Eleventh-century Byzantium Research Articles

Theodore Gabras and His Seals

This publication examines the life of Theodore Gabras, one of the highest Byzantine dignitaries in the 1080–1090s. The early stage of his career is uncovered by a miniature from a manuscript residing in St. Petersburg which depicts a scene with ktetores, patrikios, and topoteretes Theodore Gabras and his wife Irene. The similarity of this miniature and an eleventh-century fresco in the Senty Church in Alania (modern Karachay-Cherkessia) indicates that Irene was probably of Alanic origin like his second wife. The account of Theodore Gabras appeared in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad and John Zonaras’ chronicle. In 1075, Theodore Gabras freed Chaldia from Seljuks, and when Alexios I Komnenos ascended to power and tried to make Theodore one of his supporters, he appointed the latter the doux of the theme of Chaldia. In the late eleventh century, Theodore Gabras was de facto independent ruler of Trebizond. In 1098, he died as a martyr for refusing to convert to Islam. Already in the twelfth century, Theodore Gabras was a locally venerated saint, and in the fourteenth century he was canonized. In the year of his death, Theodore held the title of sebastos, which was among the highest in late eleventh century Byzantium. This paper analyses four known seals of Theodore Gabras, which legends mentioned his title of sebastos and position of the doux (of Chaldia). The Appendix lists eighteen known seals from the eleventh and twelfth century which belonged to at least fifteen members of the aristocratic family of Gabrades.

Nikephoros III Botaneiates, the Phokades, and the Fabii: embellished genealogies and contested kinship in eleventh-century Byzantium

This article examines the genealogical claims of Nikephoros III Botaneiates, namely his supposed descent from the Phokades and the ancient Roman Fabii, and aims to situate Botaneiates’ case within a broader context of exaggerated and contested claims of kinship in medieval Byzantium. While exploring the uses of fictionalized or exaggerated kinship and their reception in contemporary society, it addresses issues of authenticity, proof, and credibility. It argues that Byzantine authors were widely sceptical of audacious genealogical claims and may have been exposed to false claims of kinship more often than previously acknowledged.

"Nobody has ever seen God": the denial of the possibility of mystical experiences in eighth- and eleventh-century Byzantium

In scholarly treatments of Byzantine mysticism the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries are given short shrift. Authors deal at length with the seventh-century authors John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor and Thalassius the Libyan and then immediately proceed to a discussion of the oeuvre of Symeon the New Theologian who flourished in the late tenth and early eleventh century. There is, of course, a simple reason for this approach. In the intervening years no mystical literature was produced in Byzantium. This raises the question: how can we account for this yawning gap? Two explanations are possible: either there was no interest in mysticism, or mysticism was actively rejected. This article argues that the latter explanation is correct. It analyses texts that rule out the possibility of mystical experiences and implicitly accuse mystics of heresy.

Protection and salvation: an eleventh-century silver vessel, its imagery, and its function

A small silver bowl, discovered in Russia and usually attributed to eleventh-century Byzantium, displays a range of unusual imagery that has complicated its interpretation. The role of the saint and prayer on the vessel and the emphasis placed on intercession as well as on protection, this paper will suggest, was to protect the vessel's owner both on earth and in his afterlife. The vessel, which makes visible contemporary ideas about punishment, Last Things, and salvation, presents a fragmentary image of the Last Judgement designed to stress the importance of heavenly justice and to remind its viewer to remain virtuous.

Some Trends in the Social Development of Eleventh-Century Byzantium

Some Trends in the Social Development of Eleventh-Century Byzantium

Escaping Plato’s Cave: Some Platonic Metaphors in Symeon the New Theologian

This article proposes that the imagery Symeon the New Theologian employs for expressing his mystical experience in several passages of his Hymns of Divine Love might have been inspired by the texts of Plato and the Platonic tradition. The Hymns showing the traces of St. Symeon’s rethinking of the allegory of the Cave, the metaphor of the wings of the soul, and the intellectual Paradise of virtues are analyzed, opening the discussion on the earliest stages of the Platonic revival in eleventh-century Byzantium.

Michael Psellos on friendship and love: erotic discourse in eleventh-century Constantinople

This paper examines representations of friendship and desire in the writings of the Constantinopolitan author Michael Psellos (1018–c.1078). Within the Byzantine context of strict Christian constraints regarding expressions of sexual desire, Psellos reconfigures the dominant late antique image of friendship as unity, inspired by divine authority, with the subversive model of erôs as the pursuit of bodily pleasures. Therewith, Psellian discourse may be regarded as representative of novel trends in eleventh-century Byzantium that anticipate the re-appearance of romantic fiction. As is argued here, such novel trends are to be understood within the context of Byzantium's continuous dialogue with its past, rather than as part of linear historiographical narratives.

“Democratic” Action in Eleventh-Century Byzantium: Michael Attaleiates’s “Republicanism” in Context

The History of Michael Attaleiates is one of the most important sources for the study of eleventh-century Byzantium. It is representative of Byzantine efforts to come to terms with the important social and political changes that affected the empire in the course of the eleventh century. In his work Attaleiates often returned to the world of republican Rome in order to seek models of political agency that he then set up against the portraits of his contemporaries. Attaleiates’s fascination with Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paulus, and Quintus Fabius Cunctator is intriguing to modern readers of the History, but his use of republican language and democratic terminology in two accounts of violent popular political activity is evidence of an effort to explain and potentially legitimize some form of popular participation in the empire’s politics. This article examines the History’s account of two popular rebellions and argues that Attaleiates’s take on the actions of the Byzantine populace is part of a bold reassessment of the place of the empire’s urban strata in the world of Byzantine politics. Attaleiates’s “republicanism” is examined here next to the work of Psellos, Xiphilinos, Zonaras, and Anna Komnene, to reveal the depth of Byzantine engagement with republican political history and ideology.

“Democratic” Action in Eleventh-Century Byzantium: Michael Attaleiates’s “Republicanism” in Context

The History of Michael Attaleiates is one of the most important sources for the study of eleventh-century Byzantium. It is representative of Byzantine efforts to come to terms with the important social and political changes that affected the empire in the course of the eleventh century. In his work Attaleiates often returned to the world of republican Rome in order to seek models of political agency that he then set up against the portraits of his contemporaries. Attaleiates’s fascination with Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paulus, and Quintus Fabius Cunctator is intriguing to modern readers of the History, but his use of republican language and democratic terminology in two accounts of violent popular political activity is evidence of an effort to explain and potentially legitimize some form of popular participation in the empire’s politics. This article examines the History’s account of two popular rebellions and argues that Attaleiates’s take on the actions of the Byzantine populace is part of a bold reass...

Where Advice Meets Criticism in Eleventh Century Byzantium: Theophylact of Ohrid, John the Oxite and Their (Re)Presentations to the Emperor1

Advice had to be given carefully to the Emperor in Byzantium. This article looks at two addresses delivered to Alexios I Komnenos in the latter part of the 11th Century by Theophylact of Ohrid and John the Oxite. Both were senior clerics who sought to counsel the Emperor to abandon risky policies which had brought limited success to Byzantium. The methods of the two orators differ sharply, with one urging Alexios gently and through flattery, and the other providing a stinging critique of Komnenian rule, offering a dramatic diagnosis of the problems affecting Byzantium at this time. This is at least partly a reflection of a changing political situation in and around Constantinople between 1088–91. 1I am very grateful for comments made when I gave this paper in July 2006 at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Judith Gilliland for her suggestions.

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

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...

Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950–1100 by Leonora Neville (review)

REVIEWS 268 contemporary of Abelard, whose largely epistolary poems belong to the first metrical category. Hilary’s poetry is the most explicitly sexual of the poetry addressed in this book and speaks to the tension of homoerotic desire that may have arisen between a schoolmaster and his pupils. In his playful poetry, Hilary also pokes fun at the questionable sexual habits of his fellow clerics. Afterward, Moser goes on to discuss the changing verse forms that are exemplified in such erotic poetry as “Iam dulcis amica” from the Cambridge manuscript mentioned earlier. These new forms represent the concordant changes that were inspired by new liturgical and extraliturgical church songs. The latter parts of chapter 6 are dedicated to three poems from Bodleian MS Additional A.44 and one poem from Cambridge University Library MS Ff.1.17(I). Moser demonstrates that in these poems, poets who wrote Latin erotic lyric and who also experimented with verse form were among a group of clerics who sought to combine their interests in classical exegesis with the scientific humanism of the Neoplatonists. In chapter 7, Moser turns his attention to British Library MS Arundel 384, the largest single collection of Latin erotic poetry in England. In his close study, Moser argues for a single author for the Arundel manuscript, citing the fact that “the thematic, structural, and verbal parallels” evident in the poems imply that a “single mind” is at work (242). Whether this “single mind” is the Peter of Blois who wrote many letters or the Peter of Blois who was a canon at Chartres is somewhat irrelevant. In either case, the poetry of the Arundel manuscript continues the theme of the anxious poet philosopher who is at odds with the role of sexuality in his orderly life. Finally, Moser concludes with a chapter on the importance of myth to the erotic poet. He argues that “the reflex to think mythologically was much more than just an effort to imitate Ovid, it was part of how twelfth-century humanists learned to think about the world.” The importance of myth, moreover, needed to be present because such elements could be understood on multiple allegorical and literal levels; levels in which the level of the audience’s education did not affect the comprehensibility of the text. Moser examines three myths in particular: Hercules, Orpheus, and Leda. In his readings of these myths and in his conclusion to his book, Moser points out the uniqueness and complexity of the Latin verse in their ability to both recreate their authors’ anxieties and interact with a past and present that embraced the sexuality of classics yet still held onto a Neoplatonist world view. Although A Cosmos of Desire is ostensibly about Latin lyric in English manuscripts, it is equally enlightening as an introduction to Latin lyric in France. This synthetic work is friendly to the novice, complete with full translations of the Latin text and helpful bits of information that aid in situating erotic lyric in a larger context. It is in his close readings of the poetry, however, that Moser’s ability to deconstruct the poems’ meanings shines through. The analyses are dense with insightful commentary and fast-paced in their approach, covering a substantial amount of material in a relatively short amount of time. Both advanced and beginning scholars will find A Cosmos of Desire a valuable read. JENNIFER A. TRAN, English, UCLA Leonora Neville, Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004) xi + 210 pp., map. REVIEWS 269 The author’s main premise in this book is that the imperial administration of tenth- and the eleventh-century Byzantium only lightly touched on provincial society, concerning itself exclusively with the maintenance of imperial sovereignty , the suppression of revolt, and the collection of revenue. At the same time, social regulations were undertaken by individual provincial households. Thus personal freedom in the provinces was constrained more by neighbors and rival households than by the imperial government. The novelty and originality of Neville’s approach to the Byzantine tenth and eleventh centuries is in focusing on the provinces instead of the capital in both her choice of sources and in the questions she asks...

« Christ Polymorphism in Jerusalem, Taphou 14: An Examination of Text and Image »

An episode of Christ's polymorphism involving Jesus' multiple manifestations to the Magi during the Adoration was recounted in an eighth-century sermon (with various attributions), and copied with illustrations in an eleventh-century manuscript: Jerusalem, Codex Taphou 14. The illustration of this specific polymorphous episode combined with the inclusion of the sermon itself, presents the modern audience with an intriguing glimpse into eleventh-century Byzantium. The sermon and image together raise issues related to the acceptance and availibility of apocryphal literature both in the eighth and eleventh centuries, and further adds to our understanding of the expansion of miniature cycles during the Middle Byzantine period.

Ascetics and Humanists in Eleventh-Century Byzantium. By J. M. Hussey. (Friends of Dr. Williams's Library Lecture). Pp. 22. London: Dr. Williams's Trust, 1960. 3s. 6d.

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