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Res publica Byzantina? State formation and issues of identity in medieval east Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2016

John Haldon
John Haldon*
Affiliation:
Princeton Universityjhaldon@princeton.edu
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Extract

It is a great pleasure and an honour to be writing for the fortieth anniversary volume of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. As editor of the journal for some twenty years, from 1984 until 2004, I have watched the journal grow in stature and in esteem over that period, and I am delighted to see it continuing to do so in the hands of its current editors. In the first issue I edited, I also contributed an article that attempted to reconcile some very different approaches to the history of Byzantine society and culture, or at least, to show that such different approaches were not necessarily mutually exclusive. If now rather out-of-date in its content, that article remains a useful baseline for discussing the relationship between empirical research and writing and theoretical reflection. ‘“Jargon” vs. “the facts”‘? was a comment about the confrontation that at the time appeared to exist between, very broadly speaking, those who were interested in questioning the theoretical assumptions underlying and informing their research, and those who were not interested in such debates, preferring to see them either as irrelevant or as inaccessible. In my concluding remarks, I suggested that Byzantine Studies in the mid-1980s was in the process of what T. S. Kuhn would have called a ‘paradigm shift‘, that is to say, a process through which a traditional set (or sets) of assumptions and priorities, as well as theories and approaches, is replaced by different sets of ideas. While the changes in the nature of the subject that have occurred since then have not been particularly marked, there have nevertheless been some interesting and important developments that have altered the framework within which some ways of looking at the medieval eastern Roman world are carried on. The so-called ‘linguistic turn‘, for example, pushed Byzantinists, in particular, scholars of Byzantine literature and visual culture, to grapple with various aspects of what might very broadly be termed post-modernist and post-structuralist theory. This is evident in some of the writing and publishing of the later 1980s and 1990s in particular, and in some respects has now been incorporated into our ‘ways of seeing’ the Byzantine world.2 In particular issues of intertextuality, of authorial intention, of reception, and of the relativizing of cultural interpretive possibilities (in respect of our own perspective) have become part and parcel of scholarly discourse, thus greatly enriching our discipline.3 Represented by more recent work in literary studies and art history especially, I believe this shift also facilitated a much greater degree of cross-disciplinary reading, comparative thinking, and in respect of historical context and setting, a generally more open approach to the medieval west and the Islamic world in terms of both material and method.4

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , April 2016 , pp. 4 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, 2016 

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References

1 Haldon, J. F., ‘“Jargon” vs. “the facts”‘? Byzantine history-writing and contemporary debates’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 9 (1984–5) 95–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Agapitos, P., ‘Literary criticism’, in Jeffreys, E., Haldon, J. F. and Cormack, R. (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (Oxford 2008) 77–85Google Scholar.

3 Constantinou, S., Female Corporeal Performances:Reading the Body in Byzantine Passions and Lives of Holy Women (Uppsala 2005)Google Scholar; Nilsson, I., Erotic pathos, Rhetorical Pleasure: Narrative Technique and Mimesis in Eumathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysmenias (Uppsala 2001)Google Scholar; Lyubarskii, Ya. N., ‘“Writers’ intrusion” in early Byzantine literature’, XVIIIth International Congress of Byzantine Studies. Major Papers (Moscow 1991) 433–56Google Scholar.

4 See especially the excellent brief survey by L. Brubaker, ‘Critical approaches to art history‘, in Jeffreys et al., The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, 59–66, and the useful discussion in Lyubarskii, Ya. N.et al., ‘Quellenforschung and/or literary criticism: narrative structures in Byzantine historical writings’, Symbolae Osloenses 73 (1998) 5–73Google Scholar. For further comment on post-modernism and Byzantine Studies, see Haldon, J. F., ‘Byzantium after 2000. Post-millenial but not post-modern?’, in Sode, C. and Takacs, S. (eds), Novum Millenium. Studies on Byzantine history and culture dedicated to Paul Speck (Aldershot 2002) 1–11Google Scholar.

5 See Cameron, Averil, ‘The use and abuse of Byzantium. An essay on reception’, in Cameron, , Changing cultures in early Byzantium (Aldershot 1996), no. XIIIGoogle Scholar; and Cameron, , Byzantine matters (Princeton 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Kaldellis, A., The Byzantine republic. People and power in New Rome (Cambridge MA 2015)Google Scholar.

7 Fowden, G., Abraham or Aristotle? First Millennium Empires and Exegetical Traditions (Cambridge 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Kaldellis, A., Hellenism in Byzantium:The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (Cambridge 2009)Google Scholar; Kaldellis, , ‘From Rome to New Rome, from empire to nation-state: reopening the question of Byzantium's Roman identity’, in Grig, L. and Kelly, G. (eds), Two Romes. Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Oxford and New York 2012), 387–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaldellis, , The Byzantine Republic. People and Power in New Rome (Cambridge, MA. and London 2015)Google Scholar.

9 Beck, H.-G., ‘Res publica Romana. Vom Staatsdenken der Byzantine’. Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Phil. -Hist. Kl. Sitzungsberichte 21 (Munich 1970)Google Scholar.

10 Angelov, D. and Saxby, M. (eds), Power and subversion in Byzantium (Farnham 2013)Google Scholar.

11 See in particular Meier, M., ‘Göttliche Kaiser und christliche Herrscher? Die christlichen Kaiser der Spätantike und ihre Stellung zu Gott’, Das Altertum 48 (2003) 129–160, esp. 144–45Google Scholar; Flaig, E., Den Kaiser herausfordern. Die Usurpation im Römischen Reich (Frankfurt 1992) 174–207Google Scholar; Diefenbach, S., ‘Frömmigkeit und Kaiserakzeptanz im frühen Byzanz’, Saeculum 47 (1996) 35–66, esp. 35–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pfeilschifter, R., Der Kaiser und Konstantinopel: Kommunikation und Konfliktaustrag in einer spätantike Metropole (Berlin 2013) 496CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note also Flaig, E., ‘Für eine Konzeptualisierung der Usurpation im spätrömischen Reich’, in Paschoud, F. and Szidat, J. (eds), Usurpationen in der Spätantike, Historia Einzelschriften 111. (Stuttgart 1997) 15–34Google Scholar; and Meier, M., ‘Ostrom-Byzanz, Spätantike-Mittelalter. Überlegung zum ‘Ende’ der Antike im Osten des römischen Reiches’, Millennium 9 (2012) 187–253Google Scholar.

12 And it is fair to say that, after Beck, and Gizewski, C., Zur Normativität und Struktur der Verfassungsverhältnisse in der späteren römischen Kaiserzeit (Munich 1988)Google Scholar (for a review of which see Haldon, J. F., ‘Late Roman society and its normative structures: some critical perspectives’, Rechtshistorisches Journal 8 [1989] 69–81)Google Scholar, Kaldellis is only the third to expand on this in detail (but see also Pfeilschifter, Kaiser und Konstantinopel).

13 For the older literature, see, for example, the analyses of Winkelmann, F., Quellenstudien zur herrschenden Klasse von Byzanz im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert (Berlin 1987)Google Scholar; of Gizewski, noted above; of Cheynet, J.-C., Pouvoir et contestations à Byzance (963–1210) (Paris 1990)Google Scholar; Lilie, R.-J.,‘Des Kaisers Macht und Ohnmacht. Zum Zerfall der Zentralgewalt in Byzanz vor dem Vierten Kreuzzug’, Poikila Byzantina 4. Varia 1 (Berlin 1984) 9–121Google Scholar. More recent analyses: Pfeilschifter, Kaiser und Konstantinopel; and Stouraitis, Y., ‘Roman identity in Byzantium: a critical approach’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 107 (2014) 175–220, esp. 189–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See references cited in n. 11 above.

15 Stouraitis, ‘Roman identity in Byzantium‘, 192.

16 See especially The Byzantine Republic, 165–198.

17 On autocracy more broadly and the range of meanings it can convey, see Chehabi, H. E. and Linz, Juan J., Sultanistic Regimes (Baltimore 1998)Google Scholar.

18 See The Byzantine Republic, 1–4.

19 For a more detailed account see Haldon, J. F., ‘Ideology and social change in the seventh century: military discontent as a barometer’, Klio 68 (1986) 139–190CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 In elaborating an approach to cognition and practice I draw heavily on the work of Bhaskar, R., ‘Emergence, explanation and emancipation’, in Secord, P. F. (ed.), Explaining Human Behavior: Consciousness, Human Action and Social Structure (Beverley Hills, Ca. - London 1982)Google Scholar; idem, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation (London 1987), among others. ‘Symbolic universe’ is derived, of course, from Berger, P. and Luckmann, Th., The Social Construction of Reality (Harmondsworth 1967), esp. 110–115Google Scholar (drawn in turn from Durkheim, E., The Division of Labour in Society, trans. G. Simpson (New York 1933)Google Scholar and Schütz, A., Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Vienna 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The phenomenology of Schütz and Berger and Luckmann, and the symbolic interactionism of G. H. Mead (see the essays in Mind, Self, and Society, ed. C. W. Morris, annotated by D. R. Huebner and H. Joas [Chicago and London 2015]), seem to me to make good partners in the generation of a realist materialist theorisation of the relationship between consciousness and practice.

21 E.g. (and as noted by Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic, 33) Cheynet, J.-Cl., ‘Les limites du pouvoir à Byzance: une forme de tolerance?’, in Nikolaou, A. (ed.), Ανοχή και καταστολή στους μέσους χρόνους. Μνήμη Λένου Μαυρομάτη (Athens 2002) 15–28, at 28Google Scholar.

22 For detailed analysis of the nature of the pre-modern state, see Haldon, J. F., The state and the tributary mode of production (London 1993)Google Scholar. I have offered an account of the structural dynamics of the later Roman state in Haldon, J. F., ‘Comparative state formation: Rome and neighboring worlds’, in Johnson, S. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford-New York 2012) 1111–1147Google Scholar; see also Haldon, J. F., ‘The Byzantine successor state’, in Bang, P. F., Scheidel, W. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the ancient state: Near East and Mediterranean (Oxford 2013) 475–497Google Scholar.

23 See The Byzantine Republic, 34–5 and compare with Brubaker, L. and Haldon, J. F., Byzantium in the Iconoclast Period, c. 680–850: A History (Cambridge 2011) 724 and 796 (cited by Kaldellis)Google Scholar. Had Kaldellis chosen to follow through with the extract he selects here, he could not have created this artificial distinction: see Byzantium in the Iconoclast Period, 797, quoted here.

24 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., ‘Preface’, in Fortes, M., Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds), African Political Systems (London 1940) ix-xiGoogle Scholar.

25 The Byzantine Republic, 38–9.

26 Service, E. R., Origins of the State and Civilisation (New York 1975)Google Scholar argued that the state originated in a process of mutual or contractual relations between different groups and ecological niches in a given social-cultural context, in which the state represents the interests of all to their general best advantage. While this may certainly provide an ideological rationale for many state formations both today and in the past, such a narrow and functionalist view has met with little real support: see the literature cited in the next two notes. The situation with the creation of modern nation-states or states that come into existence as the result of deliberate policies following wars, or international negotiations, or revolutions (or all of these) clearly represents a somewhat different phenomenon.

27 See Scheidel, W., ‘Studying the state’, in Bang, P. F. and Scheidel, W. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Ancient State in the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean (Oxford 2012) 5–57Google Scholar; Goldstone, J. and Haldon, J. F., ‘Ancient states, empires and exploitation: problems and perspectives’, in Morris, I., Scheidel, W. (eds), The Dynamics of Ancient Empires. State Power from Assyria to Byzantium (Oxford 2009) 3–29Google Scholar; also Reinhard, W., ed., Power Elites and State Building (Oxford 1996)Google Scholar; Blockmans, W., ‘Voracious states and obstructing cities. An aspect of state formation in preindustrial Europe’, Theory and Society 18 (1989) 733–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; older literature: Claessen, H. J. M., Skalník, P., ‘The Early State: theories and hypotheses’, in Claessen, H. J. M. and Skalník, P. (eds), The Early State (The Hague 1978) 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Cohen, ‘State origins: a reappraisal‘, in The Early State, 31–75; together with the papers in section 3 of the same volume.

28 There is, predictably, a vast literature as well as an ongoing debate about the nature of state formation in early human history. See, for various perspectives: Scheidel, W., ‘Introduction’, in Scheidel, W. (ed.), Rome and China. Comparative perspectives on ancient world empires (Oxford 2009) 3–10 with literatureGoogle Scholar; Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginnings to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Runciman, W. G., A Treatise on Social Theory, vol. 2: Substantive Social Theory (Cambridge 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, R., Service, E. R., eds., Origins of the State. The Anthropology of Political Evolution (Philadelphia 1978)Google Scholar; Claessen, H. J. M., Skalník, P., eds., The Study of the State (The Hague 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Claessen, H. J. M., Skalník, P., The Early State (The Hague 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kautsky, J. H., The Politics of Aristocratic Empires (Chapel Hill 1982)Google Scholar.

29 Whether such divisions are expressed juridically (e.g. through a hierarchy of legally-defined statuses) is something we do not need to pursue here. ‘Class’ is not always a helpful category to employ except where clearly defined as a purely analytical economic concept, since what is important is the way in which economic classes are united or divided internally, through kinship and lineage, status groupings, political organisations, local and regional identities, ideological and religious affiliations. Because such structures cut vertically across economic divisions, any attempt to explain the politics of societies in terms of economic class position alone, regardless of the praxis-structuring ideological contexts within which people operate, will be valueless. Dominant economic classes may thus suffer politically at the hands of either the state (perhaps allied with other classes) or an alliance of normally politically and economically subordinate classes. The ‘asymmetrical’ nature of class relations in pre-industrial society is a point particularly emphasised by Mann, The Sources of Social Power, 216–223. See also by way of comparison the excellent analysis of the internal politics of Greek city-states and the rise of the Roman republic and empire of de Ste Croix, G. E. M., The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London 1981)Google Scholar.

30 Virtually all the comparative historical and social-anthropological work which has examined the question of the origins of states, whether ‘primitive’ or ‘secondary‘, and from whatever theoretical standpoint, bears this out. See, from a Marxist perspective, Friedman, J., ‘Tribes, states and transformations’, in Bloch, M. (ed.), Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology (London 1984) 161–202Google Scholar; and from a non-Marxist (although not a non-materialist) viewpoint, Mann, The Sources of Social Power, 82–102; Runciman, A Treatise on Social Theory, vol. 2, 185–190; and R. Cohen, ‘State origins: a reappraisal‘, in Claessen, Skalník (eds), The Early State, 31–75, see esp. 32–36, along with the other essays in the same volume. Note especially Fried, M. H., The Evolution of Political Society (New York 1967)Google Scholar; and idem, ‘The state, the chicken and the egg: or, Which came first?‘, in Cohen and Service, Origins of the State: the Anthropology of Political Evolution (Philadelphia 1978) 35–47.