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The Cambridge and Soviet Histories of the Byzantine Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

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Abstract

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Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1971

References

1. In subsequent notes the abbreviation CMH refers to vol. 4, part 2.

2. The following chapters of the Soviet history deal with Byzantine intellectual history: Volume 1, chap. 17 (pp. 379-94), “Byzantine Science and Education in the IV-VII Centuries” (E. E. Granstrem, Z. V. Udaltsova) ; chap. 18 (pp. 395-408), “Neo- Platonic Philosophy of the IV-VI Centuries” (K. V. Khvostova) ; chap. 19 (pp. 409-34) “Byzantine Literature of the IV-VII Centuries” (S. S. Averintsev) ; chap. 20 (pp. 435— 80), “Byzantine Art of the IV-VII Centuries” (A. V. Bank, E. E. Lipshits). Volume 2, part 1, chap. 6 (pp. 80-102), “Byzantine Culture Between the End of the VII and the First Half of the IX Centuries” (Granstrem, Averintsev, A. la. Syrkin, Lipshits). Volume 2, part 2, chap. 16 (pp. 354-68), “Science and Education” (Granstrem, A. P. Kazhdan) ; chap. 17 (pp. 369-86), “Literature” (Kazhdan); chap. 18 (pp. 387-420), “Art” (Lipshits, Bank). Volume 3, chap. 14 (pp. 219-33), “Science and Education” (Lipshits) ; chap. 15 (pp. 234-56), “Philosophy and Theology” (M. la. Siuziumov) ; chap. 16 (pp. 257-73), “Literature” (Averintsev) ; chap. 17 (pp. 274-88), “Architecture and Painting” (Lipshits) ; chap. 18 (pp. 289-302), “Applied Arts” (Bank) ; chap. 19 (pp. 303-41), “Specificity of the Social Development of the Byzantine Empire: Byzantium's Place in World History“ (Udaltsova). See, in addition, the first chapter of each volume and part, which deal with sources and thus discuss individual Byzantine authors.

3. This is the division followed throughout in single chapters of the Soviet history. In the final chapter, however, Z. V. Udaltsova distinguishes only three periods in Byzantium's history: fourth to mid-seventh century, the mid-seventh to the beginning of the thirteenth century, and the Latin conquest to the end of the empire (3: 304).

4. In some instances, correct answers were available in print long before, say, 1965; sometimes such answers were being formulated at the time of printing. In the latter case, no blame should be cast upon the authors of these histories.

5. CMH, pp. 240, 246, 276; 1st. Viz., 3: 222. Metochites was born in 1270.

6. Chora: 1st. Vis., 3: 261. The date of 1303 proposed there is a misunderstanding. “Ca. 1320” is the dating accepted today. St. Sophia Deesis: 1st. Viz., 3: 278; for the date of 1260-80, generally accepted today, see, for example, O. Demus, Die Entstehung des Palaologenstils in der Malerei [= Berichte sum XI. Internationalen Bysantinisten-Kongress Miinchen 1958, vol. 4, part 2], pp. 16 and 29-30, n. 67.

7. CMH, p. 332 (Akataleptos, ninth-early tenth century) ; 1st. Vis., 2: 392 (late ninth century) ; investigations of the church which have been going on since 1966 support the twelfth-century date for its central structure.

8. On this hypothesis—which I would prefer to call fallacy—which assumes that after the seventh century the Byzantine Empire, including its territories in Asia Minor, came to be a Greek empire and, in terms of culture, an heir to classical and Hellenistic Greece, and which further assumes that this empire was ethnically Greek, encompassing, to be sure, several minorities, notably the Armenians, see my review of the first part of the Cambridge history, “New Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire,” Slavic Review, 27, no. 1 (March 1968): 109-18, esp. p. 110.

9. CMH, pp. 26Sy 266-68 (but “Stephen's” text may be as late as 8001), 268, n. 1, 270, and 272 (CMH's first sure information on the Byzantine Quadrivium) ; 1st. Vis., 2: 83, 354-55.

10. I have in mind a teaching system, rather than the theory of a fourfold division of mathematics, which is attested in introductory courses of philosophy (e.g., Ammonius) about the year 500. See Aubrey Diller, “The Byzantine Quadrivium,” Isis, 36 (1945-46): 132; for mathematike tetraktys, cf. Vita Nicephori by Ignatios (ninth century), p. 149, 27, ed. De Boor. Allusions to a teaching program similar to the Quadrivium do occur in other ninth-century Lives of saints (e.g., the Slavic Vita Constantini, § 4). The next occurrence of the term tetraktys tdn mathematdn known to me dates from the twelfth century (Anna Comnena, Alexias, Prooemium, 1, cf. CMH, p. 194). For later examples see, for example, Laurent, V. in the edition of Pachymeres's Quadrivium in Studi e Testi, 94 (1940): xvii–xxivGoogle Scholar.

11. In all fairness, it must be reported that Dr. Kazhdan, a Soviet critic of the Cambridge history, did detect in it a common and, in his opinion, unduly valued point of view—namely, that Byzantium was a centralized monarchy or “beneficial autocracy.“ See A. P., Kazhdan, “The Byzantine Empire,” Past and Present, 43 (1969): 158–69Google Scholar.

12. Examples of factual contradictions: Romanus the Melode was both a Jew (p. 143) and a Syrian (p. 254); on page 202 Barlaam was victorious in his dispute with Gregoras, but on page 277 Gregoras was victorious. Manasses's Chronicle was composed in fifteensyllable verses (p. 236, correct) and in twelve-syllable verses (p. 250). On Leo's automata: CMH, pp. 302, 328, 355. The Soviet history is equally impressed by these automata, but at least it mentions them with cross-references: 2: 28, 86, 96.

13. 1st. Pur., 2: 384, 403, 407, 411, 412, 414, 3: 274-75, 285, 329.

14. 1st. Vis., 1: 434, 458, 2: 100, 102.

15. 1st. Viz., 1: 428.

16. 1st. Vis., 1: 381, 402, 458, 2: 81, 84, 361, 401, 3: 325.

17. Louis, Robert, “Deux fipigrammes d'Aphrodisias de Carie et AsklepiodotosHellenica, 4 (1948): 115–26Google Scholar.

18. See 1st. Viz., 2: 376, and Philopatris, §§ 12-13. The text describes the puzzlement of Kritias; being a pagan and a “fall guy,” he at first does not comprehend the dogma of the Trinity, but is set straight by Triephon, who had been converted by Saint Paul himself. As the text purports to be by Lucian, all is couched in pagan terms, but intermingled with concealed quotations from the Psalms and the Credo.

19. 1st. Viz., 2: 382. Cf. W., Regel, Analecta Byzantino-Russica (St. Petersburg, 1891), pp. xix and 4043 Google Scholar. The legend is also reflected in the Byzantine Chronicles. Thus Theophilus's having’ been an iconoclast has nothing to do with his choice as judge in Timarion, and no comic device is involved in that choice.

20. 1st. Viz., 2: 386. Cf. p. 381 (the very concept of equality was alien to Theodoros Prodromos [twelfth century]).

21. This is above and beyond the preconceptions which struck Dr. Kazhdan (see note 11 above).

22. The statement concerning the Byzantine origin of the revetment is credited to M. M. Postnikova-Loseva.

23. However, Saint Sophia is regarded as an achievement of both Byzantine and Old Russian art.

24. See 1st. Viz., 1: 453, on the “polyethnic” character of Byzantine art. Cf. 3: 325, 341, on multinational roots of Byzantine civilization, and on contributions to it made by Slavs, Armenians, and Georgians.

25. CMH, p. 1. Cf., however, page 34 for the sensible observation that the Byzantine bureaucracy and church contributed, through the official use of Greek, to the Hellenization of foreign elements in the empire; page 139 for liturgy in multinational ecclesiastical communities; and page 206 for the crushing of indigenous languages on Byzantium's periphery by central authority.

26. For translations of the text see, for example, Nestle, E, “Die Statuten der Schule von Nisibis aus den Jahren 496 und 590,” Zeitschrijt filr Kirchengeschichte, 18 (1898): 211–29Google Scholar, and Albert, F. X. E., “The School of Nisibis: Its History and Statutes,” Catholic University Bulletin, 12 (1906): 16081 Google Scholar. Incidental intelligence: these first statutes uphold, inter alia, the principle of autonomy in academic governance.

27. 1st. Viz., 2: 371 (on the fate of Stephanites and Ichnelates in Old Russian literature) ; 3: 265 (parallel between the Rhodian Love Songs and the Russian seventeenthcentury popular novel [Lubochnyi roman]) ; 3: 268 (parallel between the Porikologos and the story of Ersh Ershovich). Less felicitous is the parallel, drawn on page 266, between couplets in politic verse and the chastushki.

28. Cf. A. H. S. Megaw, “Notes on Recent Work of the Byzantine Institute in Istanbul,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 17 (1963): esp. 349-64.

29. Vizantiiskaia kul'tura (X-XII w.) (Moscow, 1968).

30. Unless otherwise indicated the references to the Cambridge Medieval History are to vol. 4, part 1; for Istoriia Vizantii they refer to vol. 2.

31. For a brief statement on the controversy between “Normanists” and “anti- Normanists” see D. Obolensky, CMH, p. 504.

32. Clapham, J. and Power, E., eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1952-63)Google Scholar, with chapters on Byzantine agrarian conditions by G. Ostrogorsky (1: 194-223, 579-83) and on Byzantine trade and industry by S. Runciman (2: 86-118, 529-30).

33. For the prerevolutionary period see, for example, Panchenko, B, “Krestianskaia sobstvennost1 v Vizantii,” Izvestiia Russkago arkheologicheskago institutes v Konstantinople, 9 (1904): 1–234Google Scholar, and Vasilievsky, V, “Materialy k vnutrennei istorii vizantiiskogo gosudarstva,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 202 (1879): 160–232, 368-438; 210 (1880): 98-170, 355-440Google Scholar. Among the most useful Soviet publications in the field of Byzantine social and economic history are the translations of relevant primary sources in Sbornik dokumentov po sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi istorii Vizantii (Moscow, 1951), and Siuziumov, M. la.'s editions, translations, and commentaries on Byzantine legal texts of a socioeconomic character such as the Book of the Prefect (Moscow, 1962)Google Scholar.

34. So far as I can judge, no aspect of history was formally excluded by the Soviet editors. One topic, however, that receives less than its due share is Byzantine imperial ideology. Much work has been done on it in recent decades in Western Europe and in the United States, and the Cambridge history naturally pays a good deal of attention to it. Nobody, however, would gather from the Soviet history, for example, with what jealousy the Byzantines guarded the exclusiveness of their claim to a universal empire and that repeatedly in the course of the centuries they resorted to war, for instance against Franks, Bulgars, and Serbs, to maintain it.

35. One of the most comprehensive and successful chapters on Byzantine foreign relations is the one by Kazhdan (Istoriia Visantii, pp. 188-205) on the period from the middle of the ninth to the middle of the tenth century. It includes, for example, fairly detailed discussions of Byzantine warfare against the Arabs in Sicily and southern Italy and of the ecclesiastical mission to Moravia. 7. Psellos's language, incidentally, resembles that of a statesman who lived eight centuries later, Otto von Bismarck, who in a speech to the Reichstag on December 5, 1876, warned against Germany's getting involved in the imminent Russo-Turkish War “unless we see danger to an interest that would be worth the healthy bones of even one Pomeranian musqueteer” (as quoted by Erich, Eyck, Bismarck, 3 vols. [Zurich and Erlenbach, 1940-45], 3: 225)Google Scholar. Psellos and Bismarck had indeed more in common than words, above all a dazzling intelligence and a thorough lack of moral scruples.

36. The same point is made in Istoriia Visantii, p. 190 (Kazhdan).

37. Carl, Neumann, Die Weltstellung des by2antinischen Retches vor den Kreussugen (Leipzig, 1894), p. 24.Google Scholar

38. For critical evaluations of Rostovtzeff's work, see, for example, the moving and informative article by Momigliano, A. in Cambridge Journal, 7 (1954): 334–46Google Scholar, reprinted in Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), pp. 91-104, also his Terzo Contribute degli Studi Classici e del Mondo Antico (Rome, 1966), pp. 787-91; Sterling Dow, “The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire After Thirty-Three Years,” American Historical Review, 65 (1959-60): 544-53, with further bibliography