Conclusion
When compared to the medieval West, Byzantium can appear as an enlightened, inclusive, even cosmopolitan, society that extended freedom of worship to other faiths and denominations.
It is true that during certain periods Muslims had their mosques, Jews their synagogues and Catholics their denominational churches within imperial territory. Armenians, Georgians, Italians, Germans, Bulgars, Rus and others, including even Pechenegs and Turks, could aspire to prominent marriages, administrative positions and military commands despite their ethnic background.[570] Yet the Komnenian dynasty, starting with Alexios I, went to extraordinary lengths to base its legitimacy on the commitment to eradicate heterodoxy. During their rule, the incidence of trials commented upon in the sources increased dramatically: some thirty cases are attested from the late eleventh to the late twelfth century, in contrast to almost no known cases from the late ninth to the late eleventh century.[571] The sheer number of trials suggests that the Komnenian dynasty was more preoccupied with persecution and repression than previous dynasties.Mere quantification obscures the changing agency behind the orchestration, staging and interpretation of proceedings. Looking back at Alexios' reign, a member of the Komnenoi writing in the mid twelfth century continued to define the burning of heretics as the greatest ‘triumph' of an imperial career full of ‘struggles and exploits'.[572] By that time, however, although the discourses of an earlier era remained useful in reminding people of the dynasty's origins, and thus bolstering the foundational story and authority of the imperial regime, it was no longer effective for emperors to employ persecutory institutions to achieve specific political goals relating either to continued control of the imperial heartland or to expansionist claims over new territory, especially in Italy.
Emperor Manuel found it increasingly expedient to avoid such punishments. Meanwhile, other political players - the pope and the patriarch - co-opted the format and framing of the heresy trials and burnings, using them to expand their own jurisdiction and to pursue agendas at odds with those of the emperors. In this way, a persecutory programme originating as a response to specific challenges faced by the Komnenoi helped lay the groundwork for the independence of the patriarchal court, as well as for the creation of the papacy's bloodiest institution - the Inquisition.Recourse to mass persecution served further to undermine state monopoly of physical force. Assaults on large population groups required not merely the employment of a few interrogators and executioners, but mass mobilisation of the citizenry, and such actions could easily backfire. By granting the people the right to use violence licitly, the Komnenoi opened the door to the possibility that the full weight of judicial proceedings would one day be brought to bear against the ruler himself. In a last-ditch effort to maintain his dynasty's grip on the empire, Manuel's successor, Andronikos, sought soon after his enthronement in 1183 to reintroduce burning at the stake. But when he condemned not only the books of a certain Mamalos to destruction, but the man himself - ordering a huge pyre to be built and stationing men with long pikes around it who prodded the unfortunate victim, repeatedly attempting to escape, back into the flames - onlookers did not react in the intended fashion, as enthusiastic or even quiescent observers, but instead were moved to tears by the spectacle. Popular sentiment had turned against the ‘Emperors of the Romans', who, it was said, were not satisfied ‘only to reign and wear gold and consider public resources their own private property' while ‘treating free men as slaves', but had the temerity to pronounce even on things ‘pertaining to God'. These emperors introduced ‘dogmas' and provided ‘doctrinal definitions', meting out ‘punishment on those who do not agree with them' as if they themselves were ‘infallible' and ‘divine'.[573]
Shortly after the spread of these accusations, Andronikos was toppled from power and killed in what amounted to a parody of the trials and executions his grandfather had once successfully staged.
Seized and imprisoned, Andronikos was given a summary hearing in which he was denied the right to defend himself, then paraded through the streets of the city, where he was abused verbally and physically. Finally, taken to the hippodrome where he had previously sought to hold burnings, he was hung up by the feet between two columns, and stabbed and hacked to death.[574]In these proceedings, ordinary imperial citizens - the ‘common inhabitants' and ‘masses' of Constantinople - played a central role. It was they who beat and denigrated Andronikos; they, too, who eventually slew him. The legitimisation of an emperor had always been viewed as resting on the assent of the people who, it was argued, had entrusted their power to the ruler. They now claimed that power back. The lynching they orchestrated was a direct response to the arrival of reports in Constantinople that an Italian fleet had finally made it all the way up the Aegean and sacked the second city of the empire, Thessalonike - a feat that prefigured another Italian fleet's conquest of the imperial capital itself within two decades.[575] Citizens appear to have come to the conclusion that the dynasty ruling over them, while unable to offer effective security against the external threat posed by the Normans and Venetians, was using fear of that threat to oppress those it was supposed to protect.
The Komnenian dynasty thus came to be viewed as having created a closed circuit of violence. In seeking to destroy the people, it ended up, through its tyranny, bringing about its own downfall. Recounting Andronikos' death, the contemporary historian Niketas Choniates expressed this view through a striking if terrible image. It seemed to many, Choniates noted, that the last of the Komnenoi, after the amputation of his right arm, ‘extended the stump' and brought it ‘round to his mouth', dying in the act of sucking out his own ‘dripping, still warm' life-blood.[576]