were the Xylinitai, who belonged to the first rank of “pure” civil nobility. Nevertheless, only restricted information of this family members survived. Therefore, any new account is of importance not only for the Byzantine prosopography but also for the Byzantine history in general. In this connection, interesting is one sigillographic find which uncovers a new page in the life of one of this family members. According to the seal legend, its owner Niketas Xylinites held the second-class rank of protospatharios and was engaged in the court service at the emperor’s bedchamber, the koiton. There is no doubt that the stylistic features date the molybdoboullon in question to the eleventh century. Analysis and Results. The sources in possession supply information on a few persons bearing this name and belonging to the family in question, who left their footprint in the annals of history in this or that way. All of them were high-ranked courtiers and persons of importance, whose career stages were reflected in different periods of Byzantine history. The comparison of the seal data with other sources allows us to suppose that the owner of the seal was Niketas Xylinites, a member of the milieu of Empress Theodora, related to her ascension to the Byzantine throne following the death of Constantine IX. The sources only inform of his career that he got from the Empress of one of the highest civil offices (logothetes tou dromou) and a high court title of proedros. According to the seal under study, it reflects the earliest stage in Niketas’ career at the court, when he was selected to serve at the emperor’s bedchamber and got the rank of protospatharios. The Seal of Niketas Xylinites probably dates to the late 1030s – very early 1040s, the period before he got the title of patrikios, his works in the Iveron monastery, and Theodora’s ascension to the throne.

Can One Write About the Eighteenth Century Without Empire?

Can One Write About the Eighteenth Century Without Empire? Nile Green (bio) To address with requisite brevity the question of whether one can write about the eighteenth century "without empire," this short essay reconstitutes the perspectives of a single "participant-observer" from the immediately ensuing decades. The figure in question is Mirza Salih Shirazi, one of a group of six young Iranians who came to study in London in 1815. During his four years away from home, Mirza Salih maintained a diary-cum-notebook in which he recorded both his quotidian affairs and his unfolding understanding of the novel environment he was exploring.1 The verb "exploring" is justified insofar as Mirza Salih and his companions—being the first group of Muslims sent to study in Europe—were not only moving through what were unfamiliar geographical spaces for Middle Easterners, but were also investigating the new intellectual disciplines, largely the fruit of the scientific revolution, which their contemporaries termed the 'ulum-i farangi ("European sciences") or 'ulum-i jadid ("new sciences").2 Since Mirza Salih was charged by his Iranian royal sponsors with acquiring skills suited for service as a diplomat, his studies largely focused on Britain's history, political system, and economy. As such, his curriculum involved looking back over the previous, eighteenth century. It is this, the self-conscious temporality of his studious notetaking, that allows his diary-notebook to serve as an emic test case of how central empire was then (as distinct from is now) to understanding the eighteenth century. Before turning to the details of Mirza Salih's reflections on Britain's "imperial" moment, it is important to situate him in his political context. While this contextualization will show how fundamental empire was to his arrival in London, we should be wary of making the interpretive assumption that the historical forces [End Page 33] (or more precisely, the trans-imperial networks) that brought him to Britain were what he himself considered to be the most noteworthy features of his time. Like his five companions, four of whom shared his court title of mirza (or 'secretary'), Mirza Salih was escorted to London from Tabriz by Joseph D'Arcy (1780–1848) of the Royal Artillery. Despite never having served in India or anywhere east of Sicily, D'Arcy had been dispatched to Iran in 1811 in the company of the former Bengal jute trader turned diplomat, Sir Gore Ouseley (1770–1844).3 Arriving in the midst of the First Russo-Persian War of 1804–13, D'Arcy and his comrades-in-arms were tasked with reforming the frontier forces under the command of the Crown Prince 'Abbas Mirza (1789–1833).4 The latter's policy of military reorganization—known as the nizam-i jadid or "new order"—was an intrinsically inter-imperial development, having been adopted from the eponymous policy of the Ottomans as a means of resisting the aggressive expansionism of the Russian Empire that was affecting the Qajars and Ottomans alike.5 The shifting alliances of the Napoleonic Wars brought to Tehran several embassies—Russian, French, then British (including separate Crown and East India Company delegations)—who competed for local influence, with the British offering military assistance. When political alliances changed again, leaving the discharged D'Arcy departing for England in the early summer of 1815, Prince 'Abbas Mirza seized the opportunity to make a new move in his "new order" policy: he requested that D'Arcy escort to London a group of young men, mostly the sons of court officials, and oversee their education in subjects of practical strategic value. Assenting under official duress, D'Arcy led the young men to Britain via the overland route through Russia, enabling Mirza Salih to inspect the provinces and capital of the neighboring imperial power that was inflicting such defeats on Iran.6 From the ravaged borderlands of the Caucasus to the resplendent palaces of Saint Petersburg, the young Iranian learned firsthand about European empires through both their violent peripheries and tranquil centers. When Mirza Salih and his fellow students were installed in D'Arcy's London apartment, they were still unable to speak English. After their chaperone's resources ran thin as one of thousands of...

Pałac późnobizantyński i jego ceremoniał

The main aim of this article is to draw researchers’ and readers’ attention to neglected and underestimated Byzantine source known as Pseudo-Kodinos. The fourteenth-century text which is one of two surviving ceremonial books from the Byzantine empire, next to “Book of Ceremonies”, includes the combination of hierarchical lists of court officials with protocols of ceremonies; a detailed description of the clothing used at court; an account of the functions of the court title holders, a description of the ceremonies of the year which take place both inside the palace and outside and much more. Based on that, the author of the article is trying to bring developments in ceremonial which occurred since tenth century and discussed the space in which ceremonial was performed. Without any archeological research the author depicts the Blachernai palace, its setup and structure, its buildings and chambers, and compares it with those of Great Palace. In the article can be also found description of most important ceremonies which were held in the Blachernai Palace such as Christmas or Epiphany. Finally the author answers questions why Michael VIII Palaeologus, establishing new dynasty in Constantinople, chose as a place of his residence the Blachernai Palace.

Greek or Egyptian?

In this article the origin of the Ptolemaic honorific court title συγγενής is examined on the basis of Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphic sources. It is shown that this title cannot be derived from any pharaonic Egyptian title and that, in fact, it found its way into both Demotic and hieroglyphic usages.

Table of Contents

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La cour et l’administration du Japon à l’époque de Heian (review)

Reviewed by: La cour et l’administration du Japon à l’époque de Heian Charlotte von Verschuer La cour et l’administration du Japon à l’époque de Heian. By Francine Hérail. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2006. 790 pages. Softcover $105.00. Any person interested in Japan, not only specialists of ancient and medieval Japanese history and literature, needs to know about the traditional imperial court system: it remained a reference for the military aristocracy as well as the court itself and marked Japanese culture in general until the end of the Edo period in 1868. The balance of political power changed drastically between the eighth and nineteenth centuries, but court offices and titles continued to exist and, weakened or not, continued to carry symbolic importance. How many times do we find a daimyo or bakufu official of the Edo period referred to by a court title, such as ukyô daibu (prefect of the capital, right sector)! Francine Hérail’s book La cour et l’administration du Japon à l’époque de Heian (The Court and Administration of Japan in the Heian Period) provides a complete survey of the court’s organization and the ascribed jurisdiction of its various offices. The book is a revised edition of an earlier study, Fonctions et fonctionnaires japonais au début du XIe siècle (Japanese Court Offices and Court Officials in the Early Eleventh Century, 2 vols., Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France, 1977), which has long been out of print. With its detailed index of Japanese office names, La cour et l’administration can be used as a dictionary of the Heian court. It has maps of the Greater Imperial Palace (daidairi) and the emperor’s residential compound (dairi), with romanized readings and French translations of these names; an index of personal names, which can help the reader trace the careers of court nobles of the early eleventh century; a table of court offices and the corresponding required court rank; and genealogical charts for the imperial, Fujiwara, and Minamoto families. The book’s arrangement mainly follows that of the Heian court. It has five chapters dealing with (1) the Council on Shrine Affairs (Jingikan) and the Council of State (Daijôkan); (2) the eight ministries (shô); (3) the Board of Censors (Danjôdai), the Six Guards Headquarters (Rokuefu), the Imperial Police (Kebiishi), and others; (4) the capital offices (kyôshiki), the crown prince’s household (tôgûbô), other house-holds, the women’s quarters or rear palace (kôkyû), and others; and (5) other court institutions, including administrative offices such as the regent (sesshô), the chancellor (kanpaku), the Chamberlain’s Office (Kurôdodokoro), and the office of the saigû princess (saigûshi), as well as organs in charge of material life, such as the court library, workshops, performers of music and dance, and the emperor’s personal meal services, including the storehouse of special food tribute (niedono). In the above I used the English translations of Heian office names in William H. and Helen Craig McCullough’s translation of A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Stanford University Press, 1980), vol. 2, appendix A, pp. 789–831, which are followed by numerous English-language authors. As this circumstance bespeaks, Hérail’s book is the only detailed survey of Heian court organization in any Western language. A compilation of English translations of court offices can be found in the “Online Glossary of Japanese Historical Terms” of the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo. In general, authors writing in English translate Japanese offices either literally, like “Ministry of Rites” for Shikibushô (McCullough and McCullough), or semantically, like “Ministry of Personnel” for the same Shikibushô (Joan Piggott, The Emergence [End Page 396] of Japanese Kingship, Stanford University Press, 1997). Those who, like me, prefer the latter approach will find clues for possible choices in Hérail’s book. For instance, the Council on Shrine Affairs (Jingikan) does not manage any shrines but organizes court rites and offerings. It thus might be better termed the Council on Divinities’ Affairs, or as Hérail puts it, “ministère des Affaires des dieux.” To Hérail, the Nakatsukasashô is the Ministry of Court Affairs, not Central Affairs, as it...

Violence and Vernacular in Seamus Heaney's Beowulf

In the introduction to his translation of Beowulf (2000), Seamus Heaney makes clear his commitment to an anticolonial project aimed at revealing and reversing the baleful effects of colonial violence. This is a project, as Heaney suggests, founded upon the cultural force and political suggestiveness of the vernacular. Describing his decision to refer to Hrothgar's reced or great hall with the Ulster dialect word bawn, a word originally derived from the Irish bó-dhún ("cattle fort") and appropriated by early English settlers to signify the fortified dwellings meant to keep dispossessed Irish natives at bay, Heaney writes in the introduction that it seemed the proper term to apply to the embattled keep where Hrothgar waits and watches . . . every time I read the lovely interlude that tells of the minstrel singing in Heorot just before the first attacks of Grendel, I cannot help thinking of Edmund Spenser in Kilcolman Castle, reading the early cantos of The Fairie Queen to Sir Walter Raleigh, just before the Irish would burn the castle and drive Spenser out of Munster back to the Elizabethan court.1 Thus, by foregoing more standard equivalents for reced such as "keep" or "fort" and putting a bawn into Beowulf, Heaney attempts, as he says, to come to terms with a "complex history of conquest and colony, absorption and resistance, integrity and antagonism, a history that has to be clearly acknowledged by all concerned in order to render it ever more 'willable forward / again and again and again'" (B xxx). Indeed, the insertion of the vernacular seems to accomplish this and more. His bawn stands as a subtle, yet deliciously subversive means of recalling Spenser's travail at Kilcolman Castle, an edifice which Heaney elsewhere calls "the tower of English conquest and the Anglicization of Ireland, linguistically, culturally, and institutionally."2 Moreover, Heaney's insertion [End Page 79] of dialect into Beowulf memorializes and enacts the kind of linguistic and cultural cross-fertilization that has characterized relations between Ireland and England for more than eight hundred years. Through such hybrid transformations of Beowulf, Heaney not only rewrites a seminal Anglo-Saxon text—a text which has been used by various Old English scholars to further claims of cultural and linguistic superiority, particularly in discussions concerned with issues of national origin and the justification for colonialism—but he also adds another intriguing narrative strand to the often vexed story of English-Irish relations.3 Specifically, Heaney's vernacularized revision of the poem transcreatively transforms it into a kind of looking glass through which Irish cultural and sociopolitical experience might be seen—sometimes darkly and sometimes vividly. At various points, for example, rather than using terms from the lexicon of medieval Anglo-Saxon society to designate key social relations and positions, Heaney deploys terms drawn from the Gaelic social structure that was first drastically altered and ultimately decimated by the colonial schemes of Spenser and his successors. Thus, the Old English māga ("kinsmen") becomes clan (B 19: 247), Unferth's court title yle ("spokesman") is rendered with the Gaelic brehon (B 101: 1457), and the Irish sept (B 115: 1674) replaces the Old English lēoda ("people" or "tribe").4 Terms descriptive of cultural behavior and topography also take on an Irish hue. Hildeburh sings a keen (B 77: 1119), not a dirge or lament, and features of the landscape become decidedly Irish: windige næssas ("windy headlands") becomes "windswept crags" (B 95: 1358) and fen-gelād ("path over the fen") is rendered keshes (B 95: 1359). Through such renderings [End Page 80] of the Old English source text, Heaney thus appropriates and alters this quintessentially English cultural treasure. * * * The question concerning Heaney's decision to recast Beowulf in an idiom inflected by Hiberno-English and Gaelic diction has become the central point of debate in the half dozen or so extended critiques of the translation. Unfortunately, this narrow focus tells only part of the...

Despot Stefan and Byzantium

The topic of this paper is one aspect of the relationship between Serbia and Byzantium at the beginning of the 15th Century, during the so-called "despot period" of the reign of Stefan Lazarevic (1402-1427), namely the fate of the Byzantine title of Despots' in Serbia against the background of the political situation in the Balkans at the time of Turkish domination. Knez Stefan (1377-1427), Knez Lazar's son, received the title of Despotes according to the procedure long ago established at the Byzantine Court. In Byzantium, this title, which was second in rank only to the title of the Emperor, used to be endowed to the relatives of the imperial dynasty, it was not hereditary and did not depend on the territory ruled by the bearer of the title. It was a personal court title of the highest rank in Byzantium. This honor was bestowed upon the young Knez Stefan in summer of 1402 after his return from the battlefield of Angora (Ankara), where Sultan Beyazid I suffered a disastrous defeat from the hands of the Tatars. The Serbian Knez was solemnly received in Constantinople, a marriage between himself and a sister of the Byzantine Empress was arranged and John VII Palaeologus, the co-regent of the then-absent Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, endowed him with the title of Despotes. Knez Stefan carried this title till the end of his life. It was held in great honors in Serbia and was broadened in meaning to designate a ruler's title in general, remaining alive among the Serbs even after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Stefan Lazarevic received the dignity of a Despotes once more, in 1410 in Constantinople. All this notwithstanding, the political situation in the South-East of Europe at the beginning of the 15th Century was all but favorable. Some Christian states were conquered by the Turks (Bulgaria), some were vassals of the Sultan (Byzantium, Serbia). Everything depended on the Ottomans. At the time of dynastic conflicts in the Turkish Empire (1403-1413) as well as afterwards, the political interests of Byzantium and Serbia were different, even at times contrary. What they had in common was the attempt to find allies in the West, especially among the countries which had an interest to fight against the Turks, so an initiative was raised to form a Christian League to that effect. Despot Stefan, in his capacity as a vassal of the Hungarian King Sigismund of Luxembourg, took part in the negotiations the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaelogus held in Buda with his host (1424). This was the last meeting of the Serbian Despotes with the Byzantine Emperor. The title of Despotes had changed with respect to the Byzantine norms. Despot Stefan became the Despotes of the Kingdom of Rascia (Raska), as the Kingdom of Serbia was called in the West. The personal title of the Byzantine Imperial Court was thus transformed in accordance with the non-Byzantine traditions of the Serbian political ideology. .

後期ビザンツ地方行政と専制公, 尊厳公, 副帝称号

The highest court titles, despot (δeσποτης), sevastokrator (σeβαστοκρατωρ), and Kaisar (καισαρ), had very important roles in the Late Byzantune Empire. The holders of these titles, normally members of the imperial family, had considerable influences not only on the political scene, but also on the provincal administration as they were the highest position of its apparatus. On the administrative role of the title holders, many scholars have explained that it had the same character as the Western appanage, and that the administration did not depend on his their titles, but simply on that they were a member of the imperial family; their administration was basically private, since it had no foundation in the Byzantine theory of government. I make my examination, therefore, in comparison with that Byzantine administrative apparatus and office of the governor considering its continuity.There are many cases which one and the same person had both the office of governor (κeψαλη) and the court title. In such cases, the administrator more often signed himself, or was mentioned by others, as the latter rather than the former in documentary sources. This custom indicates that that person tried to raise his authority by using the court title which indicated his higher social status. It was probably an omission of formality as well because there was no need to refer oneself as the lower class of the kephali. And the absence of that reference after the second half of the fourteenth century indicates that this formal omission became more prevalent.Substantially, there is no difference in the administratorship before and after 1349, when the Emperor Ioannis VI Kandakouzinos (1347-54) appointed his relatives as the administrator of imperial territory. The administration of the despots was definitely different from that of the co-Emperor Matthaios Kandakouzinos (1353-57), whose authority involved real autonomy. Though their authority was rapidly enlarged, it was not established as private (except for the case of Thessaloniki in the first half of fifteenth century) or autonomous. They lacked their own diplomacy and the rights to inheritance. Especially in the Morea, from Manouil Kandakouzinos (1349-80), the first, to Dimitrios Palaiologos (1449-60), the last, all the despotai were apparently the imperial governers rather than the private landlords. Although the tendency of feudalization continuously developed in the imperial territory, these administrators did not originate from that tendency.

Sexual Abuse of Students: Actual Notice and Deliberate Indifference. The Supreme Court's Title IX Standard for School District Liability

Sexual Abuse of Students: Actual Notice and Deliberate Indifference. The Supreme Court's Title IX Standard for School District Liability

Cities and Administration in Roman Egypt

These two inscriptions come from the precinct of the temple of Hathor at Denderah (Tentyra), capital of the Tentyrite nome, just north of Thebes in Upper Egypt. The impressive remains of the complex are mostly late Ptolemaic and Roman (re)constructions, but they look Pharaonic and suggest social and cultural continuity across the centuries. The inscriptions, however, illustrate the radical changes in communal organization and administration which the Romans introduced. These changes form the subject of this paper. The first inscription dates to 12 B.C., but is almost entirely in the pre-Roman tradition. It is a trilingual dedication with the primary version in demotic (i.e. Egyptian). Augustus is god, implicitly Pharaoh, and lacks his Roman titles. The strategos (governor of the nome) Ptolemaios gives himself obsolete court titles and a string of local priesthoods. Ptolemaios came from a family which had hereditarily held local priesthoods (and probably continued to hold them after him), and his father Panas had preceded him as strategos of the Tentyrite nome, retaining office through the Roman annexation. On this occasion Ptolemaios' dedication was personal, but other dedications show him acting, like his father, as the head of local cult associations. Ptolemaios is last attested as strategos in 5 B.C. Five years later, our second inscription, which dates to 23 September A.D. I, reveals a very different situation. The dedication was made on Augustus' birthday, and was finely inscribed in Greek only. The strategos Tryphon, whose name suggests an Alexandrian sent up to the Tentyrite nome, figures only as an element of the official dating clause standard throughout Roman Egypt; he is just a cog in the Roman administrative machine. The dedication was made corporately by the local community, structured, as we will see, on the new Roman model.

Trois Hauts Dignitaires Bornoans du XVIeSiècle: Le Digma, Le Grand Jarma et Le Cikama

Little attention has until now been directed to the rich information on title-holders contained in the two chronicles of the imām Aḥmad b. Furṭū written in 1576 and 1578 respectively. This neglect is partly due to the very confusing style of the imām's writing. In particular, he refers to the three highest ranking Bornoan officials by translating their Bornoan titles into Arabic: the Digma is called ‘al-wazīr al-kabīr’, the great Jarma ‘al-rā'id al-kabīr’, and the Cikama ‘al-ḥājib’. Once the meaning of these Arabic titles is decoded it appears that the political organisation of sixteenth century Borno owes very little to the Islamic model. Furthermore it becomes clear that the commander of the Bornoan corps of musketeers was the great Jarma, an official of Ngizim origin, and not a Turkish military instructor as one may have suspected.However, since Ibn Furṭū is mainly concerned with military activities, only a few functions of the three high-ranking court officials emerge from his account; others have to be inferred from the information provided by nineteenth-century European travellers and from more recent anthropological accounts. In Borno the political organisation of the Sayfuwa state fell to pieces in the first half of the nineteenth century, when al-Amīn al-Kānemī and his successors built up a new system of administration. This progressively supplanted the old system, which was based on a great number of court titles and attendant offices. Important elements of the political organisation of the Sayfuwa survive until the present day in some former vassal states of Borno which became independent in the course of the nineteenth century or earlier.