Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Note on transliteration and citation
- List of abbreviations
- 1 The empire, c. 1150
- 2 The heartland of the Comnenian empire
- Genealogical tables
- Introduction Problems and sources
- 1 The Comnenian empire between East and West
- 2 Constantinople and the provinces
- 3 The Comnenian system
- 4 Government
- 5 The guardians of Orthodoxy
- 6 The emperor and his image
- Epilogue
- Appendix 1 The poems of ‘Manganeios Prodromos’
- Appendix 2 Lay officials in synodal lists of the Comnenian period
- Appendix 3 Magnate ‘patrons’ under Manuel named in verse collections
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Comnenian empire between East and West
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Note on transliteration and citation
- List of abbreviations
- 1 The empire, c. 1150
- 2 The heartland of the Comnenian empire
- Genealogical tables
- Introduction Problems and sources
- 1 The Comnenian empire between East and West
- 2 Constantinople and the provinces
- 3 The Comnenian system
- 4 Government
- 5 The guardians of Orthodoxy
- 6 The emperor and his image
- Epilogue
- Appendix 1 The poems of ‘Manganeios Prodromos’
- Appendix 2 Lay officials in synodal lists of the Comnenian period
- Appendix 3 Magnate ‘patrons’ under Manuel named in verse collections
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
ALEXIOS I (1081–1118)
Shortly before he died, the emperor Alexios I Komnenos, with the aid of the Muses, committed to verse some thoughts on imperial power for the benefit of his son and heir John. That power, he knew, was bound to go to the head of whoever occupied ‘this throne which swells with pride’. John would sit in judgement over peoples and nations, and he should therefore take thought for the day when he would be judged as he had judged. Alexios for his part was very conscious that his own day of reckoning approached. ‘What horselashing knight from the West, confident in his strength and proud of his vigour; what nation of the myriads round about us did not give way, did not cower, did not draw back before me? But the last judgement of my works awaits me/ Further on, he comments:
One thing and one alone can save: Virtue … If you have this as your breastplate, helmet, and great protecting shield, this is the armour which the Celt fears; this is the armour on seeing which the Norman sails away trembling; at this the Persian, the pullulation of the Scyths, the Arabian peoples, the Abasgian, the Celtiberian, the Indian race and the Maurousian army all take fright.
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- Information
- The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180 , pp. 27 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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