Empire, Ideology, and Politics in Romania

Was Byzantium an empire? The answer is not obvious. States are commonly clas­sified as empires today based on two different criteria: either they represented the dominion of one ethnic or ethnoreligious group (usually a minority of the popula­tion) over a variety of other such groups, a dominion achieved usually by conquest and reinforced by markers of difference; or else the ruler of a certain state claimed a title that we render as “emperor.” These two criteria do not always overlap and are not used consistently.

The early Roman Empire was truly multiethnic. But after 212, all free people in the empire were made Roman citizens, Rome itself and Italy ceased to be the centers of power, and even the idea of Rome was transferred to the provinces: according to a cliche of late antiquity, it was a city (urbs) that had become a world (orbs). Many provincial cities were called New Rome before Constantine fixed that name to his foundation, and the world around it became Romania. Over time, provincial populations accepted the normative order of Rome and called themselves Romans, often losing their previous ethnonyms; this happened even to the Greeks.^[1256] With the loss of the western, Latin-speaking provinces in the fifth century, and then the loss of its Coptic- and Syriac-speaking populations in the seventh, the empire became much more homogeneous as Greek-speaking, Orthodox, and Roman.

Who, then, were the non-Romans in this society? Jews were a special, ambiguous case. Viewed legally and socially, they conformed to Roman norms, but religion erected a barrier of difference, so inclusion or exclusion depend on the aspect that we (or they) choose to use; and, besides, they were an ancient, integrated el­ement of Roman society.^[1258] Looking outward, imperial policy often settled for­eign (“barbarian”) groups on Byzantine territory, including Goths, Huns, Slavs, Persians, Armenians, Arabs, and others, and they were expected to serve as soldiers, farmers, and taxpayers. But these groups also tended to assimilate by converting to Orthodoxy, marrying Roman women, and learning Greek. Over a few generations, they became indistinguishable and went “extinct” as distinct groups.^[1259] It is sometimes noted in the narrative sources that a general or soldier was, say, of Turkish origin but had been raised a Roman, and these ethnic origins would normally not even be noted in later generations.

If “empire” requires the rule of Romans over non-Romans, it is not entirely clear where we are to locate it, as the field of Byzantine studies has just begun to discuss the Roman identity of the Byzantines in a thorough way. Certainly, there were groups and territories whose cultural profile or ethnic identity did not conform to Roman norms and who likely did not identify with the ruling culture. Candidates include the Lombards of southern Italy in the tenth and eleventh centuries; some of the Dalmatian cities; Slavs in the Peloponnese and mainland Greece and Macedonia; the Bulgarians between 1018 and 1185 (who, despite being Orthodox, were not viewed as Romans by the Byzantines, except for elite individuals who acquired the appropriate cultural profile); some of the Armenians in the eastern provinces and all those in the kingdoms acquired in the tenth and eleventh centuries;^[1260] Muslims in the conquered territories who were not expelled (though some who stayed converted); Jacobite Syriac-speakers in the east (who were developing their own separate ethnic identity at this time);^[1261] and other groups of outsiders who found themselves inside the empire for a longer or shorter stay, for example foreign mercenaries.

Romans, which happened, at various moments in its long history, to engage in im­perial relationships with other (minority) groups. Such imperial relationships were naturally scarcer in the later period.

Was there a Byzantine “imperial” ideology? By this we do not mean an ideology about the office of the emperor, which is what the term means in Byzantine studies, but about rule over other peoples. The answer is unclear. The Byzantines (Romans) gen­erally viewed themselves as superior to anyone else in the world and their emperor as having a higher status than other rulers. They were not, as it is often claimed, delusional about the existence of foreign states, with whom they dealt pragmatically, nor were they unaware that their empire did not encompass the entire world. Yet Byzantium had inherited from Rome an ideology of “ecumenical” rule, though it is hard to say what this meant. Usually “ecumenical” referred to the scope of their apparatus of gov­ernance, and so it was limited to the borders of Romania. In this sense, Romania in Byzantine eyes was the only truly civilized part of the world, and the emperors were praised for civilizing (and converting) the people they took in or conquered. Byzantine rhetoric sometimes gives the impression that the emperor was the sovereign ruler of the entire earth, but what this may have meant in practice is never spelled out. Apocalyptic narratives circulated according to which the empire and emperor would play a key role in the drama of the Second Coming of Christ, but there is no proof that these shaped imperial policy.

We turn now to the second criterion of empire, that of having an emperor. This had both a foreign and a domestic political aspect. Starting with the former, Greek had no clear way of distinguishing kings from emperors, and many foreign rulers were called basileis unofficially in Byzantine literature. The imperial chancery, how­ever, reserved the term for rulers who were at that time recognized as roughly equal in status to the basileus of the Romans such as, occasionally, the Frankish king. Sometimes the term autokrator was added to basileus to convey the sense that the Byzantine emperor was more than a “mere” king (though autokrator could also mean other things, such as having no partner on the throne). Its Latin trans­lation was, of course, imperator, not rex. The latter term was used by the western and eastern imperial courts to insult each other. It is important to note that the tit­ular conflict between the two empires was not over the term imperator, as there was ample precedent in Roman tradition for the existence of more than one emperor, but rather it was over the Roman aspect: the east felt that the west was making a claim to the Byzantine throne, as there were no Romans in the west who could jus­tify that title being used by Franks or Germans. At any rate, the Byzantines had a clear idea that their basileus was superior to mere kings. Court protocol addressed the latter as “sons” of the emperor, but when they became powerful they could be elevated to “brothers.” This “family of kings” was by no means a set theory in Byzantine ideology, nor did it govern international relations, as it has sometimes been portrayed; it was merely a function of court rhetoric.¹⁰

The domestic aspect is just as complex. It is not easy to explain the position of the Roman emperor (ancient or Byzantine) in terms of political theory. In partic­ular, there were no rules for the succession, which took place in a wide variety of ways, whether the previous emperor had already died or not; also, there were no rules about who could or could not become emperor, so long as he was a Roman.

As a result, emperors had to work hard to retain the support of the armies and the people, while potential usurpers were watching and testing for weakness. This ensured that emperors were generally capable and conscientious politicians, but it also implies that there was an active and public political sphere intensely interested in palace affairs and the state of the empire. Emperors repeatedly proclaimed that theirs was a public responsibility to protect and enhance the welfare of their subjects, the Romans, and protect the faith.¹¹ Thus, moral, religious, and political limitations on how power could be exercised were baked into the imperial system, and no em­peror could abuse his position for long without endangering himself. His legitimacy was an ongoing process and not a fact established once and for all: emperors had to be acclaimed at every appearance before their subjects, whereas jeers, protests, and satirical songs portended trouble, and could lead to “de-acclamation.” To protect themselves from the ambitions of rivals, emperors rotated powerful men in and out of office, played them off against each other, and often relied on eunuchs, foreigners (including mercenaries, such as the Varangian Guard), bishops, and monks, for such men could not usurp the throne. But they could not go too far in this direction without losing elite support.

At the same time, the imperial position was invested with a theocratic rhetoric according to which the emperor was chosen and crowned by God on account of his superlative virtues. This image of absolute divine right was projected especially in court panegyrics and art; by contrast, Byzantine historical writing tended to re­count the messy realities and multiple challenges that emperors faced. Both pictures were fixtures of the system. The Byzantines wanted to think of the emperor in reli­gious terms, so long as he remained popular, in which case he could even transmit his power to an heir. If he were deposed, the rhetoric would be transferred to his successor, who could not have claimed the throne without broad support. Thus, we might say that the politics of the public sphere determined the succession, whereas the rhetoric of the theocratic-imperial idea then legitimated the result and locked it in place. One of the disadvantages of this system, if it can be called that, is that it tended to produce challengers precisely when the empire was facing grave foreign threats. Weakness in foreign war made it seem as if the emperor had lost God' s favor, which sparked civil war. Intra-Roman conflicts contributed to the loss of Asia Minor in the 1070s, to the defeat by the Crusaders in 1204, and to defeat by the Serbs and Turks in the fourteenth century.¹²