The Byzantine Past as Text: Historiography and Political Renewal c. 900 (original) (raw)
Ideologies & Identities in the Medieval Byzantine World
In our research project, the term ideology has a central role. This is a most debated concept that in historical studies is often used either in a pejorative fashion, i.e. ideology as rigid worldview or manipulative propaganda, or in an analytically rather toothless fashion, i.e. as a homogenizing discourse with no relation to social stratification, interest differentiation and power relations.
Keynote lecture at the 7th International Symposium “Days of Justinian I,” Skopje, 15-16 November, 2019.
Historiography and Identity IV: Writing History across Medieval Eurasia
2021
Historical writing has shaped identities in various ways and to different extents. This volume explores this multiplicity by looking at case studies from Europe, Byzantium, the Islamic World, and China around the turn of the first millennium. The chapters in this volume address official histories and polemical critique, traditional genres and experimental forms, ancient traditions and emerging territories, empires and barbarians. The authors do not take the identities highlighted in the texts for granted, but examine the complex strategies of identification that they employ. This volume thus explores how historiographical works in diverse contexts construct and shape identities, as well as legitimate political claims and communicate ‘visions of community’. Introduction: Historiography and Identity in a Comparative Perspective — WALTER POHL ‘National History’ in Post-Imperial East Asia and Europe — Q. EDWARD WANG The Wars of Procopius and the Jinshu of Fang Xuanling: Representations of Barbarian Political Figures in Classicizing Historiography — RANDOLPH B. FORD Mythology and Genealogy in the Canonical Sources of Japanese History — BERNHARD SCHEID Iran’s Conversion to Islam and History Writing as an Art for Forgetting — SARAH BOWEN SAVANT Iran and Islam: Two Narratives — MICHAEL COOK The Formation of South Arabian Identity in al-Iklīl of al-Hamdānī — DANIEL MAHONEY Convergence and Multiplicity in Byzantine Historiography: Literary Trends in Syriac and Greek, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries — SCOTT FITZGERALD JOHNSON The Byzantine Past as Text: Historiography and Political Renewal c. 900 — EMMANUEL C. BOURBOUHAKIS Scriptores post Theophanem: Normative Aspects of Imperial Historiography in Tenth-Century Byzantium — YANNIS STOURAITIS Who were the Lotharingians? Defining Political Community after the End of the Carolingian Empire — SIMON MACLEAN Spaces of ‘Convivencia’ and Spaces of Polemics: Transcultural Historiography and Religious Identity in the Intellectual Landscape of the Iberian Peninsula, Ninth to Tenth Centuries — MATTHIAS M. TISCHLER Mapping Historiography: An Essay in Comparison — WALTER POHL
Collective identity in the so-called Byzantine Empire is a much-debated issue that has drawn a lot of attention over the years. The current paper attempts a critical assessment of the hitherto main lines of thinking about Byzantine identity, focussing on the period between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries. By proposing an alternative view on source material based on a comprehensive theoretical framework, I argue that a conceptualization of the collective identity of this medieval imperial social order with its constantly fluctuating geopolitical and cultural boundaries needs to be disconnected from essentialist and reifying views on perennial ethnicity as well as from the modern phenomenon of the nation-state.
Yannis Stouraitis A comparative approach to the social role of history in the construction and communication of collective identity in Latin Europe, Byzantium, and Islam towards the end of the first millennium seems to be facilitated by the common cognitive character of historiography in these three cultural spheres. It is generally accepted that the so-called Western historiographical tradition was marked by the role of the person. An author wrote his or her work of history for other persons with the aim to provide them with knowledge of the past, the image of which remained constantly open to scrutiny and reformulation. 1 In contrast, in the East Asian historiographical tradition history writing was principally considered as an official, state-run task. The ruling power employed public servants to anonymously write history based on facts provided by state documents. The latter were to be destroyed after the conclusion of the work in order to prevent any revision of what was intended to become the final, official version of the past published under the seal of state authority. The emperor was not allowed to see the text before it had taken its original final form. 2 1 Liakos, 'Γνωστική ή δεοντολογική ιστοριογραφία' , pp. 209-10. 2 Sato, 'Cognitive Historiography' , pp. 130-33.
Identity and confession in the Byzantine Empire at the beginning of the Middle Ages
The correct religious confession resides at the core of the Byzantine identity at the beginning of the Middle Ages, together with the pagan Greek-Roman tradition. Historians and chroniclers from this period use elements with a religious connotation in different proportions in their works, but even those who don’t speak openly about Christianity share a Christian identity. There is a tension between the classical tradition of writing history and the Christian doctrine, the historians avoiding Christian terminology because it didn’t exist in the works they used as a model. This tension disappears from the 7th century onwards, when the Christianization of the historical terminology becomes the norm.
The period between the two falls of Constantinople, namely the Crusader conquest of 1204 and the Ottoman conquest of 1453, witnessed the radical transformation of Byzantium from empire into a mosaic of autonomous and semi-autonomous polities. The fascinating survival and transformation of Byzantine identities in a world dominated by Latin Christian and Muslim powers was the result of complex dynamics, with Constantinople functioning, more or less, as a magnet for the Orthodox populations beyond its narrow political borders. Theodoros Metochites’ (d. 1332) rhetoric eloquently captures the ideological, spiritual and cultural radiance of the “Queen City”. In his laudatory oration on the Byzantine capital, Metochites describes Constantinople as “the citadel of the whole world” (ἀκρόπολιν τινὰ τῶν ὅλων) and the “shared homeland of all people” (κοινοπολιτεία πάντων ἀνθρώπων), stressing the city’s role as a centre, in both geographic and symbolic terms. Over the past two decades, there has been a remarkable progress in the way scholars approach the history and culture of former Byzantine areas under Latin Christian and Muslim rule in the period between 1200 and 1400. The picture emerging from these studies embraces unity and diversity, interaction and contention, synthesis and conservativism, new identities and old. Research on the history of Mediterranean has also shown that the political, religious and cultural fragmentation of the Eastern Mediterranean increased, rather than restrained, the development of multiple connectivities, among the peoples inhabiting this vast liquid area. Yet, the nature and degree of bonds of unity between Late Byzantium and the former Byzantine lands —encompassing the physical mobility of humans and objects, as well as institutional, ideological, religious and cultural links— requires a more systematic and in-depth exploration. The aim of this Colloquium is to re-address questions related to Byzantine connectivities, experiences and identities in Latin- and Muslim-ruled Mediterranean areas once belonging to the Byzantine Empire. Borrowed from graph theory, the term connectivities has been employed by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell to describe the networks connecting microecologies with similar structures in Mediterranean landscapes and seascapes, society and religion, politics and culture. Focusing on religion and culture as the main strands of identity preservation, negotiation and adaptation, our Colloquium wishes to examine the threads waving the tapestry of a “Late Byzantine Mediterranean”: a fluidly-defined κοινοπολιτεία under the enduring influence of Constantinople, but in constant communication and exchange with the religious and ethnic Other. The main themes of the Colloquium include, but are not necessarily restricted to, the following: • Byzantine legacies in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1200 • Worlds of interaction and conflict (e.g., Asia Minor, the Holy Land, Cyprus and the Aegean) • The role of Byzantine culture as a transcultural language of communication • The impact of intra-Byzantine conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean • Experiences of colonisation and foreign rule • Instrumentalisation of identities in historiography (inclusions and exclusions) Our speakers represent a variety of scholarly fields and methodological approaches, navigating the sea of Byzantine encounters in the Latin and Muslim worlds from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. By paying close attention to the continuities and discontinuities that (re-)shaped Byzantine identities in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Colloquium aims at providing fresh and stimulating perspectives on the sense of belonging to Byzantium and its broader significance. The Colloquium is dedicated to the loving memory of two great scholars, Speros Vryonis, Jr. and Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, who transformed our perception of the Byzantine legacy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Registration necessary at: https://ics.sas.ac.uk/events/late-byzantine-mediterranean-byzantine-connectivities-experiences-and-identities-a
Ragkou, K. (2024) "Benjamin Anderson & Mirela Ivanova (ed.). 2023. Is Byzantine studies a colonialist discipline? Toward a critical historiography". Antiquity, 98(401), pp. 1454–1456., 2024
This volume, edited by Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova, actively participates in the ongoing revision of dominant narratives within Byzantine studies. Informed by contemporary discussions on decolonisation, it dismantles lingering Eurocentrism and fosters a more nuanced understanding of the medieval past. The book situates itself within the context of two pivotal events of 2020. The first is the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, USA, which served as a stark reminder of systemic racial injustice and ignited global movements demanding social equity. The second event is the politically charged conversion of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul from a museum back into a mosque by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogȃn. This act resonated deeply within the Byzantine scholarly community, forcing a necessary confrontation with the entanglement of politics and historical scholarship. The decision even spurred the Byzantine Studies Association to postpone and relocate its 2021 congress from Istanbul to Venice and Padua in 2022. These events underscore the urgency of critically examining the enduring influence of colonialism on academic disciplines, including Byzantine studies. Emerging from a webinar held in 2020 and a subsequent roundtable discussion at the Venice Congress in 2022, the book presents a two-pronged approach to the subject matter through its Introduction and 14 rich contributions from 17 authors. The first section, reflected in the book's title, delves into the role of colonial constructs within Byzantine studies. The second section focuses on the question of how to write a more critical historiography Book Reviews