John Haldon
John Haldon is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Princeton University Climate Change and History Research Initiative (https://cchri.princeton.edu/) and Director of the Environmental History Lab in the Program for Medieval Studies at Princeton. He is Emeritus Shelby Cullom Davis '30 Professor of European History, Emeritus Professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies, and former (2013-2018) Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. From 2006-2012 he directed The Avkat Archaeological Project - an archaeological and historical survey in north central Turkey (www.princeton.edu/avkat).
He is currently (until August 2022) President of the International Association of Byzantine Studies. He was Director of Graduate Studies for the History Department at Princeton from 2009-2018. His research centers on the socio-economic, institutional, political and cultural history of the early and middle Byzantine empire from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. He also works on political systems and structures across the European and Islamic worlds from late ancient to early modern times, on the environmental history of the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds and the interface between societal change, environment and climate, and has explored how resources were produced, distributed and consumed, especially in warfare, during the late ancient and medieval periods. He is the author and co-author of more than two dozen books.
His most recent books are The De Thematibus (‘on the themes’) of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Translated with introductory chapters and notes (Liverpool UP, Liverpool 2021); The empire that would not die:The paradox of eastern Roman survival, 640 – 740 (Harvard UP, Cambridge MA 2016); A tale of two saints: the passions and miracles of Sts Theodore 'the recruit' and 'the general' (Liverpool UP, Liverpool 2016); A Critical Commentary on the Taktika of Leo VI (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC 2014); and Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era: A History, with L. Brubaker (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011).
He is currently (until August 2022) President of the International Association of Byzantine Studies. He was Director of Graduate Studies for the History Department at Princeton from 2009-2018. His research centers on the socio-economic, institutional, political and cultural history of the early and middle Byzantine empire from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. He also works on political systems and structures across the European and Islamic worlds from late ancient to early modern times, on the environmental history of the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds and the interface between societal change, environment and climate, and has explored how resources were produced, distributed and consumed, especially in warfare, during the late ancient and medieval periods. He is the author and co-author of more than two dozen books.
His most recent books are The De Thematibus (‘on the themes’) of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Translated with introductory chapters and notes (Liverpool UP, Liverpool 2021); The empire that would not die:The paradox of eastern Roman survival, 640 – 740 (Harvard UP, Cambridge MA 2016); A tale of two saints: the passions and miracles of Sts Theodore 'the recruit' and 'the general' (Liverpool UP, Liverpool 2016); A Critical Commentary on the Taktika of Leo VI (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC 2014); and Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era: A History, with L. Brubaker (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011).
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Empires are both simple and complex. Simple, because they are broadly identifiable through a small number of key elements in common – extended territorial polities dominated by a core, usually with a substantial element of coercive power at its disposal; they tend to entail the incorporation of local elites, and often local religious cultures, into a system dominated by the center; the language and culture of the core tends to become the dominant language of the empire's administration and elite culture; and they evolve to a greater or lesser degree an imperial ideology through which the existence of the imperial system can be legitimated. But they are at the same time complex, because no single 'version' of empire exists: rather, we are confronted by a vast array of empirically-verifiable forms, and each set of forms originates, functions and evolves differently. The relationship between imperial political ideologies and local elites, between local and regional elites and the core, between different levels of elite activity and the imperial administration or military generates innumerable variations on the theme; and the relationship between means of exchange, monetisation and market activity, imperial fiscal management and the collection and consumption of resources, all vary massively
Bien des choses ont changé dans le monde des études byzantines depuis la publication en 1977 par Paul Lemerle de sa contribution, « Byzance au tournant de son destin », la dernière des Cinq études sur le onzième siècle byzantin 1. Non seulement notre appréciation du XI e siècle est très différente, en grande partie précisément grâce à l'incisive critique faite par Lemerle de nombreuses hypothèses traditionnelles, mais le réexamen de sources plus anciennes ainsi que l'étude détaillée de nouveaux matériaux, tout particulièrement des données sigillographiques, ont permis la réévaluation de nombreux problèmes de l'histoire du XI e siècle et conduit à une nouvelle interprétation de la façon dont l'Etat et la société romaine d'Orient ont évolué. Dans cette courte contribution, je souhaiterais en présenter une brève vue d'ensemble, en particulier les aspects relatifs au rôle de l'armée et des institutions militaires, et constater l'état de la recherche, quelque quarante années après le jugement de Paul Lemerle. Malgré de nombreuses avancées dans notre compréhension du rôle et de la fonction de l'armée tout au long du XI e siècle, il n'est toujours pas rare de trouver dans les récits ordinaires de type narratif l'idée, maintenant obsolète, selon laquelle l'armée byzantine était au stade terminal de sa décomposition dans les années 1070, inefficace, mal équipée, mal commandée, et sous-financée. Encore plus commune est la notion que le XI e siècle constitua d'une certaine façon un tournant décisif dans l'évolution de la société et de l'Etat byzantins. L'héritage, apparemment empoisonné, de Basile II ou l'échec de cet empereur à régler la succession impériale furent des facteurs importants de cette transformation.
Empires are both simple and complex. Simple, because they are broadly identifiable through a small number of key elements in common – extended territorial polities dominated by a core, usually with a substantial element of coercive power at its disposal; they tend to entail the incorporation of local elites, and often local religious cultures, into a system dominated by the center; the language and culture of the core tends to become the dominant language of the empire's administration and elite culture; and they evolve to a greater or lesser degree an imperial ideology through which the existence of the imperial system can be legitimated. But they are at the same time complex, because no single 'version' of empire exists: rather, we are confronted by a vast array of empirically-verifiable forms, and each set of forms originates, functions and evolves differently. The relationship between imperial political ideologies and local elites, between local and regional elites and the core, between different levels of elite activity and the imperial administration or military generates innumerable variations on the theme; and the relationship between means of exchange, monetisation and market activity, imperial fiscal management and the collection and consumption of resources, all vary massively
Bien des choses ont changé dans le monde des études byzantines depuis la publication en 1977 par Paul Lemerle de sa contribution, « Byzance au tournant de son destin », la dernière des Cinq études sur le onzième siècle byzantin 1. Non seulement notre appréciation du XI e siècle est très différente, en grande partie précisément grâce à l'incisive critique faite par Lemerle de nombreuses hypothèses traditionnelles, mais le réexamen de sources plus anciennes ainsi que l'étude détaillée de nouveaux matériaux, tout particulièrement des données sigillographiques, ont permis la réévaluation de nombreux problèmes de l'histoire du XI e siècle et conduit à une nouvelle interprétation de la façon dont l'Etat et la société romaine d'Orient ont évolué. Dans cette courte contribution, je souhaiterais en présenter une brève vue d'ensemble, en particulier les aspects relatifs au rôle de l'armée et des institutions militaires, et constater l'état de la recherche, quelque quarante années après le jugement de Paul Lemerle. Malgré de nombreuses avancées dans notre compréhension du rôle et de la fonction de l'armée tout au long du XI e siècle, il n'est toujours pas rare de trouver dans les récits ordinaires de type narratif l'idée, maintenant obsolète, selon laquelle l'armée byzantine était au stade terminal de sa décomposition dans les années 1070, inefficace, mal équipée, mal commandée, et sous-financée. Encore plus commune est la notion que le XI e siècle constitua d'une certaine façon un tournant décisif dans l'évolution de la société et de l'Etat byzantins. L'héritage, apparemment empoisonné, de Basile II ou l'échec de cet empereur à régler la succession impériale furent des facteurs importants de cette transformation.
A major new survey of this most elusive and fascinating of periods of medieval history
Combines the expertise of a world-renowned art historian and historian, both specialists in the visual and written evidence of the period
Challenges many traditional views and places the period firmly in its broader political, cultural and social-economic context
http://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/byzantium-iconoclast-era-c-680-850-history
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-450-1000/byzantium-iconoclast-era-c-680850-history?format=PB
Plagues, earthquakes, comets, wars and other such phenomena were thus part of the relationship between the human and the divine, and were acted upon accordingly. Disasters or political calamities were frequently taken as warnings that the Chosen People - the Christian Romans - had strayed from the path of righteousness and were to be brought back to it by appropriate action, so that the search for a reason, or a scapegoat, usually followed. Such a logic underlay many important imperial initiatives, even if there were longer-term social and economic factors at work which determined the choice of a particular form of action or response. Such motives also lay behind the stress on Orthodoxy ('correct belief', that is, correct interpretation of the Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers of the church), so that many of the ecclesio-political conflicts within the Byzantine world, and thus between the Byzantine church or government and the papacy, for example, were set off by conflicts begun over the issue of whether or not a particular imperial policy was accepted as 'Orthodox' or not.
Given the length of its existence, it is not surprising that considerable changes in state organisation, as well as in social and cultural values, took place over time, so that, while there are enough constants and continuities to make the use of one term for the whole social and political formation entirely legitimate, it is also true to say that in several respects the state and society of the fifteenth century bear little relationship to those of the sixth. This is particularly true of the social and economic relationships in Byzantine society and the vocabulary through which they were understood; it is even more so in the case of many of the state's key administrative apparatuses.
In 1869 the historian William Lecky wrote:
“Of that Byzantine empire, the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilisation has yet assumed. There has been no other enduring civilisation so absolutely destitute of all forms and elements of greatness, and none to which the epithet mean may be so emphatically applied .... The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude”.
This image, which nicely reflects the morality and prejudices of the mid-Victorian world, has been remarkably resilient. Indeed, it lives on in some popular ideas about the Byzantine world, a combination of Victorian moralising with Crusaders' prejudices; and in the use of the adjective 'Byzantine' in a pejorative sense. And there are some modern writers - for the most part, not professional historians - who have, consciously or not, transferred these prejudices to the world of contemporary scholarship, if not in respect of the 'corrupt' Byzantine court, then in terms of a romantic, 'orientalist' image of Byzantium which merely contributes to the continued obfuscation of the true nature of Byzantine society and civilisation. In the light of the evidence in the written sources and the material record, the Byzantine court was certainly no more corrupt, venal or conspiracy-ridden than any other medieval court in west or east. But it has taken a long time to deconstruct these attitudes. Historians working within the western European tradition have been particular victims in this respect of the nationalist and Eurocentric propaganda which first arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the context of the evolving nationalist and rationalist attiitudes of the age. Northern and western European culture was credited with an integrity, sense of honour and straightforwardness which the corrupt 'orientalised' Byzantine world (and that of Islam) had lost.
Like any other political system, the east Roman empire struggled throughout its existence to maintain its territorial integrity. Its greatest problem was posed by its geographical situation, for it was always surrounded by potential or actual enemies: in the east, the Sassanid Persian empire until the 620s, then the Islamic Caliphates, and finally the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks; in the North, various groups of immigrant Slavs (6th-7th century), along with nomadic peoples such as the Avars, Bulgars, Chazars, Hungarians [Magyars] and Pechenegs; and in Italy and the western coastal region of the Balkans the Lombards and Franks, and later both Saracens (from North Africa and Spain) and Normans (later 10th-mid-12th century). Finally, from the twelfth century, Italian maritime powers vied to maximise their influence over Byzantine emperors and their territory. Over-ambitious (although sometimes initially very successful) plans to recover former imperial lands, and a limited and relatively inflexible budgetary system, were key structural constraints which affected the history of the empire. From the 11th century the empire's economy was gradually overtaken by the rapidly expanding economies of western Europe and the Italian peninsula. The capture and sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and the partition of its territory among a variety of Latin principalities and a Latin 'empire', a rump of the former Byzantine state, spelled the end of Byzantium as a serious international power. In spite of the re-establishment of an imperial state at Constantinople in 1261, the growth of Balkan powers such as the Serbian empire in the 14th century, and the Ottomans in both Anatolia and the Balkans thereafter, were to prevent any re-assertion of Byzantine power in the region. By the time of its final absorption into the Ottoman state, the 'empire' consisted of little more than Constantinople, some Aegean islands, and parts of the southern Peloponnese in Greece.
The history of Byzantium is not just the history of its political fortunes. The evolution of Byzantine society, transformations in economic life, the relationship between urban centres and rural hinterlands, the constantly shifting apparatuses of the state's fiscal and administrative machinery, the nature and development of Byzantine (Roman) law, the growth of ecclesiastical and monastic power, both in economic as well as in ideological terms, developments in forms and styles of visual representation, literature, architecture, the sciences, all these elements are but part of a complex whole described by the term 'Byzantine' which this brief survey will introduce. Beyond description, however, comes explanation, and in the following pages I will try to provide enough information for the uninitiated reader to piece together a picture which will at once describe the course and shape of Byzantine history and also suggest an explanation for them. Byzantine society was just like any other medieval society in the sense that its social relations - based on kinship, private wealth and power, control of natural and man-made resources, and access to political authority and other forms of legitimation - can be analysed and dissected by a careful and painstaking interrogation of the relevant sources.
The book examines Byzantine attitudes to warfare, the effects of war on society and culture, and the relations between the soldiers, their leaders and society. The communications, logistics, resources and manpower capabilities of the Byzantine Empire are explored to set warfare in its geographical as well as historical context. In addition to the strategic and tactical evolution of the army, this book analyses the army in campaign and in battle, and its attitudes to violence in the context of the Byzantine Orthodox Church.
A paperback edition of one of the most durable and successful monographs on Byzantine history of recent years
Adopts a highly analytical, non-narrative approach to cover all aspects of political, social and religious history
Includes illustrations of the art and coinage of the period
Provides interconnected essays of original scholarship relating to the social history of the Byzantine empire.
Offers groundbreaking theoretical and empirical research in the study of Byzantine society.
Includes helpful glossaries of sociological/theoretical terms and Byzantine/medieval terms.