The question of economic conditions on the eve of the Latins’ seizure of
Constantinople is discussed by Mark Whittow in one of the ten topicor
region-specific chapters in Part II. Byzantine economic history has
undergone intensive enquiry, and The economic history of Byzantium: from
the seventh through the fifteenth century published in 2002 provides an
authoritative summing up.40 The work’s three volumes contain (besides
much else) syntheses on economic and non-economic exchange, the role
of the state in the economy, and the periodisation of Byzantine economic
history, as well as studies on the urban economy, both in Constantinople
and in the provinces, and also surveys of economic life in the countryside,
and of prices and salaries.41
Taking account of all this, Whittow shows that there remains room for
discussion over the main lines of Byzantium’s economic development. In
particular, our ever-expanding archaeological database suggests that the
material impoverishment and demonetarisation of the provinces in the
seventh and eighth centuries may not have been quite as drastic as often
supposed, and thus that the undeniable economic recovery of the ninth and
tenth centuries may have started from a higher base-line (see below, pp.
478, 483–4). Whittow reopens the question of the relationship between this
recovery and the condition of peasant-proprietors. Such proprietors could
be of substance, and imperial novellae referring to them as ‘poor’ (pen¯etai)
denote their vulnerability to encroachments by the well-connected rather
than material penury (see below, p. 489). Imperial pronouncements concerning
their vital benefit to the state had their rationale, whereas the
eventual amassing of prime properties by a few well-connected and privileged
families was of questionable compatibility with the state apparatus’
longer-term workings (see below, pp. 490–1).
Unlike economic affairs, Byzantine missions received limited scholarly
attention in the twentieth century. Sergei Ivanov’s chapter is the first survey
in English of the full sweep of missionary activity from Justinian’s time to
the Palaiologan period.42 Ivanov questions the strength of the Byzantines’
impulse to spread the word to peoples beyond their borders, and shows
that the initiative for missions often came from external potentates. The
Byzantine state seems to have been better geared to the Christianisation of
individuals or groupings of non-Romans now seeking careers in its service,
or who had settled en masse within its environs. By contrast, Byzantineborn
churchmen such as Theophylact of Ohrid assigned to far-flung sees
were at their most eloquent in expressing discomfort with their barbarous
surroundings.43
The emperor’s role of indomitable defender of ‘the Christians’ was projected
in court ceremonial as vividly as his image of being the equal of
the apostles, and here at least, as Walter Kaegi shows, rhetoric bore some
resemblance to reality. The forces of Islam were arrayed against the once
mighty Christian empire, which they claimed to have superseded.Devising
administrative means of coping withMuslim incursions was of paramount
concern for Constans II (641–68) and subsequent emperors. Warfare with
theMuslims was unremitting for centuries, the orthodox Christian convictions
of the majority population in Asia Minor supplementing the Taurus
mountain range and cold winters in discouraging permanent Arab occupation
of Anatolia. Iconoclast emperors repeatedly led expeditions against
the Muslims in person; and the early Abbasid caliphs, in contrast to their
immediate Umayyad predecessors, were also intent on leading expeditions
against the Byzantines themselves (see below, p. 388). The raiding and
counter-raiding between the arch adversaries came to form a rhythm, even
if the caliphs could still deal knock-out blows to imperial prestige as late as
the mid-ninth century (see below, pp. 391–2).
The Byzantines’ caution in exploiting the caliphate’s internal difficulties
with large-scale military initiatives was matched by the Armenian princes,
generally wary of bringing down the wrath of their Muslim overlords.
Yet, as Timothy Greenwood shows, the boundaries between Byzantine and
Armenian faith and church organisation were more fluid than Armenian
narrative historians lead one to suppose. While Photios’ project for formal
union between the churches in the ninth century came to nothing,
the Constantinopolitan patriarchate extended its organisational reach into
what had been the preserve of Armenian churchmen during the tenth century,
and writers on behalf of princes not subscribing to the Chalcedonian
line on Christ’s nature could still show fulsome admiration for the basileus
(see below, p. 357). Such intermingling was not to the emperor’s unmitigated
advantage: the ties between leading Byzantine generals and Armenian
princes brought them additional military manpower, and Basil II’s
involvement with Caucasian affairs was impelled partly by considerations
of self-defence (see below, pp. 358–9).
The emperor’s interest in the Latin Christians of the central and western
Mediterranean regions was likewise stimulated partly by their capacity to
intervene in his own affairs, especially as the pope’s spiritual standing entitled
him to pronounce on even fairly minor disputes concerning elections
within the Constantinopolitan patriarchate. Beneath the formal ecclesiastical
boundaries, exchanges between Greek-speaking eastern orthodox populations
and communities in Sicily, southern Italy and the Byzantine lands
remained active even after the Muslim conquest of Sicily. The prospect of
southern Italy succumbing to Sicily’s fate in the later ninth century and
becoming a springboard for Arab incursions into Dalmatia and the Aegean
prompted Basil I’s decision to restore the southern Adriatic ports and strategically
significant inland power-nodes to imperial dominion.44 For almost
200 years, strongholds and eventually extensive tracts of territory on the
peninsula came under Byzantine administration. The population of regions
such as Apulia was mostly Latin-speaking, its ultimate spiritual head being
the pope, while Lombard customs prevailed in the courts.45 This hardly disqualifies
southern Italy from attention and yet, as has justly been remarked,
the source-material for this part of the empire has still to be fully exploited
in many works on Byzantium.46
The seepage of imperial elements and eastern Christian culture into
many strata and spheres of Italian life, from the papacy downwards, is
demonstrated in Thomas Brown’s chapter. The trajectory of imperial power
can only be described as ‘recessional’, and local elites and the papacy had
to fend for themselves against Lombards and later Muslim maurauders.
But, as Brown shows, ‘le snobisme byzantinisant’ was current among some
leading families irrespective of their ethnic origins; commercial ties linked
other points with the eastern empire; and even as the papacy aligned its own
ideology with Frankish imperium, ‘Rome remained within the Byzantine
cultural orbit’ (see below, p. 448). All this had to be taken into account by
the Carolingians when trying to bring northern and central Italy within
their dominions, as rightfully part of their empire.
Many elements in Byzantine religious culture were of interest to churchmen
hailing from north of the Alps, not least the utility of Greek for clarifying
phrases in the Bible or of the church fathers. AsMichaelMcCormick
shows, the militarily robust iconoclast emperors provided a foil for Carolingians
and their counsellors, intent on framing an empire to their own
specifications yet impeccably Christian (see below, pp. 417–18, 424–5, 431).
The working model of such an empire to the east could hardly fail to excite in
them emulation, and occasional adaptations. The phenomenon of Frankish
arms, letters and church organisation stimulated the papacy to take a firmer,
more confident, line in its own dealings with the Constantinopolitan patriarchate
and emperors. Things came to a head when in 863 Pope Nicholas
I (858–67) took against Photios; the ensuing rift was both symptom of,
and further stimulus to, the Byzantine church’s sense of its own exalted
status.47
The Frankish behemoth that loomed behind the papacy’s fulminations
was, however, disintegrating by the 880s, whereas Byzantium’s naval vessels
could still sail to relieve Rome from Muslim raiders. Byzantine dominion
began to coagulate and then extend northwards from the heel of Italy. As is
pointed out in Chapter 14, the Byzantine expedition to oustMuslim pirates
from the Garigliano valley south of Rome in 915 was mounted in tandem
with warriors supplied by local magnates and with the papacy’s cooperation.
A century later, the katepan¯o Basil Boioannes managed to intervene in the
Garigliano valley and destroy the fortress of a papally backed magnate off his
own bat (see below, pp. 538, 558). Emperor Henry II (1002–24) retaliated in
1022 but his attempt to cut the Greeks down to size was no more lastingly
effective than his recent predecessors’. The resuscitation of the western
empire in 962 by the Ottonian dynasty from Saxony had unleashed challenges,
explicit and implicit, to Byzantium, but Liudprand of Cremona’s
pronouncements on the subject strike a note of defiance rather than fullthroated
confidence. In fact the Ottonian emperors found many uses for
Byzantine luxury goods and authority symbols in devising a political culture
for their newly amassed dominions (see below, pp. 546, 549–50, 554–5).
The Ottonians provided the princes of Capua-Benevento and other
potentates in south-central Italy with a powerful, yet fitful, counterforce
to the Byzantine presence in the peninsula. The principalities of Capua-
Benevento and Salerno, and the duchies of Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi seem
to have been quite stable through the first two-thirds of the tenth century.
They were, however, vulnerable to wrangles over the succession and other
disputes within the respective ruling families, and power and resources
were becoming diffused among the families of counts and other masters
of castelli (see below, pp. 571–2, 579–80). In the case of these principalities
and duchies, as with so many other elites and political structures bordering
on Byzantium, their amoeba-like characteristics and the highly personal
nature of leadership placed them at a disadvantage compared with the continuity
of a unitary state. The basileus’ strongholds ensured his potential
military presence, while through diverse diplomatic devices, operated by
his indigenous officials and local sympathisers and also at his own court,
he kept tabs on established leading families and forged ties with significant
newcomers.
The power-play of Byzantine Italy is fairly well documented and bears
comparison with that in the middle Byzantine Balkans, for which archival
evidence is poor. There, too, the imperial government maintained its interests
with the help of centrally appointed agents, local elites, potentates
ensconced in discrete political structures and mobile groupings whose military
capability could be temporarily harnessed. Paul Stephenson’s chapter
illustrates the traditional workings of steppe-diplomacy and shows how
imperial strategy after Basil II’s conquest of Bulgaria envisaged hegemony
over the Balkans: a network of routes and a series of zones, with the innermost
receiving fairly intensive administration, fiscal exactions and protection,
while the outer ones were left more to their own devices, under
local notables (see below, pp. 664–9, 670, 673–5). Imperial attention and
resources could be devoted to those zones where external threats or internal
rebellions arose, and in many ways this flexible arrangement worked.
Defensive measures and diplomacy succeeded in repulsing or deterringNorman
incursions into Dalmatia and beyond for some time after their seizure
of southern Italy. Byzantine emperors also exploited divisions within the
Hungarian royal family to curb rising Hungarian power. Manuel I Komnenos
even appropriated a strategically significant portion of theHungarian
lands for a while (see below, pp. 642, 684–5).
Yet as Stephenson shows, the emperors’ hold over much of the Balkan
interior was loose-meshed, andManuel’s preoccupation with the intentions
ofwell-resourced Latin potentates and crusading ventures reflects awareness
of this. But diplomatic d´emarches cost gold, and westerners were no longer
bought cheaply or lastingly. The Byzantines generally tried to reconcile
non-Greek-speaking populations to their rule by keeping taxes low. But in
1185–6, resentment over higher taxes fuelled an uprising of ethnic notables
and provincial Greek-speakers, which took on separatist tendencies and
transmuted into the resurrection of an independent Bulgarian power (see
below, pp. 656, 687–8).
The outlook for Byzantium’s eastern provinces was transformed abruptly
by the coming of the Turks. By the mid-eleventh century, there was quite
heavy reliance on local elites in the borderlands and a not unreasonable
assumption that military threats from Islamic regions could be contained.48
The vigorous opportunism of Turkish chieftains and individual war-band
leaders offset their lack of military cohesiveness and of regularly raised revenues.
The drastic reform of military organisation needed to cope with the
Turks was beyond the capacity of mid-eleventh-century Byzantine regimes
(see below, pp. 600–1, 603, 607).Not that the empire was lacking in a series
of outer zones on its eastern approaches any more than it was in the Balkans,
as Dimitri Korobeinikov shows: Armenian local notables and the king of
Georgia could still be enlisted to the imperial cause, George II (1072–89)
being swayed by a sizable concession of strongholds and territories (see
below, p. 705).Manuel I Komnenos was also adept at local-level diplomacy
in Asia Minor and his personal ties with Turkish dynasts furthered stabilisation
of the borders. Stability, however, made established rulers such as
Kilij Arslan II (1156–92) even more militarily formidable, and Manuel’s
attempt to overturn the Seljuq Turkish powerbase at Ikonion (Konya)
led to crushing defeat at the battle of Myriokephalon in 1176 (see below,
p. 716).
Fortunately for the empire, the Seljuqs and other more established Turkish
leaders showed little inclination to descend from their abodes 1,000 or
so metres above sea-level in the Anatolian plateau. Not even the dissipation
of imperial power after 1204 changed this state of affairs. The imperial
Byzantine ‘rump state’ that formed around Nicaea co-existed fairly easily
with the Seljuqs of Rum. It was theMongols’ arrival and pressure in eastern
AsiaMinor that precipitated a chain reaction of migration among the Turcoman
nomads and, in the early 1300s, the breakdown of residual Byzantine
defences in the western coastal plains (see below, pp. 723–4, 726). This is yet
another example of how far-away events could have drastic repercussions,
upsetting the best efforts of the empire’s guardians.
World History
