Byzantium: The Emperor's New Clothes?

The state of Byzantium, the so-called Byzantine empire, has never existed; the term was invented in the sixteenth century to designate the empire the capital of which was Constantinople, the city on the Bosphorus, which was supposedly founded in 330 and destroyed by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Byzantion (in the Latinised form Byzantium) was the name it held before being renamed by and in honour of the Emperor Constantine the Great (324-37), and throughout the Middle Ages the Byzantines were the citizens of Constantinople only, not the subjects of the emperor who reigned in Constantinople. These subjects did not even notice that they stopped being Romans and began being Byzantines they continued to consider themselves Romans until they woke up under the rule of the sultans.

Thus the nomenclature itself is confused, and some purist scholars prefer to call the population of the Constantinopolitan empire Romans or Greeks, and terms such as 'the Eastern Roman empire' or 'Greco-Roman Jaw' are still in use. But this is only the beginning of the problem, and we are in trouble when trying to define the date of birth of Byzantium. Was it 330, when Constantine celebrated the inauguration of his new residence on the Bosphorus? Was it 395, when the Emperor Theodosius I died and bequeathed the empire to two different rulers, his sons Arkadios in Constantinople (395-408) and Honorius (395-423) in Milan and later Ravenna? Was it in 476, when the Herulian (or Hun) Odoacer deposed the last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and sent his regalia to Constantinople. Or was it in 554, when Justinian I (527-65), after having reconquered Italy, issued the Pragmatic Sanction and determined the status of this old-new province? None of these events had a lasting effect on the empire. AII we can say is that Byzantium was not born in a day, and the changes were various and gradual.

The idea that radical ethnic changes gave birth to Byzantium was popular in the nineteenth century and still remains popular among some East European scholars; the Slavs are said to have invaded the Roman empire, settled in Greece and Asia Minor, rejuvenated the decrepit empire, become the backbone of the new victorious army and, even more, that of the Orthodox monarchy. Unquestionably, the Slavs invaded the Balkans in the first half of the seventh century. They left behind some traces in Balkan place-names. The Slavic influence on the administration, legal and fiscal systems, and military organisation is another matter – there is no data for such an assertion.

Territorial changes are more evident. In rough outline they coincided with the Slavic invasion, and took place during the seventh century. The Mediterranean Roman empire disappeared, and was replaced by a new formation, concentrated around Greece and Asia Minor, the areas dominated by the Greek language and culture. But could not the empire retain its old character within a more restricted framework?

Religious changes seem to be attached to the activity of a single man, the Emperor Constantine. Tradition has it that he saw a vision of the cross and promulgated the Milan edict liberating the Christian church from discrimination. For medieval chroniclers this was a radical turning point, the creation of the Christian empire. We know now that the edict of tolerance was issued before Constantine, in 311, by the Emperor Galerius, whom Constantine's staunch flatterers depicted as a scoundrel. We also know that Constantine did not completely abandon pagan cults, particularly the worship of the solar deity (or. deities), and that when Constantine, on his death-bed, formally accepted Christianity, he accepted the new religion in its heretical denomination, Arianism. Moreover, paganism regained momentum soon after Constantine, during the reign of Julian the Apostate (361-63). At the court of the Very Christian Emperor, Theodosius I, pagan politicians were influential, and the fifth century saw a revival of pagan culture represented by such men as the philosopher Proklos and the historian Zosimos. Even in the sixth century, paganism was alive in the countryside, and the aristocratic intelligentsia, while paying lip service to the official creed, stuck to the ancient philosophical and cultural traditions. Thus, the question arises: which phenomenon is more momentous: Constantine's cautious baptism or the seventh-century triumph of Christianity that had behind it the gigantic work of the church fathers who had elaborated the system of the new belief? The Trinitarian and Christological disputes, out of which this system emerged, came to halt only in the middle of the seventh century.

The changes in the administrative system are the most evasive, and some scholars place the roots of these changes in the reign of Justinian I, or even earlier. The search for these roots is a futile one – any important phenomenon has its roots in the past. What matters is not embryonic development but the critical mass. It is, however, very difficult to measure the critical masses of historical process, especially for the seventh century, notorious for its scarcity of available sources. Of course, Byzantium remained a monarchy in and after the seventh century, and was, at least in theory, administered from Constantinople, but it now seems sure that the new administrative system of districts, the so-called 'themes', appeared in the seventh century. The exarchates of Ravenna and of Carthage, organised by the end of the sixth century, were the direct predecessors of the themes; the themes were powerful organisations until the mid-ninth century and decided the destiny of the throne of Constantinople. Indeed, all major uprisings until the ninth century were based on themes.

In central government during the same seventh century, late Roman departments were replaced by new offices. The main functionaries such as praetorian prefect and magister officiorum disappeared, and the central bureaux worked under the supervision of the so-called logothetai. Some late Roman designatioris survived, although often in a changed sense. For example, the Byzantine hypatos-consul was worlds away from the magnificent consuls of the sixth century, and the Byzantine magistros was a title, rather than an office, like the late Roman magister. Some change of function must have occurred beneath the veneer of this terminological stability.

And did society remain late Roman? We can divide the question into two sections: the urban and the rural. It seems that in the seventh century the Roman provincial city was in decline and that when it reappeared by around the tenth century, it had a new, medieval, character. Archaeological excavations are usually witness to the decline of cities, and the findings of coins from the second half of the seventh century become rare. In addition the setting of hagiographical literature shifts from the provincial city to either the capital or the countryside. The available data about the countryside between the seventh and late ninth centuries are scanty, and we are forced to build our conclusions more on the silence of our sources than on direct evidence. Silence, however, is fairly evocative. We hear little about large estates, slaves and colonies of this period; the most discussed case is that of St Philaretos who is said in his Vita to have possessed approximately fifty allotments (proasteia). Such figures are usually exaggerated, and we cannot take them for granted, the more so since Philaretos was the son of a peasant and could perfectly well manage his team of ploughing oxen. On the other hand, the so-called Farmers' Law, the Byzantine counterpart of the western leagues, deals with free peasants. Certainly, the text is enigmatic, imprecisely dated and probably reflects some local conditions, but this is what we have – direct evidence about the free peasantry and very questionable data concerning large estates.

If we assume that the leading class of the ancient polis, the urban landowners, disappeared, or at least lost its former significance, a strange phenomenon coinciding with those changes becomes clearer: the disappearance of family names. Rare after the fourth century but still known in the sixth century, they are practically unknown between the seventh century and the end of the ninth century. Does this mean that the aristocracy or at least the concept of aristocracy ceased to exist? Certainly, we do not know of any powerful family from this period, and at the end of the tenth century Basil II (976-1025) wrote with astonishment and indignation about those families which had been pre-eminent for some seventy to one hundred years; so the phenomenon must have been a new one in his reign.

Thus all information converges on the seventh century; and although it is far from extensive or dependable, it allows us to hypothesise that in the seventh century some slow changes occurred and that establishing the seventh century as a watershed at least does not conflict with the available evidence.

But why should we bother our heads about Byzantium? Today we take for granted the impact of ancient cultural traditions – they are considered to be the foundation of western civilisation. In our perception of the past, Byzantium plays the role of a stepdaughter, a Cinderella; we allow it to store and transmit the oeuvre of great Greek minds. Byzantine culture is seen not as an achievement in its own right, but as an imitation and copy of the great classical paragon. The art has been looked at and the literature has been read with this presupposition in mind; as non-creative, repetitive, slavishly following ancient originals, disconnected from contemporary problems, concentrating on ridiculous theological niceties, and so forth. And since the purpose of their art, literature, philosophy, law and science was to imitate the great predecessors, Byzantine culture allegedly knew no development.

But was this really true? Bearing in mind the social and political changes of the seventh century already alluded to, can we see a cultural transformation taking place at the same time? Certainly building activity almost stopped, literary work contracted and even the most medieval genre, hagiography, was almost nonexistent in the eighth century. Manuscripts copied at that time are extremely few, and philosophical thought came to a halt. Thus, as in the West, the Byzantine Middle Ages began with a cultural gap that was followed by a revival around 800.

What is interesting in this revival is its social background: the vast majority of the known authors of this time belonged to the monastic world. But from the mid-ninth century onwards a different type of literatus came to the fore – the imperial or ecclesiastical functionary. In the twelfth century, again, a new type of writer emerges: the professional author, frequently called the 'beggar poet' since his existence depended upon the gifts and stipends from the emperor and others, and soliciting these gifts occupied a substantial part of his concerns and of his poetry.

The genres of literature were also in flux; in the twelfth century the saintly biography went through a crisis, very few contemporary biographies were produced, the writers preferring to revise old hagiographical texts, and Eustathios of Thessalonike, a rhetorician and commentator on Homer, issued a vita that was, in its core, a denial of traditional hagiographical virtues. This vita of a (fake?) saint, Philotheos of Opsikion, was a eulogy to a rich married man living in the world. However, while hagiography was fading a new genre appeared, nr rather was revived, after a long absence: the romance. Poetic and prose panegyrics of secular leaders were of no significance before the eleventh century; the ethical ideal had remained either monastic or imperial. And the memoir did not come into being before Michael Psellos in the eleventh century.

The well-entrenched concept of Byzantine cultural uniformity does not stand up to examination, not only because Byzantium's cultural development was in a state of flux. A distinction can be drawn not only between different generations but also between members of the same generation of different class and with different taste.

A classic example of such a distinction is a group of addresses to the emperor Alexios III Angelos (1195-1203) celebrating his victory over rebellious John Komnenos the Fat. Four orations survive; three of them are traditional, that is lacking in concrete detail, symbolic and full of propaganda. The fourth, by Nicholas Mesarites, is rich in details, dynamic and ironic. Mesarites does not strive to exclude reality in the interests of a higher moral truth; his aim is to make actual events vivid.

But if Byzantine culture was not a plain imitation of antiquity, then what was the difference between the two, and what was the former's contribution? Antiquity is a broad notion whatever characterisation we formulate, and what we now accept as essential may be perceived by other scholars in other times as incidental. There was clearly a considerable transitional period between the Roman and the Byzantine worlds. On the other hand, Byzantium is not 'linear', one-dimensional and simplistic; moreover, it was consciously orientated toward ancient culture. The Byzantines called themselves Romans, believed in this definition, and did not see a demarcation line between themselves and antiquity. Homer was their poet. Aristotle their philosopher, and Augustus their emperor. In their writings they followed ancient Greek (although they spoke vernacular), and they filled their works with ancient quotations, proverbs and dead words. The cultural line between Rome and Constantinople is as indistinct as the chronological line between them.

There are, however, some points of difference which seem obvious Byzantium was Christian, antiquity pagan; Byzantium was uniform, antiquity variegated; Byzantium was autocratic, antiquity republican. Unfortunately none of these statements is completely correct: Christianity was born in antiquity and inherited many ancient ideas; Byzantium's uniformity was relative; and both Hellenistic and Roman monarchies existed within the framework of ancient civilisation. But relative as they are, these oppositions reflect partial truth and highlight the direction of search.

Another set of obvious or half-obvious dichotomies refers to a different aspect of reality. Marxist theoreticians contrast ancient slave ownership with Byzantine feudalism. The word 'feudalism' is too questionable to be a useful tool of analysis, but it is plausible that the forms of exploitation differed between antiquity and Byzantium, even though slaves (and not only the household slaves but slaves in the fields, at the herds and in the workshops) were numerous in Byzantium. We can also say that the urban life so typical of antiquity lost its role in Byzantium and that the family not the municipum formed the main social unit and determined the structure of many other units.

Before we take the final step and attempt to define along very rough lines, the 'Byzantine particularity', let us shift from chronological to territorial distinctions, let us juxtapose not Byzantium and antiquity but Byzantium and the western medieval world. Of course, the western medieval world was diverse, nevertheless, some feeling of unity prevailed: the Byzantines, at least from the eleventh century onward, spoke of the 'Latins' as a specific group, differing from the Byzantines insofar as their beliefs, costumes and habits were concerned. For the westerners as well, the 'schismatic Greeks' formed a separate set of people; one could marry a Greek woman, trade in Greek ports, serve at the court of Constantinople, but the gap remained and even widened as time went on.

From the viewpoint of the westerners the Byzantines entertained a wrong theology, believing that the Holy Spirit proceeded from God the Father only; they were too bookish and bad soldiers; they adorned their churches with icons and not the sculptured crucifix, and their priests were married. But there was one point that usually dominated in the mutual contrasting of two societies.

In 1147 crusading armies arrived in Constantinople. The Greek historian, John Kinnamos, who was almost contemporaneous with the event, described them in great detail. Among other things, he noticed with a subdued surprise that:

Their offices (or dignities) are peculiar and resemble distinctions descending from the height of the empire, since it is something most noble and surpassed all others. A duke outranks a count; a king a duke; and the emperor, a king. The inferior naturally yields to the superior, supports him in war, and obey^ in such matters. What struck Kinnamos was the hierarchical structure of western aristocracy, the system of vertical links.

In 1189 Isaac II (1185-95) sent an embassy to Frederick Barbarossa, The Byzantine historian, Niketas Choniates, relates that Frederick ordered the Greek ambassadors to be seated in his presence and had chairs placed in the hall even for their servants. By so doing, comments Choniates, the German ruler made fun of the Byzantines, who failed to take into consideration the virtue of nobility of different members of society and who appraised the whole population by the same measure, like ' herdsman who drove all the hogs into the same pigsty.

Western society was perceived by both the Greeks and the Latins as one organised on the aristocratic and hierarchical foundation, Byzantine society as 'democratic', although in Byzantium the word 'demokratia' had a pejorative tinge and was usually applied to the domination of the demoi, the unbridled mobs.

To sum up, Byzantium was an atomistic society with the family as it: cornerstone. The man was primarily the member of the family and not o the municipium (as he was in Greco Roman antiquity) or community or guild (as he was to be in the medieval West). Formal wedding ceremonies prohibition of divorce, abolition of concubinage; all these contrasted with the 'free' late Roman family Lineage played an insignificant role and vertical (hierarchical) links remained practically unknown. Small family-like monasteries were common, and family-orientated terminology permeated both political and ecclesiastical relations.

The aristocratic principle was underdeveloped. This does not mean that all the emperor's subjects were equal in rights and wealth, eve though western observers kept repeating disparagingly that they were in the tenth century, for instance, the German ambassador Liutprand asserted that all the participants in the imperial procession in Constantinople wore shabby and frayed costumes. The principle of inequality in Byzantium differed from that of the West; the Byzantines created a meritocracy based not on the individual's 'blood' or origin but on his place in the bureaucratic machine. A system which, while less stable than nobility in the West, enabled more vertical mobility. This does not mean that they were less. arrogant, but it does mean that, while less restricted by tradition, they were less defiant of the emperor's omnipotence.

The imperial power was both feeble and strong. It was strong since the emperor, in theory, was not restricted by law; he was the law itself. He combined in his hands legislative, administrative and judicial power, was the supreme army commander and claimed control of ideology. But he was poorly protected against schemes and plots, and half of all the Byzantine emperors ended their rule as victims of violence. Feeble as individuals (certainly some emperors had a strong personality) they were omnipotent as symbols of government; the emperors themselves might be criticised, but the principle of unlimited monarchical power was never questioned.

In practice, of course, everything was more complex, and many an emperor met social and religious resistance, even blunt bureaucratic intransigence. However, we can call the Byzantine empire a totalitarian state. And it was the only totalitarian state of the European Middle Ages. As such, Byzantium gives us material to observe a totalitarian state over a long period and to analyse its liabilities and assets, its roots and mechanism.

Several points are of importance. Was the totalitarian organisation of power interconnected with the atomistic structure of society? It seems quite plausible that western system of vertical and horizontal bonds created a better protection for the man, certainly for a nobleman, against the supreme power that condescended to respect the noble as the king's peer. I do not think that the western villanus was better protected than Byzantine paroikos, but probably western guilds gave more protection to their members than did Byzantine somateia, their counterpart. At any rate, atomistic feelings and fears, rejection of friendship and emphasis on individual way of salvation (rather than the role of sacraments) could contribute to the concept of the lonely man, a helpless slave in front of the powerful emperor, a toy of relentless doom. The political misfortunes of ever-shrinking Byzantium reinforced this concept; late Byzantine philosophers were unable to grasp why the most Christian, the 'chosen people' should be exposed to the crashing attacks of the Ottoman Turks.

How did the totalitarian state function? So much ink has been spilled to describe the unwieldy and rotten Byzantine governmental mechanism, and undoubtedly there is much truth in these two adjectives - based on the bitter words of contemporary critics. But there are some stubborn facts that cry out for explanation. How could the Eastern Roman empire, where centralised authority was more strongly developed than in the West, repel the same barbarian attacks that subdued Italy and Gaul? Why was it that, until the twelfth century, totalitarian Byzantium was economically and culturally ahead of the West? A century ago Russian Byzantinists developed a theory according to which the Byzantine emperors, especially in the tenth century, protected the peasantry and the village community against the so-called dynatoi ('powerful', i.e. the wealthy and influential members of the ruling class) and thus secured the existence of a strong army and of plentiful taxes. When, in the eleventh century, the emperors yielded to western feudalism, abandoned 'the minor brethren', and turned away from the principles of the Orthodox (and Slavic) monarchy, the decline of Byzantium began. This theory is political more than scholarly. The tenth-century state did not protect the peasantry either (it protected state taxes that were burden-some enough and the centralised power over the countryside), nor was the period of the eleventh and twelfth centuries that of decline. On the contrary, it was a period of economic growth and cultural upsurge. But in spite of all its weakness, totalitarian Byzantium managed to flourish during several centuries while the split-up ('federal') West suffered from shortages of food, dress and housing.

The problem is intensified by Byzantine ideological duplicity. A striking example is the fate of Roman law in Byzantium, the Roman law summarised and codified by Justinian I during the last stage of the late Roman empire. It was never abolished, although some attempts to make it simpler were made. Byzantine legal text-books adhered to Roman law, repeating, time and again, formulations that were in disaccord with reality. For instance, the official law-book of the ninth century, the Basilika, described administrative institutions that existed during the sixth century and had ceased to exist by the ninth. Furthermore, the agrarian terminology of the Basilika, translated from Latin into Greek, applied to no Byzantine reality, and often made no sense whatever. Whereas Roman law reflected the principles of the legal state, protecting individual rights and private ownership, the Byzantine empire did not give any legal protection to its subjects. Emperors could execute any citizen without trial and could confiscate any land without argument. Texts of the tenth century state that any land on which the emperor had put his foot could be taken from its owner. As more private documents have been published in recent decades, we can see more clearly that the Byzantine law of things and law of obligations deviated from Roman norms and that Byzantine tribunals acted on principles distinct from the Roman; but the words often remained the same, and private ownership of land was repeatedly affirmed in legal text-books.

This contrast between theory and practice had a strong impact on Byzantine mentality. I am not referring to the notorious Byzantine diplomacy or the lack of fealty, of which the Latin neighbours accused them; indeed I doubt that such accusations could be taken at face value. In fact they can be applied equally to many medieval leaders. Much more substantial was the Byzantine skill of allusion. Of course, their literature is in no way short of direct and open invectives against political and ideological enemies, but they loved, and knew how to say without saying, to evoke by an apparently occasional hint a broad gamut of emotions. They were much more attentive towards those details and nuances which usually escape modern understanding. One of the most drastic examples is the Byzantine insistence on the resemblance of their icons to sitter or subject, whereas modern art historians are unable to perceive individual elements in Byzantine icons and are inclined to deny such resemblance. Equally, we are unable to catch allusions, political and personal, in their writings, particularly in their favourite game, the use of ancient and Biblical imagery.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this observation. In the first place, the Byzantines frequently cared more about nuances than general statements. Any totalitarian or uniform ideology possesses an established set of concepts which are above discussion; Byzantine ideology was no exception, with a set of political or religious formulae, perceived by everyone as final truth and rarely, if ever, discussed. But they certainly had discussions, and very vehement ones. These usually began over slight terminological differences, and it gradually becomes clear that behind such niceties loomed crucial dissentions. We are facing a paradox: an allegedly uniform ideology did not prevent the Byzantines from bitter disputes, only these disputes seemed to be limited to innocuous and insignificant problems: should the churches be adorned with images? Was the Holy Spirit proceeding from God the Father only or from the Son as well? How could Christ be at the same time the sacrifice offered to God, the priest offering the sacrifice, and God receiving it? Can one see the divine light, the divine energy with sensual eyes? And so on.

In the second place, we must reconsider the role of Byzantine intellectuals. Their indiscriminate eulogies addressed to those in power sound abominably grovelling to our ears. But as soon as we become acquainted with the nuances and methods of the rhetoric it is possible to strip them of the shroud of uniformity and flattery and understand the profound content concealed beneath the surface. Of course, most of their allusions have been lost in the pas sage of time and still remain incomprehensible to the modern reader but even that little part of them that can be deciphered compels us to discard the traditional image of literary barrenness.

The Byzantine world was totalitarian; many will agree with such a statement. But it is hard to accept this heritage; we are more willing to reject it, to restrict the survival of the Byzantine 'axe and icon' to Eastern Europe, Slavic and/or Communist countries. The recent celebration of the millennium of the Russian Church sharpened this point yet more. Totalitarian Russia seems to be as natural a successor of totalitarian Byzantium as the Russian icon is the heir of Byzantine images or Russian obscuring eloquence is the heir of Byzantine rhetorics.

The problem is once again, however, not that simple. Kievan Rus certainly had contacts with Byzantium But did it experience Byzantium's direct impact beyond the ecclesiastical sphere? In fact Kievan temporal society absorbed very little of Byzantium: their weaponry came from the West, their glass producers followed western, not Byzantine recipes, their political structure was as distanced from the Byzantine one as possible. Political marriages of high rank between the two countries were almost unknown. Kievan Rus as a state did not travel the path the Byzantines had worn.

Only in the fifteenth century when Russian grand princes began to build up their centralised monarchy did they discover their Byzantine ancestry; Russia did not inherit Byzantine totalitarianism but used the model for their political ends. The process was not genetic or automatic – it was a part of the ideological programme, whether consciously or unconsciously applied.

It would be very tempting to assume that only those countries (Bulgaria, Serbia, Rumania, Russia) that were in direct contact with Byzantium developed a tendency to totalitarianism – but I am afraid that this is not true, Not only did Russia become totalitarian only after it had severed direct relations with Byzantium, (when it was separated from Byzantium by Mongolian seminomads and Italian trade republics which dominated the Black Sea coast), but there were also countries that for centuries had such contact and did not become totalitarian: Armenia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy. On the other hand, totalitarian governments could be traced in various European countries whose contacts with Byzantium were very slight, such as Spain and France, from the fifteenth century onwards. The French model of the Sun King followed the Byzantine paragon, and it is not sheer chance that sixteenth-century France contributed so much to the development of Byzantine studies.

Byzantium was an interesting historical experiment. It teaches us how totalitarian systems work, what a meritocracy ('nomenklafura') is, what the place of intellectuals in a totalitarian state is, and who owns the land and the means of production. It shows the advantages and disadvantages of the totalitarian system, and reveals under the surface of stagnation the suppressed class of political and ideological contrasts.

Alexander Kazhdan is senior research associate at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C.