Society, Culture And Politics in Byzantium

Nicolas Oikonomides

Society, Culture and Politics in Byzantium

edited by Elizabeth Zachariadou

Professor Nicolas Oikonomides

ASHGATE VARIORUM

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This edition C 2005 by Elizabeth Zachariadou The editor has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

CONTENTS

Published in the Variorum Collected Studies Series by Ashgale Publishing Limited Gower House, Croft Road, A1dershot, Hampshire GUlI3HR Great Britain

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Ashgate Publishing Company Suite420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT05401-4405 USA ., r."

Preface,

by Paul Magdalina

Acknowledgements

,j

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY

ISBN 0-86078-937-3 Britisb Library Cataloguing in Publieation Data 'l ~ Oikonomides, Nicolas . . . Society, culture and politics in Byzantiu~. - (V~orum ~I~~ studies senes) I. Byzantine Empire - History 2. Byzantme Empire - clVlltzatlon I. Title II. Zachariadou, Elisavet A. 9495'02 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oikonomides, Nicolas Society, culture, and politics in Byzantium/Nicolas Oikonomides; edited by Elizabeth Zachariadou. p. em. - (Variorum collected studies series; CS824) Includes index. ISBN 0-86078-937-3 (alk. paper) I. Social bistory - Medieval, 500-1500. 2. Byzantine Empire - Social conditions. 3. Byzantine Empire - Politics and government. 4. Byzantine Empire - Civilization. I. Zachariadou, Elisavet A. II. Title. III. Collected studies; CS824. HNII.OS6200S 949.S'02-i1c22

2005048071

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library TM Materials,ANSIZ39.48-1984.

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

VARIORUMCOLLECTEDSTIJDIESSERIESCS824

L'''Unilinguisme'' officiel de Constantinople byzantine (VlIe-XIIe S.) Symmeilcta 13. Athens, 1999

n

m

Mat~oUK{va-Ma"t~oUK6.tO~ in Ptochoprodromos

Studies in Honour 0/ Raben Browning, ed. C.N. Constantinides, N.M. Panagiotakes, E. Jeffreys and A.D. Angelou. Venice, 1996

315-319

~IAEMHN 17.

Mount Athos: levels of literacy

167-178

Dumbanon Oaks Papers 42. Washington, D.C, 1988

IV

Literacy in thirteenth-century Byzantium: an example from Western Asia Minor TO EMHNIKON. Studies in Honor 0/ Speros Vryonis, Jr., Vol. I, ed. JaM S. lAngdon, Stephen W. Reinen, Jelisaveta StQllOjevicIJ

253-265

AUen and Christos P. 1oannides. Scarsdale, N.Y., 1993 V

Byzance: a propos d'a!phab6tisation Baan et Perspectives des £tudes Mldihales en Europe, ed. J. Hamesse. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1995

VI

H tyypaj1Q"tCIlaUvrJ "ttbv KptJnJCli)v y6jXO atO 1200 Acts a/the VIlth International Congress a/Cretan Studies,llI2. Rethymnon, 1995

35-42

593-598

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

vi

XVD

ART AND POLITICS VD

Some remarks on the apse mosaic of St. Sophia

vm

H otOATj "tOO mt1pxoo n 0 I:1CUAi-n;1J~ "t1J~. M~pi"t1J~

422-434

La couronne dite de Constantin Monomaque Trawua et Memoires 12. Paris. 1994

X

H au"t01Cjlcl"t£IjlO Ayia 1:olpla

in Romania

1-11

Thymiama stl Mnimi tis Laskllrinas Mpoura. Athens. 1994. pp. 235-238

The significance of some imperial monumental portraits of the X and XI centuries

XIX

1-11 93-102

XIV

35-44

The holy icon as an asset

XXI

Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45. Washington. D.C.. 1991

An imperial Byzantine casket and its fate at a humanist's hands (with Anthony Cuder) The Art Bulletin 70. New York, 1988. pp.

1-29

XVI

A propos des ann6es des premiers Pal60logues et des compagnies de soldats TIUIIOIa et Memoires 8. Paris. 1981

From soldiers of fortune to Gazi warriors: the Tzympe affair

239-247

Pour une typologie des villes "sCpar6es" sous les Pal60logues

169-175

xxn

Andronic II Pal60logue et la ville de Kroia

241-247

The Mediaeval Albanians. Intel7Ultional Symposium 5. Athens. 1998

B'YZANTIUM AFrER 1204 La rinascita delle istituzioni bizantine dopo il 1204 Federico II e il mondo mediterraneo. Palermo. 1995

159-168

Geschichte und Kultur der Palaiologemeit. ed. Werner Seibt. Vienna, 1996

77~7

XV

The Turks in Europe (1305-13) and the Serbs in Asia Minor (1313)

Studies in Onoman History in Honour ofProfessor v.L. Menage. ed. Colin Heywood and Colin Imber. Istanbul: The Isis Press. 1994

Glas 390 de l'Acadhnie serhe des sciences et des arts. Classe des sciences historiques 11. Belgrade. 2001

xm

235-238

The Ottoman Emirate (1300-1389). ed. ElirJlbeth Zachariadou. Halcyon Days in Crete I: A Symposium Held in Rethymnon 11-13 January 1991. Rethymnon: Crete University Press. 1993

XX

Pictorial propaganda in XUth c. Constantinople

319-332

Porphyrogenita. Essays on the History and literature of ByZlllltium and the Latin East in Honour ofJulilut Chrysostomides. ed. Charalambos Dendrinos. Jonathan Harris. Eirene Harvalia-Croolc, Judith Herrin. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2003

241-262

Zograf25. Belgrade. 1996. pp. 23-26

XU

xvm The Byzantine overlord of Genoese possessions

Euphro:synon: Aphieroma ston Manoll Chatzidakl. Athens. 1992

IX

XI

111-115

Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39. Washington, D.C.• 1985

Byzantium between East and West (XIll-XV cenL) ByZlllltium and the West c.85O-c.1200. Proceeding' of the XVIII Spring Symposium ofBYZIlIItine Studie,. ed. J.D. Howard-Johnston. Amsterdam, 1988

vii

xxm Byzantine diplomacy, A.D. 1204-1453: means and ends 320-332

353-371

Publicatians of the Society for the Promotian ofByzantine Studies. ed. Jonathan Shepard and Simon Franlclin. Aldershot: AshgatelVariorum, 1992

73-88

ATHOS AND THE CHURCH

XXIV To lISPf.llto "tCOV j1O\'ClO"tTJpuiIv crt"1JV cryopci "t1]t; "tOUplCOlCpa:roUjt£UTJt; 0eoool.ovilCllt; (1400) Demetria 28. 7th Scholarly Symposium, 'Christilut Thessalonica' • Stauropegial and Parochial Monasteries. Thessalonili, 1995

73-79

viii

xxv

CONTENTS Patronage in Palaiologan Mt Athos Mount AtMs and Byzantine Monasticism. Papers from the Twenty-Eighth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1994, ed. Anthony Bryer and Mary Cunningham. Aldershot, AshgateiVariorum. 1996

XXVl

Le temps des faux Mount AtMs in the 14th-16th Centuries. Athonikll Symmeikta 4. Athens, 1997

xxvn

Aypo'tl1c6 ltEp{crmrol1a lCat 0 p6A.o~ TOU lCp6:'tOU~ y6pro (J'to 1300 Manuel Panselinos and His Age. Byzantium Today 3. Athens, 1999

XXVIll Reflexions sur Ie monocondyle episcopal du 16e s. The Greek Script in the 15th and 16th Centuries. International Symposium 7. Athens, 2000

PREFACE 69-74

195-205

53-63

1-16

Index

This volume contains xii + 356 pages

•

99-111

The prodigious published output ofNikos Oikonomides was largely concerned with the administrative and economic history of Byzantium before 1204, and the critical edition of its extant documentary sources - both the few official documents surviving in libraries and archives, and the vastly more numerous lead seals once attached to a fraction of the paperwork that perished long ago. However, his close attention to the texts and images of this material, together with his thorough contextual reading of the literary sources and his sharp eye for the neglected detail, provided him with many insights across the boundaries of neighbouring fields. Constantly in demand for Festschrift volumes, guest lectures and conferences - not least those he himself initiated as director of the Institute for Byzantine Research at the National Hellenic Research Foundation - he had frequent opportunity and incentive to follow tangential leads that then became part of his core repertoire, especially in the last ten years of his career, when most of the articles reprinted here were written. The twenty-eight articles collected in this, his fourth and last Variorum reprint volume, fall quite neatly under four headings: Language and Literacy (1-6), Art and Politics (7-14), Byzantium after 1204 (15-23), Athos and the Church (24-8). Although seemingly unrelated, the categories represent natural branches ofOikonomides' long-standing interests. Working with non-literary texts made him sensitive to levels of functional literacy; monastic documents provided a quantifiable sample for a pioneer analysis that has not yet been surpassed. Reading the iconography of seals in conjunction with his extensive knowledge of texts gave him an eye for the meanings of official imagery that few if any art-historians could match, and he used it to make some penetrating contributions to the study of artistic patronage. Byzantium after 1204, an alien and uncongenial world to most historians of earlier centuries, was for the editor of several monastic archives from Mount Athos a thoroughly familiar terrain, especially since it was one where his interests met those of his wife, the Ottomanist Elizabeth Zachariadou. Given his long familiarity with the Athonite documentation, it is no surprise that it provided him with ready material for the conferences on the Holy Mountain and related themes which prompted the papers in the fmal section.

x

PREFACE

This volume - containing, it must be emphasised, only the tail end of his published oeuvre - represents not only the wide range of but also the varied style of his output. He was the master of the succinct, no-nonsense, strictly empirical article ofless than ten pages proving a very specific point. He could also be controversial and speculative, especially when he engaged in art history, and challenged the consensus on well-known objects. But if his interpretations of some artefacts, such as the Crown of Constantine Monomachos and the Madrid Skylitzes, have been overtaken by subsequent research, others are difficult or impossible to refute. There is no getting around Oikonomides on the imperial mosaics ofHagia Sophia (see VII in this volume and XXIII in his 1992 Variorum volume). It would be hard to improve on his reconstruction of a lost pictorial cycle from twelfth-century. Constantinople (XII), or his discussion of the holy icon as an asset (XIII). Even when arguing specific points or presenting specific material with great concision, Oikonomides never failed to show the more general interest of his subject matter. Many other articles he wrote were mini-syntheses, to which one can tum for complete surveys and seminal statements on questions of central historical importance. In this volume, I would draw particular attention to his studies of Byzantine 'unilinguism' (I), literacy and patronage on MtAthos (IV, XXV), and, above all, several articles in the section on Byzantium after 1204. His discussions of Byzantine institutions post 1204 (XV), the Palaiologan army (XVI), late Byzantium between East and West (XVII), and late Byzantine diplomacy are fundamental. For them alone, this coIlection is worth having. PAULMAGDALINO

St Andrews University, Fife 19th May 2005

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons, institutions and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the papers included in this volume: Institute for Byzantine Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens (I, XXVI, XXVII); Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini di Venezia (II); Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. (III, VII, XID); Aristide Caratzas (IV); Societe! Intemationale pour l'Etude de la Philosophie Mc!die!vale, Louvain-Ia-Neuve (V); The Metropolis ofRethymnon (VI); Greek Ministry of CulturalAffiars (VIII); Gilbert Dagron on behalfofthe friends ofthe Centre d'Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, Paris (IX, XVI); Benaki Musewn, Athens (X); Dr. Smiljka Gabelie, Institut d'histoire de I'art, Belgrade (XI); Nikola Tasie, Chairman of the Editorial Board, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (XII); Anthony Cutler, Pennsylvania (XIV); Sellerio editore, Palermo (XV); James Howard-Johnston, Oxford (XVII); Ashgate/Variorum (XVIII, XXIII, XXV); Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Rethymnon, Crete (XIX); Sinan Kuneralp, Istanbul (XX); Herwig Friesinger, Wien (XXI); Symposia, organised by the Institue for Byzantine Studies, Athens (XXII, XXVIII); Centre ofThessalonican History of the Municipality ofThessalonica (XXIV).