Manuel Komnenos and the Great Palace

Abstract

That the emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–80) was responsible for some building activity in the Great Palace of Constantinople is a fact well attested by published sources and not entirely unknown to modern scholarship. However, the armchair archaeology of this work remains confused and obscure, and can benefit from a fresh review of the evidence.     

A Byzantine Grand Embassy to Russia In 1400

Abstract

The Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitani, published by Miklosich and Müller, contain a pittakion sent by Matthew I, Patriarch of Constantinople (1397-1410), to his subordinate and representative in Moscow, Cyprian, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia. The document is undated, but it is clear from the contents that it was written either in the last three weeks of December 1399 or, more probably, in 1400. Its professed aim was to persuade the Russian primate to embark on a fundraising campaign in aid of Constantinople, besieged by the forces of the Ottoman Sultan, Bayazid I. This pittakion has often been used by students of late Byzantine history; yet it is still capable of yielding new material to the historian. The purpose of this article is to identify this material and to comment briefly upon it.     

The early development of the senate of Constantinople

Abstract

The development of the senate of Constantinople as an imperial senate, on a par with the senate of Rome, has been attributed to Constantius II to the exclusion of Constantine and dated to 357. The present paper argues that the evidence for this dating is fundamentally flawed and that the decisive change came at the outset of the reign of Constantius II, while developments under Constantine foreshadowed it in significant respects. Conclusions are also drawn about what the evidence reveals of relations between Hellenic gentry and imperial rule in the fourth century.     

Four Scandinavian ship graffiti from Hagia Sophia

Abstract

This paper is the first presentation of four graffiti from the church of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, and a contribution to the study of Viking graffiti of sailing vessels.     

Divine Diplomacy in the late Eleventh Century

Abstract

The subject of the XXIV Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies was Byzantine Diplomacy and many of the papers dealt with high-level contacts between Byzantium and other medieval states. But although Byzantines often made use of churchmen and monks as ambassadors and although there was usually a religious dimension to Byzantine diplomacy, it is worth noting that powerful monastic figures and influential houses often engaged in diplomacy on their own account. The theatre of operations was often more geographically limited, but this kind of monastic diplomacy had much in common with its lay counterpart. In both cases, it was Constantinople and the imperial court which was the centre of ‘diplomatic activity’ and, in both cases, negotiations were often delicate and long-protracted. If favours were sought, if confirmations of privileges were required, if difficulties with zealous local officials were to be overcome, then representations needed to be made at the highest level. This often meant a monastic delegation visiting Constantinople and operating in very similar ways to lay missions.     

Miloš Obrenović and the deposition of a Constantinopolitan Patriarch

Abstract

In my limited study of the Greek and Serbian Churches in the nineteenth century, I had found numerous cases of Greek meddling in Serbian affairs, but never a reverse case. Then I came across a passing reference in Gavrilovic´s fine biography of Prince Milo? Obrenovi? of Serbia (who ruled from 1815 to 1839) to Milo?’ playing a major part in ousting a Patriarch of Constantinople. Following up Gavrilovi?'s citation led me to the following letter written by Prince Milo? during his triumphal visit to Constantinople in 1835. It was written (and it should be noted this means dictated since Milo? was illiterate) to his wife Ljubica on 28 September 1835. Since I have never come across any reference to the events Milos describes in any work I have made use of on the patriarchate in the 19th century, I have taken the liberty of translating the letter from Milo?’ Serbian both to call attention to it and to make the text available to a wider range of scholars. The original text is to be found in Mita Petrovi?, Financije i Ustanove obnovljene Srbije do 1842, Beograd, 1901, pp.336–37.     

Holy Wisdom and British foreign policy, 1918-1922: the St. Sophia redemption agitation

Abstract

As the Ottoman Empire tottered towards its final collapse at the end of the First World War the fate of its various territorial components aroused the interest not only of other states, but of interest groups within those states. Britain in particular revealed a strong concern with this subject, having long been interested in the Eastern Mediterranean. The end of the Ottoman Empire saw the legendary Lawrence of Arabia grasping the Arab lands, various secret treaties with the other Great Powers disposed of much of Anatolia, and the future of Turkish rule over Constantinople, that much sought after city, now hung in the balance. The final fate of the city would be decided at the postwar Paris Peace Conference. Of all of the spoils of the Ottomans none evoked such passions as that inspired by Constantinople – Byzantium, the Second Rome. If any building could epitomise the Europeans' vision of this city it was the St Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, which since the fall of Constantinople in 1453 had been a mosque. With the end of Ottoman dominance an opportunity was seen by some of symbolically completing a crusade begun centuries before, with the expulsion of the Turks, and Islam, from Europe. Nothing could so symbolise a change of control at Constantinople than the reconversion of St Sophia into a church. This found support from those who wished to see the Turk expelled bag and baggage from Europe. The philhellenes saw its transfer to the Greek Orthodox church as indicating the resurgence of the Greek nation, and forming the backdrop to eventual Greek control of Constantinople. In Britain the focus of such views was the St Sophia Redemption Committee, which sought to restore the building to its original function. Now virtually forgotten, the agitation for the redemption of St Sophia was an emotive topic during the first months of peace. The supporters of this movement were not a group of fringe political cranks, and its members numbered two future foreign secretaries and many other prominent public figures. The popular agitation coordinated by this committee, and the opposition it encountered, illustrate some of the complexities at work in the formulation of a coherent Eastern Mediterranean policy for Britain.     

Everyday Life in Byzantium: Some Problems of Aproach

Abstract

In 1554 a Franciscan friar of Angoulěme, André Thevet, published at Lyons his Cosmographie de Levant. The author had recently returned from a three year journey to Constantinople and the Holy Land, and the Cosmographie was the first of a number of geographical works.     

The original source for Tzimiskes' Balkan campaign (971 AD) and the emperor's classicizing propaganda

Abstract

For their account of Ioannes Tzimiskes' Balkan campaign of 971 AD against the Rus, Leon the Deacon and Ioannes Skylitzes independently used a common source that was written soon after the emperor's triumph in Constantinople. This source classicized the emperor and his actions, drawing upon figures from the Roman Republic and including speeches and geographical digressions. This source accounts for the bulk of what we know of Tzimiskes' reign.     

Ottoman Merchants in Constantinople During the First Half of the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

Despite growing interest among both Byzantinists and Ottoman scholars in the respective long-distance commercial ventures of Byzantine Greek and Ottoman Muslim merchants, studies focusing on the trade relations between these two groups have not yet been undertaken. This article, which examines some sources that document the presence and economic activities of Ottoman Turks in Constantinople during the first half of the fifteenth century, is intended to serve as a contribution to this neglected field of study. Moreover, by means of an examination of commercial relations, the article aims to shed further light on the daily, informal contacts between the Byzantines and the Ottomans which remains a relatively unexplored aspect of Byzantine-Ottoman relations.     

The Translation of the Scriptures and the Ecumenical Patriarchate: The Translation Efforts of Hilarion of Tirnovo

Abstract

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Constantinople continued to be the intellectual and religious centre of the Greeks despite rival flourishing educational and economic centres in such cities as Smyrna, Kydonies (Aivali), and Chios. Moreover, it was the ‘national’ centre of the Greek people. It was natural, therefore, that the subject of a new translation of the Scriptures, a project affecting all Greeks, should have arisen once more in the Ottoman capital.     

The ‘young emperor of Constantinople’: an overlooked prosopographical note in an itinerary of the fourteenth century*

Abstract

In 1385 two German travellers, Peter Sparnau and Ulrich von Tennstaedt, set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They left Plaue near Arnstadt on 30 July, travelled to Venice, where they boarded a ship, and reached Alexandria on 19 August 1385. Sparnau and Tennstaedt visited the peninsula of Sinai and the Holy Land. Boarding a ship in Beirut, they sailed along the western shore of Asia Minor and finally reached Constantinople, where they spent Christmas 1385.     

Nevile Henderson in Constantinople,Cairo and Belgrade: the prototype appeaser?

Abstract

This article will argue that far from being an inveterate appeaser, Henderson showed in Constantinople that he could be an advocate of tough measures. And that in Cairo, contrary to his reputation, he was a Foreign Office loyalist while his superior, George Lloyd, was critical of official policy. Nevertheless, Henderson's early career does offer useful insights into why, once posted to Germany in 1937, he became an advocate of accommodation. In Yugoslavia, in particular, he showed a willingness to work with authoritarian leaders and a sympathy for them, which helped him to secure the Berlin appointment.     

Foreword

This second issue of Colonial Latin American Review for 2003 offers four articles that focus primarily on colonial Mexico, if from different disciplinary perspectives. In “El misterio de los cap?´tulos perdidos de la Cro´nica mexicana de Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc”, Roc?´o Corte´s does some detailed scholarly sleuthing to propose a reconstruction of the original text of Tezozomoc's late sixteenth-century chronicle. Professor Corte´s suggests a solution to the supposed lacunae in this chronicle, and in so doing helps to establish a more accurate sense of the range of the chronicler's historical concerns. The article by art historian Ilona Katzew, “The Virgin of the Macana: Emblem of a Franciscan Predicament in New Spain”, surveys the iconographical history of the cult of this Virgin, a cult born of a seventeenth-century event in the Mexican missionary borderlands, but actively and broadly promulgated by the Franciscan order throughout the following century for reasons apparently as pragmatic as devotional. In “ ‘El plato ma´s sabroso’: Eucarist?´a, plagio diabo´lico y la traduccio´n criolla del can?´bal”, Carlos Ja´uregui studies the trope of cannibalism as it emerged in the writings of a series of colonial writers, from early historians of the Encounter through the Mexican Creole Baroque as represented by Sor Juana Ine´s de la Cruz. Professor Ja´uregui is particularly interested in the evolution of this trope over time as a means to articulate notions of similarity and difference with regard to indigenous peoples and Europeans. In our fourth article, “A Reinterpreation of Nahuatl Poetics: Rejecting the Image of Nezahualcoyotl as a Peaceful Poet”, Professor Jongsoo Lee offers a persuasive revisionist argument regarding the work traditionally attributed to the Texcocan “poet king”.     

Laonikos Chalkokondyles and the rise of the Ottoman Turks

Abstract

While most Christian writers who described the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 regarded the disaster as divine retribution for the sins of its inhabitants, carried out through the agency of the barbaric and infidel Turks, the historical work of Laonikos Chalkokondyles takes a very different approach to the problem. It argues that nations rose or fell partly through luck, but also according the virtue they possessed, so that the Turks, rather than being mere agents, could in fact take the credit for their success. In this approach, Chalkokondyles reflects not classical Greek literature, but a western tradition to be found in Livy and Cicero, a strand of thought that he may have adopted as a result of contacts with Renaissance Italy.     

‘Feeling the rhythm of the waves: “castaway rhetoric” in John Eugenikos’ Logos eucharisterios’

Abstract

In September 1438 John Eugenikos decided to quit the council of Ferrara and sail back to Constantinople. Off Italy's Adriatic coast his vessel experienced a terrible shipwreck, whereby many of John's fellow-passengers perished. John decided then to retell his almost deadly experience in a thanks-giving logos, allegedly compiled on the basis of notes written down soon after the shipwreck. The logos stands out as a unique document in the landscape of Byzantine travel literature. This paper offers the first comprehensive literary analysis of Eugenikos’ account, shedding new light on the narrative patterns chosen by the author to recount his own experience and stage his public persona.     

Physical evidence revealed during the cleaning and the excavations of the outer wall of the land walls of Constantinople at the Porta ROmanus

Abstract

During the clearance, excavations and conservation of the Land walls of Constantinople in 1992–93 at the Porta Romanus (Topkapi) some original details of the Theodosian construction techniques and the subsequent repairs were found. It was seen that the structural system of the outer wall which supports the parapet walk and the battlement had been altered during the Late Byzantine era. It was also affirmed that the inner and the outer terrace had been used as a burial ground and ceramic pipes for the water supply system of the moat and stone culverts for the disposal of the ground water of the inner terrace were found.     

Epidemic disease in central Syria in the late sixth century Some new insights from the verse of assān ibn Thābit

Abstract

Any interpretation of Near Eastern history touching upon the sixth and seventh centuries must invariably come to terms with the numerous causes of mortality, destruction, and social and economic disruption that preceded the Arab conquests. One of these factors was undoubtedly the bubonic plague, which descended the Nile in the summer of 641, spread through the Delta and passed to Syrian ports in the winter of that year; by the summer of 542 it had reached Constantinople itself and infected, among many other places, large parts of inland Asia Minor and Syria.